An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Operation Allies Refuge accelerates Mobility ABMS connection

  • Published
  • By Alexandra Soika, Air Mobility Command Public Affairs

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. -- Amid the whole-of-government effort to transport Afghan evacuees from the Middle East, Mobility Air Force’s tracking data made the first live connection into the Unified Data Library on Aug 30.

The effort was spearheaded by Air Mobility Command's Communications Directorate and the Global Decision Support System team, in collaboration with the UDL developers at Bluestaq and Space Systems Command.

“For nine months, we had been working on a plan to share our real-time mission data through the UDL, specifically to reach those outside of Air Mobility Command,” said Col. Bradley Rueter, Director of the Commander’s Initiative Group. “But when Operation Allies Refuge began and pieces started moving rapidly, we needed to accelerate the timeline and get the necessary data out to the larger joint force.”

Mission data, such as geographical location and mission information, has historically been stored in stove-piped systems and designed to only be available to select people, in support of specific mission areas. This situation was created by design to protect operationally sensitive data.

As a solution to this, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Systems Command, and the Air Force Space Command developed the UDL – a highly scalable cloud-based environment, created to allow users in disparate locations easy, direct access to data.

“There’s a balance between ‘need to protect’ and ‘need to share’, and this operation demanded greater data sharing between multiple agencies. On Aug. 24, the teams made a huge push to implement the plan to link our data to the UDL,” said Col Robert Kelly, Director of Communications and Chief Information Officer. “Less than a week later, we made the final connections live and went from sharing data with only a few agencies, to sharing it with multiple mission partners on an integrated platform.”

The UDL will help provide tangible information to the Air Force as it builds the Advanced Battle Management System, the architecture through which the Air Force envisions conducting JADC2.

“The combined AMC government and contractor team was working long hours to generate, test, and deploy software to get the connections up and running, so it was a real achievement to get the call that our information was populated in the system,” said Michael Marek, Deputy Director of Communications. “NORTHCOM was finally able to get critical visibility of flights to CONUS, allowing them to prep onward movement or lodging for evacuees before they reached the east coast – it was a great shared success.”