The Department of the Air Force Digital Transformation Office, in collaboration with Digital Platform as a Service and SAIC, is developing LaunchPad, a cloud-based software tool environment.
The U.S. Air Force Materiel Command said Friday the new enterprise-funded software environment aims to revamp the digital workforce by allowing users to adopt digital materiel management — a.k.a. DMM — methods and accelerate the enterprise’s digital transformation.
The project seeks to leverage strategic initiatives such as providing training to ensure the proper use of digital tools, promoting a digital-first culture, creating digital strategies, structuring and securing data and making DMM tools readily accessible.
LaunchPad utilizes digital tools to bolster the processes by making them faster and more efficient in delivering capabilities from development to support. Available tools include Cameo and Teamwork Cloud for model-based systems engineering software, IBM DOORS for requirements management programs and MATLAB for data analysis.
The software environment offers free, user-friendly and secure access to cloud-based tools, training and other services for more than 2,000 users. LaunchPad is currently supporting engineering programs and collaboration, but plans are underway to broaden the toolset to benefit all functions within the organization. It is expected to grow to 80,000 users by Sept. 2029.
Elizabeth Loiacono, LaunchPad lead at AFMC, emphasized that the objective of the project is to provide access to critical software tools across all functionals.
“Now that we can provide access to the tools, we can provide training to upskill people and make their work processes faster and better,” Loiacono said.
The exec also pointed out that engineering tools are costly and by creating a shared environment and implementing floating licenses, an estimated $120 million of cost avoidance has been recorded since the start of LaunchPad.
“We’re hoping to add program management tools and other tools to support other functional areas,” added Loiacono.
Noah Demerly, lead system safety engineer at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, shared his experience using the software environment.
“With LaunchPad’s tools, I connected over 11,000 artifact types to criteria in the handbook in under ten minutes – work that would have taken over six man-weeks manually. This model can now be used by any Air Force program to trace airworthiness source data,” Demerly noted.
Learn everything you need about Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC. Register here to watch the webinar.
