About the Client

The USAF Air Operations Center (AOC) Communications Training Tool (ACTT) is a training framework for system and network administrators to accomplish Mission Qualification Training (MQT). ACTT provides an environment to conduct interactive training that is not possible on operational systems. The system requires security updates as well as hardware and software updates to address End of Life/End of Support issues, or to take advantage of efficiencies in technology. ACTT addresses operational/site activation advanced planning activities for fielding activities to include analyzing site configuration data regarding system performance problems, configuration problems, reliability problems, and other operational and sustainment factors.

The Challenge

The prior instantiation of ACTT was a completed prototype. The system required security updates as well as hardware and software updates to address End of Life/End of Support issues, or to take advantage of efficiencies in technology. The current ACTT instantiation addresses operational/site activation advance planning activities for fielding activities to include analyzing site configuration data regarding system performance problems, configuration problems, reliability problems, and other operational and sustainment factors for 22 locations worldwide. Locations include Korea, Hawaii, Alaska, Germany, and the Continental United States (CONUS). The Segue Team develops/upgrades, tests, packages, fields, and trains systems and software changes as well as provides problem resolutions for the existing system. The Segue Team maintains configuration management of the system for the government and provides software change and problem fixes to the baseline, as required, throughout the contract. The Team modernizes and sustains the current instantiation through the life of the contract. This includes software and hardware updates to remain in sync with the AOC operational baseline, to include Virtual Machine, Network Access Storage, Scenario Import Tools, Active Directory authentication, and AOC Periodic Maintenance Updates, Critical Security Updates, Out-Of-Cycle events, and Fast Track events as required.

The Solution

Segue Technologies provides system development, sustainment and support, as well as information assurance, cybersecurity, quality assurance, program management, planning and reporting, and risk and configuration management for ACTT. Our Team successfully re-engineered the solution for ACTT from an initial prototype architecture, which relied upon a fully-coupled .NET architecture, to one which allowed for greater flexibility in systems and reduced licensing costs using a Java-based RESTful Web Services architecture. This update allowed ACTT to better leverage the required COTS API(s), due to vendor language support changes and updated Customer requirements.  This change to a de-coupled Web UI/Web Services environment also allowed for an improved web-based user interface to be developed. Our team has followed a standardized AGILE process for developing, compiling, and deploying the source code using DI2E and Atlassian tools such as BitBucket, Confluence, JIRA and more.

The web-based UI was developed to modern standards (following Google Material Design standards and leveraging pure client-side JavaScript libraries like Angular), removing resource strains on the Server and enhancing the user experience.

Dependency management and compilation of custom Java-based ACTT web services are being executed for ACTT using common tools such as Gradle and Jenkins. Software and the custom systems on which the software is run, are being built according to DOD requirements, with a standard RMF process in place including proper categorization, controls selection and implementation, and assessing both the operational capability and the vulnerabilities of all systems and developed software.

Our team also supports the ACTT user community by developing and delivering training materials and conducting training on the updated version of ACTT.