Each and every day, the bold men and women of IT risk it all to deliver critical applications and services. Their stories are unique. Their triumphs inspire. Learn how the US Air Force applies the intelligence gained from the Observer Platform in field testing applications, before deployment, to ensure peak performance on the battlefield and how it could do the same for you.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Nestled in the Florida panhandle, Eglin Air Force Base is about 100 miles from the Mississippi border as the crow flies. Its location to the storied Gulf Coast, near sleepy retirement towns like Destin and Fort Walton Beach belies the fact that the 725 square mile base is home to the 46th Test Squadron.
During a Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment (JEFX), the 46th Test Squadron’s Command and Control Performance Team Lead, Lee Paggeot was on hand to make sure that hundreds of participants and myriad weapons, vehicles, and other devices stayed connected.
New Technology Revealed
As part of the JEFX experiment, Paggeot’s team focused on air-to-air communication, specifically what would be revealed as the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node. The result, they hoped, would be a flying gateway between multiple military communications networks, enabling increased coordination between forces.
“We had hundreds of systems – tons and tons of servers in a massive configuration,” says Paggeot who employed the Observer Performance Management Platform to closely monitor the sensitive airborne network.
A Costly Test
Paggeot’s secret weapon, the Observer Platform was key to ensuring the success of the expensive experiments.
“Sometimes we’d lose the event,” says Paggeot, remembering the days when network problems were far more difficult and costly to solve. “We would have spent thousands of dollars, a hundred thousand dollars. We wouldn’t know until the last day that it was a multicast broadcast storm. Now if that happens at any of our events, we know in minutes.”
Find out how this IT Hero helped the U.S. military prepare for a historic wartime event, while detailing technical deficiencies to resolve IT issues faster – 60 times faster.
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Thanks to Network Instruments for the article.
