AFMC selects CoT team for Rawlings Award

  • Published
  • By Justin Oakes
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  Air Force Materiel Command recently named the Cursor on Target project office, otherwise known as CoT, as the recipient of the 2013 Gen. Edwin W. Rawlings Team Award.

This marks the first time in the team's history to receive the accolade - an award that recognizes the efforts of those who significantly improve communications and information support to Air Force and/or Department of Defense operations.

"The CoT team makes valuable contributions to the warfighter on a regular basis," said Perry Villanueva, CoT program manager. "Being selected to represent AFMC for this award is something our team can be proud of."

The mission of the CoT team is to produce technology that improves situational awareness by allowing basic information such as the "What, When and Where" to be transmitted rapidly and through data templates. Examples of CoT messages could include timely notifications on friendly/hostile troop positions; targeting information; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data.

While there was no shortage of contributions from the program office, several key achievements helped differentiate the team from their competitors.

For instance, in an era of constant budget constraints and cutbacks, the CoT team managed to release software and updates for a user base of more than 300 command, control, communication and computer ISR systems worldwide promoting DOD interoperability with coalition partners -- and did so while absorbing a 25 percent resources cut.

Not only did CoT deliver software and engineering support to coalition partners, but they also oversaw a systems engineering and integration experiment during a recent 129th Rescue Wing deployment.

A collaborative effort involving MITRE engineers and an MC-130P Combat Shadow aircraft from Moffett Field, Calif., created a laboratory for demonstration and evaluation of emerging technologies. The work with the rescue wing resulted in a 50 percent communication improvement within the wing's Horn of Africa area of responsibility, which culminated in a "significant impact," according to Col. Steven Butow, 129th RQW commander.

"CoT's simplicity, backward compatibility, and low cost of adoption has greatly affected the joint warfighting community allowing more rapid integration of shared resources than ever before," said Andrew Wehrli, CoT program management support.

Other efforts that led to the Rawlings award include: authoring a markup language schematic for medical android tactical assault kits that monitor the needs of evacuees; creating a new ability for mission planning tool Falcon View that results in target strikes within five minutes; and establishing the first international CoT summit, a forum that focuses on C2 interoperability between six nations, DOD, Department of Homeland Security and industry leaders.

With such technology making its way into the AOR, it wasn't long before joint coalition partners took notice. "Even the Finnish Chief of Defense was impressed with the work originating from our office," Wehrli said.

The defense chief received a first-hand look when the CoT project office supported a Finnish-sponsored live-fire exercise, an exercise that interfaced the Finnish navy C2 systems utilizing CoT extensible markup language format. The work that took place with Finland was part of another first that can be attributed to the CoT program office - a Cursor on Target foreign military sales case between the U.S. and Finland.

After all the packages were submitted, and the scores tallied, it was the CoT program office at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., that emerged the winner of this year's award; however, there is still more competition to be had. Now that AFMC chose their representative, the team will compete at the Air Force-level later this year.

"The CoT team has achieved impressive warfighter interoperability at low cost for our U.S. and coalition forces," said Col. Bill Polakowski, C3I Infrastructure senior materiel leader. "Their rapid IT prototyping efforts are a model for our DOD and coalition efforts."