Cyber Airmen fuel innovation

Any problems discovered in the software can be more easily corrected, a small failure being preferable to correcting the shortfalls of an entire software suite. Changes requested by the customer can sometimes be delivered in just a couple days.

Prior to Jigsaw, the tanker mission planners would use whiteboards to plot out their fueling rendezvous.

“Rather than taking hours to run the calculations by hand for the hundreds of sorties scheduled each day to find a feasible plan,” Tatro said. “The program logs events in order to detect and report errors in scheduling.”

It didn’t take long for the new software to start paying off.

“Before Jigsaw was delivered to the tanker planners, they would be spending 8 to 12 hours a day with a team of five planning a day of tanker missions,” Maung said. “Now they only need three people and it takes them 4 to 5 hours, usually done before lunch.”

Since the program was put into use in April 2017, Jigsaw has saved approximately $200,000 per day, just in fuel. There were other benefits as well. www.af.mil/News/Arti…