SBIR-STTR Award

The Air Force's ability to efficiently and effectively supply airmen with the most useful and usable equipment is central to its core mission of national defense. Many airmen, however, particularly women, face obstacles to acquiring and using the equipment that they personally need to train and combat at the highest levels of performance. Our objective is to translate the product vision that our customer has for solving this problem into a valuable, high-quality, cost-effective software solution using modern digital delivery practices and technologies. Envisioned capabilities of the product include, for example, the ability for airmen to provide feedback on equipment issues, the ability for program/acquisition personnel to analyze this feedback, the ability for aircrew to order what they need online, and the ability for aircrew to learn how best to use equipment through online training videos.

The Human Systems Division (HSD), under the Agile Combat Support Directorate, in partnership with BESPIN, under the Business Enterprise Systems Directorate, has a national defense mission need related to ensuring that all Airmen are equipped with good-fitting Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment (OCIE) / Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). When Airmen are equipped with ill-fitting gear, it compromises their job performance, their personal safety, the safety of others, and their combat readiness. Female pilots in particular lack consistent access to properly fitting tactical gear and equipment options, exposing them to serious injury or mission failure. To quote Captain Lauren Ellis of the AF: “In certain situations, having ill-fitting gear, such as harnesses and survival vests, can result in a loss of life. If an aircrew member ejects from the aircraft with equipment that doesn't fit, they can be severely injured or lose their life.” Currently, the AF lacks the necessary data/systems (e.g., a centralized database of user-driven feedback) to efficiently and effectively meet the complex personal protective equipment needs of its diverse community of Airmen. To solve this problem, we engaged HSD and BESPIN through an initial Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract to create a minimum viable product (MVP) called GearFit (formerly called Aircrew Flight Equipment). The scope of this MVP focused on gathering feedback from Aircrew on issues they’re having with their gear (e.g., harness is too tight). During the successful MVP process, Skylight and the Government team learned that the Air Force’s fitment problem is multi-dimensional in nature and requires a cohesive, integrated, modular suite of products. For example, a product to gather feedback from Aircrew and another product that enables Requirements Managers to make smarter supply chain decisions. This type of multi-product, multi-team environment warrants further research & development (R&D) to determine how best to harmonize design, product, and system engineering – thus the need for a Sequential SBIR Phase II. Not only will this additional R&D benefit HSD and BESPIN, it’ll also increase the viability of successfully commercializing GearFit for use by organizations in the defense, security, safety, and healthcare fields.