Polaris Aero LLC

Polaris Aero’s Aviation Safety Intelligence Platform More than 6,000 U.S. non-combat military aviation mishaps occurred between 2013 and 2018, claiming the lives of 198 people and costing more than $9 billion in damages, including 157 destroyed aircraft. In addition, the same mishaps continue to occur year after year. To solve the problem, a new organizational approach is required. The current Air Force strategy for collecting, analyzing, and sharing aviation-related data is outdated and inefficient. Instead of focusing on learning lessons from negative outcomes (damages and injuries), the Air Force should focus on identifying the common errors, and their root causes, that occur during each mission. Once these insights are collected, they should be shared in real-time with the entire Air Force Enterprise. The result – improved readiness and an increase in mission success. Polaris Aero provides a similar solution to the commercial and corporate aviation industries. The Phase I objective is to understand and define the requirements needed to transform the Polaris Aero’s aviation Safety Intelligence software from a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solution to a military solution. Phase I methodology will focus on a single Air Force unit and aircraft type (e.g., 193d Special Operations Wing, C-130J aircraft). The investigation includes identifying required data sources (e.g., manuals, regulations, third-party software), mission-sets (e.g., air refueling, airdrop), and subject matter expert (SME) interviews.