WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- The Department of the Air Force has developed an application data system to help those downrange track and source commercially available supplies and services available by location, in a standard format, complete with vendor information.
Air Force Fellows at Blue Horizons, Col. Karen Landale and Maj. Michael Sweeney, identified the supply chain problem and developed the concept during the 2019-2020 academic year. The original blueprint for the application was designed by CyberWorx, an Air Force innovation design center focused on cyber capability, in January 2020.
Blue Horizons, part of Air University’s Center for Strategy and Technology, is part think tank and part incubator. Fellows collaborate on original, innovative projects that are designed to help the Air Force transcend domains and reimagine how organizations operate.
“The idea was to find what we could take off the ‘packing list’ to take downrange. We knew resources would already be available where we were heading,” said Col. Karen Landale, former Blue Horizons Fellow. “We needed a new form of intelligence to support planning and executing logistics for our operations. We needed to “see” what the commercial market could offer. We needed business intelligence.”
BIZINT illuminates the relevant commercial market, revealing commercially available supplies and services within any current or potential military operations support area.
BIZINT depicts vendors by location, along with the types and approximate quantities of the supplies and services they provide. It also provides desired commercial market intelligence and data visualization previously unknown and unavailable during the planning and execution processes.
Launched in February 2022 to support European Command’s mission, BIZINT is being used in support of the mission to assure Ukraine and deter Russian aggression.
“BIZINT has identified over 4,000 vendors in Europe who are capable of supplying operations in support of Ukraine,” said Col. Bill Waynick, former Air Force Cyberworx director.
Nearly 400 U.S. and partner nation users in the European Command are leveraging BIZINT to locate commercial vendors that are able to provide the supplies and services needed to support operations.
BIZINT enables joint planners to make critical “bring vs. buy” decisions early, “buying down” movement requirements and freeing up critical strategic lift for organic support requirements that cannot be procured in the operating environment.
More information about BIZINT is available here.