(radio call redialing) (bouncy music) - The air force has announced the creation of a new Information Operations Technical Training School. (air whooshing) - The first man, simply must arm our airmen, to outthink, outperform, out-partner, out-innovate, any potential adversary. (fast paced music) Air Force basic military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on, readiness and lethality. (high intensity music) - The first command, The Air Force Starts Here. (loud bang) (flowing bouncy music) - Hey everyone. Welcome in to Episode 44, of The Air Force Starts Here. Thanks for the subscribe, stream or download, however, you might be listening in. If you have some extra time, we certainly would appreciate some stars, or even a review of the podcast. Let us know how we're doing, bringing you timely and relevant info across the recruiting, training, and education world. My name is Dan Hawkins from the AETC Public Affairs Team, and your host for this, Professional Development Podcast, dedicated, to bringing total force, big airmen, inside tips, tricks, and lessons learned from the recruiting, training, and education fields. On today's pod, we have a good one. We're going to in depth with Major Kevin Hawkins and first Lieutenant Adam Treece, from the 56th Operational Support Squadron at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, who, along with Dylan Kerr, a student at Arizona State University, have developed a 3D augmented reality system that will revolutionize the way pilots conduct mission debriefs. They're calling it, "Next Gen Debrief." And they will represent the First Command, at Spark Tank 2021, which is coming up in a few weeks, during the Virtual Air Force Association Aerospace Warfare Symposium, down in Orlando, Florida. That's gonna be a virtual event. Major Hawkins and Lieutenant Treece, both talk about how they adapted Microsoft HoloLens 2 smart glasses into a tool that air crews can use to conduct detailed mission debriefs from an interactive three-dimensional perspective. It's a really great idea, and they're hoping to really turn this thing into a reality, and also win Spark Tank 2021. Modernizing the air and space forces is of course a priority for our air force, and aggressively, and cost effectively modernizing education and training to transform the way we learn, is one of Lieutenant General Webb's top priorities, and this project certainly fits right into that wheelhouse. And the innovation aspect is also a huge part of our DNA as airman, as we value innovation and operationalizing our airman's best ideas so we can improve operations. And so we're gonna spend some time talking to Lieutenant Treece about his experience at last year's Spark Tank, where a project he called, "Making Waves." Which revolved around a low cost mobile threat emitter system to be used in training for fifth generation aircraft, was named a co-winner of that competition. I was really interested in hearing what it was like to pitch in front of the Air Force's senior leaders, the top three, if you will, and also getting the opportunity to meet Elon Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX. So a lot to get to, we'll dive into that innovation ecosystem. So let's get to it. Episode 44 of The Air Force Starts Here, kicks off right now. (strong air whooshing) - Kevin Hawkins, I grew up in a small town outside of Seattle and Washington State. I went to the Air Force Academy, and now I'm an Intelligence Officer in the Air Force at Luke Air Force Base. I've been a lot of different places doing Intel. Started at Aviano in Italy, which is where I met my wife. She's Italian, she's lovely. And then been doing a couple other things So Fighters Support joining their operation center and also in the intelligence distributed ground system operations out there. And I've also been an Instructor at Goodfellow, which is where Air Force officers do their technical training. - Awesome men. And Lieutenant Treece, young in service but not inexperienced, tell us a little bit about yourself. - That's a good way to put that. So Lieutenant Adam Treece, I've been in the Air Force about 15 years now. I'm originally from Tennessee, and I started my journey as a listed airborne Korean English in the air force. I spent about 11 years doing that. I was stationed at or over a period. Then I moved over to Japan and about almost four years ago, commissioned as you told me, officer here I'm now 56th spiraling the OSS intel officer, I've yeah, that's kind of me in a nutshell to prior enlisted Korean linguist the Intel officer and we get the air force bases, my first assignment... - Wow. So lots of different experience. And so that's what kinda makes this podcast and the topic that we're talking about today, so unique because you guys come from both such diverse backgrounds, and different areas of expertise, but yet we're talking about a 3D augmented reality system that could revolutionize the way pilots do mission debriefings. So, Major Hawkins I wanted to start with you. Can you just tell us a little bit about your Spark Tank submission from the 56th Fighter Wing, and just tell us what it's all about? - Yeah. I'll be happy to. So, Next Gen Debrief is it's kind of IVF- (background noise drowns out speaker) of some of the processes that we look at and work with inside every day, which includes debriefing missions that have flown, and also extends to how they get planned and executed, but take the processes that we use for those which all have some real limitations to them that we've just recognized over the time that we've done them and merge that with some new technology that we thought really would let us change. So take those processes from two dimensional kind of processes that we would do on a laminated map or on a white board, or even with some conventional computer software on a PC, but airspace, the flying mission at the air force thus, happens in three dimensions. And so that's how our air crew, and our planners do need to be able to think about it. And we saw an opportunity to leverage some technology that has come online in the last couple of years, to bring that process into three dimensions. And Oh, by the way, what we're also hoping to be able to do, that is to be able to make that process much more effective, in a distributed environment, to the staff of the air force. (background noise drowns out the speaker) One of the big things that we had exposed is to combat unemployment, which means that basically as an air force we need to be able to operate with greater mobility. So a lot of the processes that we have require a pretty big tech and physical footprints, and this is a way that we also thought maybe we can reduce the size of that and really let mission planning happen, between groups that aren't physically located, in ways that weren't possible or weren't effective before. And so that in a nutshell is kind of our idea, the debrief specifically seemed like a good place for us to start. So, it's not something that maybe gets a lot of talking outside of the air force, but the debrief is huge And the training environment that the U.S. Air Force normally exhibits in. So whether that is in AETC, or whether you're in Air Combat Command, or anywhere else, we're always training for the missions that we want to fight and the real learning. There's great learning, that happens in there. That they really both pilots, air crew planners. They really learn the lessons that are important to remember, and get their key takeaways. When they come back, they look at what happened during the mission, and they identify the things that they did wrong or the things that they did absolutely right. And they need to do again next time. But it's what do we need to improve as we move on to the next time we try that. That is the debrief that seemed like the first best place for us to start with integrating some of these new technologies and hopefully changing the way we operate. - So I'm curious, and I'll ask Lieutenant Treece, the seed for this project, or the idea, where was that first hatched, and how did that come about? Because that was a great explanation for Major Hawkins, but wow, that's such a revolutionary awesome way to integrate technology to transform the way we learn, but how did that, even that idea even come about? - Thanks, Dan. So, it's a fast moving world, being asked to do a lot more, with a lot less, than we have previously. Technology is changing at a very rapid pace and we need to keep up with that. So this is really born out of, something that we do every day. Well, I won't say every day, but it's something that we do often, where we're going in and we're training, as a part of the Intel team working with the pilots, going through these processes, we realized that there's a lot of inefficiencies, and we're still doing business the way we probably did business 20, 30 years ago. And we thought that there's probably a way we could do that better and become more efficient with our time and actually probably improve the way we're getting after that particular problem that they're looking at or the debriefing. I think that we saw that as an opportunity just to improve on the way we're reviewing business to reflect the nature of where the future is going. - Yeah. And I was reading some of the prep documents but I found it really interesting. Well, while you are using 3D, some of the flight characteristics data was already being collected. So you already kind of had a headstart. You just kind of took it to the next level. - Absolutely, a lot of this data is available. Unfortunately it's not always being used. And there's probably opportunity for us to incorporate these and we already have put that into the process, and get some better return on that. And another thing that the data is, once you look at one time, it's kinda goes to the wayside and no one really, it goes back to it. And does anything with a glitch. With something like this, enabling you to go back and look at it in a really intuitive rate, I think that we might be able to not only look at this last one, Hey, let's go back and look at last week and start to build, a pattern of recognition module. - So, I'm interested, with the proliferation of tools like AR, VR, especially over the last, three to five years, that's just exploded, right? So what is that augmented reality piece bring to this project? And that's a questions for either one of you. - Yeah. So for anybody that's not really, on a window that you've got, you can think of it kind of as a spectrum where you've got the physical world on one side, and virtual reality on the other end of the spectrum. In virtual reality, you put the device over your eyes, and your whole world is transformed into the virtual world. And then you've got all of this space in between where maybe certain things are being worked into the you've got your physical world, and then you have virtual elements overlaid over the top of it. So kind of far towards the left, of that spectrum back towards the physical world, you've got augmented reality that could be on your smartphone. So that could be anything from like I go into my face time and I put a hat on myself that is not real it's a digital hat, but it's the camera sees me and then it adds a computerized hat on my head or sunglasses. A lot of people use that. You can think of Pokemon Go, as another augmented reality type application. And then as you move more towards the virtual side, you get to these advisors where you've got a screen that pops down in front of your eyes, but you can still see the virtual, or you can still see the physical world but now you get these virtual objects that are there, that you can interact with. And some of the more advanced new ones which is what we're trying to use, we'll actually even let you interact with those holograms with your pads and you can move around and you can interact in a very intuitive words, Lieutenant, is anything else you want to add there? - I think that summarizes it pretty well. You're able to interact with your physical environment in a digital way and like no other way that you've ever done it before and you're taking the computer and... So I've got to admit, this is maybe only the second time in my work life that I've ever been able to accurately get a good Pokemon reference and relate it to an air force priority. So, good job out of you two, but another cool aspect of this is, the ability to bring in pilots from multiple locations, and allow them to maybe experience this debrief in a different way. And with both of you having to give, or participate in mission debriefs, maybe in different ways, throughout your career, how big is that part of it? - It's definitely going to be a game changer in the way that we are able to do things right now, and it in some ways it really feels like a missing link, between how we train, and how we plan to fight. So we're really hopeful for it, but I don't wanna sit here and tell you that we've solved all of the challenges that need to be solved in order to make this happen. We are pointing to some technology that we think is a really compelling way forward to doing that, but there are still hurdles that we are working with our team and that we really need a bigger coalition of folks to help us solve. We're proving that the technology can do what we say it can do, but there's also issues that we are working through with the relevant professionals about, how do we keep our data secure. So a lot of what we do with our aircraft is classified and we got to be able to get the right technology into those classified environments to enable the way that we want to price. So we're hoping to shine some light on those issues with this effort. That's part of why we wanted to bring this to Spark Tank, it's because we can't do it all ourselves. - You couldn't have segwayed any better, this idea, The Next Gen Debrief, the submission to Spark Tank obviously being selected to represent Air Education and Training Command at the Air warfare, or Air Force Association Symposium in February but obviously great news for your project, but practical as well. And you just talked about it. You really need that next level. And that's kind of the idea, right? Force Spark Tank it's to bring an idea, maybe it's not 100% fleshed out but you want to get some resources and take it to that next level. - Absolutely. The Spark team gives you an opportunity to present your ideas to get the advocacy that may be difficult to get otherwise, or the analogy they like to use a lot is the Frozen Middle. And I think that applies to the, taking an idea and bring it to fruition, as well as applying to oftentimes the structure of our leadership, from the lower level, sometimes it's hard to move things Up through the chain. And this park gives you the opportunity to take the elevator to the top, which is really cool. - So LTE, I wanted to stay with you because you've got some experience. You were actually on the co-winning team, from Luke Air Force Base last year, for the the F-35, the low cost of mentor idea. So you have a little bit of experience but maybe if you could tell some of your fellow airmen and innovators out there, maybe just a quick thumbnail, what the Spark Tank process really is about, how you actually, maybe even start that process. I've got this great idea, but I have no idea where to start. - Yes, for me the first thing I would say is don't... I'd never approached this with the idea. I wanna get a spot that was never a thought of mine. The way I approached this is, I have a problem, I think that we can solve this problem. And you start to work on your solution. For me this spark tank is just another Avenue, to get the advocacy and to hit that idea propagated, it wasn't the Avenue to complete it on its own. If that makes sense. That said, if you do go into the Spark Tank and you are given the opportunity to present your idea, and to get the Leadership & Advocacy, it's a very tedious and challenging process. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, months of preparation, I think prior to the last competition, we probably spent a good two months refining our pitch. And we went to Las Vegas and we worked with pitch coaches and spent three or four days, all day, giving out pitch, refining a pitch giving a pitch ,refining a pitch, taping some workers. And there's a lot of work that goes into it. This isn't your normal presentations, completely different style of presentation. It takes a lot of work to get to that point where you're ready to go on stage. But when you're there, it's a lot of fun. It's an awesome opportunity to be in front of your senior leaders, the guest judges, and they really give your ideas some life, It's incredible, It's a fun experience. - And we're not just talking about your average run of the male senior leaders. We're talking about the Air Force top three, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Secretary of the Air Force, Chief Master of the Air Force. And for you last year, it was Elon Musk from SpaceX has to be a little bit nerve wracking but awesome opportunity to be able to pitch something to a SpaceX CEO type. - Yeah. So unfortunately he didn't sit through the pitches, he ended up just being the guest speaker, though we did get to meet him more on the back end. And that was an awesome opportunity. But we had a guest judge from Microsoft, and we had a another tech author who sat on the panel, Mr. Jean Connor I can make this he turns lately from Microsoft. Those were our guest judges. And to have their perspective, was very unique. When you're in the military, you kind of develop a way of thinking, that goes along with the military culture, to have an outside perspective, to ask you some different questions, I think is important. And it allows you to take a step back and look at things from a different viewpoint. So its intimidating for sure, because they're giants in their fields, but also where else are you gonna get to do this? This is great for the Air Force to allow us to have that opportunity... - And major Hawkins. I wanted to switch back over to you, but I kinda wanna talk about the strategic relationships aspect of this as a top priority here in our education and training command is developing, and those types of relationships in academia, and industry, and different aspects of society that will help us grow, and mature as an air force, and especially on the technology front that's even more important than ever. But on the project, you have a student from Arizona State University last year, there was a student also from Arizona State University on the project, but how important are relationships like that? And how did you build that relationship? - Yeah. So that's where we've been so fortunate to have the benefit of the experience that Lieutenant Treece built last year, they started kind of blindly. You can burn you out and talk for a second, about how last year you guys did it, kind of compare that to how we've been able to grow relationships this year, doing things better than I can say. - Last year, we came up with this idea and we realized that very quickly we were gonna be exceeding our expertise, and we were gonna need some outside help. So the idea here is we have some pretty unique universities around that might be able to help. So we started digging around, looking in engineering department, looking for someone that might be a good fit. I'm not kidding you. We found a professor on the ASU website and we thought, man this is prudential matter really well with what we're trying to do. And his phone number was there, so we phone called, and the stars must have been aligned, because he was actually in his office and he answered, we told him what we were trying to do, or from Luke Air Force Base, we're trying to work on this project. We thought you might be able to help. And it was asking if you would be interested in talking to us, and that he graciously accepted and invited us down to the university. And from there we matured that relationship, started cold, and man it is really paid dividends. - Yeah. And Major Hawkins in the whole scheme of things you just can't have enough partners, right? - Yeah. So we have used that. So it started last year with a cold call but through the process of working with app works and refining that idea last year, Lieutenant Treece and the rest of his team, developed a lot of other partnerships, not just directly with Arizona State University, there's actually a whole network of universities that wanna help out with innovation and wanna be connected to innovations in the Department of Defense that's called the National Security Innovation Network. And so we actually had a point of contact there that Lieutenant Treece had known from previous year. And that was actually our first call this year, was to be to ensign, or called to say, "Hey, we have this idea, "We think it's different from last year. "It's totally, it's not the same thing "but where would you recommend we go?" And they pointed us to a different section that we had never even heard of, of Arizona State University and connected us to a student. And that has been absolutely crucial. It was a good idea before the student came along, but we didn't have a good way to visualize it. And he was able to come along basically in a weekend and build a really compelling visualization that if you you get a chance to see our original pitch video, is in here. And he could basically build that in a one or two weekends. And that's something that would have taken us if we tried to do it ourselves months, if we could have done it at all, just to figure out, then that has helped us kind of get our pitch off the ground, but in order to be able to convince the air force, that this is a thing with potential, we talked about it continuously, but we have had to cast a very, very wide net. We've talked to a lot of different folks throughout AETC Air Combat Command. We are just reaching out and talking to people all the time, like, hey, here's what we're trying to do. Do you know anybody, are you interested in helping? And there's a lot of verbal interests sometimes, and then it doesn't mature necessarily into a lasting relationship, but every once in a while you just have that one thing you really didn't think was going anywhere, and all of a sudden it ends up making a key connection for you. And so we've just been trying to make those connections, and at a certain point, you start to build up some momentum and it's pretty cool when you been gratifying, when you start to see that happening. - I will add that was one of the big takeaways from last year's... It takes a team and to build the team, and get everyone involved, is really what is critical to the success. You can't do this on your own, excuse me you can't do this on their own. And from some of those relationships we developed last year, we were able to have a good starting point for this new idea. But I would like to throw a shout out to Airman Butler from the Air Force PA office, because really what he did in that video was what helped move us into the final competition, making that compelling pitch, putting things together in just the right way was critical, to our success and having the relationships from last year that we rolled into this competition this year, I think paid off, because last year we made that, our pitch video, it wasn't very good. And this year we got ahead of that and we've made a really good video. And I think that goes to show the team critical... - So let's talk real quickly as we get close to wrapping up about the innovation ecosystem in the Air Force. And obviously both of you have been around it probably for a little bit now, but for many, they may not be that familiar with it, but it's our community within the air force. That seems to be just rapidly growing, over the last few years. What kind of resources are available for airmen out there who are just maybe sitting on an idea, what would you recommend LTE to somebody who thinks they might have the next potential Spark Tank or other great idea? It doesn't have to be a Spark Tank idea. It could be any innovation. - Yeah. For us last year and this year. was for me, the most critical part of your innovation infrastructure is your leadership, and your support of you willing to go after these ideas. And in both cases last year and this year, our leadership has been extremely supportive of our initiatives. With that last year in Squadron Innovation Bonds, we were allowed to use the full $20,000 of the Squadron Innovation Funds, to go and execute our prototype, and because in the end he allowed us to do so and built something that worked, that was critical for our success. I think so. To me, starting with your job, and being an expert in your job, and understanding where the problems exist, is a good starting point. And use your leadership network to rally off, and to get your support unit for you... - Anything to add there, sir? - Yeah. I think it's really impossible to overstate how important it is to really understand what it is like what problem you're trying to solve, and have the humility to take a step back and ask, "Hey is this really is the solution "that I'm proposing really better than "what we're doing right now, "and does it really make sense?" And you've gotta be willing to take input on that. And it's a delicate balance because at a certain point, you may have to not take no for an answer, but you gotta have the humility to step back and go. Does what they are saying make sense And might they not be right. Maybe what I'm thinking is the new best thing, is really gonna add second and, or third order effects, that's we aren't ready for. So, there's a lot of thoughts and networking that you can do before you ever really formally hit the innovation process, to make sure like, Hey if I really thought this out, is it gonna work? And once you get kind of convinced of that, then people are going, Oh, wood work? We'll never be able to do that, because whatever the policy is, or whatever that, it's too expensive, it's gonna be too hard. That is where then connecting into that innovation network really help. And it can actually be a disservice to your idea, if you run to the innovation channel too soon, without really fully thinking through the problem that you're trying to solve. It can slow you back down and kind of create more friction, than the benefit out of it. - Yeah. So, a lot to think about. So having a mentor, and having somebody that you can talk to, and a lot of bases now have spark cells, at their installation. Do you guys have one at Luke? - So, Luke Air Force Base has, is just in the process now of standing up a spark cell, and that potential... We really hope that, that's gonna be a repository of the knowledge that so Lieutenant Treece, is gonna leave us in a few months. He is going to PCS the natural cycle of the way the air force goes. And we really hope that, that sparks up can be kind of a repository of some of the relationships and the different things that he has learned about the Spark Day, and about the innovation process and really helped as a kind of catalyze, and grow the relationships that we build with universities and with other folks, they can can add to the innovation process. Maybe it can also be a focal point that inspires, they are gonna think different ways about their problems, and kind of exposes them to some new technology. That's certainly a hope. That being said, we have not had a chance to lean on a spark cell so far, it's literally just stood up since we were selected. We were already semi-finalists, and I think the Luke Air Force Base announcement that we were gonna do this, coincided with us being selected for the finals. So I can't speak to... It already providing the value to us, but we're really hopeful that it will be able to do the things that I just said in terms of, kind of clearing out, and pointing a path to innovators and following them. - Well, go ahead, LTE. - Sorry guys. Yeah. That's well said, to me it boils down to being an expert in your day-to-day job, doing what your mission is, and what you're tasked to go out and view, from there, understanding the problems. And then it becomes in education at the site. I think the education being experienced to different ways of doing business is important. And then last piece of that is the relationships. If your spark cell can capture that magic, and bring all these pieces together, I think you can be really successful. - Well, great conversation today, gentlemen, and best of luck on Next Gen Debrief, next month at the AFA Symposium, hopefully two years in a row. Lieutenant Treece, might need a bigger mantle, above the fireplace at his house, wherever his SPCs and too. But again, thank you to both of you for joining us today. - Thanks Dan. It's been a pleasure. (energetic air whooshing) - What an initiative and a great example of going fast to accelerate change through collaboration and innovation, and sounds like this Next Gen Debrief is gonna be very tough to beat, for the competition at Spark Tank 2021 happening at the AFA Aerospace Warfare Symposium, in February in Orlando, FL Virtual Events, I read that over 300 submissions were entered, for the competition and only 15 have moved on to the semi-finals. So being a finalist already a great accomplishment, but hopefully the team from Luke can win. special, thanks to Major Hawkins and Lieutenant Treece for spending some time with us today, to tell us all about it, and make sure that you tune in to that Spark Tank competition. And you can catch a lot of coverage both on the AETC social media platforms, the Air Force social media accounts, as well as the Luke Airport Base social media accounts as well. As a reminder, you can follow Air Education and Training Command and the AETC Command team via social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as on the web at www.aetc.af.mil Thanks for checking out the podcast. As we dive into the world of recruiting, training and education for our entire AETC Public Affairs team I'm Dan Hawkins so long, We'll talk to you next time, on, The Air Force Starts Here. (lighthearted music)