Case Study | #Honorthepromise
TAK Cloud | Recovery & Humanitarian Assistance
Challenge | Following the withdrawal of US Forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, many American Veterans wanted to help ensure the safety of the Afghan partner forces with whom they served. As these recovery organizations formed, it was clear that they needed situational awareness and logistical resources to accomplish their mission. It was critical to keep identified partner individuals or small groups dispersed in different locations throughout the country in order to avoid Taliban raids. It was also critical to know how to allocate humanitarian aid as partners awaited extraction from Afghanistan.
Solution | Upon understanding the urgency of the situation, RTX BBN immediately stepped up to partner with multiple recovery organizations. BBN was determined to help “honor the promise” of support for our partners, given their service on behalf of US national security interests.
Within 24 hours of receipt of each set of mission requirements, BBN had TAK Cloud Servers with WebTAK’s situational awareness capabilities developed and ready for operations. For five continuous months, BBN provided daily morning snapshots to recovery organization operation leads, sharing the latest operational insights. These insights enabled “shepherds” to move each individual or group around the country in a safe and efficient manner.
To provide this level of information in an intensely sensitive environment, BBN created custom enhancements to TAK Lab capabilities.
- An ADS-B TAK integration: This integration with commercial ADS-B flight tracking feeds helped counter misinformation regarding the timing of evacuation flights.
- A visual snapshot tool: This tool produced configurable visual summaries of where Afghan partners and families were located over a specified time interval.
- A user analysis tool: This tool helped personnel maintaining the servers to move back and forth between usernames and callsigns.
- A resource allocation analysis tool: This tool built spreadsheets with the number of users that had been located near a set of population centers over a specified time interval. Using this tool enabled the provision of humanitarian aid in these locations.
- A graphical user management tool: This tool implemented drag and drop user creation and group management functionality. This feature was ultimately rolled into the latest version of TAK Server (v4.5).
Outcome | As of January 2022, the Veteran recovery organizations with whom BBN has partnered have guided over 3,500 Afghans to safety over both land and air. A total of nine self-funded flights were managed using these systems. Today, these systems continue to guide approximately 1400 individuals on a daily basis. BBN TAK solutions provided key technical resources to support the life-saving measures taken by the hundreds of heroic veteran and civilian volunteers.
