Air Force’s new site planning tool boosts warfighter capabilities Published Oct. 21, 2008 By Jason Bishop 754th Electronic Support Group MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE GUNTER ANNEX, Ala. -- The 554th Electronic Systems Group's, Force Projection and Readiness Division at Gunter activated the Web-based Base Support and Expeditionary Planning Tool on the Air Force Portal recently. The activation was a major milestone in a capability development that started as a Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment initiative. The Base Support and Expeditionary Planning Tool, or BaS&E, provides Joint Command and Air Force warfighters with global visibility of resources at potential forward operating locations for planning and accomplishing real-time, combat operations anywhere in the world. BaS&E consists of an unclassified application and database used for data collection of location capabilities. It also has a classified application and database used for the analysis of capabilities to support specific operational plans. BaS&E capabilities present a more complete site bed-down picture tailored to the specific needs of the operator in four core areas: site selection, site assessment, mission planning and mission support. "Of all the capabilities embedded in BaS&E, one of the most useful to warfighters is the ability to perform a course of action assessment in the early stages of air campaign planning," said Master Sgt. Dennis Loretz, lead functional analyst. "Identifying the differences between a site's resources and combat forces operating at that location greatly enhances a combatant commander's ability to get the right logistical resources within the area of responsibility." The new planning tool replaces a legacy client server application released in 1999 to meet new security requirements. "Prior to BaS&E's worldwide release, each major U.S. Air Force installation was required to prepare a Base Support Plan that cataloged the capabilities of their installation," said Robert Kodya Jr., BaS&E program manager. "Traditionally, these plans were written using a word processor and were based on local formatting decisions. Also, site data was not readily available to all Air Force planners who needed it in a timely manner without having to e-mail or download these files between the planners." The Base Support Plan process will be reduced from 90 to 30 days with BaS&E, while increasing users from 2,000 to potentially up to 35,000. The implementation of the new planning tool helped increase accessibility and standardized the structure and content of data. "BaS&E implements standard data collection, centralized storage and standard reporting capabilities," Mr. Kodya said. "Effectiveness is improved and costs are reduced (manpower and time) by creating all plans using the BaS&E suite of tools. All plans have the same structure/content and will be accessible to all users worldwide using standard common tools for researching, planning and implementing deployments."