News

Robins engineers compete in AFRL's Commander's Challenge

  • Published
  • By Holly Birchfield
  • 78 ABW/PA
Robins Air Force Base, Ga. --  The Air Force Research Laboratory Commander's Challenge recently allowed two engineers from Robins to test their problem solving skills in the name of warfighter support.

The Commander's Challenge, which took place at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio; and Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, N.M., is a competition between two motivated teams consisting of junior civilians and officers to meet an urgent warfighter need with limited time and money.

Final demonstrations of the teams' solutions were made at Fort Campbell, Ky.

Josh Newton, a mechanical engineer in the 642nd Combat Sustainment Group, and Craig Petty, an aerospace engineer for C-130 Structures in the 330th Aircraft Sustainment Group, were members of the seven-person Orion Team that tackled the competition's challenge of tagging, tracking, and locating people and objects of interest.

"The challenge at hand was to successfully tag an object at a distance of about 100 yards and successfully track that vehicle for up to 24 hours and up to about 1,000 kilometers away," Mr. Petty said.

Mr. Petty said the challenge brought a two-fold benefit to war fighters and team members.

"There's the immediate point of developing a solution to our urgent need, and two, our primary point is to develop engineers to get them to be better at problem solving," he said. "It's about getting them to handle real-world problems and help them get together to solve a real-world problem in general."

Overcoming people's differences made the challenge even more difficult, Mr. Newton said.

"We come from extremely diverse backgrounds and we had diverse character types," he said. "It took a lot to come together, but eventually our diverse backgrounds made for a better solution and a better outcome."

Even though the Orion Team didn't take home first place, both engineers gained skills that will help the war fighter win on the front line.

Mr. Petty said he improved his skills of working with others to solve problems and learned how to set his detail-oriented approach aside to look at the big picture.

Mr. Newton said putting his knowledge and skills to use for the warfighter was rewarding.

"To be able to write the test plan for the team and go before a test review board was an invaluable experience that I'll use in my career in the future," he said.

For the first time in a long time, Mr. Newton said he got to see the fruits of his labor.

"Overall, I thought it was a great experience to be able to get out from behind the acquisitions desk and do some real hands-on engineering," he said. "To do something rewarding and be able to see an outcome was a great experience. The people that we've met and the things that we've done will stay with us forever."

Col. Tim Freeman, 330th ASW commander, said he was impressed with the team's efforts of designing, building, testing, and demonstrating a solution on "such a shoe string budget" of $75,000.

"It was inspiring to see these two teams made up of military and civilian members (all with less than five years in government service) dedicate themselves to this project," he said. "Their energy and pride in their product, the enthusiasm and team work was all very impressive."

Brenda Romine, Warner Robins Air Logistics Center executive director, said the challenge provided a wonderful opportunity for young engineers to solve tough problems faced by military forces on the battle front.

"I am proud of both Josh and Craig," she said. "They did a marvelous job and represented Robins well. I hope that as they share their experiences it will encourage other young engineers to volunteer for the next challenge."

Mr. Newton said AFRL will take both team's solutions and use them to support the warfighter.