Air Force awards $100M production deal for AI-enabled readiness platform
The Air Force announced Tuesday that VivSoft Technologies will develop and field a new platform intended to consolidate the service’s fragmented aircrew scheduling, training and readiness-management capabilities.
The company received a $100 million Other Transaction Authority production agreement for the Aerospace Readiness Enterprise System (ARES) program, which will consolidate multiple Air Force scheduling software tools into a single enterprise environment enabled by artificial intelligence. The service plans to begin rolling out ARES across major commands in 2027.
ARES grew out of a broader Air Force push to replace its patchwork of legacy scheduling, training and readiness platforms — many of which require manual data entry and provide limited visibility across different MAJCOMs. As several commands pursued their own efforts to modernize flight operations, the Air Force realized it could instead create an integrated software system, Air Education and Training Command said in April.
“This effort represents a fundamental shift in how the Air Force approaches flight operations,” Col. Brian Benton, AETC Command Integration Center lead, said in a statement. “Developed on a modern Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform within the Air Force’s new Operations Enterprise Architecture, ARES is designed to provide a one-stop shop for an Airman’s entire career.”
The Air Force’s award to VivSoft comes after a 90-day competitive prototype evaluation phase, during which multiple vendors developed versions of ARES and gave them to operators for testing and feedback. The service used those evaluations to inform its final selection of a production contractor.
Because ARES has already been tested and approved by airmen during the initial prototyping phase, the Air Force will transition the program into production immediately, the service said.
“The development team is laser-focused on ensuring the warfighter’s voice and agile feedback remain baked directly into the platform from day one,” Col. Eric Robinson, AETC Command Future Enterprise Systems and Production integrator, said in a statement. “This enterprise consolidation is designed to simplify administrative steps, returning valuable time to the warfighter so they can focus on the mission.”
ARES will combine a broad range of capabilities from six different platforms currently used across the service and create one unified ecosystem.
The system will replace manual, time-consuming processes with automated scheduling, training and readiness management — allowing users to assign personnel and resources, detect and solve scheduling conflicts, track training and qualifications, and more.
The Air Force’s initial solicitation estimated that ARES should be able to support up to 160 sorties per day for each flying squadron and provide commanders with a real-time view of readiness rates. The service expects that over 149,000 airmen across multiple MAJCOMs will have access to the platform once deployment is complete.
ARES will also heavily leverage artificial intelligence, according to the service, using machine learning and live data to optimize scheduling and reduce the number of training sorties needed to maintain readiness.
The capabilities are also designed to provide predictive modeling and trend analysis, giving commanders better visibility into future readiness and training-pipeline risks.
The Air Force is planning to conduct a localized rollout of ARES next year. At the same time, the service’s software factory Kessel Run and VivSoft will travel to Air Force bases across the United States to gain additional feedback from operators that will drive continuous updates and improvements to the platform.
