John C Lofton

A Comparative Study of the Warrior Support Tool and the Agile Munitions Support Tool John C Lofton

Publisher Marketing: The purpose of this research is to ascertain if the United States Air Force (USAF) is duplicating effort with the development of the two IT applications, the Warrior Support Tool (WST) and the Agile Munitions Support Tool (AMST), or if one will effectively meet requirements. Specifically, this thesis sought to answer four research questions addressing customer needs for a munitions IT application, identifying the capabilities of the two research IT applications, determining how well each application met the needs of the customer, and determining how supportable each application was in terms of information needs versus existing munitions systems. A mixed qualitative and quantitative paradigm was used to conduct a gap analysis and verification occurred through the use of surveys. Sixty-five munitions users participated in a surveying session to identify differences between the two systems as well as the relative merits of each. Overall, munitions users chose WST as the more favorable application. All but two construct measures supported the overall rating of the application. Munitions personnel liked the screen layout of AMST better than that of WST even though WST seemed to be the application that better used terminology familiar to munitions personnel. WST was also the easier of the two applications to manipulate although the AMST help features were identified as the better of the two. The Warrior Support Tool provided information in a timelier manner than did the Agile Munitions Support Tool.