DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Arizona -- The 355th Wing submitted a light-weight backpack-styled toolkit designed for portability in austere environments for the Innovation Challenge 2025.
The innovation competition is designed to empower Airmen and Guardians to cultivate ideas and find solutions to improve processes within their unit or command.
The wing’s submission came from Staff Sgt. Shawn Bigger, 55th Rescue Generation Squadron mobility section noncommissioned officer in charge, who is a maintainer by trade for the HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters. Additional members of his team included: Staff Sgt. Lance Milford, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Mitchell and Master Sgt. Edward Alexander, all assigned to the 55th RGS.
Drawing from his experiences of deployments and temporary duty, Bigger understands that heavy and bulky suitcase-styled protective toolkits do not transport effectively through sandy or rocky terrain. The temporary fix to this is having two personnel lift and carry a heavy kit to austere landing zones or forward operating bases.
“How our fly away kits are currently set up is not conducive with our posture change to Mission Ready Airmen,” said Bigger. “We needed something mobile and portable to get in and out of contingency locations quickly. It’s not feasible to bring heavy and large toolkits. We need to shrink our footprint as much as possible.”
The tactical air combat portable all conditions kit (TAC-PACK) simplifies transporting tools by packing 87 essential tools into four stackable foam trays inside a backpack, saving manpower and exemplifying high-end readiness.
“The TAC-PACK is an outstanding solution for our flyaway kit requirements, especially within the context of the Agile Combat Employment concept,” said Alexander, 55th RGS HH-60 sortie support section chief and innovation teammate with Bigger. “Notably, it reduces the weight of our kit by over 50%, making it highly practical for use in the field and significantly decreasing the physical strain on our team members while preserving efficient maintenance.”
The HH-60s expend a considerably large amount of weight to bring toolkits on mission. With lighter equipment, HH-60s’ weight and balance requirements can allow for more rescued personnel on one flight, upholding the promise of always bringing our Airmen home.
In addition to weighing less, wearing the toolkit versus carrying a hard-shelled toolkit case frees service members' hands to use weapons more effectively, should it become necessary during battle.
In past wars, adversaries targeted maintenance equipment, which was identified by large cases and reflective tape.
By protecting themselves with free hands and camouflaging their equipment with new innovative features such as removable latch and hook reflective wear, maintainers can be safer while in deployed locations. Bigger said it is a simple solution that makes the backpack look indistinguishable from any other military equipment bag and can mitigate the risk of enemy detection.
As Davis-Monthan transitions itself to support combat deployable wings, reinventing maintenance operations has been long overdue, described Bigger.
“It’s a simple idea under ACE, it’s going to take a lot of innovation for maintenance to catch up and evolve with today’s warfare,” said Bigger. “We have large equipment and big footprints when we deploy. The TAC-PACK is the first step to reshaping our minds and pushing maintenance in the right direction of change.”