Case Study: U.S. Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) achieves rapid, command‑wide emergency notification for 76,000 personnel with BlackBerry AtHoc

U.S. Air Force Reserve Command Networked Crisis Communication

The U.S. Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC), a Department of Defense organization with more than 76,000 military and civilian personnel spread across 40+ bases and tenant locations, needed a rapid, secure, command‑wide emergency notification system to meet Air Force Instructions (AFI 10‑2501 and AFI 10‑218). Legacy methods were slow, fragmented and lacked scalability, making timely alerting, personnel recall and accountability difficult.

AFRC implemented BlackBerry AtHoc Enterprise centrally behind the firewall, integrating MilPDS/CivPDS, desktop clients, a shared pool of phone lines and planned Giant Voice and failover capabilities to deliver multi‑channel alerts and real‑time response tracking. Deployed to 40 locations in under six months with Initial Operational Capability, the solution standardized procedures, replaced local systems, enabled command‑wide alerts in minutes and cut infrastructure and support costs by more than 50%.

U.S. Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC)

John Hayes

CIO