The Air Force Simulators Division first turned to Box as a secure external file-sharing platform to replace a broken legacy system. Then, they layered in Box AI Agents that have streamlined review of contractor proposals, saving the division time on tedious tasks.
The Simulators Division now has a secure, reliable way to share documents with industry partners and collect contractor submissions at scale, creating the foundation for a faster, more consistent procurement workflow — one the team could later build on with AI. What started as a fix for a frustrating collaboration problem quickly became something more strategic: helping the team move critical training-system procurement work faster in support of warfighter readiness.
The Simulators Division can now more easily accept contractor proposal submission online, and complete initial proposal review using AI and AI agents.
Key takeaways:
- The Simulators Division replaced a restrictive collaboration system, expanding secure external access from a few users to hundreds of industry partners
- The team cut initial proposal review time from more than a day to about five minutes using AI through a sandbox environment
- The Division uses AI to support human decision-making while meeting strict security and compliance requirements including FedRAMP High and IL-4 authorization
- These efforts to modernize help support the broader mission of getting warfighters trained and mission-ready sooner, by making it easier for Air Force teams and industry partners to share information, review proposals, and move procurement forward faster
Too many contractors, too little access
The Simulators Division at the United States Air Force is responsible for building the training systems that pilots and maintenance crews rely on to stay mission-ready. Managing that work means coordinating with a large and complex industrial base. Part of this effort is the Training Systems Acquisition contract, a large, long-running Air Force contract for procuring the training systems, or simulators, pilots use. Now in its fourth iteration, the Training Systems Acquisition contract involves 36 industry partners.
For years, sharing information with those partners was a logistical nightmare. The Simulators Division relied on a legacy collaboration site that came with a hard ceiling: Only two people per company could access it, and those users needed a Common Access Card (CAC) to get in.
Contractors could download documents one day and find themselves locked out the next when Air Force IT changed the rules remotely. When downloads were blocked entirely, the office had to fall back on blast emails through Department of War (DOW) Safe, paper copies, and CDs. The unpredictability created extra work and frustration on both sides, making it harder for government teams and contractors to stay aligned.
As federal agencies like the Air Force face mounting pressure to do more with less, this program office found an unexpected edge in the race to keep warfighters trained and ready: Intelligent Content Management with Box.
A friction-free platform for external collaboration
The Division adopted Box as a practical solution to make it easier for both the office and industry partners to work together, and began using it as the primary platform for external collaboration: including with secure file-sharing and a structured submission channel for contractor proposals.
The shift was immediate and measurable. Where the old solution allowed just two CAC-holding users per company, Box opened access to everyone who needed it. Today, the simulators division has 350 external users — industry partners who can access documents, receive notifications when new content is posted, and submit proposals through a file request feature, all without needing government credentials, and with granular access controls.
That shift didn’t just expand access on paper. It made day-to-day collaboration easier for the people actually doing the work, from program staff managing submissions to contractors trying to stay current on fast-moving requirements.
The file request link became a standard part of the office’s procurement process. Instructions to contractors now specify: If you don't submit through the Box file request link, your proposal will not be reviewed. Industry partners have come to expect it, and lament when other government offices don’t have as straightforward a process as the Simulators Division.
The office now holds 30 internal Box licenses and manages 350 external users across its industry partner base. But a better base for secure content management was just the first step.
Compliance built for the mission
Any tool that doesn't meet the DOW’s rigid security requirements simply can’t be used, no exceptions. Box's FedRAMP High and IL-4 authorization removed that barrier.
That peace of mind extends to access governance. The Division manages all 350 external users through Box’s admin console — adding new contacts when they join a project, removing them immediately when they leave a company. Two-step authentication is on the roadmap as requirements evolve. It’s a level of control that the old system, with its CAC-card restrictions and remotely changed rules, didn’t meet.
From a day and a half of proposal review to 5 minutes
Working from a foundation of secure, centralized content in Box, the Division started experimenting with Box AI. What began as curiosity quickly became a core part of how the office evaluates contractor proposals.
The Simulators Division regularly issues Fair Opportunity Procurement Requests (FOPRs) to its industry partners. When proposals come back, the source selection team must verify that each response meets the formatting requirements and addresses every evaluation factor.
With seven or eight companies responding to a single solicitation, that review process used to take a team of 20 people a full day to a day and a half — reading every document manually, comparing it line by line against the requirements.
With Box AI, the Simulators Division can now do that initial review in about 5 minutes.
“Our team is responsible for delivering critical training systems to keep our warfighters mission-ready, but coordinating proposal reviews with industry partners used to be a logistical bottleneck,” shares Joe Erickson Jr., Program Manager for the Simulators Division, Training Directorate. “Now that it’s easier to collaborate externally, and automate some of our most time-consuming processes, we’ve completely transformed our procurement workflow and streamlined our process.”
Now that it’s easier to collaborate externally, and automate some of our most time-consuming processes, we’ve completely transformed our procurement workflow and streamlined our process.
Taking it a step further, using Box AI Agents, accessed through a sandbox environment with support from his Box customer success team, the team built an agent that compares each contractor’s response against the relevant sections of the technical document and evaluation criteria. They create the agent once, then swap in each company’s documents. Instead of running the same analysis multiple times manually, the agent runs it once per company with a single change.
The Simulators Division was able to move from experimentation to a repeatable workflow that met the realities of the team’s process rather than forcing them to adapt to the technology.
AI as a support tool, not an autonomous decision-maker
One of the most important aspects of how the Simulators Division uses Box AI is what AI does not do: It does not make decisions.
The Simulators Division is deliberate about this. The AI provides a high-level, initial analysis, helping the team quickly spot whether a proposal meets requirements and where to look more closely. But the source selection decision still has to be made by a person. AI is just providing a high-level, quick initial analysis of the document.
This approach reflects a broader reality in the public sector: AI adoption stalls when people fear the technology is replacing judgment rather than supporting it. That distinction is critical in a defense environment, where trust, accountability, and human judgment are non-negotiable.
Due to Box AI’s ability to surface relevant information and flag gaps, with citations in every response, the Simulators Division can use it as a first-pass review tool, which has built trust with the team and leadership.
FedRAMP High and IL-4 authorization also come into play here. Compliance requirements are not a checkbox for the DOW, but a prerequisite for using any cloud solution. Because Box is FedRAMP High and IL-4 authorized, the team can rest assured that they’re in compliance by selecting AI models that are also FedRAMP High and IL-4 for any Box AI queries they do.
A model for similar organizations
The core use case is straightforward: the Air Force Simulators Division replaced a broken external collaboration workflow, removed access limitations that were slowing down partners, and gave the office a single, auditable place to manage submissions. Then, the team layered Box AI on top of that foundation to compress the most time-consuming part of the procurement cycle, allowing the team to better scale their time spent on supporting the warfighter.
The team has learned that Box’s value is not just modernizing content workflows. It also helps them communicate more effectively with industry partners, move faster with more confidence, and ultimately support the people and the mission of those who depend on the training systems: the warfighters and those who support them.
The US Air Force Materiel Command’s Engineering Division (A4/10) also uses Box to reduce technical proposal review time, create custom agents, and ensure secure, verifiable outputs from AI. Read that full story here.