Mile Two’s customers on Wright-Patterson’s Area B (and beyond) should be quite comfortable with the new offices at 5000 Springfield St. The building once was home to the non-profit Wright Brothers Institute, a longtime Air Force and Wright-Patterson collaborator, which suspended operations in October.
Air Force software factory Hangar 18 retains space in the building.
“Absolutely incredible space and incredible people,” was the pronouncement of Joe Zeis, a retired Air Force colonel and senior advisor to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on military matters.
Zeis — a former F-111, F-4 and F-15E navigator — knows the value of Mile Two’s work in the realms of software, artificial intelligence and human factors. Speaking at a company ribbon-cutting, he recalled sitting in those cockpits trying to make sense of the data coming in.
“What you do is a matter of life and death,” Zeis told Mile Two staff and leaders.
Celebrating a staff that performs “cool (stuff) with cool people,” Graley said his company wrestles with an uncomfortable but urgent truth: “Too much data, as you encounter every day now, is just as dangerous as the missing data that you had decades ago.”
“When a warfighter feels paralyzed by a screen full of noise, that isn’t a human failure,” Graley said. “That’s a systems failure.”
Guests from Wright-Patterson and the Dayton Development Coalition, as well as representatives of the city of Riverside, the Montgomery County Commission and U.S. Rep. Mike Turner’s staff, among others, were on hand for the ribbon-cutting event.
For nearly 11 years, fast-growing Mile Two has helped solve software and human-machine teaming problems for the Air Force.
The company got its start at the 444 building, 444 E. Second St., a short walk from its 601 E. Third St. headquarters, where the business takes up two floors. The young company took an early risk on the fast-growing Webster Station section of downtown.
Mile Two was also the Manhattan building’s first tenant in Dayton, as developer Jason Woodard was bringing new life to that building.
In first announcing the new offices in November, Mile Two said it has secured contracts with the Department of Defense to sustain “tens of millions of dollars in revenue in 2025.”
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