Army Knowledge Online (AKO)
Army Knowledge Online (AKO) was the U.S. Army's flagship enterprise portal, originally launched in 1999. For more than a decade it was the single sign-on entry point for soldier email, personnel records, unit collaboration spaces, and dozens of administrative tools. AKO was decommissioned during the Army's digital modernization push, and its services were redistributed to specialized successor systems.
What Was AKO?
AKO (Army Knowledge Online) sat at us.army.mil and gave every soldier, civilian, and contractor a unified login to:
- Army email accounts (
@us.army.mil) - Personnel and pay records
- Unit collaboration spaces (Knowledge Centers)
- Education and training resources
- Forms and policy documents
- Common access (CAC) authentication across DoD-wide tools
At its peak, AKO had millions of registered users and was effectively required to do daily Army business. Its sunsetting created a long, sometimes confusing, transition period in which the same services lived behind different login pages on different systems.
What Replaced Each AKO Service
| AKO Service | Replaced By | Link |
|---|---|---|
| AKO Email | Army 365 (Microsoft 365 for the Army) + DEE webmail (mail.mil) | Open → |
| AKO Personnel Records | iPerms (AMHRR) + IPPS-A (active actions) | Open → |
| AKO Pay (LES, allotments) | myPay (DFAS) | Open → |
| AKO Collaboration Tools | Army 365 Teams + SharePoint | Open → |
| AKO Career Management | Army Career Tracker + IPPS-A | Open → |
| AKO Medical Readiness | MEDPROS + MHS Genesis | Open → |
| AKO Training | ALMS + JKO + ATIA | Open → |
| AKO Education Benefits | ArmyIgnitED | Open → |
How AKO Reload Fits In
The single biggest gap left by AKO's decommissioning is that there is no longer one place to find every Army link. Each successor system lives on its own URL, and unit SharePoints fill the gap inconsistently. AKO Reload exists to be that one place — a community-maintained directory of every Army and DoD website soldiers actually need. It is not affiliated with the U.S. Army, the DoD, or the AKO Offline project.