US Air Force: Feeling the Need for Innovation Speed
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
DIGITAL REPORT 2021
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UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
US AIR FORCE: FEELING THE NEED FOR INNOVATION SPEED
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UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
As one of the largest organizations on the planet, the US Department of the Air Force is charting a new course in digital technology. It’s top tech brass talk about the different facets of a complex transformation
T
he US Department of Defence, were it a commercial company, would be one of the biggest in the world. Like a container ship, its size – while staggeringly impressive – is also a handicap. Changing tack is the work of an army of personnel under the command of strong leaders. And it happens slowly. Or it used to. As far as technology is concerned, the need for agility and development speed is so pressing, the US Air Force has had to order a bigger rudder. It installed a new Chief Information Officer, Lauren Knausenberger, in August 2020 and a number of other high profile hires have joined the mission to set a new course for the 21st century. Knausenberger admits the DoD is “a little bit behind the commercial world” and occasionally stymied by old-world thinking. “I was at a conference and I heard something I hadn’t heard in a long time: ‘digital transformation is great and everything but it doesn’t really enable the war fighter’. That used to be how a lot of people felt, but we look at that attitude now and think it’s pretty humorous. The dialogue has changed and more people are realizing that when it comes to future war fighting and especially future deterrence, it’s all about the digital realm.”
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How innovation is transforming government Leidos is a global leader in the development and application of technology to solve their customers’ most demanding challenges.
Watch: How Leidos innovation helps transform government According to Washington Technology’s Top 100 list, Leidos is the largest IT provider to the government. But as Lieutenant General William J. Bender explains, “that barely scratches the surface” of the company’s portfolio and drive for innovation. Bender, who spent three and a half decades in the military, including a stint as the U.S. Air Force’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), has seen action in the field and in technology during that time, and it runs in the family. Bender’s son is an F-16 instructor pilot. So it stands to reason Bender senior intends to ensure a thriving technological base for the U.S. Air Force. “What we’re really doing here is transforming the federal government from the industrial age into the information age and doing it hand-in-hand with industry,” he says. The significant changes that have taken place in the wider technology world are precisely the capabilities Leidos is trying to pilot the U.S. Air Force through. It boils down to developing cyberspace as a new domain of battle, globally
connected and constantly challenged by the threat of cybersecurity attacks. “We recognize the importance of the U.S. Air Force’s missions,” says Bender, “and making sure they achieve those missions. We sit side-by-side with the air combat command, intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure across the Air Force. There are multiple large programs where the Air Force is partnering with Leidos to ensure their mission is successfully accomplished 24/7/365. In this company, we’re all in on making sure there’s no drop in capability.” That partnership relies on a shared understanding of delivering successful national security outcomes, really understanding the mission at hand, and Leidos’ long-standing relationship of over 50 years with the federal government.
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Lauren Knausenberger | USAF
Digitally enabled airmen The emergence of digital warfare isn’t new, but the definition is morphing from a vision of bespectacled keyboard warriors towards “digitally enabled airmen and guardians” through “global ubiquitous connectivity – having things in the cloud, able to move between different levels of classification seamlessly, having meaningful data coming from sensors all over the world, AI for machine-driven insights. At any point in time, airmen and guardians can see their entire operating picture anywhere in the world and move assets, physical or digital, to meet the mission need.” Knausenberger has three ingredients in her recipe for achieving this: digital modernization, all domain command and control, and AI (specifically automated valuation models, or AVMs). “The rest of it just comes down to use case and tying the 8
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technology together to achieve a mission, even on the fly.” She is adamant that the path to this digital nirvana is not paved with old methods overlaid with new technologies. Nor old attitudes. For inspiration, the US Air Force is looking to adopt the agile workflow and disruptive mindset of Silicon Valley start-up culture. Enter Nic Chaillan, the US Air Force’s Chief Software Officer, whose resume is a catalogue of entrepreneurial spirit having founded 12 companies over a 20-year career (he started his first aged 16). Sensing that he could “make a difference” in a world of terrorist attacks he joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2016. Three years later, he heads up software, DevSecOps, cloud and cybersecurity for USAF. Illustrating the DoD’s historic attitude to software, the role did not previously exist.
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“ WHEN IT COMES TO FUTURE WAR FIGHTING AND ESPECIALLY FUTURE DETERRENCE, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DIGITAL REALM”
LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY LOCATION: WASHINGTON
LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER
Modular jets Chaillan’s history is the antithesis of the department’s size, structure and way of working. His companies were built fast and small, with all eyes on the exit strategy. “Everything,” he admits, “is different.” That meant he had to hit the ground running. Despite some progress prior to his arrival, there was still a waterfall approach to project management, a dearth of agile culture and a legacy pathway to talent requirements and acquisition. Chaillan accelerated DevSecOps to introduce a continuous engineering model where software would be delivered multiple times a day, rather than once every three to five years, in order to address issues in real time. USAF is starting to embrace its newfound technological focus and the possibilities it affords. Key to this, Chaillan thinks, is the realization that hardware and software should be decoupled to allow for rapid delivery of prototypes. Effectively, this means taking a modular approach where, for example, aircraft sensors can be swapped out to upgrade hardware without building a new jet.
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CIO, US AIR FORCE
Lauren Knausenberger has been with the US Air Force in a number of guises, joining as Director of Cyberspace Innovation in 2017 before becoming Chief Transformation Officer two years later. Last August, she became Chief Information Officer. The new role is, in Knausenberger’s typically no-nonsense words, “really, really hard.” More stakeholders to manage, more complexity and problem solving across the board, for everyone, at scale. “Sometimes we’re deploying too many to too many different environments. As the CIO, I look at that and make sure we have a really robust cloud environment and that we’re putting in place the right incentives to make sure people are using that enterprise environment so we don’t have development teams that have to maintain 20 different baselines. “I have to make sure it’s global infrastructure in one place that everybody can access, so I’m looking at the whole tech stack at this point, rather than just the fun stuff at the top.”
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Dell Technologies and the USAF: partners in IT modernization Dell Technologies and the U.S. Air Force have a longstanding partnership. On several programs of record, Dell Technologies supports mission-oriented areas, including providing data-centric applications for platforms that the Air Force leverages in testing and operations. For example, certain high-performance jet fighters rely on Dell Technologies software that helps provide critical information about aircraft performance to the service and the aircraft manufacturer. After a test flight, data modules gathered from the aircraft’s sensors are downloaded, processed and analyzed to provide critical insights. The Air Force has also made a concerted effort to drive technology to the edge so that warfighters can gain value from their data where it lives. Dell Technologies is enabling dynamic decision-making at the edge, where collection, management, analysis, and the distribution of data is critical. Dell Technologies’ software factories are supporting some of the largest Air Force programs, like Kessel Run and Kobayashi Maru. Kobayashi Maru is a cloud-based program designed to modernize the way the Air Force (now the U.S. Space Force) interacts
with its allies. By the time Kobayashi Maru was a program, the service had a year or two of experience with the highly successful Kessel Run. According to the Air Force, this continuous user-centered approach enabled warfighters to quickly evaluate software improvements, provide direct feedback to Kessel Run developers, and rapidly iterate the software to provide maximum value and impact. Kobayashi Maru operates under the same principle: the existing software procurement process is too slow to satisfy requirements, so leverage best practices and partner with industry (in this case, Dell Technologies) to get new systems into the field as quickly as possible. The U.S. Air Force is committed to IT modernization, as exemplified by its ability to embrace change and transformation in how critical systems are procured and deployed. And Dell Technologies is committed to supporting the Air Force in its endeavors, so the service will always be ready for what’s next.
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Chaillan compares it to Lego, the modular building block toy. “The next generation jet fighters will be a mix of different ‘Lego’ blocks and reusing existing ‘Lego’ blocks so we don’t have to create everything from scratch. It’s still very early on, but this approach to software might be the difference between winning and losing. And you are going to save time and money, or you do more right with the same amount of money, which is likely even better.” It will also allow vulnerabilities in the security of particular components to be isolated and fixed, in line with Chaillan’s zero trust policy. “Security is really foundational to the success of all of this because if you move fast but the next day your source code is in the hands of the wrong people you didn’t really move fast at all. You just give free IP to your potential competitor or enemy.” Design systems As anyone who has mugged up on the history of Lego knows, the toy owes its original success to a design system that allowed
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DARK WOLF: ACCELERATING SECURITY FOR USAF Dark Wolf Solutions is small and agile, and its partnership with the US Air Force is helping to deliver critical security faster and better than ever before. As a small company whose biggest customers are the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, Dark Wolf Solutions is a triple-threat, specializing in Cybersecurity, Software and DevOps, and Management Solutions. Dark Wolf secures and tests cloud platforms, develops and deploys applications, and offers consultancy services performing system engineering, system integration, and mission support. The break for Dark Wolf came when the Department of Defense decided to explore software factories. Rick Tossavainen, Dark Wolf’s CEO, thinks it was an inspired path for the DoD to take. It has been, Tossavainen says, “amazing to watch” and has energized the Federal Contracting Sector with an influx of new talent and improved working environments that foster creativity and innovative ways of approaching traditional problems.
“ We originally started working with the US Air Force about three years ago. The problem was at the time you could develop all the software you wanted but you couldn’t get it into production – you had to go through the traditional assessment and authorization process. I talked to Lauren Knausenberger and she told me about Kessel Run and what eventually came out of this was the DoD’s first continuous ATO [Authority To Operate].” The secret to Dark Wolf’s success – and its partnerships with USAF and Space Force – lies in a client-first attitude. “ We’re not looking to maximise revenue,” Tossavainen explains. “ We tell all of our employees, if you’re ever faced with an issue and you don’t know how to resolve it, and one solution is better for the customer and the second is better for Dark Wolf, you always do number one. We’ve just got to take care of our customers, and I look for other partners that want to do that. And let’s work together so that we can bring them the best answer we can.”
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NICOLAS M CHAILLAN TITLE: CHIEF SOFTWARE OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY LOCATION: WASHINGTON
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EXECUTIVE BIO
Nic Chaillan started young. He created his first computer game aged 12 and made some money from it, enabling him to start his first company aged 16. He would go on to found 12 companies over the next 20 years, selling 185 IP products to Fortune 500 companies. So what led him to the US Air Force, a far cry from the start-up culture he was used to? “I wanted to make a difference,” says Chaillan. Terrorism was stalking the world, and the attacks had felt close to home when the capital of Chaillan’s native France, Paris, was one of the victims. He joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2016 as Chief Architect. The move would lead him to senior postings in the Department of Defense and, eventually, to his current role in the US Air Force where he is the first Chief Software Officer, not just in that branch of the military, but in government at large.
all the bricks to interlock with each other. It’s an approach that has served software developers well, according to Colt Whittall, the US Air Force’s Chief Experience Officer (another new role for the organization). “Design systems are the reason that when you’re interacting with Google or Microsoft or Shopify or Amazon, it all kind of looks the same even though you might be interacting with multiple different systems and sites on the back end. They’re applying a design system which has all the branding and style artefacts and standards and how those things interact and how things move etc. All of that is combined in the design system.” Whittall’s approach isn’t new, but its arrival in the big thinking of the US Air Force is. It allows partners and in-house to build software that fits together. Like Lego. The many threads of change weaving through the US Air Force are combining into a single tapestry. And it's the consolidation of agile working ideas shipped in from the commercial sector and built to common standards that allows for a future where innovation speed is maximised without compromising security, and new ideas flourish in an environment designed to propagate them.
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Nic Chaillan | USAF
One of the most important elements of this transformation is listening to the end user – the airmen and women, the ground personnel – whose safety and efficacy is so closely linked to the technology on which they increasingly depend.
“ THIS APPROACH TO SOFTWARE MIGHT BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WINNING AND LOSING” NIC CHAILLAN
CSO, US AIR FORCE
“In four of five years, I’d like to see at least the 100 – maybe 500 – most widely used applications in the Air Force have consistent user feedback,” says Whittall. “That would be a game changer. It would allow us to manage the entire portfolio with another set of data that would rank the 500 most widely used systems by user satisfaction.” The US Air Force’s radical transformation is taking shape, but it still needs scale. Innovation and adoption mean nothing until they permeate the fabric of the organisation. For Chaillan, that means breaking down silos and reusing code across multiple agencies. “It’s already hard enough to compete against other nation states,” he says, “We can’t fight among ourselves. I’m not going to lie, when I joined I was a little surprised airforce.com
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Confluent: data in motion Government data is vast and complex to manage. Confluent is partnering with the US Air Force to enable mission to process and react to data in real time Data in motion. That’s Confluent in a nutshell. For years, companies in the commercial and public sectors have collected and stored data, unable to unlock its potential. Confluent was formed in Silicon Valley seven years ago to set data in motion and bring insight where and when organisations need it. This transformational process is something Confluent helps a variety of clients with, not least the US Air Force, a project which sits under the wing of Public Sector CTO Will LaForest. “I would characterize the US Air Force as early adopters in government,” he says. “Confluent (Enterprise Apache Kafka) happens to be really well
“Confluent happens to be really well aligned with the needs and mission of the Air Force. They have a ton of examples where they’re handling data in motion”
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Will LaForest, CTO, Public Sector, Confluent
Bringing technology solutions to the military aligned with the needs and mission of the Air Force. They have a ton of examples where they need to rapidly process and react to data events in real time and they need to do across globally distributed operations. We have a lot of data nerds who love this problem set, focusing on geographic data distribution. We love this sort of challenge.” LaForest feels there has been a sea change in the government’s attitude towards technology. It has started to more aggressively adopt lessons learned from the commercial sector “working to infuse some silicon valley DNA”. It has changed the way companies such as Confluent interact with the government. “They have really begun to embrace this new norm, working closely with technology companies on the cutting edge, “ he says. The difference between commercial projects and government work comes down, in LaForest’s view, to scale and scope. “Operations span the globe – land, air, sea and space – and the variety of infrastructure, security requirements, and networking available impose some tough challenges on how the data will flow. Confluent is really well positioned to address this because it’s at the heart of what we do.”
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FOUR PILLARS OF USAF DX STRATEGY • Build a rock solid infrastructure • User experience for warfighter effect • Enable digital talents • Provide tradespace
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DID YOU KNOW...
LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER ON DIVERSITY Lauren Knausenberger takes diversity seriously. On the one hand the USAF CIO is “just choosing people that are really awesome and really passionate and really know their stuff” but she balances this with a deep sense of what the modern workforce looks like. “It’s absolutely true that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. I see a lot of responsibility as the first female CIO in the department of the Air Force. I try to keep a diverse group of people. We talk a lot about making sure we can keep people included.” The Black Lives Matter movement, in particular, shunted diversity into a prominent slot in the US Air Force’s agenda. “It was important to keep a really open dialog and ask people ‘how are you feeling?’, ‘what can we do to help?’, ‘what do you need to vent about?’. I’m blessed to have a pretty diverse staff to lean on and ask. That includes women and people of color and of all different backgrounds.”
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COLT WHITTALL TITLE: CHIEF EXPERIENCE OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY
by how much tension there is between the DoD services. It’s just not healthy. I’m pretty sure we’re not the enemy here. “So we have to break that and reuse code and adopt more open-source applications and really have that baked-in security and continuous delivery of software multiple times a day. Right now the thought we can release software 21 times a day is pretty cool – for the government. But at Google or Netflix or Tesla or whatever, that’s not good enough. We need to go to even higher numbers. If you look at the teams moving to DevSecOps right now it’s maybe five or 10 percent of what they do. We need to move the needle to 80 or 90 percent.”
“ CONSISTENT USER FEEDBACK WOULD BE A GAME CHANGER” COLT WHITTALL
CXO, US AIR FORCE
EXECUTIVE BIO
LOCATION: ATLANTA Colt Whittall is obsessed with design. His background in digital agencies, designing and building visual products and services for the private sector companies was interspersed with stints of work for government bodies, including the US Air Force. In the 1990s, he joined Deloitte, eventually building a digital agency that broke away from the consultancy. “After that ran its course I was ready to do something else,” Whittall recalls. He loaded up the family car for a ‘gap year’ while he thought about his next move. That move turned out to be with the US Air Force, where Whittall is the organization’s first CXO. “My job is to delight the customer. If you go into the commercial world that’s what they talk about. We are most definitely not a consumer products and services company. We need a different bar, one that is about efficiency, about a war fighter, one that is orientated towards the mission that we have for our software and its application. Let’s make our airmen productive, efficient and effective.”
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Colt Whittall | USAF
A long way to go In Knausenberger’s view, the journey is also far from complete. “We’ve made a lot of progress over the past few years with the way we acquire technology, the way we do our contracting and the way we partner,” she says. “And I’ll just be very upfront and say that we still have a long way to go.” She admits that part of the problem is to rationalise the legacy issues surrounding different types of technological application. The US military has been one of the greatest innovators of the past century, with a paradoxical inability to manage administrative technology effectively. “I used to joke that we could hit the backend of a fly from halfway around the planet,” she muses, “but,
like – whoo! – you want to deploy some business email? “It’s mostly a joke when I say that, but we do incredible things with ease and we make really easy things – things that everybody else does very well – hard.” Hard is the operative word. Focus is split between the day-to-day operational side of USAF, advocating for a change of culture and championing an innovative spirit. It’s a painstaking process requiring diplomacy, skill, knowledge and determination. And data. Lots and lots of data. The job of maneuvering the world’s largest company to face a new era of warfare is under way and in capable hands.
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