Future

of the
Air Force
APRIL 2018 EBOOK
Contents
03 FOREWORD
MARCUS WEISGERBER

04 ANTI-DRONE EFFORTS GET A SILICON VALLEY TWIST

PATRICK TUCKER

06 THE SEARCH FOR NEW WAYS TO BUY AND PROTECT SATELLITES

MARCUS WEISGERBER

09 ONCE SEEN AS A THREAT, THIS SMALL TEAM IS MAKING

LAUNCHES FASTER MARCUS WEISGERBER

12 WANTED: NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND QUICKLY

MARCUS WEISGERBER

15 A SHORT-STAFFED USAF WANTS ROBOTS TO DO

MORE HUMAN JOBS MARCUS WEISGERBER

19 HOW THE AIR FORCE MADE ITS ISR NETWORK CHEAPER TO RUN
AND EASIER TO UPGRADE M. WES HAGA

COVER: U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Jeffrey Allen

Future of the Air Force | Page 2

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Foreword

“ With a 2018-19 budget deal that brings an uptick in funding

and at least 18 months of long-requested fiscal stability, the U.S.
Air Force is looking to reinvent itself for the battles of the future,
while tuning up its existing equipment after 17 years of supporting
ground wars. The steep spending uptick is not expected to last long,
so leaders want to move quickly.
As officials look to make the existing arsenal more lethal, they
want new weapons, like hypersonic missiles and next-generation
combat aircraft. They’re also advancing development of new
nuclear cruise missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles. All
this new weapons development has a few common themes: the
need for new weapons and systems to do more with fewer people,
the ability to receive upgrades quickly, and the ability to link up
with other weapons.
Service officials say these attributes are necessary to build
flexible systems that will give the U.S. military an edge in a great-
power competition with China and Russia. This e-book describes
how the Air Force is taking aim at its future.

Marcus Weisgerber
Global Business Editor
Defense One

U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Jeffrey Allen

Future of the Air Force | Page 4

Anti-Drone Efforts Get
a Silicon Valley Twist
W
A new kind of investor- eaponized off-the-shelf drones are a
innovation partnership growing problem for U.S. troops, in part
may help speed emerging because commercial tech moves faster
technology to the front than the Pentagon programs that aim to counter
lines. it. So four U.S. Air Force captains took a novel
By Patrick Tucker approach to the problem.
Working under AFWERX, the Air Force’s new
tech innovation program,they partnered with
tech accelerator Techstars to find start-ups and
early-stage companies whose tech might help stop
drones. But instead of turning these companies
into standard defense contractors, they are aiming
to help them mature into businesses that thrive on
commercial sales as well.
Techstars is what’s known as a technology
accelerator, an investor that takes under his or
her wing a cohort of early-stage businesses that
already have viable products or technologies.
Working against a fixed (if arbitrary and self-
imposed) deadline, the accelerator provides
mentorship, financing, education, and sometimes
logistical or office support to get the companies to
the next growth stage.
Techstars announced the Air Force partnership
in September and, in February, announced 10
companies [powerpoint download] that had made
it through the Boston-based program. Among their
products are sensors to detect harmful material
that rogue drones might be carrying (and do so
in a form factor small and efficient enough to
work in an urban environment). Another tracks
counterfeit drone parts online, while yet another
builds rapidly modifiable hunter drones.
“Our mandate was, broadly, counter-UAS
technologies,” said Techstars founder Warren
Katz. “The results are commensurately extremely
broad. We wound up being surprised, which is
what we were intending.”
The most innovative aspect of the program is
the way it conceives of a new way for the military
to engage with technology development, following
in the footsteps of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel and other
outfits that operate like venture capital funds. The
accelerator program focused on dual-purpose
technologies of use both to government and the
private sector.
Future of the Air Force | Page 5
Naypong via iStock
The hope was to help these companies mature
into business that can sell into the military via
regular contracting arrangements, as opposed to
Broad Agency Announcements or Small Business
Innovation Research programs, that are more
bureaucratic and take more time. The goal was also
to on the military for their survival.
“The Air Force, their No. 1 concern was that
the companies be commercially viable outside of
the DOD,” said Katz. “The DODcould purchase a
product from them that would be useful to the DOD
but did not want welfare cases. The criteria was:
is this company capable of surviving in the non-
military market without any further support?”
Most importantly, if the arrangement proves a
useful model for the military, it will provide a way
to buy into technology trends just as they begin
taking off, but without taking on too much risk.
“These four young captains in the Air Force
took a look at the way things were being acquired
and they said, ‘This can not stand. We’re being
leapfrogged by ISIS and Al Qaeda that can buy start-
of-the-art technology from Amazon, have it shipped
to them with overnight shipping,’” said Katz.
Two can play at that game.
Future of the Air Force | Page 6
The Search for New Ways
to Buy and Protect Satellites
P
Ideas include smaller ETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, COLORADO —
constellations — perhaps The U.S. Air Force is looking to diversify its
even spacecraft built to satellite constellations by buying smaller,
commercial standards. cheaper spacecraft, part of a plan to better
By Marcus Weisgerber protect its space assets from Russian and Chinese
interference, military officials say.
This and other moves are meant to give the
Air Force backups to its existing, more expensive
satellites, and ultimately make it more difficult for
an enemy to disrupt services delivered via space.
“Adversaries are investing in capabilities
to defeat our space [assets],” said Brig. Gen.
John Shaw, Air Force Space Command’s head of
requirements, plans, programs and analysis.
Mitigating the threat has become a top priority
of senior defense officials. Deputy Defense
Secretary Patrick Shanahan — who now oversees
the military’s space projects — visited Space
Command on Monday for briefings here and at the
National Space Defense Center at nearby Schriever
Air Force Base.
But Air Force officials have been seeking ways
to increase the resilience of space services for
several years. Some of their newest ideas could
come to light next week, when the Pentagon is
expected to send its 2019 budget proposal
to Congress.
Shaw declined to give details about the Air
Force segment of that proposal, except to say it
arose from “very good, vigorous discussion” by
military leaders.
But some ideas emerged in unclassified
discussions here. For example, officials are looking
at buying smaller, cheaper satellites to detect
enemy launches, move data and communications,
and gather intelligence. Though they would
neither replace nor last as long as the Air Force’s
customary multibillion-dollar behemoths, the
smaller spacecraft would augment them and serve
as backups if the larger ones were attacked.
The Air Force is also considering buying
satellites made to less expensive commercial
standards, one official said, noting the military
already buys bandwidth on commercial
communications satellites.
Looking further down the road, Space
Future of the Air Force | Page 7
 A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the
Echostar 105/SES-11 communications
satellite from NASA’s Kennedy Space
Center. / SpaceX
Command’s Shaw talked about orbiting satellites
five times farther from Earth, or making them far
more maneuverable than current ones.
For new projects, officials said, they are
focusing more on “essential requirements” and
less on peripheral ones in an effort to buy and
launch satellites faster.
Many satellite projects take 10 years to
move from concept to launching the first in
a constellation, and another five to make the
constellation operational, Air Force officials said..
The Air Force is also changing its space
organization to support these goals. The
commander of Air Force Space Command
will henceforth serve a six-year term, double
its previous length, and a new three-star vice
commander will be stationed at the Pentagon ito
advocate for space projects, Shaw said.
The construct is similar to the one used by U.S.
Special Operations Command, which bases its
commander and deputy commander in Tampa
and a three-star vice commander in Washington.
Congress rejected an Air Force plan to create a
different three-star general billet for space
at the Pentagon.
Future of the Air Force | Page 8
Once Seen as a Threat,
This Small Team Is Making
Launches Faster
Once seen as a
threat to traditional
acquisition channels, the
Operationally Responsive
Space office is making it
faster and cheaper to put
new capabilities into orbit.
By Marcus Weisgerber
K
IRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M.— “I
believe we will be fighting in space in the
next 10 years,” Gen. David Goldfein warns
the dozen-or-so Air Force officers gathered in a
conference room here. What’s more, the fighter
pilot-turned-chief of staff says, “Space superiority
is going to be central to who we are as a service.”
As the Air Force — and policymakers at
the Pentagon and in Congress — rethink how
the military should build and retain this space
superiority, it’s clear that the service needs faster,
cheaper ways to put spacecraft on orbit. This small
office at Kirtland just might show the way.
Created in 2007 by order of the deputy defense
secretary, the Operationally Responsive Space
office is a handful of uniformed officers who
build satellites relatively quickly and cheaply
using small teams of contractors and a unique
on-base factory. After several years in which Air
Force leaders tried to kill the shop — it competes,
somewhat, with the Space and Missile Systems
Center that has long produced many of the
service’s most advanced and costly spacecraft —
ORS is now getting praise from the chief of staff.
Goldfein toured the factory here last month
and emerged impressed. He called “pretty
significant” the August launch of a satellite just
three years after an urgent operational request
came in. Built by MIT Lincoln Labs, it will team up
with larger, more expensive satellites to help map
objects in space.
“They’ve cut years off the process, and millions
of dollars,” he said. “We saw a great example of
how to actually, on a risk-based model, achieve
speed in acquisition.”
Modeled on the Air Force’s slightly older
Rapid Capabilities Office, ORS goes to work after
a commander sends an urgent battlefield need,
something that cannot be filled by an existing
satellite, and the Pentagon approves the job.
Contacts are awarded, a satellite is built and
eventually launched — generally speaking, after
about three years and $100 million. Compare
that to major Air Force satellite programs that
often take a decade or more and cost upwards
of $1 billion.
Future of the Air Force | Page 10
 Goldfein noted that “there’s a limit to what they
can build”; for example, ORS designs satellites to
last perhaps a few years, not decades like a Global
Positioning System satellite. Nor is their record
perfect. Two years ago, the rocket carrying the
team’s fourth satellite broke up shortly
after launch.
But the office and its fast-moving ways are
increasingly attractive — not just to former Air
Force officials who have pressed for this kind of
thing but current ones as well.
“As we built a space
enterprise in an
uncontested domain,
we had the luxury of
going slow because our
adversaries were not
pushing us"
GEN. DAVID GOLDFEIN
“As we built a space enterprise in an
uncontested domain, we had the luxury of going
slow because our adversaries were not pushing
us,” Goldfein said. “It was an environment there
was little competition when it came to testing
the environment. We’re in a different place now.
Like the nuclear enterprise, space is the other
enterprise where we’re going to have to look at
speed as a key attribute for success. How we get
there is going to be as much a cultural change as a
tactical change.”
That kind of cultural change is taking hold
across the military. In recent years, the defense
secretary’s Strategic Capabilities Office has led
the services’ efforts to introduce new capabilities
not by developing clean-sheet weapons but by
modifying and upgrading existing ones. The Air
Force itself is developing its next bomber with
the Rapid Capabilities Office instead of standard
acquisition channels.
“We actually have some great models out there
that are working,” Goldfein said. “The question is
whether we can make that shift.”
The Factory
Inside an all-white room behind a thin plastic
sheet, a satellite about the size of a refrigerator is
being pieced together by a small team of workers
wearing lab coats. It’s the ORS group’s sixth
satellite. If all goes as planned, airmen here at
Kirtland will use the satellite to measure the height
and direction of the sea.
The satellite is being built through a unique
arrangement here on a military base, not at
some far-off defense contractor factory. Its bus
and payload — made, respectively, by Northrop
Grumman and the California Institute of
Technology’s Jet Propulsion Lab — were built for
other projects that didn’t materialize. A company
called Millennium Engineering is putting
it all together.
Future of the Air Force | Page 11
 A SpaceX facility prepares a Falcon 9 When it heads to orbit next year, it will launch
rocket on Dec. 20, 2017, to launch 11
satellites for ORBCOMM. / SpaceX
on a SpaceX rocket with other non-military
satellites, a ride-share arrangement that one Air
Force official compared to taking a bus instead
of driving alone in a car. The price is a mere $10
million, a fraction of what it would cost to fly on
its own rocket, said Lt. Col. Eric Moomey, chief of
programs in the Operationally Responsive
Space office.
If it succeeds, the Air Force will have gained
another option for going to space — and, along
with then 15-year-old SpaceX, dealt another blow
to the monopoly held by the Boeing-Lockheed
Martin United Launch Alliance.
The prospect of far cheaper launches led
one officer to ask Goldfein whether this would
encourage the Air Force to build satellites that
don’t last as long — allowing them to be built more
cheaply, launched more quickly, and using more
up-to-date technology.
Goldfein’s visit here cames as the service’s
space forces find themselves at a crossroads.
Earlier this year, lawmakers unsuccessfully
tried to create a new military space force, akin to
the Marine Corps, in the 2018 National Defense
Authorization Act. But they did pass a series of
space reforms that nixed the Air Force’s plans to
create a three-star general billet at the Pentagon
that would oversee space operations.
Goldfein said four factors will guide the Air
Force’s approach to space: The “combination of
lower cost to launch, the digitization of payload
to make it smaller, the profitability of space for
commercial industry and adversary activity.”
“Those four issues are going to come together
in ways that are going to drive us to be far more
adaptive in space going forward,” he said. “I do
think that what they’re proving is that there’s a
different path to get things into space quickly.”
Future of the Air Force | Page 12
Wanted: New Nuclear
Weapons, and Quickly
Just months into the first
development contracts,
the service’s top general is
looking for ways to speed
things up.
By Marcus Weisgerber
K
IRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M.— Design
work is barely underway for the U.S. Air
Force’s new ICBMs and nuclear cruise
missiles, and already the service’s top general is
looking for ways to speed up the process.
Less than three months after the Pentagon
awarded contracts to begin designing crucial
cutting-edge components for the proposed
weapons, Gen. David Goldfein said he’s
“comfortable with the technology I’m seeing,” but
“not as comfortable with the schedule.” The new
ICBMs and cruise missile are expected to be battle-
ready in the late 2020s — if Congress and the White
House approve the acquisitions, whose cost is
expected to approach $100 billion.
“My sense is that we’re in a good place right
now in terms of how we’re working with industry
going forward,” the Air Force chief of staff said in
an interview. “The question I’ll continue to have is:
How to I move it left. How do we get this capability
earlier. Because if you can actually get it faster, you
can get it cheaper sometimes.”
In August, the Air Force chose Boeing and
Northrop Grumman to work on the new ICBM,
a project called the Ground-Based Strategic
Deterrent. It is meant to replace the Minuteman
IIIs that sit ready in silos spread across Montana,
Wyoming, and North Dakota.
Over the next three years, the two companies
will collectively build about 20 different prototypes
of components for the new ICBM, according to
officials at the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center
here who are overseeing the project. The Air Force
will then evaluate the two firms’ work and — and,
if Congress and the Pentagon give the go-ahead —
choose one of them to build more than 400 new
ICBMs.
When Goldfein asked officials here whether
it would be possible to speed things up, Maj. Gen.
Shaun Morris, the commander of the
Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, said,
“We’re looking at that.”
As for the new cruise missile — called the
Long-Range Standoff weapon — the Air Force has
hired Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to develop
technology and make parts over the next five years
Future of the Air Force | Page 13
 Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein and
Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force
CMSgt. Kaleth O. Wright visit Kirtland Air
Force Base, N.M. / U.S. Air Force
before choosing a winner. The missile is intended
to replace the Air-Launched Cruise Missile, which
is carried by the B-52 bomber.
Goldfein said the fundamental role of the two
new nuclear weapons will not change significantly
from their predecessors.
“What changes is the operating environment
that they’re going to execute their missions in,” he
said.
The Long-Range Standoff is being designed
to fly in an anti-access, area-denial environment,
the military term for a region where an enemy
has air defenses that can detect, shoot down
or electronically jam non-stealthy aircraft and
weapons.
As for the new ICBM, it “will operate in an
environment where cyber vulnerabilities are
different than what the Minuteman faced [and]
has far more congestion in space than what
Minuteman faced,” Goldfein said.
Then there’s the cost. Just last month, the
Congressional Budget Office said it could cost
$1.2 trillion to operate, maintain and upgrade
the Pentagon’s nuclear forces over the next 30
years. That includes buying new stealth bombers,
Navy submarines, and command-and-control
infrastructure. The Pentagon has said the new
ICBM could cost $85 billion. The Air Force is
planning to buy about 1,000 new nuclear cruise
missile, estimating a price tag of about $10 billion.
Experts have questioned whether all of the new
weapons are affordable.
The size of the nuclear force and new types of
new nuclear weapons are being looked at as the
Trump administration conducts a Nuclear Posture
Review, which is expected to wrap up as soon as
next month or early next year.
Future of the Air Force | Page 14
A Short-Staffed USAF
Wants Robots to Do More
Human Jobs
K
The service’s top general IRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M.— Filling
says new systems, from the fuel tank of a B-2 stealth bomber is
bombs to buildings, a group effort; the task involves pilots,
must be able to maintainers, logisticians — not to mention fuel
think, share, and learn. specialists. Gen. David Goldfein wants to know:
By Marcus Weisgerber can the Air Force give some of that work to
machines, as airlines do?
“How do we take best practices from industry
and automate parts of our flight line that right now
are fairly manpower-intensive?” the Air Force
chief of staff said in a recent interview. “If I have
airmen doing things that can be automated, then I
think we got to pursue it.”
Goldfein’s quest for what he calls “smart
flight lines” reflects both his desire to accomplish
everyday tasks more efficiently and a stark
realization that his service simply does not have
enough people to do all its jobs.
During a six-day trip to four Air Force bases
last month, Goldfein often sounded more like a
wandering digital-age philosopher than a fighter
pilot. He asked questions of about everyone he
encountered — from teenage airmen who fix
planes to wing commanders building new nuclear
weapons — about how they are fitting robotics
and automation technology into their plans.
“We’re too small for what the nation requires,”
he said. “So there’s a part of this which means we
have to grow, but we also have to be good stewards
as well and look at the highest priority missions
and look at how we’re using airmen today and find
ways to repurpose airmen against the
highest priorities.”
Goldfein is searching for new types of
technology that could help prepare planes
for battle.
“Our bases are part of our weapon system
because we launch from land,” he said, alluding to
a mission in January when two B-2s took off from
Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and flew a
34-hour round trip to drop bombs on Islamic State
camps in Libya.
“How of that can be automated? How much of
that can we start to really look into some creative
robotic technology use?” Goldfein said. “I do think
there are some investments we have to make in
Future of the Air Force | Page 16
that regard.” at the Air Force’s Nuclear
Air Force leaders have Weapons Center. The colonel
spent recent years lamenting explained that tight schedule
that they have been short- demands has led to a hesitance
staffed — a shortage in pilots to pursue new
and maintenance crews that types technology.
fix planes being among the Goldfein countered that he
most taxed career fields. wants to make sure that new
Goldfein notes that his service facilities are not run like the
is eventually slated to grow, current ones.
but he wants a cultural shift in Since becoming the Air
thinking that seeks technology Force’s top general, Goldfein
to do what jobs it can, freeing has pushed for airmen to think
up airmen to fill roles that U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Robert Bailey loads a magazine to prepare for a firing
differently about the future of
machines cannot. drill. / U.S. Air Force war. He has been on a personal
Of particular interest, he crusade to make sure all of the
said, is how the Air Force will store and transport its new Air Force’s planes, satellites, and other weapons can all
nuclear weapons more safely and efficiently. talk to one another digitally. That would be a shift: much
During a stop at Barksdale Air Force Base, home of of the U.S. arsenal was built by defense firms that used
the 2d Bomb Wing, Goldfein asked how robotics and proprietary standards, preventing the weapons from
automation were being incorporated into a new building communicating electronically and requiring lots of time
that will hold new nuclear cruise missiles. The airmen and money to modify them.
replied that since the new missile is still in the early stages So when a company pitches new weapons, Goldfein
of development, they were designing the new building as asks three questions: Does it share? Does it connect? Does
if it would hold the current cruise missile carried it learn?
by the B-52. He said his push for more open systems — ones
Here at Kirtland Air Force Base, Goldfein posed the that the Air Force can modify itself — is beginning to be
question to a colonel who works with munition storage heeded by defense firms. At the Air Force Association’s

Future of the Air Force | Page 17

 Members of the 179th Airlift Wing
Maintenance Group must heat the four
turboprop engines of the C-130H Hercules in
the cold early morning at the 179th Airlift
Wing, Mansfield, Ohio, as part of daily winter
operations, Dec. 21, 2016. / Photo by U.S. Air
Force Tech. Sgt. Joe Harwood
annual trade show in September, Goldfein is networks that share and learn,” he said.
“was impressed and intrigued with how “Making that cultural shift and translating
many of our industry partners started their that to an acquisition strategy is going to be a
conversation with me [with]: ‘let me tell you big lift. But the faster we do it, the faster we’ll
how this connects. Let me tell you how this improve our lethality as a joint team.”
shares.’”
“[T]his is a big challenge for us to be able
to change fundamentally the way we think
from wars of attrition — sensor, weapons,
platforms — to wars of cognition, which
Future of the Air Force | Page 18
How the Air Force Made Its
ISR Network Cheaper to Run
and Easier to Upgrade
T
Real-world lessons from hree years ago, the U.S. Air Force decided
a leader of the three-year to overhaul its main intelligence-data
effort to convert DCGS to network — the Distributed Common
open architecture. Ground System — whose custom-built apps and
By M. Wes Haga hardware made upgrades so slow and costly
that new capabilities were virtually obsolete
the day they finally came online. Thanks to new
techniques and systems, many borrowed straight
from Silicon Valley, we have already slashed the
time needed to implement new ideas by 70 percent
while avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars
in costs.
As chief of mission applications and
infrastructure at the Air Force Research
Laboratory’s Information Directorate, I helped
lead the effort to overhaul DCGS, along with co-
leaders at Air Combat Command and the Air Force
Life Cycle Management Center. Here’s what it took,
and how other military programs might be able to
follow our example.
DCGS, also known as the AN/GSQ-272
SENTINEL System, is used by airmen to produce,
process, and disseminate intelligence from data
collected through a wide range of ISR platforms.
But for all its power, the system was unacceptably
hard to upgrade. Its infrastructure was
constructed to satisfy single-mission capabilities
only. Specifications and scripting associated with
these capabilities were held and controlled by
private-sector companies, and all applications
and enhancements had to go through these
systems integrators. It could take up to 84 months
to bring new capabilities online, by which time
new technologies had often made the additions
virtually obsolete.
So in 2014, we began our overhaul. Adopting
a “we are they” mindset, ACC/A5-2D led in the
governance of requirements, AFLCMC/HBG led
in requirements implementation, and AFRL/
RI brought forth innovative technology and
methodology recommendations for an efficient,
modern IT enterprise. The new DGCS would
have an open architecture, simplifying the
addition of new components and breaking the
systems-integrator bottleneck. Its apps and
databases would run largely in the cloud, using
Future of the Air Force | Page 20
 The Air Force Distributed Common
Ground System (AF DCGS), also referred to as
the AN/GSQ-272 SENTINEL, is the U.S. Air
Force’s primary intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (ISR) collection, processing,
and dissemination system. / U.S. Air Force
a commercial-off-the-shelf platform (Pivotal
Cloud Foundry) that would allow us to quickly
accommodate new requirements and
new technology.
To build it, we adopted Silicon Valley’s “agile
development” methodology, which breaks projects
into small chunks and checks frequently to see
whether progress is matching users’ changing
needs. Applying agile techniques to all aspects
of the redesign, we rebuilt DCGS with an open
architecture and commercial-off-the-shelf
hardware and software. This allows a culture
shift that embraces and exploits the continually
improving technology ecosystem delivered by
a global marketplace. For example, we use Dell
servers today, but tomorrow we could insert HP
without reengineering the entire system.
With so much of the computing happening
in the cloud, we needed a way to monitor events
and system performance across this new DCGS.
As well, management needed to be centralized
across high- and low-security echelons to keep
mission-critical systems working optimally. We
selected Zenoss to provide a hybrid on-premise/
cloud IT-monitoring platform, along with software
and services for extensibility and integration with
other key industry-provided hardware
and software.
Future of the Air Force | Page 21
Results
With these new models and tools in place, we are
already seeing dramatic improvements in several
measures. Moving to open architecture and agile
development has sped the adoption of new system
capabilities. DCGS users have been able to rapidly
integrate commercial-off-the-shelf collaboration
tools, including full-motion video and high-altitude
exploitation capabilities, while integrating new
tools for information correlation and dissemination.
And while previously, all new capabilities had to be
delivered by a dedicated installation-and-test team,
DCGS can now remotely deliver new capabilities from Maj. Marc Weber looks on as Staff Sgt. Tim Teller and Tech. Sgt. Krystal
Porter generate computer code. / U.S. Air Force
a centralized hub.
We’ve also dramatically cut the time that it takes to
certify software as secure enough for DCGS. By testing components rather than the system as a whole. This
throughout the development cycle, and deploying means decisions are smaller, and made quicker at a
onto an accredited platform, DCGS is able to apply lower cost. For example, we can now buy, test, and
the existing accreditation model using a software’s deploy new software with a license for our operators
Certificate-to-Field with a Security Impact Analysis for about $1 million. Previously, every time we added
for each new capability. DCGS now operates with an a new capability, we would have had to build, test, and
established battle rhythm that has slashed the time for deploy the entire IT stack. A mistake could cost $100
security accreditation/certification from 18 months to million, likely ending the career of anyone associated
30 working days. In several cases, we’ve done it in 10 with that decision. A smaller mistake is less often a
working days. career-ender and thus encourages smart and informed
The risk of introducing new components to the risk-taking.
platform also has been greatly reduced, because we’re And as we have moved to agile development,
reducing the decision space to individual system we’ve brought our partners along. We have formally

Future of the Air Force | Page 22

MF3d via iStock.com educated more than 350 civilians, military, and
contractor personnel across our combined teams
on Scaled Agile Framework for the Enterprise,
or SAFe; today, several of our teammates employ
varying forms of agile development.
Bottom lines: before embracing open
architecture, the DCGSspent about 70 percent of
its funding on infrastructure and 30 percent on the
capabilities and applications that users needed to
accomplish their mission. Now those numbers are
flipping. If we meet our goal, we will have doubled
the share of DCGS funding that goes to mission
apps instead of infrastructure. And Pentagon cost-
estimators who looked at other Air Force and Navy
ISRsystems estimate that the new DCGS will avoid
roughly $600 million in expenditures.
Even with these eye-opening savings, the
real benefit to our new open architecture DCGS
system is that we are able to develop intelligence
from a range of platforms more quickly and easily
than ever before. For the men and women who
depend on that intelligence, it’s an extra measure
of safety, security, and knowledge, and that’s more
important than the savings.
Future of the Air Force | Page 23
About the Authors
PATRICK TUCKER
Patrick Tucker is technology
editor for Defense One. He’s also
the author of The Naked Future:
What Happens in a World That
Anticipates Your Every Move?
(Current, 2014). Previously,
Tucker was deputy editor for The
Futurist for nine years. Tucker
has written about emerging
technology in Slate, The Sun,
MIT Technology Review, Wilson
Quarterly, The American Legion
Magazine, BBC News Magazine,
Utne Reader, and elsewhere.
MARCUS WEISGERBER M. WES HAGA
Marcus Weisgerber is the global M. Wes Haga is the chief of
business editor for Defense Mission Applications and
One, where he writes about the Infrastructure Programs at
intersection of business and the Air Force Research Lab's
national security. He has been Information Directorate.
covering defense and national
security issues for more than a
decade, previously as Pentagon
correspondent for Defense News
and chief editor of Inside the
Air Force. He has reported from
Afghanistan, the Middle East,
Europe, and Asia, and often
travels with the defense secretary
and other senior military
officials.
Future of the Air Force | Page 24