A recent test of the technology came at the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 5 event in March at Fort Irwin, California, a joint experimentation venue for the services to test concepts for interoperability in the vein of the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept, which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster. The word “combined” in the parlance of the framework, refers to bringing foreign partners into the mix.

The Marine Corps Software Factory, located in Austin, Texas with the Army’s Software Factory, developed what it dubbed Crusader software to see if it was a viable alternative to the current commercial middleware used by a lot of units to control these radars, such as Furuno and eventually Simrad, which was not tested at Project Convergence.

While the government and Department of Defense have been pushing the use of commercial-off-the-shelf capabilities as much as possible, the Corps noted several benefits of developing government-built software in this context.

First, radar systems can be complicated and not necessarily geared toward the way troops must employ them. By developing their own software, the Marines at the Software Factory can build tools specifically for Marines at the tactical edge and more easily interface with them as well as other joint service members.

Second, creating government-off-the-shelf software can be cheaper than relying on commercial products.

“It doesn’t cost the government anything more than our salaries to develop it. Whether I develop eight applications in a year or one, we pay you the same,” Capt. Brian Atkinson, a full-stack engineer at the factory, said in an interview.

Moreover, that means there aren’t licensing fees associated with the software, which can not only be costly, but if not managed properly, can expire at the worst possible times.

Atkinson noted he’s experienced licenses expiring in the middle of exercises and been unable to reach out to the vendor to renew it — an untenable situation in real-world operations. Solely relying on vendor support while troops are forward-deployed isn’t always the best option.

The Crusader software, which has been in development for about four months, was an improvement to the existing system, officials said, noting the old software was difficult to use and didn’t fit the plans the Marine Corps had.

The concept behind the new software is that stand-in forces — units based in close proximity to the enemy — need to be able to remote into commercial radar systems such as the Furuno. Those capabilities provide sonar, collision detection and navigation, which overall will give those stand-in forces the ability to extend maritime domain awareness.

Those commercially available radars fit well into the commandant’s Force Design vision because the radars are relatively inexpensive and readily available when compared to traditionally fielded systems, Sgt. Max Idler, a coder and developer, said. Thus, they provide an attractive option when the service can rapidly procure a capability and repurpose it for the joint fight.   

At Project Convergence, categorized as a big success, Crusader and the radars it controlled provided the maritime situational awareness data for the Southern California area for the experiment, which benefited all the joint partners participating. Officials said they processed Furuno radar data, produced tracks and targets off of it, and fed that data through the Secure But Unclassified-Encrypted network.

Officials noted there were tweaks that they needed to make in order for the software to be more user friendly.

Following Project Convergence and working with the Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic, the Marines plan to include Crusader on a commercial-off-the-shelf radar kit that will be distributed to the Fleet Marine Force sometime in the next year. If that field user evaluation goes well, Crusader will be the centerpiece of radar processing software on the kit.

The Software Factory is also discovering that there is wider interest and larger demand for Crusader. Given it is government developed, it can be applicable to all elements of the joint team members and potentially coalition partners that wish to use commercial-off-the-shelf radars for situational awareness.

The demand comes from wider DOD interest in using different maritime surveillance capabilities for various mission sets, such as special operations forces.

Officials from Marine Forces Special Operations Command have voiced their desire to use Crusader given it doesn’t require licensing to the radars themselves.

“That is a strategic add to how MARSOC likes to operate,” Idler said, noting they’re looking to test Crusader with them off a tech stack they developed using Raspberry Pi’s.

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The new document will be released “fairly shortly,” Kevin Mulvihill, acting principal deputy CIO, said Monday during the Defense Information Systems Agency’s annual forecast to industry. The directives will build upon the Pentagon’s Software Modernization Strategy published in 2022, as well as the follow-on implementation plan published in 2023, he said at the event.

“We’re in the process right now across the various services and components to update their implementation plans in [fiscal ’25 and ’26], with the focus to accelerate those strategic goals, to adopting the enterprise cloud, really looking at the department-wide software factory ecosystem there,” Mulvihill said.

Along with the Pentagon’s enterprise-wide modernization plan, several of the military departments and other DOD components have been moving in recent years to update how they buy, develop and deploy software for their systems. Some of the services — such as the Army — have published their own software modernization strategies, and others have stood up and bolstered their respective software factories.

Mulvihill said there’s been significant progress among the individual services and components, and that all of the key initiatives outlined in the Pentagon’s implementation plan for software modernization were accomplished by their deadlines.

“Hopefully in a helpful way, we’re trying to bound that with the right level of department-wide guidance and instruction that we’ll have out here fairly shortly from the CIO’s office,” he said. “That helps with the instruction, to really try to advance those software factories but do it in such a way that we protect the software development and make it safer and secure.”

A key element to the Pentagon’s software modernization goals is the proliferation of DevSecOps principles and tools across the enterprise. DISA is in the process of bringing two of its major DevSecOps pipelines — the Command and Control Software Factory (C2SF) and Vulcan — together so that they can “combine forces” and offer more tools to users, DISA Deputy Director Christopher Barnhurst said at Monday’s event.

But more work must be done to change the culture around software development and deployment, Barnhurst added.

“Part of the challenge I see is getting folks to buy into that. And not just buy into it but to understand DevSecOps mentality and processes more in the agile development kind of way of thinking,” Barnhurst added. “Along with all of the policy and the tool sets, it’s more of a cultural shift as well that just takes time to get people in a frame of mind.”

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The contract — awarded by the service’s Kessel Run software factory — will allow Leidos to scale the Air Force’s Command and Control Incident Management Emergency Response Application (C2IMERA). The agreement has a six-month base period of performance, as well as four one-year options and two additional six-month options. If all options are executed, the contract will be worth $158 million.

C2IMERA was developed by Leidos and first integrated into Kessel Run operations in 2018. The application is used as a command-and-control tool, enabling users to create common operating pictures of emergency situations, plan and coordinate operations, issue directives, rapidly communicate to personnel in near real-time and more, according to the Pentagon. 

Used at 70 Air Force installations and more than 100 forward operating bases around the world, C2IMERA is considered the designated standard for developing common operating pictures at both Air Combat Command and Air Mobility Command. According to the service, Kessel Run has plans to scale the tool to all of its installations.

Under the new contract, Leidos will work to integrate C2IMERA at additional Air Force sites, including associated forward operating bases and contingency locations. The scaling will also add emergency response services, local governments and host nations to the application’s user base.

​​Chad Haferbier, vice president for multi-domain solutions at Leidos, told DefenseScoop in a statement that the Air Force wants to have C2IMERA serve as a “core tool” for the service’s base and crisis management ops. 

“Leidos is dedicated to supporting Kessel Run’s vision for C2IMERA proliferation and multi-tenancy capability, as well as improving the software for modern architecture and more seamless integration to meet warfighter needs,” Haferbier said. “With our rapid release cycle, Leidos is able to quickly respond to stakeholder needs and dynamic priorities as directed by Kessel Run’s C2IMERA Program Office.”

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The Marine Corps Software Factory (MCSWF) was stood up in 2023 as a three-year pilot to hone and demonstrate troops’ coding skills, show that there’s a demand for the concept and that it can be scaled. It’s co-located with the Army Software Factory in Austin, Texas, one of the nation’s top technology hubs.

“What we’re doing is we’re almost singularly focused on generating a force with the right technical skill sets to be able to provide an operational capability in terms of digital operations. And when I say ‘digital operations,’ I’m talking about software development, data analytics, AI, machine learning, that type of thing. Just to provide these commanders a meaningful way of being able to compete with our peer adversaries,” Lt. Col. Charlie Bahk, a communications officer and director of the organization, said during a panel at GovCIO’s Defense IT Summit Feb. 9.

Marines there have already churned out four new applications. Three of them are tactical in nature, he told DefenseScoop during an audience Q&A at the event.

“I have to be cognizant of the clearance levels, you know, OpSec and all that. But one of them is about maximizing our maritime radar assets to be able to give the fleet commander a more comprehensive picture of what is happening in that domain. And it’s fully interoperable. It’s interoperable with not just one, but multiple different types of sensors out there. Full-motion video as well,” he noted.

Another uses QR-code technology that can transmit information from unit to unit across long distances and in areas where satellite transmissions or radio transmissions are being jammed and impeded.

The other tactical app is related to “blue-force” signature management, or “understanding where or how brightly you glow on a common operational picture, based off your electromagnetic spectrum activity,” Bahk said.

The fourth app is intended to streamline back-office operations.

“It’s on the garrison or the business side where our monitors or detailers, you know, like the people that cut orders for Marines to their next assignments and work out the retention packages and things like that,” he noted. “You can imagine, due to the sheer numbers of people that they have to engage with, the potential for miscommunication and long wait times and missed appointments and hurt feelings … I mean, it’s just tremendously high.”

To address that, the software factory built a tool to gather data from service members before they meet with those types of officials.

“What we’ve done is created a simple application that streamlines a lot of that, cuts down dramatically the wait times for each of those Marines. It compels them to preload a lot of the standardized information that the monitors should already know about them, [such as] whether or not their spouse is in a graduate-level program or has a very important job or if they have an exceptional family member in the family,” he explained.

The interview window is short, in many cases only about 10 minutes, according to Bahk. The app is intended to make better use of that time.

“Most of those 10 minutes are used in discussing things that should already be known. So what this application does is it helps us streamline the flow of information. And now all of those 10 minutes are used in meaningful conversation that the Marine wants to cover with their monitor. Which if you ask me, I think that downstream of this, it helps to feed into the Marine’s mindset as far as: ‘Am I cared for by the institution? Should I reenlist? Do I want to continue to serve?’” Bahk said.

The software factory pilot is unfolding at a time when the Pentagon is putting increased emphasis on digital modernization and the rapid fielding and upgrading of software. That trend is expected to continue as the military acquires more AI capabilities and pursues new warfighting concepts like Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).

Building up coding skills within the Marine Corps is seen as a way to better connect software gurus with deployed warfighters and provide operational value more quickly without relying on contractor support.

“When we have organic uniformed service members doing this type of work and leveraging the infrastructure … we tend to immediately open up a line of like an iteration loop, that’s a line of communication with the commanders on the ground, and say, ‘Hey, here’s our [minimum viable product] that we’re delivering to you within weeks — days, weeks and months, not years. Right? And make sure that we got it right. And if we don’t, roger that, we’ll see you next week and we’ll deliver it — or we’ll see you later today,” Bahk said.

“When we delivered these applications, we got to see them employ it in real-time. And as any rollout goes, there are a couple of hiccups here and there. Zero findings, but a couple of hiccups, performance issues — or maybe the users then think of a feature that they would like us to work on and deploy. We were able to do that. And we’re doing that today, within the same day. We’re pushing to production several times a day. And the responsiveness and the quality — the user base is tremendously happy with that model,” he said.

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The program provides resources and services to facilitate the development and continuous integration and delivery of software capabilities for command-and-control applications — including for air and space operations centers. The ADCP is intended to make it easier for developers to scale their applications, services and data, improve performance and resiliency, and speed up production, according to Kessel Run.

“The Government currently operates as the ADCP systems integrator. In order to provide the full range of ADCP services to developers and end users, [Kessel Run] utilizes a diverse set of engineering personnel supplied by multiple vendors to support Government-led teams with a blended civil servant, military, and contractor makeup,” according to a sources-sought notice posted Wednesday on Sam.gov. Kessel Run has traditionally used time-and-materials contracts with pre-negotiated labor categories and T&M rates, it noted.

The organization plans for the government to remain as the systems integrator, per the RFI. However, “the Government is also evaluating opportunities to diversify and streamline its approach to delivery of ADCP services and performance of select [Office of the Chief Technology Officer] Security functions. The evolved acquisition strategy may incorporate identification of elements of that work that are suitable for transition to a vendor-led service team approach, potentially using alternative contract types (e.g. Firm Fixed Price),” the notice states.

The outreach to industry comes as Kessel Run expects continued “upscaling” of the All Domain Common Platform over the next three to five years with a growing user base, movement to a “cloud-connected edge architecture,” and the establishment of operations centers to provide enhanced 24/7/365 operational user support, cyber defense and cybersecurity incident response, according to the RFI.

Kessel Run is looking for capabilities and skills from vendors related to cloud architecture; DevSecOps engineering; software engineering; product engineering; platform and platform services engineering; site reliability engineering; security, cyber security and cyber engineering.

“Engineering personnel and/or vendor-led services acquired via this effort will support multiple areas” within the ADCP and Kessel Run’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, per the RFI.  

That support could include platform operations, distributed infrastructure, development and deployment tools, IT service management, cybersecurity and cyber-surety engineering, the security operations center, or other areas.

The deadline for industry to respond to the RFI is Nov. 2.

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“Over the last several months, we’ve taken steps to start working on focusing on Pacific capabilities and requirements that will enable us to better support operations there,” Col. Rich Lopez, Kessel Run senior materiel leader, told DefenseScoop on Monday during a media roundtable at the Air Force Life Cycle Industry Days in Dayton, Ohio. 

KRADOS is a set of nine software applications developed by Kessel Run as a key component to phasing out the Theater Battle Management Core System (TBMCS). The legacy software suite was introduced in 2000 and is currently used by U.S. military air wings to plan and execute airborne operations. 

Kessel Run fielded the first minimal viable capability release of KRADOS in 2021 to the 609th Air Operations Center, located at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and replaced the legacy system with KRADOS in November. Since then, the software suite has been used in real operations, Lopez said.

“That marked the first time that air tasking and airspace control orders were operationally built and flown in that [combined air operations center] without TBMCS and the master air attack planning toolkit,” he said in an email to DefenseScoop. “Since then, we have continued to iterate those capabilities, and learn the lessons we’ll need to lay the groundwork for the continued development of future capabilities for the entire AOC enterprise.”

Some of the applications within KRADOS include the Jigsaw Tanker Planning Tool, aimed at streamlining and optimizing airborne refueling operations, and Triton, which consolidates information from other applications to create air-tasking orders.

Steven Wert, program executive officer for the Air Force’s digital directorate, said that as it pivots KRADOS to the Pacific, Kessel Run is focusing on achieving multi-tenancy — or scaling software suite so that multiple air operations centers can simultaneously access tools in a shared environment — and scaling for major theater war.

“When we fielded the [minimum] viable capability release, we didn’t necessarily say this is going to be capable of dealing with a thousand missions per day. It’s more like a couple hundred,” Wert said during the roundtable. “To exercise multi-tenancy, what is the next AOC we want to work with to be able to demonstrate that our software can support multiple bases? In that case, that’s the pivot to the Pacific.”

Kessel Run officials could not share which air operations centers would be the next to receive KRADOS or details on when that process would begin. There are two AOCs part of Indopacom: the 613th AOC at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii and the 607th AOC at Osan Air Base in South Korea.

With KRADOS, Kessel Run is utilizing available cloud capabilities from commercial service providers as much as possible, Lopez said. As it looks to scale the application suite, he said that Kessel Run is exploring a number of cloud options — including the DOD’s new enterprise cloud known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC).

“There’s a nexus, now, of federal cloud capabilities and DOD requirements,” Lopez said. “We’re using commercial cloud capabilities to support operations for us as we move towards a more distributed capability for the Air Force.”

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Software — and the cybersecurity tools needed to protect it — is viewed as an increasingly important component of U.S. military modernization and operations.

“We have three parts of the space infrastructure we care about. One is the ground system that we operate the satellites from, the satellites themselves, and then the receivers. So think about your GPS receiver or your satellite communications receiver. We want all three of those elements to be reprogrammable. Why? Because that in itself is some cybersecurity and resilience, and that you can out-turn the enemy and keep making” needed changes, said Burt, deputy chief of space operations, cyber and nuclear.

Baking information assurance into weapon systems “from birth” and having cyber defense teams at the ready is also important, she noted during a Defense One webcast aired on Wednesday.

Burt was asked if reprogrammability needs to be built into the systems that the Space Force buys from the get-go.

“I think we’re working through that,” she replied, noting that new satellites and associated systems that the Space Development Agency is pursuing for the U.S. military will have that feature.

“That new missile warning, missile track architecture — that is absolutely based on being able to be reprogrammable, both at the ground system, the satellite, and the receiver. So they are working hard on that to be able to also give us that additional resiliency … to remove that first-mover advantage” from potential attackers, Burt said.

Meanwhile, the Space Force is trying to bolster its organic coding workforce through its “Supra Coders” initiative and other efforts.

The service, which was stood up less than four years ago, was born in the information age surrounded by digital tools, Burt noted.

“We have to be able to leverage that. So we have what we call Supra Coders, folks that we trained to do coding and how do they work with the system developers that as we build these systems that we would trust … they would know how to work with the developers to do that on-the-fly programming. So that’s in its infancy, but it’s absolutely growing. And we see great advantages to that to the future,” she said.

The Software Development Immersive (SDI) program — which the service has described as a “fast-paced coding boot camp” — teaches guardians and Space Force civilians methodologies for working on production code, according to the Supra Coder website.

Participants in the 12-week immersive program will go on to do a three-month internship with Space Fore software factories, focused on agile software development. Both the SDI training and internships are virtual with no TDY or PCS expenses incurred, according to the website.

“The USSF is aggressively and immediately expanding and nurturing our internal digital talent to address potential future knowledge and capabilities gaps vis-a-vis our peers and adversaries,” it states.

Recent schedules suggest that new SDI cohorts are being conducted every four months or so.

April 24 is the application deadline for the next cohort, which is slated to begin May 15.

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Software factories are proliferating across the Defense Department as a way to rapidly create software in-house for the services. According to Nickolas Guertin, the factories have become essential to the Navy and Marine Corps’ modernization efforts.

“It is my understanding that software factories have become a key piece of the DON’s approach to promulgate a Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) culture which invests in and leverages state-of-the-practice methods such as continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) as a preferred approach to instantiate agile development practices and speed capability to the fleet,” Guertin said in response to advance policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee.

If confirmed by the Senate, Guertin will serve as the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. He told lawmakers that, if confirmed, he pledges to continue the Navy’s mission to deploy key software capabilities to sailors and Marines.

“As such the community will need to move these capabilities forward while continuing to assess and rationalize the software factory capability ecosystem,” he told the SASC.

There are a few dozen software factories within the Defense Department across the services, including within the Department of the Navy. The Marines have their new Marine Corps Software Factory — which opened its doors this year — and the Navy operates The Forge, a weapons system software factory built on the service’s DevSecOps platform known as Black Pearl.

Last year, the Pentagon published its Software Modernization Strategy as a way to streamline the various software factories across the DOD to support some of its top modernization priorities, like artificial intelligence and Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) — the Pentagon-wide effort to better connect all of the military services’ sensors, shooters and networks.

During his confirmation hearing with lawmakers Wednesday, Guertin emphasized the growing importance of software capabilities as the Navy and Marine Corps continue to modernize by developing new technologies.

“We live in a world now where almost everything is software-defined or controlled. Even the way we build purely physical things is done through tools and modeling and numerical analysis done in computers,” he said. “We need to embrace those digital tools used to make these systems.”

Guertin currently serves as the director of operational test and evaluation at the Department of Defense and is responsible for overseeing and reviewing the Pentagon’s tests for its major acquisition programs. In that role, he’s seen a growing trend in using software and digital tools when testing new platforms.

“There’s powerful opportunities to take advantage of and make sure we bring those into how we do that technology development so we can rapidly field capabilities that work and can also be built to scale,” he said.

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The Marine Corps Software Factory (MCSWF) will start as a three-year pilot to demonstrate that there’s demand for the concept and that it can scale. It will be co-located with the Army Software Factory in Austin, Texas, where Marines embedded last summer to kickstart the software development effort before its formalization.

The factory enables the service to empower Marines to code applications “at the speed of relevance” and build custom software “at the edges of the battlefield without connectivity or assistance from centralized or contracted support,” per a release.

Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy, deputy commandant for information and CIO, will serve as the executive sponsor of the software factory.

“The Marine Corps Software Factory is about outcomes, creating advantage for Marines at the tactical edge, today,” Glavy said. “The MCSWF will provide viable capabilities to enhance mission readiness through the power of information.”

The Marine Corps has been working to this point for several years, starting in 2021 when it launched the inaugural Marine Corps Micro-Application Development Innovation Challenge. That effort and others subsequent to it yielded good results but also highlighted untapped technical talent and the desire to field in-house software efforts across the Corps.

The initial cohort for the new software factory is comprised of communication specialists, but in the future, it will be open to all Marine occupational specialties.

They will undergo three phases during their time there: a technical accelerator and one-to-one pairing enablement with industry experts during the first year, upon which they will earn an MOS in application development and spend the final two years focused on employment utilization to solve real-world Marine Corps challenges.

“Our Marines have an amazing capacity for understanding complex technologies. We must empower our Marines to use that technological know-how to create a more lethal force,” Commandant Gen. David Berger said in a statement. “The Marine Corps is fielding more complex systems and platforms right now, and we must invest in our Marines’ and Civilian Marines’ capacity to advance in parallel.”

In total, there are a few dozen software factories across the Department of Defense. On top of the Army’s and now the Marines’, the Navy has its Black Pearl and Forge programs, and the Air Force has a variety such as Kessel Run, Platform One and Space CAMP.

The DOD issued a directive last year to streamline those software factory efforts across the U.S. military.

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The SDA, which is now part of the Space Force, recently released a draft solicitation for the Battle Management Command, Control, and Communications (BMC3) Application Factory.

“The acquisition establishes software development capabilities to securely and rapidly field mission applications developed by BMC3 ecosystem participants in support of Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) objectives,” the draft solicitation states. It is expected to yield a “DevSecOps continuous integration/continuous development pipeline that provides governance and infrastructure to enable BMC3 software applications to develop, integrate, test, and deploy into the” national defense space architecture.

“Basically, it’s the software that will be used by performers on the ground to build the apps and test out the apps in a secure environment to … basically do uploads onto the satellites so that we can upgrade the BMC3 processors on orbit,” SDA Director Derek Tournear explained during a recent virtual event hosted by the National Security Space Association.

The technology is intended to enable edge processing for SDA’s new layers of data transport satellites.

The agency wants industry’s help with development and implementation of the BMC3 app factory; development and sustainment of the Secure Interoperable-middleware layer (SIL); integration, testing, and operational support for BMC3 applications; and leading the BMC3 “ecosystem.”

The SIL is intended to enable the apps to integrate and run on BMC3 hardware.

Responses to the draft solicitation are due by Dec. 9. A final solicitation for the application factory is expected to go out in February after the SDA incorporates industry’s feedback, and an award is expected “shortly thereafter,” according to Tournear. The agency plans to use an Other Transaction Authority agreement for the acquisition.

Solicitations for the initial apps that will be put through their paces in the new factory are expected to be released in summer 2023.

“We’re going to kind of have an annual process where we select those and move forward. But that’s more of a rolling process because … it’s not that we pick one, we pick one vendor and go with them [and exclude other vendors]. We’ll pick vendors based on whatever apps they have and have this kind of rolling process. So that’s a little different,” Tournear said.

As the SDA builds out the new national defense space architecture with additional tranches of satellites, network data routing is expected to become much more automated.

“We’ll have that network operations essentially with a man-on-the-loop versus a man-in-the loop doing that … pushing more and more of that automation from the ops center floor up into the spacecraft itself,” Tournear said. “That’s when the app factory and the apps come into play.”

The apps will help fuse data from a variety of satellites made by different vendors.

“They’ll also do fusion of any other [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] data into tracks to be able to send those down to targeting centers to be able to do weapons-data pairing so we can send those to weapons. So apps will do that, then the apps will also do all of this network data management,” he said. “That will be automated and eventually that will be done on board the transport satellites themselves. So all of that network management that changes the network routing tables will be done autonomously onboard those satellites via an app.”

The SDA wants the app factory in place “next year” so people can start developing the apps, he noted.

The draft solicitation calls for a minimum viable product for the application factory and the SIL in fiscal 2024.

“The apps need to be really developed and running in the ‘25, late ‘25 timeframe, so we can start to upload those and actually do operations on board” the spacecraft, Tournear said.

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