Page 46 - FCW, January/February 2020

CaseStudy
46
January/February 2020 FCW.COM
Why the Air Force put Kubernetes in an F-16
Developers deployed the open-source platform for containerized workloads and services on top of the jet’s disconnected legacy systems
BY SUSAN MILLER
Anyone can run Kubernetes con- tainers for office applications. But what if the office in question is an F-16 fighter jet?
As part of its work on the Defense Department’s Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative, the Air Force is increasingly deploying solutions like Kubernetes, the open-source platform for manag- ing containerized workloads and ser- vices, to deliver advanced capabilities to warfighters.
The Air Force’s SoniKube software factory is one of the DOD enterprise development shops dedicated to
delivering software tools and auto- mated services so that programs can build and deploy secure, flexible and interoperable applications. SoniKube was challenged by Nicolas Chaillan, chief software officer at the Air Force and co-lead for the DOD Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative, to install Kuber- netes on the legacy hardware in F-16s.
“One point for the team was to dem- onstrate that it could be done,” Chail- lan said in his keynote presentation at KubeCon 2019 in San Diego.
In just 45 days, the team had three concurrent Kubernetes clusters run-
ning on a jet, according to The New Stack.
It wasn’t easy. The Air Force had been tackling the challenges faced by many enterprises in the move to agile and open development systems: legacy waterfall methodology, skills shortages and culture clashes. Unlike many open- source makeovers, however, the F-16’s classified systems run in a disconnect- ed environment so that they are pro- tected from vulnerabilities introduced by connecting to the internet.
To get the containers working on the jets, the team had to “bring the entire