Why the Air Force put Kubernetes in an F-16
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 managing containerized workloads and services, 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 automated services so that programs can build and deploy secure, flexible and interoperable applications. SoniKube was challenged by Nicolas Chaillan, chief software officer for the Air Force and co-lead for the DOD Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative, to install Kubernetes on the legacy hardware in F-16s.
“One point for the team was to demonstrate that it could be done,” Chaillan said in his keynote presentation at KubeCon 2019 in San Diego. In just 45 days, the team got three concurrent Kubernetes clusters running on a jet, according to TheNewStack.
It wasn't easy. The Air Force had been tackling challenges faced by enterprises moving 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 disconnected environment so that they are protected from vulnerabilities introduced by connecting to the internet.
