Kessel Run
United States Air Force software development division
Follow Kessel Run on Notably News to receive short updates to your email — rarely!
| August 2023 | Air Mobility Command joined Air Combat Command in adopting C2IMERA as their standard installation command and control tool. |
| March 2023 | The Marine Corps Software Factory was co-located with the Army Software Factory in Austin as a three-year test project. |
| January 2023 | 609th Air Operations Center completely replaced TBMCS with KRADOS. |
| June 27 2022 | Colonel Richard Lopez becomes the new commander of Kessel Run, taking the title of senior materiel leader, replacing Colonel Brian Beachkofski. |
| April 2022 | The United States Coast Guard began planning a software factory based on the Air Force model. |
| March 2022 | Collaborated with the General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Services to test Cloud.gov's capacity using Bowcaster chaos engineering tool. |
| February 2022 | Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks wrote a DOD Software Modernization Strategy memo encouraging increased use of software factories, with 29 existing at the time. |
| 2021 | Kessel Run shared its Bowcaster chaos engineering tool with the Navy Black Pearl software factory. |
| September 2021 | C2IMERA was ordered to be deployed across all Air Combat Command installations. |
| September 2021 | By this time, there were 17 Air Force software factories across the United States. |
| August 24 2021 | During Operation Allies Refuge, Slapshot server crashed at 2 am Boston time, with developers working 12 hours to restore and improve performance. |
| May 2021 | 609th Air Operations Center became the first to use KRADOS operationally. |
| April 2021 | The Army Software Factory was established at Austin Community College in Texas as part of the United States Army Futures Command. |
| March 2021 | The Navy launched its first software factory, The Forge, in Riverdale, Maryland. |
| January 2021 | Torque adapted for maintenance of C-130J turboprop aircraft. |
| 2020 | A Harvard Kennedy School project investigates and attempts to address internal discontent among Kessel Run staff regarding emerging bureaucracy and increasing technical complexity. |
| December 2020 | 609th Air Operations Center began using beta version of KRADOS. |
| July 2020 | Mad Hatter project was renamed to Torque and adapted for maintenance of F-22 and CV-22 aircraft. |
| April 15 2020 | Colonel Brian Beachkofski replaces Colonel Oti as commander of Kessel Run in a Zoom teleconference ceremony. |
| March 2020 | Mad Hatter suite of eight programs was tested and favorably evaluated by F-35 aircraft maintainers. |
| October 2019 | Kessel Run receives the inaugural Defense Acquisition Software Innovation Team award. |
| September 2019 | Kessel Run receives the General Larry O. Spencer Innovation award and the Theodore von Kármán award for modernizing software for the F-35. |
| August 2019 | Moody Air Force Base used C2IMERA software to monitor and prepare for Hurricane Dorian. |
| May 8 2019 | Kessel Run formally becomes Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Detachment 12, commanded by Colonel Oti, with nearly 700 airmen, government civilians, and contractors. |
| April 2019 | LevelUP software factory debuted in Texas, developing a joint cyber operations system for the Unified Platform connecting the Army, Marines, and United States Cyber Command. |
| March 2019 | The Defense Innovation Board releases a report on software acquisitions with a chapter on Kessel Run, subtitled 'The Future of Defense Acquisitions Is #AgileAF'. |
| January 2019 | Developers began writing code for the Mad Hatter project after negotiations with Lockheed Martin. |
| January 2019 | BESPIN software factory launched in Montgomery, Alabama, creating apps for maintenance crew chiefs, aircrew readiness, and ammunition crews. |
| January 2 2019 | Kessel Run Experimentation Laboratory relocates to a different location in a Boston skyscraper, with a budget of approximately $140 million and claimed operational software savings of $13 million and 1,100 man-hours per month. |
| October 2018 | Officially started the Mad Hatter project to fix the F-35's Autonomic Logistic Information System (ALIS). |
| September 2018 | Senator Elizabeth Warren begins inquiring in Congress about replicating Kessel Run's successful software development approach throughout the Defense Department. |
| August 2018 | Kobayashi Maru (Space C2) software factory launched in California as the second software factory, aimed at updating the Joint Mission System for space command and control. |
| May 7 2018 | Kessel Run Experimentation Lab established at a WeWork shared facility in central Boston, with initial space for 90 engineers and plans to expand to 300 within a year. |
| March 2018 | Kessel Run grows to approximately 70 airmen, partnering with Pivotal Software, US Air Force Academy, and United States Air Forces Central to deliver nearly half a dozen software tools. |
| January 2018 | Raven application for target development management became ready, reducing work time from 12 hours to 3-4 hours. |
| 2017 | Developed Jigsaw, an aerial refueling planning application that was later bought and used by NATO in multiple countries. |
| November 2017 | Chainsaw application became operational, consolidating multiple programs and reducing dynamic targeting process from hours to minutes. |
| July 2017 | The Northrop Grumman AOC software modernization project was cancelled after the development price increased to $745 million and was three years behind schedule. |
| April 2017 | Project Kessel Run officially formed at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, inspired by the Star Wars reference to 'smuggle' new software development capability into the Air Force. |
| April 2017 | Jigsaw aerial refueling tanker application was deployed at the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), completing development in just four months - significantly faster than typical Defense Department software projects which usually take three to five years. |
| December 2016 | Coders and program managers visited Al Udeid to talk to users about developing a new aerial refueling tanker application. |
| October 2016 | Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and Defense Innovation Board chairman, toured the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, observing the manual and inefficient aerial refueling operation planning process. |
| 2013 | Northrop Grumman was commissioned to modernize AOC software with an initial contract of $374 million for development and $3.5 billion for lifetime maintenance. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Kessel Run, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.