The Air Force Cyberspace Technical Center of Excellence (AF CyTCoE) at AFIT innovates in cyberspace education, training, and research leveraging AFIT’s vast amounts of cyber expertise across its faculty, staff, and students. AF CyTCoE’s mission is to enhance the USAF’s ability to develop cyber warriors capable of delivering strategic, operational and tactical effects by leveraging the most cutting-edge technologies and tactics available. In October 2021, AF CyTCoE partnered with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to create the Hangar 18 software factory, which was born from a need to create an Agile approach to help the Air and Space Force communities in efficiency and deliverables in a cost effective way.

Hangar 18 is a DAF-endorsed Software Factory whose mission is to bring Agile and DevSecOps to the Digital Transformation and Digital Engineering communities at Wright-Patterson AFB. Hangar 18 accomplishes this by developing tools and tool pipelines, assisting and guiding technical programs, and engaging in workforce development with formal and informal education and training. Hangar 18 delivers software and data solutions to the warfighter across a broad spectrum of domains, leveraging a diverse portfolio of technologies spanning prototypes to enterprise-grade systems.

Hangar 18’s niche is supporting data and data models for its AFRL and AFIT research-based customers while also providing consultation and project execution to its partners. Visit Hangar 18’s website to schedule time to discuss Hangar 18’s expertise in code approval and deployment, DevSecOps and Hangar Agile, and its lessons-learned working with researchers across AFIT and AFRL.

APPROVAL AND DEPLOYMENT
Achieving an approval to deploy software, and knowing how and where to do it, are no small feats. For many efforts, this is the most difficult and uncertain part of the lifecycle. Hangar 18 offers broad experience in meeting the military’s stringent cybersecurity requirements, and in configuring the most appropriate environment for numerous forms of software.

DEVSECOPS
DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) automates the integration of security at every phase of the software development lifecycle, from initial design through integration, testing, deployment, and software delivery. The benefits of DevSecOps are simple: enhanced automation throughout the software delivery pipeline eliminates mistakes and reduces attacks and downtime. Hangar 18 provides DevSecOps processes and tools on its projects to control code changes, find security issues early, and deploy software to the customer quickly and often.

USER CENTERED DESIGN
User Centered Design is the process of building insights about users’ experience through usability testing and other forms of user research into product development through an iterative design process. This process allows the user to be included in every step of the development process, while prioritizing features that are the most beneficial. User experience (UX), which deals with the specific experience users have with a product, is a component of the UCD process.

AGILE MINDSET
Agile is a framework that breaks the developmental process into iterative steps, allowing for flexibility, testing, and change throughout the lifecycle of the project. Hangar 18 teams complete work in sprints, which are typically broken out into two-week chunks of time. Various checkpoints throughout the project allow the team to change direction as needed. Compared to the waterfall model, implementing Agile development practices puts the user in control with the development team delivering value within a few sprints of work, not months or years where development teams build software in a vacuum with minimal communications with the customer. Agile development supports an approach to rapidly deliver working code or fail-fast and move on.

EDUCATION, TRAINING & CONSULTATION
Hangar 18’s partnership with the Air Force Institute of Technology provides immediate access to education, training and experience on project management, systems engineering, DevSecOps, and much more. Whether delivering a seminar, short course, or working alongside customer team members, Hangar 18 brings teams up to warp speed.

DIGITAL ENGINEERING
Hangar 18 aims to address digital engineering problems at the infrastructure and data level, without locking the DAF into specific tools or techniques. Team projects have demonstrated significant cost savings for data management and capability deployment, while also providing greatly shortened feedback time for data analysis and improved overall data quality.

MORE INFORMATION

WEBSITE: https://www.HANGAR18.io

EMAIL: Hangar18@afresearchlab.com

PROJECT CASE STUDIES: https://www.HANGAR18.io/projects/