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73-812: In October 2016, Eric Schmidt , former CEO of Google , was leading a group touring the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in his role as inaugural chairman of the Defense Innovation Board . The CAOC at Al Udeid oversees air force operations for over 20 countries, and at the time was engaged in the War in Iraq against the Islamic State . One of the Air Operations Center tasks

146-431: A Global Meeting Series including exclusive sessions at world-leading institutions including Oxford , Cambridge , MIT , and Harvard . Fellows receive a stipend to participate in postdoctoral study which differs from their existing expertise. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center ( AFLCMC ), headquartered at Wright-Patterson AFB , is one of six centers reporting to

219-434: A complaint from Steve Jobs of Apple, Schmidt sent an email to Google's HR department saying; "I believe we have a policy of no recruiting from Apple and this is a direct inbound request. Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening? I will need to send a response back to Apple quickly so please let me know as soon as you can. Thanks Eric". Schmidt's email led to a recruiter for Google being "terminated within

292-871: A framework for decision making and process optimization across the weapon system life cycle. AFLCMC personnel work closely with their counterparts at the other AFMC centers. AFLCMC's portfolio includes: Information Technology systems and networks; Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems; C3I and Networks AFPEO at Hanscom Air Force Base ; Armament Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base ; strategic systems; aerial platforms; and various specialized or supporting systems such as simulators or personal equipment. AFLCMC also executes sales of aircraft and other defense-related equipment while building relationships with foreign partner nation's air forces. Each Program Office reports to one of 14 Program Executive Officers (PEOs) who are accountable for

365-404: A paper trail over which we can be sued later?" On August 28, 2006, Schmidt was elected to Apple Inc. 's board of directors, a position he held until August 2009. Schmidt is currently chair of the board of directors at Broad Institute . Schmidt sat on the boards of trustees of Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University . He taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business in

438-664: A person called "the Gonker". When a VBScript run on the spreadsheet confirmed the data was correct, another person, called "the Thumper", manually typed in the result into a Master Air Attack Planning Toolkit, which helped generate the Air Tasking Order back at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. Yet another person watched to verify against retyping errors. The process took eight to 12 hours each day for three or eight people. If there

511-526: A series of technical positions with IT companies including Byzromotti Design, Bell Labs (in research and development), Zilog , and Palo Alto Research Center ( PARC ). During his summers at Bell Labs, he and Mike Lesk wrote Lex , a program used in compiler construction that generates lexical-analyzers from regular-expression descriptions. In 1983, Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems as its first software manager. He rose to become director of software engineering, vice president and general manager of

584-511: A working Volkswagen Beetle was taken apart and re-assembled in his office. In April 1997, Schmidt became the CEO and chairman of the board of Novell . He presided over a period of decline at Novell where its IPX protocol was being replaced by open TCP/IP products, while at the same time Microsoft was shipping free TCP/IP stacks in Windows 95, making Novell much less profitable. In 2001, he departed after

657-540: A year. It had nearly 700 airmen, government civilians, and contractors. Oti was replaced as commander by Colonel Brian Beachkofski on April 15, 2020, with the ceremony held over Zoom teleconference . On June 27, 2022, Beachkofski was replaced as commander by Colonel Richard Lopez, who took the title of senior materiel leader. Lopez had previously been the director of the LevelUP Code Works software factory inspired by Kessel Run. By autumn 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren

730-619: Is intentionally only about a 60% solution, which is then changed and improved via rapid iterations as users give feedback. Though this agile development is fairly basic in the modern software industry, it was unusual for the Defense Department. The development team would later adopt the hashtag #AgileAF - the AF, they assure, stands for Air Force. The total cost of Jigsaw was reported at $ 1.5 million (Captain Bryon Kroger, Chief Operating Officer of

803-563: Is one of three sons of Eleanor, who had a master's degree in psychology, and Wilson Emerson Schmidt, a professor of international economics at Virginia Tech and Johns Hopkins University , who worked at the U.S. Treasury Department during the Nixon Administration . Schmidt spent part of his childhood in Italy as a result of his father's work and has stated that it had changed his outlook. Schmidt graduated from Yorktown High School in

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876-578: Is the parent company of The Groundwork. The Schmidt Family Foundation was established in 2006 by Wendy Schmidt and Eric Schmidt to address issues of sustainability and the responsible use of natural resources. Schmidt and his wife established the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Fellowship, a University of Chicago summer school program for aspiring data scientists. The Schmidt Family Foundation 's subsidiaries include ReMain Nantucket and

949-552: Is to support research and technology in the natural sciences and engineering, encouraging collaboration across disciplines. It awarded $ 1.2 million in grants in 2010 and $ 1.7 million in grants in 2012. Created in partnership with the Rhodes Trust , the Schmidt Science Fellows program is part of a $ 100 million commitment to drive scientific leadership and interdisciplinary research. The program features

1022-636: The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center named Project Kessel Run. The name "Kessel Run" came from a line in the 1977 science fiction film Star Wars , spoken by smuggler Han Solo , bragging about the speed of his ship, the Millennium Falcon . It represented the project's intent to "smuggle" new software development capability into the Air Force and use it to set new software development speed records. By March 2018, Kessel Run

1095-586: The Air Force Materiel Command . Led by a Lieutenant General , AFLCMC is charged with life cycle management of Air Force weapon systems from their inception to retirement. The AFLCMC mission is to support qualities of war-winning. AFLCMC was designed to provide a single face and voice to customers, management of weapon systems across their life cycles, and to simplify and consolidate staff functions and processes to curtail redundancy and enhance efficiency. In addition, AFLCMC's operating structure provides

1168-817: The Monterey Bay Aquarium in 2015. In 2022, the Schmidts gave $ 12.6 million to their alma mater, Berkeley , to establish the Schmidt Center for Data Science and the Environment. They have also been contributors to Berkeley's International House and its Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing . In 2009, Eric and Wendy Schmidt endowed the Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund at Princeton University with $ 25 million. The Fund's purpose

1241-611: The Pentagon at becoming more innovative and adaptive. Schmidt is an investor in The Groundwork , a start-up company associated with Hillary Clinton 's 2016 presidential campaign . For example, it charged the campaign $ 177,000 in the second quarter of 2015. By May 2016, the campaign had spent $ 500,000 on it. Schmidt is an investor in Timshel , another start up company associated with Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Timshel

1314-649: The Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and has since served as its chairman. Schmidt had a major influence on the Biden administration 's science policy after 2021, especially shaping policies on AI . He supports using AI and related technology for military applications by funding startups including Rebellion Defense, Istari, and drone company White Stork. Schmidt was born in Falls Church, Virginia , later moving to Blacksburg, Virginia . He

1387-548: The United States Army Futures Command . In February 2022, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks wrote a DOD Software Modernization Strategy memo encouraging increased used of software factories throughout the Defense Department; at the time there were 29. By April 2022 the United States Coast Guard was planning a software factory based on the Air Force model. The Marine Corps Software Factory

1460-582: The University of California, Berkeley , Schmidt earned an EECS M.S. degree for designing and implementing a network ( Berknet ) linking the campus computer center with the CS and EECS departments. There, he also earned a PhD degree in 1982 in EECS; Computer Engineering , with a dissertation about the problems of managing distributed software development and tools for solving these problems. Early in his career, Schmidt held

1533-828: The 2000s. Schmidt serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Khan Academy , and The Economist . New America is a non-profit public-policy institute and think tank, founded in 1999. Schmidt succeeded founding chairman James Fallows in 2008 and served as chairman until 2016. Founded in 2010 by Schmidt and Dror Berman, Innovation Endeavors is an early-stage venture capital . The fund, based in Palo Alto, California , invested in companies such as Mashape , Uber , Quixey , Gogobot , BillGuard , and Formlabs . In July 2020, Schmidt started working with

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1606-487: The 609th replaced the TBMCS with KRADOS entirely. The Command and Control Incident Management Emergency Response Application (C2IMERA), is a real time Air Force base resource management tool. It used a different development model: the coding was done by software company Leidos , and the program management by Kessel Run. In August 2019, Moody Air Force Base used the software to monitor and prepare for Hurricane Dorian , though it

1679-631: The Air Force negotiated with Lockheed Martin as to what parts of the proprietary ALIS system the government could be able to reach. The Mad Hatter suite of eight programs was tested and favorably evaluated by F-35 aircraft maintainers in March 2020. In July 2020, it was renamed to Torque, and adapted for maintenance of the F-22 stealth jet and CV-22 tiltrotor aircraft, then the C-130J turboprop in January 2021. Meanwhile, on

1752-453: The CEO of Google but would take new title as executive chairman of the company and act as an adviser to co-founders Page and Brin. Google gave him a $ 100 million equity award in 2011 when he stepped down as CEO. On April 4, 2011, Page replaced Schmidt as the CEO. On December 21, 2017, Schmidt announced he would be stepping down as the executive chairman of Alphabet. Schmidt stated that " Larry , Sergey , Sundar and I all believe that

1825-514: The Cloud.gov website could handle 100 million users per hour. Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and technical advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In November 2024, he

1898-634: The Defense Department". He exited the position November 2020. From 2019 to 2021, Schmidt co-chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence with Robert O. Work . While working at Google, Schmidt was involved in activities that later became the subject of the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation case that resulted in a settlement of $ 415 million paid by Adobe , Apple , Google and Intel to employees. In one incident, after receiving

1971-787: The Department of Defense slightly redefined that to be a software assembly plant that automated the develop, build, test, release and deliver phases, but in each case to support agile software development practices. Kobayashi Maru, formally Space C2, or Space Command and Control, in California, was the second such software factory, in August 2018. It was named after an impossible test in the Star Trek science fiction universe. Just as Kessel Run came from an effort to replace an outdated system by getting around bureaucratic rules, Kobayashi Maru intended to update

2044-716: The F-35 itself, between 2020 and 2022 ALIS was gradually replaced by ODIN, the Operational Data Integrated Network, "leveraging" the software practices of Kessel Run, but built by Lockheed Martin. In 2021, Kessel Run began deploying the initial version of KRADOS, the Kessel Run All Domain Operations Suite meant to replace the Theater Battle Management Core Systems that created air tasking orders throughout AOCs all over

2117-449: The Google initial public offering , Schmidt had responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focused on the management of the vice presidents and the sales organization. According to Google, Schmidt's job responsibilities included "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while

2190-563: The Kessel Run Experimentation Laboratory moved to a different location in a Boston skyscraper. Kessel Run's budget since mid 2017 had grown to approximately $ 140 million, including workspace and personnel, and the operational software produced claimed savings of $ 13 million and 1,100 man-hours per month. On May 8, 2019, Kessel Run formally became Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Detachment 12, commanded by Colonel Oti, who had been effectively leading it for just under

2263-766: The Marine Science and Technology Foundation; its main charitable program is the 11th Hour Project. The foundation has also awarded grants to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Energy Foundation. The foundation is the main funder of the Schmidt Ocean Institute , which supports oceanographic research by operating RV  Falkor . The Schmidts, working with Hart Howerton, a San Francisco architectural firm that specializes in large-scale land use, have inaugurated several projects on

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2336-659: The Master Air Attack Plan. In 2017, Lockheed Martin had received a $ 38 million contract to maintain the older TBMCS, but the 609th kept finding problems, so turned to Kessel Run, which delivered the beta version of KRADOS three weeks after receiving the request in November 2020. By August 2022, the 603rd AOC in Ramstein, Germany, employed elements of KRADOS for visualization, though it was not considered mature enough to create air tasking and airspace control orders. In January 2023,

2409-581: The Pentagon. To avoid potential conflicts of interest within the role, where Schmidt retained his role as technical adviser to Alphabet, and where Google's bidding for the multi-million dollar Pentagon cloud contract, the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure , or JEDI, was ongoing: Schmidt screened emails and other communications, stating, "“There’s a rule: I’m not allowed to be briefed” about Google or Alphabet business as it relates to

2482-467: The U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence . In March 2023, Schmidt testified at a U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing regarding AI. In 2022, Schmidt was appointed to the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology , a legislative commission charged with making policy recommendations to Congress and the Executive Branch. In 2023, Schmidt

2555-527: The U.S. government to create a tech college as part of an initiative to educate future coders, cyber-security experts and scientists. In August 2020, Schmidt launched the podcast Reimagine with Eric Schmidt . In December 2021, Schmidt joined Chainlink Labs as a strategic advisor. In October 2022, he co-authored a piece titled "America Could Lose the Tech Contest With China" for Foreign Affairs with Ylli Bajraktari, former executive director of

2628-623: The Yorktown neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia , in 1972, after earning eight varsity letter awards in long-distance running. He attended Princeton University , starting as an architecture major and switching to electrical engineering , earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree in 1976. From 1976 to 1980, Schmidt resided at the International House Berkeley , where he met his future wife, Wendy Boyle . In 1979, at

2701-496: The acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners . Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him, they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz . In March 2001, Schmidt joined Google's board of directors as chair, and became the company's CEO in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shared responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. Prior to

2774-492: The activities within their portfolio and who report to the Air Force Service Acquisition Executive at the Pentagon (Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition). AFLCMC execution directorates provide direct program support such as engineering, technical order management, developmental planning, contracting, and source selection assistance. The 66th Air Base Group at Hanscom AFB, Mass., and

2847-515: The aerial refueling tanker application, named Jigsaw, was in use at the CAOC; four months from start to production, when a more average Defense Department software operation took as much as three to five years. The speed of development was credited to the Agile development process, an iterative, adaptive approach, that doesn't try to get the entire solution in the first release. The first version of an application

2920-685: The air mission flow organizer part of KRADOS, was also used for the Operation Allies Refuge Afghan evacuation along with C2IMERA. At that time, KRADOS had known issues with scaling; it couldn't handle many simultaneous operations, which was exactly what it was being asked to do. On August 24, 2021, at 2 am Boston time, the Slapshot server crashed. Over the next 12 hours, Kessel Run developers restarted servers, shifted United States Central Command resources to improve performance, fixed database errors, and added new features to improve load times, so

2993-600: The boards of trustees for Carnegie Mellon University , Apple , Princeton University , and the Mayo Clinic . He also owns a minority stake in the Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL). In 2008, during his tenure as Google's chairman, Schmidt campaigned for Barack Obama , and subsequently became a member of Obama's President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology . In

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3066-608: The easiest way to solve all of the domestic problems of the United States at once is by a stimulus program that rewards renewable energy and, over time, attempts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter appointed Schmidt as chairman of the DoD Innovation Advisory Board announced March 2, 2016. It will be modeled like the Defense Business Board and will facilitate

3139-613: The evacuation on the other side of the world could continue. Bowcaster, named after a Star Wars weapon , is a chaos engineering tool and playbook that intentionally creates failures in processes to strengthen them. Kessel Run developed it, and shares it with other government agencies, initially with the Navy Black Pearl software factory in 2021. In March 2022 Kessel Run and the General Services Administration 's Technology Transformation Services used it to check that

3212-584: The film at the scene with the eponymous "Kessel Run" line. In May 7, 2018, the Kessel Run Experimentation Lab set up at a WeWork shared facility in central Boston. It was modeled after Pivotal Labs training locations in Cambridge, San Francisco, and Washington. It was managed from the AFLCMC at Hanscom Air Force Base , which believed the innovation advantages in coworking and creativity would outweigh

3285-651: The future. The March 2019 Defense Innovation Board report on software acquisitions included a chapter on Kessel Run subtitled "The Future of Defense Acquisitions Is #AgileAF". In September and October 2019, Kessel Run received multiple awards: the General Larry O. Spencer Innovation award ; the Theodore von Kármán award for modernizing software for the F-35; and the inaugural Defense Acquisition Software Innovation Team award. A 2019 editorial in Defense One said that Kessel Run

3358-430: The hassles of distance and security. The Lab initially had space for 90 engineers, but planned for 300 within a year. Many were on temporary assignment from other Air Force bases; yet others would be sent off to Pivotal Labs offices across the country for training in modern software techniques. The Kessel Run motto on the wall was "Code. Deploy. Win.", a play on the Air Force's motto, "Fly. Fight. Win.". On January 2, 2019,

3431-407: The hour" for not having adhered to the illegal scheme. Under Schmidt, there was a "Do Not Call list" of companies Google would avoid recruiting from. According to a court filing, another email exchange shows Google's human resources director asking Schmidt about sharing its no-cold-call agreements with competitors. Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared "verbally, since I don't want to create

3504-426: The island of Nantucket that seek to sustain the unique character of the island and to minimize the impact of seasonal visitation on the island's core community. Mrs. Schmidt offered the prize purse of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE , a challenge award for the efficient capturing of crude oil from seawater motivated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill . The foundation also donated $ 10 million to

3577-460: The meantime, Schmidt had left Google, and founded philanthropic venture Schmidt Futures , in 2017. Under his tenure, Schmidt Futures provided the compensation for two science-office employees in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Schmidt became the first chair of the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in 2018, while keeping shares of Alphabet stock, worth over $ 5.3 billion in 2019. In October 2021, Schmidt founded

3650-607: The product development cycle times are kept to a minimum." Upon being hired at Google, Eric Schmidt was paid a salary of $ 250,000 and an annual performance bonus. He was granted 14,331,703 shares of Class B common stock at $ 0.30 per share and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $ 2.34. In 2004, Schmidt and the Google founders agreed to a base salary of US$ 1 (which continued through 2010) with other compensation of $ 557,465 in 2006, $ 508,763 in 2008, and $ 243,661 in 2009. He did not receive any additional stock or options in 2009 or 2010. Most of his compensation

3723-399: The project was eventually cancelled in July 2017. Also touring the Al Udeid CAOC with Schmidt in October 2016 was Raj Shah, tech entrepreneur and managing partner of DIUx, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental . Shah was a former Air Force fighter pilot who had first hand experience of the importance of regular aerial refueling. That same night, he called lieutenant colonel Enrique Oti who

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3796-547: The project), to $ 2.2 million (Shah), "chump change" (Harrigian). With it, tanker planning was not only faster, taking two to three hours for a single person, but was more reliable, so two to three fewer tankers were scrambled each day. Each scramble had a cost in fuel and maintenance of about $ 250,000 each. Jigsaw saved 350,000 pounds of fuel a week. Its development costs were recouped in the first week. In April 2017, after delivering Jigsaw, Oti, Kroger, and others, got approval to form an official Air Force software development team at

3869-407: The project. A Northrop Grumman project to modernize AOC software was commissioned in 2013 for $ 374 million for development, and $ 3.5 billion for lifetime maintenance. By 2016, when the Defense Innovation Board was touring Al Udeid, nothing had been delivered. The development price eventually grew to $ 745 million, and was three years behind schedule, with an estimated launch date of December 2019, when

3942-577: The software of the troubled Joint Mission System (jointly run with the United States Space Force ) for space command and control and situational awareness. BESPIN - an acronym for Business and Enterprise Systems Product Innovation, but also the name of a planet in the Star Wars universe - was the third Air Force software factory, launched in early 2019 in Montgomery, Alabama , to create apps for maintenance crew chiefs, aircrew readiness, and ammunition crews. Space Camp, in Colorado, and Section31, in California, spun off of Kobayashi Maru. LevelUP, in Texas,

4015-399: The software products division, vice president of the general systems group, and president of Sun Technology Enterprises. During his time at Sun, he was the target of two notable April Fool's Day pranks. In the first, his office was taken apart and rebuilt on a platform in the middle of a pond, complete with a working phone and workstation on the corporate Ethernet network. The next year,

4088-431: The time is right in Alphabet's evolution for this transition." In February 2020, Schmidt left his post as technical advisor of Alphabet after 19 years with the company. In March 2016, it was announced that Schmidt would chair a new advisory board for the Department of Defense, titled the Defense Innovation Advisory Board . The advisory board serves as a forum connecting mainstays in the technology sector with those in

4161-535: The week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate. He was mentioned as a possible candidate for the Chief Technology Officer position, which Obama created in his administration, and Obama considered him for Commerce Secretary . After Obama won in 2008, Schmidt became a member of President Obama's transition advisory board and then a member of the United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Schmidt has served on Google's government relations team. Schmidt has proposed that

4234-405: The world. The first AOC to use the suite operationally was again the 609th Air Operations Center at Al Udeid, in May 2021, after using the Beta version since December 2020. KRADOS linked together nine applications through cloud-based data , including the latest version of Jigsaw, Kessel Run's first application for tanker planning, and Slapshot, for planning the rest of the air missions and building

4307-656: Was "widely seen as the gold standard of military tech done right ... also the most hyped military program office in operation today". Not all reactions were positive. A 2019 anonymous survey of KREL application users found that some applications did not meet user needs, and that success metrics, documentation, and responsiveness to user feedback could all be lacking. A 2020 Harvard Kennedy School project found and tried to address internal discontent among Kessel Run staff with emerging bureaucracy and increasing technical complexity. The Air Force's Deputy Chief Information Officer , Lauren Knausenberger, acknowledged in 2020 that Kessel Run

4380-498: Was 48th richest according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index with an estimated net worth of US$ 35.4 billion. As an intern at Bell Labs , Schmidt in 1975 was co-author of Lex , a software program to generate lexical analysers for the Unix computer operating system . In 1983, he joined Sun Microsystems and worked in various roles. From 1997 to 2001, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Novell . Schmidt has been on various other boards in academia and industry, including

4453-408: Was a 17 year old proprietary system full of bugs and data gaps. Maintainers had to keep separate databases because they could not rely on ALIS data. The project to fix ALIS, including Kessel Run, Pivotal, and Lockheed Martin , its original creators, was called Mad Hatter, named by the developers. It officially started in October 2018, but took until January 2019 before developers could write code, while

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4526-407: Was a change needed, the process needed to restart. When Schmidt and the Defense Information Board asked whether the base had access to more modern software to automate this process, the answer was: "Yes, but it doesn't work." Air Operations Center software had been in use mostly unchanged since the 1990s. From 2006 to 2011, Lockheed Martin worked on the concept of modernizing it, but did not take up

4599-520: Was a joint cyber operations system for the Unified Platform, connecting the Army , Marines , and United States Cyber Command , debuting in April 2019. By September 2021, there were 17 Air Force software factories across the country. Software factories weren't limited to the Air Force. The Navy was inspired by Kessel Run to stand up its first software factory, The Forge, in Riverdale, Maryland , in March 2021. The Army Software Factory debuted in April 2021 in Austin Community College in Texas, as part of

4672-490: Was a part of an investment group led by Josh Harris that purchased the Washington Commanders , an American football team belonging to the National Football League (NFL), for $ 6.05 billion. The deal was the highest price ever paid for a sports team. Since 2023, Schmidt has been involved in building White Stork, a startup developing suicide attack drones . Schmidt was an informal advisor and major donor to Barack Obama 's 2008 presidential campaign , and began campaigning

4745-417: Was approximately 70 airmen, partnering with Pivotal Software , the US Air Force Academy and United States Air Forces Central to deliver nearly half a dozen software tools. Isaac Taylor, chief technology officer of DIUx, called them a " rebel alliance ", to continue the Star Wars metaphor. In contrast, Kessel Run Chief Product Officer Adam Furtado declared he was not a Star Wars fan, and had quit watching

4818-405: Was asking in Congress how to replicate Kessel Run's success throughout the Defense Department, and Air Force Chief Technology Officer Frank Konieczny was predicting that every future acquisition would have "something that looks like Kessel Run". Yet the project faced problems from its agile, reactive structure, as the team could not tell Congress what products it would be working on a year or two in

4891-403: Was co-located with the Army Software Factory as a three year test project in Austin in March 2023. Jigsaw, the 2017 aerial refueling planning application that started Kessel Run, was bought and used by NATO in multiple countries in 2020 and 2021. The team's second and third projects after Jigsaw were Chainsaw and Raven, applications for assembling and communicating target information. Chainsaw

4964-445: Was for "personal security" and charters of private aircraft. In 2007, PC World ranked Schmidt as the first on its list of the 50 most important people on the Web, along with Google co-founders Page and Brin. In its 2011 'World's Billionaires' list, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 136th-richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $ 7 billion. On January 20, 2011, Google announced that Schmidt would step down as

5037-413: Was having growing pains, but said that was a result of its success. Kessel Run inspired multiple agile software development teams across the Air Force and United States Department of Defense . They were called "software factories". The original definition of software factory was a set of software tools to write and automatically build, test, and document applications; the Chief Information Officer of

5110-452: Was head of Air Force programs for DIUx in Silicon Valley . They arranged an unusual partnership between Air Force developers and Pivotal Software , and got it approved by General Jeffrey Harrigian , commanding United States Air Forces Central Command . Rather than rewrite the entire AOC software suite, they would just do the tanker whiteboard. In December 2016, coders and program managers were visiting Al Udeid to talk to users. By April 2017,

5183-452: Was in operation by November 2017, consolidated many programs into one, and cut the process for dynamic targeting from an hour or two to minutes. Raven, for target development management, cut 12 hours of work down to three or four, and was ready in early 2018. Starting in late 2018, Kessel Run joined the task of fixing the troubled software for the maintenance of the F-35 fighter jet, called ALIS, for Autonomic Logistic Information System. ALIS

5256-523: Was not originally intended for this purpose. C2IMERA was also used for the August 2021 evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan in Operation Allies Refuge . It was ordered deployed across all Air Combat Command installations in September 2021. In August 2023, Air Mobility Command joined Air Combat Command in designating C2IMERA as their standard installation command and control tool. Slapshot,

5329-456: Was planning daily aerial refueling operations to support combat missions. This was done off the main CAOC hall, in a windowless room with a whiteboard bearing magnetic pucks and plastic laminated cards, and physically measuring distance on the board to determine how long planes could stay in the air. The resulting data was manually entered into an Excel spreadsheet known as "the Gonkulator" by

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