Achieving the mission: Red Hat solutions for the U.S. Navy

An evolving world has created new challenges for the U.S. Navy and modern combat, including:

• Modern warfare has changed. The battlefield has moved into cyber and kinetic spaces, which has greatly increased challenges for legacy systems.
• Manual integration of information. Department of the Navy (DoN) networks and systems need to evolve to provide modern experiences with file sharing, cloud collaboration, and information aggregation. Disconnected legacy systems force the warfighter to collate data from multiple unintegrated systems manually.
• Outdated processes. Legacy processes hinder innovative thinking and problem-solving while posing significant challenges for recruiting and retaining skilled personnel.
• Complex networks. The DoN devotes significant time and resources to maintaining its ships’ technology infrastructures while keeping combat systems secure and relevant for the future. The age and inflexibility of some platforms makes many systems vulnerable to attack, while vessels can only be serviced in port.
• Resource constraints. Even as defense budgets are under increasing pressure and scrutiny, operations and maintenance for legacy systems consumes a disproportionate share of resources, which limits modernization. 

To address these cultural, technological, and security challenges, the Navy implemented Compile to Combat in 24 Hours (C2C24), an ambitious initiative to reduce application deployment time from 18 months to less than 24 hours. The initiative would not be possible without the Navy’s focus on:

• Embracing microservices. With C2C24, software deployment will go from 18 months to less than 24 hours. Microservices hosted on a shared infrastructure will make this possible.
• Shifting to agile development. Traditional waterfall development methods cannot address the Navy’s need for 24-hour application development. Therefore, the Navy is beginning to shift toward faster, more iterative and agile development methodologies based on DevSecOps.
• Utilizing the cloud. C2C24 uses continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) to develop containerized applications that can be delivered to the warfighter quickly, safely, and with enhanced security.

Naval efforts to accelerate application development and deployment require more than just technology. Transformation calls for a cultural shift from traditional development methods to modern, agile development practices.

With Red Hat^® Consulting, Red Hat OpenShift^®, and Red Hat Ansible^® Automation Platform, organizations like the Navy can use open source software, automation, and fresh thinking to break down barriers, banish outdated development processes, and bridge old and new IT systems to deliver timely, mission-critical applications and services.

Our expert team of Red Hat Consultants work with agencies to embrace agile development practices and create secure new environments in which control parameters are locked down from within. Red Hat helps agencies adopt DevSecOps practices to create more efficient application development pipelines. Innovations and new technologies are deployed quickly and with enhanced security to propel the Navy beyond today’s challenges.

Red Hat also helps agencies accelerate application development and deployment by replacing the legacy IT technologies and processes they have used for decades with open source software and microservices. Red Hat OpenShift manages hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployments to allow agencies to move faster and drive innovation at scale, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform brings disparate teams together, letting organizations scale more effectively and increase the value of automation exponentially.

To find out how the Navy achieved its digital transformation objectives with Red Hat solutions, read our press release on the Navy’s participation in Red Hat Open Innovation Labs.