How Leidos migrated important Air Force systems to the cloud ahead of schedule
Cloud migrations are rolling across U.S. Air Force IT systems and applications as part of the Department of Defense’s larger cloud initiative. They can happen in one of two ways—as part of a migration-as-a-service or self-managed by application managers.
Natalie Fleming, Leidos program manager for the F-16 Aircraft Structural Integrity Program (F-16 ASIP), believed her team was well-positioned to handle its own migration, based on years of experience managing the systems under its care and the deep expertise Leidos has developed moving applications from on-premises servers to the cloud.
Working with its Air Force customer, the Leidos team overcame numerous challenges to move two mission-critical aircraft maintenance systems from on-premises servers to the Air Force Cloud One platform months ahead of schedule. They "flipped the switch" on the new cloud system without a hitch in February 2024, less than a year after getting started.
The effort took careful planning, a thorough assessment of user needs, and tight coordination between the Air Force customer and Leidos as the contractor.
Disparate systems, complicated processes
The F-16 ASIP, based at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, provides software development, systems administration, technical analysis, and related services to aircraft managers and engineers keeping aircraft ready to fly at a moment’s notice.
The Air Force’s A4 logistics office put two of the F-16 ASIP systems managed by Fleming’s group on its migration list to move to the Air Force Cloud One platform:
- The F-16 ASIP Portal is a web-based tracking system supporting over 3,700 users worldwide, who are responsible for flight data capture, inspections, requests for engineering technical assistance, and high-level fleet management reports.
- PERFORMS is a flight data analysis system. It decrypts and integrates data from aircraft flight data recorders to provide detailed information on aircraft usage for future maintenance and individual aircraft tracking inspection purposes.
The F-16 ASIP Portal and the PERFORMS systems resided in separate on-premises environments. That meant that data the systems needed to share had to be manually exported from one system and uploaded to the other, wasting time and complicating processes.
Additionally, only Leidos employees could access the usage data from PERFORMS since it lived on Leidos-managed servers. The systems also had separate authorization requirements and oversight due to their different environments, adding further complexity and expense.
Moving to the cloud
As part of its cloud initiative, the Air Force A4 logistics organization provides two paths to cloud migration. In its migration-as-a-service model, a Cloud One vendor does all the work to migrate the systems whether that’s a lift and shift or a complete cloud refactor. Under its hybrid model, the internal Air Force organization undergoing migration takes on the effort to move the systems to the cloud using its own expertise.
Fleming had observed other cloud migrations within Air Force/Leidos programs. These migrations occurred without the original teams, causing user problems. So, to avoid losing control, Fleming launched a preemptive self-migration effort just before the systems were slated for migration by A4 and its vendor. The Leidos team got started in March 2023 with the official migration workload.
Overcoming challenges
The F-16 ASIP cloud migration posed several significant challenges. For example, maintaining access and authorization for both the originating on-premises systems and the new cloud environment during the transition, while simultaneously moving to a new authorization boundary which imposed new rules and requirements, drew significant resources from the migration work to ensure the on-premises system remained accessible.
To solve the dual-access problem, Fleming brought in additional help to manage the new authorization boundary requirements and administrative workload, taking that burden off the core migration team.
The team leveraged expertise from other Leidos teams, getting guidance on architecture and navigating roadblocks from experts on similar migrations. They gathered user input through acceptance testing to keep users in the loop and reduce change impacts. Weekly calls with teams working on other migration programs also helped the team stay on track.
Altogether, Fleming’s leadership in anticipating needs and coordinating resources allowed the technical work to proceed uninterrupted despite the inevitable complications, according to Weston Wiggins, Leidos cloud infrastructure administrator for the F-16 ASIP.
Fleming resists taking credit.
“I definitely can't take ownership of it,” she says. “It really was a partnership between us and our customer, who has so much confidence and faith in us and the amazing technical expertise of my team. It would not have happened without her and the hard work the team put in.”
More data, faster
The new system went live on Feb. 28, 2024, with a seamless transfer of data and applications to Cloud One. Afterward, the F-16 Engineering Branch Chief wrote to the team to convey his “deepest appreciation and congratulations” for a job well done.
The 3,700 active users reported no issues. As a result, the migrated systems looked and behaved the same in the cloud as the original on-premises systems, requiring little to no adjustment by users.
Additional benefits of the F-16 ASIP cloud migration include:
| Increased data access for Air Force teams, with over two terabytes of historical usage data in the cloud. | Automated processes linking the F-16 ASIP Portal and PERFORMS systems, eliminating manual data transfers. |
| Enhanced security due to consolidating the two systems within the same cloud environment. | An estimated 50% reduction in cloud operating costs thanks to the consolidation. |
| Faster and easier system maintenance. |
Improved organizational efficiency, allowing teams to focus on other priorities due to time savings. |
“Users can perform the analysis themselves instead of having to ask us to extract the data and do the analysis,” Fleming says of the consolidated system. “Their jobs are much easier now,” Wiggins agrees.
The F-16 Engineering Branch Chief couldn’t be happier with the new system, calling it a significant milestone. “The team demonstrated exemplary skill, professionalism, and planning,” he wrote.
