[naspinski]

"I was responsible for the majority of the Air Force's software programs" - as a former Computer Systems Officer in the US Air Force at a pretty high level operations center, this seems pretty hyperbolic, as no person is in this position. Maybe majority of the software for their area of work.

[KineticLensman]

When he said "at a small base outside of the Hanscom U.S. Air Force Base" I took his responsibility to be that of one of these two bases (or perhaps the AOC if that was elsewhere). I'd agree that it seems unreasonable for a single person to have such responsibility, even for their 'ground' software. Operational battle management software would also probably come from a different place than the payroll systems, for example. The software in the various air platforms would likely come from each platform's development programme.

In the UK and Canadian military, there is no single overall software person, although there are technical authorities who define standards, etc, that should be used when software is developed.

FWIW, the UK Ministry of Defence actively supports the use of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) software. This isn't always OSS, but is at least better than building everything from scratch. A good ongoing example is the use of 'serious games' to support military training, e.g. as image generators inside simulators or as standalone desktop training packages. There are various COTS packages that fulfill both of these and other roles.

[EDIT: Typo]

[EvanPlaice]

Smells like BS. At most, the person may have acted as an ISSM (Information Systems Security Manager). Even then, I doubt the 'general purpose' config used by the majority of the Air Force is created by any one person.

By 'general purpose' I mean the baseline configuration that all non-POR (Program of Record) systems use. Ie, hardened Windows, MS Office, security monitoring, CAC authentication, and DOD certificates. There's no chance in hell that the 'general purpose' configuration will ever be changed to include OSS because it's intent is to be the 'lowest common demominator' of connected systems.

This person probably works as a grunt for the AF branch equivalent of G-6.

The COTS systems you're referring to are POR (Program of Record) systems created and supported by the product development branch. I think for the AF, it's the Air Materiel Command. They fall outside the scope of general systems support, therefore they require their own infrastructure for maintenance/support.

Source: I used to support a POR system.

[__john]

> no person is in this position

The A6...?