AOI 26-A002: Specter- Container-Native Platform for Navy Tactical and Enterprise Applications   5

Background
The Department of the Navy (DON) is managing a diverse portfolio of mission applications and battle management aids, many of which are legacy systems that are costly to maintain.

The DON is seeking an innovative, remote-first, container-native platform to serve as its standardized, enterprise-wide hosting solution for modern containerized applications. This initiative aims to accelerate software delivery to the fleet, improve cyber resiliency through zero-trust architecture, and reduce total cost of ownership by maximizing resource utilization and automation. The solution must operate across various Navy environments, from enterprise cloud data centers to Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent and Limited (DDIL) bandwidth tactical-edge environments.

Work Details
The platform will address three core pillars of IT modernization:

1. Accelerating software delivery by providing a standardized self-service container-hosting environment that allows developers to focus on coding rather than server management.

2. Improving cyber resiliency through native zero-trust architecture that enforces strict identity-based authentication and authorization for all interactions between services.

3. Reducing total cost of ownership by maximizing resource utilization and automation, achieving higher application density with lightweight containers, and automating scaling, healing, and resource management.

Key capabilities required include:

- A hardened Kubernetes-native foundation for orchestration.
- Optimization for edge and tactical environments with local autonomy when disconnected from the enterprise.
- Automated resource orchestration for dynamic scaling and self-healing applications.
- A standardized API for interaction with other systems. Integrated zero-trust security features must include mutual authentication and encryption for all network traffic, strong identity management for workloads integrating with DoD systems, and automated security compliance capabilities.

Place of Performance
The geographic locations include various Navy environments capable of supporting both enterprise cloud data centers and tactical-edge operations.