HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. – As the Chief Technology Officer for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center prepares to depart government service after nine years here, he still emphasizes that collaboration is critical to success.
“I’m proud of the teamwork that has taken place during my tenure within all organizations at Hanscom,” said Dr. Tim Rudolph. “More broadly, I’m happy with the partnerships and relationships built with the state, government at all different levels, academia and industry partners.”
He added that the broad collaboration creates a unique ecosystem combining world-class universities doing significant research, companies with innovative and unique capabilities, and Hanscom acquisition supporting the Air Force’s mission.
“We couldn’t have planned it this way; the only thing we could have planned was being good partners,” Rudolph said. “I’m very happy with the progress we’ve made and we want to continue to ensure that ecosystem is the differentiator that continues to help make the U.S. Air Force the greatest.”
Rudolph also highlighted various ways of collaborating. He mentioned cooperative research and development agreements, pilots, capability demonstrations, experimentation, and new authorities to develop rapid capabilities like Other Transaction Authority, OTAs, and the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx.
He said there are multiple cascading benefits beyond the collaboration itself. Some examples he gave include having Hanscom junior personnel work on new and interesting problems, letting industry gain better insight into Air Force needs, knowing the “art of the possible” by different partnerships and having partners whose thoughts are not only evolutionary but revolutionary, unconstrained by business as usual.
Rudolph joked about the work to transition the Hanscom Command, Control, intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Enterprise Integration Facility, or CEIF, to the Hanscom Collaboration and Innovation Center. That was a major accomplishment during his time here and involved work with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on a military bond bill that provided $2.9 million for upgrades.
“Renaming the facility was easy; collaboration is hard,” he said, adding that he has seen vast increases in understanding the usage of the facility, both by governmental and industry personnel.
Other areas where Rudolph said he has seen significant progress, but hoped we would be further along, has been use of secure commercial cloud, with the current migration that Hanscom’s Command, Control and Communications Infrastructure Division is working and also very significant progress on authorization and assessment, previously referred to as certification and accreditation.
Regarding the authorization and assessment, he said he takes a lot of pride and satisfaction in those accomplishments.
“Looking at rapid cyber acquisition, looking at command and control, we are not adding 12 to 18 months to the process on the back end; we are doing work up front,” he said. “We’re able to complete rapid cyber activities in six weeks, not six months, by looking at how to manage risk.”
Rudolph complimented leadership, both at the base and Center level, for their willingness to engage on partnerships, especially those with the state. He mentioned the Commonwealth and Program Executive Officer small business events as a way for non-traditional partners to work with the Department of Defense. He also mentioned the educational partnerships in place, which thanks to state funding, has allowed personnel at Hanscom to take critical courses at no cost to DOD, the base or the individual, setting an Air Force precedent.
However, as he prepares to head back into industry, he said the workforce here are who he is going to miss the most.
“My first, and very loud appreciation, is to the folks doing the real work here; the men and women working in the program trenches,” Rudolph said. “They make the difference. You can have the most agile, rapid acquisition process or the most cumbersome weapon system process, but it’s those who are really engaged doing the work who make the difference. That’s what I’m going to miss the most leaving Hanscom.”
He said he’s looking forward to his new position, which will provide him the opportunity to be more involved in technology and innovation in the commercial market, seeing the next generation of game changers. He will be a vice president of Cybersecurity and will be staying in the area. He said his understanding is that the AFLCMC CTO position will remain at Hanscom and he hopes whoever fills it continues the work he has started.
“I couldn’t say thank you enough to so many people,” he said. “It’s about teamwork, which is easy to say, but harder to practice. I leave knowing that organizations are now working better together and, if even one percent of that has a relationship to anything I’ve done, I’ll leave a very happy person.”