AlphaBravo Platform Engineering
You have hardware
and a mission.
Now what?
Standing up Kubernetes is the easy part. Making it secure, compliant, observable, and operatable by a small team in a disconnected environment — that is where most programs get stuck.
Sound familiar?
Three environments. The same problem.
Whether you are a forward operator with servers in the field, a crew running services on a ship underway, or a program office standing up a classified cloud — the operational constraints are the same. The platform has to work without help.
A Dell PowerEdge in a Pelican case. Two operators. No link home.
A forward element has a ruggedized server — a PowerEdge XR, a stack of Intel NUCs, a Getac — and a mission that requires TAK server and supporting services running now. Not after a 90-day ATO. Not after a pipeline that calls back to CONUS.
- SATCOM is intermittent — the platform cannot depend on it
- Two operators manage the hardware, the network, and the mission apps
- TAK server, ISR feeds, and C2 services all need to run on the same node
- If the cluster goes down, situational awareness goes with it
A Nutanix node in a ship's compute room. Underway for weeks.
An afloat tactical PaaS runs on Nutanix HCI or HPE ProLiant blades in a ship's server room. The crew runs TAK, logistics services, and mission applications on an isolated network with no shore link for weeks at a time.
- No internet — images, patches, and updates must ship with the platform
- Sailors operate the services; they are not Kubernetes engineers
- CYBERSAFE and Navy RMF compliance is not optional
- The platform has to govern and heal itself between port calls
HPE or Dell rack infrastructure. IL5 enclave. Dozens of teams.
A program office is standing up a classified mission environment on HPE Synergy or Dell PowerEdge rack infrastructure. Multiple mission partners need access. Every cluster needs consistent policy, RBAC, observability, and continuous cATO evidence.
- Clusters span IL4, IL5, and IL6 networks across multiple locations
- Each mission partner has different access and data boundary requirements
- The ATO must be continuous — not a point-in-time snapshot
- A small platform team is responsible for infrastructure across all tenants
The path forward
From bare hardware to a governed, intelligent platform.
Each step solves a real problem. Each product hands off cleanly to the next. By the end, a small team can operate a fleet that would otherwise require a department.
The problem
Before anything runs on your hardware, what runs on it matters.
The answer
Ghost
Zero-CVE hardened container images. FIPS-validated. Signed.
The software supply chain is the first attack surface. If the images running on your hardware are not validated, signed, and continuously patched, everything built on top of them is suspect. Ghost solves this before you deploy a single workload.
- FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography across every image
- Cosign-signed with SLSA Level 3 provenance attestations
- CIS Base OS hardened, attack surface minimized
- Complete CycloneDX and SPDX SBOM for every image
- Less than 4-hour CVE patch SLA — stay current automatically
- Drop-in compatible: nginx, postgres, redis, python, argocd
# FIPS-validated image catalog
✓ nginx:1.29 FIPS · Signed · SBOM
✓ postgres:17 FIPS · Signed · SBOM
✓ redis:8.4 FIPS · Signed · SBOM
✓ python:3.13 FIPS · Signed · SBOM
✓ argocd:3.3 FIPS · Signed · SBOM
✓ keycloak:26 FIPS · Signed · SBOM
+ 40 more in catalog · 0 known CVEs
The problem
You have clean images. Now your cluster needs to govern itself.
The answer
Pioneer
Multi-distribution Kubernetes management. Self-service. Policy-gated.
A cluster that requires a platform engineer standing behind every deployment does not scale to the edge. Pioneer gives operators a governed self-service layer — templates, approval workflows, and continuous drift detection — so the platform enforces the rules even when no one is watching.
- RKE2, K3s, OpenShift, EKS, AKS, GKE from one control plane
- Template-driven deployment with OPA policy evaluation
- Automatic drift detection and remediation
- NIST 800-53, STIG, and cATO evidence generated automatically
- Full offline operation — AI, policy engine, SBOM generation
- Approval workflows for change control without the toil
$ pioneer deploy --template rke2-ha \
--env sipr-enclave --nodes 5
Policy check: PASS (18/18 controls)
Approval: AUTO-APPROVED (L2)
✓ Cluster deployed: sipr-rke2-a7f3
✓ SBOM generated: 847 components
✓ Audit record: EVT-30142
✓ cATO evidence: 18 controls mapped
The problem
One cluster becomes ten. Then twenty. You need one place to see all of them.
The answer
Astronomer
The unified control plane for your entire Kubernetes fleet.
At fleet scale, the unit of management has to be the fleet — not the individual cluster. Astronomer connects to every cluster through an outbound-only agent (no exposed APIs, no inbound firewall holes) and gives your team a single console for visibility, delivery, security, and operations.
- Adopt existing clusters in minutes, regardless of distribution
- Outbound-only agent — no exposed API server, no VPN required
- GitOps delivery with continuous reconciliation and drift correction
- Built-in observability: metrics, logs, intelligent alerting
- Queryable audit log — 3,500+ rows, filterable by actor, action, cluster
- Multi-tenancy with project scoping, quotas, and network isolation
# Agent Fleet — 3 clusters, all connected
✓ sipr-rke2-prod v1.30 · Connected · 47 pods
✓ edge-k3s-fwd-01 v1.32 · Connected · 12 pods
✓ afloat-rke2-01 v1.33 · Connected · 23 pods
Alert Rules: 4 active · 0 firing
Audit Log: 3,540 rows · last event 12s ago
The problem
Your team cannot be everywhere the platform is. The platform needs to think.
The answer
Charlie
Your AI co-pilot. Embedded. On-prem. Always available.
A two-person team cannot monitor every cluster, triage every incident, and generate compliance evidence for every change. Charlie is the AI operator embedded across Pioneer, Ghost, and Astronomer — running entirely within your boundary, with zero external API calls, air-gap ready.
- Natural language cluster operations — ask, do not click through menus
- Pre-deploy risk scoring from your actual deployment history
- Incident triage with root cause and remediation in plain language
- Automatic NIST 800-53, STIG, and cATO documentation
- Predictive alerting — cert expiry, memory pressure, etcd drift
- 100% on-prem, IL6-ready, zero external API calls
$ charlie: why did sipr-rke2-prod restart at 0914Z?
Analyzing incident INC-3201...
✓ Root cause: OOM kill — api-gateway
Memory limit 512Mi hit at traffic spike
Recommendation: increase to 1Gi
✓ Fix applied — rolling restart complete
MTTR: 8 minutes · Audit: EVT-30199
The outcome
A small team.
Running a fleet.
cATO-ready.
When Ghost, Pioneer, Astronomer, and Charlie are running together, the platform enforces security, generates compliance evidence, and handles the operational toil — so your team focuses on the mission, not the infrastructure.
Talk to an engineer →Acquisition
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Let us walk through your environment.
No pre-qualification call. No pitch deck. Our engineers will walk through a deployment scenario matched to your distributions, classification level, and operational constraints.
