Keith Salisbury: Pivotal, USAF Team Up to Develop Software App for Air Refueling Tanker Mgmt

Keith Salisbury, vice president for U.S. federal sales at Pivotal Software, told Fox News in an interview published Friday how the company works to help the U.S. military execute their missions and build up their warfighting capabilities through new technology platforms.

Pivotal and other tech companies traveled to the U.S. Air Force’s Combined Air Operations Center at an air base in Qatar as part of the Defense Innovation Advisory Board.

Salisbury cited how the company’s software professionals helped military air personnel develop an application to address “a very manually intensive process” when it comes to managing CAOC’s aerial refueling tankers.

“We paired with them and we taught them this new way of building software and we built the software application side by side with them,” Salisbury said.

He also mentioned the need for U.S. warfighters to decide whether to engage or not with potential adversaries.

“The process in general is a bunch of chat windows open on a computer screen—about 20 or more—and then a bunch of people start looking into systems to find out, ‘Where is that target? … Are there civilian populations? What munition would be appropriate? Do we engage or not?’”