Ship with the package
already written.
Every defense software company knows the queue: the prototype the customer loves, waiting months for an Authority to Operate while the award money runs out. The queue is not the assessment. It is the reconstruction, after the fact, of how the software was built, changed, and controlled. Haltere builds the software so that record is written by the build itself: the SBOM at the frozen commit, the change record with names on it, the control evidence, the decision record for AI features. Attestation by construction. The submission becomes an export, not a project.
The Department has said
what it wants instead.
The Defense Innovation Board called for ATO reciprocity in 2019 and reported in January 2025 that the traditional process still slows fielding. The CIO’s Software Fast Track (memo of April 24, 2025) asks vendors for a third-party-certified SBOM from sandbox and production plus independent assessment, so an authorization can be validated once and reused. The 2026 AI strategy names rapid ATO reciprocity as something the CDAO and the CIO must deliver. In April 2026 the Army reported its first approved continuous ATO platforms.
Every one of those asks for the same thing: evidence that already exists when the assessor asks, reusable without redoing the work. Nobody sells the build layer that produces it. AFWERX says plainly it is not structured to pay for ATO services; the package is the company’s problem, with the clock running. What the package contains, and why it takes months
Last checked September 12, 2026 · sources in the footnotes
The company with the prototype,
and the program waiting on it.
Phase II in hand. No ATO. No compliance staff.
Under fifty people, pure software, a prototype a customer already uses, an award clock that does not stop for authorization. One question decides whether we should talk: do you have an ATO? If the answer is a wince, the governed production build is for you.
Adopt agents without losing the record.
Your teams are under pressure to adopt coding agents years before your assurance process can accept the output. A continuous ATO wants evidence generated by the system as it changes. That is what the line produces, per change, forever.
The layer under your delivery.
Your platforms decide; your factories build. Haltere governs what gets built underneath, so every deliverable ships with its package and delivery hours stop eating margin. Your systems, your models, your stack; our map, gates, and receipts.
Show the program office progress. Show the assessor the package.
What the assessor asks for,
and where each piece comes from.
A change cannot reach production on Haltere without passing four stations, and each station writes an artifact the package needs. Nothing is assembled later, because nothing can run without it.
We don’t grant authorizations. We make the answer an export.
Runs where the mission runs.
Air-gapped by architecture
Self-hosted or fully air-gapped, inside your boundary, with your models, API or local. Code and evidence never leave. That’s the architecture, not an add-on tier. Your identity provider and authorization configuration plug in from day one.
Edge & disconnected
Built for the disconnected case: changes made at the edge carry their receipts and seal into the record on reconnect, so the chain of custody survives the gap. That’s the design commitment, and we label what ships when, out loud.
Interoperable by design
Model-agnostic, cloud-agnostic, portable. The record exports in open, queryable formats: evidence that outlives any one vendor, including us, and that another program’s assessor can read without calling your engineers.
Agents build, investigate, and propose. People approve what changes the mission.
Every step the AI took,
and who signed off.
A change to a ground-segment validator walks the same line as any other change: retrieved, drafted, checked, approved, sealed. Including, by design, the disconnected case. This is the row the assessor reads.
Fixture data. The point is the shape of the record: understood, controlled, traceable, correct. And already in the package.
Bad changes don’t get reviewed. They get blocked. Merged: 0 lines, logged, receipted.
The governed production build.
Your prototype, to production, with the package.
The Phase II prototype hardened for production, or the next capability on the roadmap, built on the line inside your boundary. Scoped together before anything starts.
Scoped to the build and quoted in the first conversation. Agreed before anything starts. No time-and-materials meter running against your award.
From scoping to production-acceptable delivery, with the package generated alongside it.
Two deliverables, always paired: the working software, and the package: SBOM at the frozen commit, the change record with names on it, the control evidence, the decision record for any AI feature, mapped to what your ISSM names.
The process guarantee: your engineers review and approve every change. Nothing merges ungoverned. Nothing an agent wrote reaches the queue without a human name on it.
Two ways to run it afterward: we operate the line for teams without a bench, or your team operates it and we train your operator. The software, the map, and the record are yours in either mode. You walk at renewal with everything. The first cohort of five includes defense
What a founder or a program will want to know.
Do you get us the ATO?
No. Authorizing officials authorize and assessors assess; your ISSM owns the package. What we do is build and operate the software so that everything the package needs already exists when they ask: the SBOM at the frozen commit, the change record with names on it, the control evidence, the decision record for AI features. The submission becomes an export instead of a reconstruction.
What is Software Fast Track, and does it apply to us?
SWFT is the DoD CIO’s initiative (memo of April 24, 2025) to speed software authorization with evidence supplied up front: a third-party-certified SBOM from sandbox and production, uploaded to eMASS, plus independent assessment, so an authorization can be reused across the Department. If you sell software to the Department, plan on it.
We are twelve people with a Phase II award and no compliance staff. Is this for us?
Yes. AFWERX’s own guidance says it is not structured to pay for ATO services on SBIR or STTR efforts, so the package is yours to produce while the award clock runs. The governed production build takes the prototype your customer already loves onto a line where the package is a byproduct of the build.
Can this run air-gapped, or at the impact level our customer requires?
Haltere runs inside your boundary: self-hosted, private cloud, or fully air-gapped, with your models, local or API. We do not hold impact-level authorizations on your behalf and do not claim them; the environment is yours, and the record it produces is what your authorizing official evaluates.
What about code an AI agent wrote?
That is the point. Every change an agent makes carries the model, the prompt at its SHA, the frozen commit, the policy checks that ran, and the human who approved it, sealed. An assessor can read how the code was built without interviewing your engineers, and a change that fails policy never reaches the queue at all.
Bring us the prototype
your customer loves.
Tell us the award, the customer, and where the authorization stands. Fifteen minutes: you tell us what the ISSM has asked for, we tell you straight whether a governed production build makes the package a byproduct. No is a fine answer.
No newsletter. No drip sequence. Every request gets a real reply within one business day, from someone who can answer it.
