Red Queen
What is Red Queen?
Red Queen is an air-gapped GovCloud Hyperforce environment that enables Salesforce to handle U.S. government data classified up to the SECRET level. Externally marketed as Salesforce Government Cloud Advanced, it targets federal agencies including DoD, DoE, DHS, and DOJ for use cases like acquisition, logistics, force movement, and operational coordination involving classified information.
Unauthorized disclosure or modification of data in this environment is expected to cause serious damage to U.S. national security. Red Queen therefore demands the highest security, reliability, and operational standards in Salesforce's fleet.
How Red Queen fits the GovCloud portfolio
Salesforce operates a family of GovCloud environments at increasing classification levels. Red Queen is the highest tier, sitting above the existing GIA2H civilian and Blackjack environments:
GovCloud (GC1/GC2)
Unclassified FedRAMP. Commercial Hyperforce on AWS GovCloud.
Blackjack A (BJ-A)
AWS Top Secret Cloud. TS/SCI workloads. The predecessor air-gap model.
Blackjack J (BJ-J)
AWS Top Secret Cloud (east variant). Closest predecessor with some shared patterns.
Red Queen 🔴
AWS Secret Cloud (us-isob-east-1). SECRET-level. Highest modern paved path bar.
NewDesign Principles
Raising the Standard
Leverage the latest AWS and GCP platform innovations. Red Queen sets a higher baseline than any prior GovCloud — every new paved path component, every service standard, delivered from day one.
Smoothing the Edges
Environment-specific differences (air-gap, FIPS, STIG) are encapsulated in managed platform components. Service teams should experience transparent onboarding — the paved path hides the hard parts.
Respecting the Boundary
All operations must be fully contained within the air-gapped environment. No assumptions about external network access. Every artifact, every config, every secret travels through the defined transfer mechanisms.
Owning the Service
Product teams own their deployments in Red Queen just as in commercial. Parity with the commercial fleet is a requirement, not an aspiration. Teams must plan for ongoing maintenance in this environment.
Supporting the Operator
GovCloud operators perform all high-side actions. Service owners must design operations that work through — not around — the operator model. No manual runbooks that require operator judgment.
Timeline & Milestones
Environments
Red Queen runs four Falcon instances across a low-side (development / staging) and high-side (staging / production) split. This is distinct from BJ-A and BJ-J which used a different environment topology.
emf2azcrmrd1.orgd10po6crmrs1.orgmluxn5ab1e5vAWS Secret Cloud Constraints
Partition
AWS ISO-B (Secret East) — us-isob-east-1. IPv4 only. Signature V4 signing only.
No Internet
Fully air-gapped. No direct access to Salesforce systems or public internet from the high-side.
Limited Services
Subset of AWS services available. No spot instances, no EKS Fargate, no Nitro Enclaves, no DynamoDB Global Tables.
Sequoia Combine
Third-party emulation layer rewrites AWS API calls with ISO-B references for commercial dev/test on RDev1.
Functional Domains (Initial Build)
14 functional domains are in scope for the Red Queen initial build. Domains marked NEW do not exist in Blackjack J.
Product Scope
Initial Build
Agentforce Public Sector
Formerly Public Sector Solutions.
Agentforce Sales
Sales Cloud. Excludes: Einstein Conversation Insights, External Apps Logins, Implicit Integration.
Agentforce Service
Service Cloud, full GA feature set.
Experience Cloud
Full GA feature set.
Headless 360 Platform
Formerly Platform.
Post-Authorization (Future Build)
Agentforce (Full)
Employee Agents, Einstein Studio, Prompt Builder.
Post-ATOAgentforce Field Service
Field service operations.
Post-ATOData 360
Data Cloud, full analytics.
Post-ATOTableau Next
Analytics platform.
Post-ATOAgentforce Marketing
UMA — Email, Landing Pages, Analytics.
Post-ATOAgentforce for Healthcare
Formerly Health Cloud.
Post-ATOPaved Path Requirements
Every service onboarding to Red Queen must meet all 19 Hyperforce Service Standards before staging access is granted. These are harder requirements than any prior GovCloud build.
| # | Requirement | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Security Standards | Full SFSS compliance, FIPS 140, STIG hardening |
| 2 | Substrate Services | Only AWS Secret Cloud available services used |
| 3 | FEDX Substrate-Agnostic Add-Ons | object-storage-addon (S3), kv-addon (DynamoDB), postgres-addon (RDS), queue-addon (SQS), message-addon (SNS) |
| 4 | Salesforce Substrate SDK | Cloud-agnostic development; no direct AWS SDK calls |
| 5 | Structured Config V2 | All config externalized; no hardcoded values |
| 6 | Managed Pipelines | Once available; currently Design Needed |
| 7 | Salesforce Managed CI (SFCI v2) | Substrate declaration required |
| 8 | Code Test Coverage | Minimum 80% |
| 9 | Managed Releases | Safe change compliance; GovCloud staggers required |
| 10 | FIT Trust Check | Falcon Integration Testing compliance |
| 11 | FKP V2 | 100% Falcon Kubernetes Platform V2 compute adoption |
| 12 | Managed Mesh | 100% adoption; Ingress Gateway for public-facing services |
| 13 | FBOT | Fully automated air-gapped builds; "last known good" artifacts |
| 14 | Destroy Pipelines | Complete cleanup automation; no orphaned resources |
| 15 | Monitoring & Alerting | SLO/SLIs with Monitoring Cloud; Terramon for alert config |
| 16 | Day 2 Operations | No manual GovCloud operator actions; MO / SFMP / Warden required |
| 17 | Operational Runbooks | IDoG format, fully tested, zero manual commands |
| 18 | Gater | 100% feature flag adoption with Operating Zones support |
| 19 | DRMC | Data backup and recovery capability |
Artifact Transfer Mechanisms
Unlike Blackjack environments, Red Queen requires automated artifact transfer in all environments — including Dev. There is no manually curated transfer step.
Airlock — Low → High
Automated mechanism transferring all deployment artifacts into the air-gapped environment. Covers BOM, metadata, account configs, VPCs, CIDRs, TGWs. Alerts on failure. No operator selection.
Critical PathVantage — High → Low
Governed egress for observability data. Transfers artifact transfer status, deployment status, service metrics and alerts out of the air-gap. Fully automated. Alerts on failure.
Critical PathSecurity & Compliance
FIPS 140
Mandatory cryptographic compliance via Structured Config. Enforced on all services.
STIG Hardening
All compute images (EC2/EKS/EMR) must be STIG-hardened. Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2 EOL June 2026).
Trellix (McAfee)
Endpoint security on all nodes. Managed by GovSysSec team.
SFSS-103
Gov Cloud Access standard. Limited to cleared U.S. citizens only.
GRC Re-adjudication
All approved GRC security exceptions from other environments must be re-adjudicated for Red Queen.
Native Pod Identity
Kubernetes native pod identity required. No IAM user credentials in pods.
Hyperforce Teams
Teams from across T&P contributing to the Red Queen platform build. Many of these teams cut their teeth on the GCP EGL 15-month delivery.
GCP / GovCloud Core Leadership
| Person | Area | Notable Work |
|---|---|---|
| Anubhav Dhoot | VP / GCP Org Lead | Led entire 15-month EGL delivery; overall program sponsor for Red Queen |
| Jeff Lin | Architecture | Broad technical leadership across GCP; Design Review program (now deprecated) |
| Josh Giron | DevEx / Managed Pipelines | Authored GCP Paved Path documentation; led Managed Pipelines; promoted to Architect |
| Ricardo Vazquez Reyes | Multi-area / Data Security | Cross-cutting technical leadership on GCP |
| Mahesh Tyagarajan | Foundation Services | Build and testing of foundational GCP services |
| Glen Liu | AI Transformation | Technical lead for AI-driven development acceleration |
| Amit Kumar | Core / SCRT / Big Data | Application area ownership across multiple domains |
| Achal Khetarpal | TPM | Started the GCP program; program management throughout |
| Shannon Quinn / Tara Earhart | Program | Program leadership and delivery coordination |
Platform Infrastructure Teams
| Team / Lead | Component | Status for Red Queen |
|---|---|---|
| Young Bu Park, Jacob Delorme (HCP) | FKP V2 | Design Needed — API-driven clusters proven on GCP |
| Shakti Das | Managed Mesh / Cross-Network Identity | Operational w/ Gaps |
| Rajesh Jalagam | Ingress Gateway | In Progress |
| Subho Chatterjee (SDB) | Pipeline replacement / SDB uplifts | In Progress |
| Murthy Chintalapati (CASAM) | Core pipeline uplifts | In Progress |
| Herman Kwong, Claudia Santoro | Multi-Substrate SDK (AWS/GCP/Ali) | Strategic framework; cross-substrate SDK co-architects |
| Mallikarjun Murag, Scott Ware | 1P-to-GCP migration | Migration tooling and support |
| Nischal Tonthanahal | Managed Pipelines | Promoted to SMTS; Managed Pipelines lead engineer |
GCP EGL Achievements (Completed Jul 1, 2026)
App Dev Teams
App dev / product service teams are responsible for onboarding their services into Red Queen and maintaining commercial parity. All teams must meet the 19 paved path standards before getting staging access.
Azeem Feroz — APS / Missionforce Org
Key App Dev Responsibilities
Paved Path Compliance
Meet all 19 service standards before staging. Structured Config V2, SFCI v2 substrate declaration, FIPS 140.
Multisubstrate SDK Adoption
Use cloud-agnostic SDK for all AWS service calls. No direct AWS SDK usage.
Operational Runbooks
IDoG-format runbooks, fully tested, zero manual operator commands in production.
SLOs / Monitoring
Published SLOs for all prod services. Monitoring Cloud + Terramon adoption required.
Dev0 Exit Criteria Model
Use Email Infra team as the gold-standard reference: 100% paved path, terraform eliminated, helm automated, no hardcoded secrets.
FIT Trust Check
All services must pass FIT Trust Check before production onboarding.
Service Onboarding Categories
| Category | Description | Onboarding Path |
|---|---|---|
| Greenfield | Brand-new services starting on Red Queen | Standard paved path — fastest track |
| FEDX Services | Already using FEDX add-ons | Add-on uplift + substrate declaration |
| Custom Jinja2 | Services with custom pipeline templates | Migration to Managed Pipelines required |
| K8s Operators | Services managing their own Kubernetes operators | FKP V2 adoption + operator review |
| Pipeline Shapes | Foundational/platform services with complex pipelines | Managed Pipelines framework with dedicated design work |
Service Tracker (Accelerated Plan)
Current status of Falcon services being onboarded to Red Queen, sourced from the Paved Path RQ tracker (DJ Mahon, July 2026). Stage = RStage1; Prod = RProd1.
| Milestone | Service | Owner | Stage Status | Prod Status | Prod ETA Sprint |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MS5 Make Believe | Torpedo | Lai Wei | Completed | Completed | 1a |
| AI Overlords | Praveen Gupta | Completed | Completed | 1b | |
| Cupcake | Jordan Wilberding | Completed | Completed | 1b | |
| Supergraph | Parin Maru | Completed | Completed | 2a | |
| MS6 Foundation & Security | Stampy & Webhook | Lai Wei | Completed | In Progress | 4a |
| SAI Gateway | Praveen Gupta | Completed | Completed | 2b | |
| FMT | Jordan Wilberding | Completed | Completed | 2b | |
| Temporal | Parin Maru | Completed | In Progress | 5a | |
| MS6 overall prod target: sprint 3a (In Progress → 5a) | |||||
| MS7 Monitoring & BD | Grafana | Krishna C. Nalluri | Completed | Completed | 2b |
| Monitoring Cloud UI | Sean Terry | Completed | Completed | 2b | |
| Splunk | Christine Feng | In Progress | In Progress | 4b | |
| Argus / MC Alerting | Philip Liew / Niharika Bhaskar | Completed | In Progress | 3a | |
| MS8 Core Services | Ingress Gateway | — | Completed | In Progress | 3a |
| Email as a Service | Khyati Sheth | Completed | In Progress | 4a | |
| SDB | Saketh Paranjape | Completed | In Progress | 2b | |
| VegaCache | Venkat Venkatnarayan | Completed | Completed | 2b | |
| SeaS (Search FD) | Rajiv Balachandran | Not Started | Not Started | 5b | |
| SeaS (SKB) | Zach Rice | Not Started | Not Started | 3b | |
| SFAP Runtime | Ganesh Ranganathan | In Progress | Not Started | 3b | |
| CASAM Pipelines | Sridhar Satuloori | In Progress | Not Started | 4a | |
| Bootstrap CoreApp | Sridhar Satuloori | In Progress | Not Started | 4a | |
| Core Schema Upgrade | Bapi Reddy Goluguri | In Progress | Not Started | 4a | |
| MS9 DnR & TIP | Orion | Camille Girabawe, Ans Fida | Completed | In Progress | 5b |
| Partitioner | C. Davis, Vibin Vijay, Sue Huang | Completed | Not Started | 6a | |
| Search Troll | C. Davis, Vibin Vijay, Sue Huang | Completed | In Progress | 5b | |
| DnR/TIP E2E | Liam Hughes | Not Started | Not Started | 5b | |
GCP / EGL Background
Red Queen builds directly on the engineering patterns, teams, and tooling developed for the GCP Enterprise Google Cloud Launch (EGL) — the 15-month program that delivered Hyperforce on Google Cloud Platform, completed July 1, 2026.
What EGL Proved
Network v2
New networking infrastructure delivered from scratch on an aggressive timeline.
DeliveredManaged Pipelines
Paved path replacing pipelines with code. Onboarded dozens of teams. Framework now applying to Red Queen.
DeliveredMulti-Substrate Add-ons
FEDX add-ons supporting AWS, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud (multi-substrate SDK).
DeliveredFKP V2
API-driven K8s cluster provisioning. From weeks to seconds. Young Bu Park & Jacob Delorme.
DeliveredSingle-Tenant HSMs
Pushed GCP to build capabilities that didn't exist in their platform.
DeliveredStructured Config V2
88% reduction in malformed DIFFs. 650+ services fixed. Now a Red Queen requirement.
DeliveredGCP Environments (Reference)
| Environment | Region | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dev0 (useast4) | us-east4 | Decommissioned 5/31/26 | Initial dev env; many services completed exit criteria |
| Dev1 (uscentral1) | us-central1 | Active | Opened 4/13/2026; replaced Dev0 |
| Test1, Perf1 | Various | Active | Testing and performance environments |
| Staging1, Prod1, Prod0 | Various | Active | Production delivered as part of EGL |
Staffing Model
The investment areas and headcount model for Red Queen are being actively developed by the core team in #gov-can-be-weird-again. The interactive staffing app lets you explore the 40+ investment areas, work breakdown, and proposed headcount by area.
RedQueen — Investment & Staffing Model
Explore 40+ investment areas, required work per area, and headcount proposals. Based on the design document and staffing sheet (Gautam Bhatia, July 2026).