 Well, folks, we're going to go ahead and get started. OK, good afternoon, admirals, generals, some senior executives, corporate executives, industry partners, international partners, and C. Aaron Space Exposition 2022 attendees. Thank you for attending this event, Space, the next warfighting domain. My name is Rear Admiral Jim Butler, US Navy retired. I have a career in the Navy's information warfare community, which includes space. I will be your moderator of what promises to be a great panel consisting of space leaders and experts from the Navy Marine Corps and industry partners, Microsoft and Electromechanical Systems, CAES. Before I introduce our panel members, I want to offer a special thank you for our Navy League coordinator, Ms. Julia Simpson and the rest of our team. We have four excellent panel members for our discussion on space warfare today. Dr. Angel Smith has a bachelor's in social psychology, master's in information relations and affairs, master's in philosophy, and a PhD in organizational psychology. She currently serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She started her career in the US Marine Corps as a KC-130 pilot for 23 years. She continued her service as a senior professional staff member in the US House of Representatives, where she served as the chairman's lead for budgetary and programmatic oversight of the $21 billion military intelligence program. She also served as the staff lead for the Committee on DOD Software Movement, including AI and cloud. Her industry career has included leading legislative and policy coordination for Microsoft, serving as president of advanced payloads and deliverables at META special aerospace, and most recently, as a partner of Microsoft's mission solutions and customer expansion team. Commander Damon Meladosian is a native of Rhode Island. He earned his bachelor of arts in criminal justice for Rhode Island College and a master of arts degree from Johns Hopkins. Damon earned a commission through the Officer of Canada School in 2000 and became an intelligence officer in the information warfare community. Across his 22 years, his assignments include an intelligence officer aboard the USS Bella Wood, multiple intelligence roles within US INDO Paycom's J2 and Joint Intelligence Center Pacific, a strategic debriefer for field operating base in Naples, Italy, multiple roles at the Navy Expeditionary Intelligence Command, and an assistant American legation United States Naval Attache, U.S. Defense Attache Office in Tel Aviv. He has also served tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Commander Meladosian is currently signed to the Space Development Agency in the Emerging Capability Cell. Mr. Greg Bell earned his executive MBA from the University of Tennessee and graduated from Loyola University of Maryland with a B.S. in Engineering Sciences. He is an experienced president and CEO, COO, and senior program director serving in large and small businesses in the space, defense, and commercial markets. Currently, Greg is the Space Systems Division Vice President of Electromechanical Systems within Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions. Their space product portfolio includes radiation hardened microelectronics, application specific integrated circuits, and advanced packaging solutions. Prior to joining CAES, Greg served as COO of Clear Align, a leading provider in electro-optical components and systems, including imaging across the UV through the long wave IR portions of the spectrum. Prior to Clear Align, Greg served as the president and CEO for Photonus USA, responsible for U.S. operations, including defense and night vision systems business units. Greg was also the president and general manager for L3 electro-optical systems, a world leader in development of night vision technology and electro-optical systems. And finally, Major General Ryan Heritage graduated from George Washington University here in D.C. and was commissioned through the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps program. He is also a graduate of the Army War College, Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program. He is an infantry officer by trade who has served multiple tours with a third battalion and is commanding officer for the sixth Marine regiment. He has also served as the current operations officer with a second MEF forward in Iraq, future operations for the second Marine division in Camp Lejeune, current operations officer for third MEF in Okinawa, and then the deputy commander Marine forces, cyberspace command at Fort Meade, Maryland. His joint assignments include future ops planner at U.S. Southern Command and deputy director for future operations in the J3 U.S. Cyber Command. General Heritage is currently assigned as commander, Marine Corps forces, cyberspace command, and Marine Corps forces, space command. So today we have a series of questions to bring out industry and military perspectives on space warfare, and then we'll open up to the audience. So when you're ready to answer or ask a question, please raise your hand and one of the Navy League staff members will bring you a microphone. Crucial to our national defense, space is quickly gaining prominence as another war fighting domain in addition to land, air, and sea. What will the future of war fighting look like as all nations race to conquer this new military high ground? So a series of questions starting with Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell, what do you see as the space equipment industry way ahead in space warfare? Thanks, Jim. First, I wanna thank the Navy League for inviting me to be a panelist to serve on such an important topic. Case is proud to serve the Navy as a tier four to a tier one supplier. We provide products that are underwater, on the sea, on land, in air, and obviously in space. For those of you who are not familiar with Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions, we are a leading technology provider for many of the world's most critical missions. Our RF, microwave and millimeter technologies serve many of the critical missions. Our communications satellites keep us connected. We are also, sorry, our radiation hardened microelectronics empower the world's most important spacecraft. So we serve from communication satellites, from Earth observation satellites, from manned space, as well as the critical mission military, well the critical military missions. In addition, we also, we have several, we serve several of the latest constellations. So, but to your question specifically about space equipment in the industry, the way ahead, the way that we see it at Case, it's definitely about situational awareness. And with that situational awareness, what we wanna be able to do is reduce cycle times and accelerate technology development. And how we do that at Case is through strategic partnerships because we don't have to do this alone. Secondly, we wanna make sure that we protect the US supply base. So, from a strategic partnership, recently we announced a partnership with SkyWater. SkyWater is a US based foundry that will provide American semiconductors. We also have a partnership with lattice semiconductors where we will bring our radiation hardened electronics packaging to FPGAs, which is gonna be critical for learning in space. Also, most recently we announced a strategic partnership with Trident Systems. While that's important is that they're a leader in digital signal processing. And when you combine the capabilities of our radiation hardened microelectronics with their advanced digital signal processing, we'll be able to further advance some of the world's most critical missions. And we also did an acquisition in 2021 of Colorado Engineering. That was some of the brightest minds of scientists and engineers in Colorado Springs. And what they're able to do is add to our portfolio artificial intelligence and machine learning. Now, dear to my heart in Exeter, New Hampshire, is the partnership that we have with Swiss to 12. Swiss to 12 is an additive manufacturing company that's we're bringing their space technology for additive manufacturing or 3D printing to the United States. So, while they're qualifying, they've been qualified in and to the European Space Agency we'll be qualifying them to the NASA requirements. But why that's so important to reduce costs and accelerate technology development is that recently we received a spec and it was for a five channel high power RF combiner. And from the time receiving the spec to the time that we were able to deliver the product was 10 weeks. And a normal manufacturing process it would have taken us over 10 months just to manufacture it but we were able to take the design by eliminating a lot of the parts through additive manufacturing. We were able to do then the integration, the test and ship the product within 10 weeks. And then critical is our supply chain. We must have onshore foundries. Definitely as we're looking at that where we continue to, we can ask for congressional support with skywater so that we can further advance that. But I think if COVID taught us anything is that if we're gonna rely on the West to provide all of our semiconductors and there are foundry solution then we're always gonna be left behind. So we need to have that capability. And we also need to be able to identify down to those rare earth elements as well because we have critical foams that serve many of the Navy missions for our radar systems whether they have electrical properties or medical properties. But when you don't have access to those rare earth elements then it's a long re-qualification process. So in summary, we need to advance our technology development through strategic partnerships and we need to ensure that we have onshore foundries. Okay, thanks, Craig. Commander, what is the SDA way ahead in space warfare? So how do we reduce the latency time between a sensor identifying a threat to a ship and that ship being able to shoot on that target? How do we close the kill chain to between the time that sensor is detected to the time that target is destroyed in single digit seconds? That is the challenge that SDA has taken on to proliferate a low earth orbit constellation called the NDSA National Defense Space Architecture to do that exact mission. So we're gonna do that in a number of ways. First and foremost, it's working with our DOD partners, the combatant commands, the services, the interagency partners and most importantly, I think our industry, the commercial market that's actually, as you'll see throughout my talking points is kind of the genesis of getting what we're putting on orbit to defend the United States and our allies to quick as possible. So what is the NDSA and how are we going to proliferate this low orbit constellation of satellites to actually reduce that latency as I described to single digit seconds? So the architecture we're building is done in layers. A transport layer, tracking layer, a custody layer and then different layers of satellites, processes, sensors, all to build out this architecture. The backbone of our, the NDSA and our first layers is the transport satellite architecture. So it constitutes initially 20 satellites in low earth orbit through our first tranche and subsequent tranches proliferating out to that to 126 by 2024 and then so on throughout the end of the decade and beyond. And what those satellites are gonna do is provide speed of light data transfer from anywhere on the planet to any war-flighting element whether it's a carrier strike group, a carrier air wing, a DDG operating independently and named your body of ocean, Marine Corps ground unit along range fires unit operating anywhere on the planet. We can get that data there as quick as possible during our on-orbit satellite links, optical satellite links, seeing it down through link 16, KA bands or optical links down to the ground. The other layer that we have that's crucial to this given the recent press with hypersonics is our tracking layer which was just funded for off through beginning of 2025. Our first operational later tracking layer will be on orbit, it'll be 28 satellites. Soon to be, we just released the contracts proposals for that so we should be seeing contracts come in pretty soon for the vendors in the industry to help us perforate that architecture. So what the tracking layer is gonna do is it's gonna be able to do right of launch tracking hypersonic missiles, advanced ballistic missiles and any advanced missile fired from an adversary's sea air or land based, be able to track that on orbit, send that data through that transport layer I just identified and then ultimately down to a fusion cell or targeting cell and ultimately to that shooter, that weapon system that'll knock it out of the sky before it impacts a friendly target or a friendly population or military installation or base or carrier strike group. So that is how we're actually going to perforate a defensive measure throughout the space architecture to actually fight that battle and help our allies and our services fight that battle in any body of water and on land throughout the earth. We're doing that by a very different business model from how it's normally done in the Department of Defense. We're focusing on making sure we get satellites on orbit, on time, on schedule as a top priority, working with the budget we have and ultimately giving the war fighters the capability they need to actually perforate, to actually conduct those operations and then continuing that on every two years we'll be putting up satellites in the hundreds, transport satellites and tracking satellites as well as building out the architecture and the algorithms, the software and the hardware to proliferate that throughout the end of the decade and beyond. So right now I'll leave you with this is our first tranche, tranche here, our demonstration tranche, which is where we get the war fighters to play with the system, see how it works so they can build it into battle plans for our first and second tranches as we perforate throughout the decade every two years. Tranche won't be launching 2024, that's to be 126 transport satellites and 28 tracking satellites and then so on throughout the decade and beyond every two years perforating the architecture, putting hundreds of perforated low earth orbit satellites providing a persistent coverage of the globe by the end of the decade through hundreds of satellites working in a mesh network and then that's where we bring in other end nodes, other different satellites as well as commercial market satellites to hopefully help perforate a defense architecture and move data swiftly throughout the globe and ultimately to the war flight it actually has to pull the trigger or press the button to go defend the United States. Okay, great answer, thanks Damon. Dr. Smith, what do you see as the software industry way ahead in space warfare? Well I'd say anywhere that you've got multi-domain operations, you've got large data sets, large disparate data sets that don't necessarily easily mesh together, you need to move data fast and you need to make decisions very, very quickly. That's the place where I think that the software industry is actually uniquely postured to be able to support. I'd say if we've learned one thing, we owe an Xbox, right? So if you want to figure out how to make an entire globe full of a 16 year and under people really, really angry, you mess around with latency whenever they're playing Call of Duty and you make it very difficult for them to, you give them one second worth of latency problems and all of a sudden your world is falling apart. If we were to take just that same mindset and apply that some of the same commercial learnings to our military individuals across the globe, I think it would be a serious game changer in the way that we make decisions all the way from the tactical level to the strategic level. Great, thank you. Jarrah Heritage, what do you see as the Marine Corps way ahead in space warfare? Thought you were gonna ask me a different question. First Jim and Natalie, thanks for the opportunity to be here today and talk a little bit about the Marine Corps and MARFOR space. So I would start with there's probably two guiding concepts out there. Directed in this force design 2030, that talks about the modernization of the Marine Corps, the lethality and some of the, you know, divestiture, so that we can take that and reinvest it in many of the capabilities that the other panelists talked about today. And the other one is the stand in force concept, which the commander I think hit upon or alluded to when you talk about a MEF or a MEW or an ARG, some sort of MAGTF, you know, sitting inside weapons engagement zone of an adversary. So those are our two aiming points. As I look at port, you know, it's been a deliberate effort across the Marine Corps. For those familiar with the dot MLPF acronym, please don't go back 20 or 30 years like myself and think that's a process that's, you know, gonna take three, four, five years to flush out because it's not, and it's just tied to the commonized force design, the necessity to modernize. So if I look just from a doctrinal perspective and I quickly walk through it, you'll get how the Marine Corps is rewriting some of its doctrine as it relates to space and fires and integrating all of those capabilities, how we're nested with Space Force, how we're nested with the U.S. Space Commons Track Comment and updating the policies, whether it's for space control or space doctrine, as I mentioned in the Marine Corps. Organization, you know, what changes have we made? You have to look no further than really Marfor Cyber, which in July of 21 became Marfor Cyber Marfor Space, so a quick reorganization there. And it's something more than just to acknowledge the importance of the criticality of space, but it's how we support the fleet, how we support the joint force in the fight, and then, you know, how is wearing two hats, how do we converge those capabilities and authorities under one again to support the warfighter forward? From a training perspective, you know, the Marine Corps is stepping out, changing some of the training for our space staff officers, doubling down on the space operations officers out at Naval Postgraduate School, which produces an incredible product. Training in the field, training across the field. What we're doing at the MAGTF integrated exercises, warfighting exercises out at 29 Palms, our night and day to what I did, went through experience as a lieutenant captain or even as a regimental commander. And again, integrating all of those capabilities, going back to the training, I had the opportunity to walk quickly into a group of officers from all the services and civilians who were there from Expeditionary Warfare School and they were up at Marfor Cyber before it came down and they were talking about, you know, how do you integrate capabilities at the company and battalion level? And they're talking about authorities and speed and the importance of data and the transport layers. Those are things we were not talking about 20 years ago, but are absolutely required today. Material, you know, we can talk about capability development, typically you don't associate, you know, Marines in space necessarily, but that capability is being moved forward through all the exercises that are ongoing at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab tied to our capability development director and obviously Mark Horsescom would be critical in the foundation there. On the personnel, you know, personnel are coming. This isn't, again, this is a comprehensive look across the Marine Corps. There's new MOS's, Marine Occupational Specialties, Military Occupational Specialties that have been created, whether it's from Influence Space or Cyber, and they're being resourced accordingly. And then on the leadership side, very similarly, we're creating team leaders for Marine Space Support Teams, leaders at all echelons being educated both on Cyber and Space. So we're all in. And as a Naval Expeditionary Force, you need somebody to be inside the footprint of a satellite, you know, that's something that we're accustomed to doing. So we're all in and that's sort of the summary of how we're getting into it. All right, great answers. Thank you. So to set up the next question, the space industry can be generally grouped into three sectors, commercial, which includes goods and services, broadcast, SATCOM, tourism, et cetera, civil, science and weather, and then national security, which includes defense and intelligence. So for our industry panelists with commercial experience, when it comes to warfare in space, what can the military learn from the commercial industry to assure positive outcomes in a military conflict? I'm happy to jump on this one first. So when I first left the Marine Corps, it was really, can I also address the fact that General Heritage and I both have the high ground over here and so you're all surrounded. Elephant in the room, I just want to make sure you guys know we've got it under control. So when I first left the Marine Corps though, it was, you get used to doing things a very specific way and sometimes you don't necessarily think outside the box or think about what's in the realm of possible. When I first retired, I went over to Capitol Hill and it was the first time I had really had any experience working with industry because they were lobbying me and they were constantly coming in and saying, hey, this is what we've got, this is what we do. And admittedly, I kept thinking to myself, like, holy cow, we need that. Holy cow, we need that in the military. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we don't know that they don't have that in the military. And I kept being just bombarded by so many different really incredible innovations and technologies that I had no idea existed whenever I was in the Marine Corps and I flew C-130s, which is God's chariot, the sexiest airplane in the DoD's inventory. So you can all imagine that was probably on the front side of all innovation, right? But with that being said, I'd say the one thing that commercial can do is just let you know what's in the realm of possible. A lot of times when we engage with our DoD and IC counterparts, we walk into the room, the first thing we'll just say is tell us your problem because you'll have a lot of my, one of my old bosses used to call him hippie patriots. We've got a lot of these software data scientists that are really just like super, super eager to understand your problem because I guarantee you they're gonna come to the table with a solution that you're probably not considering. So that would be the first thing. And I think the second thing is that because commercial companies deal and profit and loss, we're always, always, always looking for ways to actually make things happen more efficiently. And I'm always reflecting on the fact that whenever I was in the Marine Corps, I flew a harvest hawk for a little while and we had a Cobra ball on the wing of the aircraft. And if we were doing any type of collection, we would literally live stream the whole thing straight down to the ground. I mean, whether it was good data or bad data, we were constantly streaming everything that we possibly can. As you can imagine, that's not necessarily always super helpful. And I bring up Xbox a little bit in jest, but the way that you move data super, super fast whenever you're trying to service global customers is you have to think about efficient ways and you're only passing the most important pieces of information at the time that you absolutely need that. As sensors continue to get better and they get better integrated and we are starting to see such a huge variety of different types of data sets that are coming. And then we're looking at synthetic aperture radar. We're rigging in LiDAR data, signals intelligence data, EOIR data. All of these things are incredibly important to the warfighter, but they're very, very voluminous. And a lot of times if we are doing a collection and you're only looking at probably one to five percent of all of that data, then why are we need to be smarter about how we're moving it around? And that's when you start to think about multi-domain operations. We're in the business of ones and zeros, right? So we're looking at ways that we can move, rather than just fiber, can we move data through satellites? Can we go from Leo to MEO, back down to Leo, then down to a ground station? How can we be faster with our ground stations? How can we use our underwater data centers to be able to process data more rapidly? So we're constantly looking at different ways to be able to do things more efficiently. And I think that that's in this particular, as warfare is starting to transform into a place that is sometimes kinetics aren't necessarily the thing that's gonna tip the scale. We have to start to really look at ways that we are going to fight in, I think the battle space that our adversaries have chosen to fight in. Great. Can I jump on? Thank you, Angel. I'm fucking, just maybe add- Yeah, no, go ahead, go ahead. I wanted to add a little bit. Yeah, I don't know that we have the best military in the world, so I don't really know what they can learn from us, and I've kind of been threatened that I got two Marines on each side, so we're gonna go tread here lightly. But I think that it's definitely when we look at it, we need desegregation. When you look at like 648 satellites for one web, you need that desegregation of data so that you can't be just taken out by one orbit or one set of satellites, but more practical. I think what the military could continue to learn from industry would be product standardization, a continued focus on SWAP-C, and then also generational up revving. You know, I think when you look at companies like Airbus, and they've been able to, I think they're now on, using commercial techniques, they're now on their bus structures like Gen 6, and they've been able to do that by making it affordable, and also adding new feature sets each time. And we're gonna be able to do that with additive manufacturing as we start to 3D print more things as well. I think the other thing that the commercial industry does really well is bundling. So we know how to bundle, and I really give acquisition reform a thumbs up for the fact that they now allow commerciality of like products for contracts because that helps speed the whole acquisition process as well. And I think as we start to look at like what Microsoft's doing and others are doing in AI and machine learning, we're gonna be able to incorporate those much faster as well. Great. So I was just gonna jump on, and just point is just on the training, because you talked about how do you transition from Leo to MEO and then the data and then knowing what data you need at what time. We need to be able to exercise and train to that. So again, I'll go back to sort of the dot MLP up. This isn't something that we can take two years to learn about. This has to be real-time learning and exercising and then back to the capability development and then bring in the fielding those fixes as quick as possible. So I like that analogy, all I kept thinking about is how does a team out at 29 Palms work through that at the battalion or a MAGTAP MEO level? So really really good. Training globally too. Absolutely. Yeah, we used to just think about training in the Marine Corps, training the Army, training the Air Force. Now we must train as an entire organization with all of our civilian counterparts and oh by the way, all the other nations across the globe that also need to integrate with us because of the threats. Yeah, and distributed, right? So not only globally. I mean, you mentioned desegregation of data. All I kept thinking about is distributed forces. Yeah. All of our, so sorry. Great, no good answers. So for our military panelists, what can commercial and defense industry partners learn from the DOD military to ensure minimal impact and or survival of their systems from a warfare perspective in space? Nice. Resiliency, I think that'd be the first and I think both of you already touched upon it is when industry is delivering something, it's got to be resilient right off. Taking the time for us to add that additional resiliency is something we continue to get better at. Platform agnostic. The one delivering one platform that only does one thing, we need something that supports all war fighting functions in the worst environments and as you all both already have mentioned, those would be three things at the top, jump to the top of my. Okay. Yeah, I think the general had a really good point as well as both resiliency is critical. Looking at how SDA is building on architecture with two years, it's small satellites that have to be profited every two years. So how do you do that? Given the bureaucracy normally associated with the government and with the Department of Defense, you have to leverage industry's innovation in addition to the resiliency on how to keep those satellites functioning and then keep those satellites progressing in their capabilities every few years. So they stay competitively in a business environment. We need to stay competitive in an operational and national defense environment. So SDA is not focused on reinventing the wheel, we're focusing on how do we leverage industries, small satellite building capability, the launch capabilities, their algorithms, their hardware and software that they're putting into their satellites that we can use ours, focusing mainly on a commoditized commercial architecture, commoditized commercial buses. These are not a squids of satellites we're looking at. We're looking at small sats able to perforate quickly within two years and given how our timeline looks, it's less than that, 120 days from on average between the time we put out a request for proposal until we have a private company or industry on contract to build it and it has to go up. So we need the SDA and the government to figure out how can we make things on our end faster to support you guys' industry putting those satellites for us on orbit quickly. I think resiliency is a key and I think the innovation that we're challenging our industry partners to build stuff for us fast. And I think it's something that we I don't think the government can do at the pace that industry does and definitely at the pace at what SDA is achieving to do really say we're a simpler city, it seems always faster. The only way we can be fast is if we run it from industry. Great, great answers. So for any panelist, across the three sectors, commercial, civil and national security, where's the line in the sand in warfare engagement across these three sectors and what should we do differently to defend these three sectors? I'll take that one. I'm gonna defer the line to draw a line in the sand. I'll leave that for the policy makers to handle that one. But I would go back where they call it resiliency or security, that would be the one area I think we can probably close some scenes and gaps. And from I'll put my sort of cyber hat on is whether it's the small mom and pop company working out of a garage, which is fantastic and we all need to leverage all the way up to the largest industry is our companies. Where is that cyber security really coverage? What's the coordination that happens between private and DOD on that cyber security ensuring not only supply chain but then once that capability is fielded, there's a requirement I still think on us in DOD industry or industry really large to maintain that and protect it. So that'd be one area. Okay. I'm happy to add on to that too. If there's one thing that we've noticed over the last few years that our adversaries have absolutely muddied the water on where combat zones actually exist. And so if we learned anything even from like the colonial pipeline phenomenon, what is operational preparation the environment look like anymore? Is OPE when you've got adversaries that are starting to mess with your power grids starting to figure out how they can mess with your fuel systems? What does that actually look like? And unfortunately the enemy gets a vote and they've I think very, very clearly identified that anything that would affect us and our stability inside our nation or any of our partner nations across the globe is 100% fair game. And the only way that we can get over that is by making sure that we are ridiculously integrated. I mean 100% integrated. We know your problems, you know our solutions that's just the only way that we're gonna be able to get there is to buy really, really good consistent communication. I think that question really talks, so if you flip the question on its head a lot about situational awareness. Having the indication of warning whether it's in space or cyber in any domain you want that indication of warning. We sort of talked about it before we came out here is this idea of zero trust. I mean you don't trust your network anyway. I mean you have to have confidence in it but from a trust perspective there's all sorts of things that again both of us can get after. Yeah, I totally agree. Great answers. So to set up the next question space architecture can be generally defined as the launch segment, space segment, ground segment and sometimes a user segment defining data and services beyond the ground segment to limit or command and control. So for our industry partners across any of the segments how does commercial industry prepare and train prepare and train to defend their systems for warfare across the space, ground or user segments? At case that's an interesting question because I'm not really sure in the way that we manufacture that we do it differently for any of those sectors. We really use in the same technologies for all of them. So I think that what it really comes down to then is the survivability and the protectability of the data and how we're gonna do that through redundancy and steerability and frequency agility. I don't know how we're gonna do that. And then I think though if I were to sum it up all in one word I would probably say interoperability across those three domains you really have to have interoperability and I think a great example of that for industry to follow is what the military's done with the MUO system. So with that mobile user objective system for that UHF narrowband system that's controlled by the Marine Corps that's a great example how it's used by the Air Force and the Army and the Marine Corps and the Navy and how all of that's integrated together I think so that can really serve as a lesson for us to learn in industry is that interoperability across the three domains. Great. This is one of those really funny areas that I feel like we've had a little bit of an advantage for the last two decades or so because we've literally been under attack as at least on the Microsoft side for decades now. When you operate the largest productivity suite across the entire planet we see trillions of signals every single day of attempts to penetrate all of the different areas that we have inside of our productivity suite in our cloud. And one of the things that we've actually seen is if you go back to the early 2000s we had a less sophisticated opponent. They most of the time they were maybe looking trying to hustle a little bit of cash from some of the users and maybe just a little mischievous to what it's actually developed to now in the 2020s and that is a nation state adversary. It's a activist adversary. It is a terrorist adversary. It's a mischievous 16 year old Eaton Cheetos and his mom's basement adversary. They're all over the place. Very, very, very, very wide swath and these are incredibly well funded, very versophisticated and incredibly motivated opponents that we now face these days. And they're just as complicated as the variety of the opponent that we have that's constantly trying to penetrate the system. It's what motivates them. Some of them are politically motivated. Some of them are just angry because they're mad about what Russia is doing. Some of them are just trying to take money away from a large entity that they know that they haven't been doing the security fabric properly. And so a lot of that that we're starting to see right now is that the enemy has gotten much broader. They're much more specific in their targets but at the same time they've also opened the aperture on what they would consider a target to actually be because they know that the integration between commercial and defense is a must. And so the target set has absolutely changed in a lot of ways. And, General, I will tell you I, we completely footstomp when you talked about essentially having agnostic systems. I would say that that's one of the greatest benefits of having a cloud agnostic system also is that you have now given your adversary a targeting problem. By putting it all in one cloud, all you're doing is you're making it more simple for them to be able to focus in on the issues and the areas that they need to be focused on. And as we start to move to the satellite space, it's gonna become even more important, especially considering the dependencies that most of the systems we operate on have on satellite infrastructure. Great. So for our military panelists, same question. What can the military learn from the commercial space industry? Should we get into a fight in the space, ground, or user segments? Scalability, I think, is one. Obviously, the resiliency, I think that's tied into scalability. The rapid prototyping is another one, something that is a necessity for us. The innovation, just the thought that goes into it, the investment that goes into innovation is absolutely critical. The culture sort of fail fast, which I like to think we have sort of removed some of those bars from the way we train. And again, whether it's in 29 palms or on a deployment, having the opportunity to learn those lessons and then apply those lessons immediately is what we need. So I gotta leave it there. Great. So I would add to that. How industry utilizes supply chain issues. I mean, recently we've been able to understand that the global supply chain has affected everything from Department of Defense to new cars. So how is industry working to affect and be able to get satellites in technology in a competitive environment, in a cutthroat competitive environment in some cases? How are they using, leveraging gaps or challenges with supply and chain issues globally to be able to remain competitive and able to get satellites, the hardware and software on orbit? And that's something I think as a SDA definitely could use given the pace that we're working at as well as the Department of Defense and particularly focus on a space where it's a lot of technology, everything eventually rare earth metals. How do you get it from its infancy or the nascent stage of it's just an idea to we need this metal to be oared and to refine it and ultimately put it in on a satellite? I think that's something that the Department of Defense particularly of military and definitely SDA would need to look at, be able to leverage to get satellites up as quick as possible. Okay, great answers. So for any panelists, in the world of cyber our adversaries, nation state actors and criminals appear to operate or attempt to operate on our soil and on our equipment without fear of retribution. How do we prevent this from occurring in space or across the space architecture? Try to answer without getting into deterrence theory. Well first is I'll start with attribution. That's hard. Attribution and cyber as you know is hard. So to say that they're operating on our terrain in our homeland, that's a whole different issue. But there is, you know, as General Nakasone would say is this idea of forward presence, this idea of hunting forward, this idea of competing. I think from a cyber perspective is something that we have to continue to do and we have the authorities and we have the necessity to do that. So you have to compete. And then I'll really, I think I'll anchor back in on the sort of cyber security aspect of it. Again, it starts at really concept design, you know, and holding folks accountable for the security of the data as it moves from concept to fielding is absolutely critical. And then when it is a space capability that's fielded, you know, even as Mar-4 cyber and we talk about our cyber protection teams, and that is a mission that they're prepared to do is get on those networks and defend, you know, either remotely or forward where we need to. Great, okay. I'd say it's also, in some ways, it starts with a healthy appreciation for what the threat actually is, which if I was to give one complaint back as the, from on the cyber space on the Microsoft side, sometimes we only know the threat based off of the threats that we actually see. And I think that there's sometimes some good synergies between the threat that we see or perceive, the threats that the Department of Defense and the intelligence community actually sees, but sometimes the synergies between those two things just never overlap. And, you know, if we're going to get resilient everywhere we plan to operate, we need to make sure that we're synergizing the threats and then making sure that we're putting in place cyber protections that are actionable at every single, within every single domain. Great. So now we'd like to open it up to the audience for any questions. If you have a question, have you raised your hand and one of the Navy League staffers will bring you a microphone. No takers yet? Oh, there we go. Back over there. Hello, I'm Anindatha McCurgy from the Naval Surface Warfare Center. This has a little bit less to do with the defense of space, but more like the maintenance of our space environment. So you were talking about deploying multiple satellites and increasing quantity over the years, but what happens at the end of their life cycle? Do you have any plans for deorbitating them and clearing up the space clutter? Because a lot of junk will end up in space and that'll end up jeopardizing future space missions. Yes, so each of the satellites we'll be putting up, as you mentioned, every two years in our architecture, plan to be deorbitated in five years. So as we're constantly, it'll seem like we're constantly, once we get our first and second tranche on orbit, you've constantly seen every two years satellites coming up and satellites coming down. So whether or not the satellite can last and function beyond that five years, it's scheduled to deorbit safely once its mission cycle is over. So it'll have a maximum five-year lifespan once it's on orbit and it's checked out and it's actually operational. So that's how we're going to keep a preflated architecture on orbit without getting satellites that are past their prime and depending on which tranche we're looking at, pretty much potentially obsolete compared to what's on orbit. Like tranche one will be very impressive compared to when the end of the decade, when tranche three or a little farther, when tranche four satellites get on, tranche one will look like a dinosaur. So it doesn't need to be on orbit, it needs to be safely and successfully deorbitated. So the architecture, so our NDSA can continue to proliferate successfully and operationally without having useless satellites that are no longer compatible with the latest technology on orbit. Great answer. Thank you. Other questions? Hi there. This is Steven from Namanic, a Norwegian cybersecurity company. I was wondering how will the U.S. collaborate with NATO member countries when it comes to cybersecurity? I think we need to work together to fight the adversaries. Sorry, I'll try to take this one under the MARFOR cyber. So we're doing that now. U.S. Cyber Command again has multiple arrangements, partnerships globally. Right now, leveraging, whether it's General Nakasone under his own authorities the global coordinator for cyberspace operations, but also through the combatant commands. So right now, a lot of coordination by, with, and through commander for USUCOM as a particular example in those types of relationships. But again, it's a global. So, and it's something that we have to continue to do is, so as I mentioned upfront, and it's all domains, right? It's all domains in which the relationships between our allies and partners are just becoming more and more important in the time to close any seams or gaps between those relationships is now. Great. Other questions? Can I see one over here? There we go. Good afternoon. Ken Christie from MITRE's National Security, FFRDC. We've had a really good discussions in this panel on the partnership between industry and defense and other discussions related to supply chain. And so I'm wondering what you think about with your software supply chain, especially as you get into such critical infrastructure as space defense networks. I think one of the things that Kase is definitely focused on is the radiation harden of FPGAs. We're no longer just in hardwired ASICs. You really need to be able, while you're up there, you need to, you have a limited amount of power in space, right? So whether we're using our solar or array drives to help us, you know, if we're having to defend ourselves, then we're gonna reduce some of our life. So one of the things that we really wanna do is move towards these reprogrammable FPGA so that we can relearn, we can retrain, and then we can actually not just collect the data, but maybe even given a new mission through new software uploads. I can tell you all, at least on the software company sides, we're trying to recover our ability to be able to own our own chips. That is a place that we got very, very far behind for decades, and now that's an area that the commercial tech industry has actually really started to ramp up efforts to make sure that we can recover that are American made, secure. We're looking at a lot of different types of technologies, working with glass and some other areas, which is really pretty exciting. So there's a ton of really interesting things taking place in chip technology today as well. Great. Okay. Hello, team. My name is Major Leipung with the Joint Staff, J7. Part of our interests are JEDC2 and growing the next, I guess, JDNO, Joint All-Domain Officer. Part of what I'm sitting here listening to, the flash to bang from the capabilities emerging in the new gadgets in response to the threats, but what about the doctrine piece to keep the joint force educated over? So I can, I'll take a swing at that first, is I mean, it is moving out, and I tried to capture that sort of in the opening, is we're not taking the years to rewrite doctrine. There's, at least on the Marine Corps side, you're seeing sort of the 85% solution is out on the street, and we're moving forward and we'll correct it or update it over time or as new capabilities software is produced and applicable. Same in the schoolhouses. The Marine Corps schoolhouses are incredibly dynamic and up to date, constantly updating their programs of instruction, and this is both officer and enlisted. The same thing on the training side. So there are lessons that are observed in current deployments. Those are immediately fed back into two lanes, really the capability development lane and then lessons observed back into the training and education lane. And so it is, it's a constant assessment and it's a constant feedback loop that I think we're seeing across the service. Okay, Damien. If I can add on to that from our perspective, we're looking at for SDA, the transport layer being the backbone for JADC2. So what we have as part of SDA is a warfighter integration cell. And their task, obviously by the cell's title is to work with the warfighter community, the services, the component commanders, the combatant commanders, the joint staff to actually get their input as to how our satellites are going to work, how they're going to incorporate the NDSA, the transport and the tracking layer into how they plan to fight and how they plan to train. So we're looking at leveraging their abilities, their knowledge from a combatant command and the service perspective to see how they can incorporate our technology into how they train and how they fight. And at the same time, our bi-weekly outreach to the warfighting community, understanding and over time developing that doctrine. So essentially, they'll see how we're actually going to be able to employ our satellite systems, how they're actually going to be fighting those, whether it's a con-op and doctrine and eventually trickling down to the schoolhouses, to those major fleet exercises, those joint exercises and even a unit, even part of a carrier strike group or an army work-up cycle, be part of that training cycle. And that takes initially now working with the combatant commands and the services all the way down to once it's refined once it's, we have the con-ops and we understand how our architectures work together, establish the doctrine. So it is part of all the training cycles for these services, the army, the navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps. And the major brings up a good point is, so it's doctrine is all ranks, right? And that's the important. So if we start to, if you continue to sort of stovepipe, you use JADC2 as an example. Well, if that JADC2 just sits in your G6, your commos bucket and hey, that's a G6 thing, then we've missed the boat, right? That's a two intel officers, your operations officers, he's logistics officers, how are you gonna support it, your commos? I mean, all of that integration is absolutely necessary from a doctrinal perspective, from personnel and material to actually capability. I love this kind of dovetail off of what you just asked. The other thing that we at least were the way we're kind of trying to look at it. So JADC2 makes my heart go pitter-patter because it's tons of disparate types of sensors. It looks like all kinds of like crazy different types of data sets to everybody else, but to the tech industry, it's ones and zeros. The play that we typically try to look at those problems though is in the absence of having established and well-practiced doctrine, how can we make it easy? And that's the one place where I think that the tech industry is actually really uniquely postured to be able to solve some of these problems because we look at them like ones and zeros. The question could be like, okay, what are you trying to accomplish? You're trying to use all these different sensor data. You wanna bring in some open source information. You wanna, are you trying to target? Okay, great. A lot of times the warfighters just wanna be able to have some type of an analytic with all of the data coming in rather than having to like think about it and integrate a lot of different systems. So in some ways, we kind of look at it as the doctrine part of the doctrine problem is just making it easy for everyone to use the information that they're actually ingesting regardless of the type of sensor where it's coming from. And that's from the tactical level all the way to the strategic level. If you can process it faster, make sense of it really, really fast and you can get it to the tactical level all the way to the strategic level, then you're starting to kind of like break down doctrine barriers in ways just because the information that you need is easy to use and easy to access. An interoperability being key. If I go back to one of your earlier questions about the needs from commercial side, it's gotta be interoperable from fielding, right? So if we're all part of, we're all part of fall under the umbrella of JADC2 and trying to fill out that kill web, your sensor, who knows who your sensor's gonna be and who knows who your shooter's gonna be and your shooter may change in the seconds that you referenced before. And so being able to communicate. Okay, other questions. Great questions. I went over here. I have a question you had brought up a little bit about hypersonics. Could you just briefly talk about the challenge of tracking? You had mentioned tracking earlier, intercepting them and anything that we're learning from Russia's implementation in Ukraine. So I will respectfully pass on the last part. Keep myself out of trouble. So for hypersonics, it's one of our key missions which is why we're implementing the tracking later. The reason why we pick the periphery low earth orbit is so we can get the hypersonics, not just the initial flash, which can be seen by geosynchronous, medium earth orbit and low earth orbits. It's also when it's in flight and when it's a little dimmer, a little harder to catch from the medium and higher elevations or atmospheres beyond what we're going at at about 1,000 kilometers is where our tracking later will be. So the emphasis to be able to use that low earth orbit to detect the signals or the OPIR signal from the hypersonic as well as be able to detect it with the potentially incredible amount of clutter in the atmosphere that would resemble a false positive. So we're actually not chasing phantom hypersonics. And then at that orbit, we can leverage the transport layer to again how I alluded to earlier, be able to get that data down to a fusion center and then over to a shooter as fast as possible. So we're leveraging the altitude that we're flying at, the ability from an altitude to see the hypersonic when it's a little dimmer or moving at great speed as well as be able to leverage the rest of our architecture to get that target track down to a shooter. Okay, other questions? Sweet, good afternoon gentlemen, good afternoon ma'am. My name is Thomas Garen. I'm studying at the National Intense University and I had a question relating to the space domain. I know there's a slew of anti-satellite weapons against the space domain but I'm particularly interested in non-kinetic, especially the cyber effects against our space systems. Is this a credible threat and what do we do about it? Especially in terms of how our adversaries are restructuring their forces and kind of understand that our military is heavily reliant in the space domain on our side. So I'll start with that one. So I'd go back first is on really the defense of your network and your capabilities. I think it starts there. And that's not only from a network or capability development perspective but that's everything to include physical security as well. As well as talk a lot about that's the biggest threat to the network is usually the 12 to 18 inches between the computer and the back of the chair. And so that education piece as well. And then you have to have a deterrent. So I acknowledge the threat. Again, I would talk about the network and space capability hardening, but the very similar, you know, the US has to develop similar capabilities as part of that deterrent. Other questions? Hi, Robert Cox and Pitek Solutions. I have just a general question. What do we learn from the Ukrainian experience of integrating Starlink capabilities with major weapons systems in 45 days that can actually have a command control structure showing data information to target tanks and take them out? What have we learned? Yeah, so I'll tread lightly on it. I would say lessons observed. I think it goes somewhat back to the question we had before about what can you leverage from the commercial side? Their ability to scale, commercial office, the shelf, the ability to innovate and produce capability at low cost and the integration. I think from a grunts perspective, I mean, you really have to be concerned about all domain warfare, everything from an individual taking a phone, you know, posting it on TikTok and it goes to the cloud. And now somebody's using that information, to target or what have you seen in the news? I mean, those are concerns. You're seeing it play out today, but I would say those concerns have been around for the last five, 10 years. So some things are just coming to light and forcing us to focus on them. I'd love to add to that too, as the emergence of open source intelligence, huge right now. And it also, as much as we certainly have a relatively high reliance on classified information, been a lot of different spaces. I think if we've learned, at least on the Microsoft side, one of the things that we've learned a great deal is there is a ton of work to be done in the open source intelligence sharing, whether it's vetting the information or using it, but a lot of times, you'll start to see different anomalies start to pop up on social media that will give you an indication of warning that something bigger is coming somewhere else. Great. Jeff Burlett, Peroton Cyber Mission Sector. There's been a great deal of discussion today about JADC2, both in this session and other sessions. And I know the acquisition and the development and fielding of that solution is many years away. So my question is, what are the steps we're taking today to de-risk that acquisition, that interoperability that we're looking to get in a future system? And also, are we developing common operating pictures and TTPs that will connect the DOD in the intelligence community? I'm happy to kind of start with that one. At least on the technology side, the commercial technology side, knowing that JADC2 is coming down the pipe, most of the tech industry is not waiting for the acquisition before we start to try to figure out different ways that we can integrate in sensors. And because we are also looking at, a lot of times we're having to use open source information like AIS data on ships and MaxR data for EOIR types of data. A lot of these companies were already starting to kind of figure out ways that we can integrate those data sets and then make it readily available and immediately available to the Department of Defense rather than just waiting for an acquisition to pop. So I'd say that I think a lot of work is already being done in that space, but it's literally in the name of we need to do something. So if we wait for the acquisition cycle to play through, that's probably gonna be too late. I would add the JADC2 implementation plan is out there. I'm also responsible for Secure, Operate, and Defend the Marine Corps Enterprise Network. And part of that is what we're referring to as network modernization. That network modernization is directly tied to that implementation plan of JADC2. So as we're moving out in future network development, modernization, whether it's software or it's migrating to the cloud, those steps are already underway. To your point on the cop on ship, I think that's a great comment and that's a great discussion point. Again, under JADC2, if I go out to use the Marine Corps example of, if you have Marines on a ship forward deployed and they're inside that weapons engagement zone, and they are what part of the kill chain are they reinforcing? What part of the kill chain are they? How are they reinforcing the entire kill web? And that feeding back into a cop on a ship that may be a shooter or feeding back into, I'll call it a cop on an F-35 that might be the shooter and making sure that all of that is interconnected. And then obviously I'll go back to the transport layer. This is about decision making and the data flow. So absolutely critical part of that. That's a good question. Damon, anything to add or? I think we hit on everything related to that. Just to add briefly, when it comes to acquisitions and the speed at which I agree it needs to be fast, looking at our tranche one of the transport layer, which by 2024 it'll be up and then once tested out it starts to go with interoperability with all the services. The key focus being that it will work with what the services already have, what the mocks, the operating centers and the theaters already have. So be able to perforate that quickly is incredibly important and not actually using the traditional acquisition process. SDA has modified it to we have the capability we're putting in on orbit and relying on the flag levels, the warfighter council to say yes, go forth and kind of bypassing the traditional rent free process. So I think that working well with my colleagues up here have mentioned, I think that's how you get JADC to operationally faster. Other questions? Well, my name is Daniel Moliano with Naval Service Warfare Center and my question is about the quality of sensor data collected by the satellites. It's more specifically regarding the effects of adverse weather and atmosphere impacts on those sensor data and if there are any plans on how to mitigate that, especially regarding false positives and false negatives on track recognitions such as hypersonics. I think that's one of those beautiful places where the tech industry can also be helpful. When you think about, I've got a bad picture with an EOIR feed, what's better than layering that with SAR data? SAR data, whether it doesn't matter. So obviously there's other phenomenon that you would have to worry about, sandstorms and other things like that, but bringing in everything that you have and figuring out how to put those on top of each other, especially with some type of predictable reliance on maybe you're tracking a target, the clouds roll through, you've got good SAR data that's able to kind of follow that target all the way and you can maintain custody that's with a relatively good predictability that's probably the place that we need to start looking at is figuring out ways like what works and what doesn't work and how can we start to put those different types of data sets together to paint a more holistic picture of what you're trying to get accomplished. Yeah, I think you bring up a very good point when it comes to being a collaborative effort. First, it's that fusion, it's that layered fusion between not just what you're seeing on that one satellite is what the global picture looks like focused on that one target, leveraging multiple and multiple assets down to that fusion center that's hardening cell and the decision makers as to what to do with that threat of potential threat. For SDA, that is why we're launching our Tronch Zero, our warfighter immersion. For tracking, it's exactly doing that, is working with industry when it comes to false positive, when it comes to weather, and cold weather, sandstorms, to identify how the satellites will work and what potentially gaps there are looking at that Tronch Zero. And that will affect what we will put on orbit for Tronch One for the tracking layer for those satellites. So fast lessons learned and most importantly, industry's ability to adapt while that is in production could be critical. Or it gets pushed on to the Tronch Two tracking layer once it's funded and it goes beyond planning to production. So that's how I think our organization, SDA, working with industry as well as defense partners, we were to execute and mitigate the challenges you presented as best we possibly can. Okay, in the back there. Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, Robert Stukes, P-E-O-I-W-S. I wanted to ask how satellites are being protected against directed energy weapons and electronic attack other mediums like that. Sorry to go Star Wars. I can handle that in generalities without going into any of our vulnerability assessments are. That, I can answer your question without directly answering your question. That is why we have a proliferated low earth orbit architecture while we're putting up hundreds of satellites is to essentially if a, whether it's directed energy, an anti-satellite missile takes one out, you cannot cost effectively take out 126 or potentially 400 satellites. If you do, it would take you a while, particularly in a hot war where the weapons that are shooting out of satellites, whether they're kinetic or energy are also targets for us. So I think that's one of the advantages we have with a low earth orbit architecture is a proliferated low earth orbit architecture is we have too many satellites for you to effectively destroy or render useless in a, over a, take you a longer period of time than if we had just one exquisite or two exquisite satellites where if it's done, then we lost a major capability. Hopefully that's a very good non-answer to your question. Other questions. I think we have time for one more. There we go. You talked earlier about global challenges and the global answers. Space junk has been a problem for three, four decades and it's only gotten worse. In charge of sharing data across national state lines and cross domains, what is the focus on space junk cleaning up? So I think for SDA, I have to allude to the answer I gave earlier is successfully de-orbiting our satellites so they do not become space junk. That is our focus as well as making sure our satellites as our technology advances to not run into space junk and therefore become space junk. So I think that's from our perspective of how we can be good stewards of the low-earth orbit altitudes that we're operating at. I think from a US space com perspective as a component, I would echo work that's being done with response with respect to responsible behavior but also really space domain awareness and developing those capabilities and improving those sensors to be able to detect and then report track all of that debris that's up there with space commas put out already with the spacetrack.org would be a good example. Great. So we're out of time. You've been a great audience with lots of really good questions. Thank you very much for that. So I wanna thank the Navy League for putting this on, inviting us and last but not least if we could get our panelists a round of applause. Have a good rest of the exposition. Thank you. Thank you.