 Hi, my name is Sarah Monara. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to play a big part in the establishment of the United States Space Force and the re-establishment of the United States Space Command. I was the staff director for the Strategic Forces Subcommittee in the House of Representatives in both the majority and the minority. I now happily serve as a senior defense fellow with the Center for New American Security where I focus on space and strategic forces issues. Let me say thank you to the Secure World Foundation for having me to talk a little bit about Space Force, how it happened and where it can go in the future. Let me first recognize that the call for an independent Space Force really started around 20 years ago with senators like Bob Smith from New Hampshire, the 31st Marine Corps Commandant, General Chuck Kruliek, as well as at the time, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. It wasn't until almost 20 years of reform and reorganization had occurred that Congress started to believe that these challenges were so big that the executive branch was not capable of fixing them on their own, which is where Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama and Jim Cooper of Tennessee entered the scene in 2017. The gentleman asked a pretty simple oversight question. Who's in charge of DOD military space? And instead of getting a simple answer, what they got back was a labyrinthian chart with over 60 different organizations, all of whom were able to say no to a specific space acquisition, but none of whom were responsible and authorized to say yes. Over the next couple of years with the help of individually motivated senators and the executive branch, the reasons for developing a space force started to really crystallize and there were four of them. The first was really resourcing. In a resource constrained environment, who was advocating for space unique budgets? And if a tough choice needed to be made between an air-breathing platform and a space system, how is that going to be made? The second was really about requirements and acquisition. With the rise of threats to our space assets coupled with the innovation and the potential that's coming out of the commercial sector are the processes that the DOD uses for defining requirements and for buying and purchasing and developing satellite systems adequate to be able to address these concerns in a quick and responsive manner. The third was really about culture, about cadre development. Who wakes up in the morning and thinks solely about space operators? How are they trained? What is their career progression? What is their opportunity for growth? And how will that be fostered into the future? And lastly, with the recognition that space was a war fighting domain, how did this fundamentally change how terrestrial operations would be executed and how future war fighting concepts would be developed? Space forces still less than two years old. They've made consistent progress in addressing all four of these issues. And I anticipate that they will continue to do so. In general, I think space force would be well served by going back and looking at those first four issues or challenges that were identified by Congress in the establishment of space force and the reestablishment of space command. I think they need to build honest and transparent relationships with their oversight committees and have the courage to shape their own destiny. And this is important because it's not just some science fiction kind of trope. It's about recognizing that space force has the opportunity not only to make history but to shape the future. And it does this by prioritizing space resources, by choosing winners in the private sector, by making big bets on advanced technology and by challenging legacy architectures that have been with us since the Cold War. In this way, space force gets to define itself in other ways the services only wish they could. At the same time, let's recognize that space force will encounter challenges. Let's be honest, all of the space force leadership prior to 2020 was Air Force leadership. And so as an individual, it's now up to them who were raised in Air Force culture to navigate these challenging incremental steps towards independence. Let's recognize how personally and professionally challenging that will be for them. Nonetheless, it is their responsibility not only to change how they were taught to think about space but to make demonstrably different decisions about how they acquire and operate space systems. I'm really loath to talk and perpetuate Star Trek references when talking about space force. And I've been counseled plenty of times not to do it. I'm actually gonna kind of open the aperture a little bit here. If I had to give guiding advice to the space force, I would probably quote Mae Jemison, one of our NASA astronauts, never limit yourself because of others limited imagination. Never limit others because of your limited imagination. Thanks for having me. And I hope you have a wonderful conversation. Hello everyone. My name is Brian Whedon. I'm the director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation. As Sarah discussed in her spotlight talk, the creation of the space force was the continuation of a long running debate on how the US military should approach its activities in space domain. Part of that debate has been what is the role of the US military in space? Is it primarily to create capabilities that support enhanced terrestrial operations or should there be more of a focus on in space activities and capabilities to suit missions in space? Today we're gonna have a panel that's gonna unpack all that issue, but before we get started, we wanna make sure we get some of your thoughts on this issue. As Crystal mentioned, there's a poll running over Mentimeter. We're gonna be wrapping up in just a minute here where you can add your opinion on this question. While you're finishing up filling out that poll, let me go ahead and introduce my speakers for this panel. First, we have Colonel Casey Beard, who is commander of Delta nine of space operations command of the US space force, which focuses on orbital warfare. Prior to that, he was deputy director of space strategy and plans directorate in the office of secretary of defense. We also have Dr. Bledin Bowen, he's a lecturer in international relations at the University of Leicester and he's an expert on space warfare, international relations in outer space and strategic theory. We also have Ms. Caitlin Johnson, who's the deputy director of the aerospace security project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of the editors of their annual space threat assessment report. And finally, we have Dr. Mir Sadant, who's the founding editor in chief of the space force journal and a former director on the National Treaty Council, as well as a prior intelligence and space officer with the US Navy. Their full bios are on the website and I welcome all four of you to our panel today. So as Sarah mentioned, the creation of the space force involved multiple different problems that were trying to be solved. How do we deal with the proper resourcing of the US military space activities? How do we reform and update the acquisitions process and creating requirements for military space activities? How do we create a professional space culture and cadre and sort of break away from that air focused mindset that Sarah mentioned. But what we want to talk about and kind of focus on in this panel is the things she mentioned at the end about imagination and how that affects how we think about space activities. And it really gets to this core question of what does the future of space activities look like? How should the US military be using space? And are we gonna, is it gonna continue to have this focus on space to support terrestrial operations? Or is that focus gonna shift where it's more of an in space? Before we get to the discussion, can we go ahead and show the results from the audience poll? So very interesting, at least to me, that we have two thirds of the audience thinks that the focus should probably shift towards developing these new missions and capabilities towards an in space activity. That's pretty interesting. It was actually, I was expecting a little bit more 50-50, but that's quite interesting. So now let's go back to the discussion. Caitlin Johnson, I'd like to start with you. We heard Sarah talk about the role the military is being a driver for the space force. Can you sort of expand on this? What was that historical debate about the role the military in space and why was it important? Sure, well, thanks for having me, Brian and the Secure World Foundation. It's always just an incredible pleasure to talk with you guys and with this awesome panel. I'm really excited for the discussion. Sarah, as always, was brilliant in her spotlight talk and I think really laid out the foundations of why the space force was created and what the debate in Congress was like. As she mentioned, it was not new. And the debate of what and how the military should operate in space, it's also not new and has been ongoing really since the start of the space age in the launch of Sputnik. So we're really talking about who will advocate and own space? Who will determine what the missions are and what those missions will be? Often this is talked about in the concepts of war fighting for the layman's terms. The way I kind of think about it without military jargon is the supporting or the leading mission in space. And I don't necessarily believe that one is better than the others. And I know that my colleagues, Mir and Levin have written on this extensively. So I'm very excited to see what their perspectives are and how they articulate those. But the debate has always been while space provides an incredible supporting infrastructure for the US military through communications, through command and control of our nuclear forces, intelligence gathering through ISR and remote sensing. We're really seeing this debate pick up and a new focus on and partially I think driven by the Space Force and Space Command establishment of is this the right mission that we should be focusing on or should we start shifting towards whatever these future missions are? And we often see people talk about space as learner space, as providing incredible national security advantage and how to start developing missions there. And so I think right now within the department we've have a couple of different camps, not just new versus old, but also where should we, where should the Space Force and Space Command really start focusing their efforts and planning for future systems? Because as we know, space systems take a long time to acquire and develop and launch. So we have to start thinking about this now. Yeah, thank you. That's excellent point. So, Bledin, she's first said that I'm great. I'm going to turn to you. This is not the first time this question of what is the purpose of military Space Force has been imposed. Can you give us a quick summary of sort of the history of how that debate has played out? Yeah, sure. And thanks very much for the invitation to be here today. And congratulations on a great summit. Yeah, so a great introduction by Sir Minero there as well and background on this. And the debate and the conversation within the USA Force goes back far more than 20 years, arguably the idea of a space core or a Space Force or anything that's sort of more independent as a space entity within the DoD goes back to arguably the start of the USA Force itself. Definitely by the late 1950s when military space activities and applications were certainly going to be a thing, especially after 1956 or so. So those ideas have been running around in various corridors of the DoD for a very, very long time and they had been flow. And the USA Force traditionally faced a few push and pull and tensions in this because of course as any bureaucratic entity it enjoyed the budget that came with space. So more budget means usually more influence. So they wanted to keep hold of the space budget and the Army and the Navy did try to compete to keep their various space budgets and activities in the 1950s but eventually lost out to the intelligence agencies NASA and the USA Force. So as well as giving the budget, it had to make sure that it didn't neglect space too much otherwise Congress would take space off of it. But also if it did space too well, arguably it would create enough of a subculture and bureaucracy within the Air Force that would then spin off into a more separate organization which is arguably now what has happened that due to political intervention from the former president Donald Trump which jumped on the pre-existing bipartisan drive that was already in the works as we already heard from Sarah. So those general arguments of a culture really have been pretty consistent and there was some headway of course in the 1980s after the Goldwater and Nichols Act which provided a bit more operational coherence within the USA Force with regard to space and more joined up military planning and execution of operations within Strategic Command and US Space Force Command as well. So a lot of these old structures are being resuscitated and also brings things back that were ended under the George W. Bush administration as well. So there's a lot of old bureaucracy and arguments that are now taking part in slightly different bureaucratic settings with the Space Force. Yeah, thank you for that. So, Mir, you were serving on the National Security Council while the most recent iterations debate was unfolding. How did it play out there? What were some of the changing geopolitical dynamics and space domain dynamics that you saw playing into this? Yeah, thank you so much Brian for the invitation and Secure World Foundation for hosting this event. I'm extremely humbled to be on such a great panel with everybody. Just first of all, I'm speaking my personal capacity and representing myself, not the US government or any of its agencies, departments or services. And the perspective is a national security perspective, right? So one of the things that I was very keen on after the new administration took off to see how their major policy which I would consider as the China policy plays out. And we see that is very much an extension of the previous administration's policies. Of course, there are the means of which those policies get enacted, maybe and are probably very different. One of the things that the last administration faced was turning the tide on China. And what I mean by that was a lot of turning of the Nelson's eye on what China is doing, a lot of they have us in a unistrategic location where we can't, they backed us into a corner. We didn't have that problem with Russia because our supply chain was independent of any Russian production or means of supply. And so that is interesting. And it's interesting to see how in Congress we see a bipartisan movement to see how we can get China to start playing along with everybody and start appreciating the rules of the road, some of the international systems, norms and values that have been guiding our system for about 80 years or so. And then the primary drive for the White House has been and I think will be is to ensure that United States and our allies and partners around the world, those who believe in democratic norms and values, ethical practices and business, financial transparency and not polluting the environment and staying within bounds. I think those are the ones that will live on that we will also lead in space. And I think the single best long-term initiative that the Biden administration and Congress can undertake is to really address China's ever ambitious revisionist aspirations. And really the Biden administration has an opportunity to take something out of the Kennedy Johnson playbook and go all in sort of what Sarah mentioned earlier in American space development. And I think that is something that is very important. The one piece that I think the last administration just couldn't get to it is Artemis program. The Artemis program is not NASA's program. It's the program of the United States of America. It's the United States Artemis program. And so that is an important piece. If we don't understand the full spectrum of space power, then we find ourselves following the next century leaders. And Artemis is part of space power and does the calculation of national security involves it because our adversaries, nations that don't consider us as friends have integrated their national security, commercial and civil seamlessly. And so the question is, do we want to lead in space or not or do we want other nations to lead and we follow them? That's fine if we want to do that. And so I think that is some of the discussions that we had in the White House without getting into specifics of it. But that was what the themes were. And I'm assuming that that will be the themes as we see in the media and in some of the statements being played out right now and the interagency meetings. And of course, every agency has their particular perspective and so that is going to be negotiated. Great, thank you. So current virtual on turn to you now, you were also on the ground floor of some of the discussions, both within the Air Force and your time with us at your defense. Can you add in what you were seeing both from an operational perspective and maybe also on sort of some of these policy considerations about this changing nature of the space domain in the last few years? Sure, yeah. Thanks, Brian. And again, like my colleagues have mentioned, thank you to Secure World Foundation for the invite to participate on this on the stellar and esteemed panel to discuss a very important and timely topic. So very much appreciate that as the rest have mentioned and also appreciate Sarah's comments at the opening and those that have been mentioned to this point. What I would add maybe another perspective to all the spot on statements that have already been made from an operational perspective is the threat environment itself. And so the way I would look at this, the two bins that I would categorize the evolution and the development of the space force and the rationale for it is the combination of the United States and our allies and partners exceed increased reliance on space for national prosperity and for security coupled with, again, an increased growth or a trend in the threat environment that could potentially deny that access. And if we go back to a shorter period of history, and there's always a danger if you will of trying to oversimplify historical correlations to what you see now, I think there's an important time period that it's important to understand here. If we go back 30 years to 1991, two seminal events occurred in the same year. The first was Desert Storm in Iraq. And the second was the collapse of the Soviet Union and ultimately the end of the Cold War. And those two events really did contribute to the next 30 years, the culture that had been developed, the perspectives, the paradigm, if you will of how space contributes to national security and what the military's role is in that. And I would say with the first example, Desert Storm really introduced, as some have been quoted in the past as saying the first space war, introduced space capabilities into the theater fight, position navigation and timing, military satellite communications, missile warning. And the asymmetric advantage that we gained and we witnessed and realized in Desert Storm was largely attributed to those space based capabilities. And that set us on a course to exponentially grow those capabilities that a man's signal in the Department of Defense in particular was exceeding what we could even develop and acquire in field. And so that was the world that we grew up in over the last 30 years. And we're at a point now where we do not project or employ our instruments of national power without space. On the flip side, the second example with the fall of the Soviet Union, collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, we effectively lost a peer competitor that could challenge us and prevent access to the domain. And so while maybe smaller threats in terms of jamming and other capabilities or operations may have persisted over the past 30 years, at the end of the day, our peer competitor had been lost. So what that effectively meant is that we could acquire, develop, field more highly technical, highly capable systems to support theater operations and didn't have to necessarily prioritize the end domain requirement or capabilities to protect those systems because that just wasn't there or wasn't as credible or as persistent or prevailing. And what we've seen over the last decade plus, for example, China's direct descent launch in 2007 that's well documented and recorded in a series of other activities, the threat environment now has begun to increase and mature and become more complex. So ultimately it's that addition to the operational environment and again, in addition to the four imperatives that Sarah had mentioned that really give rise to the need to have a separate service that is exclusively designed to develop the doctrine, the capabilities, the professionals that are steeped in understanding the domain and are able to be able to leverage the domain's capabilities and characteristics for again, national security and prosperity and the threat environment is probably is a central reason for that. Thank you for that. It's a great recap of sort of that more near history and sort of what the military saw and how we've been changing some of the around some of those capabilities. So, I mean, I wanna go back to you and sort of now get to sort of the crux of the question that we're trying to get to this panel. You've been pretty outspoken in recent writings and some of the discussions that the Space Force should move beyond just sort of this support orientation of supporting trust operations and you hit into that in your initial remarks. Can you summarize that argument in let's say two minutes or so, you know, why do you think the Space Force needs to look beyond just the traditional supporting role? Two minutes, okay. So it took Shaggy Beard nine months to write the capstone and it's not two pages, but okay. So yesterday, if you didn't read Space Force Guardian Captain Chris Fabian wrote an excellent piece in The Hill. So I would recommend you for you to read that and look at all the links. So China has proclaimed themselves that they wanna become humanity's dominant space power by 2045 and China is not containing themselves to Leo, right? And they're looking beyond. And so that is something that should concern us. That should also be something that should have a chilling effect on how we are calculating because we saw, we see on earth around the planet how they behave, right? Extermination of Uyghur Muslims, the Hong Kong protests, the harassment of China, the COVID pandemic cover up and so forth. And then also in space, we saw that and things have changed and I've seen their behavior changed for the better. We saw their reckless 2007 ASAP test. We have debris still orbiting until 2027 or so, right? And while they're still interested in Leo they are now looking beyond Leo and they're integrating commercial and civil technologies into their national security system enterprise and set their targets on geo and ex-gio. And as was mentioned, ex-gio has been coined as a cis-lunar area of operation, right? And so that's an important piece to think about. And I like this terminology. We hear blue water, brown water but I like this terminology that Coast Guard captain Mike Sinclair coined earlier on last year called look down space infrastructure, right? Which provides us everything PNT, geospatial imagery, communications and also other sort of non-security related things like weather, aviation control, maritime traffic even well left trafficking control and then climate and earth science research, right? Today, the DOD is very focused and as it should on look down operations, right? And defense of our United States based assets that facilitate those operations, right? We cannot stop doing that. We should not stop doing that. This is starting, but the idea is starting to become more encompassing and inclusive and we see some evolvements in that. And we yesterday or today AFRL released a primer on the cis-lunar, right? And so we need to start looking at that. We need to start planning for that because if we're not there right now I know the argument is always, hey, we're not there right now but guess what? The Chinese are planning and they're building and they will be there and then we're gonna be looking like fools without proper planning, right? So we will have to have the capabilities to protect our look down infrastructure but at the same time, we need to start looking at what is needed for look up national security space operations. We need to start looking at what acquisition authorities need to be made more flexible. We need to have a gap analysis. We need to start thinking up corresponding closing of operational authorities to address that, right? So we can have that full spectrum capability. And also most importantly, as a national security person, I'm concerned because I don't want the Chinese government having unilateral dominion and control and holding my critical capabilities at risk whether it's the look down capabilities or the look out and up capabilities, right? So that's the important piece that I think we need to be looking at. And so one of the things that we know we like to think about is and I'll compare this to, we've been talking some history is how our highways were built, right? And so, in the same way President Eisenhower had the foresight to do look out development of our interstate highway. Even before there were enough cars and trucks to utilize them, right? We must invest in the same way to secure a space infrastructure today because we know it will be there, right? Everybody's looking at the economic projections. And so that is what China is doing and that is what we really haven't started yet, right? And we need to start thinking about it. And for example, space systems need to be part of the 17, 16 plus space needs to become part of the 17 critical infrastructures that DHS lists, right? I would say, I would end with this that if Eisenhower would be alive today and I wish he were, he would totally support developing the space highway system of tomorrow, right? Just as the interstate highway knitted us together and introduced our country to each other, we can introduce humanity to each other, but it really needs to be who will build that infrastructure and who will be in control of that infrastructure. And if we are not, then we relegate that to China and that is where we're at right now. Great, thank you for that. So, Plet, I want to turn to you now. You've recently written a book on space strategy that argued essentially the other side of this issue that space is likely to remain largely a support function. Can you summarize that argument in a couple of minutes? Yeah, thanks for having me. Condensing eight years worth of work in the two minutes. Well, look, we're still not looking at the book, right? My book is, the analogy I push in my book is that we have to see a little bit more of a coastline and concepts of blue water, sea power that a lot of people like to use about military space thinking and strategy. That sort of fits more with what may or may not one day happen with interplanetary space. But when we talk about satellites in Earth orbit, the coastal mindset is really the best one to think because it really is about infrastructure and support of needs on Earth, military, civilian, economic, commercial, security, intelligence, the lot. But even in Earth orbit though, I would disagree with that interpretation at the start there that it's rather the implication with the poll at the start of this panel that it's either or, it's not support versus combat. As we know in Earth orbit, combat and support operations have a long history in space and in Earth orbit. So even in the environment, in coastal operations, it doesn't exclude military, offensive or warfare operations and not just logistics. So both do happen, but the way we approach space power is about the influence of that environment on the terrestrial environments, land, sea and air. And if you can't use infrastructure or if the use or non-use of orbital infrastructure of space makes no difference on Earth and there's no point to waging space warfare in the first place. The same with the Navy, the same with the air. There's no point just doing stuff in their own environments for their own reasons if it has absolutely no impact on what goes on the ground. So conceptually that's the starting point. It's about the use and the influence you gain from that medium. Battle is a means, not an end. So continually seeking battle is not necessarily the right mindset. So when thinking about space culture and new space services or more units within military forces around the world now doing space, for me it's the logistics mindset is where you start and then combat operations and thinking has to then support those logistics operations. So that's the way around, I would argue it and it's not a one or the other approach but I would keep it to Earth orbit and leave Cisluna to the fantasists. Thank you for that. So we're gonna turn to audience questions here in a minute and I see there's already several that have been piling up in there. But one of the ones that you just mentioned that one of the audience questions we've gotten in here is exactly that, right? We sort of created a bit of a manufactured choice here between one or the other when it really is we kind of have to do both. So Colonel Beard, I'll turn to you now is because you were part of the team that wrote the Space Capsule publication for the Space Force. How did you guys approach this issue? And is this where you felt that you felt that Space Force had to deal with both? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I would continue on with just the last comment that was made that at no point in time, part of the team that had drafted this in advance of the service becoming a reality, did we parse it out in that stark of a manner? What we did realize and what we wanted to emphasize in writing this first capstone publication were three things, three motivations behind it and those all tie into answering the question here. The first was that space power had matured to the point that it warranted its own independent articulation and that was the first prevailing motivation that drove us to this. The second motivation was that when we were to have a new service should we have a new service that that service would need a central document that provided its purpose, its identity and its culture separate from but coordinated with and integrated with the other services. Those that joined the Space Force and no longer be Marines, airmen, soldiers, sailors, et cetera. And the third motivation which is equally related, I should say was that the Joint Force would also have to understand what the Space Force brings and what space power brings to the Joint Fight to National Security. And it's in that framework that this discussion really kind of started to abound and we identified in addition to those three cornerstone responsibilities of the service. The first is to preserve freedom of action in the domain. The second is to enhance joint lethality and that's, you could, you could suggest that that's what the space capabilities military space has been doing for decades. And the third cornerstone responsibilities was to provide independent options. And if you look at that context to this blue versus brown looking down versus up discussion, it really is a combination of both. We have to first and foremost preserve freedom of action to those capabilities that enable us and provide the prosperity and security that we have. And that is an inherently brown water, if you will dialogue, that we have to maintain access to those capabilities which already exist and which might be threatened and potentially could be removed in a detrimental fashion. And at the same time though, we do put hooks in the capstone publication in the doctrine that speaks to CIS Lunar XGO with the anticipation that national interests, national objectives would expand beyond the geocentric orbit and that the concept of preserving freedom of action, providing independent options, they are not contained to a specific geolocation or geocentric location, if you will, or orbit regime. And so those requirements that cornerstone responsibilities would expand as national interests expand and that the military would have a role pervasively to be able to provide those no matter where we are. But I would also say, regardless of when and where that happens, the fundamental premise of defense and space power and combat power in the domain has to also and always remain in our geocentric regime which is providing support to terrestrial operations. But again, we are not limited to that. Should we expand the military and the space force of particular must be on guard and on call to be able to provide that and continue that support, freedom of action beyond. Great, thank you for that. So, Caitlin, I'll turn to you and sort of get your thoughts on this. And in particular to me, one of the issues with doing both is that creates some resource challenges, particularly on the budgeting side. So how do you see this and what do you think some of the challenges are in working through this? That is exactly what I was gonna say. So it's not a one or the other approach. However, in the current state of our resource constrained environment and in the future, looking at a further resource constrained environment, we're going to have to make tough decisions not to eliminate the great capability that we already have, but decisions on what to further invest in. And as Sarah said at the beginning, the space force has incredible opportunity and responsibility in promoting commercial space in starting and investing in new technologies and new missions. And so that's kind of where this resource issue plays in. I don't think there are, I think there are pros and cons to this debate on all sides. What I'm really excited about is that having this debate in open forums like this is causing further research, deeper discussion and even more study and getting attention onto the issue and the smart minds thinking about it will help us make more informed and technically informed policies. So not just what we can dream of and throwing in Star Wars and Space Trek Reference, but really what are we physically capable of and where is the conversation leading us while keeping in mind that we can't just posture ourselves against what we think our adversaries are doing. We must do what will protect and support our troops and our capabilities and our national security at home. Thank you. Mir, I want to pull up one of the audience questions here and sort of get your reaction to it. And it's something that I wonder myself and that's, you mentioned that China has talked about dominating space and becoming sort of the global space power the next, I think about 2050. But the U.S. has also talked about that dating back for a few decades now and has had U.S. policies or doctrine statements from the U.S. military talking about space, Donald, space superiority. How much do you think that maybe China's thinking on this was influenced by prior U.S. thinking and are they both approaching the same way or is China really thinking about it differently than the way U.S. has in the past? Yeah, Brian, that's a great point. Let me just also reiterate, I'm a violent agreement with Casey Beard. So I think the document had a great, like he said, stepping stone for expansion, right? And to the blue water sort of space aspect. So once we get there, we will be able to expand. So I think that was an important aspect that I was very happy to see in the capsule. So when we talk about a domination, right? Nobody can dominate space. Like I had a conversation a couple of days ago with someone about Lagrange points. Like they're as big as the Mediterranean ocean. Like how are you gonna dominate the entire Mediterranean ocean, right? Even physically on earth, it's not that easy to do, right? So we're not talking about dominating space. What we're talking about is different things. And like you said, China's really smart move of the Beto system, right? The alternative to GPS, who are they bringing on board for that? It's very shrewd. It's very smart. It's something straight out of our playbook, right? But they are making sure that there's no dependency on the US. They're making sure that the little coalition or the big coalition that they're building, there's no dependency on the US. And that then if they wanted to, they could tap in and get a national security or intelligence information from that system, right? The belts and roads a process, right? It's something very similar to the Marshall plan, but different, right? And so they are doing that. And they should be doing that. If I was in China and I was advising the Chinese leadership, I was Chinese, I would tell them, do that. What are we doing, right? So what I'm saying is that the industry, right? The commercial industry is being dominated by China, right? The aggressive manner in which they are making sure our companies are being driven out of business where they factor and they disband and they send our production lines overseas similar to what happened with solar panels, right? The US has created another mass producer of solar panels who are dependent on them. These are ways where they dominate. So they dominate in that aspect, right? The US really doesn't have a problem. The US military doesn't have a problem of dominance, right? The Navy's goal is to always be dominant and the Navy is gonna be much more robust about it than the Air Force. Air Force talks about air superiority. I'm pushing for, hey, we need space supremacy, right? There's a big difference between dominance and supremacy and superiority, right? Superiority, hey, any day one group can win, right? Supremacy at a specific location, at a specific time, you will win. But when we dominate, the Navy dominates, they will dominate at any time, any location, anywhere on the earth, they will dominate. That's their goal. Whether they do or not is a different discussion. And so when we talk about the US being a dominant military force in space, that is what I mean, but the Chinese are looking at it. They're gonna be dominated from the civil side, right? They're gonna create a very unique ecosystem where everybody wants to be part of that system. They're gonna upgrade their military capabilities so that they can do things that we can't legally yet do, right? Because there's restrictions. The Space Force just signed an MOU with NASA, right? This is a first time, this is a great start. But there are certain things our government cannot do where we're bound. And then of course, it's the overall, the national idea of what's going on, right? What do Chinese people as a whole want and what do we want as a whole? So that is the importance of when we talk about dominance. And I think the Chinese are working towards that. We just need to sort of wake up and see whether that is what we want to do. Yeah, thank you for that. So I'll turn to you, Caitlin, and then I'd love them to see what your thoughts were on this sort of same question of how to view the issue of dominance. Sure, well, Brian, as you mentioned earlier, our organization CSIS writes a space threat assessment every year in tandem with Secure World's global counter space assessment. And in this research, we look at the language directly coming out of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, India, the United States. And between that research and continual research, the language is not much different from the US and China. I think you can talk about intentions. Obviously Chinese public released information is much more controlled than here in the United States. I mean, someone could be watching this right now and hear what, you know, Carl Beard is saying, what we're all saying and take that as US policy or US movement and policy. But also we need to think about what the impact of the United States' roles, responsibilities, and communications are on our allies as well as our adversaries. After the US stood up the space force and the space command, we saw a ripple effect across our allies. The UK has stood up their own space military force, so has France. And there are significant investments in space and space organizations across Europe, but also from NATO. And so I think, you know, we need to be careful about how we communicate and posture ourselves, not just looking at what China and Russia are doing and saying and thinking, but also what are our allies investing in and what kind of direction are they taking from us? Pleasure. Yes, so I think when it comes to the question of doctrine and language, I guess to Americans they'll say, well, there's no better flattery than imitation and the Chinese are learning from the best at military space and that is you, the United States. And there's been studies that's done on this showing the remarkable similarities in the learning that a lot of the People's Liberation Army have gone through in thinking about military space operation. So the language is in many ways deliberately similar and also because they are learning from similar sorts of strategic concepts from military theory. And then I think in terms of thinking more broadly about what China is doing in space, I think that's to be a bit more caution and I guess I put a bit of brakes on some of the more sort of space-racy arguments that we've heard in that. I think it's worth bearing in mind that China has spent the last 30 years investing so much money in its massive array of military and civilian space infrastructure to try and get to almost where the United States was in the mid-1990s, that sort of which China is now today in the bulk of its space infrastructure. Now there are certain target areas like space weapons where of course the Chinese do have a lot more capabilities than the United States did in the 1990s. But China has been in catch-up modes. And also if you look at a lot of documentation from China on its exploration plans on the moon and perhaps deep space probes, the deadlines are always optimistic. The same as they are in the United States and Europe and Russia, everybody likes having those diagrams on the dates that I never met. In the year 2000, China was saying that it was going to have boots on the moon in 2020. It's 2021 and they're just putting up their long-term space station into orbit. So I think we have to be a bit more careful in terms of thinking, oh, China's going to take over, it says we'll do it tomorrow. And we have to stop seeing all scientific and exploration activities as inherently dangerous and a threat as well. Because that's not how the United States would like to see its Artemis program as, even though they may well be some military involvement and the space forces talking about its lunar operations, that's the sort of language that China will jump on in the same way that a lot of American analysts jump on any sort of PLA involvement in any kind of space activity with the Chinese. That are not necessarily threats like the space station, for example. So there's a lot of mirror imaging and there's a lot of similar sort of action and reaction going on on both sides here. But also it's worth remembering that the CIS lunar environment really is not politically, sorry, is not militarily or economically significant today. And probably will not be for a very long time, especially when getting orbital infrastructures to work for real important issues, real important needs here on Earth is still something that's quite difficult to do and quite temperamental. I mean, how is GPS3 rollout coming along? Oh, it's been quite a interesting discussion. So Colonel Barrett, I'm not going to ask you to comment on GPS3 specifically. I do want to pull up another question from the audience here and touch on something we mentioned a few minutes ago and that's sort of the role of commercial in this. And so the question is, what is the US Space Force's role in terms of fostering commercial and space activities? How is it you guys are seeing that? Is it part of this equation of increasing, American space power that we talked about a little bit earlier? Yes, another great question. And I would say broadly, and many of you probably have heard General Raymond say very similar comments that the Space Force from the get-go is built to be innovative, agile, fast and future looking. And so we are really looking at everything that we can with an open canvas. I would say that as the Space Force continues to mature and our presence continues to expand and adjust to meet the needs of the nation and the sport of our allies and really to contribute to a safe, secure, accessible space domain. We're also partnering very closely with the commercial sector. And I believe that there's a symbiotic relationship between both that we can continue to seek some of the great technology, learning innovation that's being done in the commercial sector, which we're in fact, it might be even exceeding the DOD. We've seen an inflection point over the last couple of decades where the DOD has largely been the leader of technology and fielding of that technology. And in this case, now the commercial sector really has the preponderance of that. And so we have already established several connections and bonds with our commercial partners to understand and leverage some of the approaches they take in the digital transformation that you've probably heard several times that the Space Force is trying to undertake to get us more into the 21st century and beyond. From that to infrastructure, to just other technologies that could be fielded to continue to provide robust capabilities for what we need here on earth and beyond. So I think the growth is absolutely there. In fact, I know it is. And there's evidence throughout just the first year and a half of our existence. And I absolutely see a continued growth in that relationship, more formalized growth going forward. And as if I could, before I step off too, I'd also like to contribute or add more to what Caitlin had mentioned previously about also the need to partner with our allies. This is not go it alone. This the objective of being able to maintain the security accessibility requires a team approach, whether it's commercial allies, partners, et cetera. And so that is absolutely where the Space Force is focused. And we're already seeing the benefits of that at this point. Yeah, great. Thank you for that. Mir, you wanted to chime in on this question as well. Yeah, and I think this is one of the important pieces, right? I mean, one of the reasons for the creation of the Space Force was to help with the whole procurement acquisition process. So the fact that the Space Force is doing that is an important aspect too. Don't forget that it's while the major primes have always been the backbone of a lot of the heavy lift. The innovation really lies in the smaller companies and we need to find ways at this COVID year, I was at home giving free advice to, as a government guy, I can't take money for this, but I was giving free advice for a lot of startups. And I would tell you how much time I would spend with people from the CEO down to their finance people saying we are baffled by how this process works. It's not just space acquisition and processes, but others. We need to find a way to streamline that and really find a way to streamline that because there are some amazing capabilities out there that are not integrated too. The other part that's not really looked at upon that much is how we are leveraging commercial when it's an idea that's not currently in the architecture. It is currently not something that we have imagined and getting that in there so that that becomes a requirement for future planning. That's an important aspect. So I've talked to companies where I'm like, have you talked to General Raymond? They're like, no, and there's a reason why he's not there, they're not talking to General Raymond, but the idea that this needs somehow to be incorporated into the imagination of the service so that then they can say, we are looking for stuff like this, can you approach us if you have this? That is an important piece. And then lastly, I wanna just clarify, maybe I misspoke, but when I talk about space power, I'm not talking about militarization, right? I'm talking about the national instruments of power and how we project that power into space. And so just like the Food and Drug Administration is part of our national security as we witnessed in this COVID year, the same thing is happening with NASA and space. So they are part of the national security calculus and space power. And so the DOD really must return to some of their historical roots in going back into commercial, going back to supporting civil like we did in the 50s and 60s. I mean, the president mentioned it, he wants to create a DARPA-like agency for science during the state of the union. So these are things that we need to start feeling comfortable with. I know it's maybe it's uncomfortable for some people, but we need to start feeling comfortable with. Thank you. Yeah, it's an excellent point. And that's a difficult thing to try and balance, right? How do we integrate all that stuff without sort of the military sort of, the military aspect sort of taking over all those other things, right? And you know, NASA now being pursued as potentially a military entity or having a role with that. I think that's an interesting question. So there's another question on the chat. I want to bring it up real quickly as we're sort of moving the last few minutes here. And, Bledna, I was thinking, maybe you could give kind of a quick answer to this. And the question is, you know, how can the US use the words like space, supremacy, dominance, while at the same time talk about norms of behavior, which I think it's been a big talking point for the US military the last several years. Thanks. Yeah, so in terms of squaring this circle, I draw a distinction between words like dominance and supremacy. They really are more about military doctrine and strategy and what you want to achieve in a time of open hostilities and conflict versus international cooperation and norms and rules of the road is something that you want to do, you know, with an absence of open hostilities. Therefore, when the United States Space Force will talk about denying the use of space for two adversaries, it doesn't mean denying the use of that environment in a time other than war. And the same way that the US Navy talks about dominating particular sea lines or communications and particular oceans in the event of open conflict. But during peacetime, it ensures safe passage of all legal traffic. So that's the distinction I make. And I don't see a contradiction there because rules of the road, things of that, are really more about everyday governance in times other than open warfare. So that's how I would square that circle in the language that we see coming out of these different parts of not just the US government, but many of the United States allies and also some other states as well today. Yep, great, thank you. It's a great point. So as we wrap up here, I want to give one last question I'd like to sort of each you to chime in on. And that's sort of, you know, as the Space Force and the US government in general continues to ponder this question of, you know, what does military space look like going forward? You know, give you an opportunity to pick up sort of maybe one challenge you think we should really think about as we go through that, whether it's resources, this is the policy, is it legal implications, whatever else? You know, and you know, maybe a minute or so each as we sort of, you know, one final round up for wrap up that. Mir, do you want to start? And then we'll go around. So I think the issue that I'd like to stress is what we don't have and what we need and we are constrained by the way our government works. You know, the election cycles, the fiscal cycles and all that is you really need a national space vision. Bruce Kay and I wrote about it a while back in a record for DIU and AFRL and Space Force. But I think we need to have that. The second piece that I would really talk about is we need to talk about how, why and when we should classify space systems as critical infrastructure, right? The debate is rife right now. There's legislation appending in Congress about that. And we need to start thinking about that because that will drive how we protect our look down space systems, but also start planning our reliance and our future capabilities of the look out piece of space infrastructure and systems. So I think that is the major piece I would want everybody to leave with. And we should and we can't do both. We can look down and look up and about. So I think that is something that I want to leave everybody with. Great, thank you. Caitlin? Thanks, Brian. You mentioned a lot of challenges. Obviously we kind of talked about the resource one earlier. So I want to pick something different. And I think that is the challenge of integrating commercial capabilities that already exist into our services architecture and using them actively in missions while balancing the security aspect of using commercial services and software. So making sure that, as we know, US military satellites are highly protected from attack, but commercial services might not be in the same way. And so how do you impact these requirements without signaling innovation or putting too much burden on commercial industry? But I think if commercial industry really wants to make that impact and have the government as a customer and as a reliable customer, they do also need to think about adopting a lot of the best defenses or protections in the case of a conflict or attack or in an operating in a denied environment. Yeah, and of course, in doing so, what does that do for their cost and their business model? That itself is a hugely complicated subject. So pleasant, I'll turn to you. Thanks. So I think the most interesting thing I'll be watching in the years ahead of military space in the US is the evolution of the culture in the US space force. So as Sarah said at the very start, the space force is inheriting a lot from the US Air Force both in terms of actual personnel, but in terms of procedures, institutions and what it's done as a US Air Force part for the past 60 years or so. But also in space, what is interesting to see what could develop is will there be a greater emphasis and prestige roles given towards what is effectively a logistics job? Logistics and IT support to keeping US terrestrial forces active and efficient and working, whether or not the space environment itself is degraded or not, because in space, as we know it today, we don't really need the top gun fly boy jocks. We don't need the big gunners. We don't need the flashy naval captains. You need the engineers. You need the logisticians. You need the computer geeks. So those are the people, will they see a proper home in the culture in the US space force? So I'll be keeping a close eye on how that turns out in the years to come. Yeah, and to that point, there was a recently a statement about the space force, Brandon says the digital service and sort of trying to attract some of those exact skill sets. So sorry, Colonel Beard, over to you for the final word. Yeah, Brian, thanks. Great points, all legitimate challenges, all that we were facing in here. I don't have necessarily anything new, but I want to maybe add a small tweak to those. First, I'll start off on the comment, or the question that had been asked at the very end, and in blood and I completely agree with his comment that the concept of norms of behavior and the need to attain space superiority or supremacy are not contradictory to one another. In fact, in many ways, they're complimentary. And I think one side benefit or one important benefit of being able to establish norms, how we get there is really the challenge. But the benefit of those is that you can identify and all can identify and agreed upon set of bad behaviors or unwanted behaviors that could trigger further deterrence or if necessary, defeat mechanisms. And in the absence of that, that creates the challenge. What are the ROEs? Who is in the right and who is in the wrong and that if you will, if you want to put in those terms. So the ability to attain norms of behavior in this domain is going to be a challenge, but one that we absolutely have to pursue if we're to be perfective in defense of it and prosperity of it. The other pieces on the resources, resourcing of it, it really is in the context of the DOD writ large. So now that we have a new service a year and a half in existence, what is the prioritization scheme? How does the space force itself fit into the rest of the joint force? And there will be trade-offs, in strength, budget lines, et cetera. All those challenges that we know and how does the joint force and how does the space force integrate into the rest of the services and armed forces from a prioritization standpoint to be able to get the resources it needs and understand that those trade-offs might have to be made with the more established services who've been doing this for a while. And lastly, I'll just do want to reiterate the point that Mir had mentioned about classification. Highly classified business, highly classified world and we're not able to talk a lot about it. And I know that's always creates intrigue and mystery behind it, but collectively going forward we need to have the right balance of what we can talk about, what we need to talk about to continue to advocate to solve these challenges and of course maintain the security that we might need to like we do in any other domain. And I would say those are the three, most of those have already been mentioned but I agree wholeheartedly with those. And thanks. All right, well, thank you as well. Thank you to all of you for a great discussion which we had an audience here person to give you the round of applause you all deserve. But with that, we'll wrap this up and I'll turn it back over to Crystal to introduce our second keynote speaker.