 Good afternoon. Welcome to the launch and inaugural roundtable of the Freeman Air and Space Institute. The Institute was another brainchild of Air Vice Marshal Rocky Rochelle, who recognised the mainstream air and space power debate in the UK lacked independent analysis and rigorous challenge. So that's what we have now established. Overseen by Air Vice Marshal Link Taylor and delivered through our partners in DSTL, the Institute is operated by King's College London as an independent voice to not only bring that independent analysis and discussion, but to challenge our traditional thinking. The name Freeman was chosen carefully to reflect the brilliance of Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfred Rhodes Freeman, who served in the Royal Air Force from its formation in 1918 until 1942. He was best known for his time as Air Member for Research and Development, where he oversaw the critical pre-war expansion of the Royal Air Force, including ordering the Halifax, Sterling, Hurrican, Spitfire, Lancaster and the Tempest, and perhaps his greatest legacy, the all-wooden Mosquito that was known as Freeman's Folly until its astonishing performance and utility proved his detractors very wrong. The Freeman Institute will be the conceptual and academic partner to our Rapid Capabilities Office. Both exist to be radically forward-looking and to innovate relentlessly, to challenge ourselves, our people, our industries and our processes to recognise and accelerate the rapid development and delivery of the platforms and equipment we need for the future. We'll be delighted to hear your contributions to the Freeman Air and Space Institute through our partners in King's College London. Today's roundtables are the start of a series of events which will focus on the integrated review over the next six months, which we'll be organising here at FASI. As we heard from the Chief of the Air Staff, the Institute is named after Sir Wilfred Freeman, who was crucially influential in air British air capability development in the late 1930s and during the Second World War, and indeed many regarded him as having made a significant contribution to the eventual Allied victory. He also led the Ministry of Aircraft production in the latter stages of the Second World War. As such, Freeman straddled the military, industrial and political domains, a very fitting inspiration we think for fresh thinking about air and space issues and national security in the coming decades. And before we move to the roundtable, I'd like to invite David Jordan to introduce our latest Freeman paper for Britain's Air Defenses Inventing the Future. David. Thank you, John. As our first paper, we are considering the matter of air defence. It is, of course, 80 years ago this year that the Royal Air Force led the fight to defend Britain against Nazi Germany. And we have, of course, commemorated this, perhaps not as extensively as we would have liked thanks to the pandemic, and you'll have seen a lot of television coverage relating to this. But this hints at one of the problems with air power studies to an extent, which is the tendency to focus upon the rich seems of historical information that are available. And if you look at air defence in the round, you might be forgiven for thinking that after the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the Royal Air Force's air defence forces did very little, which of course is not true. And our consideration of air defence, not only of the United Kingdom, but also British forces deployed abroad in the aftermath of the Second World War is generally rather lacking in both breadth and depth. There was a tendency in the 1950s and the 1960s to declare that the rise of intermediate-range ballistic missiles marked the end for conventional air defences. And the 1957 defence review paper by Duncan Sands suggested that the path forward was one of missiles and guided weapons and high technology. But Sands' vision was perhaps too optimistic and within a matter of years it became clear that some of the supposedly old-fashioned devices such as manned aircraft and the systems that had been in use in 1940, the basics of an integrated air defence system, it became clear that they were not quite as redundant as Sands thought. And the purpose of this paper is to contemplate the contemporary position, particularly since 1990. And one of the key points that I wish to draw out in the paper is the notion that the temptation to be seduced by technology today, artificial intelligence, cyber and remotely piloted systems, amongst others, that temptation to bring in the new and to discard immediately long-standing extant capabilities is in fact quite dangerous. The watch required in approach is a balance that we can't have technological luddism that says that there is no place for these new technologies and they're all fantastic, they're almost science fiction because that's not true. We're already seeing in the United States with their advanced battle management system the use of artificial intelligence, not only in terms of developing situational awareness, but also indeed in terms of force protection through artificial robotic dogs, for ones of a better term, to help enhance force protection on airfields. So we can't ignore that technology, but the paper advocates striking a balance between proven workable technologies and the integration of new capability and blending together those two different strands to present a very effective form of air defence, not just for the UK homeland, but also to provide protection for British forces when deployed overseas. And the paper addresses some of the capability challenges that practitioners and policymakers alike will face in trying to strike that careful balance that is needed to maintain Britain's air defences and indeed more widely in terms of defence, making sure that the balance is right. The paper does not deny that this is a formidable challenge, but it is one that is extremely important and requires great care. Thank you and I'll hand back now to John. David, thank you very much. Very interesting and I recommend the paper to everybody and it's available now to download. So the panel we're now going to convene on air and space issues brings together thinkers, practitioners and academics from a range of backgrounds to consider the challenges facing the UK and its allies in this important policy area in the coming decades. I'll briefly introduce the panelists and then give them all a chance to make their opening remarks. Moira Andrews is a lawyer with over 35 years experience of public, private and third sectors, and she now runs her own niche law firm specialising in national security and the interface between privacy and the use of cutting edge technologies, which is a senior visiting fellow in the centre for defence for the King's College London. Peter Watkins was formerly Director General of Strategy and International and Director General of Security Policy in the Ministry of Defence. In these roles he was responsible for strategic planning and policy, leading MAD's input into the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review and the 2018 National Security Capability Review. He was responsible for deterrence policy, defence and defence exports policy. His previous roles, relevant to this discussion, included being Director General of the Defence Academy, worked closely with King's College in that time, and was Director of the Typhoon Programme. Mark Phillips is Head of Government Affairs for Lockheed Martin and is previously Director for the Security and Resilience sector at ADS. The UK's industry will be the defence security and aerospace companies. He led the UK Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Council in that role. Before joining ADS, Mark was a fellow at WUSI and before that was Chief of Staff to the Security Minister following the successful form of creation of the Coalition Government in 2010. Baroness Pauline Neville Jones, in which capacity he advised on aspects of defence and national security policy. Levin Bowen is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Leicester and is author of War in Space, Strategy, Superpower, Geopolitics. He's a researcher and teacher in military space strategy and policy. And as fortuitously, he is author of the forthcoming Freeman paper, British Space Power and the Integrated Review for Search for Strategy, which we plan to publish in October. And finally, David Jordan is Executive Director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute and a Senior Lecturer in the Defence Zone Department here at King's College in London. With that introduction, I'd like to invite Moira Andrews to start the discussions. Thanks, John. Space has been much in the public eye recently and almost every senior defence spokesman, whether political or military, has spoken passionately about the opportunities and challenges of space. We're increasingly dependent on space based capabilities for communications, earth observation, precision, navigation and timing and the various digital information systems which are increasingly part of our critical national infrastructure and from the building blocks of our future commercial prosperity and economic prosperity. But at the same time, it's becoming an increasingly congested and contested domain as major and not so major powers compete to exploit it. Our continued uninterrupted access to space is, we are told, fundamental to our national security. And as the nation emerges from the COVID industry session, the space industry is poised to deliver much needed economic regeneration. Just this month, UK Space published a paper setting out on behalf of the company its represents its aspiration that the UK should become a modern space power. But do we know what this means? Is it just rhetoric? Is it about investing in space systems just because we can, dare one mention one web, or is there a coherent national view of what the UK should be doing in space and why? And is that reflected in a clear cross government policy and strategy? We are told that space will be at the heart of the integrated review of which we will hear more later. But do we as yet have a national by which I mean a genuinely cross government strategy for space? Traditionally, the civil, military and commercial dimensions of space have been viewed in separate compartments, but increasingly they overlap so that they are now virtually inseparable. In future, the focus will be much more on dual use. So how do we organize all the disparate actors involved or who think they should be involved in the space debate? Industry often complains that it is not hearing clear and consistent messages from the government that it needs if it is to invest in long term R&D and infrastructure development. Similarly, the financial markets need to understand what the long term strategy is if they are to have the confidence to invest. The government needs to get it sat together to be more coherent and to send one clear and consistent message. So where is the promised national space strategy and when is the National Space Council going to meet? And what changes might be needed to the machinery of government to deliver what is going to provide that long term coherence? It seems to me that there are a number of fundamental issues. First, there needs to be one go to person in government who is empowered to speak authoritatively on space issues, whether military or civil. Given the competing agendas of interested departments, notably, but by no means exclusively, MOD and BASE, the Cabinet Office, with the National Security Secretariat at its heart, is the obvious candidate to take on this role. But it should not be something that is merely added to some hapless DG's existing portfolio. It demands a full time dedicated role which reflects the importance that the government tells us that it attaches to space. He or she needs to be, sorry, he or she needs the dedicated skilled technical support to enable them to be effective. So this go to individual needs to be able to speak on behalf of the whole of government to speak with one voice. They will need to have an effective framework to bring together the interested departments around a common agenda, focusing on delivering a single goal in a genuinely joined up way, call it a fusion doctrine if you dare. So this go to person will also need to ensure that the sponsoring departments provide the necessary funding to deliver the ambitions of this policy and strategy, because without it nothing's going to happen. The development and delivery of the infrastructure to fulfill those ambitions is not a short term process, and both the industry and markets will need certainty if they are to invest. The government will also need to be confident that the necessary legal and regulatory framework is in place to ensure that the first licensed British spaceports can operate their launch facilities from early 2020s. But as the responsibility for regulation passes from the UK Space Agency to the CAA as the single regulator of both air and space, it will be incumbent on the Department of Transport to ensure that it has access to the deep skills that will be needed to integrate the two properly. I hope it goes without saying that our space champion needs at least to know something about space, but even more important is that those further down the policy and technical food chain know what they're talking about. And there is going to be a fine balance between the government acquiring and retaining the appropriate skills to be an intelligent and effective customer without denuding the private sector of the skills that it needs if it's to realise its potential. It could do worse than to start now to identify that those that it already has with the necessary expertise and then to develop a strategy to fill those gaps. Once all that is in place it seems to me that there is a good chance that a coherent and comprehensive national space strategy will emerge, so no big ask. And that might be where the Freeman Air and Space Institute might have a small part to play. Thanks. Thank you very much indeed, very challenging, great way to start off. If I could invite Peter Watkins to give his views. So thank you, John. Well, I'm delighted that King's College London has established the Freeman Institute to generate knowledge and understanding of air and space issues. As John indicated, I spent much of my civil service career in defence, a long time as one of those hapless DGs, as Moira said, and many years were spent working on Air Force or air procurement issues in head office in what is now headquarters air command at High Wycombe and in various incarnations of defence equipment and support in Bristol and of course in London. And civilians have always played a key role in the air part of defence and indeed in the Air Ministry. And one of my more famous predecessors as the Director General Security Policy was of course Michael Quinlan, who spent a long time in the Air Ministry before the formation of the unified Ministry of Defence. But from my perspective, I often felt that the organisational and prime issues involved with air power were a bit understudied in academia. So when the idea of establishing the Institute was mooted a while ago, I was very keen to support it. The Institute's website refers to the current and I quote, rapidly evolving strategic environment characterised by transformative technological change unquote. Such a phrase could have been applied to the time when Sir Wilfred Freeman was at the heart of air systems development and production. The quote brilliant air marshal unquote, as David Edgerton calls him in his book, Britain's War Machine, somebody rather unfairly in my view overshadowed by his contemporaries. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the air and spaces in this country are as another critical juncture, like that of the late 1930s and 1940s. The civil air sector, whether airlines, airports or aerospace companies is in crisis as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic with little prospect of early relief. And of course the risk of further disruption in the event of a no deal, in the event of no deal with the European Union. But the military sector is also coming to a crossroads. The two big collaborative combat aircraft programs, Tornado and Typhoon, with both of which I was very closely associated in my career. Those two programs sustained it for decades, both through deliveries for the corporations and through exports. Typhoon has many more years, indeed decades of operational service to come, but we have to ensure that its capability is continuously enhanced, actually evolving threat, and to start to work on an eventual successor platform. So the combat strategy was launched at Farmer in 2018, and has made good progress with Sweden and then Italy becoming partners last year. In my view, it now needs to be fully established and funded through current integrated review. This should be a national strategic project. If you could forgive me a sort of HS2 of the skies, but much better value for money. Defence and space have been on a bit of a journey. As the director general responsible for defense strategy, I argued that defense needed to become much more aware of its reliance on space and invest more in space based capabilities. I also wanted to strengthen our international collaboration on space. The uplift in space investment in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the SDSR, was less than I would have liked, but we had to give priority to addressing capability gaps elsewhere, not least of course the maritime patrol aircraft. But there are many commitments in that SDSR to enhancing our space surveillance and satellite communication capabilities, and the RAF's first satellite, Carbonite II, was a child of that endeavor. But the big change was the determination of space and cyberspace as operational domains through the Modernising Defence Programme in 2018. As the MDP report published in December 2018 says, quote, we must conceive of our joint force as consisting of five domains, space, cyberspace, land, sea and air, rather than the traditional three, unquote. The big challenge now is integrating defence activities across all five, multi-domain integration into the latest terminology. I note that the Chief of the Defence staff alluded to this during last week's events on HMSR, but the Defence Secretary has also talked of reshaping his word, defence to operate much more, again his words, in the space domain, as well as neighbour and subsea. So it's taken a while, but I sense that the current integrated review will do the right thing on space. I'm interested to hear what these speakers in the second panel think about that. But multi-main integration, particularly across such dynamic domains as air and space, will have significant implications for the organisation of defence. And for the acquisition process, as well as raising many other policy, legal and ethical issues. I am confident that the Freeman Institute will make a constructive and distinctive contribution to this agenda. Peter, thank you very much. Very, very interesting. I'd like to invite Mark Phillips now to give his marks. Mark. You're still on mute, Mark. Sorry. We've got video, but no, we can't hear you. Left-hand side of the screen. I think there's a mute button. No, you may have to try and turn your settings on to get your microphone working. Is that working? That's it. Fine. Thank you. Perfect. Sorry about that. Too many different systems in the office. Well, John, thank you very much for inviting me to say a few remarks at the opening of the Freeman Institute. And congratulations on the initiative, which I think is long overdue and will make a tremendous contribution as the UK thinks about its requirements in the air and space domains in the future. I thought I would provide some personal perspectives on the UK and the space domain. I'll cover what the UK's dependencies are on space-based systems and services, the risks to those dependencies and interests, and how the UK can go about achieving greater resilience in an increasingly contested and congested domain, as well as achieve greater influence through the space domain. And all of these things, I think, are being considered as part of the integrated review at the moment. On the first point, the UK's interests and dependencies on space. I think there is growing awareness of what these are, but it is not consistent. In the first instance, there are a range of economic dependencies on space-based systems and services. For example, the Blackage Review, which was published a few years ago, identified the range of different sectors of the economy, which currently rely on position navigation and timing services from space, but also highlighted that PNT from space will be essential to future sectors of the economy, such as autonomy and the Internet of Things. More broadly, from a defence and wider government perspective, space-based systems and services enable intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting, the functioning of government and national decision-making. But awareness of that is still fairly limited, because departments are not naturally constructed to think about their own interests and requirements in space. And there's something about how we mainstream space as a concept within the day-to-day work of departments and agencies. And this is particularly important, because to come onto the second issue, the risks to our interests and dependencies on space. These are very diverse. On the one hand, you've got a plethora of natural hazards. You also have space debris, which is a growing risk, particularly as space becomes more congested with megaconstellations, etc. And then of course, you have increasing hostile activity in space as well. And the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in the US publishes a very good annual space threat assessment report, which I would recommend to you, which assesses the activities of countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And it particularly shows the high levels of investment that are being made in electronic counter-space weapons, in cyber disruption in the space domain, in modern kinetic physical attacks, and in co-orbital anti-satellite weapons. Now, this creates an interesting dynamic, because how do you protect your interests in space in that very contested environment, particularly when from a UK perspective, you realise that actually we don't have many space-based systems and services of our own. We have some military satellite communications assets, but in most other areas, we actually rely on the systems provided by others such as GPS by the US. So how do we actually achieve resilience for our interests in space and project our interest in space? Well, the first task is to actually identify what national level capabilities we as the UK need to improve our resilience and meet our own national needs. At the moment, the only real programme of record is the SkyNet-6 military satellite communications programme. There's an open question around whether that requirement could be broadened to meet the interests of other departments and agencies. Open question, it's about, as Moira said, looking at these things on a national basis rather than just as individual departments. Do we need a UK GNSS programme? There's a lot of uncertainty around that, despite the political commitments to it. And do we need to do more by way of using the nascent UK satellite launch programme to use small satellites and networks of small satellites to meet intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance requirements? To provide resilience for larger assets and project interests in that way. So there's something around defining what our national level requirements are. Once you've defined what national capabilities you need, you then need to think about what resilience they require in this very difficult domain. And I think there we're going to run into a challenge because the UK does lack suitably qualified and experienced people who understand the space domain. It's a skill set we need to grow quite dramatically. How do you translate that understanding of the domain into technical specifications for your programmes and capabilities to ensure their resilience against natural hazards and potential hostile activities is quite a difficult time. And one which we need to get our heads around. Thirdly, we need to realise that the system architecture for our capabilities will potentially be quite complex. The different orbits in space, geostationary, medium-earth orbits and low-earth orbit all have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the type of applications you are looking at, communications, PNT, etc. And possibly I think you're going to shift towards very hybrid or layered architectures with satellites in different orbits as part of a single system. Again, it's quite a complex endeavour and one we need to think about quite early on. It goes back to that square point that I mentioned. But then there's another issue which is that actually the scale of the task of developing space capabilities and projecting your interest in space and ensuring resilience is existential. It is so vast and so can the UK do this by itself or does it actually look at how to work with allies to provide and develop capabilities perhaps by providing elements of layered or hybrid architectures. Rather than the full systems, it's potentially a very good way of reducing the cost, improving resilience, but also achieving international influence, which is my final point. And then there are other more creative ways we could look at achieving international influence through space. For example, could we use space-based services as a form of international development and aid to grow the economy, support economic growth in other countries, rather than necessarily providing direct aid funding, because we know that space-based systems enable economic sectors. If we provide that as a service, it could dramatically increase the economic growth in developing countries. And finally, there's a big initiative around rules of behaviour in space, which the UK is starting to lead on, but it does need a technical underpinning. You need space domain awareness and space traffic management expertise. And you need to have that technical investment in sensors and data processing to actually underpin whatever rules you try to develop for behaviours in space on a national and international level. So again, there's a question around what national capabilities does the UK require to meet those broader objectives. And I'll pause there, John, I'm happy to take any questions. Thanks very much, Edwin. Hi, thanks very much for putting on this event and thanks for having me and Moshe all the best for the Freeman Institute as you get started. And as one of the very few academics in international relations and strategic studies who actually specialises and has a PhD in space power and space warfare, it's very good to see more investment and more activity on the academic side. So it's very cold and lonely in space and it's very much the case in my discipline. So I'm very much looking forward to the academic outputs that will come as well as the doctoral research here. So the comments I have are based on the tail end of my book that came out earlier this year, as it discusses the hard edge of space power on modern warfare. And I also have the paper with Fasi coming out next month on what does space power mean for the integrated review in particular. And to try and summarise this into five minutes. The starting point for understanding what space power actually does is to understand it as infrastructure and as providing force enhancement for all sorts of trustual warfare capabilities in all domains. So it's not just something that the air force or any air force should think about it for land and naval forces and special forces, irregular forces as well. Space power is very ubiquitous as an infrastructure and an enabling services provider. And what a lot of space power technology does, especially towards a higher end, conventional higher intensity warfare is the impact of dispersion. And effectively more and more militaries now can effectively shoot what they can see within a particular theatre or environment of operations. So values to be just a monopoly for the Americans and to a lesser extent its NATO and other allies. Now of course we're familiar with the Russians using those kinds of systems in places like Syria and proving their space enabled modern warfare capabilities and being able to shoot what they can see. And we know that China is also building these weapons systems as well but they've not been battle tested to the same extent as the Russians have done recently. And these are now imposing dispersion on NATO and Western military forces and of course other American allies. And space power also allows you to disperse and network your forces so they can avoid any strike operations or detect them earlier and then maintain a larger dispersed force. By maintaining that network efficiency to be able to retaliate or conduct concentrated effects of firepower operations as well. So dispersion affects everyone all around and as military forces become less survivable all around because everyone can more easily target and launch strike missions at each other. If you don't check the space power infrastructure and those services if you don't start attacking space power with those hard and soft kill methods that Mark mentioned earlier. You get perhaps a new premium being put on mass and survivability of forces. You either make sure that your forces can absorb or deflect or hide away from those sources or deny the targeting for the enemy. Or you put more forces in the field. And one of the concerns I have with the integrated review just based on the commentary that we see in the press and on UK defence Twitter is and also based on what David was saying early on about being infatuated with lots of new technologies. I'm worried that people might think that investments in space alone might make up for getting rid of key combat capabilities in any of the trustual environments. So I'd be worried that investing in a fancy new intelligence and surveillance program might just give you a really timely high definition view of how badly you're being broken to bits by Russian artillery in the Baltics. And then you have no one else left to do something on the ground. It's just given you a good view of it. So information supremacy or information warfare and all those debates we had in the revolution of military affairs from the 1990s and the early 2000s looks like they're being played out again in some parts of the integrated review. I pick up a bit on this in the forthcoming paper with FASI as well. So space power whilst it's important that it is invested in and I think there are good investments that the UK can make in space, particularly on communications and ISR and space situational awareness. We have to make sure that as David was saying that it's part of the balanced overall picture because space does impose opportunity costs and we have to make sure that it doesn't take away from a really important area. And that's for an overall experts or overall decision makers to make because space experts and space specialists we know what space can do, but we don't necessarily always know what is the best for a Baltic defence scenario because you need to engage with all terrestrial environments on an equal footing and decide what's best in a particular scenario because space can be useful for any kind of warfare, whether it's grey or hybrid zone warfare, whatever that is called these days will get a new term for it in the next few years again, I'm sure irregular warfare or whether it's high intensity conventional warfare on land or whether it's air warfare or naval and maritime warfare. Space is useful for all of those, but whatever space investments Britain make and I do think there are good investments to be made. They have to they have to be aligned to terrestrial military priorities because there's no point having a space architecture that isn't linked towards your terrestrial defence priorities and by terrestrial I mean all domains not just land there. So I will leave those comments there hopefully they were short and provocative enough for discussion so thanks again for having me here today. Thanks very much indeed. Well I'll kick off the discussion and we'll bring all the speakers on to the screen now by asking David just to add anything he'd like to or pose a question and then I'll put a couple of questions that we've heard from our Q&A function and we'll have a discussion so David. Okay, thank you, John. I won't detain people too long obviously with pressure of time, but I'd like to thank all the panellists for some very interesting and forthright views that have been put forward. I think my opening question, Peter in particular said that he very much hoped that the integrated review would do the right thing without wishing to metaphorically steal the sandwiches of the second panel. I'd just be interested to learn whether he thinks that it'll do the right thing across the air and space domains as he sees it or whether it will be a bit cure its egg good in parts but there'll be other areas where we may have much to ruminate upon. Well, thank you for that. I think the important thing and this picks up on what Moira said, and what Levins just said, is you have to look at this as a whole. It isn't just about, you know, investing in bits of equipment. And I think one of the, a couple of the questions up on this in that it's also around building the human capability, the human capacity, the skills and so on. And I am reasonably confident from what I know about the integrated review and what I've read publicly and so on, that it is trying to take that overall approach, but it's looking at national security in a rounded way, and looking at the skills and capabilities that we as a country will need for it. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Moira, there's a question for you asking whether you were advocating a national space advisor for the UK government, maybe someone wants to offer themselves and as in the United States or for a little more robust single structure, such as CNES in France. Well, I don't think I'm advocating either actually. I'm simply advocating the fact that the government needs to be joined up to speak with one voice. And the only way to do that is first of all from the centre, so from the cabinet office. And the advantage of that is it has, as I said, the national security secretariat support behind it. It needs to be sufficiently, a sufficiently authoritative voice, so it needs to be let's say at director general level, and it needs to be able to marshal the views of every department and reflect them in one space strategy. So I mean, you know, I don't think that either a national space advisor might follow. And I think to a certain extent we've got a single structural ready in that we'd have the UK space agency, although that just deals with the civil side of space as opposed to civil and military. But no, I'm just advocating a mechanism to help deliver this national truly national single space strategy. Thank you. Yeah, this is a really, really interesting topic. And again, I touch on this and the forthcoming FASI paper next month. And I'm pretty agnostic in terms of what the best structure is because I always believe that if you have the right people in the right places, then hopefully you just get the right decisions. I think you can make structures work, but interestingly, you know, we have, I think we're expecting a new space command to come out from the MOD soon. And that's going to change the way joint forces command which was changed to UK stratcom works which does some space responsibilities whilst others are still done with the RAF. I'm very much in favour of more consolidation within departments on space, I think every department should have a space lead, some do. But I'm a bit more reticent about how much authority or how much we want to cohere space policy as a whole on the UK government level because it's for me it's like having a director of the sea, or a king of the sea, however you want to call it because space is an environment, space is a place, it's not a policy issue. And I'd be just concerned that we might be overly contaminating what is clearly like military space policy or military defence space activities with space science or space industry when we should have clear diverse leads on those other areas. So, because I think UK Space Agency would have a clear state on how they want to do stuff on space and industry as well as base as a whole. Whereas the MOD might want to take more charge on the defence side because it's a very different kettle of fish. For me, I would like to see the National Space Council take a coordination and just review position really rather than directing too much from the top. If there is scope for more coherence, I'd be a bit worried if it became too powerful and started directing to me from the top when and I think like the FCO or FCDO, as is called now should definitely be taking the lead on Britain's efforts at the UN General Assembly in building or identifying norms in space for example, rather than the MOD perhaps. So I think there's lots to do in coordination coherence and review but I'd be a bit skeptical of too much top-down direction on space policy as a whole because we don't have a C policy, we don't have an A policy. So conceptually I'm a bit wretched about having too much direction from the top based on looking at as a single environment and contaminating space science with too much defence and vice versa as well when we can open up to a lot more international cooperation on space science. Whereas on defence, we may not. Right, well perhaps Julia will take up some of those challenges in her doctoral research. Let me put another question, provocative question to all the panellists actually. If you put space assets into orbit, how will you protect them? Mark, do you want to try something to kick off with this? Yeah, thanks John. I think that was one of my key questions. The point about ensuring that if you have space based systems and services and assets, the need to ensure their resilience in an increasingly challenging environment. Now, there are a range of different ways of achieving that resilience. Some is about hardening the platforms and systems themselves. Other techniques include moving the assets out of the area of a risk. And there are also things you can do to harden data links and secure those etc. So you need to look at this as an end to end system and the resilience of all aspects of that chain. And that's actually quite an expensive undertaking, but there's no point in putting assets up into orbits if you're not going to ensure that they can function and be resilient. So if I link to the previous question, whatever structures the government comes up with to determine space policies and requirements need to ensure that they have proper industry engagement because most space expertise, particularly in the technical sense, resides in industry. And the government needs to harness that if it is going to develop good requirements and indeed of course deliver those requirements. There's no question around how you actually grow the UK's knowledge and skills base because it is fairly thin even on the industry side at this stage. And my slight concern with the integrated view is does it go for programs because they're national industrial projects vice proper capability requirements, and surely it should be capability driven based on the threat. So that's the aspect in areas like space should look at how you can achieve inward investment to grow the UK knowledge and skills base and facilities over time, knowledge transfer, technology transfer and inward investment because at the moment as I said it's fairly limited. There's a parallel there with with combat air which I think Peter mentioned, and if you look at F35 for instance the revenue from that program to the UK is actually enabling the combat air sector to be sustained so that it could potentially do things like a Tempest project. But this debate around what a national industrial project is versus capability requirements is probably a tension, which would be interesting to see how the integrated review results that I mean there's one other question which I would like to give to the panel unfortunately we're running out of time very fast. The introduction of space command in the US has triggered a focus on space professional military education. Is the UK conducting a similar review and I guess if not why not. Perhaps. David you give a quick answer and we'll invite anybody else to add to that if they'd like. Let's get me here. Okay. At the moment, I don't think there's any major development upon which to report but that doesn't mean that it isn't being actively considered. I think that's probably the most straightforward answer to give. It's obviously an area that can't be overlooked or ignored. I suspect that I'd probably be able to give a more precise answer had it not been for the global pandemic because as you might imagine that has rather got in the way of coordinating meetings and discussions. And the sorts of things you might wish to see develop over time. But I'd certainly hope that we'll see that evolve. Okay, I'm afraid I have time for one short comment on that and then we'll have to wrap it up. So did you want to say, yes, very, very quickly. I mean one is, I mean I am aware that air command over a number of years now has been trying to build up. It's, if you like space cadre, which is good. It's not something to do overnight. And I think that that work has been underway for a while. Another thing and this goes back partly to what I said earlier is that I think the integrated review is looking at the skills needed for national security in the round. And, you know, very obviously for all the reasons that we've all been saying this morning, space and space related matters has to be part of that skill set. Thank you very much. Apologies to the, to the panelists. I really would like this session to have been longer. But thank you very much for your presentations please stay online. And there are a few questions which we haven't managed to get to and we'll we'll try and answer them in the chat function. Perhaps David, you can have a look at those now, the couple there and other panelists. If I make a sort of 30 second break. My team will then be setting up for the next round table which I'll introduce in about one minute. Thank you very much. All right, if I can just repeat the guidance for this session. It's being live streamed on on YouTube. So is on the record. If you have any questions, could you use the Q&A function rather than the chat function on on on zoom as we go along and we'll try to get to as many questions as we can. I'm going to very briefly introduce our five speakers and then get on with the interesting bit which is hearing what they've got to say about the integrated review. This is Professor of War Studies at King's, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London was head of the Department of War Studies and vice principal of King's College, a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the Iraq war. He's written extensively on nuclear strategy and also commentates on contemporary security affairs amongst his plethora of publications and books loy. The evolution of nuclear strategy deterrence, the two official volumes of history of the Falklands campaign is really interesting paper on the transformation and strategic affairs for for double I double S. More recently strategy a history and the future of war history, and perhaps that will give advice for people trying to conduct a review. As it retired from the Ministry of Defense in 2019 as the strategy director in which post he led the department's work on the 2015 defense and security review, the 2017 18 national security capabilities review and the modernising defence program will is now pursuing a second career advising overseas governments and commercial organizations on strategy and planning. The White Honourable Julian Lewis MP has been elected as as his website reminds us seven times as the Conservative MP for New Forest East, since the seat was created in 1997. He was twice elected to serve as chair of the House of Commons Defense Select Committee, which I know very well from previous time. And in that role. He supervised more than 30 inquiries into aspects of defense and security policy consistently campaigning to restore defense spending to three rather than 2% of GDP. In July 2020 after being nominated by the Prime Minister, he joined the intelligence and security committee, which elected him its chairman. He's speaking today in his capacity as a former chairman of the Defense Committee though. Mr Dickings is a research fellow for space policy and security in the military sciences team at Lucy. Her research covers military space space programs space warfare, counter space capabilities, arms control and the intersection of space and missile defense. And Greg Badwell, who retired as an air marshal from the RF in 2016 as head of operations. In six years in the RF with including a lot of combat flying experience now works in the commercial sector. He's been president of the air and space power Association for the last four years, which is a longstanding supporter of air power theory, and hosts the annual RF and space power conference. Great panel. I'll go without further ado to Laurie Friedman. First, congratulations on the on the center. Secondly, it's very difficult to to start this in a very specific way so I'm just going to raise some general issues that tend to come up with with most defense reviews. Different these days and the defense reviews used to be prompted largely because there was some financial crisis or other and chancellors were looking to find ways for ways for cuts. We now schedule them so they happen every five years which I think is by and large, a good development but it doesn't always mean that that's the best time to be holding them and we have a particular problem at the moment in that the review has to be completed before three key things are known first, who will be the next president which is one of the most consequential issues related to our security, European security, global security. How the final exit from the EU will occur because that will have an impact on our ability to to work with current European partners about security issues. And third covid, which now looks like being with us for another half year in one shape or another. And of course we'll have an enormous economic impact that's quite hard to grasp at the moment as well as stirring things up politically around the globe. So the timing is scheduled. We need one every five years but the but it's not perfect for those reasons. Moreover, the the financial question never quite goes away though government would rather. This was talked of in the whole nature of an integrated review in terms of the broader needs of the country's security and foreign policy is naturally providing the criteria by which you judge the various commitments and allocations, you will want to make it in the review. And here there is there is a sense that something big is up. First, since the last review, which came not long after Ukraine and with it and with the sense that Russia was a big problem once more. Since then you have a growing concern about China. And to my mind China is an altogether more serious long term issue than than Russia, which although Russia is aggressive users dubious methods interferes with elections and so on, its power is inherently limited by its economy. And it's global reach to China is still a growing economy is very integrated into the international economy. And as a sort of competence that Russia is often lacked and demands on social control on preserving the role of the party. The create political demands on those who deal with with China. So the China issue looms large now how much that is a defense issue, as opposed to a broader security issue seems to be one of the issues that we're struggling to address there's to what we can do in the Asia Pacific region. There's a freedom of navigation question. And of course perfectly fair to say that China influence extends well beyond that but it's not particularly in the military side that it extends well beyond Asia Pacific so there's a question of China, inevitably, there is still the question of Russia. But as good as this review can show any major sort of pivot. I tend to doubt I think we, however hard we try. We're going to be looking largely the issues in a defense center of our own neighborhood. The other general point that's worth making everything that follows from the previous session is the extent to which. It's more ambitious in the in looking at certain areas, which have a very strong technological input. This is true whether you just simply looking at defense capabilities going more for drones and so on. Cyber and space. I mean there's two things that need noting first, something has got to give to make room for these and what gives in terms of classical military capabilities is always going to be the issues armor is on. There's clearly one question in this, but there's always that nagging worry which I've always sort of put as my law of defense reviews which is that as any capability which you decided surplus to requirements in the year of the review is likely to be found absolutely necessary. The next year as we saw with the four clans and with the desert storm so there's always that worry. There's another interesting aspect and that in the areas we're looking at the interface between the military and the civilians fear is really quite striking this is very true with cyber. The issues with cyber may relate to international conflict but they relate to a whole range of issues, particularly crime or child abuse all sorts of things come under the cyber heading and dealt with by GCHQ and space to it. There's a broad economic capability as well as having important implications for defense and I think if you think in the past we've always known about this interface in terms of the industrial implications of defense policy but they seem to me now to be going back and I'd argue that is true, even when you look at the basic military capabilities such as how many troops we have. Just think how many times, including just now that we're looking to troops to deal with, helping with testing with COVID backing up the police or fighting fires in Australia recently or foot and mouth as we have. I think one of the things this argues for is to looking at our defense capabilities with a much wider remit and accepting that their role is going to be not just in a very narrow set of contingencies related to armed conflict, but as part and parcel of a much broader sense of security. So I think that these are some of the interesting questions in terms of how the review will be framed and how the choices that are made are going to be explained. That's just the final point on this. My guess is especially as we seem to have reached a time when governments have given up worrying about debt is that the budget will not be cut but in fact will will grow. The Chancellor has decided yet and the Chancellor no doubt will have views on this, but it seems to me that this will not be seen to be a good time to be cutting back on defense and the aspirations that have already been described just don't seem to me to be able to be met without a lot of pain elsewhere, unless you give a bit more, a bit more space in the budget. So I have to say for the moment. Thank you very much indeed and your point about the the broad admission for the armed forces is very well made. The Center for Defense Studies which FASI is sitting within has just produced a report on the whole force concept, which will be published in two weeks. And we're planning to commission a Freeman paper to talk about the REF and the whole force, which hopefully will come out later in the year. So thanks very much indeed. Julian. So sorry, it's will Jess it next time so sorry Julian, and and I'll come to you after will, apologies. Thanks Sean. So the integrated review has been billed hasn't it as the deepest and most radical review since the end of the Cold War. The force seems reasonable to examine that claim by reference to the outcome of the major reviews of the last 30 years against which it intends to compare itself. So I'm working on a on an article with some colleagues to set out, you know something of an analytical framework against which the results of the integrated review could be tested, looking back to history. There are four main tests. The first is how good assessments in previous reviews were about how the threats and risks to UK and international security instability would develop and how they inform the policy baseline that was set for each of those reviews. So you could argue a benign interpretation would be that the four major reviews, I enlarge got the headline judgments right about threats and risks, and broadly set the right sort of policy framework in response. The final interpretation I think would be to say that we missed a series of really major judgments in the middle of this, and particularly that we allowed the threat of international terrorism to unbalance UK defense policy and plans, particularly leading us into the Iraq and Afghanistan misadventures that we didn't predict the pace or the trajectory of the threat posed by Russia on the Putin, or the wider national security threat posed by China, as Laurie has just set out. So I can't anticipate how quickly gray zone threats would grow. And finally, that we didn't really pay enough attention to planning for pandemics and climate change, not withstanding having written them very centrally into our risk assessments threat assessments over a decade and and more. The second test might be how successful individual policies and planning approaches have been in helping to reset the armed forces to deal with these two challenges. As another panelist was saying, we've been a range of different operational concepts for the use of the armed forces developed over the last 20 years and more. We've simply fallen by the wayside. So we're expecting the CDS to launch the latest version of this quite shortly and from the trails that I've seen that all sounds quite persuasive. The question will be whether or not that sticks. In this category to join three in defense was a really big deal in the 1990s. We've gone a bit in the noughties, but the pace is clearly increasing again. And I think that we should expect that to be another major theme of this review. So this time, you know, we're talking about multi domain integration so bringing cyber and space into the mix again in the way that Laurie was just describing the defensive approach again, Laurie was just making a more collaborative approach to national security between departments. A big theme in the noughties but actually this one, which got a big boost in the 2017 national security capabilities review with the launch of the fusion doctrine. So I think, you know, another issue to watch out for this time is how far that develops. The national coordination and cooperation which has been a major theme of all the big reviews during that period. It's had a huge impact on policy on planning capabilities and on operations. And again, I think one should expect to see, you know, kind of allied by design like approach being bought into into this one. So I think in this category, innovation and technology led modernization. Again, staples of all the big reviews over the last 30 years. The last word on that was the modernizing defense program in 2018. I think you should expect to see more of that in this review. I think all of those themes are likely to be big issues for the forthcoming international integrated review. I think the test is going to be, you know, whether they stick and how much real world of impact they have. The third of the tests, I think relates to for the full structure emerging from each of the reviews. The shape of the UK armed forces has got progressively smaller over the last three decades. The reviews have all tended to claim smaller, but better. And in some cases that claim is justified, clearly not in all cases. So haven't we two giving four structures, you know, fairly snappy descriptors. So the 97 98 SDR at the Joint Rapid Reaction Force 2010 at the creation of a future force 2020 joint force 2025 was the outcome of SDSR 15. And the big issue I think has been the latency between the force design that comes out of these reviews and the realization in terms of delivering those forces and structures into the real world. We're told from the trails that there will be something that might look a bit like a joint force 35 coming out of this next review, which takes the planning timeline still further into the future. So that's not really going to help much with the with the latency challenge. And fourth and finally, the big test, clearly is money. I'm with Laurie in thinking this won't be a big defense cuts exercise. I can predict what Julian will have to say about this that he would say it's the biggest test of all. And I wouldn't necessarily contest that. The defense expenditure, you know, certainly as a proportion of GDP has gone down across the period of the reviews. And the big challenge that you know maybe where Julian I would be in a slightly different place. I think the real challenge is how you achieve an enduring stable balance between policy commitments, forward program on the defense budget. And in fact, we've had after each of the major reviews to undertake another kind of rebalancing review because we've not in any of the major reviews quite managed to to balance the books. So, maybe the key test for the interview review then is whether the funding will match the new policy ambitions that are being trailed. Again exactly just as Laurie just set out. There are two other tests that I may be relevant which I won't cover here and one relates to management and organization how much management organizations changed and improved effectiveness and efficiency. And then a bit of a minor test on how well the reviews were were conducted. The purpose of doing this really is just to kind of try to get out a sense of compared to what, because the rhetoric is big out there about what this is going to achieve. What we're trying to do is just to just to produce some sort of initial framework to allow people to, to make some objective judgments. That's my piece. Thank you very much. Yes. Commitments balance to funding. What a new question for defense review and really answered Julian. Thank you very much for this opportunity to bring a politicians cynical and conspiratorial view to the question of what is in danger of becoming a disintegrated review process. Like before I proceed to just add one more to what from now on I'm always going to think of as Laurie's law of lost capabilities, and that is of course the decommissioning of the carriers in the 2010 review and the desperate need for them in 2011 for the Libya campaign, misconceived as that was, but my conspiracy theory I'm afraid is that I believe this exercise is going to be a cover for cuts, and it's going to be done under the aegis of a claim that new 21st century threats have made old 20th century technology unnecessary and I was struck by the way that David Jordan warned about this very thing in his opening remarks in the first session. Now Sir David Omond in a recent short paper for the global strategy forum said, and I quote, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown us into a state of national insecurity, confidence in government to take optimum decisions in a timely manner has been shaken on both sides of it has not helped that COVID-19 struck on the back of a rising tide of social media misinformation and information manipulation, the Internet is awash with conspiracy theories, I fear I may be about to add to them. So, following on so marvelously from Will Segway about defense expenditure, I never tire of pointing out that the Defense Committee has often explained that six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the consequent peace dividend cuts. We still used to spend fully 3% of GDP on defense, the Blair and Cameron governments successively reduced this to 2.5% and 1.8% respectively, when calculated on a like for like basis. And it was only by changing the method of calculation legitimately but misleadingly that we managed to maintain our notional present day figure of 2.1%. I think therefore that it would be a terrible lesson to draw that our defense budget should now undergo further punishment as a result of the COVID crisis on top of its already manifest inadequacy. What the COVID crisis teaches us once again is the need to prepare in peacetime for crises to come. And I guess that when the inevitable public inquiry is held into how the pandemic was handled, much attention will focus on what prior exercises were held, what conclusions were reached, what recommendations were made and how many of them were carried out. As it probably will, if it emerges that the government chose to take a chance, hope for the best and keep its fingers crossed that a pandemic wouldn't happen on its watch. It will undoubtedly be condemned for failing to invest in procuring for example strategic stocks of PPE and the capacity speedily to replenish them. Now there's a strong parallel here with the perpetual reluctance of democratic governments to invest in adequate armed forces in peacetime at the cost of more popular expenditure on other public services. In this time and again we're being told that defense is the first duty of government, but just as frequently we find that governments gamble on wars, not breaking out suddenly at very short notice or no notice at all, yet that is what usually happens. It's actually safe from predators as well as from pandemic requires major peacetime investment. We shouldn't be forced to make unacceptable choices between vital assets like amphibious assault ships on the one hand, and capacity to meet so called 21st century in cyberspace on the other, we need flexible forces capable of deterring containing and if necessary defeating a whole spectrum of potential threats from nuclear blackmail through conventional aggression to all the ambiguities of conflict in the grey zone of hybrid warfare. Now, to conduct a review such as this one in the midst of a pandemic, such as this one, which has dislocated our economy and shut down our society is in my view, reckless and irrational by offering detailed prescriptions on how to quotes define the government's vision for the UK's role in the world over the next decade, at such a hideously inappropriate time, one simply provides a degree of cover for a flawed undertaking. Our country is already committed to spending scores if not yet hundreds of billions of pounds on postponing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. How long will this hemorrhaging of money continue? Will a vaccine appear in time? What will be the total bill and how and when will it be paid? At the moment, no one has the faintest idea. So plans drawn up at a time like this are bound to be skewed in the short term by the ongoing crisis and for the medium to long term they'll be meaningless unless the government accepts that the outset, which it probably won't, that it can't cover more than a fraction of the coronavirus expenditure by inflicting intolerable further cuts on defence and that it shouldn't try to do so. So while it lasts, I believe the pandemic has torpedoed any prospect of discerning how to achieve our quotes long term strategic aims rooted in our national interest. And if the Cabinet Office carries on regardless, one can only conclude that it is following another agenda in order to arrive at a predetermined outcome. And what is that predetermined outcome? I think it's just conceivable that it will be that even more conventional military assets should be slashed and scrapped than were done after the 2010 review so that inexperienced but opinionated advisors can promote their one dimensional doctrine of 21st century warfare, which claims that new threats posed by cyber have superseded rather than supplemented the continuing threats from our opponent's armed forces. But finally, if indeed the review is to continue, as I suppose it will, I will just outline for the sake of it a few of the basic messages that I'm afraid other panellists have heard me say all too many times before, and they are the following. Our opponent's behavior can be influenced by our preparedness and also by our lack of it. Our nuclear deterrent does counter WMD blackmail by hostile states, but other threats remain. Our conventional armed forces are seriously underfunded and cyber is not going to magically overcome this shortage of money. 2% of a reduced GDP is not nearly enough to maintain adequate defences. European security is a chimera without US involvement in NATO, and where we cannot deter, we must strive to contain, for example, stateless terrorist threats. At the end of the day, it always comes back to a realization of the value of deterrence containment and the unpredictable outbreak of future conflicts. Thank you. Thanks very much. And I wouldn't say you're completely a divergence from the other speakers because many people are wondering what the integration review will lead to so let's let's turn to some of the air power aspects now but thank you very much. And I'd like to invite Alexandra to make her opening remarks. Thank you. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I'm going to move the conversation a little bit more specific. I'm looking at space. Some of these issues were touched upon in the previous panel, but I'll give you my thoughts on them. Space being included in the IR is a good thing. I think that that we just have to accept that space is is a part of defence foreign policy etc as we go forward. And it's good that the UK is showing ambition in space, but ambition is not enough on its own and ambition without understanding all of the underlying discussions can actually lead to unintended consequences. I want to run through what I think are the most important questions that the IR should be asking when it comes to space. And the first is on cross right whole space governance. I'll be quite blunt here it has not worked the current and the current structure. I don't think has worked as as we might want it to have. I do think we need a central point within government for space. We will have a National Space Council. I think there are questions about the UK Space Agency, where that sits, what its remit is what its powers are. The Ministry of Defence does have its own priorities and will have its own programs. A lot of what it does will require working with other departments, particularly with the Space Agency. But all departments rely on space in some way. We heard in the previous panel that the need for every department to have a designated space personal space office to allow their requirements, their understanding, their thoughts to come through. There are big questions about what we need to do in space. And this is where I think you have that balance between the ambition and what we need to do. And this has to come from the user requirements. This has to come from what problems are we trying to solve through space, whether that's through the use of space communications, Earth observation, PNT, etc. And then the questions about implementation. Again, any defence space programs are likely to have a civil or commercial aspect perhaps and how do we implement that across government. Looking specifically at the MOD, we have seen changes this year with the appointment of the first director space in the MOD, which is very encouraging. There will be a lot of questions about the role of space command. How much that is just a defence role and how much it works with the civil and commercial sectors. We have questions about the war fighting versus operational domain and how far the UK wants to go down the route of space warfare rather than space as as an enabler. And that will play into a lot in terms of what kind of capabilities we might want to get. And looking at these capabilities, I think a very important question is not necessarily to think about them as space capabilities. Break them down into communications ISRPNT. And then what role does space play? What role does space assets play within those architectures? Again, looking at the requirements, doing space for the sake of space isn't the answer. It's what space is giving us to solving problems. And then the questions about alliances within Firebys, within NATO, what gaps is the UK perhaps trying to fill through its space capabilities? What value can it add to those partnerships? And how might those partnerships change? Where might we be fighting in the future? What are our requirements and how might those shift within alliances? And all of that will go to determine what capabilities we might look at acquiring in the future. We heard earlier as well, space is an aspect of foreign policy. The conversations, particularly within the United Nations around norms of behavior, responsible behavior in space and the role that the UK is playing within this is very important. And so there is a balance between those conversations and the military space ambitions and how the UK plays that role internationally. But we can also see space in terms of soft power, you know, the use of commercial and civil space capabilities for non-spacefaring countries for benefits, whether that's through agriculture or countering illicit shipping, and the role that the UK can play in assisting other countries in gaining some space capabilities. And of course, we have to take into account the commercial sector and industry. This is very important because of the economic benefits of space prosperity, but also how far the UK can go to being a space power. Having an indigenous sector that is respected and innovative can actually help the UK's international standing as a space power. So there's so many different aspects that we need to take into account and a lot of difficulties and I think the major one is, it does come down to how well space is understood across government. I think the fact that it's important is well understood, but some of that nuance and some of the complexity isn't. I think we have seen with some of the arguments around a UK GNSS system and earlier this year with with one web, that the potential for investments to perhaps be made because we need a national space program without taking those requirements into consideration and then the danger of creating white elephants. It's very complex, it touches on defence, it touches on national security touches on foreign policy. It's a changing environment there are new actors, new technologies. So we do have to find that balance between ambition and what we also and the plans that we put in place and also allow flexibility to adapt to the changing environment. I think space is important, but I think if we get it wrong, it could potentially be as damaging as as not doing anything at all. I'll finish there and look forward to any questions. Thank you very much indeed. And Taylor and Charlie. Thanks John. Let me just quickly start by doing a quick plug for for the Air and Space Power Association and I too welcome Fasi to the to the marketplace. The Air and Space Power Association was actually formed in 1947. And was called the Air Public Relations Association and it was actually formed by the Air Ministry Information Division, who was effectively the public relations arm. And it was done because it was recognized that promoting air power thinking was going to be vital post war because people either didn't understand it or misunderstood it. And I really welcome the intellectual rigor that Fasi is going to bring to that debate. And we look forward to working very closely with you through that. I see the job of my association to promote and I definitely see the job of your institute to challenge. Let me do some quick thoughts and then we can get to questions. Firstly, I have lived the experience of the last four reviews. Personally, I've shut stations and squadrons and aircraft types down more times and I would really want to remember. And I think it's important that we recognize what that feels like for those in service. They need certainty they need to understand where they fit into the grand scheme of things so it does make my blood run cold sometimes and we see some of the debate in the news. Somewhat either really informed or poorly leaked shall we say. So I think we can help balance that which I think is important. It's also important and another others have already mentioned this that it's very quickly becomes a debate about equipment. And actually that in itself doesn't help because it then sort of stymies the debate. It is just as important to talk about the human capability, and we too often say those words but then do nothing about them. The infrastructure that's required to enable those things to happen. I think it's particularly pleasing to see the Air Force at the moment under Mike Wigston's leadership on a project Astra really focusing on that human and infrastructure element recognizing why it's so important to ensure that when all this shiny kit turns up that there's a place to use it from and people to use it because that is so critical. And if I just give you some examples of why I think that's become a problem in the past is that when we focused on equipment and prioritize the spending on that equipment, and perhaps been over ambitious or poorly budgeted. The actual expenditure on those things. We've ended up taking the cuts in the people and the infrastructure space, and that you often have to go a lot deeper there to find the money than you spend in the equipment area. But if you look now at the way the Air Force is configured, we have an awful lot very capable kit sat on very fragile singular places, which doesn't have an awful lot of protection. And that is a worry for me it's something I always fought for and I think we need to think long and hard before we make any more reductions in those types of spaces, because preserving the capability in the event of an enemy action is increasingly difficult now, just in terms of sheer protection. The military tends to look at these problems in rather simplistic way they look at the most likely scenario versus the most dangerous scenarios. And unfortunately we find ourselves stuck between the two here. And we've certainly been spending an awful lot of time and effort thinking about the most likely, which was the counter insurgencies of the last two decades. And even the sort of hard war fighting was relatively one sided. And in many ways the legacy of our equipment today is very heavily weighted to fight those mice, most likely scenarios, and they are next to useless for the most dangerous scenarios. And in that I would include the almost the entirety of the ref is our capability. It would not last very long in the most dangerous scenarios, and that's something we need to think very carefully about. Finally, I just counter slightly Julian's view about this is not the time for a review and I do understand exactly where he's coming from. I'm just going to offer a slightly different perspective from in the industry view. Many of those industries and members of our association I happen to work in the commercial sector to. So you could argue this is a bit of a plug, but, but the decisions that will be made in this review about the importance of the industrial strategy that underpins it will be critical, particularly now, because of COVID hitting aerospace particularly hard, and also because of Brexit where there's uncertainty about what happens next. And if this review decides, and then ultimately does come up with a really credible strong industrial strategy that focuses on UK economy and UK industry, then I would welcome it. I do, but if ever there was a time to do that it is now. And I think that's it's important we keep that in our mindset, just to give you one example, the vast majority of the UK space capability is foreign owned. And that's something to just think about as we ponder the Q&A session. That's enough for me over to you, John. Thank you very much. Yes, great way to pull some things together. So we have a few outstanding questions which I'd like to put to the panel we're also replying to some of them in text based forms. The conceptual one from Alan McKenna refers to David's opening remarks treating air and space domains equally. And he says some people might argue that these are categorically different domains. There's a bit more about this point. So briefly David first, perhaps, but if anybody else on the panel would like to use domains of air and space. Thanks, John. It'll be very brief because I would note that there are at least three people on the panel who probably better qualified to comment on that than me given their in depth knowledge of space research. So I think either Bledin, Ali, Peter, Meiter wish to observe on that, but I think there needs to be some very brief. I think there needs to be some recognition that air and space are not completely identical. There's always a risk of trying to shoehorn the two together and there's been a long standing debate about whether if air forces rename themselves, whether they should be an air and space force, or whether they should be an air or space force. I think a few days gone by, I know that Bledin and I had several conversations over a cup of coffee about the air and space versus aerospace debate, which I think is still alive on but I'll hand over to those better qualified to speak, I think. Okay, as briefly as possible, please. Thank you. Who wants to go next, Alexandra. So briefly on that. I think, yeah, historically we did always see spaces as it was seen as an extension of it. And his Air Force has kind of grabbed on to it. But the way that we operate in space is very different. How we use spaces different what we get from space is different and while there are similarities and those can can can help us in our understanding of space. I think there is a danger if we don't allow space to an extent to come out on its own and have its own structures its own people its own its own expertise and really get all the benefits of it. It pulls from quite a few different areas like you know you can you can make a lot of comparisons to the maritime domain with space perhaps almost more than air sometimes. And so, you know, in my personal opinion, I don't always think that space should be within an Air Force I think it should be brought into a more central function so that it's benefits to to the maritime domain to the land domain are not, not pushed to the side and don't become secondary, because it does it does benefit all of them equally. Any more comments on this or move on to the next question. Okay, and we've had a couple of questions about integration. Ben sharp asks key to integration cross government and multi domain is investing in decision making. I'm just losing my message right now someone's just moved it. I think they must have answered it for me as I was imposing it to everybody. Office information hub ideas been divided in the press does the panel see the are attacking the challenge of creating a national decision making structure and hierarchy to predict and cope with national crises. This was mentioned by a couple of people in their presentations. Julian, do you see any prospects for better national decision making structures coming out of the review. And so, and it's the last part of the question which talks about predicting future crises. And I'm afraid that's, that's the one thing that no structure is ever going to achieve. And so, I feel that the problem is short termism. People always say such and such a capability is not relevant to the threats we face today as if the threats we face today are going to be the same threats we're going to face in five or 10 or even 50 years time. And I don't see that tinkering around with decision making structures is going to solve a problem until people realize that they have to have the capacity for flexible response to unpredictable events. Okay, thank you Julian. Yes, great. So I'll come in there, I'll be slightly flippant and there was always a saying in the military that a politician would either want to make no decision or the latest possible decision. And I think in the military we live in that world, whether we like it or not, and it's working out how to, to, to prepare and plan for things that may or may not then be asked to be done. I've already said that he thinks more for deployment is part of his strategy going forward, so I'd be interested to see how that comes out but of course, being for deployed means you might find yourself in trouble far quicker. And therefore, you've either given the correct orders to the forces in being, or you have to have a very quick and very fast system in order to make the right calls escalate rules of engagement or whatever that might be. I think trying to find a perfect answer to this is impossible. The challenge is however is finding the right levels of decision. One of the problems for us in the military is that space based systems better communications does allow a much faster and more importantly more complete communication across all the way from the Prime Minister right down into the tactical space. And right now we don't really have the mechanisms that make that work. I used to quite enjoy it when my comms went off because it made my job a lot easier, because people stopped interfering I could get on with my last orders. But yeah we need to be wary of trying to find some perfect solution here, but I think it will get harder not easier. So Toby Dickinson's asks, does the exclusion of the Department for International Trade from the integrated review threatened the coherence of any defense industrial export policies and strategies. And I guess, tangentially to that, a question was asked, should the UK collaborate more with private investors similar to NASA and SpaceX, or would this be too much of a security issue. I mean Laurie, do you want to start with the question about why the Department of International Trade is not there and does that matter. I might as well assume if the number 10 in the Cabinet Office of Coordinating this will be talking to the Department of Trade. So I doubt if they're excluded altogether. I think there's a used to be a worry going back into the sources started in this business in the 70s. Industrial strategy dominated defense to the extent that you would end up with capabilities that you didn't really need or quite in the form you needed them because you had to sustain some vulnerable bit of the British economy or look after some vulnerable region in the UK. I'm not part of it is ever quite it's never going to go away. I think there's an issue now especially as we're looking at cyber and space as to whether, rather than just try to sustain vulnerable bits you could you can promote the areas of the future and strengthen the digital economy and so on and so forth. So I'm trying aspiration but the difficulty is you can try to do to just too much in these sorts of reviews and try to end up being too clever. So I think I'm all for a capabilities based review I'm all I'm all for recognizing the links between the civilian and the military spheres, but I think you can over. You can over engineer this to try to achieve too many objectives in the same review. Thank you. Yeah, John, I slightly correct the question I mean I am involved in this and DIT are involved via variety of committees and different associations that they're trying to bring in the industrial element to the strategy. The question will be is how much that industrial thinking and how much the industrial strategy shapes the reviews outcomes is the the unknown, and ultimately clearly defense has got to make sure it's got the right things to do the job it's being asked to do. So there is also that balancing act to ensure that the country has the economy and the capabilities that it needs that it believes it needs to maintain a sovereign recognizing that the UK's budget is insufficient to sort of compete at the levels that we're talking about an export driven international focus of that capability and that strategy is absolutely vital. If you don't have it export driven the UK MOD's budget is not going to keep a UK aerospace industry a photo. Thank you very much Greg, thank you. I don't know if anyone's going to be able to answer this but I'll just throw it out there. An anonymous attendee asks how do we extract ourselves from the one web white elephant liability question mark. Does anybody want to take that on. I think we'll put that to one side for the moment maybe we will apply in writing. What about the question of the private investments in space capabilities and the military getting much closer to them. Does anybody want to develop on what Greg was talking about. Much of the technology does seem to be and the finance seems to be in the private sector at the moment. I think there was the question I think on on partnering with with organizations like NASA and SpaceX and absolutely. And we've seen commercial space capabilities in a lot of areas on a par with state capabilities and in some in some cases overtaking national capabilities. You look at SpaceX and they're reasonable reusable launchers and they're able to take risks that states often aren't. If you look at the history of the Falcon nine and I'm landing it there are many many failures before they got it right. And we just can't do that seen as well with with small satellites and how the commercial sector has has led in that so I think there should be. Open to partnerships between defense, particularly and and the commercial sector. SpaceX does carry out a number of national security and defense missions in the US so so there isn't always a security barrier to that. I think in the UK it's it's about the the indigenous sector growing in a way that complements what national capabilities we might require so that so that they are able to to to partner. So so there has to be that conversation back and forth between where industry is going and where where it sees its its future and and what the ambitions and plans of of the UK government of the MAD will be so that there is that opportunity to work together, but I don't see the UK being able to reach any goal of being a real space power without that partnership with industry. Martin rose asks or comments that there's a developing doctrine within the night MAD championing and integrated approach. The comprehensive approach, we all know by any other name, and part of this and other conceptual work has been the meeting of a pan government strategic headquarters led by the MAD. I'd be interested in the panel's views on the practicality and utility of such a headquarters, particularly whether other government departments would play nicely in a defense rich environment. Who wants to start that will have you come in on that. And I think, you know, the notion of strengthening higher level. It relates back to the earlier question actually has been around for a very long time. In fact, you know, the advent of the National Security Council has made a positive difference, I would say. And Cobra has been, you know, tried and tested and by and large found to work in a wide range of contingencies. I think interesting question is, you know, but if it's worse than the sorts of things that we've had to deal with.