 Rhaid da i chi, i chi'n gwelio'n gwybod. Rhaid i chi, John Ghearson. Rhyw ddechrau yma, mae'r ddrwg frymian â'r ddau'r dweud. Ddweud ei wneud yn fawr i ddweud â'r ddau'r ddau i'n gwirionedd ac oed. Rwy'n ffocws i'r ddau'r ddau frymian â'r ddau frymian. Wrth gwrs, mae'r ddau rymian yn gweld o'r ddau'r ddau, Gall a'r olyfan gwneud o'r bobl amser ar y cwylwyr maen nhw'n gwneud y cwylwyr o'r ddweudiaeth yn d weaponiaeth ar ôl yma wnaeth i chi'n dwydoedd y gwirionedd nidtwyr mewn ddweud gan DEFRI ac a'r SMF, cyfeirio cymaint cyfeirio cyf nag ymlaen. Mae'n mynd i'n deall cynnig mewn gwirionedd yn darparu o'r phaint o'r ddweud ar y byd eich byd a'n gwisig mewn ffasio a'r wych ar hyn… yw'r dysgu anodig ym milynes. Felly mae fydd yn cyrthynas o'r ffaith mae wnaeth ym ymweld fwy fydd rhaid o ddim yn siarad yn dweud ei frau, ond rydyn ni'n ddweud hynny ddim yn Moon Unedol, os yna ni'n gweithio yma ar y gwaith, o bobl ond, felly mae'r ysgol ar y cyfryd ar gyfer am ysoleidd, a'r ysgol yn gweithio'r gweithiau. I'm delighted that we've got Julia Baum, our space research student for her PhD, one of our three funded PhDs here at the Freeman Centre, who's going to moderate, if that's the polite way of putting it, and lead some of the questions. David Jordan, my co-director, is going to handle the online questions when we come to the Q&A. We're going to operate on Chatham House Rule, I think, for this, and when you ask questions if you could be kind enough to identify who you are and where you come from. But with that, I'm going to hand over to Julia. Thanks very much. Thanks, John. Just to quickly say for Q&A, for those online, start getting your questions in as early as possible. We'll be doing hybrids so both in person and online. Yeah, just to kind of jump right in, if that's all right. Looking back at this past year, what are some highlights that you both have? Is there anything that stands out? Is there anything that looking back at your year of review is your proudest moment? I think my lowest moment was being in traffic five minutes after the start of this event, so I do apologise for that. From my perspective, I'd see Harvard's got some notes. I haven't. The highlight for me has been just being a part of this, actually. Having spent 30 years in the aerospace side and the flying side, I never thought I'd be coming into the space. Never thought. I know all of you have heard this before, but it has been enormously useful, brilliant working with Harvard. We've joined the Air Force together. I think that's some of how we've managed to get so far in this particular year. Being a part of it, starting an organisation from scratch, that is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime event. Not many people get to do that. It's a lot harder than you think it's going to be when you pitch up on day one and go, oh, this will be easy, and you open the can of worms, and they all disappear everywhere. As I look around the audience here, there's so many familiar faces. We've just done our first industry day, essentially a space seminar for Space Command. I really feel like we had a connection with so many people in the audience there that were essentially all new to me a year ago, so being a part of it, starting a new organisation, and meeting a bunch of unbelievably interesting people in a domain that is essentially new when it comes to the operational side of things, the whole thing has been brilliant. The entire year has been a highlight. What he said, so obviously I got about a year head start on Goddards because we stood the directorate up a couple of years ago. I think this year what's been good to see through the lens of the directorate in head office has been it all coming together. The money came together, we got the defence space programme settled to what that would look like. Goddards came in and took on Space Command, Space Command stood up and started ticking on the work. I think the biggest thing this last year is just seeing it come together. Probably the pinnacle of that was when we were last in here getting the space strategy issued. People have heard me say before there were quite a few naysayers about just our ability to get the space strategy published. It's been tried before, it's been at this for ten years. Others better than you have tried this type of monitor and actually it was hard at work at the end just to get it over the line. But I think that has set. We talked about this earlier today with industry. What that has allowed us now is something that we can hook a golden thread to and that's really important particularly for Space Command as they go forward here and tick on more of the heavy lifting of capability delivery because we didn't have that before. We didn't have an ability to go in front of an investment of a braces council and say here's the programme, here's my pitch, here's how much money I need and here's the golden thread that goes all the way back up to a defence-based strategy which hooks into a national space strategy which is signed by the top of government and that's why you need to give me the money. We didn't have that before so it was at worst could have been accused of you know people just wanting to get after pet projects so it's been nice to be able to settle that and now have clearing points. The trick now in this next year is to start implementing. It is worth saying as well I've mentioned the defence-based strategy you know so you've got sort of one thing there. Actually in two days time we declare our initial operating capability so you know I think that becomes our thing and you know I mentioned the sort of kind of worms and how difficult it is. We started many of you I think have heard me say we started with six people on the 31st of March last year. 1st of April suddenly with Farlingdale's with some of our units up at Warrington and down at High Wickham we ended up with 400 people all looking at us wondering which way we're going you know and doing the Wallace and Gromit laying the track in front of the train as we steam around the living room but we've got to a point here with IOC that is essentially we've got a bunch of track laid out now you know we know where we're going and we've grown the command and you know I'll talk about people in this room there are a couple of people in this room who've been important to you know how we've grown and the fact that we're reaching IOC and it is just a you know all credit to the personnel within the command and the directorate that we work closely with that we've managed to get to this point and we've managed to declare IOC we possibly talk about the the bits we haven't got to as part of IOC but you know to be able to do that in what is feels like 10 minutes but is actually a year I think has been fantastic. Yeah thinking about those difficulties that you're mentioning when you first started in the first few days or months was there anything unexpected that you know presented as a hurdle in the first steps? Well certainly from my perspective because Harvan the team had been there they'd actually cleared a bunch of those hurdles out of the way and the fact that defence had fully embraced the space command just made it so much easier for us I think probably the biggest hurdle for me and the command as we've gone through the years and not necessarily at the beginning has been this doesn't sound like a hurdle but the slow growth of our workforce across the way so we're lower than we wanted to be right now which has actually manifested itself and we haven't been able to take on all of the capability programmes that we've wanted to from the space directorate and that is you know we've been working this through there are a number of reasons why this happened but we're starting to accelerate now we're getting into it we're growing the team but it has meant that the team that we've got have been working really hard in order to try and fill those gaps and actually we brought on some just a small amount of contractor support to fill those gaps at the moment while we build that military and civil service workforce as well so that's probably been the biggest hurdle and the biggest one to manage and but that's really only come in in the sort of last sort of four to six months I think I think I would absolutely agree with that that's been harder than we expected historically doing workforce growth always is but it's generally getting the money and getting the positions agreed we call them the jpans you know the kind of the admin function of a seat for someone to sit on actually what we've found here is it's been quite hard to find the humans to get just to get the humans in because we've not we've not necessarily grown any of the three services to allow space command to grow so we're going and taking those people we've got to stop something to do this so that can be a challenge but as God has said they're they're kind of on a good path through this year um and what's been nice with the relationship between the directorate and the command is we've been able to easily take that decision so okay well we'll delay that a bit and we'll keep running that here you take this on you know we've lent a couple of people out of the directorate into the command to just keep some progress going I think for me one of the things that's been the biggest surprise in terms of challenge has been maintaining the narrative maintaining the support for the narrative of space and it's having to constantly go back and justify why this is important and that that has surprised me I thought you would only have to say that one or two times and people are like right we get it right we're good but we are particularly in the directorate and within head office where there's always a fight for the money there's always a positioning for prioritisation when there's only one bucket of cash and we do we are finding that we have to consistently go and justify what you know we gave you this amount of money at the IR you you need to come again and re-explain what you're doing with that and why that's right for defence so this is why we talk about both of us you'll hear us talk about this next few years three to four years really important that we use that money constructively to deliver tangible product that actually does change things for defence where people can say well because we've got this thing now in space these things are now easier for us or it has opened these doors that weren't previously open so that when we go in front of Treasury etc at the next spending review in a few years time it's more than fancy PowerPoint and we actually have product to say last time you gave us this we presented this plan we've done we stood up a space commander team of taking it on we've delivered these products and actually you know we've underpinned some MDI we've done operational capability life is getting better we're increasing our operational advantage etc etc that's really important this idea of having a license to operate if we want to keep that I think your next couple of years are critical in terms of implementing and delivery I have just thought of a single hurdle and that's the there's only 24 hours in the day but you know the clearly I'm not serious I'm serious on that particular front but one of the hardest things has actually been engagement so it I think it was your point that just just made that come to mind half where you know right from the beginning because we wanted to be you know the two things I always say about the command joint and collaborative because we wanted to be collaborative if today we had I don't know how many it was 150 industry representatives in the room I'm kind of glad to say that I've probably had conversations with every single one of them you know at some or multiple occasions and so in order to try and do that and engage with everyone right from the beginning and tell them what we're about and tell them where we're going as well as putting the command together and as I say laying the track around the living room in order that we've got somewhere to go and bring the people together we we really have been limited by you know how much time we've had and that has been hard work but you know it's something we want to continue and and I think we've got the relationships now I'm looking around the room for let's see if there's any knots in here I think we've got the relationships now set where we can just continue those discussions and it's not as difficult it is right at the beginning when you're trying to build that initial relationship but it goes to that point about continually talking about what we're doing why we're doing it and and where we're going but I was excited a wee bit doom and gloom aren't we I see it's been really successful you know and I'd be happy to challenge you know other parts of defense and say show me somewhere else that has you know had equal success to what we've had in terms of just getting this thing up and running from what was a relatively greenfield site and we have a strategy which is hooked to national strategy importantly we've got governance really good governance that's now proven across government all the way to a prime minister we've got a command stood up when's the last time that happens and actually we're delivering you know my nerve is often running as our first program that transfers across to goddess in the next couple of days and that's actually we're often delivering in a contract with that already so you know it's not all there's obviously there's bits of it that are hard it is complex and but I think all told we've made good progress with it yeah I think despite those hurdles yeah we've got a national the national and defense based strategy yeah and we're getting into IOC but we just can't rest here no need more time again so I suppose on a more optimistic note you mentioned personal relationships that's something that's quite strong in the space industry but also industry military relations considering you both grew up through the rf together would you say that your personal relationship or your close working relationship is part of directorate and command success and then I guess on the flip side of that is that a challenge for defense thinking of building the next defense leaders and how the personal element feeds into that yeah I think it is we might start arguing like an old married couple here but I know it definitely is I mean you know again we did you know we joined the Royal Air Force together in the same day from the same airplanes being on squadrons together that definitely helps um also you know we we go to the rugby and whilst you're watching Ireland beat England's we can talk about how we're going to solve the next challenge so yeah that it does it does help there's no doubt about it and the last thing you would want is you know to be a competitive nature we we talked about this when God has got totally got the job and that was our first conversation this this isn't going to be a competition this is going to be you know greater than the sum of the parts that's what we're going to get after here and I think we've we've been doing that um and because we're good pals we're able to have tough conversations about stuff um that doesn't always happen that's just humans you know that's hard I think what's key is with all these things you can't rely on personal relationships and in my experience great if you have them you kind of make hay whilst the sun shines you've got to put the processes in place for when you get a couple of people that maybe don't get on and that does happen but the processes and the governance keep it clean and everybody knows what their rules are um and I think we've done that I think we've got a good solid governance process it'll continue to be tested and adjusted particularly as space command takes on more of the capability work um but I'm very confident that either the service could walk away and we could get a couple of antsy people in here and it would still work because the processes they're done dependant I think it you know it's been strange on occasion because I know it's sometimes difficult when you know you became Mr space in the in the mod I don't think that's not his nickname by the way but it's much better than that um but uh then when another two star came along and the fact that we and you know the fact that we're wearing the same uniform but we go to the same events I think has and could cause confusion in various areas which is why we spend so much time talking about it one of the slides I put up today for the industry forum was a Venn diagram that showed where the grey shaded area in the middle is that's quite thick at the moment in terms of of what we do together and how this is going to drift apart in the in the future as as we get our feet as we have now with IOC underneath us we've got the governance in place and so on um and I think the other thing is you know we're always kind of smiling and and talking a lot of talking uh to uh together and you know I don't know whether some other areas of defence look on and go well they seem to be having a laugh that you know that can't work how's that working but I think that not I think that comes down to the personal relationship but as you said we have managed to have the hard conversations and I think having that good personal relationship sometimes makes that difficult yeah is that you don't want to annoy your friend but on a professional basis you have to have the difficult conversations that you know the other when we were talking about that loaning personnel from one way to the other you know half has to tell me no in certain areas when can I just borrow them for six weeks no we're doing this damn it okay you know we're not afraid of having those conversations with each other um and uh you know if whenever either of us move on I think it'll be a real shame because you know this is as I say coming back to the point of as you have done you know forming an organisation from scratch is a kind of high point in your life um and to do it with someone that you've worked with for so long in trust um has just made it so much easier uh along the way so you know I don't know whether that's a model you can bring in defence you know you've got to find this was kind of accidental we're going to be posted together yeah exactly we'll go everywhere as a tuition but it has made it so much easier genuinely that we can what's that text have a conversation and solve problems even before they become problems and you know hopefully they're from the staff and the directorate to the team in space command you know they don't feel that friction and know that they can you know that we are solving problems for them before before we actually get to them to sort of change gears and look into the future a bit uh you've already spoken a bit about short term goals looking into the long term whether it's 10 20 plus years or if you're willing to be zealous you could talk about the year 3000 um where do you see sort of the priorities of the focus for commanding directorate success or or sort of the future of it yeah I'm going to go to my strategy going on that one it's uh and so this is why I love this job so much um because of you can have conversations like we're just about to have I hope where you know you can it's what we try to get this going a wee bit today at the industry engagement I've kind of built this PowerPoint slide you know the last two years the next 20 um and if we look at what we expect to happen in the next 20 in the space to me and it is quite amazing even if only 50% of it's delivered it's still going to be quite amazing humans back on the moon more you know permanent basing on the moon a lunar gateway perhaps um you know mineral extraction from asteroids certainly from the moon what's that mean for earth what's that mean for what's the next generation after next prosperity agenda going to look like if we've cracked the nut that is mineral mining off of an asteroid um and then that broader bit about going to mars someone asked a question recently once humans go to mars when a baby's born there is it a human or is it a martian where would you ever get to have that conversation in any other job in defence so it is it is really interesting and intriguing and you can it's almost starts to get into science fiction and we've had this discussion around how science fiction actually some of it has now come true um and maybe some of those people that write science fiction are the sorts of people you want in your strategy teams looking 20 30 years like um but I think the big question in all seriousness for defence is what's our role in that mindful that the whole purpose of defence is supposed to be protect and defend the nation and the you know national interests well if our national interests properly extend to space in terms of economic prosperity let's say a space based solar power and we have to defend that from a defence perspective what's that look like and then there's broader question around if you know space x etc keep doing what they're doing and you know effectively anyone can access space because it's relatively economically viable at some point some some bad people are going to get into space and there's going to be some sort of space terrorism type thing what's that look like how do we respond to it what's the role of defence in that you know we saw why a big strategic impact big strategic shock like 9 11 affected the whole of earth what would something like that in space look like for us how would we respond to that what's the role of defence so that's a discussion you know for sds or 25 or sds or 30 but it's a discussion that needs to start finding its feet today I think so that folk in this room particularly from the world of academia can maybe start putting a little bit of rigor behind the thinking so that it isn't just science fiction but that discussion for me is really interesting what's that look like in the future what would our equipment program look like 20 years from now if we're told you've got to protect the space line of communication that could be very exciting back to x wings x when it fires you know you know from my perspective on that you know having said about the Wallace and Gromit train I haven't laid that much track in front of the train yet you know in order to to determine where we're going it's one of the things we talked about today you know in the last five weeks I think there's been a profound change and we can't predict where we're going so whatever we do I think there's a need to just be flexible in terms of where we're going and I came without repeating with some of the same audience here but the reason we originally had a full operating capabilities were hitting initial operating capability in a couple of days there was originally as there always is in a military plan a full operating capability or a final operating capability I deliberately got rid of that because I didn't want there to be a final shape size whatever of the command and you know I'd always enjoyed the phrase iPhone doesn't have an FOC and so I think there's an organic growth that if we get the right structures in place will allow us to to move with whatever happens with whatever shocks come along I also mentioned today our our vision in terms of making space safe secure and sustainable for all generations that points to that long term you know the sustainability aspect is key and so definitely in the next few years when we're looking at debris the companies out there that are doing debris removal space traffic control all of those elements I think come together to ensure that space is sustainable and accessible to future generations because if we get this wrong right now then there won't be a future space because we won't be able to get into it for a start and so I think a couple of those aspects that agility to be able to change to whatever the the strategic context is changing to and just that maintaining sustainability and having that longer look and not just being I think blinkered by capabilities now that might have an effect into the future I think we need to consider sustainability as we do everything from both the defence and that's why it's really good to be working closely with our space agency and base space directorate colleagues that were actually on stage with us at the last event here to ensure that we're doing this collectively from a UK perspective and engaging with all the other nations out there as well so yeah I guess it's those two points that the things that I think about for the future rather than or as well as X wings you know just just to kind of close on it but a couple of things gotta said sparked with me this idea of and this is me now with my kind of co-chair of national space board had on where we're looking for opportunities for UK to maybe leapfrog ahead to be a global leader in certain parts of space and we you know we're not naive enough to think we'll ever be able to match the likes of the USA or China in terms of you know how much money we put into it so this idea of you know how that's measures success and how many satellites we've got is that's the wrong place to start but there are definite there's definite opportunity for us to lead the world in things like licensing and legislation and the work that fcdo is leading into the UN we're supporting very closely on space norms and what could that look like God has mentioned space traffic management you know 100 years ago if you would have stood where Heathrow is today and looked up you wouldn't have ever thought there would be a Heathrow and airplanes landing with 250 people in them every x number of seconds in the fog and but we got there because we put legislation and we put IKO rules and I think there's opportunity for UK to lead in that discussion doesn't cost much money it's about thought leadership it's about having the putting the intellect into it and then influence and doing that rule that UK does well this idea of being the honest broker and being an interlocutor across the world and we're seeing that play out really well in the UN with the fcdo work the other thing is were the opportunities in terms of spin-off from space and one of the things that we're just starting to look at and this is me more and I as a light blue officer I'm more than doing the space stuff but if indeed SpaceX get something like a starship working properly and we end up with this rocket that can lift 120 tons and go to Mars it can also lift 120 tons and get anywhere point to point on earth in less than 50 minutes what's that mean for generation after next c17 maybe we shouldn't be thinking about brice norton flying airplanes but in 2050 maybe they should be flying starships and sending cargo around the world that way or people what's that look like and again there's a conversation to be had now because that in terms of a concept and in terms of trial is going to happen within the next five years guaranteed that's certainly where we see that company going and we're starting to work at looking at options for how could we be involved with that discussion to learn the lessons and see is there a viability and something like that and there'll be plenty other spin-offs that we can then apply to the other domains to make us even better and I think that's the rule that the space directorate certainly as we make this transition with space command taking on you know the day to day hard grind of delivering space for defence the space directorate's role of doing more of the upper night and the horizon scanning for worse the opportunity in the future seeding the narrative for future defence reviews and you know maybe doing a few studies early studies on it to really look at being a global leader in certain areas and I think that's really exciting as well that part of it yeah thank you for those it's a very interesting and I look forward to meeting you on the moon someday okay yeah so I won't steal any more of your time and I think it's important to open the floor for Q&A um we'll be taking questions online so just a reminder to submit your questions online and when the there are two roving mics um when you've been selected just introduce yourself with your name and where you're from so the first question will go to Richard Franklin good evening thank you um firstly congratulations for surviving the first year I'm two days away from IOC and 150 industry players I'm sure that's been the worst bit other nations are seeing the threat in space and accelerating capability partly Ukraine recently we've seen Germany saying how fast can they replace stuff you're in Australia the Australians are really worried the Pacific for Asia would you like to accelerate and if so you've mentioned there are only 24 hours in a day we see the challenge 150 of us trying to get to you um what could we as industry do to help you accelerate and in particular what sort of models to embrace the SMEs that you talk to to get to those fast capabilities that you want in a sustainable way so I'll kick off with the first part of that um what was interesting so I have just come back from Australia so if I pass out at the back of the stage it's because I still haven't adjusted to the time zone yet but it was interesting seeing the the launch of the Australian Defence Space Command it was really interesting talking to my German colleague the two-star space commander who we've got a really good relationship amongst all of the space commanders in the in the CSPO the combined space operations forum um and so unsurprisingly the conversation went to 100 billion euros what are you going to do with it um Mike was particularly pleased that you know where they'd had ambiguity and funding for their space program they haven't got ambiguity now we talked about whether they had the mechanisms to be able to cope procurement mechanisms financial mechanisms um the ability to speak to industry given how much of industry is is now heading towards Germany um and uh you know and looking to help them with the uh with the spend um and that was an interesting conversation so when you so yeah it wouldn't be brilliant to have more money it wouldn't be brilliant to be able to do additional stuff um I've said to the team you know we had to crawl before we can walk before we can run and as we reach IOC that's essentially the point that we've gone from a crawl into a walk I would not try and sprint now so when you talk about accelerating I would just like to get the structures in place get the relationships in in place as Hal was mentioned already start delivering I think get the quick wins out the way with Minerva you know everything that we're going to do in the next year or so before we even consider expanding after that um you know I go back to the the can of worms point you know at the beginning with all the worms crawling we just brigaded them back into a sort of straight line and I think if we tried to do something too quickly right now then we'd probably break it and across whether it's Australia or Canada, France um you know are ahead of us in terms of standing up their space command and what they managed to do and the fact that they got heavy lift with our you know all of these different things with France but um you know when I look across most of the other nations um it's almost exactly the same ambition as us and actually is broader than defence as well certainly with Australia it's about as we are here enhancing the the space enterprise across the United Kingdom it's exactly the same in Australia and it's the same in Germany as well um so yeah it'd be brilliant to just inject money into it and make it happen but as I said you know one of the challenges I wasn't expecting was increasing the workforce I couldn't magic people out of the air it you know we could bring contractors in if you gave me all the money in the world but it is about putting the structures in place I think Richard on that particular front um so uh the question about threats well placed because there is one and we shouldn't shy away from that and we even see our US colleagues being much more overt in the public domain about where they see the threat I heard a great quote the other day that Russia is the imminent threat China is the pacing threat and climate change is the shaping threat and if that if we stand by that as a position then you know we we kind of go back and look at well what was our analysis that underpinned where we've ended up with a defence space program and the shape of that going forward and I actually I think we're in about the right place we're in about the right place with the amount of budget we had anybody can write an incredibly ambitious plan but at some point you've got to close with the resource and actually we did have an incredibly ambitious plan at the start of the IR process and then you go through that financial knife fight which you know at one point we were concerned we might lose it all and actually where we ended up was was an okay place to be mindful of how bad it could have been and so you know we were we were very happy with that and we've got enough to be able to put a foundation in what's interesting is we have when we saw Russia the Ukraine crisis bubble up one of the things that we have been doing is just a little bit of financial contingency planning just in case just within the department and certainly from our perspective what that meant was a let's have a look at just dusting off what the original proposal was for the IR and if we you know if we were asked what could you do if you got more money quickly there is at least a plan there that isn't back of a fag packet last minute oh we'd buy some of these things that was that was underpinned by you know five years worth of analysis we just ended up having to pair it back and change the shape of the profile so there is a plan there that is a let's call it oven ready there's a plan there that's oven ready um so i think that we would have confidence but goddess points right there's more to capability than just buying kit um you know the whole tepid oil thing and sometimes as i have accused others in the past of a tepid oil with a capital e it's all about the equipment and actually you know we we can't lose sight of the personnel the training the infrastructure to support um all of which takes time to pull through particularly on the people in building experience i do however think that one of the lessons we're seeing out of ukraine is leveraging into the commercial markets and how you can quickly with money leverage into the commercial markets um and we talked a little bit about this today you know it seems to me that every every image i see on the news at the moment has got a maxar stamp on it um and they're pretty pretty high fidelity images and so there's definitely something we could do quickly there if the if the question was we want you to accelerate here's a bunch of new money what would you do with it immediately it would probably be that um and we would have to look at some sensible partnership with industry to help us get there in terms of making best use of it and i think we've got the word with all within di and the likes to process it for sure um but you know we've you've heard us richard talk about future collaborations that are more than the old school customer supplier relationship that we need to be looking at what could the partnership be where we're all in it together delivering this on behalf of the nation i think we did accelerate some stuff with airbus recently i've mentioned it at the conference today with um you know everything we put in place with Artemis and you know get vision one imagery across to the national centre for geospatial intelligence um and through some good work from your team richard the um unlocking some tasking in uh novusaw you know exactly to harv's point of you know some good partnerships there um in order to get what was required to the right people so there was a little bit of acceleration on that particular front that was both sides as well it was you know wasn't just us um but i think you know that was a good example of the sort of teaming that could come together yeah absolutely and the and the us are doing this as well now it's not it's not we would do it because we didn't have the word with all to do it any other way this seems to be in practice the best way to get after it so you know and a place to this idea of what we've talked about the uncollaborate access and what's that look like and as we go through this summer through the national space board we're looking at properly on picking that what would that mean to really help industry what does own mean you know what the sovereign mean um and there's a bit of work to still to go on that just so that industry can properly understand it and know how they would then react to that um but certainly the model of partnering in a in a meaningfully collaborative way with industry to exploit commercial capability we're seeing that play out today and it seems to be pretty damn good great are there any other questions in the audience uh Simon Henley from reaction engines um i will say this from reaction engines point of view uh c 17 after next or to be sensitive to our sponsors a 400 after next um i hope it's horizontal launch and recovery not not vertical um the question actually is we're the first year of space command and where we are we're still to some extent in a bit of a honeymoon period albeit that things in Ukraine are making it a lot more serious than it would otherwise have been these things but only really become serious part of the defense space strategies is based around collaboration to get assured access to things like launch where they're too expensive to be born by one individual country things start to get very serious and relationships change when you start entering into programs where you are mutually dependent for assured access on something that's joined the uk of late has been on the civil science space side you know the the previous partner of choice has been isa but there's a degree of ambivalence at government level certainly on the civil side towards isa you've mentioned a number of partners that you're talking to who are new players in the game when do we think we'll start to see some bets being placed as to who are your strategic partners to do these things and i'm probably asking too much speculators to who some of those first partners might be so that's it's a live topic at the space board and we'll work it through this summer i wouldn't want to kind of jump into detail now because there's a ton of analysis to go and frankly whatever the analysis said then it will be influenced by a healthy smear of politics and we we all know that what's interesting for me is just the way things have worked out on the military side we tend to look west we tend to be quite atlanticist and it's all about our us colleagues and you know probably what was not lost on no one in our defense space strategy that the only nation we mentioned by name was the usa but that's a space relationship that's existed for many many decades and we've benefited from that in terms of a receipt of space derived data that we've then been part of the processing and the analysis and what we're trying to do now is just put a bit more skin in the game to kind of earn it a bit more to be honest so that relationship will and is and will remain really important to us and have some semblance of primacy for sure in my view um in the broader discussion of the cross government and isa um you know i kind of talk about this at risk of getting way outside my own swim lane and then being told off um so i would just say you we're doing we're doing a ton of work on isa on isa particularly with the council of ministers coming up this autumn this November i we're we're looking at some specific programs like Copernicus where i still trying to work out where do we go now that we've left Galileo um what would that all mean in terms of you know if you were being particularly built and you said well maybe we're not going to commit just as much to an organization like isa because we're not saying as much in terms of contracts coming back to UK because of the ramifications of brexit i will then what would a good divide look like i don't think anybody's saying we should get out of isa that it's about what word do we put our efforts into that organization in terms of maintaining the relationship in a meaningful way but getting after the things that that we know are right for us and if that frees up some cash then how would we use that in back in UK for some semblance of national programs that then the broader UK space sector could really get behind and then then you might be able to have conversations around should we could we have a national EO program what would that look like we've already been quite overt we're putting the guts of a billion pounds into an ISR program and you know what if there was some money on the civil side that could at least maybe even match fund that it's not a bad place to be especially if I the minister for science is correcting his assumption that when HMG puts a pint into space the sector should match it with three so if I did the math on that that would be a five billion pound program over 10 years that seems okay for a big EO program and I'm sure we could do a hell of a lot more than what we've seen historically as technology has come on so those conversations are all live no decisions yet all will go up through the space council all will be politically influenced and it's incredibly difficult to predict how that would how that discussion would go and what's good is that we're closing with the discussion and it's at the ministerial level and my experience thus far is that the ministers are being incredibly open minded and they're willing to to you know show me the data show me the metric show me the analysis and we'll let that we'll let that lead a conversation and then we'll put the political nuance on the top of that so you know as a good government official my job is to produce the analysis and the data and present options um and then we'll see where the likes of the national space council exit hopefully that's as good as you're going to get certainly from a you know from the command perspective um the CISpo the command space operations uh forum is the prime forum along with nato you know nato is you know declared space as an operational domain in 2018 and actually is in the same position as us in sort of building an emerging um space center actually down at ramstein francer looking at building the nato centre of excellence so we've already got a really good core there in terms of collaboration as i mentioned with richard's question that there's a really interesting discussion to be have with germany as a as a close neighbor have went out to france just recently for their asterix exercise and and i think it was really impressive from everything that i've heard with the with what they were doing there um from a previous life as a station runner up at lossy mouth being in the f35 program we talked a lot with the scandinavian countries that's not a conversation that we've realistically started from a space perspective we've had these conversations especially when you bring in companies like one web or whoever who you know now from a broadband the saccom perspective can you know can start doing things in the high north we've had conversations with japan we've had conversations with with career there's a bunch of different people out there that are doing some brilliant things again for us it comes back down to resource at the end of the day and how as i've mentioned about the you know not having enough hours in the day we have to come back and prioritize the sort of key relationships which leads us back to c-spo and and back to nato and just ensuring that we you know we do our very best as a good partner in those organizations and try and do as much as we can to sort of share the load and and actually get somewhere as well one of the blockers in that you talked about hurdles is classification of ultimately military space which i think is something we really do need to to look at when it comes to dual use and the final point i'll make is that whichever way we go you know from the east side from the space agency the good thing is with the four of us with half rebecca myself and paul we do a hell of a lot of talking right now you know paul is in the middle of a transformation of the uk space agency into more of a delivery organization than where they had been before in terms of managing grants and that that sort of direct line into isa but whatever we do i think we've got kind of got all bases covered here from looking that way the prime sort of defense relationship looking across the atlantic but again it's down to resource and and we're prioritizing right now just being mindful of those online are there any questions from there are a few anonymous attendee has been very diligent in asking question but i'll go if you'll forgive me with sort of named individuals first harsh data says that space budgets and priorities references states have often increased and decreased with the arrival of new presidents in the united states of america and wonders what in your opinion the biggest risk to your objectives and vision for uh uk space is and there's a related question from marcus burton about budgets as well which i'll tie in if i may way says the budget allocated to space command is comparatively he thinks very small compared to those in private sector private sector space companies and how will space command keep parity with the speed of private sector space and still meet the aspirations so the budget thing i did notice yesterday actually we mentioned this earlier 24 and a half billion annual budget for us space force i think that's our watering is back to your point richard in terms of of could you accelerate if they gave you all of that all of that cash i think you know ultimately are what we have to do and what we are trying to do is add value to the united states in terms of probably the pacing threat you know when it comes to it is as you talked about earlier i mentioned it today i mentioned it in a bunch of different forums you know where we take our what is a comparatively tiny little cog and try and fit it into the enormous us machine is difficult you know where do we put it where do we invest our money where do we take our budget that we've been given and i the value of having had the space director at look at this and determine essentially the pipelines and where the money fits is because they've done that analysis and the more difficult bit going back to the relationship side of things is you've got a bunch of different cogs from a bunch of different nations how do they all fit together into that big machine and how do we make sure that our gears aren't crunching when we put them in together you know how does that collaboration work we talked about australia and the and the other various nations earlier so it's about taking what we've got and using it intelligently i think on that side of things so you know you can get lost in budgets i did a an exchange tour with the united states air force over 9 11 actually and we were in iraq at the time when it happened came back from and were flying combat air patrols over the top of washington dc at that particular time there were combat air patrols across every major conurbation in the continental united states and they'd already sent assets across to afghanistan and it was eye-watering the scale of it and there's another depression you go through when you come back from that and well i'm back to an air force of i think it was probably about 45 000 at the time what's the point but then you soon realise where you fit into the broader scheme and how you can be a good ally and partner and i think having done that coming into the space side of things i wasn't too depressed to see 24 and a half billion as an annual budget on by the way that doesn't include some of the other intelligence community out there i think it's just a matter of perspective and coming back to earlier points not trying to run before we're before we're walking properly and so you know the big conversation right now is is how do we best target the money we've got it's a lot of money if you take this tell someone in the street you've got five and a half billion for satellite communications over the next 10 years and a billion and a half for a defense-based portfolio that is a lot of money so we've just got to make sure that we make every pound count i don't know that i have much more to add you know budgets are budgets the law will be hard and we just have to in many ways it links back to the point i made earlier about constantly being on the narrative and making sure that people are supportive and understanding of why it's important to spend the money in that area when everybody else is trying to innovate and do new things and develop new kit and bring new capability to bear all of which is required in this more competitive sub threshold world um you know why should we have a billion and a half more of new money i'm sure if there was a cyber person here they'd be saying well i could spend that if it's equally as challenging in the cyber world so um you've got to cut your cloth some way we've we've landed where we are i think the point is to get the foundation right and then to leverage the partnerships that we've got you know and there's a huge appetite from particularly the usa to partner they see you know and again have spoken publicly around the pacing threat being china and the best deterrence for that as a pacing threat is a global partnership of like minded space faring nations all of whom are working together through this lens of safe secure and sustainable space um and being part of that then gives us access to the 24 billion budget that they're about to spend in certain areas like we've enjoyed for many decades and so it's it's a tricky question to just neck down on particularly on budget because it's it's all interlaced just being mindful of time i think we should just take two more questions together from the audience if there are any uh one over here and then we'll take this one over here hi um katie king from university of cambridge so i want to go back to your point about the workforce i found it quite interesting that you said that that's been a great determining step as it were because i mean everyone in this room is interested in space and wants to see uk space thrive so i'm interested in knowing what specialisations you're looking for in your workforce and how you think or are planning to accommodate that or bring those people in rather than maybe just nabbing people from harvesting um so yeah i wonder what the plan is and the other question uh yeah uh nill do will touch uk um what keeps you up at night what keeps you awake at night jet lag mainly um thanks katie uh i thought we said no tricky questions yeah so it's a conversation we actually had at the industry day today because you know if i'm brutally honest the i kind of started thinking about this we did a trip out to space systems command recently which is essentially the procurement arm of of us space force 10 000 personnel there and i forget the numbers right you know it's more or less but only about 5000 military only two and a half thousand only two and a half thousand civil service but then a two and a half thousand contractors and you know in our original plan we did not do not currently have contractors we do right now because we had to use them to fill the gap so i have started thinking about that as a hybrid model into the future and certainly when you speak to some of our us colleagues the perennial problem is we're in for a couple of years move the furniture around and then get posted somewhere else when you've got contractors in and you're paying them long term actually you've got the continuity on the various programs and you're not just you know for the industry in the room you're now not dealing with a different face every couple of years as has been the case so i think you know one of the things i have taken over the last few months is the use of contractors and how we do that how we budget for it in the first place in terms of our own workforce we don't again there was a discussion here today there are certain areas where we need space specialisations so if you take our space operation centre for example actually we're using space agency personnel who are the orbital analysts on that side of things we're training up our own personnel on that side of things the intelligence side of things is specifics in space intelligence and understanding that particular environment that space traffic control the conjunction analysis that side of thing needs an understanding of orbitology in order to that and actually then when you get to the capability side there are certain areas where we'll need people to understand it so that they can go toe to toe in procurement terms with with satcom specialists or isr specialists or whoever happens to be but actually the majority of the people i think you know are like me and not necessarily a space specialist but we need someone who's a procurement specialist and understands organisations and commercial legal financial frameworks the legal aspects of all of these sorts of things from the operational side you know the head of ops plans and training we've got a commodore mark flune was not a space guy previously but is essentially a command and control expert so when you throw him at a problem you get the structures right rather than getting into the nitty gritty detail of the of the space aspects so all of that i think comes together and i said right from the beginning if the the wiring diagram that half and the team had passed across to us is to right that's what you're going to build if that's what we end up building then that was a lucky guess you know three years prior a really lucky guess so i'm constantly on at the team to look at you know what do we need to change who do we move around and what uh what difference you know what different aspects do we need to bring in the future and i think you know probably the biggest one is contractors at the moment i still don't know by the way for anyone who was a contractor out there and that is is now going to give me the business card afterwards i don't know how we're going to do that quite yet but certainly we're going to continue with the with the help that we've got at the moment but that's that's probably the biggest thing is a much longer conversation to be had about space skills and where we're going with the training aspect and that's one of the highlights of our ioc is that we've just had a training needs analysis output more we get it in two days time and we'll have a training campaign plan so from a pure defense perspective we do start getting people interested in space from a very early stage whether you're you know whichever service you happen to be in going through the basic training um and then the sort of postgraduate courses that require people to to have as they go through and certainly um here we've got cliff in the audience here who's uh who's off to study space at sort of phd level out in the out in the us and uh and you know we'll take advantage of him when he eventually finishes and comes back as you know as soon as he can so i think long answer to it's going to change you know and it's only by living this that i think i've worked out where we need to go in the future i think there's a we so we don't have problems getting people in the service not not certainly into the light blue um we don't we can recruit people people want to join the air force you know the kids say it is something that they aspire to um and i think the space element of that will only help reinforce that position we're already seeing that play out and um you know i i worked very closely with the charity called the john egging trust which reaches out to young teenagers some of whom are a little bit wayward um and you just see them get fired up about space they love it you don't necessarily understand all the stuff that we would talk about here but it's space so it's cool and that's what i want to do um you know that's that so i don't think that there's but there's something around how we uh overtly and maybe brazenly embrace that and do the inspire bit and i think there's huge opportunity for us and even just this next year and we're going to do uk is going to do its first sovereign space launches this year and next year you know we're going to be firing rockets out of shetland you know if you said to any youngster do you want to go to shetland they'd probably go well this time next year they'll know where that place is um and they'll want to go there and you know we're doing work to build a space camp there because we know they'll want to go there so um i think there's something around the inspire the hard bit is retaining them and uh this is where you know goddess and the team are doing some brilliant work around uh this idea of a zigzag career you know come in we'll give you the training you get to wear a uniform you get to do all that coups based stuff in the military and then maybe uh you know you maybe step out for a while and then maybe you're a reservist um and you still contribute and then maybe you come back in full time and this idea of how do we exploit that i think there's there's a there's goodness in that somewhere which we just don't quite have it yet but i think we will get there with it and we see the us space force are already doing this if uh if anyone is at all interested in this go on google and type in us space force space is hard have a look at the 32nd clip that general reyman did and then tell me you don't want to join the us space force because it's brilliant absolutely brilliant and it's because of the subject matter so there's something around that on the the uh can i just jump in that so the other thing you know i didn't expand upon um we've had a discussion with reservists over the last sort of three or four days actually because we've um we've not quite used them properly so far especially reservists that come from industry where we're worried about putting into our capability and acquisition areas where you then wonder how much is going to leak out onto the other side you know those sorts of things whether there's any legal challenge to that sort of stuff i think we're just going to go put ndas in place nondisclosure agreements that sort of thing and start using people that have got 20 30 years of experience um in and around space as well with a couple of the reservists that we have got um in order to do it and certainly um we do need reservists so clearly anyone in this room that you know sounds like you're a volunteer yeah same yep yeah we once put on a uniform and uh and uh you know maybe give up a couple of weekends we could do with you especially if you've got that that space experience to work in the space operations center and so on sorry oh no fine i forgot another question already what keeps us awake keep it awake at nine well so from my perspective um i mean you know if we could banter about it but if there was one thing out i would want us to just accelerate in terms of building resilience it would be around provision of pnt um just because we've done so much work around pnt and we really understand in quite high fidelity what the what the impact could be to the nation if that was denied to us even if it was just for a week it would be billions of economic impact and actually i think you know there's been some people have compared it economically to the equivalent economic impact to the height of covid pandemic etc i actually think it would be how how it would upset the fabric of modern life in the uk the people who just pull their phone out and can get places or can call places or can facetime and all those things that you do just in your phone to the normal punter on the street wouldn't work you know telemedicine and financial district traffic lights turning green at the right time all that stuff that would be okay probably work for a day or two but two weeks in not having that having had modern life completely underpinned by it there would be looting on the streets and and that's probably not an exaggeration so there would be this unraveling of modern society i think which not quite sure how we would deal with that it's going to keep me awake at night now you know from my perspective it comes into the classification side of things as well but the threat that's out there and you would expect me to say that from a space command perspective how we counter that threat you know we talk about it being an operational domain it's up there already yet you know we've got six geostationary satellites that you know don't have everything on it that we would want them to in the future so you know how we get space domain awareness on to scarlet 6a as an example that a hot topic that I've said about 15 times today for a reason how we get defensive packages you know whether that's electronic warfare or however you want to skin that particular cat on to everything that we're going to put into not just put into space we talk today as well but the ground and link segments as well a cyber hardened are they physically protected it's those things that keep me awake at night because especially with some of the things we've seen in the last few weeks as well it's not a given that you can have access to to your assets and when you haven't got a lot of assets you know that's a big deal so looking into resilience exactly why we're talking to a lot of of you know other nations around the world in terms of what they're doing proliferated leo to short to ensure that someone cuts the internet cables down here then we've got data pathways up there at high speed through optical data links and they are compatible at that particular point so I think it's that side of things that they keep in awake at night as well as the pnt side of things now well thank you both thank you for asking or answering everybody's questions and apologies there's no room for any more online questions for today but i'm going to invite john up to give some closing remarks and then invite us to the reception okay julia thanks very much indeed um well thanks very much um I think we've learned a lot this evening um harb is watching too many editions of the purge uh at the moment um goddess it doesn't have enough hours in the day but fortunately has got such bad jet lag that he's making up for his at night so that that's good to know 36 hours at the moment and I'm pretty sure harb did suggest that a big policy focus is on how to populate mars so in terms of vision um we've heard quite a lot as well as delivery um and um not walking too fast before you can stand um which which is not a bad thing to to take away from this I think from the perspective of of of a university outside just the technical side I said just um because that's not an area that we do particularly here at kings from from the the freeman center perspective and I think david would agree with me um we are interested in air and space power matters and we see our mission as trying to um create a generation who are more who are more space and air literate um and and if we can support that um by increasing diversity which you both know I've spoken about before uh in the people who are coming through which we think it has to be focused on um well probably school leavers undergraduates and masters students rather than only our brilliant researchers um we'd like to have that conversation um with you about it and with partner academic institutions because I think it's very important and as harb said you do need to excite the the young generation um and I suppose notwithstanding the fact we haven't got the scale of the americans perhaps we can identify some things that will generate that interest in space um beyond the sort of the technical and the commercial interests who of course are very interested in space so thanks very much um I guess the only other thing I was going to raise with you to think about and it's not about your personal careers but in your staffs as well how far space might require um longer times of appointment perhaps um I take the point about contractors um and you know we are pretty major contractors at atrivenham and it's a bit scary being the institution of memory but I think we would all on the civil side like to have a bit more time with people who've certainly understood the sector um to to work with us and if if if that would be relevant to space that's another conversation we could have um with whoever comes um afterwards yeah and watch out for your budgets I would say my last point I'm pretty sure there's an armoured fighting vehicle um tender out there coming up soon which might want some money um and then you might find some of the other uniform services bidding for it but overall thank you very much indeed uh it's it's fantastic to hear from you and it's amazing that um you haven't repeated yourselves in three visits so that's really good um and and uh I wouldn't say that is a consistent thing with all the speakers um that we've invited uh to kings not fasi of course so um thanks very much indeed um I'd also like to thank airbus for partnering with us this evening and making this uh this event possible and we're we're we're delighted to have a bit of time to um continue the conversation here upstairs and Julia thank you very much for uh leaving the conversations um and um posing some challenging but not too difficult questions as the two have demonstrated in dealing with them um and polled anonymous online with their brilliant uh questions um as we said put your names and then we'll ask we'll take your questions so thank you very much indeed and thanks everybody for coming this evening thanks