AFA Policy Forum

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Lieutenant General Hamel: Good morning. What I'd like to do is to make a few introductory remarks and then join the panel to get some thoughts from our industry partners, but let me just start off by saying that, as the military co-host here, I'd like to extend a very hearty welcome on behalf of the entire Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) team to the assembled group. It's a very, very hard thing to follow behind [Air Force Space Command Commander] General Lance Lord as well as [Air Force Materiel Command Commander] General Bruce Carlson. Those were some great, inspiring words that I think really set the tone.

Hollywood of course is noted for all its celebrities, but I will tell you the real facts are that this is the place where we reach for the stars. This is indeed “Space Country USA,” to use a phrase from my friends and colleagues up at Vandenberg Air Force Base. This truly is where we invented military space and it's the place where we're taking it to new levels.

I'd also like to express my appreciation to the Air Force Association. As has been pointed out, this really has become the premier event on an annual basis that focuses on military space power; how it is we develop it and how it is we employ it.

I'd also like to recognize another real giant here. Over 30-plus years, we've both the Ball as well as the Symposium, dating back to General Bernard Schriever's days and General Jimmy Doolittle and the like. I'd like to recognize one of our great space leaders here also, General Bernard Randolph. It's great to have you here to serve as emeritus from the local Schriever Chapter of the AFA.

One of the things I would say, as I mentioned last evening at a small gathering, we have quite a few people here from throughout the SMC organization as well as local colleges and universities and I'd really encourage our industry as well as others to take the opportunity to get acquainted with some of our incredibly bright young men and women that are part of the next generation of space professionals.

Finally, this past week both Air Force Materiel Command and Space Command had their commanders’ conferences, so let me extend a welcome to many of our colleagues from those commands that are joining in on this.

We're going to have a great panel here that can speak from a number of different perspectives that industry brings to this particular business, but let me just kind of share from a military operational and development standpoint a few things from my own perspective.

General Lord spoke a bit about being at the mid-century point in the first century of military space power. I'd say we truly are at an auspicious juncture in all that. The fact is that General Schriever began the business out here. His passing is very regrettable. At the same time, though, we're going to reach back and understand some of the cores and the basis by which he really left us such an incredible heritage as we look forward into the future and shape that next half century.

It's important, though, to be able to understand some of the sources of the great achievements that we had over this first half century of military space power. The fact of the matter is that we had an inspired group of individuals that came here back in 1954. They had incredible technical competence, they brought operational perspective, many were World War II veterans, and they understood the vitality as well as the survival of the nation was going to depend upon what they produced in the 1950s as we addressed the threat of the Soviet Union.

Let me just rattle off a few things ... Thor, Atlas, Delta, Titan, Minuteman—all those Greek gods as well as the foundations of our own liberty in this country. Discoverer, Seamless, Veila, Discus—there was a stream of capabilities that was invented within the first ten years of the formation of the Western Development Division that laid the foundation for every aspect of military operational capabilities that we know today. That came about because of strong technical excellence and leadership. It was perseverance, determination, and a unique combination of government and industry, partnership and teamwork, where people didn't know other than by what you wore who was writing your paycheck. It was a badgeless environment. It was true, at-the-very-roots cooperation and collaboration between industry and the government, operators and developers, that produced those capabilities.

If we fast forward, we know that space has become a critical part of how it was we won the Cold War as well as how we now are poised to continue to lead the world both militarily as well as economically and politically. Space, as we've noted, is now indispensable in joint operations and the application of military force as well as humanitarian relief. Every place we look, from the deserts of the Persian Gulf region to our vigilance on the Korean Peninsula to our ability to have Special Operations forces deployed literally within hours to any place on the face of the earth and operate with speed, precision and agility...and yes, most recently, we've learned also what the value is of military force as well as space in serving our humanitarian relief needs—all the way from tsunami relief to what's happened on the Gulf Coast.

It was interesting; in our commanders’ conference we had several people that served in the relief operations along the Gulf Coast. Here’s what we learned about the roles and promise of space. Bringing iridium phones in when all cellular phones were down; being able to get commercial imagery that allowed us to be able to understand where the most devastated and hardest hit areas were and what was going to be most accessible; how iwe had global broadcast capabilities and were able to tie together all those first responders. These developments were truly revolutionary in terms of how we are applying space and we're going to get better each time as we proceed forward.

I'll tell you as the Commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, it is an incredibly privileged opportunity that I have to lead this great team. Obviously, we are direct linear descendants of General Schriever and a whole host of people from Forrest McCartney to Roger Dekok. It truly is a very sobering set of responsibilities to think about, both from the standpoint of where we've come as well as where we're going to head for the future.

Let me reinforce a point that General Lord made. If you listen to the pundits out there, you'd figure that everything is broken and we should just go home and forget it. But I can't tell you how far from the truth that truly is.

Take a look at the record that was pointed out here. We just recently, with the last Titan 4 launch, set the all-time consecutive successful launch record for military space launch. [Applause] That old record was set in 1971 and here we are in 2005 pushing to a new record. The mighty Titan went out in great style. It launched what was arguably the most important mission that this nation has faced in over three decades, and what a fabulous way for that team to go out.

Likewise, we have the healthiest constellations on orbit today we've ever had and it is more integrated into every aspect of joint warfighting than it has ever been.

So we don't have a lot to apologize for in terms of the capabilities we've delivered, but we do have issues and problems out there. There are programs that frankly were born during an era where we were operating more on a case of hope, if you will. We thought we could deliver with faster, cheaper, better techniques and we know that this is a business that is very unforgiving.

As General Lord pointed out, we're going to focus on the three P's. We're going to get development back on track by going back to basics. Those three P's are the people, processes and partnerships.

You're going to hear a little bit more about that as we transition to hearing from our panel members, but let me just share with you, if you will, from the government standpoint, from the Air Force team on this, the people part of the equation.

We continue to get a lot of very bright young men and women that come in through our officer and enlisted ranks and we're revitalizing the training that we give those bright young folks to make sure they understand not simply the terminology and science, but also the art of technical program management. We're going to make sure that everybody starts once again assuming accountability, all the way down to individual projects engineers, and that they know what they are expected to do and that they are going to be personally accountable for their particular part or subsystem. We're likewise going to make sure that there's the highest level of integrity. Not only personal integrity, but technical integrity in what it is that we produce as a center together with our industry partners.

Let me touch on processes. Why is that important? I will tell you our business is unique from many others across our military—you don't get two chances to do it right. The day that you light the fire on a rocket, it's not going to come back. You need to ensure that you have every confidence that it is going to successfully perform, as well as the satellites we launch into orbit that we expect to operate for 10, 15, 20 years. We need to know precisely what we are doing and have confidence about how it is going to perform.

Finally, the point about partnerships is that this is a hard business. It takes a diverse group of people, all the way from industry to government individuals, contracting officers, engineers, program management, testers, as well as operators and users to really bring together these capabilities.

If we think about how space is used by the warfighter, they simply want to be able to pick up the phone and get the dial tone. It's immaterial to them what it takes behind the scenes to produce an integrated set of space capabilities all the way from imagery to warning to communication systems. But we've got to have a partnership that understands how you bring together all those diverse elements and produce that dial tone; to have that responsive capability when and where it is needed.

We really are very privileged today to have what I consider to be probably the premier panel of senior industry executives that have been there, done that, from virtually every aspect of our space development and operations side of the business. They represent the biggest three companies that we have out there that are developing major system solutions. Let me at least introduce each in order and we'll then give each an opportunity to speak.

General George Muellner, currently serving as Boeing's Vice President and General Manager for Air Force Space Systems ... We all know George served an illustrious career as a fighter pilot, developer, acquirer, and requirements guru. Now, in industry, he has served key leadership positions in the Phantom Works for Boeing as well as his current position as primary Air Force systems manager for integrated defense systems.

We likewise are very privileged to have Joanne Maguire. Joanne Maguire is the Deputy of the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. She's held that position for a couple of years. Prior to that she served decades in the space development business, and currently Joanne…[Laughter]…decades…well, two. We didn't say three or four. I wasn't going to say anything about “old friends,” either. But truly, Joanne has from the very earliest days had the grit under her fingernails of knowing what it means to be down there on the floor and to produce hardware and software and she is now leading up Lockheed Martin's Sunnyvale operations.

Finally we have Alexis Livanos, who is with Northrop Grumman as Vice President heading up their space technology sector. If you will, he’s with the old space park team down here in Redondo Beach. Truly cutting edge technology. Again, Alexis is a long-term resident, and a graduate of CalTech here. He's done just about everything in the business and again, is a great partner in how it is we will produce the next generation of space capabilities.

So with that I'd like to turn the floor over to George, then we'll have a few questions and dialogue at the end.

Mr. Muellner: Thank you, Mike. I'd like to also thank the AFA for this opportunity. As several of the previous speakers said, this is a great venue out here and it really does advance the space community a great deal.

I was happy to hear from Lance's presentation that we really have everything under control. I feel bad now, because I'm going to maybe throw another challenge out on the table that we can take on next year, but we have indeed made tremendous advances over the last several years in really making the warfighter not only totally dependent on space, but in satisfying their expectations in almost every case. That “almost every case” is what I'd like to talk about.

From my perspective, the war of the warfighter and the way they operate is dramatically changing and I'm going to make some continual references to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program because I think it's indicative of where the warfighter is going tomorrow. Then I’ll raise the question as to where we have to go to keep up with that.

We've seen this morning what we, the space community, do for the warfighter, and I'm primarily talking about the theater warfighter here. Great communication support, navigation, timing, sensing, to include things like weather and what have you. That support to the theater or deployed warfighter, not employed as was pointed out earlier, really has become a dependent element of warfighting for our ground forces and all the other elements in theater.

But if we look at that, what it really is is a series of independent systems that we have developed over the years, brought together, and are now really pushing into the theater application often by deploying space warriors forward to facilitate the use of these systems. We’re trying to get more out of them if you will, and to help with the very asymmetric type of warfare that we're dealing with these days in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

We're still faced with the challenge in most cases of being bandwidth constrained. Even though we're making high use of commercial comm, mobile warfighters are still “disadvantaged users.” I always loved that term when we used it. Just recently I had the opportunity to talk to a number of Army and Marine forces in theater and the ones that were highly mobile clearly were disadvantaged in what they had access to and also their ability to connect on the roll. So we certainly have got some challenges to close in that if we're going to keep up with what is really the changing face of warfare.

The systems we've got right now provide tremendous capability to that warfighter, but let me kind of put it in their terms. We provide a lot of information. It is not horizontally integrated with the other ground and air sensors, so we have decision-makers that end up providing that synthesis to underpin their decisions.

Mobile warfighters ... I had a Marine commander over there tell me that the intelligence information they generally had on a day-to-day basis was usually a day or a day-and-a-half old and they depended almost totally on their organic sensors which in some cases were UAVs—either Predators or some other organic UAV deployed forward with them. So they're not getting the current information that we're almost always getting in some of our command centers.

Secondly, our warfighters communicate by selecting a communication means, whether it be Discus, commercial, what have you. They have terminals for those and if those systems happen to be saturated for whatever reason, they get in a queue and wait in some cases. And as I said, mobile warfighters are really disadvantaged.

The other thing is, one of the things I got from both the Army and the Marine forces that I talked to is they have a lot more understanding where the enemy is than they do their own forces. So Blue Force Tracking is still a deficiency that I think we have to close on.

With that as today, let me jump ahead to tomorrow and kind of describe where I think we really need to go.

Let me refer to the Future Combat Systems briefing that the Army uses. What it describes is a totally different type of battlefield. In the case of the Army, they're designing a system whose success is dependent upon them being able to see first, decide first, act first, and then close decisively. All these things require a different sort of support to that warfighter. That support is integrated space in air and ground systems. Not just horizontal integration of all of our space systems, but of all the systems that support that warfighter. They define it as internet-like with bandwidth on demand and comm on the move is absolutely integral to their concept. If they have to stop to communicate, they are no longer in their Bradleys, in their M1-A2s, they are in much lighter vehicles that are much more vulnerable. It is clearly a networkcentric-focused operation in the terms that Art Zubrowski brought to us.

Decision-makers are really presented all-source knowledge and do not have to synthesize as they do today, enabling much more rapid decision-making. Mobile warfighters are pushed this all-source intelligence because we know where they're at, we know where the enemy is at, and we push what they need to operate. Not quite what we do today.

As Lance talked about a few moments ago, the folks on the battlefield don't care how they communicate, in other words what network they use, they just want to communicate. Like on the internet, we really don't care what server our information goes to as long as it gets to the end destination. So on tomorrow's battlefield we have to enable that warfighter to be able to communicate, period. And then the network decides, indeed, where the right communication pipe is.

Finally, the common operational picture that we see out there—and by the way, that includes the space and information domains also, not the information and ground domains—really has to be available to everybody who requires that.

What we're seeing on the battlefield is movement to what used to be stovepipe warfighting elements, where tomorrow's warfighter is a very agile, highly interdependent team player. The Army is no longer counting on their artillery. They're counting on air assets and other things to support them. So it's that growing interdependency that we have to understand. I guess the question is, do we know how to do that, because we have a very stovepiped execution mentality in our community.

For us to move forward and adequately provide this support in the future, there are a couple of things we need to do. One is, we need to start thinking as system of systems engineers, if you will, and move away from our independent platform focus to really think about fielding a capability, and then figure out how to do it afterwards. That's not been our history, unfortunately.

The second part of it is, as Lance pointed out, we need to be prepared to partner with anybody that can bring a part of that capability to the battlefield and help us figure out how to exploit that in the end game solution.

We've got to be a lot more agile to deal with the asymmetric threat out there that every day looks for the hole in our capability to exploit. Again, agility and time-to-market has not been one of the strong suits of the space community. We talk about 10-, 15-year space programs and that's probably not in keeping, so spiral development in those things really has to become much more prevalent in our lexicon.

Finally, I think we need to develop a new breed of people. We see warfighters, we see great stories. I know Lance last year told us the story of the space operators and the Special Forces folks out there riding their horses with their laptop computers, being very entrepreneurial in how to exploit all the things available to them. We need to grow in that same direction as developers in industry to become much more entrepreneurial, much quicker to market, and much more agile in our ability to support the warfighter.

One of the early air power theorists laid a challenge out for us that many of us have looked at over the years, and that is that if you don't anticipate where warfare is going and stay ahead of it, you've got to adapt much more quickly to it. I would offer to you, our community right now has not been terribly agile and adaptive. I think that's the direction we need to go in the future.

With that, Joanne, over to you.

Ms. Maguire: Thanks, George. Thank you, General Hamel. Thanks to the AFA members for organizing this forum. I think it's a great venue in which to discuss the issues of the day and in particular I think the topic of space enabling the joint warfighter is particularly timely.

It's really appropriate to be discussing this as we enter the second half of the first century of our nation's military space program. It's important, I think, that we reflect on our successes and how far we have come since those early days of the '50s when a small group of passionate, smart, dedicated people were first attempting to demonstrate the feasibility and utility of strategic missile forces and satellite-based military capabilities.

Today, we're using satellite communications to deliver Air Tasking Orders directly into the cockpit with GPS coordinates and putting ordnance on targets with extraordinary speed and precision. Because of our successes, military space utility has not only been validated, but has become indispensable to the warfighter.

As has already been mentioned multiple times and I'm sure is well known to all of you, the origins of military space track back to 1954—I was not there…[Laughter]—with the establishment of the Air Force's Western Development Division, the first office devoted to the fostering of space and missile concepts. Led by General Bernard Schriever, the Western Development Division played a vital role in the space race between our nation and the former Soviet Union. Other space luminaries like General William G. King worried about such fundamental tasks as how to lift a satellite into orbit.

Consider this factoid. This year, Lockheed Martin has provided launch services to the government for four missions. In 1960, General King launched six rockets. In 1961, he launched 20. The following year he executed 29 launches and in the process legitimized the importance of space to the American public. I don't know what that really says about where we are relative to our sense of urgency and our risk tolerance.

Another early program we at Lockheed Martin are extremely proud to be associated with is Corona, a pioneering reconnaissance satellite effort. I often think of Corona and its string of 12 consecutive failures before achieving mission success and wonder if the American public would have the tolerance to stand by such a program today.

These early successes, though, spawned the use of satellites for other important purposes including meteorology, military communications and navigation systems, and these advances all were made possible by a strong government/industry partnership.

Flash forward 30 years to the early ‘90s and Operation Desert Storm, a time many point to as a true coming-of-age moment for military space and missile forces. It was then that the JDAM made a stunning debut and the warfighters' use of military satellite communications enabled action much quicker than ever on the battlefield. It marked the first war where the complete spectrum of military space capabilities was brought to bear. General Tom Moorman refers to operation Desert Storm as the validation of the creation of Air Force Space Command during the prior decade.

Now flash forward another decade to today and we again find our warfighters across the ocean and once again, military space is embedded in their operations.

We enjoy an asymmetrical advantage in space and I would point to such examples as GPS satellites revolutionizing precision strike and redefining the definition of cost effective lethality. Our intel systems are routinely first to the fight, offering us global reach in preparing the battlefield, understanding enemy force disposition and preparing precision target folders and then following up with subsequent battle damage assessment.

Our communication systems are extending our reach, providing global command and control networks and ISR support to the troops, and our meteorological systems are turning weather understanding into a battlefield advantage.

The criticality of space to the warfighter also carries a danger. Don't think for a moment that other nations and factions around the world haven't closely monitored our accomplishments in space. Trust me, they have. Our space systems are at risk from those who would attempt to disrupt our operations by either attacking the ground assets that control them or the very satellites on which we depend. As General Lord has said, our day of reckoning is looming out there and we need to be much better prepared and more focused on assuring the space superiority that we enjoy today.

Certainly as [Director of Strategic Security, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations] Major General Roger Burg indicated, a first step for us is to enhance our space situational awareness. We also need to make our systems, including our commercial satellites, more robust and able to tolerate more; I'll call it “interference.” And ultimately, we may need the capability to counter our adversaries' space capabilities.

But today I want to talk about another risk we face. General Muellner has alluded to some of the things we need to do to adapt moving forward and become more agile. General Hamel has spoken about some of the areas in the acquisition arena where we need to perform to higher standards.

I will tell you that I believe a key part of our ability to succeed in the past and our ability to prosper in the future is really tied to the notion of effective partnership. I believe that we need to look at reinvigorating and renewing our commitment to true partnership across the space community and that encompasses not just industry; not just industry and SMC; not just industry, SMC and Space Command; but the users and the other stakeholders that participate in the space enterprise, notably Congress.

It's my conviction that strong partnerships are rooted in mutual respect. That respect is earned, not granted, and is really supported by twin pillars. One is competence, which derives from skill and experience; and the other is trust, which derives from basic honesty and integrity.

Another key element to an effective partnership is alignment of interests. I think sometimes we spend so much time looking at how our interests differ that we lose sight of the basic interests we all have in assuring that these challenging systems work right the first time in support of our warfighters.

Finally, I think a third key agreement to effective partnerships is communication. Candid communication, and as the voters in Chicago were admonished, do it early and often. This communication I think is the underlying lubricant, if you will, that allows partnerships to transition through the friction of those tough patches we will inevitably encounter if we are daring greatly in our space ventures.

I will close by saying that it is my firm belief that our commitment to effective partnering is an essential part of continuing to deliver the very best systems to our warfighters.

Thank you, and I look forward to your comments.

Let me now introduce my colleague, Dr. Alexis Livanos.

Dr. Livanos: Thank you, Joanne. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here with you and share some of my thoughts.

Recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq received tremendous support from space technology. We know that. This technology enabled our forces to reach new levels of situational awareness and engage enemies more effectively than ever before. We now see that space is indispensable in America warfighting and I am convinced that it will be the heart of all of our future successes.

This sets up the question that I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing with you today. How will America maintain the superiority in space technology that is now so vital to our fighting forces?

We face growing competition from rapidly developing nations as well as serious weaknesses in our own educational systems. A recent study by the National Academies reports that China is graduating 600,000 engineers a year; India is graduating 350,000 engineers a year; and we are graduating 70,000 a year. Some people are worried that these figures cast a shadow on our long-term prospects for maintaining our technology edge. I certainly agree that we need to interest more young people in math and science. We need to improve math and science teaching in grades K through 12 and we need to graduate more home-grown engineers from our universities.

But so what if China and India are breaking the Guinness record for engineers? Sheer numbers I don't believe are the key to technology leadership. I am optimistic about our future. My optimism is based on America's superior ability to capitalize on one of the most important benefits a company can derive from globalization; a multinational, diverse workforce.

We have shown scientifically that a diverse gene pool creates the most resilient biological organisms and in the geopolitical competitive environment we're applying the same thinking to the workforce by drawing on cultural intellectual diversity. The key here is having a national and business culture like America's that stresses openness and diversity both in society and in the workplace.

Multinational diversity in the workplace drives leadership and technology. Diverse individuals working together interact in a free-wheeling debate that stimulates curiosity, prompts explorations, sparks conjectures and brings solutions to many difficult problems. This is a hothouse environment that generates the best new ideas about strategies, markets, ways of doing business, and solving problems.

Diverse teams are stronger and more productive. The team members come from various backgrounds and they not only bring a greater variety of technical knowledge and skills, but also a dynamic range of different styles to bear on design problems; as opposed to homogeneous teams made up mostly of members with similar training and thinking styles.

At Northrop Grumman Space Technology, our engineering teams include men and women engineers from all corners of the world—north, south, east, west. We view this mix of backgrounds as our essence and main driver in our progress. It's a melting pot of innovation.

Diversity enables us to create innovations and win patents. When I look at the names on the patent awards, they certainly reflect a multinational heritage. Diversity's role gets highlighted every year when we hand out technical awards to these top teams. To many in the audience (and especially to me) that have to pronounce them, the flood of diverse names is as challenging to navigate as the technical accomplishments that are being described.

So like many other companies, we believe in the benefits of ethnic and gender diversity and we're not surprised to see that now business schools are starting to build the solid objective case for these benefits. One study of 350 Fortune 500 companies showed a strong correlation between diversity in the executive ranks and financial performance. On the average, companies with higher diversity had a return on equity about 35 percent higher than the ones that didn't.

More specifically focused studies have made an even stronger case. Researchers at Harvard Business School studied cultural diversity at 450 branches of a bank in the northeast United States. They discovered that the mixed workforce can generate measurable improvements in productivity.

So then why am I convinced that America will enjoy this benefit in greater measure than developing nations? Why won't our competitors create culturally diverse workforces of their own? For two reasons…

Some of these developing nations have ideologies or cultural leanings that work against openness and having a broad spectrum of players. In addition, it is well documented that several cultures in southern Asia have tended to rely exclusively on family networks in their transactions.

But even if competitors do attempt to build mixed workforces, we are much better positioned to remain ahead of the game. We have probably the world's most vibrant economy. We will continue to draw an international diversity of top quality students, researchers, skilled workers and business managers to staff the teams that generate the creative ideas in our universities, in our laboratories, and in our companies.

In contrast, competitors like China or India attract relatively few engineering students from Western nations and as a result I believe that few of the hundreds of thousands of engineers that graduate from these lands will be able to duplicate the American engineer's experience of working in truly global diverse teams beginning in the university and then continuing onward into the workplace.

However, without the major push to strengthen the foundations of America's competitiveness, the U.S. could lose its privileged position. The National Academy's report again makes a strong case that a coordinated and comprehensive federal effort is urgently needed. They offer a number of ideas that I find very attractive.

Congress is talking about expanding the cap on H1B skilled worker visas from 65,000 to 95,000 in the fiscal year of '06. That's a good first step, but we need to move more to pre-2003 levels when we had about 200,000 a year.

It is self-defeating to be cutting off the flow of international workers and students that is the lifeblood of high tech companies. At the same time, we recognize that post-9/11 security concerns must not be compromised. Instead, they must be balanced against the long-term needs of the nation.

Government should also create the process that helps international students earning math, science or engineering PhDs in our universities to become U.S. citizens. Again, the proposal put forth by the National Academies is a winner. These international graduates would receive a one-year automatic visa extension that allows them time to look for work here. Then if they are hired and pass their security tests, they would automatically get work permits and expedited resident status.

U.S. businesses should work closely with our universities to engage students in company projects earlier on and encourage whatever interests these talented people have in joining our work forces. There was a program like that that worked extremely well in the Silicon Valley in 1990.

So let me sum up. The open business environment is essential. Multinational diversity will fuel innovation, will enable breakthrough solutions, and keep us ahead of the race. Sheer numbers are not the key to technology leadership.

Thank you.

Q: Does the panel think there are enough trained engineers, scientists and technicians to successfully execute our national security space programs like FEA, T-SAT, the Space Radar, Inpost, etc.?

Mr. Muellner: Clearly, there are some key shortfalls in certain specialties and so on. I think as of last week just in my business area with Air Force programs which includes the space side, we were short something like 1,800 engineers. We were trying to hire them, but they tend to be in some specific domains—systems engineering, software engineering, etc. Interestingly, one of the domains that's in big demand right now up in our Puget Sound area is structural engineers. There's a great shortfall there. A lot of it has got to do with the phasing in our schools and so on. The space industry, the aerospace industry overall takes a downturn, students go in other directions. Four or five years later there is an upturn in the aerospace industry and unfortunately, all those potential engineers are now finance majors or lawyers or something else, so I think we need to deal with that.

We're able to generally hire the people we need, but in some cases we're all competing for a very limited database. I do know that in Southern California here, at my Anaheim site, I see a big truck driving around with a Raytheon recruiting poster on the side of it regularly, and I'm sure there's a Boeing truck somewhere orbiting the area as well. [Laughter] It is a very competitive market space.

Ms. Maguire: It's my impression that in the short term we're doing okay. We do have I think a fair amount of hiring going on. From our corporation's perspective, there's a very strong impetus to bring entry level engineers into the workforce, to really tackle the graying of the workforce that we're all observing today.

In the longer term, probably seven, ten, twelve years out, we have a challenge in front of us. I think it's not just about having an engineering talent pool that graduates so many engineers. I think we need to continue to be mindful of the fact that those engineers when they graduate from school make choices about the industry that they want to participate in, and frankly, we need to try harder at making the aerospace industry attractive. When we get in public forums and beat our chest about how hosed up the whole business is, it's not very appealing to a young engineer coming out of school. I think part of what George is talking about is making sure that we find ways— within the context of working in a very risk intolerant business, because it's got to work right the first time—to allow our engineers to manifest some of their entrepreneurial instincts as they look at ways that we can use these systems in an interdependent manner and more effectively. We need to pay more attention to that. I would just say that as kind of a key take-away.

Dr. Livanos: We have hired about 2.5 thousand people in the last couple of years, mostly engineers and mostly out of school, and I think we have been successful in terms of doing that. Again, I share some of the opinions expressed by Joanne. I'm not terribly concerned about the near term future. However, with the engineers that we have now, we do have a bi-modal distribution. There are a number of keys in terms of success for the near future. One is, I think the distribution on the right hand side of the chart needs to teach the distribution on the left side, what some of the lessons learned are that are absolutely mandatory.

The second one is, we've got to have an enormous amount of process focus and I think that's very important in our industry. As probably most of you know, we do just about everything by process and that discipline will avoid the mistakes that could happen when you introduce 20 to 30 percent of your workforce.

Then the final thing is, how do we retain those young people after the investment is made to hire them and to teach them? That is a key issue.

One of the things that was mentioned was the tendency of our industry sometimes to be risk averse, but I recall in the early times when I was in space programs at TRW, we used to build a satellite every nine months. That's an amazing number, one every nine months. Cycle time is key. To get the young kids in, they don't want to wait nine or ten years before they see something flying, they'd like to do it in two or three. So a lot of energy has to be expended in terms of figuring out we're going to implement some of the short cycle time but higher risk systems.

So the retention of engineers is really key and the passing on of the lessons learned plus the focus and process I think is important for our industry.

Lieutenant General Hamel: I might add kind of a perspective from the military and the government side. Inherently, our business is a very technical business and it takes skills and understanding of the different aspects. However, we don't have young officers that are going to come in and become experts in particular subsystems or specialties. What we need are paths that can hone their systems engineering, judgment, their technical skills, critical thinking skills, and then be able to move on to program management, operational, as well as command kind of positions.

I'm very optimistic in terms of us being able to attract young talent into our business, but we've also then got to make sure that we've got paths where we mature and develop them into the kind of technical and operational leaders that we need to have for the future.

Q: What's the single most important thing the government can do to influence or incentivize industry to ensure space acquisition success?

Ms. Maguire: There are so many things. Let me see if I can think of the single most important.

I think sustained commitment to the mission would be one thing. Not allowing programs to twist in the wind. Not allowing programs to be competed at every turn.

I think industry really is very committed to the mission, but I think frequently we get into these structural situations where we're not really thinking about what's going to be best for the mission. We're thinking about how can we minimize our exposure to funding shortfalls? How can we cope with requirements that are over-reaching and do so in a way that allows us to be perceived by our customers as can-do, forward-leaning, and capable?

Those are just a few thoughts, but aligning the vectors is largely about thinking about how we can take all of our respective stakeholders' interests that we all serve and accentuating the positive.

Mr. Muellner: I really think Joanne nailed the priorities in her earlier statement. That is, it really does start with the trust and respect of all the partners on the team. I guarantee you there are none of us out here in industry that go into a program with any desire, intent or lack of commitment to be successful. We all focus on success and we really try to put our best people in that, and sometimes that trust is lacking.

When the trust is there, the alignment of interest becomes an integral part of the team winning. I think when the interests are aligned we start doing things that will be successful and it's a win/win situation.

The third one that she hit on as the absolute enabler is communication. Communication is not just a natural thing. It has to be facilitated and forced in the program. I think in some cases some of the activities over the last couple of years and some of the difficulties we've had across the industry have really inhibited communication. We have young engineers and people on the industry side and then we have young officers on the government side. I feel like there's often a wall between their effectively communicating with each other. I think we have to overcome that if we're going to be successful.

Dr. Livanos: I think the two key words here were discussed by both of my colleagues—‘alignment’ and ‘win.’ I think we would like to create a win/win situation here. On the one side we understand that the government is looking for timely delivery, the meeting of commitments, and mission success. On the other side the contractor is looking for the motivation of putting the right contractual structure within their organization so that the contract or the work that is being performed reflects the risk associated with the contract. It is steady in terms of the funding profiles, and then basically it has the right contractual structure to reward the performance.

So it's an alignment to produce a win/win situation between the contractor and the government.

Lieutenant General Hamel: I think Joanne really nailed it, and it was pointed out here in terms of some of the attributes. But there is another core piece and that is that we do not often have a shared understanding of the environment, the situation, the needs, and what it's going to take for that very complex team to come together to operate in a political, technological, programmatic and financial sense.

So to me one of the keys is to try to develop better mutual understanding. That does require dialogue. That requires working shoulder to shoulder. That's one of the things we've had a longstanding history in in the space business dating back to General Schriever's days, where literally people worked shoulder to shoulder. It was from that that we understood what it took for each part of the team to be successful in their respective arenas and, as a result, for the team ultimately to be successful. So to me, mutual understanding is a core part.

Q: What three revolutionary technologies or capabilities do we need to field that will allow a national system of capabilities to be anticipatory?

Dr. Livanos: In terms of revolutionary technologies, probably the one that comes to mind most is very large structures in space. That would be one, because it will enable a lot more capability. The second one that I think would be very significant is probably nanotechnology. That will facilitate a lot more capability and a lot lower volume or weight in a system. The final one in my book would be along the lines of developing much higher data rate communication systems, to go beyond some of the laser comm even, because of the amount of information that needs to be communicated in both directions.

So in that order, my answer would be large apertures, nanotechnology and advanced comm systems.

Ms. Maguire: I would second Alexis' comment about the need for micro electronics and nanotechnology with the unique caveat that space demands radiation hardness which becomes—as we look at conventional micro electronics and feature sizes dropping down into the tens of nanometers—increasingly challenging.

Second, for me, is more efficient power systems. I think all of us have been hoist on the petard of batteries more than once in our careers if we've spent any considerable time here. So advancing the state of the art there would be I think very beneficial all the way around.

I would I think also endorse the view that lightweight precision structures are another key part for us because as we all know, one of the big tyrannies of space is escaping the gravitational pull of the earth and the fundamental weight of the payloads we attempt to loft is a key part of making that challenging.

Mr. Muellner: I certainly agree with all those. I would add two additional ones.

One is the networking technologies that really allow the machine-to-machine integration and the horizontal integration that we've talked about.

The other one is, I'd really like to see the ISP triple or quadruple here in the next couple of years so that we can get some of these things to space with smaller vehicles and maybe develop a much more responsive launch capability.

Q: What can or should industry do to help General Lord and General Carlson train space technology and acquisition professionals? Would it help them to understand industry's perspective?

Ms. Maguire: In terms of trying to help General Lord and General Carlson train the next generation of military technical folks, I would strongly endorse revitalizing our partnership with industry programs, where we take young officers early in their careers and give them an opportunity to kind of work hands-on with the contractor.

Mr. Muellner: I certainly would endorse that because that was my number one priority.

I guess the other thing is, I think the more opportunities we have for joint schoolhouses, where we, industry, have people at Defense Systems Management College at the Defense Acquisition University. I know we have a leadership center in St. Louis, and we have government people and customer people that attend that and go through joint training. I think it fosters this joint empathy and understanding of the environment that is lacking.

I really am happy to hear about Lance's initiative to get out into the schools and what have you, but one of the things that we've found—and I know this is a pet rock to [Aerospace Education Foundation President] Mary Anne Thompson and her crew, who encourage these students to get into math and science—is that there's got to be a teacher there that can satisfy the students’ demand.

I found it interesting the other day coming back on one of my redeye flights, the movie was called “October Sky.” I don't know how many of you have seen that, based upon a book called The Rocket Boys. That NASA engineer would still be a coal miner had it not been for that teacher that found a way to nurture and grow his interest, and more importantly, his knowledge. I think we have to as a community collectively do something to work that part of the problem.

Dr. Livanos: We put together last year, and we will really strengthen it in '06, the concept of “Space University,” where we're putting together courses that reflect some of the experience that we've had in space in different areas, as well as introducing people to some other fundamentals within the physics and engineering areas as well as administration.

We could make that completely transparent to you. We would like to invite actually some of the people to come in and attend some of those courses and then give us feedback. That would be one thing.

The other thing that we used to have in the past which was very successful was having sort of like the National Reconnaissance Office scholars. You would have a group of people coming in, again from your organization, and the original program was just a week. But we found that bringing in teachers is a good idea, because one of the ways of motivating the K-12 in science and mathematics is teaching the teachers. So we bring them in for three months and have them work shoulder-to-shoulder as part of our team to actually get a first-hand look as to how industry really works and what it does. Such a program I think would be beneficial for both of us.

Q: What is the single most difficult problem we face in getting space acquisition on track?

Ms. Maguire: I think the thing that could transform our progress most effectively would be a change in attitude. I would salute General Lord's view that we get on with moving forward as opposed to continuing to admire some of the issues and failures that we've had in the past. We obviously need to learn from them, but it reaches a point of diminishing returns after you've contemplated them for a while. We need to move forward.

Mr. Muellner: I would certainly endorse that. The reality is that space acquisition is not off track. We haven't had all the successful launches and provided all that capability without real success. I could certainly cite some examples from some of my other business areas that might be considered off track also. I mean, I'm glad to see we're finally getting Initial Operational Capability on the F/A-22 even though it's, as I recall, six years late to the requirements document that I think Officer Carlson may have authored back in the Defense Resources Board a long time ago. [Laughter]

So we've got to put things in perspective. We field very, very complex space systems. The environment that we put them into is very hostile and unforgiving and we only have one shot at it.

My point would be we need to get some stability into the process and solve the technical issues before we put them into orbit, and then move ahead.

Dr. Livanos: The one thing that I notice that is different between the old days of the late '70s, early '80s and now is the fact that I think there was a lot more trust at the time, and it was both ways. It was a real partnership. So I think this one single thing that we can do is basically reestablish that trust, and that is not an easy proposition. We have to deliver on our promises, we have to basically establish a really good relationship with the government and its representatives, and, most importantly, we have to do what we say we're going to do and just stick with it.

Lieutenant General Hamel: From my perspective, if they said, “so what is the biggest challenge that SMC has for getting acquisition back on track?” I think we understand what the recipe is in terms of process and discipline. The biggest challenge we have really is revitalizing our workforce.

Regrettably, through a decade of acquisition reform we became very passive in terms of our role in the development process, and regrettably what that does is it teaches, if you will, bad behavior. What we've really got to do amongst our workforce which is comprised of military, civilians, aerospace corporations, CETA contractors, is we've got to get our game back on track. That is not something that comes easily.

We've got to bring back in mentors and coaches and we've got a lot of very talented young people. We've got to make sure that with the demands we have across the national security space community, that we get some balance in where we put the talent, the numbers of people and the like, but that is one of the things that we're working very, very hard on that will in my mind be the absolute ingredient of success. That’s how we’ll really get our workforce revitalized in this business.

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