2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Air Dominance

The “Air Dominance” panel at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Jenna Paukstis, vice president and general manager of Networked Information Solutions at Northrop Grumman; Renee Pasman, vice president of integrated systems for advanced development programs at Lockheed Martin; and Elaine Bitonti, vice president and general manager of Connected Battlespace & Emerging Capabilities at RTX. The panel, held on September 16, was moderated by Maj. Gen. David Shoemaker, director of operations at Air Combat Command. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. David Shoemaker, Director of Operations, Air Combat Command:

All right, good afternoon. This is going to be one of the last sessions of the day, so we’ll try to make it exciting for you. Welcome to the panel here. I am extremely, extremely fortunate to get a chance to sit here with some titans of industry, some of the best that our industry partners have to offer to talk a little bit about air dominance.

And to set out the topic here a little bit, I’d like to just point out the fact, I think we all know this, air dominance is not a doctrinal term, a doctrinal concept, but it is just a very convenient way for us to package some topics to talk about things that have to do more or less with air superiority, which is actually the doctrinal concept that we’re dealing with. It’s the doctrinal concept that actually some folks have a hard time getting their arms around.

But simply stated, air superiority is that way that we use domains to control the air domain at the place and time of our choosing, and that requires multiple domains, clearly air and space, but also other domains. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So what I’d like to do starting out here, is have the panel if each of you could introduce yourselves and give us your job title and your portfolio, and then we’ll move into how that connects to our discussion on air dominance.

Jenna Paukstis, Vice President & General Manager, Networked, Information Solutions Division, Northrop Grumman’s Mission System Sector:

Great. Well thank you for having us here today. I’m Jenna Paukstis. I’m the vice president and general manager of the Networked Information Solutions Division, and that’s part of the Mission Systems sector at Northrop Grumman. My portfolio brings together capabilities across communications, networking, and processing, as well as sensing, cyber, and intelligence. So these are some of the enablers that help create mission success through information superiority and I believe are several key elements that contribute to air dominance.

Elaine Bitonti, Vice President & General Manager, Connected Battlespace & Emerging Capabilities, RTX:

Hi, good afternoon, and thanks for having us on the panel. My name is Elaine Bitonti. I am the vice president and general manager of a portfolio called Connected Battlespace and Emerging Capabilities inside of Collins Aerospace. Collins Aerospace is a business unit of RTX. So Collins, we work together with Pratt & Whitney and Raytheon to bring together many multi-domain effects that are critical to air dominance.

My portfolio specifically, we do two things. One, we focus on connecting the battle space. So how do we move data from a battle management command and control perspective? And how do we make sure we have resilient networks that underpin that so you can reliably move that data? And so we’re focused on how do we integrate new technologies together to do that, but how could we also use existing technologies in new ways? So I look forward to talking about that in the panel today.

Renee Pasman, VP of Integrated Systems for Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin:

And yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for having us on the panel. My name is Renee Pasman. I work as the vice president for Integrated Systems at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works and Integrated Systems is one of those job titles that doesn’t tell you what I do. In my case, that’s a feature, not a bug. But for the discussion on air dominance, it’s really a focus on integrating all of the capabilities, new, existing, across domains, and inside of a particular domain, to create the overall war fighter capability that we need to deliver in today’s threat environment.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. David Shoemaker:

All right, thank you. And thank you for using Skunk Works in the title so that we didn’t have to try to decipher that, I appreciate it. Okay, so just to open up here, for each of you from your perspectives, clearly air dominance requires a multi-domain approach. Could I hear each of you describe your vision of how a layered multi-domain approach for air dominance, what that looks like versus the pacing challenge?

Jenna Paukstis:

Sure, I can start. The challenge regardless of what theater we’re in, is really about marshaling and employing a diverse set of assets to achieve and optimize combat effects. And like you had mentioned, at the time and place of a commander’s choosing. So to overcome this challenge, we need to lay a foundation of insight and interoperability across the battle space. And that begins with a layered approach using modular building blocks that can be built with open architectures that empower our war fighters with tailored mission solutions based on mission agnostic capabilities.

By integrating and leveraging these modular capabilities like SIGINT and non-kinetic effects, we heard in the keynote this morning about elevating the importance of cyber, communications, networking, processing, and multilevel security, and cross-domain solutions, we can give war fighters access to that critical data they need when they need it in a secure and adaptable way. So starting with SIGINT and non-kinetic effects, both of these play a very critical role and need to be used as both offensive and defensive tools to protect our systems while also introducing vulnerabilities into adversarial networks.

And these are critical capabilities, certainly left of launch, but then even continuing right of launch, to gain that precious resource of time. So time to assess, decide, communicate, and act. Of course, to communicate we need resilient software-defined networks so we can exchange data freely and securely. And this really helps us empower, again, war fighters with that access to critical data that they need. We can leverage that across multiple domains at the time and place of our choosing. And then it also helps war fighters establish and sustain that air dominance by being able to route, translate, and forward higher quality data from a wider array of sensors.

Of course, to make sense of the data and be able to act on it, we need to leverage our processing capabilities. Sometimes that needs to be at the edge, given latency or platform requirements. Other times we can leverage off-board processing, sensors, cloud infrastructure, which then help us reduce size, weight, and power. And that then frees up space for other capabilities, could be fuel, weapons, other payloads, helps ensure that our platforms can remain undetected longer by having lower power requirements, also drives affordability. All of which then increase range lethality and survivability.

At the core of the layered approach of course is BMC2, and that really extends beyond the air and also contributes to air and missile defense through ground and maritime forces, enabling more fighters, whether you’re a pilot in the sky, a soldier on the ground, or a sailor at sea to be able to contribute to and receive benefit from that cohesive operational picture. So by integrating domains and establishing those joint force operations through robust interoperability across these building blocks, we can really extend operational reach, optimize engagements, and give our war fighters and decision-makers more time to act.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. David Shoemaker:

Thank you.

Elaine Bitonti:

Okay. I think when we think about air dominance from an RTX perspective, there’s really four underlying things that we talk about a lot. One is the ability to employ combat mass. The second is, do you have the right technology to employ that combat mass at the time and place of your choosing as Jenna was discussing. The third is some element of being able to operate from sanctuary because we need to be able to launch the combat mass effectively. And the fourth is how are we enabling the airmen, or the guardians, really with the data that they need when they need it and not having them be overwhelmed by the complexity of the battle space.

So I think when we think about a multi-domain approach to delivering combat mass, one of the things we really think about is in this new conflict there are many, many targets that need to be simultaneously identified, tracked, and then potentially engaged with a weapon quality track. How do we make sure that we’re leveraging all domains across all different joint services to be able to fuse that picture together to get the war fighter the right picture, the right single pane of glass that they can use to make the best decisions that they need.

In order to do that, especially if we’re thinking about future theaters like INDOPACOM, the distances are very long and we need to be able to do that both using line of site capability but also beyond line of site capability. That’s going to give us the ability to update our in-flight target updates for the weapons and make sure that as things dynamically change on the battlefield, whether we can get the update from a space asset, an air asset, or a ground or naval asset. We have the resilient networks in place to transmit that and we have the battle management command and control software to effectively right fuse that and deliver that data to the war fighter.

I think one of the things from RTX perspective, we produce sensors, we produce effectors, and then we produce many of the capabilities that glue that together. So we have a lot of unique experience across the entire kill chain when it’s platform agnostic. And I think when you really are considering a multi-domain approach, it’s about, and Jenna noted, how do you bring multiple platforms together across all of those domains, and that requires very specialized set of skills, the right architectures. But it also requires collaboration between industry in ways that we have typically not done before. And so I think that’s a key part that we also need to be focused on to have a successful multi-domain approach.

Renee Pasman:

When I think about multi-domain approach or the layered approaches you’re talking about, kind of bucketed into two. One is what a lot of the capabilities, whether those are ones that are existing today, because sometimes when we talk about that multi-layered approach, it sounds like something that’s going to be there in the future. A lot of it is already there today, whether that is about the integration between our fifth-gen and our fourth-gen fighter fleets or the way that the Air Force and the Navy can collaborate on information or any number of other examples that you hear about on a regular basis that are things that we’re doing today.

But there’s bringing those capabilities together across different platforms, kind of unleashing, if you will, the data so that it is not tied to that specific platform so that it can be used wherever it is useful, including in areas we maybe haven’t thought about. But there’s also, just to kind of pull a little bit on Elaine’s last point there, of there’s also how, because a lot of the things that you also hear about the multi-domain elements today is that it’s hard. It’s not as easy as just pushing a button and the data shows up where it needs to be.

It’s a lot of, in some ways, kind of a lot of our people having to fill the gaps with extra work with sneaker netting things, with why does it take three days to do that? Oh, you know what, I’ll follow up with the paperwork afterwards. All of those types of things, that’s the state that we live in today. It gets us to where we need to be today, but it’s not the inefficiencies in the systems that we can have for the fight in the future.

And so thinking through, if you think of it from an OV-I perspective and all the lightning bolts, how you actually make that real in a way that those end users don’t have to think that hard about how to move the data, but can push a button and have confidence and trust that that data is going to go where it needs to be, and similarly that they’re going to get the data that they need regardless of where that is. And that’s where you see a lot of the enabling technologies that maybe aren’t as cool to look at as a new airplane or something else, but this is where you see the open architecture elements, the investments in the digital infrastructure and the investment in other types of standards that are truly the way that you bring those multi-domain capabilities together in a way that is more efficient than what we can do today.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. David Shoemaker:

Thank you. And I’m going to come back to this idea of the teaming between us and you industry. I’m looking for some specific examples. We’re going to do that if we have a little time at the end, because I’d like to for folks to hear some ideas of where we’re doing this teaming, where they can become a part, interject into this system. So when we talk about the air dominance, what I liked about the discussion we just had was everybody’s saying platform agnostic. We’re not talking about specific in particular fighters.

Unfortunately, probably a lot of people came in here and wanted to hear us talk about fighters the whole time, but when we’re talking air dominance and we are talking about the multi-domain approach, and there is a lot more to it as we’re hitting on here. However, let’s talk a little bit about the technology that goes along with that, the fighters. And I continue to talk about, and I actually heard my boss today talking about the fact that fourth and fifth and beyond generation integration is going to be key for a long time for the foreseeable future, because we need those exquisite capabilities that we get from fifth gen and beyond, but we need that mass that you were discussing, the capability of the fourth gen, the number of rails, the volume that we can get from the fourth gen.

So that integration is going to be key. So I’d like to hear your thoughts on how you see that integration. It’s not just fourth and fifth gen, it’s also crewed and un-crewed talking about some of the technology that you see making that part of air dominance in the future.

Jenna Paukstis:

Sure. So achieving that seamless integration of sensors and effectors across fourth, fifth, and sixth gen platforms requires a focus on speed and scale, and I think that came through in many of the talks that we had today. Certainly, when we’re thinking about the air dominance assets that we have available right now, fourth and fifth gen will continue to make up the bulk of those. So one thing that we need to focus on to be ready to fight tonight is making sure that we can update those existing systems with near-term technology enhancements for greater survivability, security, precision, and resilience, while also increasing that interoperability across domains.

So one thing we’ve been focused on at Northrop Grumman is making sure that these fourth and fifth gen platforms can remain relevant by modernizing legacy systems such as electronic warfare, communications, networking, targeting, and multifunction sensors. And this has a couple benefits. It also helps us burn down risk for the future development of six gen capabilities, and it helps us bridge that gap by being able to implement solutions now, but also ensuring that interoperability for the future.

And as we’re looking to optimize the force mix between both stand-in and stand-off forces, we need to leverage terrestrial and space-based connectivity to close those long range kill chains and make sure we can still have mission success even when under significant threat, by building those robust webs of connections and really creating that dynamic resiliency across the force. One way that we did that recently, we had a recent demonstration and connected, when you talk about teaming, to two commercial space internet providers. And really the point was validating that hybrid SatCom can make it exceedingly difficult for adversaries to disrupt comms. And that’s by leveraging multiple orbits, multiple providers, whether that’s MilSatCom and commercial space internet, again, going to where we need to team with both and multiple frequency bands.

So certainly LPI, LPD, LPX solutions become mandatory for survivability in this environment. And it’s not just about transmitting, but making sure when we do transmit that we can’t be detected, and that shift emphasizes the importance of stealth in communications and data exchange. I think another thing to think about is we also know that the Air Force cannot achieve air dominance alone. So every integration effort needs to consider how the joint force, and allies, and partner nations can also contribute to that air dominance.

So when you have this connectivity, you can think about what this insight and interoperability and data that we’ve all been talking about, what that opens up for you. And there’s a lot of possibilities we can think about in our personal lives, how going from dial-up for those that aren’t too young to remember that to 5G connectivity like we have on our phones, thinking about that in the battle space, what does that enable? If I can count on high throughput, low latency, resilient connectivity to space, what can I now do with my air, ground, and maritime forces? So it’s really this mindset of being integrated by design needs to be at the core of everything we do and ensuring that interoperability is a foundational principle from the start.

Elaine Bitonti:

Yeah, I think interoperability is really critical. I think one of the other things that needs to be focused on as we talk about fourth to fifth and how you’d operate is we have many, what I’ll call connectivity and data gaps that exist today, where the technology exists to connect these things to solve these problems. It may either be an acquisition gap or in some cases when we’re talking about how do we communicate with allies, their policy gaps or potentially policies that could be optimized for us to do that better and more quickly.

So I think it’s important that we look not just at a technology perspective, but as a whole approach from acquisition policy and technology to really get after these gaps. As Jenna mentioned, there’s been a lot of great focus on what commercials SATCOM can provide, especially now with the advent of PLEO. But I think as we’ve done multiple demonstrations, especially across different domains, one of the things that we have learned that’s really important to note is there is no one data link. There is no one comm modality to rule them all. 5G may work very well in certain areas depending on where you’re operating, they may have only 3F infrastructure on the ground.

So how are you going to have integrated resilient networks that can take advantage of all of the different comm modalities and how do we make sure that there are interoperability standards so you can communicate between those different message sets? We’ve learned a lot of lessons from what is currently deployed on fourth and fifth gen from a comms perspective about interoperability wasn’t taken into account in the beginning. And I think that’s something we now have the technology to overcome, but we need to make sure we think differently about that going forward.

Another thing I think is, again, when you think about multi-domain, it’s important that you have also I would say beyond line of site and line of site links. So while beyond line of site offers a lot of great improvements, we can also look at how can traditional line of sight links like link-16 be augmented now with the advent of the space layer? And how could you think differently about what line of sight links could previously achieve, if you could employ them in different domains, not just let’s say the air or the ground domain. So I think there’s new technology advancements that can help us with some of the things that are already widely fielded. If we apply them in a new domain, we can close down on gaps that exist.

Then the last thing that I would say is really focus on machine-to-machine timelines. When you’re talking about prosecuting the number of targets, we’re going to need the fourth, fifth, and sixth-gen assets, that’s going to create a range of data that has previously likely never been seen before. And we’re going to have to make decisions on that in very fast timelines. That means you need machine to machine, you need the resilient connectivity layer, all of that happening machine to machine. But when you also get into the AOC, all that data has to be processed and we can’t be having a sneaker netting as Renee mentioned. You got to really look at how can we use machine to machine and how can we use autonomy technologies across those enablers to cut down on the kill chain timelines.

Renee Pasman:

Yeah. So to me, the interesting thing with fighters is because it’s very easy when you talk multi-domain and air superiority to get, well, here’s my little boxes and my little lightning bolts and all that. But when you think about the pure platforms, fighters represent the air Force’s ability, the DOD’s ability to really create that air superiority and to create, more importantly, enable the freedom of maneuver for everything else. And so yes, there may be more ways we have to do some of those types of things or different modalities to do that, but in the end, in terms of taking the capabilities and putting them forward, putting them on the edge in the agile sense of keeping the end user in mind, those are the end users, the men and women in those cockpits.

So it can be great like, “Hey, I can make this technology work when it fits on six screens and I have some time to put a disk in something. But I can’t ask a fighter pilot to do a sneaker net transfer while they’re busy trying to fly their mission.” So there’s the element of a lot of the capabilities we’ve been talking about, open architecture, things like that, that I think is really important, not just on future systems, but also on the current systems that are there, whether it’s the open architecture on F-22, the path forward relative to compute on F-35. And you see even today how those systems, how those fifth gen systems enable a lot of that interconnectivity.

And a lot of what you get from a multi-domain perspective is that interconnectivity, but now at an even larger scale, which does then raise questions of, “Okay, how do I change the way I think about data? And how do I change the way I operate?” Just like generations of fighters change how they’re operated. You don’t fly in F-35, the way you fly in F-16. You don’t think about how to mission plan in the same way because the capabilities are different. There’s a lot of upgrade paths, particularly when it comes to some of the compute to the point of communications. And yes, there is no one comms link to rule them all. That’s one of the reasons why open architecture so important, and one of the areas that Lockheed’s been focused on for, at this point, the better part of a decade of how do we enable the airplanes that are already out there to benefit from these technologies? And how do we do that in a cost-effective way?

I also think though, there’s an element of the physicality, if you will, of a platform. There’s a certain range associated with it. There’s a certain amount of mass associated with it. But that’s part of the power of fourth gen. What fifth gen really brings is those things, plus the ability to communicate, the ability to connect, the ability to process information in a way that was the step forward at the time. And that’s now what we have to build off of. Not taking a step back and thinking, “Okay, where can we go.” But building off of the capabilities that are out there existing today from a fifth gen perspective and bringing that to the rest of the fight.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. David Shoemaker:

Thank you. Those are all great answers. And the next question you’ve kind of already answered through your other answers, but if we could, rather than pick out of your other answers, if you could each neatly package up or describe the attributes and characteristics that you think are important for both new and existing platforms as we’re talking about these all domain solutions for air dominance moving forward. And again, I think you’ve all kind of listed some of those, but if we could just hear those all kind of together.

Jenna Paukstis:

Sure. I think with current events, it’s certainly brought forward the importance of electronic warfare again, and that being at the forefront. So that is one of the keys to maintaining air dominance and spectrum superiority. And one thing we’ve been focused on is really developing systems that can operate effectively in a more congested and contested electromagnetic environment than we faced before. So that involves moving from prescriptive to more adaptive responses and electronic warfare, BMC2.

And then when we can combine that with our LPI, LPD solutions that enables us to protect our forces, ensure that freedom of maneuver, that Renee had talked about, and also degrade the adversary’s ability to operate as freely in those competitive spaces. Going back to the partnerships too, I think to move at that mission speed of relevance, we’re all recognizing that we need to leverage both commercial and defense tech bases who are both really driving incredible innovation and making sure that we can equip our platforms with current technology while also keeping costs manageable.

And that will enable us to then field a more heterogeneous and distributed mix of systems at scale and get to that affordable mass that we’ve all talked about. Of course, commercial solutions help with speed, mass, and ubiquity, and we need to balance that with capabilities that we’re not designed to operate maybe in heavy EW, or jamming environments. And that’s where the cyber security and mission expertise that defense industry brings can really help ensure that reliable and resilient connectivity.

Of course, when we talk about affordable mass, we’re also focused on low swap mission systems. We know those are essential to optimize operations across domains, across crewed and un-crewed platforms and enable that more seamless connectivity. And by being able to translate data between those previously siloed platforms and provide that all domain interconnected near real time comms links, we can give war fighters what they need at speed and scale. We can ensure they can access data securely. It doesn’t really matter where the data comes from as long as we can access it and act on it in a secure way. And it just highlights the imperative, I think, we have to continue partnering with government, both domestically and internationally and commercial and defense, so we can deliver those integrated connectivity, processing, and intelligence solutions that will help us not only establish air dominance, but sustain it as the battle space continues to evolve.

Elaine Bitonti:

Yeah, I think if we think about how we’re going to deliver on this, I think Renee brought up a really good point of when you’re going forward and you’re putting things on the edge, obviously compute is very important. One of the things we haven’t talked a lot about here today is the multifunction nature of many of the systems going forward, and the open architectures that underpin that. Previously, you would have a comm box, an EW box, and a radar box. And technology and architectures have evolved to the point where I think we can multifunction both processing and apertures is something that definitely underpins air dominance going forward in the future, because we have to combine so many more technologies, but they have to be combined forward on the edge.

And so I’ll say multifunction systems are a way to do that, and there’s many examples of how those are being developed and fielded today. I also think platform agnostic and getting the architecture right, taking a systems architecture view of the problem is probably one of the most important things to do. It’s easy to say that we’re going to have things that are interoperable, but what does that really mean when you go to make that, when each industry provider goes to make something, if we want to take a software container that we’ve made at RTX and we want to combine that with something that Northrop Grumman, a capability they have, how do we make sure that that really is seamless?

And so I think the systems architecture and decomposition process, while not something that is sexy or exciting, it really is very important to delivering these capabilities of the future. And I’d also say, like Jenna mentioned, how do we combine commercial and defense applications so we can do things at speed and scale? We have a lot of modernization that we need to do across our force to be ready, and we need to do that with urgency. And part of that is working across the defense industrial base to do that effectively.

Renee Pasman:

So from a future platform perspective, I think there’s two things, flexibility and agility. And a lot of the technologies that we’re talking about today enable those. But to me, it’s always really interesting because the slightly longer answer is that you don’t know exactly what you need. And even if you did, it would probably change by the time it got there, whether that was a platform upgrade to a fourth-gen asset or a new software push to a fifth-gen assets, or anything along those lines. And so it’s that ability to be flexible and to be agile, to allow for those upgrades regardless of which generation of platforms, because flexibility and agility aren’t necessarily tied to a specific generation of assets.

Again, there’s things that happen today in terms of integration between the air domain and the step-based domain where we’re like the commercial satellite work that Jenna was talking about, that show great promise. But if we have to come up with all of those things in advance, then not only will that take too long and we lose the sense of urgency, that I think is really important. But also, if there’s only one answer we can implement at any given time, then the adversary knows that too. And that’s how you get back into the tit-for-tat counter-counter discussion.

Whereas if we have the ability to create systems that are flexible, that are agile, that can be put together in a force package day-of, or however flexible it is that we need to go, then you provide the commander that level of flexibility in a certain element of strategic surprise. You don’t know what we’re going to do because there’s so many different ways to put it together. And I also think it’s an interesting thought process to think about those airmen and guardians of the future and how they might use systems in ways that had not been envisioned, that had not been laid out, but make sense at that point in time.

Now, do we enable and empower those people as much as possible so that rather than saying, “I’m going to push this button, I’m going to get this great data from space and it’s going to create me my targeting solution and it doesn’t work, because I get an error box,” it just works because they thought of it that day. So that’s from a current and future platform perspective, the bringing all these capabilities together to create that sense of agility and that sense of flexibility is important while not losing track of the urgency that these are things that we have to do today and going forward.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. David Shoemaker:

Thank you. For those who have a pen and paper available, go through, we talked about how important this teaming is and working not just the technology, but the systems and the processes and the procedures and the policy. So we heard this morning from the Chief of Staff about Bamboo Eagle as an example of experimentation that’s going on out there and good teaming between industry and the military. Can I just briefly get some examples from each of you, whether it’s experimentation, exercises, things that are going on within your little corner of the industry where we can become involved to make sure that we have that good communication going?

Jenna Paukstis:

Sure. I can start. Well, I think experimentation is absolutely important. We need to not only do the MONSIM and operational analysis. But then as Renee just said, we find things out differently, we can use systems and data and information and assets that we have in different ways, and we don’t know that unless we can do those demos and learn from them quickly. And even if it maybe didn’t work out the way we planned, that’s really important information too. That goes to that mindset of fail early, fail often.

So I think we’ve been focused on doing a rapid set of demonstrations. You can pull together capabilities in different ways. I’d say one example is going back to hybrid SATCOM and the Global Lightning program and what we’re doing there. I think there’s demonstrations roughly every six weeks or two months. And that’s to look at how we leverage those multiple orbits, multiple frequency bands, multiple solutions. How does it work on different platforms? How can they work together? And the only way to really learn that is through those demonstrations.

Elaine Bitonti:

Yeah, I think demonstrations are a critical part. I think at RTX we have, I’d say an enduring demonstration campaign. And one of the things we’re focused on is how do we continually enhance the capability demonstration after demonstration? Because inevitably, you learn something, like you said, the combatant commanders always have new needs, and they’re coming up with different ways to solution that. In those experimentations, is when you can start accessing those networks, hooking up to them, seeing what works, what doesn’t.

I think what’s important is how do you sustain that momentum? How do you keep moving forward? And how do you make sure that those demonstrations and experimentations, if the capability proves out, have a path to rapid acquisition? I think that’s a place where we sometimes see it falling down. Have a lot of great demonstrations, capability that worked capability, the war fighters state that could solve gaps they have. What’s the quick way from an acquisition process to get that into the cycle?

So I think Northern Edge, Valiant Shield, there’s many different joint experimentation activities that include coalition partners that we should be taking advantage of. Another thing I think is important is consortiums, especially now many things are software-based. We’re seeing a lot of success for the ABMS digital infrastructure for the future aerial tier networking. Both of those have consortiums where we collaborate every day, not only with the government, but also with industry partners to make solutions that are truly platform agnostic, but also I’ll say company agnostic. So those are two ways I think we can collaborate together.

Renee Pasman:

Yeah. I was going to also bring up the consortium activities and a lot of the standards bodies, which are maybe not always the most exciting thing to go do. But they’re hugely important in terms of enabling cross-service collaboration, cross-domain collaboration, cross-industry collaboration. Industry can usually hash out when I say a piece of data, what is RTX or what does Northrop mean? But if you think about some of our space-borne assets versus our air domain assets versus the assets on the ground and what kind of information flows there. And not only are those usually technically different, but they’re also culturally different. And so kind of using some of the consortiums and using some of the standards bodies, not just to figure out what the technology needs to look like, but also to just understand each other better so that we can collaborate more effectively.

And then the other area that I would highlight, in addition to what everybody else mentioned already, is there’s a lot of demonstrations. There’s a lot of experimentation. There’s a lot of live flying. But that point of being able to repeatedly run how are we going to fight in the future, whether that’s in some of the modeling and SIM capabilities, things like the virtual Warfare center or things like the MDAC, things like the Lighthouse where we can actually have today’s non-piloted technologies, like the AI capabilities represented through modeling and sim. And then, okay, what really happens when we push the button and go and what can we really see? What can we really control?

And start to think today how we’re going to fight in the future, and then feed that information back into some of those consortiums, some of those demonstrations to make sure that it works. But really to think through, “Okay, what would I do with all of these capabilities and what does that look like with some of the people that would actually have to use them?” And I think that level of collaboration is very important because that’s a perspective that industry doesn’t necessarily have and doesn’t necessarily bring, and we can greatly benefit from the partnership.

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