2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Electronic Warfare Dominance

The “Electronic Warfare Dominance” session at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Maj. Gen. David M. Gaedecke, USAF (Ret.), Booz Allen Hamilton; Richard “Moose” Haas, Epirus; and Joshua Niedzwiecki, BAE Systems. The session, held on September 18, was moderated by Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauck of the DAF’s EMS Superiority Directorate. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch, DAF’s Director, EMS Superiority Directorate (A2/6L):

So, to the left of me are three of our industry partners and let me introduce them really quick. Our first panelist to my left is Major General, now retired, Dave Gaedecke, also known as trout to some of you in the audience, and he’s currently a senior executive advisor with Booz Allen Hamilton, where he provides technical and business development leadership across the global defense sector in support of the digital battle space platform, he culminated his military service as vice commander at 16th Air Force AFCYBER. And we’ll talk in a bit about what other key jobs he had in the past.

Our second panelist is Richard “Moose” Haas. He joined Epirus in 2024 where he serves as Director of Business Development for the United States Air Force. And prior to Epirus, Moose held a variety of roles through the aerospace and defense industry and was most recently B 21 mission assurance director at Northrop Grumman. Moose joined the Air Force in 1985 and ended his 20-year active-duty career with over 2,500 fighter hours. Impressive, Moose.

Third panelist, Joshua Niedzwiecki. And Josh is vice president, General Manager of the electronic combat solutions business area within BAE’s electronic system sector. Josh is responsible for managing the development of advanced electronic warfare technologies that deliver superior next generation electronic support, electronic protection, electronic attack, that help us defeat current and future threats. Did you write that? It’s pretty good.

So, I’d like to start the panel with you, General. In 2019 you were instrumental in an Air Force reorganization. Maybe it was really in reoptimization that stood up the Directorate that I’m currently leading a two 6l so thanks for that. I’m really trying not to screw it up, especially with you right there. Can hit me with a microphone. The intro is going well.

Maj. Gen. David M. Gaedecke, USAF (Ret.), Senior Executive Advisor, Booz Allen Hamilton:

The intro is going well.

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

I know you worked very closely, also with our Air Force top leaders at that time. And there you were in 2019 with Chief Goldfein, at the time, Vice Chief Wilson, and I’m sure others, and realizing the importance of electromagnetic spectrum at the Air Force had lost our game and needed to get it back.

You were put in charge of leading an EW EMS superiority enterprise collaboration capability, collaboration team to conduct an enterprise-wide assessment of EW in the larger picture, on the EMS and how it affects the other physical domains. So, with that context, how would you say we’ve done over the past five years since you were in this position and getting after it and making EMS superiority really a thing, and how effectively do you think we’ve done with the recommendations that you made at that time, and can we do anything better,

Maj. Gen. David M. Gaedecke, USAF (Ret.):

Absolutely. So first, thanks, thanks for the question, and then thanks again for the opportunity to be a part of this, part of this panel. Really excited to see a full room. And then many of the former ECCT members that are that are in here today. So yeah, thank you. Yeah, for all of you, you guys did incredible work. And so, when you ask, how are we doing, how did, how is the Air Force done over the past five years? And so, the first, what I’d like to do is frame what we really did. So, we had three specific recommendations that came out of the ECCT so, and I kind of organized it in a way. First, it was organizational. Second, it was operational efficiencies. And third, it was education, right? A lot of people wanted us to develop, like a technical recommendation, what should we go out and procure and buy in this thing? But instead, we said we had to, we had to reinvest in the foundation of electromagnetic spectrum operations, electromagnetic warfare, so that we were prepared to do the things. How did we gain our competitive advantage or maintain our competitive advantage as we move forward. So, for those three things that we did, it was very specific. What we did in organization. First was create a general officer led organization in the Pentagon, which now General Hawk is leading, and that’s important. And I always said, how will you know if you were successful? So, this answers your question. I said, if they continue to replace the fill the position with the general officer, to see a pinned on general officer in the position is powerful. The second was, we needed leadership at the wing level. And so, we needed a wing commander that was Iwo and understood and so that was our receptive second objective of optimal operational efficiency. And what that was, was the creation of the spectrum warfare wing. Now, the language we used for that was we wanted to consolidate and modernize our reprogramming interest enterprise, because so many people were in the business of reprogramming different match, comms, aft space. At the time, everybody was doing something different, but who was really bringing all that technology and sharing at various classification levels. So, we created the spectrum warfare wing. And again, that’s here today. Many members in the crowd today, I’m sure, and proud to see that that’s still going. And then the last one was education. We wanted, still awareness on electromagnetic spectrum, and that’s a tougher one. AETC took that one on, and we’ve done individual course courses that have improved. But overall, I would say we’re really, really proud, but I’m really proud of the Air Force and what they’ve done to continue to make that progress. And the other thing that all of you, and maybe that’s why many of you are here, is because it’s a big deal that the Secretary of the Air Force stood on this stage on Monday in his opening remarks and said, I have my seven OIs, but then I have four other things I’m going to focus on. And one of the ones I want to talk about today is electromagnetic warfare. Not only that that he talked about it on Monday, but then an article came out this morning that, yet again, talked about his belief in the importance of electromagnetic spectrum operations, electromagnetic warfare and his intent to drive that forward. So, thanks again for the question.

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

Well, thank you, sir. Again, I’ll try not to screw it up here, but I guess you know my number and email now, so I’ll be hearing from you potentially if I’m not doing it the right way. With that said, Great points on the article by the secretary, and his words are definitely super important. And we need to continue this charge, not let up on the pedal there. It is great to see some of the leadership from the 3/50 in here. I don’t know if Colonel Finner, the who just replaced Colonel Kozlov, made it, but a couple there. There’s leaders in here. So awesome to have that work in the rapid reprogramming and everything else, and we’ll definitely continue charging. So, let’s continue on our reoptimization discussion here moose, and I’ll turn over to you for the next question. Another review that we’re undertaking on the Air Staff is how to best organize the Air Force, including roles, responsibilities, authorities, lead, agent, those type of things, and how we get after rapid acquisition, particularly how we defend our bases against airborne threats. How do we successfully accomplish airbase air defense, or Abad, as we commonly referred to it, throughout the past couple days here, against all threats, really, right? Cruise missiles, small UASs, whatever’s fine, any size UAS is. So moose, I know you’re well versed in the counter small UAS business, from what you’re doing there with your portfolio at Epirus, would you please detail your thoughts on how we might reoptimize the a bad mission to best defend ourselves, and really, not just our air bases, but in whatever context you know we’re sitting in whether, and we’ve seen these threats all over the place with Ukraine, with the discussion that’s going on with General Regan or the Middle East.

Richard “Moose” Haas, Director, USAF Business Development, Epirus:

Roger that. First off, thanks for letting me. Let Neo prime Come here and sit here without a suit. We really appreciate it.

You know, we’re here to be agile and do things fast. But, you know, I’m an operator, so I look at I look at the mission, I look at what’s going on and right now, what’s happening in Ukraine and MENA is kind of a looking glass in the future. It ain’t going away. It’s persistent. It’s pervasive, and it’s only going to grow. We’re really at an inflection point right now of counter UAS or UAS and uncrewed surface vessels, et cetera, attacking on a daily, hourly basis, and their target, their targets are vast and varied. So, when I look at the mission, I, you know, I kind of break it into, you know, how we how do we solve the mission? I break it into three parts, what do we have to do? How do we do it? And then, how do we pay for it? Because, as a startup, living hand to mouth, we don’t have that large s of a treasure chest, and we can rely on, so we have to constantly be chasing the dollars. So, we have to come up with a solution that that’s, you know, that works, and I think we have. So, when you look at what, you know, what do we have to what do we have to do we I look at, I look at the, you know, the three things you learn in first grade, the nouns, people, places and things, we got to protect them. So, protecting people and infrastructure is critical. And that’s kind of where air base defense is. And there’s no silver bullet you’re going to have. It’s going to be a layered defense you’re going to have. And I look at the problem, like you and I used to look at defensive counter error, except we’re moving at zero knots, and they’re moving slower. But it’s the same exact problem. You still have to do f2 t2, EA. You got to go through the kill chain, and like when we were first learning how to do, do intercepts, the hardest part is find, you know, f2 t2, once we solve that. I think we have effectors in a layered sense of that, we can do it, but we have to, we have to be able to have that layered defense, because things aren’t coming from 40 miles out. You know, we’re not, we’re not meeting about it and getting into a furball. We’re being, I call it attack because it really is, whether it’s reconnaissance, some kid with a brand-new Best Buy drone or whatever, every base is getting harassed by small UAS. So, you have to be able to defend close and far at the same time, because things.

Are going to pop up that you don’t expect, right? And so how do we do it? We need to get our collective thing in a sock with doctrine requirements, R&D, testing, prototyping, Fielding. We need to make it all coherent. Right now it’s kind of scattered around the services and within the Air Force. So we need to get it all in one collective basket so we can have one message stepping out, it’s not going away.

And everybody, we’re not the only ones looking at Ukraine. Everybody’s looking at Ukraine, and it’s changing on a daily basis. If anyone hasn’t seen the two dismounted troops walking across the field battling one single, small UAS go Google it. It’s mind blowing. Basically, it’s two guys with rifles battling a big Wasp with a with a grenade strapped to the bottom. If they had they had a handheld device that could, that could zap it. I call it zap it. It’s not like Star Trek.

They would have been okay in the end. They’re bobbing and weaving around this small UAS, a group one UAS, with a with explosive on it, trying to not let it hit them. And they end up throwing their $2,000 rifle at it to kill a $100 thing. And I don’t want to get in the ROI of you know the chiefs, the chiefs in the Panthers, what they just did. But anyway, it’s ubiquitous. It’s getting it’s getting greater, and everybody’s looking at Ukraine on both sides, how to defend against it and how to use that against you. So, I hope that answers the question.

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

Absolutely. I think it definitely highlights the need to have an ability to move rapidly with technology moving as quickly as it is. And then it also highlights the need to not just engage with industry, with the big dogs, but then also those that have innovative ideas and move quickly to be able to do that innovation. You know, we’ve heard a lot about force design, Mission threads, stand up of integrated capabilities, command also the stand up of the integrated the IDEO, the Integrated Development Office, as part of the acquisition’s community. And I know, Josh, you’ve been in this business for a good bit.

What is your perspective on how we make all this move quicker, using those two organizations communicating across the board from not just on your end, but knowing what our RFIs might be to you, but then us also providing feedback with you with our analysis. How do you think we could do better? What’s your perspective on all that to make it be able to win with the threats that moose just discussed?

Joshua Niedzwiecki, Vice President and General Manager of Electronic Combat Solutions, Bae Systems:

Yeah, so, great question. So, a couple things. First, we’re very excited about the reoptimization for great power competition with the ICC and the ICO at BAE Systems, we’re not a platform prime. So, we don’t think of solving the problem from a platform perspective. We think of it from a mission systems perspective. We have electronic warfare kit on a lot of platforms, as well as other sensors. And so, when we look at collectively, the pacing threat in China, it’s all about kill chains. It’s about enabling the blue Kill Chain. It’s about disrupting the red Kill Chain and the future fight. You can’t just do that with a platform centric view. We were with Mr. Hunter earlier, and he talked about the shift from platform centric to system of system centric approach. So, we’re excited that with the ICC and things like the integrated capability office there now becomes a mechanism for us to look at the problem differently and integrate capability across multiple platforms and multiple systems. The other thing I’d say that’s important today, everything is spec and designed in a platform centric way, and so the requirements are defined for each platform.

What that provides as a gap, or creates as a bit of a gap, is the ability to leverage capability and a drive cost down across platforms. So, with things like the ICC, our hope is we’re going to be able to do things like create big iron compliant Software frameworks, for example, across multiple EW systems, on platforms like F-35 on platforms like Compass Call and epaws, to allow us to deliver capability to the warfighter faster as a nation. And so, with the ICC, I think there becomes a mechanism now that we can drive alignment across those things. The other piece of the puzzle, see general Cropsey here is around electromagnetic battle management. And you know, that’s another problem set that we need to continue to mature and develop today. Every platform fight.

Threat environment as a one versus many fights. Every platform has to be able to close the kill chain itself, and it has to be able to address all possible threats that it will face, to deny red and as we look forward with things like counter C5 ISRT, it really drives the need to build collaborative, coordinated effects across the battle space, and you need electromagnetic battle management capability to orchestrate which platforms are going to provide which electronic fires, similar to an air battle manager. And so, I think this new organization will also, in my mind, hopefully help connect those dots and bring those pieces together.

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

You bring up some great points there, Josh, and you know, we’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking air centric this entire whatever we’ve been up here for 20 minutes. But you know, you start talking about other capabilities and how we do the electromagnetic battle management with them, including cyberspace, and not just our air platforms, but our ground platforms those that might be out at sea. So, to make that happen, you also have to have, obviously, the operator train. So, I’d like to go back to you, sir, Trout, like your time at 16th Air Force. You saw operators across all those domains, with information warfare perspective. How are we training them, and how can we best collaborate and do better with the PF solutions to get the force ready for that connectedness and the deconfliction and the synchronization?

Maj. Gen. David M. Gaedecke, USAF (Ret.): 

Yeah, absolutely, it’s a really important question. And of course, first I want to say, you know, thanks to Josh for mentioning air battle managers, because, you know, I grew up doing that, and it is to use that example in the electromagnetic spectrum as I just get it so intuitively, the ability of looking at, you know, what’s looking at a radar scope for decades where I saw blue air and I saw red air, and then you saw the unknowns in between, or the or the gray that’s in there, the electromagnetic spectrum is no different, and we need to be able to harness that and be able to get after that as well. But to your question, on my time at 16th Air Force, what we were able to do that is so incredibly important, is we were able to use the electromagnetic spectrum paired with our unique US Cyber Command authorities to produce outcomes and advantages over the adversary. We’re doing it. It’s real, and so what we have to be able to do is continue, and what we need in industry from the government is to help us to develop those requirements so that we can bring those things together. The chief of staff the Air Force talked about on Monday about one Air Force, and we need that to produce those capabilities that we don’t have, those communities that are separate and distinct and stove piped and not working together. We need those communities to come together. We saw that yesterday. We saw the panel with General Whiting and general hawk. They were on the stage the different general Hawk like four stars and turns commander. It’s confusing, yeah, the other one, if it comes up, right? Yeah, much more handsome.

But the importance there is, they were talking about that critical reliance on one another to be able to accomplish their mission. They’re the warfighters, right? And so, if the services are going to provide those capabilities, we have to do what we saw at 16th Air Force, using the electromagnetic spectrum to produce outcomes, using U.S. Cyber Command authorities. The other really important part that I saw about that that we haven’t yet talked about today is the critical importance of data. So, when you look at it’s not just data being transported through the EMS, and just data at rest, and the security of the data at rest, but it’s also really important when you have that data at rest is, how are you going to parse through it? How are you going to get the conduct the analysis, to get the information we need, whether for the embm or for reprogramming, rapid reprogramming in the earware process, all of those things depend on, on eware process, and we need to leverage the AI and the ML capabilities that are out there. I’ll tell you. As I joined Booz Allen while, I was astonished. I was learned. I was so excited to learn that Booz Allen is, in fact, is the largest provider of AI capabilities to the federal government. And so, we want to be able to take that how do you take those capabilities, parse, pair with those that are helping to bring the data together and open an open-source method so we can all use it that’s nonproprietary and be able to solve the tough problems for the government that we’re really all here to do. I’ve done 30 years in uniform, and I’m passionate about continuing to help the war fighters to accomplish their missions and win, right? This is about winning.

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

Thanks. And talking about the data, the Airmen, the Guardians, those people that are behind all these efforts. We can’t forget about the like the spectrum management part of it too, right? And I know moose like your time. Yeah, you know, recently, in the B-21 with what you’re doing now, we were IM so for a reason, right? We joined EW with spectrum management, called it electromagnetic spectrum operations, and brought it together. But there’s certainly challenges there, and there’s barriers with the managers, the platforms, the practitioners, and how do we, you know, and attempt to unify this across all of it with the data parts that were brought up by General Gaedecke, like, What’s your perspective on that, on how we might be able to do it better from a smaller business that doesn’t there’s maybe not necessarily in these other areas? I mean, you’ve seen them both.

Richard “Moose” Haas:

So, if you all of you who’ve been to the Pentagon, one of the first things you find out is we’re stove piped everywhere, and we need to break down the stove pipes. And that’s a I can make millions on that bumper sticker.

So, we need to get the developers to the war fighter in the same room. That’s the key. Is getting them all to talk to each other.

Everybody’s kind of struggling now, and especially in the counter UAS on, how do we do it? What are the requirements? I mean, I’ve been taught, I was in the skunks, and I’ve been talking to a couple of the skunks and that it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s on their radar, and but they’re and they’re attacking it. But we, you know, this reminds me, those of you are who can get Social Security like me. Remember this when we had, we first got the internet in the email in the Air Force, it was, hey, 48th fighter wing here you set it up so Wing Commanders, optics, group commanders, Squadron commanders were all on our own to set up internet and email, and after a few PCS for everybody in the Air Force, we figured out what a debacle that was, and then we had to recage, you know, I’m talking about recage, and get everybody on the same page. I hate to admit this, but the army did it right first, because everybody had an army.mil had an army.mil email address. I had like four before they finally went Air force and it was hard to, I mean, we couldn’t even facilitate communication through email, because everybody was stove piped there.

But what counter, counter UAS reminds me of is the counter IED problem we had, and we had, we stood up the MRAP Center of Excellence, and in a year, was a 30-fold increase in investment, which is probably what it’s going to take. Hopefully we don’t get to the point where MRAP was a, you know, it was, you know, it was a necessary evil that we had to do because we were losing kids on the battlefield. Hopefully we don’t get there with counter UAS and we’re more proactive and more forward looking, because, like I said, it’s ubiquitous, and it’s not going away. But the key is getting everybody across, stop mil PF in the same room, talking together to find a cohesive plan and incorporating industry into that. Because a small startup company with three people may have a better idea than a, you know, a major defense contractor with 5,000 and but they all need to be talking on the same sheet of music in the same room at the same time?

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

Yeah, I think everybody in this room probably vehemently agrees with that. Anybody not agree with that?

Stand up.

You do. Bring up, though, what we’ve been doing with electronic warfare, you know, in our before, we were working on reoptimizing right now for the China, China, China parts. So Compass Call was doing a lot of different things over the past, and we didn’t have the focus on a new aircraft for quite some time. And the airborne electronic attack mission was primarily driven by the United States Navy, as we get our game back in that one. Josh with BAE with the joint endeavor on Compass Call with l3 Harris, what’s your perspective on what that’s going to bring to the fight and the game changing from the counter IED fight that Moose just brought up, and what it’ll bring to the to the fight, how we collaborate with it, and other things that Bae has worked on for countermeasures, or F 35 how’s that going to play into it? And how do we, how do we best train our operators for that? And then also back to the electromagnetic, magnetic battle management perspective, how does that integrate across the board with the other sensors and fires that might be out there? And how do we deconflict those? That’s a huge question. If you can answer that one right now, it’d be great.

Joshua Niedzwiecki:

Sure. Yeah. So first of all, we’re super excited about systems like compass, call you may have seen. Last week, we delivered the first EA 30 7b General Wilsbach had it. That was awesome. We delivered the first Boeing delivered the first F 15 ex to. To Oregon Air National Guard with epaws on it, block 4f, 35 EW in production. What we’re excited about is the investments the Air Force made over the past decade are now going to be in the hands of the war fighter. And I think the capability that these systems offer is better than ever before. I think what is important now is that we drive an alignment between the operators and the engineers, because we designed to a set of specs, as every industry player does, but the threat didn’t stay still. The threat is moving at a faster pace than ever. You know, with the with the boom of the commercial telecom industry, you know, every threat system that China has is digital, reprogrammable. The waveforms can change on a dime, and we have to be able to be agile to combat that. So, in systems like Compass Call, we have over 23rd party app providers. It’s a big iron like framework that’s open architecture, and it allows us to rapidly get after the threat. We want to be able to do that as an as an Air Force, as many places as we can. To me, that’s where we get after the threat. The other piece of this is in, you know, connecting the engineer with the operational user. I was in a session last week, and Dr. LaPlante talked, and he said, you know, magic happens when you get engineers talking to engineers between industry and the government. My take as a as an engineer, is where the magic also happens is when you get the engineers in the same room as the operator. We just had a team that was downrange for a month and a half, a team of engineers with some with some operators, and the knowledge that those engineers gained by understanding not just what the environment looks like, but how the operators use our systems is invaluable in driving the pace of change and making that faster. If we follow the standard requirements, development, acquisition process only, then there’s a timeline that is not going to pace the threat our ability to short circuit that allows our engineers to innovate faster and find ways to MacGyver solutions into the kit the Air Force already owns. That’s a big focus. The other thing I’d add is an area of emphasis in the Air Force, and as we look at electromagnetic spectrum operations. A need is to drive more maturity in the operational analysis of EW effects. The EW capability that’s out there now, and that’s being developed, isn’t that same just jam to signal ratio, white noise, simple model. There are more advanced techniques, and if we don’t, if we don’t model them correctly in the operational analysis, then we assume a platform like F-15 is going to be operating way outside the Wes, if we understand and model correctly the EW effects that show how much further inside the Wes, they can operate without being at risk. It changes training and tactics, and when you’re facing a threat like China, we want to make sure we clearly understand the capability that we have and train and operate toward them.

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

Fantastic point there, particularly on the training and the modeling, the simulation, the analysis, like I don’t think anybody’s going to say we’ve got that down 100% that we’re we have that problem solved like it is a very challenging problem as we go to modeling more than one thing versus one thing, and also training to that. And I know that we as a as a government certainly owe the data to you all the industry to be able to do your part of it. And that’s part of that collaboration. I’ve been excited to be part of the operational imperatives as a cross cutting or domain enabler over the over the past year in this job. And I’m fortunate that we’re going to continue that one for the electronic warfare, the MSO or the counter c5 isrt, as better known in the community of UOS, because we got to get after it. We have to have to have that modeling to show where we can get our return on investment. And you all know those when we show you what we think is important, and you’ll go after it as industry. So, we certainly appreciate that, and the partnership from you all, and then also the rest of industry that’s out here. So, we’ve got about eight minutes left. We call this rapid fire, or whatever. If you all would like to talk amongst yourselves or correct me on whatever I’ve said wrong. We’ll go. Or if you’d like, just have like two minutes each to throw any other additional thoughts out there. I’ll turn it over to you, trout first for any thoughts or whoever would like to pile on, and I’ll do the same.

Maj. Gen. David M. Gaedecke, USAF (Ret.): 

Yeah. Thanks. So first and foremost, for the opportunity. And having done this before, it’s fantastic sees the size of the crowd that you brought today. So, it’s really important for this topic. And the end, the focus that we’re seeing from the our Department of the Air Force, and how more of our leaders are talking about it, you know, one of the things that, as I’ve made that step from a, you know, 30 years in uniform, into industry, is learning that the capabilities and the opportunities that we have to help solve your problems. Now, when you look at what Booz Allen has done, is 110-year consulting company that’s been working side by side with the government, but now we’re in that business of being that integration integrator, helping with those mission system solutions that you need help with. And so, you know, when you look at those things that we’re doing now to solve the government’s problem and to and to be that integrator. And it’s like my final fellow panelists talked about, it’s not ability to go alone to solve these problems, that industry also needs to partner together to be able to do these things. And we have those opportunities when you know great things that we’re already doing. When I look at REWD, which is an acronym, R-E-W-D, which is RFEW Demonstrator, and we’re able to help go now analyze and go through those tracks so much more rapidly what used to take hours or months, and it was, it was actually taking, you know, many, many days. And were able to do that in minutes, and excited to do that. Or if you’re familiar with crowdsource flight data, and the ability for us to take some of the data that’s out there from the F-35 and be able to help with that, we’re right there. Worth the government doing that today, and then we want to be able to be an integrator that’s going to be helped with our other partners and things like embm to help lead that for the government. So, thanks again, and excited to help solve the problems that the that we know the SECCAF is expecting of all of us.

Panel Moderator: Brig. Gen. Leslie “Toro” Hauch:

Thank you, sir. Moose I’ll do the rapid fire. We’ll stick to the two minutes each.

Richard “Moose” Haas:

Okay, well, Josh, pretty much hit my summary. So, I’m not going to beat that dead horse, although it probably needs beating, but I’m just going to appeal to the fives in the room. I’ve got really, really bright engineers. Some used to work at Raytheon, and we have a great system, but no one’s given us a requirement to hit, no one’s driven a stake in the ground and say, can you get there? We need that. Industry needs that and, but we can help you. I’ll go to I’ll happily go to the skunk so the J5 and go help them write their counter UAS requirements. My hands up. But industry needs to know what the services, and it’s, I’m not, I’m not bashing my own service. It’s, it’s DoD wide what, what, what? What do you need us to do for you? So, we can, we can keep, you know, tower 22 safe. We could keep the guys and gals down range, drone free, so or cruise missile free. So, that’s my, that’s my, I guess my appeal to the crowd is tell us what you need. And if you don’t know, let us help you determine what you need, because we know what we can do. So, if we define the realm of the possible, we’ll go out and do it. And I guess I’m a boydian at heart, because I want to make this OODA loop as small as possible. So that’s all I have. Awesome. Thanks for being here, sir.

Joshua Niedzwiecki:

Yeah. So, in closing, you know, I think kind of echoing your comment about partnership, I want to say, as a industry mission system provider, I want to say thank you to the Air Force and thank you to the platform primes. From where I sit, I’ve never seen collaboration more than I have over the past two years, and it’s really all about allowing a broader set of the industrial base really understand the threat and the threat dynamics, we have to take off our industry badge and put on our team USA badge because, because China is a formidable threat. And I think what I’ve seen is the amount of focus on instead of just, you know, specking, here’s what we need from you guys, that ability to be part of the discussion understanding the threat and the threat environment and solutioning capability together has been incredibly, incredibly valuable. Sharing operational analysis with companies like Lockheed Martin, being able to really look at closing Kill Chain gaps, things that have never happened, you know, to that level from my 24-year career in the past, so I want to say thank you to the Air Force and our industry partners.

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