Delivering Training Capabilities for Space Superiority

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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be with you here today. And I’m glad that we have a chance to talk to you about training. Training for the Space Force, that is. Hey, when we kicked off the session earlier today, it was pretty clear that one operation certainly had a primary focus. In fact, it was three months ago today that Operation Midnight Hammer executed. And although that was a operation that was marked by exquisite precision and preparation for the aviation crews involved, there was actually a Guardian footprint behind the scenes that made sure that that was successful. Guardians helped ensure that our ISR, our space-based communications, our position data for both the aircraft and the weapons, precise timing, as well as an ever-watching eye for infrared, for missile warning and other detections, was always there providing that. The Guardians had to be synchronized just as much as the air crews to be able to provide those capabilities and to make sure that mission was successful. But I want you to envision for a moment, what if before that operation could execute, we had to fight for space superiority? We had to take deliberate actions that would be required to be able to enable all of those space capabilities, to ensure that they were unfettered, that an adversary could not take those away from us. And what if we also had to take the fight to the adversary? They had learned the same way in which we use space capabilities to enable their kill chains, we had to fight for that. That’s what we’re here to talk about today, space superiority. That’s a game changer, and that’s what we’re preparing Guardians to do now and in the future. As I said, I’m Brigadier General Matt Cantore, I’m the Deputy Commander of Space Training and Readiness Command, or STARCOM, in the Space Force. And it is my honor to be here with you today, along with this panel, as we talk about space superiority as it is enabled by training. And I’m pleased to be joined today by four distinguished members from industry. And so first, on my left, I have Mr. Matt Brown. Matt is the Executive Technology Director, Air and Space Systems at Raytheon. Matt works with customers and teammates to review concepts of operations, understand end to admissions, assess technical needs and opportunities, and provide leadership to drive investments in research and development to deliver critical capabilities to enable mission success. He served as a chief engineer on multiple programs and is recognized for his work in space protection, service-oriented architectures, satellite command and control, and mission management, and small satellite technologies. Matt, glad to have you with us. Next up, we have Ms. Emily Farkas from Shift5. Emily spent 25 years serving as an aircraft maintenance officer before getting involved with the Space Force stand-up in 2019. Here, she fully realized the central role that space plays in every mission. Shift 5’s support to the Space Force includes exposing cyber vulnerabilities, especially in the satellite control network, and identifying solutions to strengthen mission assurance. For Emily, delivering space superiority begins with realistic, integrated training that prepares Guardians and Airmen to operate in a contested cyber-relevant environment. Glad to have you as well, Emily. Next, we have Mr. Jim Reynolds. Jim is the vice president of business development for SAIC’s Space Defense Market, where he directs strategic planning and development of mission-integrated solutions for Space Force customers, including SSC, SDA, Space RCO missionaries. He’s a retired Air Force colonel. He’s worked in a variety of mission areas to include Space Superior at Air Force Space Command, the National Reconnaissance Office, and Headquarters Air Force. And finally, we have Justin Tkach. Justin is the director of the Virtual Warfare Center at Boeing Defense, Space, and Security, where he focuses on operations, analysis, and strategic development to enhance warfighter capabilities. With extensive experience in various leadership roles at Boeing, Justin is dedicated to driving innovation and shaping the defense strategies. Please give them all a warm welcome.

So as I said today, we are gonna talk about space superiority and how we deliver training capabilities for that. And as many of you know, space superiority is the formative purpose of the Space Force. It’s the difference between having and operating a civil space agency and a warfighting space service. And so the textbook definition of space superiority from the CSO’s Space War Fighting Framework, it’s the degree of control that allows forces to operate in a time and space of their choosing without prohibitive interference from space or counter space threats while also denying the same to an adversary. At Starcom, our job is to prepare Guardians to get ready for that future fight. We do that through the training and education, doctrine, war gaming, test, and then we operate the arena with the range and aggressor capabilities. Think of this, Starcom, as the Space Force’s version of the Warfare Center in the Air Force, the Air Force’s Test Center, and AETC, just in a much smaller, compact state. And so it is my honor to help lead that team here. But to do that, we need capability from industry. And so members of the stage here are gonna talk about the partnership and how they help bring those to fruition. And then for those, many of you in the room here, we realize you play a critical role as well, and we wanna thank you for that. This partnership is absolutely essential to ensuring that we get our requirements known and understood, but then delivered into capabilities that allow our Guardians to prepare. And again, that’s what we’re so eager to do, to get Guardians ready, whether it’s a fight like a strike, like Midnight Hammer, or whether it’s large-scale continuous combat operations that require a fight in and for the domain, that’s what we need to be ready for. All right, so now that we have the background of myself on STARCOM, our panelists, and our topic at hand, I’m gonna ask the first question. All right, and very much, we are focused on the fight tonight. You think about Midnight Hammer, you think about how Guardians are key enablers and partners in the missions today. What do you view the state of training capabilities for the Space Force? Is it sufficient to get our operators ready for the capabilities that are needed today? How do we prepare our Guardians to provide for those missions? And are there certain capabilities your companies are working on to enhance the fight tonight? I’ll start with Matt here on my left.

Matt Brown:

Thank you, sir, and it’s an honor to be part of this panel. Thank you for being here today, and I’m excited to talk about space superiority in this context. When I think about the long-range kill chain, that’s really, we’re talking about space superiority in the context of supporting the long-range kill chain, like the Night Hammer. It’s a critical aspect, end to end. There’s a lot that has to be accomplished. It’s a system of systems problem that you’re trying to solve. And for the fight tonight, it reminded me when we were talking about this, of a recent other engagement we had right within Iran in April and October. And we were in the process then at Raytheon of delivering a ground system into operations right at that point. It was the future operationally ready ground element. And in April, we were delivering that system right as that attack happened. And immediately, the operators were able to leverage that system to support that fight that day. And what was really exciting about that as being part of that team was that had been prepared over a lot of time. That wasn’t just the first time that we had had that engagement. And what was unique about that training to support that is that they actually had in place a ground innovation facility that was placed so the operators could start seeing the software ahead of time, could start learning the software ahead of time. And that could transition more easily into operations. Those types of methodologies are critical in order to be successful. We want to have the opportunity to interact with the operators and get their feedback as those missions occur. We want to be able to support them so that they know what’s there and what’s coming before it even gets on their software baselines. And so I think this was a great example of what we want to do going forward. Have that interaction early and often from a training perspective, from a testing perspective. And in this case, that actually allowed us to, before something was operationally accepted, support the fight tonight. And be able to get data from that system and support the war fighters and the Guardians that needed that data. So I think that is a key aspect of being successful in training and testing.

Col. Emily Farkas, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, Matt. I just want to pull the thread on that to share the integration early and often. So thank you for the opportunity to be on this panel, this elite group of senior leaders. What I learned in my Air Force career as a commander is readiness can’t be surged. It is a daily grind of the reps and sets. And Guardians, you know that the Sims, the war gaming, the red and blue teams, that’s practice for reality. And I’m really proud that Shift 5 has done a cooperative research and development agreement with Delta 6 where we’re able to assess the satellite control networks. And in a realistic operational environment and a cyber contested environment to see how the resilience on the architecture is. And the wonderful thing is industry being able to give the Guardians those lessons learned in improving that architecture over time and taking it to the next fight. I think that’s how Guardians are bringing different capabilities and training, continuously training, to support the joint force and create the greatest space superiority ever. And quite frankly, it still boggles my mind that General Whiting has, as US Space Command commander, the largest area of responsibility in the history of combat commands. So just wrap your head around that, that our Guardians are taking on a large responsibility for the defense of our nation, not only our nation, but our allies.

Jim Reynolds:

Great, thank you, Emily. I also wanna thank the AFA. And Emily actually gave me a great, great line to open with. When we were walking in earlier before all the commercials were playing, they were playing Metallica, Enter Sandman. And so she’s like, hey, is that our walk on song? And I was like, I hope so, because as a proud Virginia Tech Hokie, that would be my walk on song if I had one. Although our football team’s kind of fallen on some rough times here lately. But anyway, back to the subject at hand. So for SAIC, I really think our focus is on mission integration. And when I think mission integration, it’s way more than the capability delivery. It’s how do you sustain that capability? How do you train that capability, test, do the war gaming, the modeling and simulation that it takes to really operationalize that capability and use it, be prepared to use it in warfighting as needed? And so that kind of mission integration really requires, I think, three elements. Really depth of mission understanding. So you have to have a deep across all space missions for space. But then also, how does it fit within the joint fight? That has to be part of this as well. It requires a discipline, right? You have to have a discipline process to how you’re doing this, right? It has to become, I think like you said earlier, part of your daily routine. You’re not gonna surge and all of a sudden wanna do this. So it really requires discipline. And then lastly, it requires collaboration. You have to be able to work together to do any of this. And so you need an environment that enables collaboration. So that to me are really the three elements that are key for mission integration. And it’s done in a variety of ways. For SAIC, we obviously do a lot of systems engineering, integration work, technical advisory, more services based to the government and to Space Force in particular. And implementing digital engineering into that so you can kinda speed the process which capabilities can be tested and integrated and proven and trusted is critical. But it’s also, you need to do integration for our current systems. So the sustainment, the modernization of our current systems is also a critical component of mission integration. How do you take those systems and make sure that they can provide data and communicate and be more digitally relevant when they weren’t designed for that? So a lot of it is how do you figure out to take what you got and make it more relevant to current operations? And then lastly is taking the new capabilities that are coming online and make sure you start with an integration mindset from the beginning and bring those systems into an, you’re not waiting till the end when these systems are delivered, you gotta start at the beginning. And that’s where I see collaboration being key. How can we get not only industry to collaborate with government, but industry to collaborate with one another, right? The same way that we protect data from a classification perspective, we can protect that data from an intellectual property perspective as well. And be able to share those models, share those tools. Every industry partner has their own environment that they build models in. And then even for systems that don’t have these models, cuz they were built decades ago. There’s ways to introduce the interfaces from these systems so that you can see that level of collaboration and integration from the beginning. And not wait for a delivery and then you gotta figure out how to test, how to train, how to operate these systems after they’ve been fielded. You need to do that from the start, I think, so.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Justin.

Justin Tkach:

Yeah, I mean, it’s tough to follow all three of these. They were great points. I think maybe a piece that industry adds is, as we go deep in the physics-based modeling activities, making sure that it’s grounded in what a system really does. And you get into training, it’s creating that right thinking environment. Because when you fight through something, it’s about thinking. Can you outthink the adversary? Can you be faster in the thinking process? And something that industry brings from a Boeing perspective is the depth of, what can it really do? Cuz there’s always what something was designed for. And then there’s, well, what if you use it a new way? What if you do something different with that array? You do something different with that antenna. That’s where it becomes a warfighting component in training and test. Because it’s pushing that envelope past the design and into the art of the possible. And the art of the possible is typically where you get adversary disruption. It’s pretty easy to model what something’s supposed to do. It’s not so easy to model, they came up with something crazy. And the benefit of industry is you can have that training. And somebody calls an engineer who’s been doing this for 40 years and goes, hey, we’ve never thought of using this this way. The manual says it can’t be done. And I don’t know about everybody else, but every time I talk to an engineer, the answer is, duh, of course it can be done, they just won’t let us. That’s what modeling in sim gives you, is an ability to say, well, let’s try it. Let’s not break a billion dollar system, let’s try it. And I think that’s what industry really brings. Especially when you introduce a whole bunch of young talent coming in from the universities that don’t come in with a policy says we can’t. They kinda come in bright eyed with a let’s do it, let’s make it happen. And I think for the Space Force, as it gets into testing and training and really figuring out what is space superiority, that’s where the partnership with industry really expands. Because that’s where you can test the absolute edge of stressing the adversary to the point where they break and we don’t. To your point, sir, about how you fight through. You fight through by that creativity that you learn in a modeling and sim environment and apply in a real world when they don’t expect it to show up. And that’s when you win.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

There’s another group that’s also thinking how they can push us outside of the bounds. It’s not just our Guardians, it’s our adversary. And so that’s an area that we have to acknowledge. I thought there was a great quote from the CSAT this morning. He said failure is good in training. And boy, is that correct. That’s where we wanna push the bounds of what we can or can’t do. And certainly we have to think to the future. That challenge is one that our Guardians need to take up and to look at. So as we talk about, we’ve just been talking about the current fight, the fight tonight, and how we’re prepared and thinking about that. But the fight for the future is upon us here imminently. We know that the next major conflict is gonna require a fight for space superiority. We have to be ready. And so as we look to the future, what do Guardians need tomorrow from industry to prepare for the future fight? What’s the next big thing? What are we missing? And how do we tap into it? And we’ll start over here with Matt again.

Matt Brown:

Yeah, I think, I guess, I wish my name wasn’t Brown cuz I had to be first in line. Cuz I like, I don’t know, you didn’t wanna go last. I like going last. These are the smart people. I like to hear what they have to say. When I was thinking about this question specifically, I’m thinking about what the next big thing is from the mission perspective. And it always comes back to the mission for me. I’m always looking at what’s missing, what do we need, what’s the challenges? And what’s coming next when you talk about space superiority and talk about the long range kill chain in particular is things like MTI, Airborne Systems Transitioning to Space. That is a different challenge for how do we train our Guardians versus the airborne systems that we had before, right? And that is what’s happening today. We’re seeing these airborne systems begin to transition to space. And what’s the next big thing there? It’s really about maintaining that long range kill chain. And so when we go into training, you look at how would I train for this system from an airborne perspective? It’s actually a lot different than when you get onto an ops floor. I have a group now that’s no longer just worried about the health and status of the satellite. They also have to be worried about the tactical mission side. And they’re no longer sitting in an airplane with one sensor. They can bring in lots of different types of data. So I think that’s one good example of thinking about the problem and saying, hey, as we transition into the next generation of capabilities that we need to have to win that fight tomorrow, what does look different? And how can we leverage what we’ve learned on the airborne side? Lots of strengths from JSTARS and AWACS, but it’s also a different system. And now, maybe there’s new capabilities that we can have on top of that. And we need to train on those. We wanna focus on that. Things like, how do I orchestrate multiple sensors to keep tracking these systems? Can I do that automated? That helps the Guardian be able to focus on the specific piece of their mission, as opposed to having to worry about the threat environment that they’re in as they’re flying, the mission planning that they’re in as they try to fly that system right from an airborne perspective. So I think it’s that next set of thinking around what do we need to support the mission end to end? And as things transition in space superiority and all the different aspects of that long range kill chain, what do our Guardians need and how can they focus on the piece of the mission that really matters?

Col. Emily Farkas, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks, Matt. I’ll just add that I think adaptability is the currency to winning the next fight. And learning those skill sets that you don’t have today, that you need for the next fight. The problem is, the Guardians are running a mile a minute every single day. And you’ve got job after job, and you normally end your day with a cut line, because there’s so many other things that you could get after. So how do you get after it all? Well, now you have to plan the time to think. You gotta plan the time to stretch yourself. And those are the exercises. Those are the opportunities that the service gives you to stretch beyond what you’re doing today. So don’t lose sight of, a lot of times we get to the exercises, there are a lot of people that are planning it, but I need Guardians to be exclusively involved in those exercise development plans, so that you can implement those stretching opportunities. And invite industry. We would love to be a part of your exercise, your war gaming, to help you think through those next generation fights that you’re going to be dealing with. And you are developing your teams now, your Guardian leaders, you’re developing your teams now for tomorrow’s fight. You have to be able to stretch yourself. You have to be able to adapt and overcome the things that you don’t know today.

Jim Reynolds:

Yeah, yeah, building off of that, the next big thing is not a single thing. It’s continuing to build off of the foundation we’re establishing now, to where we can continuously integrate new capabilities or new technologies. And not have to train and test individually every new thing that we bring on. We must get to the place where we have this collaborative environment, as we talked about earlier, to work together in, practice in. And then be able to share that information, share that knowledge, so that it doesn’t require specific training for every new capability that we bring on board. And then we can truly start getting after the kill chain, right? Cuz once you can see that across end to end, you can see where your priorities really lie, and what gaps you have. And then you can see where new technologies may fit, right? Everyone wants to bring in artificial intelligence, machine learning, high powered computing. But it really needs to be applied to where it really benefits the mission and the outcome. And so the only way you can do that is by working collaboratively together, not trying to do that 100 times over for every one of your specific weapons. You have to be able to apply that foundationally across your entire architecture. And then that way, you don’t have to go through the long cycles of accreditation, acceptance, testing, and training for every new capability you bring on board. That’s how you truly achieve this idea of continuous integration, continuous delivery of your architecture.

Justin Tkach:

Yeah, the integration piece really well said, cuz without that, you can’t really transition anything new. Cuz it’s like, I have a new widget, but I don’t know what to do with it. So you have to have that. I think the next big thing though is really driven by the shift in mindset and the offensive thinking. So shifting to what does it mean to create temporary space superiority in conjunction with another domain? What is that? That’s a different kind of thinking and it drives a wholly different kind of test and experimentation thinking. Cuz we tend to still think, I need robust permanency. Yeah, you don’t get that. You don’t get to keep that, you don’t get to have that. So what does it mean to shift to temporary offensively punch a hole in something the same way we think air superiority? And we’re gonna punch a hole in something and go do something that directly challenges an adversary’s ability to act. The partnering with industry allows us to think very forward on, so what is an offensive space superiority capability that’s shiftable? And what I mean by that is, it probably has to be able to have a defensive role as well. It probably has to have a functional role as well, but in a time of extended conflict with a peer, how does it become offensive when you need it? I think that drives that kind of next big unknown thing, which makes it a really exciting time to be staring at a whole new challenge across the space domain that just fundamentally changes how do we think. And then from an engineering side, cuz, well, we’re industry, so we wanna build stuff, what do you gotta build to make that happen? And then to the software side, how do you iterate fast enough to stay in front of the threat, knowing whatever you build has to have a lot of foresight in it? Cuz by the time you get it up into space, the threat may have changed.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

I’m struck that while we’re sitting in this room, there is another discussion going on focused on air power and training. And as we move forward, certainly the way we are gonna fight is not going to be one domain alone, it’s going to be multi-domain. And with that, Space Force is gonna learn a lot from the Air Force, from the Navy, from the Army, and for our allies and partners going forward. I do wanna audible a little bit off the script for one point. I wanna talk about live virtual constructive and mixes for Space Force. How do you see that growing long term? One of the challenges for space is you can’t repeat things over and over, whether it’s a policy limitation or just a delta V limitation on a spacecraft. But we’ve gotta find a way to find this balance. How do you view LVC as it pertains to fights for space superiority and training in the future? So I’m gonna start on the other side. I’m gonna start with Justin, and then we’ll come on back.

Matt Brown:

Thank you, sir.

Justin Tkach:

Yeah, that’s a great question, sir, especially the LVC component that ties it to other domains. Cuz there’s always that timing challenge when you’re trying to model, okay, I have a space effect and I need to connect it to an air effect in order to get a surface or subsurface kind of effect, all coordinated together. And that’s really what has to get done from a LVC kind of standpoint. And that also then amplifies as you start getting into that training on the repeat. We’ve had a number of engagements with the Space Force. And one of the great things about it is an ability to look at it and go, was it worth sacrificing those space assets or not, and run it again. Obviously, virtual, not live, at the same time being fully informed from all the live data coming off of those systems to get a sense of can you really do it. I think the future has to be more of that, and also probably a deeper and broader connection with industry on those type of activities. Because there is a lot of constructive work that’s done across industry that I think falls on the cutting room floor that can then inform the virtual and the live portions of it.

Jim Reynolds:

Well, I think you did a perfect job of reversing the order on this one, because you have probably one of the leading experts in the world right here answering that question. So I can’t really do much more than that. But I will say, when I think about live, virtual, constructive, I think of, obviously, you’re gonna do as much as you can in the virtual and the constructive environments, because you are limited at what you can do live, right, especially with space. But it really comes down to trust. Can you trust that this capability and these people and these processes are going to be resilient enough to handle their mission when under fire, right? And so if we can get our fidelity of our virtual and our constructive environments to get you to that place where we can all gain that trust, the people that are working these can trust themselves, trust their partners. The testers and the ops acceptors and the accreditors can trust that the right cyber protections are in place. And to be able to operate this through threats and not create more vulnerabilities, that is really the goal, the focus for any of these.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Yeah, and Jim, you said the C word there, and so I’m gonna turn to Emily, certainly she has a cyber focus for, how does LVC and cyber fit for Guardian development and training?

Col. Emily Farkas, USAF (Ret.):

Well, I actually think I wanna go back to my old world of aircraft for a moment, cuz when we talk about aircraft and then you tie it to training and maintainers, you have an airworthiness deal. Like you can only train to a certain degree and you’re losing airworthiness of an aircraft. So when you go to LVC, you have to understand the standard that you’re trying to meet first. And then when you feel confident that your Guardians are at that level, now you can let them loose. So when we lose the sight of the requirement, now you’re really increasing risk. So I think you have to ensure you have the right standard first, and then you can let them loose. Now going back to cyber, you have to have a cyber resilient architecture. You don’t want to be working in an environment that now you have adversaries coming in and unfortunately, maybe making changes to your system without your knowing. That’s where we come in as industry that have worked in it a long time, that are experts in this field, and can transfer that to protect and harden your architecture. Because you don’t want, that’s the fog and friction of war. That is not part of your operations. You don’t want to have to deal with the environment as part of your risk assessment. But you capture it, you sink it down with the cyber capabilities that we can bring to the table as industry, because that is our bread and butter. It’s worth our effort to take care of that for you so you can operate freely.

Matt Brown:

Yeah, I think you have to look at it from, again, the end to end perspective. And so if you have a live system, you want to select, hey, where in this overall thread are we going to test and train on this? And then you put in safeguards around some of those. I mean, it’s really also about leveraging as much as you can of the live systems when you have them available. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go all the way to the end, right? So how close can we get? What is safe? And I talked about it a little bit earlier. If you separate the tactical mission from what’s the, from the health and status type missions, we sometimes get those blurred when we’re thinking about space. But they actually, you can separate those. And when you get to that point, what is safe? I was a chief engineer on a Space Force program. We had to build in the simulators to be able to test that, but we couldn’t test it live all the way. So how close can you get? Where do you draw that line? And then how does that repeatable? That portion can be repeatable. And then you might have to go to the virtual and the constructive to say, that last little bit, we know we can’t close all the way. This is what we know today. And get as much data and as much understanding of that problem as you can. So you can solve it analytically through simulations over and over again when you’re training. But I do think it’s about thinking about the problem in the way of how far can we get, how close can we get, what can we do, and what safeguards can we put in place so that we can be successful.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Okay, all right, well, hey, one other thing that we’ve talked about in the symposium so far, which is that we get our strength with our allies and partners. And we don’t see that we’re going to operate any future major combat operation without them. In fact, the Chief of Space Operations laid out his line of effort three, and his international partnership strategy came out. They talked about strength through partnership. That is a reality, that’s where we are going to go. I just came back from being at Maxwell a few weeks ago, and I watched the 17th iteration of the Shrever War Game. We had ten nations there, including partners such as Norway, Germany, France, Japan, as well as many of others that we commonly work with. It was fantastic to see the growth in partnership with them. But that also means we need to be able to prepare together. And so how do you see us working together and preparing training opportunities, whether it’s war games, exercises, whether it’s education, trust? How do we work together and develop opportunities to have that environment with our allies and partners from the beginning? And so with that, I’m going to start with Jim, just to mix it up, and we’ll move to the right.

Jim Reynolds:

Sure, yeah, so for me, I think just building off what I’ve already talked about, it really is extending your collaborative environment, right? You have to be working in a common environment. Doesn’t mean that we have one environment that you do everything in. But just like the Internet, you can get to the point where folks can access a common environment, access common data is really the key. Cuz for the most part, we’re using commercially available tools to do this, to do the modeling in SIEM, or to do the visualization of the kill chain, or whatever. We’re using, or sometimes you have some homegrown tools, or some tools that you modify, but it’s really about the data access. And then, obviously, there are more controls and more access controls you have to put in place as you work broader with more partners, especially international partners. But those controls are no different than the same controls we have in place for our own security classification levels. And really, the key to all this is being able to access data across those controls, right? The panacea here is the cross-domain solutions, right? How can we get trusted, accredited, accepted cross-domain solutions so that the data that needs to be protected from certain accesses is protected? And the data that can flow, which is really about how these systems interconnect, how the threat affects those capabilities. None of that is proprietary or classified for the most part. So you’ve gotta be able to get those accesses across multiple domains, or multiple security levels, protect intellectual property so that industry trusts they can come in and play and not lose their secret sauce. And then, how can you then extend that to bring in other partners, whether they’re international partners or ally, commercial partners, etc.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Emily?

Col. Emily Farkas, USAF (Ret.):

Well, I think it goes back to what I mentioned earlier in bringing in the stakeholders in your exercises. For our Guardians, you’re leading the way in building these relationships with our ally partners. You’re developing the shared training, the shared doctrine. We’re building the doctrine as we’re moving along, and to build the shared confidence. So when you actually show up to the fight, we’re all been trained, we’ve seen the exercises, but then it’s bigger than that. It’s infused in your military education and having those synergies with your allies. And being able to be at the US Space Command and at your bases, those are where you’re building trust. I think that’s the biggest part for allied partnership, and quite frankly, it goes across all domains and all the commands. But you have to build that trust with your partners. And to Jim’s point, you have to have a common operating procedures to talk the same language. You may not be able to speak the same language on a day to day, but there should be an operational language that we can all speak.

Matt Brown:

Yeah, I think back to one example where I was working a program where we had the Guardians directly on the ops floor with the partner. And the communication was verbal, they were talking back and forth. And we need to look at that for a training environment and say, how does that scale? Because that’s the challenge, is to scale, because that system is so helpful to have those groups be able to talk to each other and talk through the mission, looking at their own data. We need to be able to scale that, and it comes back to, that’s a lot about security, multi-level security, understanding how to bring those together. And also making better decisions about what level, I can’t control this, but what level is at what level of security, right? So how can we bring the data up to the right level, but also maybe looking at how do we really decide at the government level, what needs to be classified at what level? And how can we open up those doors to be able to share that data? Because the example is there, when we’re on the floor together, having these conversations, that is beneficial to the mission. How can we scale to make that happen?

Justin Tkach:

Yeah, I think when you think about it from the industry side and partnership, so it’s great to hear and see that partnership emerging at the service side with the other services internationally, cuz that starts the dialogue. From an industry end, it’s what do you want of industry with the partnering with international industry? So where do you want us to work with the Germans, with the Brits? Where do you want us to invest together to develop capabilities? How do you want pockets of goodness across industry to come together to form a whole that’s more than any of the single parts really could be? And that gets into all that annoying stuff like policy and FMS and weird interpretations of treaties and all that fun. But that’s a key part saying, is that partnership built with enough robustness that you can actually activate it when it comes time to fight. And the pieces are ready to scale. Because a lot of the time, that’s the stuff that gets left off to the side, cuz it’s not fun. Nobody likes having that challenging conversation. But it’s the part that gets the service what it needs and gets the allies and partners involved in a way that benefits everyone. Because all those little pieces get pushed to the side, cuz they’ve been dealt with. And that’s what we should do early, not when we’re in the middle of a crisis.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Okay, lightning round. So final question we have for our panel. And so I want to focus on what we need to get after now to get ready for that speed security fight. What’s the most important next step to prepare Guardians? Where should we focus our next dollar spent? Is it affecting a policy change? Is it going after a technology? Is it going after a partnership? Where do you think we should put your focus? Each of you, about 30 seconds. I’ll start with Justin.

Justin Tkach:

I think I’ll go back to offensive space capabilities. The absolute focus has to be on going after red. So if I had one more dollar, it would be on going after which offensive capability makes the most sense to go after that threat. From an investment standpoint, policy is a whole different animal. That might be a never ending process. But investment would be after that next offensive capability.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Okay. Jim.

Jim Reynolds:

For me, it really is not a specific technology, but it’s how can we get a truly trusted cross-domain solution that we can implement across everything? Right now, we are trying to solve this problem hundreds or thousands of times over repeatedly, and it really bottlenecks us. And some of its policy, and those policies have built up over time in different communities, right? Especially for space, you find you to get anything accredited at any kind of security level. You have to work through the DOD process and the IC process. And now you start throwing in international partners or civil partners or commercial partners. It just is such a barrier to unlocking so much capability that that is the one key thing I’d like to see addressed.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

Emily?

Col. Emily Farkas, USAF (Ret.):

I would say keeping the lines of communication open, especially for a small business startup like Shift 5. It’s difficult to get in to talk to Guardians in order to understand your capability gaps. And if I can understand your capability gaps, I can bring my smart people in to help discuss that, even develop a training plan. So that’s probably the most difficult thing. Even when I was part of the Space Force development in 2019, we talked about how do we declassify some things so that we can bring the right people in the room to get after some of these issues. So I would bring these businesses on, provide the easy path, and make it fast, because we need it yesterday.

Matt Brown:

Yeah, I would say the same thing. It’s about going fast. How do we get operational capability into the Guardians’ hands as fast as we possibly can? And to me, that also means looking at things and partnering with, how do we decide what’s really a minimum viable product that gives a capability immediately, and what does it look like to test that sufficiently? That we know it’s gonna work, and that it’s gonna be able to be given to them and work when it needs to. But sometimes we get bogged down in those requirements and what it means to test each one at which level. So I think it’s really focusing on getting operational capability into operators’ hands as fast as possible through minimum viable and testing.

Brig. Gen. Matthew S. Cantore:

All right, well, hey, thank you to this fantastic panel who walked us through ways we can get after improving the training and readiness for our Guardians to get ready for the future fight. Really appreciate your time and insight. We wanna thank AFA for the chance to talk. And I wanna thank all the industry as well as our allies and partners out there. And you are helping to get Guardians ready. Thank you for what you do, and thank you for listening to the panel today.