Dynamic Space Operations
September 23, 2025
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Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today’s panel. I’m Charles Galbreath, Senior Resident Fellow for the Mitchell Institute’s Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence. Welcome to this Mitchell Institute’s panel on dynamic space operations. The recognition that space is a war-fighting domain has driven the need to change the U.S. space architecture, our acquisition approaches, and our operational concepts. The United States needs approaches that can more quickly deliver capabilities, more flexible capabilities, and more dynamic capabilities that can add additional dilemmas to our adversaries’ calculus. U.S. Space Command has provided a clear and consistent demand signal for dynamic space operations and the need to be able to maneuver satellites without regret for the fuel consumed. To meet this operational need, it appears that two options exist. We can either build low-cost satellites at high numbers, at high production rates, that we then dispose Or we can build satellites and a supporting infrastructure that allows for on-orbit servicing. Either of these options comes with several detailed nuances. And trades that have far-reaching implications, particularly for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing are ISAM. But of course, there isn’t a single answer that this is not a strictly a binary decision that has to be made and one size does not fit all And So to help us think through this, I’m thrilled that we’ve been able to put together such a distinguished panel of experts. First we have General Major General Dennis Bythewood, Special Assistant to the Chief of Space Operations. We have Dr. Monty Greer, the outreach coordinator for the Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities or COSMIC at the Aerospace Corporation. And finally, we are pleased to be joined by Rob Hauge, the president of Northrop Grumman Space Logistics LLC. Thank you all for joining us today. So let’s dive in. Dynamic space operations can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different peoples depending upon your mission set or your orbital regime. So can you just kind of walk through from each of your perspectives what does DSO mean to you?
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
Yeah, I do think it is pretty expansive. I mean at its core, I mean if you look at our space warfighting you know framework for planners, you know, we define it as movement and maneuver, right? And at its core, that’s what it is. But you can take movement and maneuver and you can look at it as we have historically at m movement of satellite communications, you know, bandwidth across, you know, the you know the different combatant commanders to enable operations. from movement maneuver of beams and spacecraft capability to detect missiles. In this case, we’re talking much more about the movement and maneuver of spacecraft in order to gain some level of ability against an adversary. And we can look at that strategically, as we’ll talk about today, all the way down to how do we enhance tactical operations and create decision space for us and reduce decision space for an adversary. Thank you.
Rob Hauge:
I would agree with all that. To me, dynamic space operations, if we just use just basic terms, is ability to be proactive in space, whether it’s defending or engaging a threat. But there’s another term that I’ve heard the Space Force reference that’s closely related to this, which is reactive space ops. And if I break those two into pieces. Dynamic Space Operations, we’re at an event that has Air Force people here. If I use an aircraft analogy, Dynamic Space Operations to me is it’s your F-22. Reactive space operations is more like your AWAX. So how does that translate to space? In the geoorbit, That’s the ultimate high ground because that orbit enables your satellites to hover. Now for those of you that are in the space world, you’re cringing at me saying that, but the orbit is 24 hours, so it appears to hover. From that orbit, each satellite sees one third of the earth. Three satellites, the globe’s covered 24-7. That’s a very valuable mission. So having the combination of dynamic space operations with more like a fighter capability, the ability to maneuver very quickly to defend or engage, but reactive space operations, in that case I need something that’s… these GEO spacecraft are the size of a large minivan with wingspans the size of an airliner wingtip to wingtip. These are very large machines. If they move off their nodes just like an AWACS, they can’t do their mission. So the goal would be to get off that node very quickly, to be reactive to a threat, and get right back in the mission. So there’s a combination of both. And Charles, like you said, it’s a reason there’s not one solution that fits all. Thank you.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Dr. Greer?
Dr. Monty Greer:
If from the COSMIC perspective, and COSMIC being a consortium that’s made up of government, academia, and industry, we have a much broader view of ISAM and space mobility, but when we start to talk about dynamic space operations, the ears of our U.S. Space Command and U.S. Space Force members perk up and they start to talk about how do we have the ability to not just life extend but survive or to create challenges for adversaries. And everything f kind of falls in behind that to bring industry along and to get the academic foundation built to do that research that enables startups and big companies to provide the capabilities that Space Force and Space Command are will be asking for. So dynamic space operations for us is a little bit little bit broader, but in the end, it’s really about being well, we think, at least initially. to refuel, refit, and modernize on-orbit spacecraft. And as Rob said, the first folks who are going to want to do that, we think or flying U.S. government satellites.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Thank you all. I appreciate the conversation, especially where you’ve all talked about the broader implications for DSO than just maneuver, which is where a lot of people’s minds go. And General Bythewood, your comment that the space warfighting framework talks about it even in the frequency domain and frequency hopping is a form of maneuver in in that area, and particularly the impact of DSO to be able to proactively go after threats and cause dilemmas as opposed to always be on the defensive. Really appreciate those comments. So Dr. Greer, you mentioned life extension. So there is a distinction between life extension and sustained maneuver. For example, you could do your day-to-day mission and just have that be extended. Or you could fundamentally change the type of mission that you do because you are constantly maneuvering. So can each of you talk a little bit about what that means from your perspectives, from COSMIC, from industry, and from the government perspective, and maybe let’s just work backwards this time.
Dr. Monty Greer:
Sure, and I think we’re gonna hit on Rob’s gonna talk about how they’re really enabling right now today life extension to continue a mission that has been going on and is being enabled to have a longer life cycle based on a lack of fuel. So we see the model there. But sustained space maneuver I think is more than that from a military context because being able to be in a in a place at the time of your choosing and to take action that you choose to take and to be able to recover from that, maybe move to the next place and take more action. That’s the sustained by refueling and refitting perhaps. Think about Golden Dome and some of the concepts for that architecture that may require refitting. And so we’ll see how that plays out. But I think sustainment space maneuver is much more than life extension. It’s the ability, not just, as I said earlier, to sustain, to live to fight another day. if you’re in the warfighting context. So that’s not just continuing normal operations unless normal operations are when the balloon goes up.
Rob Hauge:
Yeah, as a bit of a scene setter. So we have on orbit now two satellites that we call mission extension vehicles. They’re essentially jet packs that attach to satellites low on fuel, and they’re in the geosynchronous orbit. We’ve been doing that for five years with our two vehicles. We have now docked three times in space and we’ve undocked once. So for us from an author Grumman perspective, We’re moving from the realm of demonstration now. We’re not just pioneering space. We’re making in space servicing routine and there’s an opportunity for the government to build on that capability, which right now we’re using for the commercial market. And the reason we did that is because it was nascent. It was new. The satellites on orbit were never prepared to be upgraded. In other words, to be refueled. to be repaired, to be upgraded. So we started with existing satellites with our capabilities that we’ve got on orbit now. I’m excited to announce that we’re building our next generation servicer now. We’re building three what we call mission extension pods. About the size of a dorm fridge for those of you that have kids in college. They’re a much smaller form factor of what we’ve got on orbit today, but provide a similar function at a lower price point. And they’re installed by a new spacecraft we’re building called the Mission Robotic Vehicle. This vehicle has two robotic arms that are provided to us by DARPA and built by the Navy Research Lab. In fact That mission robotic vehicle just completed thermal vacuum testing, which is one of the most strenuous tests, 30 days of hot and cold liquid nitrogen and heating up the spacecraft. to make sure it’s going to survive in space. That mission robotic vehicle and those first three mission extension pods are all going to launch in 2026. to build on this capability. And as you were mentioning, sustained space maneuver, we can do that with electric propulsion, which is very efficient. But we also have the ability to use chemical propulsion to be able to move satellites faster. But that’s where Northrop started. Where we want to get to is the same place the Space Force is asking us, which is the ability to refuel in space. So if we really want to embrace that, the time now is to start modernizing our fleet. Typically takes three to five years to build a spacecraft. Putting a refueling port on that spacecraft is the first step. A little bit of field of dreams, Kevin Costner, if you build it, they will come. Putting that capability, Northrop Grumman has been funded by the Space Force to develop a refueling port. Everything has to be an acronym for engineers, so it’s called the PRM, the passive refueling module. That is going to fly on a future operational Space Force mission. That is also going to fly on our mission robotic vehicle. And we’re also funded by the Space Force to develop a refueling payload to bring it all together. that’s called Elixir. So for us, again, there’s no one solution that meets all needs. We’re trying to cover the gamut. What’s on orbit now? How do we extend and enhance that? And then what new capabilities can we provide with refueling for the Space Force in the near future?
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
Yeah, when I when I look at the question of life extension versus sustained maneuver, it actually feels like the wrong question, right? Because both of them are really come together in the same point. I do life extension to extend a mission, right? And in some cases the answer is I’m going to extend a mission that’s l largely static or needs a new payload or an upgrade in others. Other missions are inherently driven by maneuver, right? And so life extension for a high maneuvering spacecraft where maneuver is core to its job. is refueling. It is sustained maneuver and enabling that as it goes forward. So it isn’t an either-or in those cases. It’s Hey, what’s the use factor of the thing that we’re trying to service? And some of those are going to be driven by enabling it to continue maneuvers as it goes through this mix. either for one more round or for a life that now could extend, you know, five, ten years wherever we needed from emission sets. Hey And so I think if we look at that within the holistic pilot place we get at the points that these two gentlemen made. of we’re looking at in the broad structure. It’s not just, hey, can I refuel spacecraft? It is what are the necessary things we need to do to drive long-term mission success. You know, from the Space Force assets. And then what is the architecture that we need to put in place that will enable it? We’ll talk more about that as we go through the rest of the day.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
That’s great. And I thank you for identifying it’s not a binary choice. You It’s what I said at the beginning, but there is an overlapping Venn diagram there where life extension and sustained maneuver inter intersect, which is great. Now Mr. Hauge, you talked about your mission extension vehicles being at Geo. Is there a distinction in your mind of the types of operations and what we should be thinking about at DSO for Geo versus LEO or Mio or Cislunar?
Rob Hauge:
Absolutely. So our focus has been on Geo for one simple reason. From an orbital mechanics standpoint, it’s a fairly benign area. The GEO orbit is 22,000 miles above the Earth, and there’s about five between five and six hundred satellites in that orbit. Those satellites typically want to stay without any inclination. I imagine a being a disk because the users are pointing to space and they’re counting on that antenna to close the link to be there. So if the satellite becomes inclined, for example, going above. and below this disk, it makes it much more difficult unless you’re, for example, a mobile user, like on a ship, for example. The benefit there, as I mentioned, is it doesn’t require a whole lot of delta V, which just means change in velocity to be able to move from one satellite to the next to be able to offer services in this case. But the killer I’ve already mentioned is the word inclination. When you move down to these low Earth orbits, we’re now talking about several hundred kilometers, several thousand kilometers above the Earth. When you try and change the inclination, let’s say you’ve got a satellite that’s at 60 degrees and you want to go all the way down to the equator, it turns out the way the orbital mechanics works. is you have to put twice as much energy in order to make that change. So the point again, no one solution meets them all. Putting a satellite in GEO, you’ve got a lot of capability in one location that can be there for a decade plus. In the lower Earth orbits, there’s the ability to have smaller satellites because they can have smaller apertures, you can proliferate those. And so the ability to do servicing, that market is different because the price point is different Absolutely from a commercial standpoint, the GEO satellites that we support cost several hundred million dollars apiece. And for General Bythewood, that’s Government satellites often cost significantly more than that, where when you move into these low Earth orbits, that price point might be tens of millions. So again, it comes back to the value trade. 22,000 miles is a long way to go to repair something. You may want to have more capabilities on that satellite, more redundancy, and consider repair. Whereas in the lower Earth orbit, it might be more financially viable or from a mission standpoint to just replace that satellite with a new one.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
So when we’re talking about DSO, we started off saying it’s broad and can be of a lot of different things. But the aspect of DSO that is maneuver may not be as applicable to LEO as other domains like Geo, but something like frequency hopping might still be on the plate. Great. General Bythewood. I talked about US Space Command’s loud and clear and consistent signal for DSO and maneuver of thought recret. So how is the primary service provider for Space Command, the Space Force? responding to that need.
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
Yeah, I think we’ve kind of hinted at it already in in some of these pieces. Certainly experimentation, right? You know, we’ve got multiple experiments running across industry. you know as we move through that through that mix, you know, testing and laying out different refueling ports solutions and starting to think through the actual refueling mechanisms as we walk down the line. I’d argue we’re also looking at it, you know, in the mode of our Victus knock series, right? So now if we think about maneuver and finding positional advantage. You know, the idea isn’t in this case, hey put something on orbit and refuel it. It is rapidly launch into the inclination. that an adversary is at on the demand of the operational team that needs to have something done. You And so we’re walking through that series and I’ve already demonstrated the ability to quickly you know move from go to launch to be able to get into operations. We’ve got a series of those events moving forward. More broadly, we’ve stood up a PEO that you know that is kind of focused on this, not just the maneuver piece of it, but the space logistics and in in the pieces that come to that to explore that program space and we go forward. And then within the concepts teams, you know, we’ve kicked off some concept work that we’ll flow into much harder over the course of next year. that looks at what are the military advantages and not the ones where we go, hey, is movement and maneuver useful in space? I mean the answer to that is yes, right? We can do that on the you know just as a quick thought piece, it’s useful in every warfighting domain. But specifically, what types of movement and maneuver within our domain drive the most military advantage, and what are the architectural choices that we’d have to put in place in order for them to be viable as we walk down that line. And then what are the what are the force design trades as we walk down through that work? And so we’re kicking off that work to really get past the, hey, this is a good thing to specifically What are we looking at for advantage? How would we architect in order to deliver that advantage? And how do what are the implications of that on future force structure for the Space Force?
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Excellent. Thank you for that. Dr. Greer, COSMIC believes that it’s more than refueling to meet Space Command’s need. Can you talk about some of the additional aspects of ISAM that you think are particularly relevant there and what helps you be convinced that that’s the right approach?
Dr. Monty Greer:
So we agree. Our community agrees. I’m the mouthpiece here. that refueling is an answer in the right application for ISAM, space mobility, sustained space maneuver, whatever term you choose to latch on to. There are other aspects besides that, assembly and manufacturing are the other two pieces of ISAM besides servicing. As we talk about proliferated constellations in A thousand the thousand sails constellation, the Starlink constellation, Kuiper, we build up these Leo proliferated constellations. At some point, Somebody’s gonna have to deal with those dead spacecraft. Maybe they don’t burn in. Maybe we decide that it’s no longer viable from e environmental standpoint to burn them into the atmosphere. So what do we do then? And there are a number of companies within our consortium that are that are looking at what to do about that. So the idea of active debris removal for space sustainability is an area of very active work and research and demonstration going on. We also see in the assembly area or host of capabilities that For dynamic space operations and for other operations, the assembly of large space structures is incredibly powerful. to get past what they call the tyranny of the fairing, which is how do we get bigger than what the launch vehicle will carry from a standpoint of what can be enclosed by the fairing. When we start to do that, and there are a lot of There are concepts. We haven’t demonstrated much of that other than that thing called the ISS. I mean that is day to day an assembled space structure that is well bigger than anything we could carry in one lift. And so we see that As force design and objective force structure for the Space Force and Space Command evolve and mature, that those capabilities for assembly and manufacturing as well, and dynamic and space debris removal will provide benefit to the warfighters that make up. a significant portion of our community.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Thanks. So Mr. Hauge, you talked earlier about the work that’s already going on and you’re building some additional capabilities, but we’re not to a point where we could say we have a robust space logistics infrastructure yet. So what do you think is going to take in order for us to get to that next step? That next stage.
Rob Hauge:
Well first of all, we want to continue to support the commercial market. We’re looking to support the government market as well as our allies as well on the side of In space refueling, the catch there is the Space Force is absolutely leading the way, as I mentioned, with the development of the PRM for us, which is going to fly on multiple spacecraft. The challenge that we’re seeing, and we’ve been asked this question as a commercial company as part of Northrop is a Why isn’t the commercial market just going and addressing all the needs, for example, for refueling? And I use the following analogy If I was talking to a pilot and I said, look, for cost reasons, your fighter is not going to have an afterburner capability. It’s just too expensive, it wastes a lot of fuel. that fighter pilot is going to be pretty upset because they need that capability to be able to engage a threat and sometimes just evade to live to fight another day. The commercial market is more akin to an airline. If I went to an airline and said, how would you like to have afterburner for your aircraft? Most of them would say, I’m not interested at all, because my job as a company, as a commercial airline, is to maximize the revenue per passenger. I don’t want to burn any more fuel than I’ve got. So how does that compare to space? When we talk about the geo market, most of these commercial geosynchronous satellites. They want efficiency. They want to stay on the node for the least amount of cost. But the Space Force, if they want the ability for DSO, if they want the ability for sustained space maneuver, That moves out of the realm of often we talk about is electric propulsion, almost think of like hybrid on your car, very, very efficient, to chemical propulsion, which is less efficient but gives you a lot of thrust. That’s the key differentiator between the commercial market and the military’s needs is that need to move very, very quickly. And so we see that if the Space Force wants to move into this area and accelerate these technologies, North Grumman’s prepared to respond. But it’s going to require continued leadership on behalf of the Space Force to make that happen. That being said, we are seeing interest in the commercial community. You heard the mention of all the different LEO constellations, those apply pressure on the GEO satellites that provide communications capabilities today. That market there’s a lot of uncertainty. So when it comes to refueling They’re very happy to look to the Space Force to take leadership in that area and they’re watching very closely. My point is I think what we’re going to see is if the Space Force continues to lead in this area, there will be a commercial market that will follow. But that commercial market’s probably not going to take off and drive this market in and of itself.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Thank you very much for that perspective. But we certainly do for the military. And your comment about efficiency is absolutely relevant because it’s been said that warfare is the most inefficient human activity ever created. I think that’s probably a fair statement. There’s different priorities that we have. So we talk about warfare a little bit. Let’s dive into that a little bit further in terms of our competitor and potentially our adversary. We’re not the only people doing looking at this. China is also and reports indicate that China has conducted a SP, a GEO refueling of the SJ-21 satellite, which is the robotic arms satellite. And it has since done a significant maneuver. So from each of your perspectives, and General Bythewood, let’s start with you. What does that event mean to you and your perceptions of dynamic space operations or ISAM?
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
Yeah, I think we’ve been, you know, clearly talking about this from you know all the space war fighters across the mix for years now, right? You know, our adversaries are moving forward with the capability to you know to threaten us in the domain. and the ability to protect themselves in the domain, right? And what we see here is another step along that way. Movement and maneuver like I like I started with is inherent to military operations in any domain. So the idea, right, that China would be looking to enhance its ability to conduct movement and maneuver within the domain, you know, is spot on. It’s expected, right? What we see is ultimately this tit for tat as we walk in, right? Remember, it’s not movement and maneuver for movement and maneuver space. It’s movement and maneuver to achieve positional advantage And or exploit, right, an ad a tactical advantage that that you found. And we see that in you know odd-orbit operations day in and day out. And so this is a step forward by China as we walk through, you know, to demonstrate those capabilities and enhance their ability to move and maneuver within this space. As I mentioned in the beginning, it’s important for all of us as we walk down the line. We’ll see as time goes by what are the architectures that they put in place in order to enable that widespread across their fleet of satellites as we walk down that line. It’s certainly one we’re watching.
Rob Hauge:
Well I will defer to the Space Force on any implications of the Chinese activities in space. But I will say that we are launching a robotic vehicle, a commercial platform in 2026 that’s going to have mission extension pods. As I mentioned, this mission robotic vehicle. also has a passive refueling port on it, the passive refueling module that I referred to earlier, meaning it will be designed to be refueled. Northrop Grumman is also funded by the Space Force the next few years to launch and operate Elixir, which is a refueling payload. So Northrop Grumman We are poised to move this technology forward at whatever pace the Space Force wants to either address that need or even counter it.
Dr. Monty Greer:
So one of the things I didn’t mention about COSMIC in the beginning is that it is a U.S. entity made up of U.S. participants who are all Working toward promoting U.S. leadership in this area. And as we s as a consortium see the activities of a competitor, an international competitor. that are that are showing progress, it makes us think about things like refueling ports and perhaps standards when you have a command economy, you can enforce and pay for all the standards you want. We’re still working through those collaborative standards that that help us be able to be interoperable to have a commercial services area. What we’re seeing from China is eye-opening. For example, my friend Bernie Kelm says the United States doesn’t have a robotic arm in space. Hmm. Why is that? What do we need one? We think we do. We don’t have, we haven’t demonstrated since Orbital Express. refueling or spacecraft docking for that purpose in space. And so as we look out to GO and see SJ-21 and -25 and SJ-17 and some of the others that are demonstrating capabilities. It is motivational, I think, for a lot of the companies that are part of our consortium, and it’s also motivational for the government parts of our consortium to move forward and to find the answer to those capabilities. It may not be refueling for us, but we have to figure it out. We’re gonna figure out what the military utility is and move forward with it.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Thank you all for those perspectives. Let’s talk about one of the implications of being able to maneuver without regret, even if it’s just the Geo Belt. We know that the space domain is becoming more congested. And that has placed a high priority on space domain awareness. If we start maneuvering satellites on a on a fairly frequent basis and maybe even not following traditional orbits or you know, following some non-Keplerian path as it goes around the planet. What does that mean for our ability to maintain space domain awareness? General Bythewood, would you like to kick us off?
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
Yeah, I hit just with exactly how you described it, awareness, right? We draw it we did we do we discuss the space domain, you know, in the terms of space domain awareness. But what that doesn’t evoke in your mind is maintaining custody of threatening objects in space. And that that really is the dynamic. When you have maneuvering objects that once again are trying to achieve positional advantage in order to execute missions, In many cases, we would presume against U.S. interests as we walk through, we need to have much more than awareness of what the what’s going on in the domain. We need to maintain custody of threatening objects and make sure that we’re able to respond quickly and in kind as necessary.
Rob Hauge:
I would add another aspect. Clearly what we’re really focusing on right now as space logistics is extending and enhancing existing satellites. So what could that look like in the example I use? I recently installed the ring system. I’m not making any claims as to the product, but I’m just saying as an example, the ring system, the doorbell. You install that, it’s got its own battery and it connects to your Wi-Fi. And it will send you notifications that someone’s at your door. Thinking about this from a space perspective, I mentioned there are 500-plus GEO satellites. Many of those are U.S. either commercial or they’re military or they’re allies. We have the ability with this robotic vehicle to attach payloads. Imagine if essentially we could put a ring camera, in other words an SDA sensor, on every one of these. You mentioned about these challenging orbits. to essentially have a trigger around all of Geo. Now, we do need to develop more exquisite capabilities and Northrop Grumman is developing a number of them. And we need to still continue to do that. What I’m saying is in addition, this is a low-cost means to essentially set up a fence, imagine like this ring camera analogy, to let anyone know if anybody’s in the vicinity. as a as a tipper that you’ve got an adversary and you’re giving them nowhere to hide.
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
Can I just add on to that because it brings together you know kind of the architecture discussion Right. So if I dialed back, you know, 30 years and I had the ring camera, but you didn’t have Wi-Fi in your house and you didn’t have your cell phone in your pocket. Right, the implications of that are different, right? So even when we get to the mode of saying, hey, I can s install a payload on a on a spacecraft that can provide advantage. I also then have to think about the next three or four architectural choices that I had to lay in to take advantage of that, right? You know, in this case would be space Wi-Fi, right? You know, the ability to rapidly disseminate that to the to the person, in our case us. Right, but in in a warfighting domain it would be an operations center that uses it. So all awesome, right? But each step of the way, and this is why for the Space Force it really comes back to what are the concepts of how we link all of this together into a structure that makes it useful for us of not only what is the kit that goes at the endpoint, but what are the what are the pieces of that that have to be sewn together and how do we do that for best effect. But that’s a good example.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Yeah, you’re describing a cascading set of requirements and architecture decisions. Because you made one, it puts you on a path that you now need to make multiple.
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
That’s right. And then in in the case of the ring camera, you look at it the opposite way. Like we didn’t we didn’t put Wi-Fi in your house because you put a ring camera on the on the front end. We didn’t put a cell phone in your pocket because you wanted to know who came to your front door But we took advantage of all of those other architectural changes to promulgate new services, new capabilities out there. And so you have to look at it that way. It’s a good example.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Dr. Greer, any thoughts on domain awareness?
Dr. Monty Greer:
The only thing I would add, I guess, is General Purdy had a blast recently about the follow-on program to GSAP and there is an RFP on the street now from Space Systems Command to make that a commercial capability What I would plant the seed for that is how do we make that maybe the first opportunity to have a serviceable geosynchronous based domain awareness platform that relies heavily, like you said, on being able to maneuver to do its mission. It’s not just life extension. It that is its life. And how do we, can we do that as the first instance of a programmer record that demonstrates that capability?
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Thank you. So we’re running a little short on time. I want to get to two more questions if I could. Mr. Hauge, you talked about your passive refueling module. And you’re working with the Space Force on that standard. But other companies like Orbit Fab are also developing capabilities like RAFTI, the Rapid Detachable Fuel Transfer Interface, for those playing at home. How is Northrop working with other companies and the Space Force to ensure that we have a common standard where we don’t end up with a vendor lock that that might derail future progress?
Rob Hauge:
That’s a great question as and as General Bythewood was talking about, the Space Force is looking at what that architecture needs to look like in the future. What we’re trying to do from a Northrop perspective. is to see what can we do now. Now those requirements are coming to us from the Space Force and more specifically SSC. So they funded us to develop this passive refueling module. But we as Northrop Grumman want to make that available. In fact, any U.S. company that has the access to the distribution rights can work with the Space Force and this passive refueling module, the standard data package, can be made available to all. Again, we see the need to create and move as quickly as possible to a standard. It doesn’t have to be the standard. And the example I would use. is every one of you in this room who has a laptop, you’ve been in the situation where you find out someone’s got an older laptop and they don’t have a USB C and the word is dongle You just, as long as you know what that interface is, you’ll be prepared for it. Similarly for refueling, but to that end, we do want to collaborate across industry. We’re doing that through, we were one of the founding members of Confers, which is a global consortium looking at setting up safe in-orbit servicing operations processes and so forth for the industry. We’re also a part of COSMIC, helping the U.S. government to advance these technologies. And we’re even in the midst of developing AIAA, which is a standards organization. to help define what refueling looks like in the future. What are the basic tenets of any refueling system to try and drive not just compatibility but even interoperability between different technologies.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
All right, so the last question in our final three minutes. We we’ve talked about the need for change. From each of your perspectives, what is the next big change that you see enabling us to move down this path, either in the near term or something that needs to change in the long term to prepare us.
Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood:
Yeah, for me it at its at its most fun to fundamental level is you know that the service needs to define the concepts that make take most advantage of these technologies, right? And by doing that, we’ll have walked through the mix of where we think we want to go. And we’ve got a clear vision out there that responds to U.S. Space Command’s needs, right, to be able to execute military operations in the domain. And it lays a pathway for us as we drive through all of the mix of technology, some of which we’ve talked about here today, that’s necessary and able to implement it.
Rob Hauge:
So we talked about extending and enhancing existing satellites. The next step the Space Force is leading the way is refueling. It’s not a large step, in fact. It’s a very small step, a modification to actually make that port, for example, also be power and data. If you look at the way we build aircraft and ships today, they have the ability to be refueled, they have the ability to be repaired, and they have the ability to be upgraded. Again, our goal as Northrop Grumman is to try and offer all of those capabilities to the Space Force as they lay out the architecture for the future.
Dr. Monty Greer:
I would amplify what General Bythewood said is the concept and beyond that the overarching sort of architecture, although there’s a counterpoint to that because when we talk about the internet and a cell phone and a ring camera and all the other things. We didn’t design those all in at the beginning, but we built a foundational infrastructure. That allowed that plug-and-play application of various technologies. So from our COSMIC community, the biggest demand is The concept that we can all plug into, and I say we as a small company, a big company, government organizations, that it is the place where we coalesce. and provide capability across that. And the chief said it this morning, five, ten, fifteen year long-term view for objective force. Give that demand signal, that that concept to the community, and they will then bring you their great ideas because they need to know a great idea about what. And that’s key, I think.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Excellent. Well thank you all for a very enjoyable and insightful conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for this. Please join me in a round of applause for our panelists. Be sure to stop by the Mitchell booth if you want to have continue the discussion. And from all of us at the Mitchell Institute, have a great space power kind of day.