Dynamic Space Operations
February 25, 2026
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Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the last and best panel of the Warfare Symposium. I’m looking out in the audience and thank you all for hanging in there, especially… Yeah. You should be proud of yourselves for choosing the correct panel to listen to on this day. So, thank you all for being here. I’m Charles Galbreath, the director of the Mitchell Institute’s Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence. And I’m thrilled to have a distinguished panel with me here to discuss Dynamic Space Operations.
We know that space and space architecture for the United States is at an inflection point. We’ve heard time and time again that the Space Force we have today is not the Space Force we need in the future. That goes for the size and the number of personnel that the Space Force has, but also the capability and concepts of operations that we need to employ.
And Dynamic Space Operations is going to be one of those potentially game-changing elements that will help us prevail in future conflict. We heard for the first time this week from General Saltzman that on-orbit servicing will be part of the objective force for the Space Force. And that’s welcome news because the demand signal has been coming through loud and clear from U.S. Space Command for many years now.
And so, to help me walk through this discussion, I’m just absolutely thrilled to have with us Major General Anthony, Tony, Chachi Mastalir. He is the director of Global Space Operations of the J3 at Headquarters Space Command. Next, I’m joined by Dr. Kelly Hammett. He is the director and program executive officer at PAE as well.
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Not yet.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Not yet. Maybe a PAE…
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Wait for it.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Wait for it. See, we knew you were at the right one. For the Space Rapid Capabilities Office.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Yeah.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
I’m also thrilled to be joined by Scott Forney, the president of General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems. Scott, thank you so much. Give it up for Scott.
And then last but not least, of course, we have Ryan Tintner, the sector vice president and general manager for Space Superiority Division at Northrop Grumman. Gentlemen, thank you all for being here. So, let’s dive into what I know will be a dynamic conversation. Okay. Hey, if the CSO can go 67, I can do dynamic. All right.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
You’re not the CSO.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Fair. I’m better looking, smarter, and have more friends. That’s okay. Chachi, let’s start with you.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Yeah, this just went real weird all of a sudden. I guess we’re all punch drunk here.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
A little.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Well, first of all, hey, thanks to AFA and kudos to all of you. You get the perseverance badge for being here. I think mostly we just have friends and family in the audience if we’re being honest. So, no, we’re really, really glad to be here. I can tell you from a warfighter perspective, and on behalf of General Whiting and all the warriors at U.S. Space Command, it’s an honor to sit on this panel with this distinguished group.
What we generally look at is the joint war-fighting functions. And there’s only seven of them. And these are time-tested. This is what commanders need. These are capabilities that commanders need across all domains. And they’re fairly basic. Command and control, information, intelligence, movement and maneuver, fires, protection, sustainment. These are capabilities that a warfighter needs to execute operations in a combat environment.
Like I said, they’re time-tested, and history is replete with examples where movement and maneuver have won the day. My staff did some research and very, very quickly came up with over 75 really poignant examples of why movement and maneuver. Everything from being able to protect your assets to being able to mass surprise, increase lethality. And every other domain, it’s not a question. We don’t even question the importance of maneuver.
I heard earlier in the week an airman talk about, from an air power perspective, the worst thing you can do is line up the aircraft wing tip to wing tip on the tarmac. That’s the most vulnerable place for an aircraft. The Navy will tell you being underway is far more secure than being in port. And we’ve learned these lessons over the years. And yet, when you look at what we’ve done in space, we have parked our satellites wing tip to wing tip, and they don’t move.
Yeah, they follow Kepler, but that’s predictable. Anybody can calculate that. They don’t move. They don’t maneuver. And it really puts us at risk when you think about the need to protect against the adversary and the weapons that we’re facing. So, from a warfighter’s perspective, this is just intuitive. It’s a no-brainer. We’re really, really glad the CSO rolled this out as the objective force.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Excellent. I didn’t even ask him a question, so that’s…
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
I knew what I was going to say. It didn’t really matter what you asked.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
And in short, that’s what Chachi thinks. Thanks for that. I mean, great.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
But wait, I got more.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
No, but I think you highlight the importance of maneuver in every domain. We’ve seen that in warfare, as you said, for literally millennia. And so, why would we think that space is going to be any different? And we need to prepare for what could be conflict in space and make sure that we’re ready to win in it should that prevail.
Now, when we think about Dynamic Space Operations, we typically think about on-orbit maneuver, but I like to think of it in a broader context of what are the things that make us more flexible as a space enterprise. And so, Dr. Hammett, can you talk a little bit about some of the efforts that the Space RCO is pursuing or efforts that the Space Force is pursuing at large that help us increase our dynamic flexibility across the spectrum?
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Yeah, sure. Happy to. Thanks again to AFA. Thanks to the audience members, particularly those I paid to be here. Thanks for showing up. And I’ll just say from my perspective, my introductory comments followed by an answer to your question is I’ve been at the Space RCO as a director almost four years now, hard to believe. But that entire time, the board of directors that governs my activities led by the secretary of the Air Force, but the United States Space Command Commander sits on that board of directors.
And the demand signal has been loud and clear for those four years. “Hey, I need maneuver. I need war fighting capability. I need fires.” They started talking in joint terminology, coming out of the closet about being able to speak more clearly about the war-fighting capabilities we need, and asking us to answer the call.
So, to that end, I’ll say a couple of things about what we’re doing. One is, and we were talking about this before, before the break, there’s not a great and widely existing demand signal from a commercial market. For this, this is, as Chachi just said, this is a war-fighting need, right? You need to be able to move, duck, attack, pursue, perform reconnaissance. All these functions require maneuver.
And so, in my portfolio, we have essentially added high delta-v in many cases, high thrust requirements to all of our platforms. We’re having that conversation with Colonel McLean and his portfolio. So, I can do that on a program-by-program basis. And in fact, I believe I’m the only PEO that currently has systems and development that are refuelable in the Space Force.
So, we took that direction from General Dickinson at the time, and we followed through to continue to pursue that. And then we’re also working, as you said, some of the other pieces like dynamic TT&C, autonomy, AI, you know, things that allow you to battle manage, not just have the capacity to move and shoot and do other things and defend yourself, but then to battle manage that, to command and control that through the ground link, through the space link, all that’s there.
The challenge for me has been, as I said, the way we operate. I’m basically given money and a charter to execute a program, build up a particular thing to service a particular combatant command need, and a service requirement. And so, I don’t have money to do tech maturation types of things, but I have been like the leading adopter, I’ll say, in the service for this. Great to see the objective force roll out now, and we’re getting alignment between the combatant command and the service to do this, but I’ve been doing it for a while, pushing it and championing it, advocating it, and supporting people like the advanced assured access to space.
There’s a very small program office, you might not know, who’s charged with doing SAML for the service with no budget, right? So, I’ve been supporting them in the POM, trying to get them resources. We get a little bit of money through AFRL, through SpaceWorks, through other types of things where we can try to mature new offers who are bringing high thrust, high delta-v buses. And we, again, we can put those requirements on our existing programs with our performers.
This year is actually a big year for demonstrations in space of refueling this year and next year, as we put up some refuelers were putting up demonstration birds, the roosters, the tetras, that are going to demonstrate proof of principle for some of these things. And that’s what I need to see before I launch off on a full-up program of record.
I need to see that the technology is mature. I don’t want to be, and I don’t have the money nor the charter to be in the tech mat process. I need it to come through industry. I need it to come through the labs. You may see, and this was, again, I’ve been saying this for two or three years, and all these types of venues, DIU just put out a call for highly maneuverable inspectors, if you will, right?
So, the call is starting to go out there. We’re starting to see activities. We have sponsored in the background a number of TACFI and STRATFI activities. So, we’re doing what we can, but now with it showing up in the objective force, and I think with all my future programs, we’re being told, “Make them able to move and perform these war-fighting functions, make them able to defend themselves, and make them able to perform offensive space control as needed.”
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Awesome. Thank you for that. And thanks for your leadership over the four years to push that forward seriously. So, you mentioned that you don’t have the budget to do tech maturation. So, one area we expect to see some tech maturation is from industry. And so, Scott and Ryan, as our industry representatives here, can you talk a little bit about the efforts that you’ve initiated, maybe through your IRAD, to mature the technology for Dynamic Space Operations?
And then also knowing that concepts of operation and how we employ technology also evolves with that technology development. Can you talk if there’s any advancements you’ve made on understanding how to operationally employ this type of technology? So, Scott, I’m going to start with you.
Scott Forney:
Okay. You want me to go? So, first of all, Charles, thanks for inviting me to this. It’s actually great to set up with this team. I will say that tech maturation requires money, and it’s been my observation that with all these claims of reconciliation and increasing budgets at maybe 1.5 trillion for defense budget, it would be nice for industry if we could find a better path for some of this money, or at least speed.
If you’re not working with a classified customer, I think it’s just like a snail’s pace. But I do appreciate what your team does. And obviously, there’s other organizations that go very fast. For General Atomics, we’re the nascent guys, but we actually got started in space in 1958 on the NavSat program and did all kinds of investments developing radioisotope-based turboelectric generators. And then we worked in the ’60s on uranium-zirconium fuel that’s in SNAP-10A. That’s the only reactor, at least that I know of, that’s been launched by the United States. It’s still up at 1,800 kilometers of orbit.
And then there was, “Well, let’s go do nuclear thermal propulsion,” until the country decided, “We don’t want to fund that anymore.” And Northern Grumman and GA worked on JIMO together to try to do another nuclear something. And then we had this DRACO thing that went away. The point is, you’ve got to have some consistency, because when you look at the things that are going to be required for this freedom of operations, it doesn’t necessarily just mean you have to refuel. Because refueling is not going to be an easy thing.
I mean, in order to be able to do a service on a satellite, Northrop Grumman’s been doing a lot commercially after that, so I’m interested in hearing Ryan’s feedback. But we’ve been working on how do you get down to sub-meter delta vs. And it’s not so easy, and you need to be able to make sure that you have enough autonomy.
So, we’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars worrying about how can we go from something with a delta v of, let’s just say it in the centimeters per second range, up to 1,000 meters a second. That’s a completely different kind of maneuver. It’s a different kind of technology. But when we look at what we think is coming, you’re going to need both.
So, we’ve been trying to invest in those technologies. The government’s going to tell us what they want for refueling. They’ve already told us these are the nozzles we want you to put on spacecraft. We get that. In our case, as General Atomics, we’ve decided if it’s, “Is there some other way to do this?” So, we’ve been investing in “How do we get the energy source different? How can we get more energy?” So, our investment has been very focused on what’s an alternative fuel that we can use.
There’s tons of refrigeration at home in your refrigerator and cars. We took that tax so that we could do six degree of freedom and very good delta v controls. But then you need all the special cameras to know where you are. Then you need to have the feedback loops. So, that investment, it’s not minor because let’s talk about what the CSO said here a few years ago. He said, “What we’re doing with Space Forces, we’re converting the United States Merchant Marine into the U.S. Navy.”
Well, let’s assume now we’re the U.S. Navy. What does the U.S. Navy do? They have a great example. They have oilers, you know, you can go anywhere. You’ve got nuclear carriers and submarines. You can go anywhere, and you know that you can get the refueling, just like an airplane can get refueled along the way. But take away those capabilities, and then what do we have? So, how do we find alternate capabilities? And I’m personally a big Hyman Rickover fan, believing what he did for the Nautilus and thereon for nuclear propulsion should not be out of the question, but we should have some sustained funding.
So, we’re spending a lot of money on radioisotope-based things. We are doing fission reactor things, but I’m not sure that we can go all at once. So, radioisotopes are much easier to control. But do you know how hard it is to get a simple radioisotope approved by a regulator so that you can actually make a, just like a nuclear battery? I can tell you, it took three years in the state of California, but we finally got that.
But the point is, there’s alternative kind of solar panels, there’s alternative kinds of fuel, and then of course, you have to make sure you can do the right maneuvers. Because you can imagine in the future, look at airplanes, they fight onto each other, they’ve got to maneuver very fast. Ships, submarines, there’s a whole new thing that we have to worry about. And I personally think today I’m going to talk mostly about Navy to give you an easy comparison of what we’re all trying to get to. So, thanks for the question.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Thanks, Scott. Ryan?
Ryan Tintner:
Yeah, I think I’ll cue off a little bit of that, both when you think about the need for Dynamic Space Operations, and some people jump to refueling, but frankly, there’s been an on-again, off-again push for, “Do we need it? What is it?” And I think the demand signal is pretty clear now of what we need.
We’ve spent the last 10 plus years investing, frankly, a lot more money than I care to say in getting a commercial capability going, as well as knowing that there are foundational capabilities like the refueling nozzle, like the spacecraft that you need to be able to support refueling. And so, for the last five to 10 years, we’ve had spacecraft on orbit that will stay in geo. They go, they fly in very carefully, and will go dock with a commercial spacecraft while it’s under a complete operation.
So, these might be a comms or broadcasting capability down. Do it so that you don’t drop a single packet while that’s occurring. And sometimes a spacecraft that doesn’t know how to deal with someone who is docking to it. And so, from all of that, been working on the commercial side to say, “Hey, that’s a capability that’s needed.” But there are critical technologies that have been coming out of this as we partner with the U.S. government now to say, “Okay, we understand the kind of things we want to do in dynamic operations.”
And when the CONOP development, the TTP development that we’re talking about right now, how do we make sure that capability is available? And so, I think that investment has been critical now to get us to the point where we say, “Hey, we need refueling on all of these.” Let’s get the nozzles on there. We’ve still got to go figure out how to tank, right? What the gas station looks like.
And frankly, the commercial business case for doing all of that isn’t entirely there. So, while commercial has helped us get to where we are, now we need to get some of that next capability established. But if you take what we do in commercial and then say the problem for the U.S. government is different, and we can’t probably go into all the details.
But we’ve taken some stuff away from there and said, “There’s a lot more that we need to work on from.” Exactly what are the CONOPs, exactly how does a spacecraft need to be built that can exist in an environment that maybe is not as simple as a commercial environment, and working to get that onto the spacecraft right now.
And so, I think from all of that, the final part for me, over the last 10 years, with some of the stuff that Dr. Hammett was talking about, as well as other applications with the government, we’ve been working on how does an operator operate effectively to perform Dynamic Space Operations? And what are the future CONOPs that we want to go use? Because that can go inform now the spacecraft that we’re designing and building, so we don’t over-design them.
Because the more that you over-design it, the bigger you make it, the more fuel that you use, and the less Dynamic Space Operations you have. And so, I think that investment and partnership with the government has been really key to moving this forward.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Can I riff off of that?
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Of course.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
I love the Admiral Rickover quote, to be clear, we’re asking for maneuver, not necessarily refueling. That may be one, that may be one option. The Rickover example is great because, as the Navy transitioned from diesel to nuclear propulsion, it changed the way the adversary had to… The adversary had to adjust in how they tracked in the open blue water, right? So, if you knew you had some, legs to get so far, you were going to have to port, and you’re going to have to refuel, and you were likely now you had two or three different options. Nuclear propulsion, basically, the U.S. Navy became ghosts in the open water.
And it was very… And then the submarines even more so. And then you fast forward to today, and you see the Ford that’s bouncing from, you know, a CENTCOM assignment down to SOUTHCOM and now back to CENTCOM. And we don’t even blink when we ask. But if you asked, if you asked Space Command to move at 10 or 20 or 30 meters per second, wow, we’d be wringing our hands, because you have this psychology of scarcity that overshrouds everything you do.
The example I use is imagine Operation Midnight Hammer, and you got all the planners together in a room and said, “All right, this is what we want you to hit. These are the targets. Oh, but you don’t have any air refueling available.” Well, that’s what we ask our space planners to do basically every single day. So, yeah, we need to work on the CONOPs. We need to do the planning, and we need to be unburdened by this psychology of scarcity, where every option we present has to have a fuel tax that we have to be sensitive to.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Right. If you move 10 meters per second more than you used to, you just cut a year off the life of that satellite, right? We’ve got to get out of that mindset.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Well, and if you have a, like what happened recently, where the PRC puts up a new threat on orbit, and we want to maneuver to get some idea, to better characterize what that threat is. And so, the commander says, “Hey, that’s a priority. I need you to get over there and help me characterize what that threat is.” Well, again, we get to, “Well, how many meters per second should we burn? How important is it?” There’s this trade that we’re constantly making every time we sit down and do planning because we know that once we are out of fuel, we’re out of mission.
And so, you can compensate a couple of ways. One, you could refuel, or two, you can give me a fuel source that lasts so that I’m not worried about that calculation, because something else is going to fail on that spacecraft before I run out of fuel.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Absolutely.
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Three, you can buy a whole bunch more of them and replenish, but that takes money.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
You can buy more, and you can proliferate, which means you have more aircraft parked wingtip to wingtip.
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Not if they’re the right capes.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
If you’re not maneuvering, you are standing still.
Scott Forney:
Would you like me to switch with you?
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Your time’s coming.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
All right.
Scott Forney:
My time’s coming.
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
We said we were going to make this fun.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
I hope you’re enjoying this, guys, because we are. So, we talked about the operational need, we talked about some of the technologies, and we’ve all celebrated the simple fact that part of the objective force is now on-orbit servicing. But let’s put the O in Dynamic Space Operations, DSO. What are the next steps that we need to take to operationalize this type of capability? Chachi, let’s start with you.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Yeah, I kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier, but we… So, the service is going to be responsible for doing the testing. They’ll have to put… They got to organize training quick, right? So, they’re going to have to organize. “Do we need a refueling squadron if that’s the route we go?” “How many refueling squadrons do we need?” “What does that form function look like?” “Are we going to… We’re going to have to test that capability.” The services are going to have to, through their components, work and develop TTPs to understand when do I… If I’m refueling, do I need to refuel underway? Because, quite frankly, a large gas station in space is also a juicy target if you can’t refuel underway.
I mean, there shouldn’t be any lack of gas, so you should be able to maneuver, right, which is going to complicate the adversary. So, there’s a lot of things that the service will have to do. And then what we have to do at space command, combatant commands, the number one thing that we do is we plan. We plan for the employment of forces. So, we have to think through our planning. We have to think through… Well, let’s assume we have a competent adversary. Let’s assume that Red has a pretty good idea of what the key satellites the joint force is going to depend upon as we go from competition into crisis and conflict.
With maneuver, I could change that deck immediately. I could switch to a different, completely different architecture and bring in the capabilities of the time and place of our choosing. And that would really complicate the adversary’s calculus. You know, in terms of being able to protect those assets, if I can’t maneuver them, I’m kind of a sitting duck.
And today, what I do is I talk to the other components in the other domains and say, “Hey…” When I was the commander out at Space Forces Indo-Pacific, I would talk to the air component and say, “Hey, I’m going to really need your help because PRC has these direct ascent ASATs, and it’s very difficult for me to get to move out of the way of one of those. And I need your help to protect my forces.” And sometimes somebody would say, “Well, you know, Chachi, every commander has a responsibility to protect their forces.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a profound statement. Because in space, we have not thought that way.” We have not taken the steps necessary to protect those assets. We just assumed that they would be there. And that’s why we got to change our thinking.
So, we can work on different maneuver plans. When you ask, “How are you going to protect our high-value assets from direct ascent ASATs?” Knowing that you have either nearly unlimited or at least maneuver without regret or refueling options, you’re going to completely change how you approach that problem set. Just like the planners are going to think differently on how to execute defense of Taiwan or Operation Midnight Hammer if they know that they have refueling, aerial refueling.
So, those are the kind of changes that we’re going to have to make. The other change that we have to make is whether we invest in this area or not, the PRC is investing in this area. So, we have to be… We’re now the adversary that used to look for the ports to see where the diesel refueling is going to take place, and that’s how we track things. We have to be prepared to maintain custody of these targets. We can have the fires, but if I can’t open a Blue kill chain, if I can’t open a kill chain because I don’t know where it is, that becomes problematic.
Today, we reconcile everything to an orbit determination. Something maneuvers in space, you wait for it to stop maneuvering, and then you get enough metric obs so you can reconcile to an orbit determination. What happens when you can never get an orbit determination? Because the adversary is dynamically maneuvering every rev. It becomes very, very difficult. The irony is, as we are working on MTI from space, we’re going to quickly realize, “I need MTI for space.”
Ryan Tintner:
I’ll just jump on that as well. I think we tend to high-five when we say, “Look, I can do dynamic operations with this spacecraft, and look at the delta v, I can do and look how long I can do it.” We have to think at scale now and recognize that the timelines that we need to go execute these operations, not on one spacecraft, but across an entire fleet, is an order of magnitude more than we’re thinking about right now.
And so, that’s two things. One is the entire enterprise of broad domain awareness and communications to say, “I can actually go move forward on a command that a guardian wants to go do.” And do we even have that infrastructure? We’re challenged right now, even with what we have. So, I think that’s one.
And then the second, which is probably forgotten, is the test and the training and getting these guardians to be thinking in this dynamic way, and the kind of interfaces, next-generation interfaces and automation, and planning. Because again, it’s not for one spacecraft. You can’t say, “Take 10 people on one spacecraft and plot this out on a board and say exactly what maneuver you want to do.” It has to happen at a scale where you have one person making decisions for multiple spacecraft. So, I think thinking about the people, how this is going to operate, and how we command it is a major piece that gets forgotten. We like to look at the thing that’s, you know, exciting.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
That’s right.
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
So, I’m going to riff on three things. And here it is. I told you this was coming. In order to have Dynamic Space Operations, you have to have operations. So, things have to work. You know, when we ask you to provide capabilities, they actually have to work, too. We have to provide the assets in the test and training to allow the TTP development, the new capabilities. As I said, tech mat comes along, “Okay, it’s feasible. Now, we actually have to give them some toys to play with so that they can figure out what works and what doesn’t.”
And then Chachi’s point about MTI of space, we have that right now if we will just use it. This is one of my massive soapboxes, right? If we use commercially available SDA data, we can close these gaps in our coverage. We can actually close kill chains. And we’re working very actively to figure out how to do that.
Scott Forney:
Well, if I can, back to the Navy analogy. If you look at World War II, the oilers were the targets. So, if we’re going to have refueling in space, you’re going to have a lot of targets. And are you going to defend them? Or would you rather have a bigger tank or a different kind of tank that allows you to go farther? And I think that to me, that’s a provocative question that does need to be answered to support this. The second thing is, it’s not just GEO, it’s not just MEO, it’s not just LEO, right? We’re at xGEO now. Where are we going to go? How are we going to communicate that?
If you’re chasing down a Red and you’ve got all this maneuver, you’re going to keep chasing them if they have the same capability. So, don’t you want to show photons at them? So, you want to have more electricity. I don’t know if photons exist yet, but photons will be a good example. The second thing is, how are you going to communicate? If they’re moving so fast, can they get in front of your RF signal, crack it, and know exactly what you’re doing next? Or do we need to really focus on things like optical to make sure that we have a better way to go after our communications? And I think that’s all very real when we start thinking about DSO.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
So, thanks for bringing up the multi-domain examples. But when we do have air-to-air refuelers or ship refuelers, we protect them, right? Just because they’re a big, juicy target doesn’t mean we don’t have them. We just protect them, and we develop our concepts of operations around them. So, great, great discussion. Let me shift gears a little bit, and that is to acquisitions. We’ve also heard a lot this week about acquisition reform, leveraging commercial, et cetera. So, what are some of the things in acquisition reform that we should be looking to help us improve Dynamic Space Operations? Kelly, you want to start us?
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Well, sure. I think one I already said, right? We’re going to… In acquisition transformation, we’re going to appoint PAEs by mission area. And so, as I said, space access basically has the space access mobility and logistics mission. Now they will have, hopefully, additional resources and the ability to make requirements and shift money to the highest priority, best performing options that are going to give them space access, whether that’s launch, whether that’s refueling, whether that’s replenishment, whatever that is.
Additionally, as I talked about, harvesting these new capabilities and getting them into programs should happen quicker, right? You don’t need a JROC-validated, JCIDS requirement that says, “Go put a refueling capability in.” Again, PAEs can say, “I’m going to be responsive to the warfighters’ needs, like we’ve been doing,” and say, “I’m going to put some type of requirement for maneuver mobility logistics.” And the several forums in the last year, we’ve talked about contested space logistics. That’s really what we’re talking about, right? The whole spectrum of things you need to do to resupply and maneuver and fire, and keep in the fight.
So, I think, again, by clearly articulating where mission areas lie, and it’s like, “Well, is it their job or our job or whose job?” It’s going to be clear that we have a portfolio manager who’s got to do this for us, and we’re going to have to hold at this point, you know, Colonel Z responsible for this. We’re going to have to resource him. And then given that, I think they’ll run. They’ll run. And if we can, again, get some assets up for test, training, readiness, and overcome Chachi’s, you know, culture of scarcity, because now you’ve played with these things. You’ve got some throwaway test assets. You can learn what you need and can do with them.
Scott Forney:
I’d like to add on to your prior comment. We owe you something that operates, which means we need to get contracted, which is good. And you actually offer… The SpRCO offers great opportunities to quickly get under contract. But you can’t make operations without sustained funding. That we’ve got to settle out now is we’re going to go up and down, and we’re going to deliver half capability. And that’s what we don’t want to do.
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
Yeah, I should have said that as well in my media roundtable this morning. You know, that’s the thing that changes for us under acquisition transformation is we then all PAEs own the full life cycle, and you own sustainment, you own modernization, you own replenishment, you own foreign material sales. And so, yes, again, now you’ve got one belly button. “Hey, it’s my fault. If I don’t, go get the money, go get the resources, and have a plan to keep those things in sustained operations.”
Ryan Tintner:
Yeah, I think in all of this, we need to get capability at scale into the hands of the guardians. So, that’s got to get out there. That means understanding not what 100% requirements are, what are the right 80% of requirements that we need to get moving forward. And we will run into problems. We will run into challenges.
And I think part of it actually, with the PAE process now is giving more authority to say, “Look, I understand this is my mission here. I’m going to change it. I’m going to change a requirement. I’m going to go down a slightly different path because we’re going to be biased towards getting capability out there.” I think we’re going to get there. It’s the right direction. But keeping funding going and keeping the production lines going will allow us to scale up capability.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
So, from our perspective, or for our part, we just have to be consistent with the requirements as the warfighter, and I think we have been fairly consistent. And again, I think after exploring all other alternatives, we’re now settling on the fact that, yeah, movement and maneuver is important if you’re going to conduct operations, combat operations in the space domain. But as we develop these CTPs and we achieve some proficiency, this also unlocks for us another aspect of this, which is campaigning.
Because one of the first things I had to do at INDOPACOM was write a campaign plan. PACAF actually has a line in their budget for JP-8 every year just so they can fly bomber task force missions as part of their campaign plan. The fact of the matter is, I don’t have the equivalent of that. And when you think about what does it mean to campaign in space, well, if you had maneuver without regret, for lack of a better term, you could do a lot of campaigning.
We are starting today under MNF-OOD, Multinational Forces Operation Olympic Defender, which is a named operation. And for those of you who know, having a named operation means everything. But we are now flying in formation with our allies. We’ve done several of these, working closely with the UK, with the French. Others have expressed interest as part of MNF-OOD, which is basically Five Eyes plus Germany and France today.
But there’s a powerful message when I can fly, let’s say, two or three escort vehicles alongside of a French HVA, and I’m maneuvering, and I’m doing RPO operations, and we’re demonstrating that we’re working together. There’s a powerful message there.
At the operational and the tactical levels, we are learning in our domain how to do things that other domains have done for decades. The Air Force has been flying with other nations. The U.S. Air Force has been flying with other nations. They invite them to their exercises, to their Red Flag. I mean, they have, this is just normal behavior in the air domain. Same thing in the maritime domain.
You know, things like RIMPAC, which I’ve experienced now several times from my days in Hawaii. Being able to operate with our allies, as you learn their processes, their procedures, we have to develop these relationships now at the operational and tactical level so that when, if called upon, we can operate together during crisis and conflict.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Great discussion. I found it somewhat literally humorous that in order for us to be dynamic in our space operations, we need stability in our vision, in our demand signal, in our funding. So, really great discussion. Time flies when you’re having fun. We’re down to like 2 minutes and 25 seconds. So, I’m going to throw away the rest of the questions I have and just ask you, Ryan, start with you, and then we’ll just work our way, and Kelly ends up. What one message would you like to leave this audience with when it comes to Dynamic Space Operations? 30 seconds, go.
Ryan Tintner:
For me, again, I mentioned it earlier, we tend to talk about that dynamic, the piece that you see. People need to remember to have Dynamic Space Operations, we need consistent ability to have domain awareness, we need an ability to communicate, and we cannot forget the funding and the focus that’s needed for test training and CONOPs.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
So, General Whiting would talk about moral imperatives, right? We have to continue to deliver space capabilities for the National Command Authority and the Joint Force. We have to be able to defend those capabilities against adversarial attacks so that we can continue to deliver those effects. And then finally, we have to defeat adversaries’ use of space to protect the joint force from space-enabled attack. Those are the three moral imperatives, and all three of those require that I have movement and maneuver if I’m going to be successful.
Scott Forney:
I think I heard here a couple of things though that I would like to go back to, which is why don’t we try not giving anything more than the N requirement, let industry go work on how we get there, because it might be surprising that we would not be a refueler or somebody else will be a refueler, but you get four or five different maybe approaches and let’s see which one works.
Secondly, let’s allow really easy contracts. So, if somebody in industry wants to spend IRAD on widget A and immediately put it into this new future concept, we should make it very easy and not get hung up on intellectual property rights. We should get hung up on how fast can we deliver to the war fighters, period.
Dr. Kelly D. Hammett:
I’ll just say two things. Secretary mentioned this the other day, showed the CSO, the budget outlook for the Space Force in ’27 and beyond is very favorable at the moment, right? We’ll see what actually materializes. But if that budget materializes, we have the opportunity to inject these types of capabilities and requirements into everything we’re doing.
And to my fellow PEOs and PAEs, we ought to be doing that. And that’s part of this revised requirements process. It is what is the operational need. And then the PAEs can say, “Go get it.” So, the joint JROC or the components or the service will define key operational problems, they’ll hand it to the PAEs and say, “Go come up with creative, fast capability deliveries to meet the need.” And that’s what we need to do, given the resources.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Excellent. Thank you, gentlemen.
Scott Forney:
Awesome.
Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):
Hey, thanks a lot, everybody. Thank you, audience, for sticking with us. And I hope you’ve had a wonderful Warfare Symposium. Have a great space power day.