Space-Based Sensing and Targeting

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Col. Nathan Vosters:

Well, good afternoon everyone. Thanks for joining us for the last panel of the day. We really appreciate you hanging in there with us to the end. We understand, we were talking about this just before, that we are standing between you and the many happy hours that are about to happen. That said, I think we’ve got a really great topic and some awesome panelists here for a great conversation. So thanks for hanging with us. I’m Nate Vosters, the Commander of System Delta 810 out at Los Angeles Air Force Base, aligned under Space Systems Command and working for the Space-Base Sensing and Targeting Program Acquisition Executive Breeder General Select Ryan Frazier. So right now I think we’re at a critical point in national security. The era of space as a benign support domain is over. I think we heard that this morning from the CSO as well as yesterday from the SecAF.

Space is a contested war fighting domain and our ability to dominate it directly dictates our lethality on the ground, at sea, and in the air. As the threat landscape shifts towards hypersonic weapons, stealth, and rapid maneuvering targets, our traditional terrestrial sensors are being pushed to their limits. The high ground of space offers us the ultimate vantage point, but leveraging it requires a fundamental paradigm shift. Today, our panel of experts will dissect how we build and operationalize a resilient next generation space architecture. We’re going to explore several critical pillars today, a resilient architecture and sensor mix and kind of looking at how we balance diverse payloads to build a resilient threat agnostic architecture. We’re also going to look at AI and threat tracking and how we integrate artificial intelligence directly on orbit to transition from raw data collection to rapid threat tracking.

We’re also going to look at sense making. This is really achieving sense for our war fighters by collecting and moving sensor data to the tactical edge at the speed of relevance. Finally, we’ll investigate how the long range kill chain has evolved and how capabilities being developed by these industry partners are bringing us to have global persistence in our space capabilities. So ultimately this is really about closing the sense, make sense, act loop. We’re here to discuss how we can move from space based detection to closing the long range kill chain, delivering fire control quality data directly from orbit to shooter to enable near real time decisive action. So before we get started, we’re going to start with Jeff and then we’re going to go down the line and we’ll have each of our panelists introduce themselves. So Jeff, over to you.

Jeff Hanke:

Thank you, sir. My name is Jeff Hanke. I’m the President of Space Systems at L3Harris. So everything from prime satellites to payloads to components and ground services as well. Really particularly happy to be here on the panel and especially be joined by such distinguished colleagues here from Leidos, and Lockheed, and Northrop. I think you’re going to find out in the panel today that we all really are passionate about this mission. We’re passionate about solving this very, very hard technical problem for the nation. And we all recognize that no one company can do this by themselves. We’re all in this together. So looking forward to the panel. Thank you.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Awesome. Thanks Jeff. Over to you, Jon.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

Hi, I’m Jon Rice. I’m the Chief Architect for Space and Integrated Air Missile Defense at Leidos, and I also serve as our Golden Dome lead for the company. Before that though, I served several decades in the United States Air Force and in my final assignments, I oversaw the Air Force’s targeted enterprise. I worked to help define a lot of the requirements that NORAD and NORTHCOM articulated for Homeland Defense. And then in the final assignment at the Pentagon, I oversaw the Air Force’s ISR and information warfare portfolios, all three of which dealt with exactly the same issues that Nate highlighted at the beginning. And it just goes to how complex the problem set is and why it’s going to take the entire military and industry team in order to solve it. Look forward to discussing in greater detail. Nate, thanks.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Thanks Jon. Over to you, Brandon.

Brandon White:

Great. Thanks. Good afternoon. I’m Brandon White. I’m the Vice President, General Manager of Multi-Domain Space at Northrop Grumman. Generally, my responsibility is all of our space capabilities that are supporting war fighting across all domains. And so when we think about how do we stitch together the capabilities not just to sense and gather data, but to sense in a way that’s trusted, that’s timely and that can be acted upon, that is the critical piece of this we all need to focus on stitching together. So looking forward to the conversation to be able to really close the end to end.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Awesome. Thanks Brandon. And finally, Todd.

Todd Stevens:

Hey, good afternoon. My name’s Todd Stevens. I lead mission strategy and advanced capabilities in Lockheed Space focused on strike deterrence and missile defense. I also serve as our corporate Golden Dome facilitator and chief cat herder. But really thank you for the opportunity to be here to join the panel. A really critical topic to, as we think about enabling the defensive kill chain for Golden Dome, but also for enabling long range offensive kill chain. We work seafloor to space across the whole mission set here. And to echo the colleagues on the panel, it does take a whole of industry, a whole of government, a national level imperative to bring decisive advantage to the war fighter. So looking forward to the conversation today.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Thanks Todd. Okay, we’re going to start off with Jeff and the question that we’d like you to kick off the conversation, the intent here is unfortunately we were told we can’t do questions from the audience, but we do expect to have a pretty good conversation amongst the panelists. But Jeff’s going to lead us off with an answer or some thoughts on this question. How must we optimize the balance of diverse sensor payloads across proliferated constellations to ensure a truly resilient next generation defense architecture capable of surviving kinetic and non-kinetic counter space threats?

Jeff Hanke:

That was like a six part question. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do all those, but when I think of resilience, okay, I think there’s a lot advertised about proliferation, right? And hey, if you got more satellites up there, more targets, harder to get them all out of service, so therefore some capability at least still exists as you continue to work your way through the fight. I think there’s a lot more to it than that, right? I mean, if we look at mobility of all of our satellites, right, if we address and have more capability to actually maneuver satellites through their lifetime, that adds to resilience as well. Communicating in multiple ways to multiple other satellites so that the information has thousands of paths to get to the actual war fighter who needs the information instead of one. We tend to make pretty monolithic looking type systems, but if we think in the terms of a mesh, of a network, of the internet, of routing it wherever it needs to go so that it gets there instantaneously, that is going to provide an incredible amount of resilience as well.

And then obviously all the additional things with encryption and things to make sure that anybody who has a signal doesn’t even know that it’s the signal when they get it will continue to add resilience. But I’m glad to see that we’re addressing that in industry, we’re addressing that in the Space Force. And I think it’s critically important for us to recognize that the war of tomorrow will not be what we believe previous wars would be where neither adversary did anything in space. I think we’ve all determined that the next war will have some element in space, some sort of combat element in space. And what is that going to be for us? And we need to be resilient enough to survive that so we can continue to win.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Any additional comments from the panel on Jeff’s response there?

Brandon White:

Yeah. I mean, I’d say yes. And I think being able to understand the proliferated approach across multiple orbits as well and stitch that together through the fight. And to Jeff’s point, to ensure that you can rely on and trust the interfaces to get you the information in a timely way, right? And so understanding that architecture upfront and kind of the future state as we build out capability and fit into that, I think is a critical piece of ultimately achieving that outcome and not treating it as well, we’ll build capability and then we’ll bolt on the other pieces at the end.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Very good point. So Jon, over to you. Where does AI change the space-based targeting problem and how do we build the test, assurance, and operator trust that lets a commander rely on it in a fight? Because we’ve heard a lot about AI, but then if you’re a commander, you got to have that confidence in that software and that technology.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, let’s start with what is changing about the operational environment? What is changing about the technology that both we and our adversaries have to deal with that operational environment? And therefore, what does that mean in terms of how we have to change our formations, change our people, change our equipment, and change our techniques, tactics, and procedures in order to handle the complexity that Jeff described and that we’re talking about today?

So I invite you to consider this concept, right? Most people begin with, great, I got to do things faster, better, and more of it. And that’s not a bad place to start. You might think of it as speed, precision, and scale, but I would invite you to think about those terms in a different context in the digital age. So before we would think about speed as how fast can I do something? But now maybe I need to think about it in terms of can I do something to a degree of sufficiency that it can deliver at the time I need to make a decision, take an action, or achieve an effect? Precision historically has meant, hey, how closely could I adhere to standardized specifications for my product, or my operation, or my procedure that I was performing?

And so it was sort of how could I do everything exactly the same in a very precise way? But now it might be, how can I produce everything in a tailored way, individualized, a tailored fit to the specific problem I have to solve, the threat I have to defeat, the operational capabilities I have available to me at that moment in time? And scale is no longer just the volume of the same thing that I have to deal with in a moment in time, or products I have to produce, or operations I have to conduct. It’s how many different things can I do simultaneously? And so if you change a paradigm and you think about speed, precision, and scale in terms of sufficiency, tailored fit, and simultaneity, then what you’re asking AI to do now differs.

And so AI provides us time, time to close that long range kill chain, time to detect sooner, time to decide faster, time to defeat decisively. And so now I’m asking my AI empowered tools, the AI that I build into my weapon systems, the AI that I build into my space-based sensing and targeting, whether it’s the own orbit segment, the ground segment, or all the magic that happens with the data that’s derived from it.

And I’m asking that to help me have greater speed in terms of sufficiency at the time of need, greater precision tailored to the moment, and greater scale, but to do a whole bunch of things simultaneously. And that helps us then with identification of targets. First detection of targets, detection of objects, identification to determine if they are targets, fixing a location so that I can then target them effectively. Because there’s always going to be more targets than we have the capability to strike. It also then helps me to discern which of the targets will not just are available for me to strike in some important way, but are the ones that’ll have the greatest systemic effect against my adversary so that I can defeat them holistically, not just tactically in sort of a battle of attrition, if you will. And then it gives us the ability to handle many threats all at once.

So think if we now in this proliferated space architecture have hundreds of apertures that are detecting and tracking tens of thousands perhaps of objects, only a subset of which but still a large subset, maybe thousands of potential targets, it helps me to address those at the speed that I need to in order to achieve the effects in the battle space that we’re looking for. And then when we begin to think about the need that we have of AI in that context, it allows us to now find those specific instances where we insert AI empowered technology throughout our entire architecture as Brandon and Todd were describing. Where all across the architecture do we need to insert the AI-based tools that allow us to achieve the holistic operations that we’re trying to conduct?

Col. Nathan Vosters:

That’s great. Thanks. Any supporting comments from the rest of the panelists there? No, thanks Jon for that. I really appreciate it. I think very insightful. Brandon, we’ve made some extraordinary progress proliferating sensors on orbit as we were discussing earlier, but sensing and targeting aren’t the same thing. What needs to happen for space-based track to become weapons quality, decision quality products at the tactical edge?

Brandon White:

Yeah. So maybe I’ll start where Jon left off and talk time a little bit, right? So the timeline of the overall mission has to be the outcome, not the timeline of sensing or the timeline of any subset, right? So step one from our point of view is certainly you’ve got to understand the time that you have to close that kill chain and how often you need to service that information, how often it needs to be provided and what quality it has to be provided to close that kill chain. So step one in my mind of these pieces is you’ve really got to understand that end-to-end mission timeline so that you can ensure that your space-based sensing architecture can produce that output. And it’s not just a single detection, it is a qualified track at the right quality, at the right update rate into a system that can act on it, right, and fitting into your portion of that overall mission timeline.

So that’s a piece I think we’ve got to pay a lot of attention to and make sure that we understand upfront. I think the second piece we touched on a little earlier is trust and that’s in four or five different dimensions, trusting that data stream and that information at a level of pedigree that you can discern, friend from foe, that you can discern the exact understanding of what is that “target” and then ultimately have the trust that that system is locked down enough that you can make decisions that are life and death based on it. And at the end of that kill chain, a man or woman in uniform is making a choice and that choice has to be informed with trust through that entire chain of that mission. And all of the pieces are going to contribute to this space-based sensing architecture have to have that same level of trust.

And then I think the third big piece of getting us there is going to be reps and sets. It’s going to be producing that output in a way that it feeds into the fire control systems, and the C2 architectures, and the weapons release architectures that exist, whether it’s IBCS on the Navy side, whether it’s E2D or it’s the cockpit of a B-21 or a fighter, it has to fit right into that chain of mission and it has to fit into that decision process and weapons release process to close a kill chain just like all of the other sensing artifacts that they have. And if we lose sight of the fact that producing some alternative view or some alternative way of doing weapons release and trying to bolt it on to the existing services and the existing CONOPS, I think we’re going to set ourselves back. So I think that’s the biggest third piece, is making sure we’re integrating and reps and sets on the existing systems for closing kill chains.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

If I could just build on that, because I think Brandon, you’ve hit upon something that’s really, really key, which is trust, right? There’s a technical element of the trust. Do I have provenance of all the data that I’m basing decisions on, whether those are autonomous decisions or human-made decisions, either one. Do you have foundational trust in the information that you’re making the decisions on? But then also going back to what you said, we’re not just closing one kill chain at a time-

Brandon White:

Right.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

… In a serial effort, right? It goes back to this concept of simultaneity. We’re doing this extensively at scale. And so how do I trust that if I select certain targets, but not all of them, that it’ll result in the optimal outcome on the battle space that we’re looking for because I’m taking risk in the ones that I don’t strike and, right, that takes confidence by the commanders and the forces in the field to operate in that way.

And then I think the final concept that you were alluding to, and you might have some additional thoughts on this, is we’re talking about space-based incident and targeting, but that’s just one part of the puzzle, right? I mean, the commanders in the field are going to be ideally armed with not just space-based incident and targeting-

Brandon White:

Right.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

But across domains, across phenomenologies, they’re going to have to fuse that data together to create solutions. They’re going to have a variety of weapons, whether they’re strike weapons or interceptors that they’re leveraging. And so do I have confidence that I can guide them to the targets, whether those targets are for missile defense or whether they’re air ground maritime targets that need to be struck in some manner? Do I have confidence that I can not just know about the threat target, but that I can close that last tactical mile, if you will, of closing the kill chain, getting my interceptor or my munition all the way to the target and then assess it at the end?

Brandon White:

Right. Right. Maybe I’d add too, as we think about trust and the sort of reps and sets of understanding how it fits into the TTPs and the mission, the adversary also gets a vote, right? And so a clear blue sky day is going to be very different than the day when things start to escalate. And so making sure that we have thought up front and then are prepared to do those reps and sets in a way that do consider maybe some degradation in your space layers, maybe some interference with some of your communication capability and upfront understanding how we’re going to layer all that in and build the confidence that we can rely, as you’re saying, on those last decisions that are going to be made at a time when the enemy’s going to have their own view of what they expect to happen.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, 100%.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Well, what a great lead into our next question to Todd, talking about the enemy. As our adversaries extend their operational reach, how must space-based sensing evolve to reliably close the long range kill chain supporting both offensive strike packages and defensive kinetic intercepts across contested domains?

Todd Stevens:

Sure. Thanks. Thanks for that question. Some of the panelists have already touched on this already, but when we think about a space-based targeting or sensor layer, it’s not just one layer, it’s multiple layers, probably different orbits, it’s different types of phenomenologies. It might be easier to spoof one on one day and not another on a different day, but it’s being able to fuse all that information together in a timely manner and to enable for a weapon quality track that’s trusted in a timely manner, you’ve got to be able to deliver it probably with processing at the edge. Might not always be bringing that data to the ground before it bounces out to the, whether it’s the aircraft that’s going to launch a strike or a missile interceptor in one of the layers of a defended architecture that’s going to defend. As we get towards Nirvana here, it’s that sensor fusion at the edge in space that hops directly maybe to an effect, directly down linked to the weapon that’s been paired with the threat that with sense making, we’ve made the right sense and we’re attacking for an offensive perspective.

We need to make sure that we use that data smartly so we don’t expend more weapons than are required to have the effect desired, right? So you talk about trust and be able to get that package all the way to have its intended effect for the war fighter. And I think that being able to bring it all the way, it’s got to be resilient and hardened. So that might be cyber proofing or jam proofing, depending on what the lay down we’re going against. And I’d say on the defensive side, we’ve got to be able to, for something in the future as we walk into programs like Space Based Interceptor, those are going to be enabled through these long range kill chains that exist in the space layer, in multiple parts of the space layer. So that’s where we’ve got to go. I think that a lot of the enabling technology is here, but it comes from all across industry and working, as you said, on the reps and sets through the exercises, working out those TTPs so that it’s reliable at the point of need when we’ve got to call upon it, so.

Jeff Hanke:

Yeah, I’d just add to that. I’m really optimistic with the way all of us are working on this problem. We’ve been successful tracking hypersonic vehicles and that was probably the hardest problem technically that we had thought of to this point, right? I mean, I joke that a fifth grader with graph paper can probably track an ICBM and understand what the parabola looks like, but the hypersonic ballistic missile is a whole new bag of tricks there to try to track. But we’ve got that piece. We know that piece. And to build on the comments, I think our next real great step is to put it all in one and get it to the point where you have the satellite that does missile warning, missile track, comes up with a fire control solution and then instantaneously goes right to whoever the shooter is who needs it, right, and tries to make all of that as simple. Right?

I think we tend to think of proving, like you were saying, sir, we have steps in the process. We think of missile warning first, and then we think of getting a fire control solution next, and we kind of think in incremental steps. We really need to think of all the way to the end, start to finish, and how simple can you make it? How simple and quick can you get that done is a different mindset than the way we traditionally think of acquisition, and we think of requirements, and we think of everything we do on a daily basis. We should be literally going, how do you short circuit the whole thing and go instantaneously, what is the fastest solution you could ever think about coming up with and how do we design that? Instead, we tend to think of incremental steps and it slows us down, I think, towards getting us to the finish line.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, that’s a great point on the alignment of the technology with the people, and the skill sets, and the expertise, and the training with the TTP and how do we as industry help our military customers, our war fighters in that progression, right, that good alignment. To your point, people tend to… We all have this sort of innate inclination to, “Hey, give me a new tool and I’ll figure out how to do what I’m currently doing more, better, faster with the new tool.”

Brandon White:

New tool.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

Right. And then at some point we have the aha moment and the light bulb goes off and we say, “You know what? I no longer have to do things exactly the same way because the new tool allows me to do it in a different way than I did it before.” Nirvana happens though, to your point, right? Nirvana happens, Jeff, right, when we realize, “Wait a minute, the output that we were providing before, the military operational activity, the widget, the whatever it is, the output we were providing before came about because of the technology we had available to conduct operations before.” But now we can achieve different outputs that achieve the outcome we’re looking for that gives us a completely new way of thinking about what’s that mission problem? That’s what Brandon said, right? We always have to keep in mind closing that long range kill chain, many of them simultaneously, that’s the mission problem. So think through the entirety of it. That’s a great point you made, Jeff.

Todd Stevens:

And maybe I just, and you said earlier the enemy gets a vote, right? And so as we think about the resilience of our own long range kill chains and the counter long range kill chains that we’re thinking about at the same time, how do we make sure that we smartly orchestrate all of those effects to enable the ones we intend and deny our adversary those, that they intend to goof our plan up, right? And so doing that smartly in an orchestrated way, and then when we think about the current moment we’re in, when our national leaders say we’re on a wartime footing, to be able to work as collaboratively as possible on those mission roadmaps with our customers, with the end users and get into those war games and prove out through those reps and sets and break it and make it better fast, so.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

So for the entire panel, but I’ll start off with Jeff on this one, but I think this is where we’re really looking for your insights. How do we build targeting architectures that are both fast to field and hard to break against jamming, cyber, spoofing? And then what’s the right role for commercial and allied capability as part of that? So fast and secure, but where’s the secret sauce there? And maybe each of you have your own special sauce that you might want to share that you’re doing at each individual company.

Jeff Hanke:

Yeah, sure. I mean, fast is easy in my mind. I have manufacturing background as well as program management background. Fast to me is no change. So AMDT3 that we just won for 18 to tie it to our current work is build to print off previous program. That’s fast. We signed up for the fastest delivery schedule we’ve ever signed up for, for 18 space vehicles. I mean, we used to sign up programs that wouldn’t get you one space vehicle in twice that amount of time, right? So to me, speed and speed is critical for us because we obviously want to proliferate quickly. We recognize a gap, we want to fill it quickly. If you want to do that, take what you got and make more of them quick while you think about the longer problem, right? And so I think in the short term, and the short term for me is a couple, three years, you got to go with what you got, right?

There’s an element of commercial in that, right? Some of the commercial stuff that exists already can be used for some of the aspects of these kill chains. You can use that commercial data. It’s not bad data, right? If it’s available, go buy it, right? And for the short term, that’s good. There’ll be, of course, some sort of issues or concerns with it, but you’ll continue to work through that as you work towards the long-term solution as you go forward.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Awesome. Thanks. Jon, yeah.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. I think there’s three key elements that are worth mentioning here. The first is, and I’ll speak from a Leidos perspective, the first is how do you continue to build your new capabilities in a modular open standards way, right? Embrace that modular open systems’ architecture because of two things. One, we have to get all of our stuff to work together, right, because the warfighter needs a fully integrated set of capabilities, not a bunch of stovepiped capabilities, so that’s a key thing. But the other thing is we’re not doing this one and done. We know that the future’s dynamic, technology’s emerging quickly, and so we’re going to continue to evolve very quickly. And so it’s a dynamic future ahead of us, and so it allows us to continually update and provide ever improved capabilities is helped by that modular open standard approach. The second is the, and I think maybe Brandon mentioned this early on, is hey, cybersecurity is part of the organic initial design at every level because you’re going to build redundant paths, you’re going to build redundant sensing capabilities, you’re going to build redundant processing capabilities.

And so because that architecture also has to be dynamic because you’re never really sure which parts of it are going to survive, right, the threat, that we’re under attack as we’re operating, it all has to be designed to be secure in and of itself. And so again, we’ve sort of taken the approach, defend the network, but also defend the individual tactical elements of the network, the devices, the weapon systems that are connected to it. And then the third thing is design around the data, right? So whether it’s our space-based missile warning tracking and defense sensors, whether it’s our persistent surveillance, land-based capabilities for local area defense, whether it’s our kinetic or non-kinetic effectors, you design it in such a way that it is resilient in that when the whole system’s working, it’s effective. When the system is degraded, it’s effective. As the network degrades, it’s gracefully degrading in terms of your operational capabilities. But just as important, as it gets reconstituted, you gracefully reintegrate capabilities along the way.

And so when you do the data centric design of your hardware, right, which is a concept that maybe is one that we collectively need to continue to move forward on is data centric design of hardware, software, and then of course of the network connective tissue that brings it all together. It allows for that organic resilience in the system. And so that’s sort of three elements that we look at every aspect of our capabilities through.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Gotcha. Thanks. Brandon.

Brandon White:

Yeah, thanks Jon. Maybe I’d start building on what Jeff had to say. There is useful commercial information out there and it should be used very quickly, right? I think that that adds value and I think upfront understanding even if you’re not going to go address the trust aspects of it, understanding when you’re going to use it and what you’re going to use it for and putting the right boundaries in upfront I think are very valuable and helping accelerate and understanding a capability, and then recognizing when it does have limitations that you need to manage. The other thing I would just offer, and we’ve started to see some evolution and some good thinking from our customer community on this. We don’t have to advertise what we’re doing and when we’re doing it with all of our commercial information. So I’d say making sure that it’s not clear and obvious what we’re using it for and when we’re using it and when we’re not. I think that’s a very important part of making commercial data and commercial information valuable in the overall sort of closing of the mission.

And then the third piece I would add is the industry is here to go solve that problem for you and it will not be solved by one company with one big solution, right? Back to the architecture conversation, back to the trust conversation, having multiple ways of solving these problems and an industrial base that’s going to give you several different choices and applying more than one answer to that problem is a very important aspect of building the robustness and to move very quickly. So if we do have a challenge or an issue in one component of the architecture, we’ve got three others right beside it that are going to close that aspect of the kill chain. So that’s the way I would think about how to make sure that we’re moving at the speed that we need to support closing the mission.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Gotcha. Thanks.

Todd Stevens:

Yeah. And I would just echo what’s already been said. When we think commercial, if it’s more of a commodity product and then what kind of ornaments can you hang on that commodity Christmas tree for a bus, for example, to go fast? And so how do you… I think our company’s done a good job. I think our industry’s done a really good job of hearing the demand signal from the user community and pivoting to be more commercial, certainly in proliferated LEO. But as we go forward, being able to… I’ll say the analogy that’s way overused, that we’re going to skate to where the puck is going to be for the mission as we talk about those mission roadmaps. We also invest a lot of tech demonstrators, that there is not a defined acquisition. There is not a defined, there’s a user need, but there’s not the acquisition pull.

And so we’re not alone in industry, but we spend a lot of time in tech demonstrators in our space business to try and demonstrate a capability that fills a perceived or vocally a gap and then partner with the user community to figure out how to go field that at scale. Again, it’s not always waiting for the requirement, waiting for the RFP, it’s trying to get ahead of that. And that is also a little bit more commercial to just go fill a need. So yeah.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Thanks, Todd. So we’re just about at the end of our time here. And before we wrap up, I just want to offer if any of you want to provide any closing comments before we close out the day? Jeff, any final thoughts about SBST, closing long range kill chain, resilient architectures, AI, all of that? So we’ll offer you each just a couple seconds here to solve some of the biggest problems facing us right now.

Jeff Hanke:

Yeah, I should be able to do that in 30 seconds.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Yeah.

Jeff Hanke:

No problem. No, I am really incredibly optimistic at our group, our industrial base and the way we are all thinking about the problem, to come up with inventive ways to make this happen. I think this is Space Race 2.0. This is going to be an absolutely insane ride for the next five to 10 years to get to things that are actually on orbit, operationalized. It’s part of our culture, the way aviation is part of our culture today, right? If you rewound the clock 100 years, aviation wasn’t part of the culture, right? Well, if you rewind the clock 10 years from now, probably most would say space wasn’t really a part of the war fighting culture. We’re in that incredibly exciting time. So I mean, it’s just great to be here, great to be a part of such a great panel with these folks and look forward to the next several years.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Thanks, Jeff. Over to you, Jon.

Brig. Gen. Jon Rice, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Wow, what an exciting time to be solving these hard problems in this sense, not because of the threats that we face, because those are vast, those are significant, those are really tough problems to solve, but we will solve those. There’s no doubt about that. It is exciting though because we have a Department of War. We have a mix of traditional and new entrants to the defense industry who are asking all the right questions now. And because of that, right, because of that aligned focus and the inherent capability that my colleagues and our teams bring to this discussion, it’s an exciting time to be solving these problems and set the foundation for what not just contemporary, but near future warfare looks like going forward.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Thank you. Brandon, any closing thoughts?

Brandon White:

Yeah, so maybe I’ll just sort of echo and add, now is a very different time than it was even a year ago or five years ago. And I can vividly remember having similar conversations at conferences and having many services imagining a day without space, right? I think we’ve evolved beyond that and I do see a whole new opportunity in front of us for how we really bring the power of space sensing, space data sharing and bringing that domain into the war fighter’s hands. And so we talk a lot about this concept of space at the tactical edge, at the edge where the conflict is unfolding, bringing the power of kinetic and non-kinetic effects from space, just like any other tool that our war fighters have to bring to the fight. When we think about going fast, we think that now is the time that we can go fast to bring that space-based sensing and targeting architecture into play and really put it in the hands of our war fighters as an advantage that our nation can depend on.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

That’s great. Thanks. And Todd?

Todd Stevens:

Yeah, so what a time to be working in the space business, right? I mean, it is just a phenomenal time, the speed at which things are happening, the openness of our government to partner, to invest, to make it real. It’s a war fighting domain. We talked about that a lot at this conference and how it enables, pull it all the way to the effect that we need to achieve here on planet Earth for that long range strike package and to know where that data is coming from in a trusted way. It’s going to get there multiple paths and to be a part of enabling that, we’re excited as a company to be riding that wave, helping deliver the capabilities for the customers, for our customer community across this whole domain of targeting from space. And so thanks Nate for leading this panel.

Col. Nathan Vosters:

Well, thank you. Thanks everyone for hanging with us right to the end. So will you join me in thanking Jeff, Jon, Brandon, and Todd for their great comments today?