Armed and On Time: The Art of Delivering Space Capabilities at Speed and Scale

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

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining our discussions today. I know that yesterday there were a lot of receptions, some of them going into the wee hours. So I really appreciate you making the effort to be here with us this morning. This is a really important topic and one near and dear to my heart as well, and I’m hoping you’ll all enjoy this. So good morning. In the face of rapidly expanding threats, the Space Force is making architectural, strategic changes that are transforming our national security enterprise. These include application of innovative acquisition approaches, use of commercial technologies and capabilities, and more effective organizational alignment. Congressional initiatives, such as the SPEED and FORGED Act, seek to streamline acquisition. And while there’s always room for improvement, it’s important to remember that the Space Force is already leaning forward in many of these areas and making significant progress. The delivery of capabilities for space is not just an acquisition effort, it takes an end-to-end process across the Space Force, which is why I’m thrilled to have the panel that we have today to help guide us through this discussion. On the far left, you’ve got Lieutenant General David Rock Miller, Commander of Space Operations Command. Lieutenant General Philip Garrant, Commander of Space Systems Command. Rock, you need to bring more people next time.

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Clearly.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

There we go, all right.

Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:

A little late.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

And then last but not least, Major General Stephen Purdy, Military Deputy and Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Service Acquisition. I’m sorry, Service Acquisition Executive for Space within the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. Gentlemen. All right, nice. Well, you got the home crowd with you, so that’s kind of embedded. But gentlemen, thank you all for being with us here this morning. General Purdy, let’s kick it off with you. You’re the Acting Acquisition Executive for Space, and at the center, really, of space acquisition efforts. Can you provide us a little context of where you’ve seen us come from, where you think we are right now in terms of space acquisition, and where you see us heading in the not-too-distant future?

Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:

Yeah, sure. We could talk probably for hours just on that topic alone.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

We only have 40 minutes.

Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:

Only 40 minutes. All right, I’ll filibuster for 30, right? So the pace and the speed of space acquisitions has been pretty remarkable. So let’s go back a few years to previous to Space Force. Some of the earliest innovations actually came out of SSC with SPEC OTA. Then we saw the formation of Space RCO, the establishment of Space Development Agency. And then the formation of the Space Force. And then things started to really speed up. You started to see pitch days. You started to see space works and innovative constructs. You started to see the establishment of the first SAE with Mr. Calvelli. Activity after activity, organization processes established pretty quickly to get after new norms within space acquisitions. And so it’s been pretty exciting. So that coupled with a really fascinating industry perspective where space industry has really bloomed over the last several years, right about that same period of time. All kind of started out of launch and then that blossomed over into adjacent mission-based systems, satellite systems, ground systems, etc. And then the focus of the Space Force itself has been really exciting. So as Mr. Calvelli came on board, he established a lot of new norms for acquisition with his principles. Many in the industry and acquisition system know his principles, doing two to three year kind of builds, doing low entry, low engineering, fixed price when you can handle it. All designed to change the culture of acquisitions really. And that’s been really successful. Over the past, we’ve moved from these large billion dollar, 10-year kind of development cycles into a proliferated model. Space Development Agency was doing some of that, SSE was doing some of that. But now, program by program, especially over this last year, we have really taken charge and taken a look through our ADM project, where can we improve these individual systems, these individual acquisitions, in some cases stopping them and pivoting into a faster, cheaper architecture where all along we had been developing with venture capital, new industry and new companies to be able to feed all that. So in the future, I see that just continuing and getting faster and faster and faster. More proliferation, more speed to get capability to the warfighter as fast as possible, and then revving and increasing. That’s exciting because the warfighters get capability faster. The industry likes that as well because we’re activating the R&D side, the production side, the O&M side all at once. And so I think more and more we’re going to be heading down that track and just a really exciting future for that.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Excellent, thank you very much. General Garrant, Space Systems Command traces its history and heritage all the way back to the very beginning of military space in the Western Development Division and General Schriever’s efforts out in Los Angeles. Over the years, there’s been multiple transformations and pivots in terms of the focus and the approach that we’re taking there in Los Angeles. But can you give us an update on some of the recent changes that have occurred and what sort of benefits you’re seeing from those modifications?

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant:

Thanks, Charles, and thanks to AFA for hosting this great panel. So I took command in February of last year. SSC stood up in August of 2021, coming out of SMC. And even when it was created, it went through a lot of change early on. So my focus with my command team has been, I like to put it in the terms of completing the work that General Mike Guttmeier started. And really, it’s a big emphasis on resourcing the program offices and changing the culture of SSC to be a headquarters and a field command focused on supporting the mission, which for us is acquisition. So some of the things that we’ve done is we’ve taken our S-staff and created a traditional Napoleonic structure. And in a lot of cases at SSC, the S-staffs were dual-hatted. And now we’ve made sure that they’re singularly focused on their particular roles. You saw that with a big separation from SSIO, and I know Steve’s going to talk a little bit about that in a future question. The other thing we’ve done is pushed a lot of resources back into the program offices. The program offices are incredibly lean. So we want to make sure that the best talent and the most people are in the efforts actually executing these programs and doing the work. SSC’s role is less about oversight now. I don’t have acquisition authorities. My role is to make sure that the programs are resourced. So putting resources back into the program offices, making a lean staff focused on policy and guidance, and supporting our three main installations at Vandenberg, Patrick, and LA, and then our GSUs around the world, primarily in Colorado and Kirtland. So a big emphasis on lean and agile, resourcing the program offices, and making sure that they can execute and have what they need to do their job.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Excellent. Thank you. So General Miller, at the end of the day, it really comes down to capabilities in the hands of war fighters. And so in your 10 years, the commander of Space Operations Command, how have you seen the changes that General Garrant has talked about impacting the delivery of capabilities to the warfighters?

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Yeah, thanks, Charles, and thanks to the Air & Space Forces Association for the support that they’ve given us. I think I’ll bend it into a couple of key things. The first is, I live in the realities of the fielded force. So what Steve may be looking at, maybe he’s got to look years in the future, fills the link between the force development of where we resource to, and ultimately what gets delivered. Historically, in the operational units, they probably would have focused within the last few months prior to ultimately fielding. Typically, as we finished up operational tests, we’d be getting into a review and things like that. In the partnership I’ve had with Phil, with Jim Smith, and some of the other leaders of the other product centers, Kelly Hammett and so on, we have worked to drive left into that cycle to bring as much capability as we can as early as we can. And the simple reality is, the fielded force today is not the Space Force the nation needs. We have requirements that we need to satisfy in terms of performance, resilience, and effectiveness across the mission sets in every one of the mission areas that we have. And as the lead for force generation, as well as providing those forces for the service components and the combatant commands, it’s my job to try and train, certify, and field those capabilities as quickly as possible. That’s why that fielding authority is there now. We have transferred the sustainment function and the oversight of weapon system sustainment from SSC to Space Operations Command. So now our purpose is to find the structure that we need at the lowest possible echelon, in this case, mostly focused on mission deltas paired with Phil’s systems deltas, give them the tools, resources, and capability they need, and drive as far left in the acquisition and capability development timeline to bring capability forward. I think we have been successful. There are numerous examples, whether that’s the NAVOR mission area with PNT, position navigation and timing. I think particularly I’m excited about electromagnetic warfare and where we’re headed there. But overall, I’m very satisfied with the progress we’ve made. I want to see more capability, obviously, in the hands of the operational units and provide those capabilities to our service components and our combatant commanders. But I think you’re going to see over the next year, there’s a lot of wins. Our focus in particular, I think you’ll see a couple of key areas. Surveillance, targeting, and tracking of air, missile, and space threats will be a big win for us, I think, in the next year, as well as our capability to field some core function capability in our space control, I mean, orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare, and also in cyber warfare. I think those are the big things we’re going to see and have started to see already.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

And to your point, seeing already, I mean, we clearly saw the capabilities of the 11th Space Warning Squadron and the 2nd Space Warning Squadron with the missile and drone attacks against Israel and our bases in the Middle East. So a real-world example of how those changes have delivered life-saving capabilities to the warfighters.

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Yeah, so it’s often underreported because the face of that largely is those men and women who were at IED in this case and at the end game ultimately had to evacuate because we anticipated and understood what the threat was going to be to that location. But people don’t realize how much was done in the preceding months, partnering, frankly, with both Phil’s team as well as with Doug Schiess as a service component, to field, we got to a place where we were able to better synthesize the tracks, we were able to reduce confusion, we were improving our accuracy and timelines for reporting, and we were reinforcing some of the other JTAGS elements globally because they back up and reinforce. We were able to move out of that and evacuate at IED, you saw the video, is because we had reinforced in other areas and had plenty of depth in the mission area. That’s just something that we haven’t done in the past and that’s obviously a place where we’ve made a lot of progress.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Yeah, excellent. Yeah, that integration’s really coming through and it’s important to remember that while a lot of attention gets placed on missile warning with the space-based elements, there’s a lot of ground processing of that data that’s produced that actually leads to that warfighting and war winning capability. So General Miller, you talked about driving to the left and introduced the concept of integrated mission deltas. So it’s rapidly delivering capabilities, it’s not just the acquisition community throwing something over to the operational community saying good luck, there needs to be a tight integration as you’ve both identified. So can you talk a little bit about how that approach of integrated mission deltas is achieving success and how that might be applied at a larger level? General Miller, kick us off.

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

You bet. I think, so I think we’ve covered this a couple times. If you heard the service chief talk about it, he has emphasized in a couple places, it’s the marrying of really, unity of command is the focus, but the marrying of what was previously two separate approaches to doing things. One was operations and the previous was sustainment. When I was an ops group commander, if I had an issue or maintenance or logistics challenge at one of my units, I would have to request support from Phil in SSC in order to rapidly fix and address those. Those authorities have been streamlined, the resources, the people, and the maintenance capability is all under space operations command and that’s great. But what people also forget, as part of the integrated mission delta, is now each one of the units have intelligence and cyber defense expertise embedded in those mission deltas. As a result of that, they’re able to understand the indications and warning associated with the threat, they have detailed ties to the targeting requirements that they have associated with their missions, and they’re able to go out and pursue what is our soft underbelly in a lot of ways, and that is the cyber threat, and particularly the cyber landscape that we have as a concern. So in two areas in particular, we’ve seen success, and I alluded to them before. One is Andy Menchner, now his vice commander, deputy commander, was my mission delta 31 commander, and we went from two year time cycles, from the time Phil produces a satellite, a spacecraft, in this case GPS for us, to a fielding in five months. That’s an 80% reduction in time. A demonstration of a capability to reconstitute that capability as quickly as possible. And that’s because Andy owned all the elements of logistics and sustainment, as well as the payload, to transport it, move it, and also be able to demonstrate resilience in the architecture. We have gone from what are basically units that didn’t have a lot of resilience in their approach, to we exercise continuity of operations on a regular basis across space operations command to demonstrate the resilience. I think the biggest capability that probably has gone underreported though, is the advancements made in electromagnetic warfare. And that is mission delta three and Colonel Angelo Fernandez and his deputy, Colonel Eddie Gutierrez. We have previously had a model where we have a handful or so of counter communication systems capabilities that deploy in single units with small UTCs, 15 to 20 people, for a deployment period to cover a mission system. We are moving to a remoted architecture with a global footprint, where we can synchronize the employment of the systems, but more importantly, synchronize the electromagnetic surveillance, i.e. when an adversary is jamming or disrupting our systems, we understand where that’s at. We’re able to geolocate that capability in the future on seconds to minutes timelines, whereas we’ve had to deploy capability and augment to do it in the past. And we’ll be able to remotely synchronize in a fallback posture across multiple areas of responsibility. Just think about the difference we’ve been able to do. We have literally leaped ahead, two weapon system upgrades in the bounty hunter electromagnetic surveillance capability because of the partnership with Phil to get to a remoted structure. And I think that’s a testament to where we have the integrated mission delta. And I think that’s really due to the partnership. Now we have dedicated systems deltas working day to day on our priorities.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Yeah, that’s awesome. So two generation leap ahead, that’s incredible.

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Thank you.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

General Garrant, from the Space Systems Command perspective, how about those integrated mission deltas and how they’re impacting your activities?

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant:

What’s really neat, and you’ll hear General Saltzman talk about it and Rock alluded to it, is this singular focus on unity of mission readiness. So now for the first time, a commander’s singularly responsible for all four parts of readiness, personnel, training, systems, and sustainment. They have the budget, they have the acquisition professionals integrated into the mission deltas. The acquisition authorities still flow through the PEOs to the SAE. And in every single delta, we have an acquisition professional and an operator. Couple of examples, Delta 9, orbital warfare. Eric Stockham was the Acquisition System Program Director, responsible for acquiring the next generation of orbital warfare capabilities. He’s now the deputy commander of OW9. Barry Croker, another acquisition professional, is a commander and they’re partnered. What Rock and I love about this is in the past, if there was a problem, Rock and I became three star action officers trying to solve a problem between SSC and SPOC. Now, at the lowest echelons of command inside SSC and SPOC, inside these mission deltas, at the captain, NH3 level, they are solving problems because they’ve got operators and acquirers side by side with a mutual understanding of the need and the resources to include funding to solve those problems. That frees us up to be more strategic leaders and use venues like the OAT, or the Operations Acquisition Test and Training Summits, where we bring together all the field commands and focus on strategic priorities and direction and inform the force on requirements. So, a lot of benefits and consequences from pushing down authorities, tightening the connection between ops and acquisition.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Great, I just wanna make sure I got that acronym right. OATs, Operations Acquisition Test and Training?

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant:

Correct.

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Correct.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Very good. So, General Garrant, while you still got the mic ready, there’s a parallel to the integrated mission deltas and that’s the system deltas that are now being stood up across Space Systems Command. Can you talk to us a little bit about that effort and how that pairs with the integrated mission deltas?

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant:

Absolutely, so again, multiple purposes with standing up systems deltas. The first is the General Saltzman’s vision of a common Guardian experience for anyone in the Space Force. So, it’s a very traditional organizational unit. A lot of the gray beards up here on this stage, well, at least the two of us remember when we had experiments in AFMC and on the Air Force side where you had acquisition squadrons and acquisition groups. In a sense, it’s a similar idea. Let’s put acquisition organizations in traditional military organizations, military and civilian. We’re gonna have Colonel level commanders with full UCMJ authorities focused on organized train and equip of the personnel in that organization and bring back a lot of the esprit de corps and identity and spirit, focus on fitness, warrior readiness, everything that Secretary Hegseth is asking us to do. At the same time, we now have a focus on unity of effort. So, we have unity of mission readiness with the mission delta and now we have unity of effort between the mission delta and the systems delta. The Space Force has already organized its program acquisition into portfolios. So now, we’ve got a systems delta supporting a PEO, taking care of the people and there’s a one to one mapping and in some cases, one to multiple mapping between that sys delta commander as an O6 and the mission delta commander as an O6. Again, reemphasizing the echelons of command of where problems should be resolved and a tight connection. That has the intended and good benefit of freeing up the PEOs to be a little bit more strategic, a little bit more up and out, still responsible for program execution, still responsible for that acquisition chain of authority but now they can engage with external stakeholders a little bit more. They’re not as focused on the organized train and equip because the system delta commander has that responsibility. So, we’ve stood up five, we’ve got three more to go. They’ll be stood up by the end of October and we’re seeing phenomenal results coming out of that partnership and the tighter and tighter coupling between operations and acquisition.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Yeah, so having a unity of focus on readiness for the integrated mission deltas and a unity of effort on the systems command to help drive not just the acquisition efforts but also the mentality and the culture of the Guardians that are in those positions. It’s kind of a two for win there. That sounds incredible. So, General Purdy, I haven’t forgot about you. Your job is not only in acquisitions but also space integration and this integration is across the entire Space Force directed space enterprise. That’s a huge, huge aspect. And in fact, the NDAA has recently called out you to direct the stronger space integration and accountability function across for your office. Can you please tell us about the steps that you’re taking to drive enforceable and accountable integration across the entire portfolio? This includes mission partners like the NRO and the Air Force’s C3BM as well as with allied and commercial capabilities. It sounds like it’s a huge integration challenge.

Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:

It really is and it’s actually been a major focus for this past year for us up in SQ. You’re right. I mean, our title of our office is acquisition and integration. So, I would say major movements of this started last year when Honorable Calvelli signed the memo and we had an agreement to move the operational control of SSIO, the integration activity that’s resident out at SSC up to SQ. SSIO had been there for years previously that I was portfolio architect and they had been slowly building over time a system engineering capability. And that was on purpose a few years ago and we really started accelerating it because previous to that, most of our acquisitions frankly had been kind of in silos. Good systems engineering within those organizational silos, not so much crosstalk in between to the point of where we even tracked several years ago, we would use the same buses from different industry but we would tell them to do different things. And so there was a lot of real fundamental interesting issues there. So, as we’ve been building that this last year, we’ve been building on the success out at SSC that SSIO had. They have been establishing system engineer review boards and different classic engineering processes that you would expect to see. There’s been previous to that assignment kind of a coalition of the willing among the multiple mission partners. So, your NROs and your AFLs and your Air Force sides and all these different elements that we didn’t have direct control over but did have direct involvement in space systems. And that had been going pretty well but now underneath the authority of Cavelli and now myself as the acting SAE, we actually have full control over that activity and we’ve been driving in different directions. And so what I’ve told our folks is I know that that process is working. When I have two PEOs come to me because SSIO has told them that they need to do something that they don’t necessarily want to do, it’s a disadvantage to their program from a bit of a delay but it’s an advantage from an integration perspective. Luke Cropsey on the Air side sees the same thing as he’s managing a large C3BM portfolio of a lot of different programs. He’s gonna have to put the hammer down at times and make sure that there is some actual integration. We’ve gotta make sure that these systems talk to each other. So SSIO is building out through this process reviews. They’re building out reviews of all our various TT&C. They’re building out reviews of all our different ground C2 systems. They’re building out reviews from each one of the programs. How well are you complying with cyber requirements that have come down, with cloud requirements, with data requirements. They’re building standards and they’re kind of going through those processes. It’s actually really exciting to see that work happening. As part of that, we actually hired Woody, General Haywood, retired General Haywood, Woody Haywood, to be our lead for that effort. We have Colonel Strizzi, he’s actually running the organization. I have an SQA organization that’s seeing it from the SQ staff. And then he kind of sits over top guiding all of those efforts. So he’s dedicated full time toward getting after that integration. And his number one focus is the C2 architecture for warfighting. That’s an architecture that we have never built before. We’ve never done before. There is an incredible amount of work to build that architecture from sensor all the way to shooter. And so that is strong work happening under the guidance of SSC and SPOC and particularly General Whiting who’s maintained a key interest in that from US Space Com. That’s moving along really nicely and I’m really happy to see that. So there is nothing but more work and more focus in this particular area. We’ve given that organization a bunch of new taskers to get after that next level. And so for those that are familiar with NRO SED, the system engineering shop, or MDAs, system engineering organizations and their interim approaches to capability drops and global tests, that’s actually where we’re headed. So SSIO will grow to become that system engineering organization for the Space Force. Operating all our, operating like kind of a master schedule if you will, with global test drops and global capability drops in increments. So it’s pretty exciting to see that. It’s desperately needed and I’m really thrilled with the progress so far.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Excellent, excellent. So integration isn’t just part of your responsibility. I think there’s integration that happens at SSC and certainly at SPOC as well. General Garrant, General Miller, any comments about how you’re integrating capabilities? For example, GPS is an integrated, or a joint program office out at SSC.

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Yeah, I think one example would be, so as I mentioned previously in my comments, one of the places where we used to mainly focus the operational team was only about a couple months prior to fielding. And as Phil mentioned earlier, we have a dedicated quarterly area or event, it’s OATS Summit, the Ops Acquisition Test and Training Summit, where we now look out about 24 months. And we focus, whether it’s I need to provide operations crews for testing and training early. We need to dedicate intelligence focus in order to ensure that the kill chain closes and that the targeting systems, particularly for electromagnetic warfare or orbital warfare have it. Where Phil needs to advance some dollars in order to ensure the fielding of a C2 system, tactical C2, ’cause remember, it just doesn’t happen at the operational level of war. Battle management must occur at the tactical level of war, force packaging and so on. So now we go across our key mission threads and we do it every quarter. We prioritize, sometimes it’s winners and losers, but it’s mostly just what are the key priorities. And it’s all directly tied to the Secretary of War’s war plans that we have and/or our service or component commander requirements in order for fielding. So if we know General Schess has a key priority of something that needs to get fielded, and that is a demand signal he’s put on me to generate a force in order to do it, Phil and I can have a discussion with Jim Smith about sequencing the test, the key training activities, as well as any of the personnel and logistics and sustainment requirements in order to field at a specific time. We’ve gone to early use in a number of key mission areas. We’ve gone to early use, which is in advance of operational acceptance, on the long-range discrimination radar for space domain awareness. We are about to field a tactical C2 system that allows us to maintain battle space awareness with a common operational picture, and that’s a partnership we did with the NRO, not just between our two commands. We are doing that across every mission area, and because we have the same focus now, we’re far enough left where we’re going beyond a year. Now in the sourcing and prioritization conferences I hold every six months, I’m able to hear from Phil where a new force mod is coming in three years. So I can directly affect the readiness requirements that we project up to three years out, now because we have that approach. I’ll be candid with you, we didn’t have these forums, and we didn’t have the decision criteria at the lowest level where a single commander who has unity of command over all the elements of readiness can make their call, and also a systems Delta commander who’s working on the dedicated PEO structure can partner to deliver success. So I think the integration is key across all of the mission areas, but more importantly, you’re beginning to see the results of some of that integration. Over to Phil.

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant:

Yeah, just a few thoughts to amplify there. That’s an advantage of our size. In some cases, being small is helpful. Steve mentioned the integration work that SSIO does and the kill chain analysis, using Space C2 as an example that Steve mentioned, absolutely informing gaps analysis, which then feeds into the prioritization that Rock talked about, which then helps me understand where do we need our PEOs to focus their investments, and then as Rock mentioned, when is something being fielded, what’s the test campaign, and then Jim Smith’s trainers making sure that those capabilities are there and ready so that we can actually force present capability and operate them by the time we need them and answer General Whiting’s needs as a combatant commander. So truly end-to-end integrated, informed analysis and prioritization.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Excellent. So part of the acquisition process, really it starts with requirements. In many cases, that’s coming from an operational need, from Space Command, but we’re also hearing from OSD that they’re basically revamping, getting rid of the J-SIDS process, the J-SIDS is dead, so let’s see what comes next. General Purdy, can you kick us off with a conversation about requirements and how you see that process evolving so that we can deliver at speed and scale more rapidly?

Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:

Sure, absolutely. There’s quite a bit of acquisition reform coming down the pike. We know that, we’ve seen the bills on the Hill, and so we know that there’s reform coming in some way, and we already see some of that coming out of Department of War. And for me, that’s exciting. There’s a lot of good ideas that have been on the table for many years, and so I’m excited to take advantage of those. From the requirements side, that’s normally not an area that we deal with specifically, although we interact with. Obviously, there’s a requirements function within a service. But I think a really interesting point that I learned, frankly, this year, through all of the activity we’ve been doing, is requirements is a much deeper and more pervasive activity than we think. It’s not just a function of the front office and the service doing a requirements activity and then levying, okay, here are the requirements. Clearly, we obviously participate in that, all of us do. But it turns out that as that program is developed in response to those requirements, there are a lot of opinions about how that is interpreted and derived requirements that start to form as you go all the way down into a unit. And many times, that’s a good thing. They’re adding their voice and they’re adding clarity. But interestingly, if we’re trying to do something dramatically different, for example, if we purposely set up a program at the service level to shave off requirements, because we wanna get after industry speed and capability, and it’s a good enough capability, and that’s what we’re trying to do, an interesting reaction ends up happening. And that’s everyone starts adding on the requirements of the old system all the way down because they wanna do the best for the warfighter, and that’s what the old system had. And so while that’s great that they were trying to do that, that wasn’t the intent of that program. And a couple of times over the last year and a half, we had to chase down what happened as the program started to immediately go off the rails. And why is it suddenly so expensive and gonna take so long? And so that was a real lesson that I learned and our organization learned over this last year is that when you wanna hold requirements, you need to be very upfront and solid about that and ride that strict set of requirements all the way down. And so I think that’s the key piece that I took from that, especially if you wanna go take after industry speed.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Yeah, was that requirements creep that’s still kicking around or?

Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:

You can, that’s a kind of a negative term, from requirements creep or gold-plated requirements. And I don’t think I would go there because I think what I discovered in this process was like, no, this was just good Americans trying to do the right thing. These were capabilities that an existing system had and so they felt the following system should have it. Whereas in this particular case, we were trying to do something faster. So I wouldn’t disparage it with negative kind of a connotation. I think it’s just part of the communication and the culture change that when we’re gonna choose to do that activity, we need to all be on the ball there to include industry and make sure that, nope, there is a box around this one and we don’t want any improvements because we’re after speed in this case.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

General Miller?

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Yeah, I don’t know that I’d say it’s requirements creep. I mean, I think one of the keys to that memo, if you pay attention to page one, is it squarely places the requirements in the hands of the service chief. And it takes it out of, you know, previously the JROC and/or other processes and you could get lost in JSAs. The diagram alone of what it takes to get to the JSAs process is enough to clarify the dysfunctionality of the process. So I think what we found is useful is, or at least where I said is useful is, now the service chief gets to baseline what the performance requirements of the system are and where there are must-dos, it’s clear for us, and where there are should-dos and areas where we can take risk and come back to them, I think that’s also clear. ‘Cause you gotta remember, speed and scale are not just executed in a vacuum. We’re all focused on delivering combat credible. And that means that it has to operate not just to the legacy standard of being safe and efficient, it has to operate and be able to take a punch. It has to, we have to understand that our feature moving target indicator capability that we’re gonna field in partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office is gonna be under attack, that an adversary is gonna seek to deny that. And that there are things that when we are fielding some of these systems now, that frankly just were not or may not have been considerations in different architectures in the past. So I think overall that is a big positive of what Secretary Hegseth’s memo pushed out, which is that you squarely get the requirements back in the service chief’s lane, you clarify what are the core things for performance. No one is saying to minimize them to zero, I would not agree with that. I’ve not seen a program where there’s no requirements and we get something we can use in the end. I would also clarify though that Steve is 100% right, there are places we can make trades. And the OAT as I described to you is an area where Phil and I inside the 24 months, we do make trades of what can get done and what needs to be prioritized over something else. I think what Steve is talking about is now we can project a little bit further out. Because now we’re in the place where by mission area, we are actually able to start to define what our objective force that the nation needs from the Space Force looks like. And get to a place where the minimums in each one of those weapon systems that ultimately come to SPOC for fielding is clearly defined and so forth. So we’re actually going through having a discussion prior to coming on stage about a system that’s gonna field this week. And Steve said, “How we doing?” I said, “We’re gonna accept it.” There are some leans against things that I think are in the trade space. And those are calls that frankly, if you don’t have clear requirements, we can’t even make and have an informed discussion about moving forward.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

General Garrant, any comments on requirements?

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant:

Yeah, I think as our program managers and system program managers and directors execute every day, the traditional trades between objective and threshold requirements probably won’t change very much. That flexibility is still gonna exist. To emphasize what Rock said, this is really getting after the key performance parameters and the KPPs and returning that flexibility to the service chief. And then associated with it is the budget flexibility that we are anticipating to be able to reprioritize there. And then the last thing I’ll add is with this return to the service chief as being responsible for requirements, that’s really gonna strengthen the chief of space operations responsibilities as the design force architect for space. Because again, not only can they influence the other services, but now General Saltzman owns those requirements, not the JROC.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Unfortunately, we’re running short on time. So I wanna ask you just one last question ’cause sometimes anecdotes carry more weight than quantifiable data. But can each of you provide a quick example of an anecdote of how some of these changes are adjusting the speed and scale and delivery of warfighting capability? General Miller, you wanna kick us off?

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Yeah, I guess I’ll finish on the point I started earlier and that was really on, I’m really most excited about, like I said, over the next year, two core areas we’re gonna focus on. One of them is surveillance tracking and targeting of airspace and missile threats. I think we’re gonna make some big gains and I think you saw some of that over the past year in the situation in the Middle East, but you’re also starting to see it in some of the capabilities we’re fielding now that are gonna begin to fuse tracks and do some other things. One of the main areas I see the biggest gain, though, is gonna be ultimately in electromagnetic warfare over the next 12 months. We’re gonna, in the next couple of months, field the first ever Space Electromagnetic Warfare Tactical Operations Center where we will be able to globally command and control the tactical level, the surveillance, tracking, and targeting of electromagnetic spectrum as opposed to the penny packet of just six CCSs being spread on rotations. The deployment model for us is unsustainable. So now we have forward postured capability, able to globally build the situational awareness picture, understand where threat systems are employed, and simultaneously have a posture to respond, all while maintaining the command authority of preserving it of the combatant commands. We are also in the process of forward positioning some agile systems over the next year or two that are gonna allow us to plug holes where we see gaps. None of that would have been capable, there wasn’t even an employment concept 18 months ago for something like that. You talk about speed and scale, we’re ops accepting in the next couple of months and we’ll begin to field some of those core systems and capabilities over the next six months. Those are things that, frankly, if we didn’t have this structure where we powered down the authority for unity of command over readiness, specifically to the mission Delta Commander, and she or he didn’t have a partner in the systems Delta who could also look at the same priorities, the key performance requirements, and come up with new ways to do it. Those are just things we have not had in the past, and I’m really excited about seeing those moving forward.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Outstanding, thank you. General Garrant.

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant:

I’d like to emphasize that Rock mentioned the movement of weapon systems sustainment into the mission Deltas and SPOC. So maintaining acquisition authorities, but putting acquisition professionals into the operational organizations, and then yesterday General Saltzman talked about how we’ve executed our first acquisition board where we’ve brought operators into acquisition. So again, getting Guardians a common experience and understanding with the goal of developing leaders of the future who can take on leadership roles in acquisition and operations. Just continuing to tighten the connection between ops and acquisition in the Space Force.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

General Purdy, close us out.

Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:

I think the example I would use is the one I’ve used all year, which is GSAP and RGXX. Right after administration priorities in terms of getting after the defense industrial base, leveraging commercial speeds and timelines, commercial tech. In that particular program, we asked the SPO to go figure out if there was a better way. And we thought that there might be, but we needed them to go do the homework. They went and did that homework. They did their market analysis, their RFIs, they looked at the companies, and then we asked ourselves, what requirements could we trade off in return for some speed? That was approved by the Space Force. All credit to the Space Force. They shaved off a couple requirements. That allowed us to go from our one existing competitor to an industry day that hosted 150 companies, with probably in the high double digits that are potential successors there. And so that meets a COCOM need in terms of scale and mass, in terms of GSAP-NEXT and RGXX. And so I think that’s a really good example of kind of what we’ve talked about up here on stage today. Working together, both operators, acquirers, the requirements side, looking at requirements, trading requirements where prudent, delivering operational capability, and leveraging commercial industry and the speed of American industry into warfighter hands as fast as possible.

Col. Charles Galbreath, USSF (Ret.):

Awesome, thank you very much. Well, unfortunately, they’re about to grab the hook and take me off here, but thank you, gentlemen, for an incredible discussion. Very insightful, and thank you again for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. Please stop by the Mitchell booth for some brochures and discussion on these important topics as well. And from all of us here at the Air & Space Forces Association, have a great Space Power Day.