Leveraging Commercial Space Domain Awareness

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

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

Well, good morning AFA. That was very exciting music there. I hope you’re all ready for a great panel. I’m Colonel Brian McClain, Program Executive Officer for Space Combat Power and moderator for this panel, Leveraging Commercial Space Domain Awareness. I’m really joined with a great team of colleagues, friends, and shall I say former neighbors. So let me go ahead and introduce them to you. Right next to me, Mr. Brandon White, Vice President and General Manager, Tactical Space Systems Division, Northrop Grumman. Next to him, Mr. Rhett Turnbull, Senior Solutions Architect, Leidos. Mr. Pat Biltgen, Vice President, Space AI Booz Allen. And a couple quick notes there, he’s performed as the Chief Architect for Activity-Based Intelligence and SDA Programs and has recently authored the 2024 book, “AI for Defense and Intelligence.” And then at the very far end there, Mr. Josh Conine, Director, Space Command and Control, SAIC. So we’re gonna jump right in. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for AFA for allowing us this opportunity. But we don’t wanna spend a bunch of time with too much detailed introduction, so we’re gonna jump right in and I think it’s gonna be a great discussion. But I wanna set the stage for today’s topic. So I’m gonna pull from the Space Force’s commercial strategy. It states, “The Space Force will leverage “the commercial sector’s innovative capabilities, “scalable production, and rapid technology refresh rates “to enhance the resilience “of national security space architectures, “strengthen deterrence, “and support combatant command objectives “in times of peace, competition, crisis, “conflict, and post-conflict.” So today, let’s use the topic of space domain awareness and kind of focus our thoughts and really explore the how do we get at that. So let me start off with the first question and give the panelists an opportunity to share their expertise. When you hear the Space Force talk about commercial strategies and a commercial focus, what does that really mean to you? Mr. White, we’ll start with you, sir.

Brandon White:

Sure, thanks. First, appreciate the invitation. Really looking forward to a lively conversation this morning. I think the first layer of that is really accessing the innovation in the commercial industry and commercial markets. And I would point out that that primary objective of being able to access technology and innovation well beyond the investment of just the DOD and to commercial enterprises is super valuable in informing the ability to access those technologies and then be able to bring those into a commercial mission. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to partner and bring things forward that are much more quickly upgradable than we’ve seen in the past. And so looking forward to a robust discussion and definitely think there’s opportunity that we need to be focusing on and making sure we’re bringing the best of commercial innovation into the tools that your team will be using.

Wallace Turnbull:

What I think comes to mind is what do you mean by commercial? And I think, so when I hear the government say we want a commercial solution, I hear one of two things. Sometimes what I hear is we just wanna go really fast and we want the contracting to be really easy. And we can do that, and I think commercial can work for that really well. But I think where commercial really can add value is when you really understand what it is that you wanna buy, you really understand your requirements. There’s more than one customer that has those same requirements. You’re not the only customer. And we can leverage the market to provide a very predictable service at a predictable price. And I think that’s where the service really ought to focus on leveraging commercial is trying to understand what is it that we really need and who else needs that and how can I leverage the fact that more than one customer is helping pay for the innovation and delivery of that service.

Patrick Biltgen:

Right, you make some good points. And I think when we consider the whole spectrum of commercial solutions, there are commercial data sources or subscriptions, data feeds for raw data or processed information, but also commercial tools and apps. A lot of us are familiar with the kind of things that you see on the front end where when you go to the exhibit hall, you see a lot of these flashy interfaces, new tools that look very different from a lot of our traditional military systems. But you also are seeing a commercial marketplace for things like orbit determination apps or machine learning satellite anomaly apps. Previously, the government would have had to write the requirements for that, spend years in development, maybe have a research lab do it as a science project, and then try to operationalize that. Now there’s potentially a new market to buy those tools and also integrate them into modern ground systems.

Josh Conine:

Yeah, those are all great perspectives and it’s great to be here today. I’ll put a little bit more of an operational context to this as the emphasis continues to be that space is becoming more increasingly contested every day and what those commercial space sensors and their capabilities can do to help close those space domain awareness gaps to bring on a more robust surveillance volume around the globe, obviously, as well as tracking capabilities. My previous experience as an airborne manager, one of the things that I learned was the custody of tracks as you’re going through the sensor to shooter process is extremely important. And so if you’re leveraging only what’s out there from the military aspect, you’re not gonna maintain that custody. And that custody’s gonna allow you to not to have to start that identification process over in order to create the effects that you want to do at the end of the day. So the ability for the commercial space sector to bring scale at speed as well as innovation, but also bring in the data diversity that’s needed to do that job for the end user is what’s the critical point of the purpose of the commercial space strategy.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

So let’s pull some of those threads there. Rhett, you talked a little bit about this is a great ability for us to leverage the market. How does that fit within the traditional defense industry kind of business case, which is usually more requirements pull than leveraging the market?

Wallace Turnbull:

Sure, so we look at it from the same perspective that I think you do when you’re looking at the commercial market is how many people need the same solution? And what’s the business case then for providing a repeatable solution? For Lido specifically, our marketing tagline is making smart smarter. We try to solve problems for our customers in smarter ways. And I think one of those ways is understanding where more than one customer needs the same thing, particularly across different sectors of the business, and then developing that product or that service into a repeatable offering that we can offer at a predictable price. And where it makes sense to do that, where we have multiple customers, we can leverage the fact that we’re building the same thing multiple times to get economies of scale. And we can do the same thing for the government as well.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

Great, Pat, obviously I can’t just ask a question about what one company can do without asking all four of you, so I’ll let you jump next.

Patrick Biltgen:

Well, you know, Colonel, one of the things that’s interesting is the government might have to live with what exists. What I mean is like, if you’re stupidly rich, you can get the most amazing kitchen renovation in the world with handcrafted marble and blah, blah, blah, but the rest of us, you know, it’s whatever they have at Home Depot. So the government is used to setting requirements for exquisite capabilities, it must do this, it must do this, it must do that, and then trying to levy that on commercial companies. And right to your point, okay, but if it’s that exquisite, maybe it only has one customer. So one of the ways the government could reimagine its missions is to say, if I had a commercial capability, what could I do with it? Rather than setting the standards or setting these requirement levels that maybe cannot be achieved. And it’s possible that that commercial capability will not solve every mission problem. For example, you might not be able to get an extremely precise position on an object in space, but you might be able to get pretty good data on almost everything. So is there a mission that we can cover with that type of service if it existed? Those are some of the things that I think an acquisition office needs to consider in the way it would acquire commercial solutions.

Brandon White:

Yeah, can I add that I completely agree, and I think there’s an important aspect that you brought up too, Josh, on track custody and ultimately taking what will eventually be a Title X action, right? And so one of the most important things from a policy and from an acquisition standpoint is to make sure you understand that landscape and the information you’re gonna use and ultimately be prepared to head down the path of what our armed services are supposed to do. So certainly as we think about that, accessing and using commercial data and commercial models, they’re a very important aspect of teeing up and providing a much more affordable landscape, but at some point it will transition into a place where you will need to have that kind of confidence in the decisions that you’re making based on, in many cases, probably a little bit more performance than what a commercial outcome really requires.

Patrick Biltgen:

Yeah, and Brandon, that’s a good point because if the goal is track custody for a Title X action, there’s a question about is there a commercial service that could give some or all of the data for that? And I think we as traditional defense providers tend to think of commercial as like not as good as the thing that we would custom build for the government, but the physics are the same. You’re just buying it differently. So I think if the government were to specify the requirement, I want to maintain custody of these objects with this timeliness and this accuracy, and that was the RFP.

Brandon White:

Right, bingo.

Patrick Biltgen:

That’d be exciting.

Josh Conine:

Yeah, I think that’s, I think those are all great inputs as well, but I’d say back more to the business case perspective is when I think of the commercial data, I see it just as another piece of information that without it being mission integrated is just going into another stovepipe, and we all have our own perspectives of the stovepipes depending on what services you live in, and certainly trying to get through the joint problem set. So specifically for SAIC, we value ourselves in being that trusted mission integration partner to tie that information together to allow it to get to a broad spectrum of war fighters, if you will, and also more importantly in this case, the Guardians themselves. The enemy’s not waiting for us to do this. They’ve already moved out on providing very unique architectures to do decision at speed as well as give them operational flexibility. So the integration of this data for us is extremely important, especially from an industrial perspective or a traditional industry partner perspective is not to bring in this commercial data as just another bolt on to the capabilities that exist there, but actually put it in within the meshing of the capability to allow for that planning, sensing, making sense, and engaging against that aspect while also leveraging that speed and innovation that those commercial partners can provide.

Wallace Turnbull:

Yeah, I’m gonna pull on that thread, Josh, and I think that data is important, but it’s not the product, right? And I think that that’s part, sometimes from a commercial perspective, the government talks about buying data, but I think if you talk about buying outcomes instead, then industry can focus on what’s the product that we have, what’s the tool or the application or the service that we can provide around that data. For example, the data might be observations on space objects, but the product might be tell me every time this set of objects does something I didn’t expect it to do, right? And so focus on the outcomes that you want, not just the data.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

So I love this idea of focusing really on those outcomes. The challenge that comes to my head is, as I sit here, I think to myself, this data is for warfighting purposes. We have Guardians that are making decisions based off of this data that directly impacts systems in space, as well as warfighters in the terrestrial environment. This is 100% wartime operational data that we’re talking about. What guarantees do you have that you can help the government ensure that that data is assured and accessible in all phases of conflict, and how do we really work in that situation? And I’ll, Josh, you wanna jump into that one, give your operational background?

Josh Conine:

I think it all depends on that trust and tolerance that the military user wants at the end of the day. There are unique differences between peacetime and wartime. One goes from a low-risk perspective, in which you could have broad access and lower controls of those data aspects during those time, but as you transition more to high consequence, you wanna make sure that you have tailored licenses, you wanna have the ability and confirmation to have that assured access. You also wanna make sure that you’re being prioritized for the data, and that’s probably a little bit of a rub from the commercial side of the house, because the military’s not their only market provider. They have a public sector that they pay attention to, and some of those can be customer-driven, it could be perspective-driven and personality-driven, as well as customers’ values change through their own equilibriums. They’ll feel the pressure from those customers if, for example, a warfighting element isn’t correct there. But I would say there that, as you’re going through this, the trust that needs to be enabled isn’t necessarily about the technology itself. The controls and the mechanisms can be placed there. I would say it’s more based on the policies that are out there, who owns the data, will it be available at the time and place that I need it. Is it providing me a level of authoritative data that is meshed with other pieces of data so I know that I’m making the right decision at the right time and place?

Patrick Biltgen:

Yeah, this is a really tricky one, because when the Space Force says, “We are contracting with a commercial company “to procure a data stream that we will use for warfighting,” that company is now a target. You can assume that they’ll be compromised in the cyber domain, and you can be assumed they’re gonna be compromised in the physical domain. You can walk up to the building that I work in, there are no dudes with guns there. That is very different than some of the other environments where the military operates. So this is a very sensitive thing, because there are commercial companies that might want to sell a data feed. There’s been some talk about this with commercial satellites that do Earth observation. Are they a target in a military conflict, because they are providing information that we know goes to military operators. So this is something that the government has to, some of these talks talk about indemnifying the companies or protecting them or cyber hardening them, but to openly state this is how we will get data from a focal plane or from a sensor to the warfighter, and there’s a node that is a commercial firm, potentially opens that firm up for being attacked as a military target.

Brandon White:

Yeah, and I think that’s a building on it, just as very good example of where I think there is appropriate thought being put into, and then ultimately decisions of, yes, I’m gonna buy this commercially, but I’m also gonna do X, Y, and Z, so that I know it has the pedigree necessary to take action, I know it’s available, and I know there’s certain protections in place for it. I believe that that will always be part of the calculus that our customers will need to think through up front, so that they know what they’re getting and what they’re not, and then ultimately where we can trust and rely on it and how to do that in an educated way.

Patrick Biltgen:

Yeah, and one quick thing, you also see this with a lot of the commercial software products use commonly known open source apps that everybody knows are packaged. It could be view for visualization, it could be a machine learning package. If you go to the online repositories, you can just watch the bad guys checking in bad stuff, and so that’s another aspect of, hey, as soon as you tell people how the network works, they’re gonna figure out how to penetrate the network. So that’s one of the things where I don’t know anyone has, I mean, I haven’t heard a very good answer on how we would harden those systems, but definitely a concern when we go from, oh, I just need situational awareness and peace time to figure out what things are doing, to no, I’m gonna have a targeting solution that depends on this data.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

So I know from a government acquisition guy, my approach would be very simple. I’m gonna hire some really outstanding big prime contractors to solve that problem for me, and more of the discussion that I’ve heard is, well, we’ve gotta go solve a policy discussion before you can solve it. Is that really your assessment, or do you think that there’s capabilities that you as industry have that can help us on the government side make these policy discussions a little easier?

Wallace Turnbull:

Yeah, I think the answer to that is yes. There are things that we can do to make it a lot easier. Certainly there are policy restrictions, speed bumps that get in the way, and we can work around those, but from a technology side, we can solve all the problems that my colleagues here have raised if we understand what your requirement is. Your strategy says that you’re going to use commercial services and data in all phases of conflict. If you’re clear about that in the RFP or the RFI, or in your communication to industry, this is what I need, and these are the conditions under which I need it, then we can help you solve those things. For example, to Pat’s perspective on the software, that’s a very real problem. We have ways to solve that, hardened containers, a lot of software security and cybersecurity controls that we can put in place to establish chain of trust and understand what’s going into the product that you’re buying. As long as we know what your requirements are, we can solve those problems for you, and I think we can speed run, not around, but maybe through a lot of those policy issues and help you get past those.

Brandon White:

Yeah, I think maybe another good example that helps us illustrate is the discussion about how much classification is too much classification, and the debate around, if we look at any given capability, making it completely unclassified inherently makes it more affordable and more commercial, which is great. It being 100% unclassified sometimes would ask, why do it if we’re gonna hand the adversary the capability that ultimately we’re gonna rely on for defending the nation? So from our view, I think certainly there is a spectrum there and making the right choices up front and sticking with those choices is the approach that we would recommend, but also really thinking about, are you sure we have to classify this? Are you sure, right? And really focus on those crown jewels that are key and leaving everything else to others to make sure that we’re protecting, but ultimately giving us a much more affordable way to operate and execute.

Josh Conine:

Yeah, I think there’s also a shared responsibility here when it comes to policy. It’s not just all on one side or the other. There is a protection measure that comes with being part of the national interest of the United States. And when the commercial world comes into play on that, they become part of that national interest. But I also think it goes back to your original statement of from a procurement perspective, not to go out there and just buy things from the commercial side, buy outcomes at the end of the day and provide those outcomes based on performance-based incentives for those commercial companies, whether they’re in the form of subscription models, tiered access models or usage capabilities, along with making sure that there’s a level of agility there that can scale based on the continuum of competition. So when you go from low risk to high end conflict, are those capabilities gonna be there? Are they gonna be prioritized to meet those mission needs? And I believe you can get to middle ground to that policy, but to go back to that original point is, yes, the integration can be done now. The policy’s gonna come in time. We’re aware of how fast or how slow that can go. It can certainly go a lot faster as the competition continuum increases, but yes, the technology’s there, and that’s why I said before, it’s not about the technology, it comes down to the trust.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

So we’ve talked a lot about commercial data and data as a service models, but I will highlight that the Space Force’s commercial strategy talks more about leveraging. It doesn’t necessarily say it just has to be commercial data. There’s a lot of other growth in the commercial sector that’s happening right now. Do you see opportunities to leverage commercial capabilities, commercial products in more of a traditional government-owned, government-operated system?

Brandon White:

Maybe I’ll start by just saying, yes, I do think that, as I mentioned at the beginning, there is an enormous opportunity for all of us to reach out and be able to take advantage of commercially developed technologies, bring them in, and then be able to harbor them and hold them in a place that does meet some of those additional requirements and expectations. But it’s about finding that right balance and making sure that we understand, no, the government’s not gonna own the IP or the capability associated with this piece of this mission and that’s okay in this case, and making sure we’re working through those traits.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

So it feels like we’re starting to get into that topic of are we doing the right things in the acquisition system to leverage commercial, which I know is a topic we all wanted to get into.

Patrick Biltgen:

Well, there are a lot of interesting things going on in the commercial marketplace. There’s a company called Scout Space that builds a camera that’s a hosted payload to do SDA. Now, I’ve talked to this company. I think it’s a really interesting concept. But I also kind of go like, I wonder how you got the idea to do this, ’cause it doesn’t seem like something that you would have come up with to sell this to the government, either operate a commercial spacecraft with hosted payloads or potentially sell this sensor to the government to put on their systems. So if that type of model proliferated, a lot of the custom development where the government says, I need to build a sensor from scratch that does X, you might be able to build a whole constellation that gives you angular diversity within space sensors, ground-based sensors, through an integration of either buying data sources and/or operating your own spacecraft with commercial payloads, or buying a commercial spacecraft that hosts those payloads. True Anomaly says, hey, we sell a commercial spacecraft bus. There’s probably a Lego problem of, what if you put one of these on one of these and bought this many of them? So that is a very different way of buying than hiring a system integrator to kind of vertically integrate that whole system together, space to ground. But if the government were to say, we’re looking for a commercially integrated solution, it doesn’t mean like companies like us couldn’t partner on that design integration, but it might be comprised of a lot of commercial parts.

Wallace Turnbull:

Yeah, I’ll pull on that thread and to use Pat’s Home Depot example right there. What you need may not exist at Home Depot, but all the parts to put it together might. And I think that if you ask in the right way that gives industry flexibility to put the parts together to solve your problem, we can do that largely from commercial parts. And I will say, kudos to SSC recently, I have seen this in a number of the RFIs and RPPs, RFPs coming out, that you’re asking about those kinds of things, breaking down the problem in sort of small enough chunks that we can go provide a commercial solution to those problems. You’re the PEO for Combat Power, as an example. There’s not a big commercial market for Combat Power in space, and that’s probably a good thing. But many of the problems that you need to solve can be solved with putting together pieces from Home Depot. And if you ask for it in the right way, we can do that.

Patrick Biltgen:

It might take you 10 trips to Home Depot.

Wallace Turnbull:

It might take me 10 trips to Home Depot, but I’ll make those trips and you don’t have to.

Josh Conine:

Yeah, I think that’s an interesting comment about the amount of trips to Home Depot. And with a lot of these commercial marketplaces being placed on the cloud, they are closer to the edge, if you will, for traditional industrial companies to mission integrate these capabilities in. And that’s where we prefer to see them sit. So as the commercial side rapidly innovates and scales these capabilities, we want that ability to take that capability, embed it into the overall system, but be able to provide our own unique military-specific capabilities and layer it on top in order to give the best product possible as fast as possible to that military end user.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

All right, so let’s pull this Home Depot thread a little bit more and say, hypothetically, that you were interested in a geo-based space situational awareness satellite constellation, and considering doing some requests for proposals around that, what would you find as key elements and key aspects in that to ensure that, A, you’re able to look at the Home Depot solutions that are out there, and B, really open up that space and help incentivize companies so that you look and recognize that that’s what the government’s asking for versus a new build of something?

Patrick Biltgen:

Well, I mean, since we’re gonna do Home Depot, don’t send me to the plumbing aisle. I’ll never come out. It’s an NPT, and it’s a 1/2 to a 3/8, and oh my God, there’s so many parts. How do they go together? But actually, that’s the military problem. It’s the plumbing aisle. It’s like every system has a different input and output. They’re all different sizes, they’re different flow rates, they’re different formats. Oh, this is a state vector. That can’t be that hard, can it? Oh, the units are all different. It’s missing fields. Oh, this one isn’t labeled with the classification, so I can’t use it. Okay, so you don’t want to make the problem just about standards and ontologies because you’ll spend the entire budget of the Space Force just doing that. However, all of the providers, like one of the things that companies like ours, one of the benefits is we generally understand a lot of those Byzantine plumbing interfaces, but many new entrants into the acquisition system do not. It’s like I’m producing an image. Well, that’s not the format that the image needs to be in. That standard was developed in 1974, and no one’s heard of it unless they’re in this industry. So there is a level of specification that may be required. Mentor-protege relationships with companies that do this a lot could be helpful. Some element of prototyping, for example, the government could say, here’s the system I want you to integrate with to show me how you can do it, kind of a quick prototyping down select competition. There are some examples of successful procurements that do that, but I think it has to be more than just a demo of a UI or something that’s just flashy. Proving that you can actually do the plumbing and comply with all of the government’s rules at some level might help increase the confidence of those solutions.

Brandon White:

Yeah, I tend to agree, and I would maybe build on the analogy, right? We’re gonna spend a lot of time in Home Depot. We’re gonna be looking for that Made in America sticker. Either I am or I’m not, right? So I gotta make sure I know which parts came from where, and then ultimately building out to your point of, yeah, these are all great pieces, but do they meet the ultimate need and the ultimate mission? And I’ll tell you, we’ve learned it before. We hopefully won’t learn it many times again, but there are lots of opportunities in Home Depot with lots of tools that lots of people will sell me fixed price, which is cool, ’cause then I can give you fixed price. The reality is that we have to make sure that we sustain support, if it is mentor-protege, that we really help those organizations thrive. They have to have the success the first time, and they’ve gotta build on that. And many times, there’s a lot of opportunity out there to get, I’ll say, distracted with great PowerPoint versus the plumbing that actually will produce a mission outcome.

Josh Conine:

Yeah, I agree, except I don’t have the problem with the plumbing aisle. It’s the one with the washers and the nuts and bolts more than anything else.

Patrick Biltgen:

That one, don’t even start with that one.

Josh Conine:

But it’s kinda like the chicken and the egg. I agree, in order to get through that one, you could say that you need some very distinct data standards, if you will, with some of the complexities that Pat had brought on. But it also comes with clarity and requirements, as well as clear contract mechanisms, all of that. And there’s a lot of different mechanisms also. But the chicken and the egg, every time, from my previous experience in the military, you ask for very clear requirements, it means that it’s gonna take a lot more time. So you’re slowing down the aspect of the case in which you’re trying to get this to the end user as quickly as possible. So I don’t have the answer for that, but how do you find that happy medium where this site’s saying, give me more clear requirements so I can go fast for you, but I’m asking you to slow down as well so you can do your homework right. So I know I’m not supposed to ask you questions, but

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

No, I think that’s honestly the problem. This discussion is having me flashbacks of time with government as a system integrator, and the challenges that you have when you’re trying to fit multiple things together, makes me flashback to my other threat, which is if we have government-run standards, we end up with MIL-STD 1553 coded in ADA, and we stick with that forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. So there’s a lot of challenges here that we have to work through. I do think you’re right though, Josh, it hits us on that requirements piece, and how do we work through the requirements to be more fluid almost with the prototyping before we lock in on some final decisions, but there is some flexibility there. Yet as I’m talking through that, the one thing that’s jumping into my head is the investment stability problem. The more that we’re doing prototyping, the more that we’re trying out a whole bunch of different things, I don’t sit in an environment that has investment stability. What are your thoughts in that realm? Especially as we start talking about going into a commercial marketplace and leveraging commercial companies that are small, growing, and I’m talking about maybe trying to do a quick prototype, or maybe I need some data for a short period of time. Do you have any thoughts on that that you wanna go down?

Josh Conine:

Yeah, I think as you have wider competition, you’re gonna see more innovation, but if there’s a level of instability out there from traditional companies, you may see less investment. So the mechanisms to probably try to find the right balance of theirs, the continued use of IDIQ mechanisms and maybe performance-based extensions to allow that balance for the competition to allow a very high level of innovation, while also allowing a traditional military provider the ability to continue to invest, to make sure that those very unique capabilities are ready at the right time and place for the warfighter.

Wallace Turnbull:

I would add that I think you need a transition path. You need to do both, right? You need the innovation, the prototyping, lets you explore the art of the possible, particularly if you’re using commercial capabilities where they may not meet your exact requirements or you don’t know what your requirements are, experimenting helps you understand what the art of the possible is. But if that’s all you do, then there’s not a long-term incentive to how do I invest in this to actually provide a service or a product that you can use long-term. So there needs to be a transition path, and I think that that’s part of, you have to build that into your acquisition strategy. You know, in space domain awareness, for example, I love what SSC is doing with the SDA Tap Lab. That provides a place for industry to come together and rapidly innovate, experiment, try new things, see what works, but once you figure out that something works, there needs to be a path where, okay, now I’m going to use that as part of my commercial strategy for all phases, or these phases of space operations, and there needs to be a path to how do we get on contract that it’s not just, hey, I’m doing, you know, this is a three-month prototype, but this is going to be a long-term part of my strategy, and having an acquisition mechanism to be able to transition those things off. Keep the experimenting going. You need to keep doing that and keep innovating, but there needs to be a transition path.

Brandon White:

One other consideration I’d offer, too, as we’re thinking about significant investments in long-term opportunity is making sure, not just focusing on how does it be commercial or DoD, but more importantly, how is it brought along with our allies and partners, and there will never be a scenario where we are not going into conflict, most likely utilizing or at least aligning with our allies and partners, so up front, acknowledging that and recognizing places where we can go ahead and bring those partners in, give us the visibility that you intend to allow us to make those capabilities available, we’ll all just tie into that long-term business proposition when we’re thinking through a business case for a particular investment.

Patrick Biltgen:

Yeah, and Colonel McClain, this one’s really tricky when the government wants to have a robust commercial market because lumpy funding is very bad, so there’s a big push away from multi-year IDIQs and away from cost-plus contracts, or, hey, we want to recompete contracts every three years instead of every five or every 10 years, but for commercial companies, there are some entities that are fans of really short contracting periods, like four or six weeks at a time, and there’s a sense that if you have this continued competition, it causes a rapid pace of innovation, but it also can starve those companies. If you get the prototype, you have a really big, exciting party because you got the six-week prototype, then the moment of abject terror of, I have to deliver it in six weeks, which is gonna cost a lot more than I’m getting paid for the prototype, but then what happens right after that? And for smaller firms, cash flow is king, and they need that income coming in, so there is, I think, a sense of, hey, I can subscribe to Netflix this month, and then I’m gonna cancel it and go to Disney next month ’cause I got a better price and I like the shows better. Netflix doesn’t care ’cause they have millions of customers, but in this case, these companies have just one customer, and so there may be a model that says, we’re gonna do an RFI, we’re gonna do some prototyping, but then we’re going to select a set of companies that are our trusted partners, we’re gonna give ’em facility clearances, we’re gonna clear some of their people, we are going to co-invest, we’re gonna give ’em some CRAD, a collaborative R&D, so we can leverage their investment. That allows those companies to show their investors that you’re committed, and then they can use that to generate additional funding and have a healthy business. So that aspect of, look, it’s not corporate welfare, but we need to have a robust commercial market ’cause the worst thing that could happen is you do get that data feed that you dreamed of, and it’s integrated with your Home Depot plumbing, and it meets all of the criteria, and then the government shuts down, somebody forgot to pay that company, and they go bankrupt in three weeks, but you needed that feed for your warfighting system. That would be a very bad outcome.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

So as we start coming up towards kind of the home stretch here, just kind of summarize where I think we’re at in this discussion. I’d say one of the first topics that we really hit on was, what is the real policy that we’re talking about for using SDA? There’s definitely some policy questions that I think we’re gonna have to continue to iterate on. We’ve got some models in the government right now that are poking at that, and so we’re looking forward to that. I think there’s definitely a sense from the group that requirements focused on capability, and open enough to allow new ideas or innovative approaches, but not too tight, but also strong enough that you actually understand what we’re asking for, which leads us to kind of that contracting discussion that we talked about, where we really need to have that ability for prototyping early on, but some long-term stability, long-term sustainment for that real return on investment, and pulling that all together with concepts of, how can we leverage allies and partners? How do we maintain contracts that support that? I think that’s kind of where the group is at. We’ve got about two minutes left for any closing parting thoughts or corrections to what I just summarized. Josh, how about we start out with you?

Josh Conine:

Yeah, no feedback back to you, sir, but I just go back to what the key element is here, and it’s to provide that deterrent factor, and I think a lot of that starts with decision advantage, and that starts also with space domain awareness within this regime anyway, so what I ask is, don’t allow this commercial data to be stovepiped. Start with an integration mindset at the beginning, so it is there constantly, and it’s flowing up and down through the right elements, not only within the space domain, but also through the joint and coalition world as well.

Patrick Biltgen:

In a lot of industry engagements, Colonel, the government will often ask companies, how do you think we should buy this, or what acquisition strategy would work? And you probably get hit from 15 different angles with all kinds of clever lobbyists, and sneaky tactics, and whatever, but I think a deep analysis of, why do you think we should do it like that, would really help the government figure out the potential pitfalls in an acquisition strategy that would get you something that you weren’t expecting. So I think when you have those engagements, instead of focusing really 100% on the capability, and the technology, to go, how would you want me to buy this from you, and why do you think that?

Wallace Turnbull:

We’ve talked a lot about the benefits of commercial solutions, and I think they often are the answer, but they’re not always the answer. So I would start with a conversation with industry, when you have a new problem, is this something that commercial can solve, is there a market for this, how would you solve this with commercial technology, and then go from there, before you jump into, here’s my CSO, I wanna buy this commercial product.

Brandon White:

Yeah, maybe I’ll just wrap up by building there as well, right where we started. What do we mean when we say we want commercial? Part of my organization, we do a ton of commercial work, it’s awesome, it’s great business by the way, but what do we mean when we actually ask, I want commercial, but here’s what I really need? I think that’s the place to start the conversation, to lay out the overall business case, that ultimately will give us all ability to make decisions along the way.

Col. Bryon E.C. McClain:

All right, well there’s some zeros on the clock down here, so Josh Conine, Rhett Turnbull, Brandon White, and Pat Biltgen, thank you all very much, and I hope you all have a great rest of the AFA conference, thank you all.