Moving Target Indications from Space

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Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like to welcome you to our panel, Moving Target Indications from Space. I’m Jennifer Reeves, Senior Resident Fellow for Space Studies at The Mitchell Institute’s Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence.

Space is a domain that is critical to our military’s success. So much of the information our warfighters depend on, whether it’s GPS-enabled navigation, communications, or command and control is provided using space-based assets. If all goes to plan, soon another important mission set will be supported by space, ground and air moving target indicators.

GMTI and AMTI are critical to tracking targets on the land, sea and in the sky, and are a prerequisite for success on the battlefield. Both the Space Force and elements of the Intelligence Community, including the National Reconnaissance Office are looking at how best to leverage the vantage point of space to provide GMTI and AMTI support to the Joint Force.

Setting this up is no easy task and will require the development of new capabilities along with an understanding of the proper roles and responsibilities to each party. To discuss this topic, I’m honored to be joined by an exceptional panel of key leaders leading this project, Lieutenant General Greg Gagnon, Dan Stewart, and Dr. GP Sandhoo.

General Gagnon is the commander of U.S. Space Force’s Combat Forces Command. Mr. Stewart previously served as the acting principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, as well as Deputy Director of NRO’s GEOINT office. And Dr. Sandhoo is the acting director of the Space Development Agency. Welcome, gentlemen.

It is a distinct pleasure to have them with us today and to discuss this incredibly relevant topic, and so let us begin. First, General Gagnon, can you set the lay of the land for our audience? We’ve done GMTI and AMTI from airborne assets in the past. So what are some of the new opportunities that space brings to this mission?

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

Well, thank you for the introduction and thank you for listening to us talk for about 37 more minutes about something the three of us have been working for about two and a half, three years. Let’s kind of talk about how we got to where we are in this room today.

Decisions were made, both in the United States and in Beijing, and those decisions that were made in Beijing boots was to build an Anti-Access Area Denial defense off the coast of China. Those decisions were made by President Xi when he came to power.

He rapidly consolidated power. Start about 13 years ago, he starts making investments. And what we start to see is an integrated air defense system that continues to push back air power further and further back into the Pacific. So those decisions, those decisions made in Beijing are incredibly important to why we’re in here today, because if we had a permissive air environment, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Many people forget that.

JSTARS and AWACs are not going to survive right off the coast of China at the beginning of a war. We’ve all been given very clear guidance that we need to be able to defend U.S. interests and power project. And based off of that, we had to make adjustments to our force design and our force structure. That’s what caused the Department of War and the Pentagon and the Hill to decide that the ultimate high ground is no longer 45,000 feet. The ultimate high ground is actually in outer space.

So we took those critical, critical warfighting capabilities that we did in the air element or the air domain, and we raised them higher. And we were able to do that because of decisions made in another location in the United States and not by Capitol Hill, and not by DARPA, and not by all our tech innovators, by our private sector.

Our private sector has innovated so much over the last decade that we’ve lowered launch costs, we’ve increased miniaturization, and our optical and IR sensing and radar sensing has gone through exponential improvements. Those type of technologies with the decisions made in Beijing is why we’re on this stage today.

Your simple question was, how is GMTI, ground moving target indicator different than air moving target indicator? The answer is kind of simple and kind of complex. Obviously, it’s speed. The other issue is clutter, and that’s why the technologies that these two men are experts in are so critical to how we move forward.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome. Thank you so much. Mr. Stewart, do you have anything to add to this conversation?

Dan Stewart:

Well, I would like to highlight the last phrase there. What we’re really talking about when it comes to moving target indicators, especially with some of the airborne activity is speed of processing. It’s a very challenging, very hard technical problem.

If you look at the scale of moving target indications going from a navy, relatively slow-moving ships, open ocean, generally not very dynamic movers, to ground moving target indication where you’re talking with large vehicles, generally following roads, again, not going too fast, to an airborne environment where you have a cluttered background, three-dimensional space moving in all directions, it’s technically very hard to put together, at speed, being able to project and predict where those types of targets are.

So the second piece of that, that we need is being able to incorporate additional ground processing capability to bring those smarts into an environment and being able to work that in real time, in the need of the display of the data providers and the data recipients.

The third thing that comes into it is we need to recognize. You hinted at it. This is not a single-mission phenomenology. We talk a lot about radar and radar capability as … Certainly from an all day, all night, all-weather environment, radar plays a key component, but this is really a multi-inch challenge.

And we’ve been involved in that type of moving target processing, and being able to maintain custody between those different types of phenomenologies, and working to do those processes because while you’re tracking these things, you want to make sure that you have a handoff into that next environment or that next collector that’s coming over the hill.

The last thing I’ll mention, the advantage of going to space now gives you global coverage. If you’re looking at a JSTARS or something like that environment, you’re really looking at a regional capability. Moving to a space environment gives you global opportunity to be able to apply collection wherever you need it across the globe and be responsive to whatever capability the warfighter needs.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome.

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

Yeah, boots. If I could drag that forward about coverage and the change. So this is a change in scale and scope. This is a change in scale and scope of our ability to sense. If your premise is that this replaces JSTARS, the Air Force had 16 JSTARS, home-based in Georgia. They had two permanent detachments around the world. Those two detachments, each one of them would generate about an eight to 10-hour coverage sortie with a couple of aircraft.

The area they would cover was about the size of West Virginia, and they would spend the beginning hour of that vault trying to figure out what’s going on and what they’re tracking. So think about having area coverage on the globe equivalent to two West Virginias. What Dan just said is, we’re going to have the ability globally, 24/7 when we’re at end state. That’s a profound difference in both scale and scope.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

So, that’s such a perfect lead-in to this question. We want to hear from each of you, how you envision this ideal future architecture with capabilities that come from the space domain and maybe from the air domain as well. So Dr. Sandhoo, can we start with you, sir?

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

Yeah, sure. So I just want to kind of emphasize just a little bit what General Gagnon said earlier. So when the SDA was stood up back in 2019, the focus was from what he alluded to, now it has expanded, was that advanced missile threats that were designed to go after the United States Navy at the time, right?

So we have to close the sensor coverage gap. We had to get to a very low latency architecture that could get that information to the tactical and operation users at relevant timelines, right? So that’s why SDA has been focused on for the last four or five years, to build out the architecture.

Now as the threat has continued to expand, we have added in additional capabilities for the AMTI, GMTI, other things that have been developed over the time. So how do you build a completely resilient architecture to be able to do all of those things? And the leverage comes from the commercial sector here.

It’s not a matter of technology, because we can leverage commercial tech, but it comes down to the ability to actually do it quickly, and build it rapidly, and launch it, and get it integrated to the rest of the architecture that we have already.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Great.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So that’s what SDA has been focused on. So, almost all the technologies that we are looking at to solve this problem have been developed, not every single one of them, but almost all of them have been developed commercially for other users and we are doing our best to leverage those.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Oh, that’s great.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

Yeah.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

So Mr. Stewart, do you have any thoughts on what this architecture could look like, that you can share with us?

Dan Stewart:

Well, I think one of the challenges is specifically within the context of the question, what is that architecture? And from an NRO perspective, we rely on, we just look at it from a perspective, what does the warfighter need? What supports the mission, and the capability, and the timelines they need?

As a entrepreneur data provider, it’s how does our collection capability fit into that broader architecture that spans COCOMs, different services, the IC, different transport methodologies. It’s a very broad community of engagement across that, which makes it very complicated to try to figure out those touch points. But we need, from our perspective, looking at improving our sensing capability with finer resolution and accuracy, revisit capabilities, how we process that data in a timely manner, be it on orbit or on the ground, and then be able to deliver that in a secure manner. That’s kind of our, I’ll say, our part of the piece of the puzzle within that broader architecture.

What it leaves out and what’s very important is, how does that fit in within the, I’ll say, the warfighting question being asked? What’s coming or going? What’s over the next hill? How do I support an attack vector in realtime flight? Those are broader DOD, DOW architecture capability that we play a piece of.

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

So boots, unlike the PhDs and the experts to my right, my architecture desires are kind of just two things. One, it’s an architecture that can continue to learn how it’s going to adapt its processes. And two, it’s an architecture that enables forward control. When we started this capability, we talked about assured sensor access for the combatant commands through their Space Force component.

So the JTF, if that satellite’s overhead, knows that, that JTF has access to that satellite, to track the target it needs. That’s why this is a military surveillance capability in part because we need to assure that forward commanders have sensor control. Because they’re doing mission planning, they know what they’re going to strike, they know which targets they need to increase track confidence on, and they’re best positioned to deliver that outcome. That’s why Space Force is delivering GMTI to the Joint Force.

That’s one of the reasons Space Force is standing up component field commands in each of the combatant commands, so that there is a senior Space Force officer who’s responsible for that operation of that capability in support of their combatant commander.

On the learning point, we’re learning today. We’re working very closely with our partners at NGA and with the NRO to work through how we’re doing automated collection strategies, and automate is the key thing because this needs to move at the speed of operations. And two, how we can continue to further develop ATR algorithms with industry so that we can get after the threat, because the threat will be a lot of different tracks and we’ll have to work through that.

Right now, we’re in a good position with partnering with everyone. We’re in all the right places and we’re continuing to learn. So my two takeaways are assured sensor access for the warfighter and institutional learning as we prototype a one-of-a-kind capability for surveillance in this world.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So, what I was going to add to that was that the architecture that SDA started back in ’19 was to ensure that we are backwards compatible. To General Gagnon’s point, to they don’t need a new kit. The existing radios, terminals that are fielded already in the thousands can receive this information from the space layer, right?

So we just added a space layer piece to that, which is critical because if you’re going to field all new equipment, that changes the timelines for this.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Sure.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So for the first three tranches that we’ve been focused on at SDA, it is backwards compatible to the existing radios, terminals that are out there, from the lance corporals to the captains and lieutenants in the cockpits, to all the staff out there.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Oh, that’s great. So Mr. Stewart, going back, thinking about the architecture that you’re talking about, do we see any differences in what is needed for GMTI versus AMTI? I mean, are there some things that are compatible and easier to do, say for example, from space with AMTI versus GMTI? Something that one of them requires that the other does not.

Dan Stewart:

From an architecture perspective, they’re very similar. The key feature is we need to run it faster and we need better coverage. And more importantly, we need to also focus on those visualization tools. Being able to synthesize information at the point of delivery is critically important in how we present that information and move it around the world globally.

The backward compatibility, the people with the handsets in the field, being able to transmit that information in a way that can clearly understand the operating picture is very important. We don’t own a lot of that piece of the puzzle, but we’re feeding that, and we’re working together with some of our internal visualization tools, to try to integrate that into a broader warfighting picture. That’s one of the key components.

The other aspect is really looking at how we transform the overhead collection architecture. The NRO is in the middle of a process to do that. We have launched over 200 satellites in the last year, specifically forward-looking in terms of how we can support timely, assured, secure data delivery and data collection through an architecture. And we’ll be continuing to do that through the rest of the decade, specifically with this community in mind.

The last thing that kind of comes with that is we are facing a mountain of data. The scale of, volume of data that we’re looking at with these systems is just going to be overwhelming unless we really start applying some of the AI methodologies or machine learning, the automatic target recognition. The more we can automate that capability, the better off we’ll be to leverage the data that we’re already putting into the system today, as well as what’s coming in the future.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s great. And that actually leads into my question for Dr. Sandhoo about the fact, and you’ve already mentioned it, about the push that we want to engage and have our commercial partners working with us on this.

Also though, we need to leverage those efficiencies while taking care to protect the sensitivity of the information, of the commercial technologies that bring us the information. So how do we balance all of that? How do we balance the sensitivity of it?

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

Yeah. So when you say commercial, it’s not necessarily that you are having a commercial entity do this for you, right? It’s the commercial technologies that are being implemented into the architecture and the satellites that we are building and we have the crypto on there, right?

It is what I would call, going from … Nobody can feed in the system that is beyond the edge of human knowledge. And the question becomes, how do we take the knowledge that has been gained in a commercial sector and put it to use for defense applications?

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, that makes sense.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So when you leverage that knowledge that is being gained through, be it startups, used to be 20 years ago, it was all the government labs and those kind of places where that came from. These days, it’s all coming from not just national, United States, but also internationally, there’s technology development that happens.

So how do you take that knowledge that has been gained and put it to use for defense applications? We are not trying to go buy things from commercial sector as a service. We are building systems that are based on that knowledge that has been gained.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Oh, super.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

Right? But at the same time, we are also, before we go do that, our motto is demonstrate it, then proliferate. To demonstrate, we will go leverage commercial technology. Literally, we just released a contract this week to leverage a commercial constellation to do some testing on their … We are not paying for the satellite, we’re just paying for the data. If that works and solves the problem, then we’ll go see the next step.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Great.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So that’s the difference, is we are gaining the knowledge from the commercial by building the architecture to support the warfighter.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Super. Well, let’s keep going in this sort of thoughts about who is doing what. General Gagnon, between the military and the IC, are we talking about how the responsibilities for MTI are being delineated?

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

Yep, we are. We’ve actually had that discussion and we’ve kind of solved that discussion as we move forward. That was sort of the history of the last 18 months of this and that came to culmination really, in a security classification guide where the Space Force leaned as far forward as humanly possible to keep it as low as possible on the classification levels.

Obviously, the table itself is classified, but we have set this system up so it is one that can feed each of the services inside their targeting cells, whether that’s a DCGS for the Air Force or whether that’s a NIFE for the Navy or if it’s TITAN for the Army, but to do it at a data level, and at a data level that doesn’t cause the data machine to choke on a classification.

We have also, purposely done this classification table so that we can partner with our allies in any theater this may take place because remember, this is a global capability and we’re also inside that design, making sure that we can take care of each investor’s needs, whether that investor is the National Intelligence Community for some segment of this or whether that investor is the Department of War.

And for the Department of War, the assured sensor access is that key thing. But not just assured sensor access for what the DOW bought, but I can make that even better if I can lay in all the intelligence communities, other information on top of that. So that’s why that partnership is so important.

I will tell you, we may have a $900-billion budget, but the Intel Community has about a hundred-billion-dollar budget. So if you give me a dollar and I give you back a dollar and nine cents, you tend to like me, right? So that type of thinking with ROI and then thinking about, “Hey, if this thing costs this much money, maybe I can get some partners to throw in with me and we can do this collaboratively.” That’s all been worked out, that’s been thought through, and we’re kind of in learning mode to implement mode.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Oh, that’s great. So Mr. Stewart, in a time of conflict, it’s important that we can provide our warfighters and analysts with the information and data they need in the fastest manner possible. That’s certainly what we’ve been talking about. So how is the NRO tackling this challenge?

Dan Stewart:

I think you heard some of the answer, previously there. One step we’re doing is practicing with the systems we have today. Later this year, we’ll actually be launching a demonstration for ground moving target indications, but we have a lot of MTI capability that we can extract from systems already on orbit today.

So working through that community he just described, we’re actively talking about, how do we work that tasking, collection, dissemination process? And the more we practice, the better we’ll be, the more we’ll learn, and that will influence and adjust how we approach our future systems as we start to field those in the future years.

The second thing is looking at what the actual information need is at the point of delivery. If you’re taking an image, you don’t necessarily need to send the whole image to wherever the destination for that is. If you can extract the meaningful information out of that image and send that, that is often a reduced classification or a smaller data set and could even be transmitted directly to a small handset in the field with minimal impact or issue.

So it’s thinking about, how can we practice with the systems we have today, but also looking at how we can manage the classification and the data extraction so we can disseminate that at speed.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s great. Thank you so much. So with that, I’m going to go back to Dr. Sandhoo and ask about how your role in the procurement and acquisition process is sometimes working with both the IC and the military. And so how do you coordinate between both of them to deliver on the capabilities that we need for MTI?

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So the model that SDA has taken, to General Gagnon’s point earlier, right? Now, Space Forces has Space Forces in INDOPACOM. We just stood up Space Forces NORTHCOM about a month ago. But where we started back in 2019 was what we call the Warfighter Council, which was a direct feedback from the warfighters of what their needs are.

Within that council, we had every COCOM, every service, and the IC in that discussions. So we meet on a regular basis, almost on a monthly basis as a working-group level. And twice a year, we get together and we see what is the need from the warfighter that can be met with a commercially viable solution and a proliferated architecture.

So that’s the process we have used up until now to get to a point where we are. That’s how the IC comes into the picture. I talk to our colleagues on a regular basis at the working level and also at the senior level, almost on a regular basis. Every six months, we have a Warfighter Council. I’m always there. I see other NGAs there. And of course, all the warfighting communities are represented.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So that’s how we pull in all the information to come up with a solution that we can go out and move on out.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, that’s great. I’m sure people are heartened by that. Oh, go ahead, sir.

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

Yeah, yeah, boots. A good example of this is a singular architecture to support, let’s just say missile warning. And the fact that the Space Force delivers missile warning to the Joint Force, inside the Joint Force because we have radars everywhere, right? We’re part of the team, but we also do it for national command authority and we also do it for the Intel Community.

The Intel Community also takes that data and they help work the technical intelligence and the signatures of all those IR plumes so that the system itself continues to get better and we learn more about adversary weapon systems.

This architecture that will help us track targets from a Department of War perspective is really about moving target engagement. It’s about connecting what you know to your battle management system so that you can create an effect. And maybe that effect is kinetic and getting rid of that target, but that same network is going to be connected to the National Intelligence Community.

So it can help them in their business of understanding the battlespace, supporting combatant commanders, and answering national command authority questions.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s great. So keeping on that train of thought, from your perspective as the commander of Combat Forces Command, what does mission-ready look like for the units that you will present to the combatant commands, and how are you building the training and certification pipeline to get them there?

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

So, where we are in the story today is that we’re establishing a squadron that has global responsibilities for architect, and working with the satellites with the NRO, and we’re doing that very deliberately.

The second thing we’ve done is we’ve leaned forward and we’ve put almost two dozen guardians into the National Geospatial Agency so that we could think about how to complement their mission area with Department of War mission area for the Space Force. And in the future, we’ll move our global squadron, and that global squadron will execute sort of the tasks into the architecture.

Now, that doesn’t really answer the question if you’re the INDOPACOM commander or the UCOM commander. So we’re also moving elements into our component field commands, which are our senior Space Force officers in those combatant commands that lead our component.

We have components set up in, I don’t have the number exactly right, but I think it’s seven or eight because we just established the one last week, and we’re building those out in each of the combatant commands because moving target indicator or moving target engagement is a capability we are providing inside the Joint Force to take care of the requirements of the JTF or the other service components.

And what we will see is we’re simply at chapter two of this story, but there will be many chapters to this story. The key thread I want in each chapter is how we learned, got more precise, got more timely, and got more effective.

There’s a few things that everyone in this room doesn’t even question anymore. No one in this room, regardless of their country of origin or their uniform questions that the Space Force will deliver missile warning, that it’ll be timely, that it’ll be global.

Well, I will tell you back in Desert Storm, we only had strategic missile warning and we innovated it to make it tactically relevant. Today, that story is one where it’s 100% assured and we just accept it like air. Right? The second thing is we push PNT even through contested environments to make sure that we know where we are and our weapons know where we are. Desert Storm, same time period. That constellation wasn’t even complete.

So there are things that we’re still learning today, but in 30 years, the assurity of global moving target engagement delivered by your Space Force will be as certain as missile warning and PNT. I don’t think it’s going to take 30 years either.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s awesome. Well, everyone, we have 10 minutes left of this really interesting panel. And what I want to do is I want to give each of the panelists an opportunity to speak free flow, let them tell you what they want to tell you and leave with you the most important thoughts that they might have about MTI. And sir, we’ll start with you, Dr. Sandhoo.

Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo:

So, I think we’ve been on this journey, at least SDA, it’ll be seven years in April trying to feel the … Again, we started with the missile warning side of things. And one of the things we had to realize was that every kind of used to this OODA loop four-step process, and it is no longer the case. This is very much a non-linear process to stay ahead of the threat.

Our fundamental goal was to pace the emerging threat, and that goal stays the same. Again, focus has been on the advanced hypersonics, FOBS, MOBS, all this stuff. We’ve been after that. Now as that has expanded, we’ll continue to work with our partners, and the strategy and the acquisition strategy that will be forthcoming to do all that is TBD, but the fact remains that we have to have the sensor coverage to meet this threat. We have to have that timely delivery of that information to the warfighter.

And we’ll be working with … General Gagnon, we have guardians that are at OC North and OC South already working as LNOs. At some point there will be a full team there, but in the meantime, that’s where we’re focused on.

So the mission is there. We are hyperfocused on it. We need to make sure we get our first goal, which was the missile tracking piece done. And then right after that, we are working with our aerial partners to get the AMTI done.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s exciting. Thank you so much. Mr. Stewart, what do you have for the team?

Dan Stewart:

Probably the simplest statement I could make is, this is hard. It is a complicated problem. The scope and scale of moving this layer to space is unprecedented. We have been trying to consider these types of collection capabilities on orbit for decades. It’s been an incredible combination of commercial capability, technology engagement, communication, precision. All these advancements kind of coming together in this timeframe that are starting to make this high-interest wish a very real capability that we’re getting ready to deliver.

It’s not that we’re going to make it, I’ll say, 100% every step of the time. We’re going to learn. We’re going to probably do a few things that we wish we didn’t. We’ll have to go back and fix those. That’s okay. That’s part of the process.

So as we’re going through this process, as we’re learning how to deal with the volume of data that we’re getting ready to deliver, as we think about how we deliver that information to the edge so people can take action on that, recognize that we’re evolving an architecture that involves a lot of moving pieces that all have to move perfectly in synchronicity to be able to deliver that capability that so many people are going to depend on, because at the end of the day, we have to be right.

The assessments we make about targets, about our analytics, about our data. If we’re going to take action based upon that information, we want to make sure we’re providing the best answer we can to the people that are depending upon that. And so we will learn through that process and deliver that capability. And we understand the needs of the warfighter. We’re committed to be a part of that conversation and delivering the solution. And we’re excited to leverage what we have today and we’re even more excited for what’s yet to come.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome. Thank you. Sir?

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

I’ll ask you all to put on your history class hat. Okay? Reconnaissance changed before in a transformational way when an adversary delivered the SA-2 and proved that U-2s could not penetrate, right? So we went to space once before to help gain the advantage and maintain the initiative.

I discussed the sensor coverage areas. Dan talked about the speed at which we’re looking to employ and pursue targets. I need you to also keep your thinking cap on and realize that this is not incremental change. This is transformational change about what we’re talking about doing.

For those of you who have the battle scars of doing global force management inside the Department of Defense, that’s how we allocate stuff around, you’ve realized that some of the biggest food fights of some of the senior most officers are about, “I need that aircraft. You can’t have that aircraft because he has that aircraft on the other side of the world.”

That discussion won’t necessarily apply to this capability because as we are sensing in East Asia, we’ll probably very likely still have sensor capacity and energy on the spacecraft to be sensoring in the Arabian Peninsula or in Eastern Europe. So those trade-offs of just 16 JSTARS, that’s no longer the trade-off.

The trade-off is, how do we connect our sensor grid to our engagement grid and how do we make sure that to defend freedom, we got enough bullets, because ammo matters.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Yes, it does. Gentlemen, anything else for this audience at this point? We just have a few more minutes. Sir, you got something else?

Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:

I got the part two to this that people don’t think about. Okay? What pushed us away from being in the operating area? The threat. Okay? The threat and the decisions made in Beijing didn’t stop about A2/AD in the air domain. They’ve also seek to extend that to space.

We have a choice. We don’t have to cede that advantage to them. The Space Force has three major mission areas. We do access to space with the world’s greatest launch infrastructure. We do global operations, of which this moving target indicator week, kind of term space-based sensing and targeting, which is part of our taxonomy.

But the third area is space control, and space control should be invested in because there’s no reason to cede the initiative in outer space. In fact, in order to do all the things we think we need to do as a service, we think we probably need to double in size. And with that, we need the corresponding infrastructure to make sure that there’s never a day without space, because controlling the high ground has profound impact on the outcomes of war, but that high ground is no longer the air.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Absolutely. Thanks for bringing that home, sir, really. We really appreciate it. And ladies and gentlemen, we really have come to the end of this panel.