Northern Tier Defense
March 4, 2025
Watch the Video
Read the Transcript
This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Houston Cantwell of the Mitchell Institute, and it’s absolutely my pleasure to welcome you today to talk about our northern tier defense today, we face an increasingly complex and contested arctic environment. It poses significant challenges to our homeland defense. Russia continues to expand and modernize its military and its presence in the region while conducting provocative operations near our North American airspace, China has declared itself a near Arctic state and is steadily increasing its capabilities to operate in the high north the Chinese surveillance balloon incident from a few years back highlighted some concerning gaps in our ability to detect and track threats approaching from the northern vectors. President Trump recently weighed in on this topic, issuing his Iron Dome, now golden dome Executive Order emphasizing the priority being placed on homeland defense. Given this context, Arctic defense has gained increased priority. The northern warning system, which was designed back to detect Soviet bombers during the Cold War, must evolve to address modern threats like cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. We need new capabilities and concepts to achieve persistent domain awareness across the vast Arctic expanse while operating in one of the world’s most challenging environments. Given these challenges, I am absolutely honored to have with us today three distinguished leaders who bring very unique and expert perspectives on how we’re going to strengthen Arctic defense. First of all, general Guillot, due to inclement weather, could not make it here today, but we are most honored to be joined by Major General Jonas Wikman, Chief of Staff of the Swedish Air Force. Next, we are excited to have Scott Gilloon, Senior Director for mission architecture at General Atomics, aeronautical systems. And then finally, we are glad to have Major General Chris McKenna of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Major General McKenna currently serves as the Canadian NORAD regional commander. Gentlemen, thank you all for being here. We’re going to start off with the questions. I’m going to set the stage with a little context, little strategic context. Russia continues to rebuild and supplement their permanently assigned Arctic military forces, while China has declared itself this near Arctic state, we’ve seen an unprecedented level of coordinated Chinese and Russian Arctic military and scientific operations. All of this has been occurring while the Arctic continues to warm at a rate two to three times the rest of the planet, so we can only expect increasing levels of activity across the region, gentlemen, why do you think Arctic security deserves our attention and an increased priority? What are your biggest concerns over the panel?
Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman:
Right? I’m the one to kick it off, I guess. Thanks guys, no worries. First of all, thanks for having me back this on this conference. Really, truly great opportunity for for dialog and to have have conversations on these importing matters. So thanks. Now I think, yeah, I think you put it pretty well in your forward there and in the question itself. I mean the increase increasing importance of the Arctic region right now. Russia keeps investing. I think the word continues to invest is the right word to choose. They have never stopped to invest. They have never stopped to reinvest in their strategic military capabilities in the Arctic and the dual use capabilities, adding China and adding the melting, melting produces a kind of different and I think in some ways, new threat trajectory for us, new threat directory for for Scandinavia, for the Nordic nation, for Europe, for for NATO, and I think for for us as well. So it really well deserves our attention in these times. In my mind, I think my biggest concern is this, that we fail to recognize. Is the urge to speed up the pace, to get back on track when it comes to the Arctic, when it comes to invest, invest in our capability, in our capability to operate in Arctic as allied and partners, and fail to really assess the atmosphere in the Arctic. I think that’s the assessment part, and the operational part is, to me, the most important part right now for us.
Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna:
I can go next. You want Scott, okay, so I’m going to try my best to be the Tony Robbins of integrating Air missile defense for North America today. So first and foremost adversaries is the first is the first reason so Russia, illegal, unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine. It causes them to be named by my government as an adversary. And quite honestly, they are the acute threat, in my view, to North America. And they clearly have a lot of part to play in the Arctic, historically, with their long range aviation, which is what I spend most of my days trying to deter China their aspirations as a self declared near Arctic state caused them to be regarded by, obviously by my country, as the pacing threat to global peace and security. And I spent a lot of time watching what they’re doing at the 1012, and two o’clock to North America. So in my role, I’m a Canadian NORAD region commander. I’m also the Joint Force Air Component Commander for Canada. And these are the two threats that I spend a lot of my time caring about and trying to deter on a daily basis inside of a binational command with the US to detect, deter, and, if necessary, defeat these adversaries and their threats to North America. So it’s the rise of Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic and the new Arctic that we are seeing that I spent my entire summer watching. This summer, we had the Alaska Region and myself countering the combined bomber patrol with the Chinese and the Russians conducting a bounce to ranadier to take a run at the air defense identification zone for Alaska and Canada. And the US were shoulder to shoulder in that deterrent moment, and we were in position for that deterrent moment. The second is that architect security, in my view, is economic security, not just for Canada and the US, but for our Euro Atlantic partners, fundamentally economic security. So these are the threats, and this is the context that I sort of live and fight in, and that we are forced developing against in Canada from a sort of circa 2014 when the Ukraine was first invaded by Russia, we started really deeply thinking about how we must modernize rapidly. Takes a while in Canada to modernize. We’re getting there. 2017 defense policy followed in 2022 by NORAD modernization plan. $87 billion allocated against that, and then more than 100 allocated in our most recent defense policy this past year, Canadian dollars, so like 70 cents on the dollar, dropping by the day. But irrespective real money that is buying real hard power, finally, for us, and I can get into some of the things we’re buying, I also think the other aspect is that the Arctic is really austere. I think people don’t really realize I have a 10 million square kilometer, sort of, for a metric, on you country with 245,000 kilometers of coastline, I have six paved runways longer than 5000 feet north, of 60 degrees north. That’s an ace challenge about where you can disperse your jets to and where you can conduct agile combat employment. And then lastly, pre handed over Scott here is presence equals interest, and you need to be there to deter. You need to be there to deter. And it’s tricky. It’s extremely abrasive environment to operate in for aviators and airmen, and it’s extremely difficult on the aircraft that we operate there. I’ll pause there.
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, real quick. You bring up a great point, sir. We have lots of airmen who have operated out of Elmendorf Air Force Base, and they’re like, we’ve been to the Arctic. Well, you’ve been, you’ve been close to the Arctic. You got to get a little a few more 100 miles north, and it’s a completely different area as you, as you just articulated. So thanks.
Scott Gilloon:
Sorry. So I think first I’d like to say thanks to the panel members here. I think the perspective that you bring is hugely important, you know, because we all sort of interface with the Arctic, and we have to work together. So it’s, it’s amazing to see kind of the panel composition, at least. Thanks to slider, to you and the Mitchell for for hosting this, and really to the audience there, for everybody who navigated their way to to this ballroom, appreciate it industry perspective. So don’t own the forces. Don’t do those things. What we try and do is figure out, hey, where are the gaps? Where can we develop a technology or leverage an existing technology and apply that to that gap, to try and close that for our partners, FMS, partners, on different platforms, for NATO, certainly for anyone across or any one of our allies and partners for the United States. So we look at it that way. So in part, one of the aspects of my team at General Atomics, we look at this when you say, Hey, where are the gaps? First, I think at least for my team, we found it useful to sort of reorient our thinking for the Arctic, because it’s different and the way I explain it to them. And again, being the slow guy up here, I gotta like, you know I speak. I use big fatty crayons, and I try to use small words, but reorienting our way of thinking, meaning it’s closer to Russia and China from the north than it is from the east or west. And when I say that, I think that that’s kind of the way we need to look at it. Talk about the threats, you know, the challenges in the Arctic. I think we have to understand that when we talk on NORAD perspective, we look at it and we say, Okay, well, what does NORAD have to defend? That’s a 7000 mile stretch from the tip of the Aleutians over to Labrador. To put that in perspective again, the slow guy, I kind of take my Google when I look at my Google Maps, look at it, I say, Wow, that’s, that’s like going from Singapore to Sapporo in Japan and back to kind of put a little perspective there. It’s kind of a big line. And so we say, well, what can we bring, you know, what are those challenges on the detection side? I think Golden Dome, I think it’s going to deliver some real capability to detect. I think, as you stated, sir, you know the different capabilities that we’re going to bring online. I think we’re going to start to to manage the the detection phase of things. I think so. So, you know, we’ll kind of get there. But I think, really, for me, kind of the concern wise in industry, which we take a look and we go, okay, well, what happens then? Like, what’s the what’s the point after the Detect right? Because a maritime challenge on the north com side can quickly turn to a challenge, a maritime an emergent challenge on the NORAD side. And so what we have to do on the industry aspect is figure out, Hey, what are the technologies that can help them bridge that gap? And that’s kind of where we come at it from. So concerns, when we look at it, say, Well, what follows the detection is it ISRs. Do we want to surveil? If so, what do we want to surveil? Do we want to do SIGINT? Do we want to just put a camera on it? Those type of questions. And so do we have the right technologies that will allow that operating in the high north? And I think we’ll probably get into this. It’s different. It’s just a lot different. So in industry, have we developed all of the things, or can we leverage technologies from the commercial sector to help with that. So those are kind of some of the concerns, I guess, but, but then the last one, I’d say, and this kind of, I guess, you know, I had a military background, so I can at least understand some of this. And so we look at it, and we say, hey, how do we now, once we detect if we surveil, all right, what’s, what’s, then, what’s left of all of that? Right? Because a NORAD challenge from it doesn’t matter if you’re a commercial vessel that then, you know, from a shipping container releases small UAS, or you’re a bear that has cruise missiles, right? It’s a lot easier when you focus on the archer than actually on the arrows. And that’s the part we look at an industry. And I say, Okay, do we have those capabilities? Do we have the technology? If not, how long, you know, what’s our investment timeline? We work with partners, and we are working with Swedish companies on that. We’re working with Canadian companies. So there’s so much Interplay there. But that’s kind of where we come at it from on the industry. And, you know? And while the concerns, I think, are shared, they’re slightly different, at least on the industry.
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
I think many people agree, getting as far left of launch as possible is completely critical to this mission set. And fog also brought up the point the importance of international cooperation, and so with Sweden and Finland recently joining NATO, what opportunities do you gentlemen believe are out there now that we’ve got a lot more focus on the Arctic region.
Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman:
First of all, when it comes to, I mean, it’s, it’s been a journey now for us, one year in, in the in the membership, and it’s, it’s, it’s going really, really well. And I think, you know, when you look at Sweden, when you look at the Arctic and Sweden and Finland joining, I think you see two two pieces of the puzzle with two pieces missing. So it kind of completes the puzzle. Kind of completes it geographically and and not only geographically, you also bring two nations, which has really recently and but is very committed to cooperation, very committed to the alliance, and really have a high ambition when it comes to cooperation and to develop that. So I think that’s really important to see in the context right now. We also add geography when it comes to to early warning. Early Warning capabilities. I mean, we cover from, I think, 55 to 69 degrees north. That’s, that’s kind of wide area for early warning. We bring in place geography when it comes to bases. We have air bases and we have space port north of the polar circle, and we know how to operate that. So I think that is a really important message from my part, that we bring geography, we bring knowledge and we bring infrastructure to the game together with a really high. Ambition to cooperate. Both Sweden and Finland signed the Defense Cooperation Agreement with us as early as we could, and we’re trying to figure out a way to cooperate together. Because, as already mentioned and will be mentioned again during this panel, in order to operate, in order to deter and defend in the Arctic. You need to be in place. You need you need to know how to operate, and you need to do it in a way that’s trustworthy in that kind of environment. So I think that’s that’s the kind of platform for that, that that I think we bring to the Arctic.
Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna:
I’ll just keep going on that, on that train. So thanks, Jonas and so first of all, congratulate both Finland and Sweden on their ascension to the largest and most successful military alliance that the world has ever seen, and it has been the guarantor of Euro Atlantic security since its inception. Super proud to see you both in the in the mix like minded nations to Canada, we share a commitment to the rules based international order in a way that is not to say unhealthy, but we really do see things very similarly across across the spectrum of conflict. Sweden brings geographic advantage, I think, specific geographic advantage to and Finland to the to the alliance, as you’ve mentioned, general Wikman. I also think you understand the adversary potentially better than most of us, because you’ve had to live next to them in a way that none of us have had to. So I think that tactile understanding of the adversary is really important as you, as you build up your your assistance within NATO the second I think that in terms of key opportunities I would touch on, obviously, the sharing of the recognized air picture, instead of NATO, which is sort of de facto, and I know that was actually being done prior but most importantly is sort of seeing NORAD as the western flank of NATO, and stitching that seam to make sure that it is a single cohesive wrap, so that we are all monitoring the same threats in the same way and collaborating to deter I think, as a first first party, second is There’s a significant opportunity to deepen the defense industrial base. Industrial base. I think about Saab as a as a company that I’ve dealt with a number of times. Canada just purchased a whole bunch of air defense systems from Saab for our army, and we’re equipping our hands for presence brigade in Latvia with all Saab air defense weapons. And so there’s an opportunity there that is pretty significant. They’re also playing right now in a very live competition, or RFI cycle, with Canada on our patrol submarine project to recapitalize our legacy submarines, which is huge, and Sweden has a huge legacy of goodness there. And then lastly, would be just information sharing opportunities, both the NATO and NORAD opportunities, and then hybrid, hybrid sharing capability, information sharing alliances that might be more linked to the to the Arctic sort of mission set.
Scott Gilloon:
Thanks, sir. So we, I guess we have a little bit of a unique perspective in that, you know, I get the opportunity to work with different FMS partners, so we get to see kind of what various elements bring to the table, and kind of, when I break it down, I’d say I’d look at it through a few different lenses. One of those would be in the sense of or in the context of distributed sensing, right? So the opportunity to put distributed sensing across our inner, near contested region, in this case, the Arctic. Look at that, and just as you pointed out, sir Saab, is world class in many aspects, and the sensing is definitely no different there. So we’ve got an opportunity to leverage now the I guess what matters in this is how you bring that data in, right? So now it’s not only generating the data, but do we have all the agreements, and do we have everything in place to share the data? And we see that, you know? And I would say it can be difficult sometimes to get everyone to agree on how we’re going to share data, but I think in this case, it’s critical, you know, you can’t it’s impossible for us to have a common operating picture, or at least some sort of shared or shared domain awareness if we’re not also exchanging the information the ones and zeros across partners and again, from the industry. How do we facilitate that, right? So how do we how do we help with those agreements? How do we help with the systems and make sure that the systems are formatted properly. So all the less sexy details that we get to deal with, you know, we actually look at it, I say, Hey, do the ones and zeros generated over here match the ones and zeros generated, or what’s needed over there? Those are kind of the geeky pieces that we deal with. But I think the other part, or there’s a separate part of this, though, which, sir, you alluded to, which I think is really critical when I look at it, you know, again, if I put back on my homeland defense hat, or just in terms of a war fighting hat, is the concept of defense in depth, right? And so what we have, and especially if you look at it from imagine, you know, we face in a lot of cases, this sort of unitary adversary. In many cases. Right? It’s not like a lot of the Chinese are flying all these. They do fly some Russian stuff, but they’re making their own right, and so, but it’s kind of, you know, along a particular line with us. Now, imagine an adversary having to approach it from, Hey, what is Saab system do? What are the maybe, if there’s, what is it? What is it that this system is going to look like to my to my screen, to my, you know, to the sensing apparatus, they have to approach it from all of us. And I think that’s very, very powerful, not only in terms of kind of the way we generate information or process information, but also the way that we can then attack the problem, because you can’t just get to one of us without bypassing the others, right? And so I think that, again, that that, to me, seems like a great way to collaborate, and just something that you know, again, being the retired guy, love to see kind of that expansion of NATO, bringing Sweden and Finland to the mix.
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
Now, gentlemen, great points about the strategic context that we’re all facing as we look at Arctic security. Let’s bring it down just a little bit more towards the operational and let’s talk about domain awareness. Mentioned the Chinese balloon earlier. Obviously, there are some seams from the northern approaches here in North America. The northern warning system mentioned how antiquated that is. It hasn’t been upgraded in quite some time. And we’ve got new threats, whether it’s cruise missiles, long range drones, hypersonics, our adversaries are arming themselves with new, advanced weapons. So as you guys look towards the future, what’s your long term vision for domain awareness, and where do you see some gaps? And how do you see us moving forward?
Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna:
I can start if you’d like Jonas, just because, well, my boss isn’t here, but General Gil, I’m going to channel my inner general deal, if I can. So from a North America perspective, you know, my I think his view, and my shared view, not just because he’s my commander, is that we need a layered sensing grid, from sea floor to the space to the space layer. And we have no choice. It has to be layered and deep, a defense in depth, from a sensing point of view. And I will say I suffer from an insufficiency of ISR in the Arctic on a daily basis. And I am fighting for information. I am fighting for comms in the Arctic every single day that I operate there. So I mean, one of the things, I think is one is rapidly modernize your forces so that you are in a position to act upon all of that great data that the sensing grid will give you. So from our point of view, and we capitalized our entire fighter capability, taking our first F 35 A’s under late next year on delivery and training up down in Luke Air Force Base. But nine new tankers. First one’s showing up in 27 we’re a p8 customer now with 14. P8 inbound, and we’re MQ nine Bravo customers now with 11 MQ nine Bravos. First two were actually built and going to be tested this year. Deepening your air to air weapon magazine depth is extremely important to deal with that being able to react at for a consequential period to an adversary, and then relying a lot more heavily on the space layer. So I’ve talked a little bit about the investments that Canada’s made, but one of them is about $20 billion into the space layer, and looking at not just domain awareness, but also polar comms, to be able to close those c3 BM gaps that exist in the Arctic. And then looking at an air airborne early warning aircraft. So historically, Canada has taken all of our ABM crews. We’ve pushed them into the US and Elmendorf and tinker and into NATO AWACS. We didn’t operate our own aircraft. Going forward, we must have an AWC aircraft. And so we’re going through a competition in short order here that does include a Saab offering for the global eye, but also looks at an e7 and something from l3 and other any other players that may wish to play. And so I think there’s an importance here of not just air domain, but also space domain, and having a sufficiency of ISR in the Arctic to actually build you the picture I haven’t really touched on over the horizon radar, but I certainly can get into it. I think that’s a really important capability, given the austerity of the Arctic and the need for it to cue other things.
Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman:
To me, yeah, thanks. I think that was I’m a great view and a great answer to it. To me also, it’s quite obvious that we need to adopt, let’s say, multi domain mindset, also to sensing in a way that we haven’t done before. I think for Sweden and many of us, has invested in the capabilities to sense and share information within each service, or maybe, maybe sometimes in your level connected to specific tasks. I think we really need to, at least for our part, reinvest in connectivity. And we talked about that information sharing is very difficult, but combining all those domains, combining the assets and all domains in one kind of information sharing web. I think we’re doing. We do good on the strategic level. We have great, not great, it’s always dangerous to say. But we have sa on the strategic level, on the overall aspects of what’s happening in the Arctic. I think we need on more short time, quicker reaction. And kind of dissemination of information multi domain. We’re also investing in space now, finally, but really, with a high ambition going into there, with our space port up up north, and also responsive launch capabilities to be able to do that, to be able to share information between between domains.
Scott Gilloon:
So part of what what we’ve been looking at relative to kind of domain awareness, there’s a there’s a sensing piece, not going to get into that. What we’ll talk about, though, is kind of the sort of the surveillance side of things, right? So there’s an ability to surveil from, let’s say, space, or from a subsurface submarine asset or something. But I think then it kind of leads that into that next question of, well, what are we trying to do? There? Is it both a presence and a monitoring type of mission? And so kind of the way we’ve approached this is, well, what are those enablers? Where are the gaps, where the enablers right? And so I think about this, and we talk, you know, a lot about, well, I have a subsurface asset, an attack submarine, that can maybe trail, I can put them in a position to monitor. Well, that’s not really going to give you a presence. It will, but it won’t right, because the whole point in those things, it’s to not be seen. So that’s, you know, so we kind of put that down, and then we go, well, space. Space is absolutely a necessary layer. But oftentimes, when we’re monitoring from space. Sometimes we make that public. Most of the time we don’t, so it’s kind of, we’re just we’re monitoring, right? As the general alluded to before, working with the Canadian Air Force on the MK nine Bravo, we look at that as a platform that also provides that presence, right? So from my job, part of my job is okay, so how do I figure out how to provide more presence. So the longer endurance, the more presence up forward. So there’s all of these kind of ancillary tasks that come off of that. And you know, when we say we want to put something forward in the Arctic, what does that really mean? As you pointed out, sir, there’s not a lot of bases up there, like, what five or so fighter capable, three that can take tankers and or larger aircraft. And so there’s just not a lot of options. So that sort of puts a derived requirement, then on us to look at, well, how expeditionary is the platform, right? If we’re going to provide this domain awareness, how expeditionary can I make the platform, or how ruggedized it’s where it can withstand very, very different operating conditions it I know, heads up. It’s kind of cold there, right? It’s cold for long periods of time. Those are different stresses on an aircraft. For you know, aircraft don’t like to sit in cold. They just don’t. Things break, seals. Everything changes. So, so what we have to look at, then, as we put that back into the aircraft design again, trying to provide that domain awareness. It sort of leads to all of these different requirements, but it’s it’s why it’s so important, so that when we’re working with the Canadian Air Force, I can turn to the Swedish Air Force and go, Hey, here’s what we’ve worked on. I think this capability, or I think this may work for you, working with Saab and with other partners. So it’s kind of from an industry perspective, sharing the information. We do it every day. We set up agreements. We use the offline time here at the conferences to discuss those things among industry. So it’s always going on, continuously innovating. There are a lot of other aspects to it, but that’s just kind of some of the things that when we talk about this high level domain awareness, sort of how that pushes down to the industry side, and how we try to react, you know, in the way that we best think is going to address your capability gaps or your capability gaps. Awesome.
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks, folks. General McKenna, you mentioned the importance of layered systems. And in fact, just a few weeks ago, General Guillot testified on the hill, and he mentioned three specific systems over the horizon, radar e7 wedge tail and space based Amti. You didn’t mention unmanned systems. I’d love to get you guys thoughts on unmanned systems use in the Arctic. Just a few months ago, the NATO r q4 actually flew its first Arctic mission, and so there’s certainly the ability to do it, and the long loiter times and the ability to put multiple sensors. There’s a possibility there any thoughts on the use of unmanned aircraft?
Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna:
I could start on this one, if you like. Yeah. So we, we’re sort of live working this right now, between us and GA so as I mentioned, we bought 11 MK nine, bravo. We’ll be putting them on our coasts. But you can imagine, we’re a maritime country with three oceans, so we need to surveil the maritime domain. First all of our space based constellations that we have launched and operate now are focused on maritime domain awareness and ability to cue more exquisite assets to go and look at a dark ship, etc, approaching the continent. The MQ nine is going to add to that dramatically, I think, and it’s going to provide us that overt presence that I think is important. There’s a bunch of mods, though, you need to do and so as another example, directory four example is the MQ nine that GA launched out of North Dakota last two years ago, went straight north to see the limit of the control link for geo. It’s around 70, and then it gets a little autonomous and spins around and comes south. That was a really good programming option, by the way. Um, so I think we need to solve that problem. I need that asset to be I mean, I have land mass to 83 and a half north, and we have contiguous waters to zero or to 90. And so we have no issue. We have no sort of choice. We need to be able to surveil there. So it leads me down to a number of mods. And the first is pivoting to P Leo control links. And that is live discussion, obviously, with GAA, and I know the US Air Force is working that problem as well, and seeing your geo links as your A in pace, not your P in pace. And that is different. And certainly the geometry and math, it just seems very mathy, but it’s tricky to rely on that command link second would be flight and unsegregated airspace. So we’re used to browsing an airplane and popping it up, or alt revving an airplane, we want to do a flying file. So that means do regard radar, that means Sense and Avoid technology. And that means you’re operating that airplane like you’re operating a 737, like Southwest would. And you’re going to file and fly it and put it in your northern domestic airspace to surveil. And that is, there’s a whole technology background to that, that GE is working with us to solve. Third would be FICCI, or flight and known icing. It’s a thing. It’s a huge thing in the Arctic, and that is not an easy challenge to solve, and they’re working through that with us to be able to get this aircraft started to do flight and known icing, obviously, for a rival departure into into operating areas. And then lastly, is the modularity of sensors. So you think about what the aircraft can do. Yes, it can strike. And was, you know, initially in our when we ordered these aircraft, I think our view was more expeditionary than domestic use. I would say that’s flipped just based on the geo strategic changes to the planet, and we are now looking at a much more Arctic use of this airplane. The good news is the modifications to the existing infrastructure that I require to bounce this aircraft through the Arctic for a 28 hour endurance mission, probably across three crews, is zero. I can move it through Inuvik, Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Goose Bay without changing anything on the ground, which I think makes a very big difference with respect to my optionality. But if you look at any submarine warfare mission sets that could be adapted to airborne early warning mission sets you could adapt to, certainly signals intelligence and maritime domain awareness, all of that can be wrapped into an unmanned platform, and it really leverages you to take your exquisite pH and put them on targets that require the closure of a kill chain, a long range kill chain, and keep your unmanned system for sort of the broader surveillance tasks. I’ll pause there. That was a lot,
Scott Gilloon:
So I appreciate the FQ nine call out the so for a number of years now, we’ve had multiple different efforts, one of those being using the use of proliferated low Earth orbit constellations, I will say it’s very promising. Adds a lot, you know, in terms of throughput or latency, the lack thereof, it’s much faster, much better data links. We’ve tested that out. We’ve got those aircraft modified and flying. Very promising. Beyond that. I think for me, at least in my team, what I challenge them with is, okay, again, the what’s next? How do we look forward? Like, you know, we can’t be satisfied with sort of tethering, the way we’ve tethered, the way we’ve always done it these challenges. There’s kind of a mix that I think we can bring to this to solve it. So the one of the things we look at is autonomy starting, I guess, late 2018 early 2019 and a program with the Department of Defense. At the time, it was a joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Since it’s changed to the Chief Digital AI office, it’s called Smart Sensor. And the whole challenge back then is, you know, you’d ask the question, well, what do we need to fly autonomy? Everybody kind of look at you and they’re like a lot of compute. You’re like, well, what’s a lot? And you try to get these images, you know? So it says it’s like the pulling teeth sort of thing, you know. And to get a, especially a software engineer and a hardware kind of focused engineer, to agree on anything was impossible. So, so working together from an industry and a government perspective, the Air Force, in this case, General Atomics and OSD kind of came together and said, Okay, let’s just go do let’s take what’s the processor we’ve got. Let’s go see. And what we found, this informed your everybody who’s walked around. You see CCA, the collaborative combat aircraft. You see all these things. It has informed everything we’ve done since then. It was very profound to understand that the level of autonomy, right, that is, that is a there is a very direct correlation with the amount of information I must generate at the edge. In this case, what we’re talking about, if we’re talking about ISR or we’re talking about locating, and the case that I did not fully appreciate, for the Canadian Air Force, there’s a huge search and rescue component to this. That’s not the case for the case for the United States all the time. So we had to again change the way we think about this. But it allows us to actually now start to look at concepts and how we use artificial intelligence, or in this case, machine learning, to identify different things in the Smart Sensor case, we use this to put that autonomy so to enable the autonomy you. You’ve got to generate a requisite and it sort of varies. There’s always an it depends aspect to this, well, what type of autonomy or what level do you want? But we had to sort of allow that that air vehicle to sense and make sense of its environment so that it could actually perform autonomous tasks. Right in the Arctic. It’s a little a lot different than if we were sending this into, say, the South China Sea. The good news is we had very stressing use cases, one in maritime, one in on a Ground Array. But what we found is what we were able to do was actually distribute both the sensing and then allow the aircraft to generate its own search grid based on task. So task loading this thing just the same way we would give prioritized tasks to a an airman or to anyone else, say, Hey, these are the things we want to see. See if you can go find them right and then using very smart algorithms. So the software guys came up with some pretty intelligent algorithms that we could put in the processing so that it could actually figure out if it found the thing that we told it to look for. Again, kind of turns out machines are pretty smart when you tell them what to look for and you saw and you run them through that, so that’s the, you know, iteration after iteration of what we’re looking for. And so in this way, I think we kind of were, we’re sort of focused on, how do I bring that autonomy now to the platform in the time since then? So from late 2018 early 2019 to present, what we found is the just the acceleration or the nature of compute solutions. Now we can actually distribute those algorithms around various processing on the aircraft, so we don’t have to actually put that big processor that we added before the big computer that’s that now is that’s old. It’s only a few years old, but it’s old tech. And now we actually, just due to simple box upgrades on the platform, we can distribute that same level of processing now, and the algorithms run around. So it’s so it’s it’s becoming much, much more available. And I hate to do it try and hand wave AI and ML and just kind of throw that and sprinkle it out like pixie dust. But in this case, it’s very real, and I think it’s going to help us with our customers as we move forward in sort of getting away from kind of the traditional or legacy way of dealing with data links and Situ sorry, long winded way to say a lot of stuff. AI, sir.
Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman:
I’m part of the audience on this question. I think, I think that was really, really, really great comments on the capabilities. The only thing I can say is that all of the nations operating up north and in the Arctic is looking for a way forward on these kinds of capabilities. So I’m happy that Canada is paving the way. I mean, we still haven’t found a way to trust enough on the capability when it comes to operating on the really high north, when it comes to weather and, you know, those kind of environmental things, and also the survivability in a higher, high conflict, conflict levels. So I’m looking forward to the development of this. This one. Thanks, sir.
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
Well, gentlemen, we are really short for time, but I wanted to get the question out there about the golden dome and the implementation of it, and get your thoughts on that. Because I’m sure there’s a lot of questions in the audience about, how’s NORAD, how are you moving out on this? What are the priorities? We’ve got about four minutes left. So just some real quick thoughts from each of you. If you could.
Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna:
I can start again this one, if you’d like. So first, I think, extremely pleased to see the clear language in it was Iron Dome. And then it became golden dome on the in the executive order on allies and partners, I think it was very clearly stated the intent to collaborate, which I was, I think, very heartened to see. Second is as a member of the integrated binational command in the US for essentially integrated intermission defense of the homeland since 1957 this is sort of music to our ears in terms of deepening investment levels on the home game and the homeland, homeland defensive game. It’s always been a struggle away versus home, as you well know, couple weeks ago in DC, my minister was down, my minister of defense, Minister Blair, had a bunch of discussions with your political level about Iron Dome at that time, and I will quote him frankly, an integrated, integrated missile defense system for all of North America is the thing that makes sense to everybody, which I think is a great quote from one of my ministers, and I’m hoping to see a lot more discussion on that tomorrow. So the Ottawa conference on defense and security is kicking off general Geel as a keynote. I’m very interested to hear his comments to Canada with respect to opportunities to collaborate in that in that regime. And I just think it’s going to be a government choice, a policy choice, but from an operational point of view, integrating deeper is better.
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks, sir.
Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman:
Well, one minute to go, I guess I think one of our absolute top priorities, integrated and missile defense, it is for all of us. Yes, and I think they the all the priorities should go to to have that kind of information sharing and that kind of web that makes us achieve that very difficult task, to protect our territories from from those kinds of attacks. So I think that’s it makes sense, and it’s need to be connected.
Scott Gilloon:
Thanks. If I could throw one thing, and I would say this to the to the audience, but especially to the the airmen, you know, the soldiers, airmen, Marines, you know everybody who’s sitting out there and whoever may be listening or maybe they watch later. Let’s say they’re the ones who are ultimately going to be charged with executing this, right? So I challenge, challenge them. How do we use the new technologies we generate, reproduces CCA? You know? How do I use a CCA to alleviate the burden of a fighter aircraft that you have to station up north to go intercept the long range aviation assets and escort them? So, right? So we can redirect or repurpose, reallocate those assets somewhere else. So provide that flexibility, that agility to the commanders so that they can make those decisions. Those are the things. Those would keep me up at night. You know, how do we how do we help? How do we do that? But ultimately, at the end of the day, I think it’s going to be someone, probably in this audience or somewhere else in this building, who figures out and helps us help use those technologies to further enable this concept. Thanks,
Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.):
Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for flying all the way from all over the all over the world to join us today. I really appreciate your professional and very insightful opinions, ladies and gentlemen. That brings us to the end of today’s discussion. Thank you for joining us. If you get an opportunity, the Mitchell Institute has a booth set up right outside of the exhibit halls, and we’ve got dozens, maybe even hundreds, of reports that highlight the challenges across the aviation field. And again, thank you all for joining us today and have a great air and space power day. Thanks so much. Thank you. Applause.