Space Access: Building Resilient and Ready Launch

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Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Okay. Well, good afternoon, everybody. I am Brigadier General Eric Zarybnisky, and it’s my privilege and really the great place to be on this stage right here asking the questions and not down there where I’ve been for so many other panels. So, super excited to be here to talk about Space Access: Building Resilient and Ready Launch.

So, I’ll go down the line and introduce everybody. So, really excited to have General (Retired) Mike Minihan. He’s the senior advisor at Radia and the former commander of Air Mobility Command. He brings an unparalleled expertise in global logistics and mobility.

Mr. David Simenc is the president of SciTech, a Firefly Aerospace company representing the cutting-edge of intelligence software integration.

And, at the end, Mr. Greg Wood, the chief engineer of Space Force Range Contract at Amentum, who provides technical oversight to sustainment and modernization of our eastern and western ranges.

So, for decades getting to space was treated as a bespoke, highly scheduled, and true rocket science, but the threat environment, as you heard from the secretary, has changed.

Today our warfighters rely on space as a critical node in every joint operation. We are moving past the era where space access is defined merely by successful launches on rigid and many times months long schedules.

To survive and win at a contested environment, the joint force requires assured access to space, which demands to transition the high cadence, resilient, and responsive launch pipeline.

Today we’ll explore how we can best unify modernized range infrastructure, emerging technologies, and global mobility to ensure space access is a reliable, rapid logistics capability for the warfighter.

So, I’ll start with a couple questions and we’ll go down the line. So, for all of the panelists, from your perspective, what is the single biggest challenge the U.S. faces in ensuring assured access to space in the coming decade? Sir?

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

All right. Happy Monday, everybody. This is going to be the fun room. Everyone’s in the big room. We’re going to have the fun room here, but Mike Minihan. I’ll do a quick little context here before I answer your question, but Mike Minihan. Retired for about two years. I’m a beardo, officially, a beardo guy. So, you’re welcome. My wife likes it, and that’s the only opinion that matters.

I didn’t wait until I retired to have an opinion. And I, certainly, didn’t wait to share it. So, all the things I cared about in uniform I care about now that I’m wearing this uniform. I am pushing hard on the things that I think that this country, this Air Force, this space force, this department needs.

I was lucky to be at INDOPACOM when I was a deputy commander and I got to work with cool people like General Raymond and General Saltzman. And we were at the very beginning of the Space Force. We were trying to figure out how does the Space Force present forces to a geographic combatant commander? What’s the liaison element we set up? How do we get it included in the targeting cycle? The transportation board? All the things that makes the Space Force successful.

And one of the things I came away from those couple of years working with that is … And General Raymond taught me this is that space requires terrestrial support to be successful. All right? So, if you’re wondering why an airlifter is on a space panel board that’s it. Okay?

And then the last thing, I was on a … I got to be you at the last AFA. I was a moderator. It’s tough work, by the way. And I’m sure you’re going to do great.

But at the very beginning of my remarks I said, “I can’t wait to come back here and do a panel on contested logistics.” All right? And so, here I am, doing a panel on contested logistics. I can’t think of a more appropriate venue to talk about the contested logistics of space access. All right? It’s hard, it’s extremely hard, it’s extremely expensive, it’s vulnerable. All right? And it requires things for integration that we normally don’t think about.

And so, I’m happy to represent Radia. I’m happy to talk about WindRunner, and an airplane capability that I think is going to be a game changer for the Space Force’s agility concept to have rapid access to space. So, thanks for inviting me.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Absolutely. Thanks, sir. David?

David Simenc:

Yeah. Hey. David Simenc. President of SciTech, Firefly Aerospace company. A little brief history here. SciTech was acquired by Firefly back about nine months ago in October of last year.

And Firefly, you probably know them. Right? And they’re on my little pin here. They launch, they operate, they go to the moon. They do all sorts of cool stuff that I do not do, or, I guess, now I get to say that I’m a part of that.

But, so, when I think about the general’s question of what’s the single biggest impediment or challenge for assured access to space, I go back to where I’m comfortable and I think, “Well, when I look up, there’s a lot of stuff up there that we have to worry about.” And, frankly, I think one of the biggest challenges to access to space is being able to operate and navigate freely once you’re up there. And that’s a big data problem, that’s a big command and control problem, and I think something we’ll talk about a little bit more on this panel.

And there’s two sides to it too. Right? There’s the threat. We heard about that in spades this morning, and a little bit about how we’re getting after it, but it’s the ability of our adversaries to deny us navigation in space.

And then there’s just the simple fact that there’s debris. There’s an ever-increasing congestion in outer space. And so, just being able to operate from that perspective becomes a challenge and the two things, heaven forbid, you have a war or bad actors, something like that, they become merged.

So, really, if I had to pick the single biggest thing that concerns me about access to space is that it’s the continued navigability, it’s the freedom. And I think the good news is, as you’re going to hear from our panelists today, is there’s a lot of ways we can get after that.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Thanks, Dave. Greg?

Col. Greg Wood, USAF (Ret.):

Hey. Thank you. Well, so, my name is Greg Wood. I am with Amentum, and we’re a global engineering and operations firm. We can go into some of those details later. But it’s interesting. When I got the opportunity to come down and be chief engineer on the Space Force range contract, because I started in this business, I hate to say, I’m going to show my age, about 30 years ago when I was active duty, and then left and went over and did some support for NASA, and got a chance to come back.

And when I talked to our program directors I was debating about uprooting my family one more time, I said, “One thing I want to do as a chief engineer is I do not want to focus on mission statements, vision statements, all those things you see put on the wall,” that, quite frankly, nobody ever really remembers. I’m good for about four words. Those that have worked with me in the past, I know there are a few out here, know that I don’t have the capacity for long sentences.

But I wanted to be technically credible, but operationally relevant. And I think that’s really the key going forward. And I’m excited to come back to the ranges. I did take a little hiatus as a range-y as they’re doing the NASA thing.

And I came back and what I see and what I’ve been watching grow … I can, certainly, remember the days on the ranges where if we saw 20 launches in a year off of a coast that was groundbreaking and amazing.

And it was a one-off and it was a novelty at the time, and it was really focused on defense missions were at the front end of it. Now what I see as a real opportunity, not just for DOD, DOW, I’ll probably slip and say DOD again, old habits die hard, but I see an opportunity to develop a national space economy. And I see us being a major piece of that.

And the reason I say that is when I think back to things like telegraph lines and phone lines, fiber lines for the internet or wagon routes back in the day or highway systems or airways or sea routes, whatever, those pieces of infrastructure were important in and of themselves, but they were also a critical enabler to a global and domestic economy.

I see a future for a national space economy out there and I think that’s a whole of government challenge to go get after. And the thing I think we can do a little differently is start with that end in mind at the whole of government and then figure out how we support that, because we have two key missions on the ranges.

There is a test mission, which is … I know that’s not the purpose of this panel, but we can’t forget about that, because we do missile tests, we do ICBM work, missile defense tests, those kinds of things. There’s aeronautical ops that are supported, there’s all that test business, and that is a DOW imperative that we absolutely cannot fail at.

But, at the same time, while complementary, also different requirements set for the commercial sector. So, how do we enable that? How do we allow our commercial partners to begin to build that infrastructure I was talking about toward the end of the national space economy?

So, I think our biggest challenge is how do we blend those two without excluding one?

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Great. Thanks. So, I’m going to come back to you, General Minihan, as somebody whose led large-scale mobility operations and your comment about resiliency. What lessons can we draw from contested airspace operations that you saw and how those apply to maintaining assured access to space?

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Sure. Well, when I came in in 2021, I had spent most of the previous 10 years in the Pacific. So, I was pretty well-acquainted with the challenges of China and North Korea. Certainly, the tyranny of distance. We don’t normally talk about the tyranny of water, but we should. The tyranny of water.

And so, my boss gave me a direct order when he promoted me. Chief, you were there. He said, “Go faster. Go faster.” And so, my three-year tenure was I got in just after the evacuation of Kabul. During my tenure, we responded to Russia invading Ukraine. We had responded to the Israel crisis and withdrawing out of Niger and a whole bunch of other stuff like that.

And what I learned, and this is the problem, I’m a big fan of problem statements, and this is a little bit of coaching here too, don’t ask a problem question. Ask a problem statement.

The problem statement that I was trying to solve is we are not as ready, integrated, or as agile as we think we are. And I’m accusing every service of that. Okay? So, that’s what I learned, like, eight times over during my three years.

And I would be so bold as to assume that some of the frustrations over what’s happening in the Middle East recently are along the same ways. So, this readiness, this integration, and this agility really matter.

Every services, including yours, agility concept is held hostage by our ability to maneuver. Okay? Maneuver means putting our unique capabilities in a position of advantage, so, they can create lethal effects in the battle space. And we’ve forgotten what it’s like to earn our maneuver. Our grandparents had to do it in the Pacific and World War II. And we’ve pretty much … I’m not saying there hasn’t been challenges, but we’ve enjoyed permissive lines of communications and enduring bases and we’ve got to get out of that habit.

So, when it comes to launch pads we talked about how complex it is, but there’s a tyranny of distance. Okay? There’s the tyranny of being situated only on water, because that’s the only way you can ship vehicles and payloads. There’s the tyranny of expense. All right? There’s the tyranny of the vulnerability. And what could a drone do or UAS do to a launchpad?

And then there’s a tyranny of, “We don’t have enough launch sites.” So, I was always attacking this maneuver concept. And getting not only just the unique toys, if you will, the platforms that can do maneuver, but a mindset shift in America’s Department of the Air Force that is both the Air Force and the Space Force, and start thinking about maneuver like our grandparents did where we got to earn it every day, that if we are going to be ready, that if we are going to be integrated, that if we are going to be agile the way this country needs us to be in a time of crisis …

Here’s another tyranny we don’t talk about, the tyranny of attrition in space that we haven’t had to deal with, that we will have to deal with in a contested crisis or conflict with China is how can we deliver? How can we put American unique capabilities in a position of advantage regardless of what the enemy is doing to that? And it’s something that should keep us up at night. Did I answer your question?

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Yes, sir.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

All right.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

All right, David. SciTec’s rapid innovation and advanced technologies has benefited challenges across multiple domains. How do you see emerging technologies contributing to launch security and assured access to space?

David Simenc:

Yeah. I think there’s any number of ways that technology is poised to vault us forward in the near future here, but I’ll call out three areas specifically that I’m looking forward to seeing mature and come to fruition here.

The first is responsive launch. So, historically, launch is a very scheduled activity. We talked about how in the past we’ve done maybe 20 launches a year. We’re a lot faster than that now. But still pretty scheduled, regularly cadenced.

A couple years ago, we saw the first 24 hour responsive launch from notification to launch, the Firefly did. We saw that record get broken recently just a couple months ago. And I think it’s going to get broken again and again.

And we’re going to be able to move in a position where we are able to be responsive instead of reactive from a launch perspective to put capabilities on orbit, reconstitute capabilities, get needed assets where they need to be, and this is going to be a game changer for ensuring control of the space domain.

Second technology area that I see emerging is mobility. So, the general talked about mobility. In space, the era of the dumb satellite orbiting the Earth ballistically over and over again following Netown and Kepler and Einstein is behind us.

We’re in the era of maneuver now, era of mobility. And spacecraft are going to get more and more maneuverable. We’re going to put payloads out in orbit that allow us to do orbit transfers more easily. We’re going to see space tugs emerging, which is going to help us be backwards compatible and be able to deliver mobility to those satellites that are already up there.

And that mobility is a key advantage that we’re going to have in a contested space domain as well as just being critical for health and safety in an increasingly congested environment.

And then the third technical area that I want to talk about is data and sensing and command and control, understanding of the space environment. Space Fence, the era of Space Fence where you’ve got a couple of radars and you’re just updating the TLE every time somebody flies over you, that era is long gone. That leaves so many gaps in our chain of custody for objects on orbit that it leaves us incredibly vulnerable to threats maneuvering out of our field of view, without our knowledge. That’s an unacceptable place to be.

And we’ve seen technology catching up to close those gaps with commercial telescopes, with proliferated capabilities on the ground to cover areas where we didn’t have sensing before, and without orbit capabilities. And we’re going to see this continued explosion of sensing, fusion, and command and control give us continuous custody of what’s going on in the space environment and, ultimately, I think we see that extended Cis-Lunar in the moon as well.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Great. So, Greg, you talked about your time in launch and in this community, both as a range user and in uniform. So, with that in mind, what innovations or improvements do you think are essential to ensure there are launch systems and the supporting infrastructure can handle the increased cadence while remaining secure and reliable.

Col. Greg Wood, USAF (Ret.):

I wish I could say that’s an easy one, but it’s not. It’s a loaded question. Well, it is an interesting one, because I mentioned earlier there’s two really key distinct not completely severable missions on these ranges between the testing and the space launch. I know we’re focused on the launch side, but I can’t talk about one without the other.

I got the opportunity 10, 11 years ago to sit on the [inaudible] review when we looked at new entrants for the EELV program. And I won’t go into gory details of all those discussions, because, quite frankly, I was probably the most junior guy in the room. I think I made a lot of coffee or something during that board.

But as I listened to these seniors from both DOD and from the commercial sector, the one lesson I took away for commercial is in order to provide assured access to space for us in uniform we needed, at least, two domestic commercially viable providers for a variety of orbital capabilities.

And the only way to really be competitive on the global scale was through throughput. So, we find ourselves in this area where we have to enable fast throughput, the rapid throughput, the things you see coming off the Cape right now with, at least, one of our providers flying quite a bit right now.

So, you have that piece of it, but at the same … And I think about, “Okay. How could we make the Cape or Vandenberg more like what they need?” And, well, it’s not really a fair question to ask, because when I look at the Van Horns or the Boca Chicas or some of these commercial sites that are out there, they got to start with a clean piece of paper and build it from the ground up.

So, what you see from a range perspective, at least, is almost a minimalist approach. It’s got the telemetry and the things they need to receive the data on how their vehicle is performing, but that range safety function has been put onboard the vehicles.

Now when I come back to historically test ranges, which is where we started at the Cape and Vandenberg it’s really a giant hub and spoke, because in the old days of launch, back when I still had hair on the top of my head, it was about a man in the loop for range safety. Meaning, you had to have two adequate independent sources to track a vehicle at any point in flight.

And to do that you had resources up and down the coast, even downrange, telemetry sites, radar sites, optic sites, you name it. A lot of ways to track that vehicle. And all that information fed in from all these hubs into an individual spoke in the middle. And that being the guys in range safety that had the ability to track the flight and decide if it was going to continue on.

That is a very expensive footprint to maintain. By definition, it allows for processing and serial, if you will, rather than parallel. But when I look at the two, what are we doing? The core at both of those, those commercial guys when they build their … I hate to say minimalist range, because that’s not really the right phrase, so, please don’t quote me on that. But it’s a small footprint. And it’s because they have figured out ways to get the data they need, large quantities of data, pull it into the format they need, and process it to do the things they need to continue to be successful in their business.

When I look at the way we do things out on the heritage side with traditional range safety systems, it’s the same thing. It’s coming in differently, but it’s all about data and processing it.

So, I think as we go forward to find a way to make those two environments coalesce into one, I really think that the truth is in the data. And I’m really glad I come from a place like Amentum, because we’ve gotten to reach back, because I will tell you if I’m asked to spell AI I’m going to get it right three out of four times. So, I’m not that guy.

But we do have a digital transformation officer on our team and we met probably the first day we were here, and we quickly realized that we weren’t going to do anything apart from each other. So, if we want to go deep and talk on this topic, we’re going to pull somebody else aside later and have a sidebar.

But I will tell you I think that the future of the ranges is being more agile. It’s going to evolve around how we can process that data, how we do it effectively, how we do it quickly, how do we do it smarter. I think about things like maintenance on the ranges, how many hundreds or even thousands of period maintenance inspections we have to do on all those sites. Many times, they come back and the thing’s in pretty good shape.

Are there ways to leverage these new electronic tools, your AI, your machine learning to be predictive in nature? What about weather constraints? That’s probably, I don’t know, 20% of scrubs we see. Something like that. I don’t even know the number.

But it’s significant for potential weather violations. Are there ways to use these new tools to perhaps provide more launch opportunity for the customers? When I think about area clearance or I think about the telemetry processing, how we can do things in parallel, I think it all revolves around finding and the way to use those new tools. I heard SECAF talk about them today.

But as a piece of that, it’s not just about the tools. It’s also about having a digital-ready workforce. I’m part of the problem. I’m learning as I go. But how do we have a workforce that is equipped to understand when the machines are telling you the right thing, and I won’t fully quote, but [inaudible] told me a long time ago with artificial intelligence, it will feed you garbage at the speed of light if you let it.

So, how do you make sure you have the right talent pool to understand how to use those tools effectively and filter out when it’s telling you odd things, because I know, certainly, I’ve taken things and pushed it into AI and it comes back and tells me I’m smart, funny, and good-looking. And I know that ain’t the truth.

So, you have to be judicious in your use of it, but I think there are ways to leverage those tools with the appropriate workforce. I think that’s probably the biggest thing we can work on.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Great. Thanks, Greg. So, we’re going to pivot to space port of the future. So, it’s a concept we’ve talked about for quite a while, but I want to get into the very specifics of how do we make that happen? So, since you just keyed in on data, I think we’ve got somebody on the panel who speaks data, AI, and all the other things. So, David, how do you see real-time data and analytics reshaping the way we run our space ports to be more secure, resilient, reliable, and ready to meet the needs we have coming.

David Simenc:

Well, first let me try this, A-I. Did I get it? All right.

Col. Greg Wood, USAF (Ret.):

I think so. You’re doing better than I do most days.

David Simenc:

I’m on it. Yeah. I think to the panelists prior remarks, this is going to be key. So, the first thing that we’re going to see is I think the instrumentation of the range and the environment. And the internet of things, the advantage of system as a sensor, essentially, every system can be a sensor, if it’s instrumented.

We’re going to get much more instrumentation, which is going to give us a lot more insight into what’s going on on your range on any given day, any given time.

All that information needs to be processed. That’s where the analytics and the AI comes in. And we’re going to be able to process not just in a, “Hey. What’s going on?” perspective for understanding the state of the system, but being able to predict the future state. What is going to happen? If the weather is bad now … Maybe weather forecasting is a bad example of something to pick for a technology, but if the weather is bad now might it look good in an hour? In two hours? What do I really think? When is this component going to break or fail? Not, “It’s already broken. Go fix it.”

And by being predictive, that’s going to allow us to be more proactive instead of reactive, keep things up and running better, ensure availability, ensure uptime, and provide more opportunities to service the customers.

And then I would say that that all feeds into the concept of the digital twin. And I think the digital twin for the space port of the future is I’m just really excited about what this is going to unlock, because when we have the instrumentation we can marry it to a digital representation of the entire infrastructure stack, which, again, provides us unique insight and the ability to understand the state of our range, the state of the space port, but also the ability to train our people, who are key to operating these things, to be more effective, to be more efficient, and to be more performant.

And, ultimately, they say, “You should train the way that you fight.” Well, you fight the way that you train. And so, if we train in a data-dominant way, if we train to be able to use the automation, to be able to take advantage of the automotive tools, and if we train to be proactive instead of reactive, which we can do now with digital twins, we’re going to see I think an unlocking of a future era of efficiency.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Great. Thanks. Okay, General Minihan, I want to step back more to the infrastructure side and all the things we need to do for space port of the future. So, what are really those design features and operational changes you think that are critical for space port of the future? Both for our traditional space mission, the test missions that were highlighted, and really the requirements for a contested environment that we’re going into.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. It’s a great question, and I’m going to try to incorporate some of the comments from the gentlemen on the last series of questions. So, I want to help with the responsiveness, I want to help with the ranges, and I want to help with clean sheet space ports, because I think that’s essential.

And I think the way we do this is, one, access to space is maneuver, but the maneuver underneath that has to exist. So, imagine an airplane that’s about a football field long. Imagine it’s seven times more volume than the C5. Imagine it can carry the weight of the C17 and has a reliability rate in the upper nineties instead of the below 40%.

Imagine we’re in a contested … Let’s just say we’re in conflict with China. Let’s say we’re trying to deal with weather. Let’s say that … Did something happen on your space port recently this summer? If that happens with what we have now we are dead in the water with access to space. Your agility concept falls on itself when something goes wrong on the pad. And we’re done. All right?

The other thing General Raymond taught me was first move or advantage in space is the most precious first move you will make. The first move in space is the most precious move that this country will make and it will set the tone for every other domain and every other action you have in a fight with China.

So, we got to get this right. We need an airplane like WindRunner that can carry seven times the volume of a C5, has a C17 weight, operates at 90%. So, when the launch pad blows up we just stick the next vehicle and we go to Texas or we go to California or we go inland to some clean sheet. Or if the weather is not good for two days, which we would normally wait out and tolerate, while Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines are on a highly contested, horrific battlefield, and think that 48 hours was good enough, we won’t have to do that in the future.

So, we have got to get after the whole enterprise, not just the clean sheet space port, incorporating the old-school ones. We’ve got to think about it in terms of how do we really create that launch agility and that access agility and get really good at that?

One more thing I want to talk about here is we condemn ourselves and this military to a rail system and a road system that was designed in the 1800s, an interstate system that was designed in the 1950s, and that’s more of an engineering influence in how you design rockets and payloads than what the warfighter really needs. Okay?

So, I’m going to give you an airplane that says, “Hey. This tube is huge, seven times that of a C5.” And you don’t have to do these capabilities, put them on a ship and take 30 days to cruise to your launch locations. And I’m going to be able to give you immediate responsiveness. But I’m going to unleash the most restrictive engineering problems that you have and I’m going to let you focus on the rockets and the payloads that this country needs to win and dominate.

That is part of the conversation that needs to happen too. So, I think both the access and maneuver and then both the thought process behind how we design is a game changer when it comes to Radia WindRunner, and what we can provide this team.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Great. Thanks, sir. All right. Greg, I’m going to pivot a little bit to infrastructure and really the tactical level of how we make sure the space port is ready. So, how do you envision that we make sure the infrastructure is ready? And what do you see as the biggest risk to the infrastructure side? And how do we fix those infrastructure issues?

Col. Greg Wood, USAF (Ret.):

Oh, infrastructure and risk? Wow. That takes me back a ways, because I think I told you I’ve been doing this for a little while. If you roll back the clock about 30 years ago, I hate to admit this in public, but I probably was the worst launch controller in the Air Force. The reason being I had to fail within about 18 months where I was on the team. And I can tell you my very first exposure to infrastructure I think I’d been at the Cape maybe two weeks, and we launched a Delta II with a GPS payload on top of it.

And we launched it all of 1200 feet in the air before it exploded and rained down upon our launch sites. And I thought as a new guy, first off, I thought, “Wow. That’s the coolest explosion I ever saw,” but then that’s beside the point. No. I thought, “Wow. What do we do now?” Because I was brand-new to the business. And I quickly realized, when we talk infrastructure, there were two things that helped us recover to flight within about four to five months.

One was probably luck, but it was the fact that we were already building a new launch control center a couple of miles back connected by fiber to the pads. Because in the old days, it was all copper. So, we, literally, had guys a hundred yards off the pad or something that day in a shelter with that stuff raining down upon them.

So, certainly, fiber was a piece of it where I went, “Wow. That’s a game changer.” Even though, I was a lieutenant, I realized that the data flow was going to be key. But also just the fact we had two pads, because we had some pretty significant damage near one. And the other was in reasonably good shape and being modified for another vehicle. So, we were able to get back to launch pretty quickly, because we had access to the data and we had redundant facilities.

So, that was a piece of it. And I rolled the clock forward several years into the future and I got involved in standing up or really readying the Cape for the EELV program, and Vandenberg as well. It was actually both coasts. And I was involved in funding, and policy, and all those things that everybody thinks sounds like a snoozefest, but it was interesting, to me, because, certainly, there were things we had to do for the launch providers, but looked at the Cape.

A lot of our resources, aside from environmental work that had to be done, focused on water lines that needed to be upgraded and replaced. It focused on fiber. So, there is that trend again. It focused on power lines, bearing power lines. Believe it or not, at the Cape, for many years, we had above ground power lines in hurricane season.

So, I saw the power data. Those were the big things that stood out. And I roll forward … General, you know where we were 10 years ago this week. Right? So, sitting at Vandenberg, you remember it well.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

Oh, yeah. Jim Horn and I.

Col. Greg Wood, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah. Colonel Horn was there too. Yeah. We were all serving together at the time. And I remember on a Saturday night, I got a call, “Hey, sir. There’s a small fire on South Vandenberg.” “Well, what do you mean by a small fire?” “Well, if we don’t take control of it it’s going to be a big fire.” “Well, put the fire out.” That’s the response on the phone.

Unfortunately, they were unable to do that for a variety of reasons on the first night and we ended up with … What was it? About 12,000 or 13,000 acres lost. And there was some epic pictures. I still have a screenshot that came off the crisis action team computer monitor fire coming down the hill behind SLC-3 and those sort of things.

But what I saw out of that is we had a vehicle on the pad at SLC-3. There was an Atlas V. You had another provider that had multiple satellites in the barn being processed. You had other key national assets and national treasures further down the road that we were trying to protect.

But the big thirst I saw immediately from the providers was, “I need power. How do I refuel these diesel generators while there’s fire burning? How do we maintain power? I need redundant power.”

At the same time, what are we doing? We’re de-energizing the power lines on the base, because you have to take the power down to get the firefighters in to put the fire out. I still remember an epic picture of a young Airman in a bucket truck de-energizing the lines for the firefighters. And I thought, “That’s a great shot.” Then you look further down and the pole was on fire while he was de-energizing the line. That was one of those pictures I was glad I didn’t know about until days later. I was glad I didn’t know about that one in real time.

So, we had the power and then in the immediate aftermath we’re trying to get that atlas off the pad, I remember there was a missile defense test that was coming up, and the big push was data. “Oh my gosh. Those fiber lines were laid down over some relatively rough terrain for California.” And as a result, they weren’t trenched real deep. Let’s face it, they were pretty much laying on the surface. So, what happens when fire burns over? Now we don’t have the data transport. So, once again, we’re at power and we’re at data.

So, I keep seeing this trend throughout my career. Retired later and at NASA I got ready to go down to Stennis for some of the early tests on SOS. And we got to the test stand for the first power line. And I remember all the pre-briefs, “We have duel power feeds to the test stand.” Great. Good. Because I remember asking that question, because the power was always the trend.

Showed up the first day. We had horrible thunderstorms. I was at my hotel. Got up. Getting ready to go to work. Walked through several inches of water in the parking lot just to get to my car. I get out there and they’re like, “Well, we’re probably not going to test today, because there was a single point of failure in the power off the base.” So, they got hit by lightning and they took us out.

So, again, power, calm, those sort of things. And it’s also an eye-opener that it’s not just within our fence line. And that was my takeaway out of there is when I talked about this being a whole of government approach. It really involves the downtown communities and involves the critical infrastructure on the base, obviously, but off the base.

So, I really think if there’s things we need to do is really understanding the demand and partnering with our local communities and our local governments to make sure we have the defenses, if you will, in place for all those cyber power, data type things to make sure that we have the ability to maneuver when we need to in space.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Okay. Great. We have a final wrap-up question and a couple minutes. If you could talk about what the one specific action you think we should take today that’s got the biggest long-term impact on our ability to continue to access space as the nation needs us to. Sir, I’ll start with you.

Gen. Mike Minihan, USAF (Ret.):

I’m not going to be the one rule, but I’ll be quick. This country needs to pay for the Air Force and the Space Force it needs, not the one it has. We need more resourcing. Both the Space Force and the Air Force need a maneuver mindset. So, if you’re in uniform, get a grip on it, please. We need to invest in the mobility. We need to recapitalize the mobility that this Air Force has. It’s the most vulnerable, the least connected. It is atrocious state right now.

We need to acquire differently. We need to require platforms that have dual use, that fit within the infrastructure we already have, and have an enormous effect on all the other forces in a positive way. And I think we have that with our plane. I know we have that with our plane.

And then, most importantly, we are the most dominant, dominant, military on the planet. Okay? And as tough as it’s been, as tough as it’s been in the Middle East recently, it pales into comparison to what it’s going to be like in the Pacific, if this goes down with China. Okay?

We want to be so ready in all domains that they look at us and they say every day, “I don’t want to take that on.” And if they do decide to take it on, it’s got to be an overwhelming decisive victory that happens within weeks, not months or years. So, bundle all that up into one and let’s do all that.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Thanks, sir. David?

David Simenc:

That’s a big one. Yeah. I would say that the single thing it comes down to mindset. We need to think about our space infrastructure, think about launch, think about space ports, think about navigating and operating in space with a threat mindset. Think about the fact that we are under threat and we need to consider every element of the infrastructure as potentially a weakness that we need to go remediate and ameliorate.

Data is a big way that we’re going to be able to get there. If we know our infrastructure, if we know our systems, if we know our environment, we’ll be able to see the weak points before somebody else can exploit them.

So, I think that pivoting to a threat-first mindset and committing to treating every piece of your process as a vulnerability and addressing it through proper funding, through proper work is the single change that we can make to really position ourself for success in the future.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Great. Thanks, Dave. Greg?

Col. Greg Wood, USAF (Ret.):

Wow. No pressure. I think I’m the last speaker. Believe it or not, there’s a little clock up here counting backwards until I get the hook. So, I will tell you in brief, I think it’s about having a unified demand signal. And, again, I mentioned the national space economy earlier. I truly believe that we are an enabler for that as well as a military imperative.

Having that unified demand structure will allow us to partner across the government, perhaps even step outside our traditional stovepipes of, say, space launch, leverage the airlift community, leverage the national airspace system, the airport networks we have, and those sort of things and think about the challenges they faced in the late ’50s when the national airspace system stood up, and begin to leverage lessons learned from elsewhere and have these hard academic discussions, which is actually why I came here. I was actually hoping to engage in more of those discussions later.

I think that’s really critical for us to understand the national demand signal, get out of our individual comfort zones, our stovepipes, our cylinders of excellence, whatever you want to call them, and begin to have those cross-domain discussions and really learn from the best.

And there’s things that we’ll share too, but I think with that unified demand signal we can forecast demand power skillset. We need the human capital. It’s not just an HR problem. It’s actually a strategic asset. We need to capture it that way. The funding is always going to be important.

All those things will come together if we do that right, but only if we do it under that unifying demand signal at the national level.

Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky:

Great. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. It’s been a real pleasure to talk about, obviously, a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. And like any good launch, we’re ahead of schedule and ready to go for D-O. So, thank you for your time. Have a great afternoon.