Space Force and Intelligence Community Integration

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Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our panel on Space Force and Intelligence Community Integration. Now over the past decades, the importance of space for our nation’s security has grown tremendously. Our military services depend on space for a multitude of functions, including communications, navigation, missile warning, space control, among many others. Beyond the military, our intelligence agencies rely on space to collect the data that informs intelligence for our policymakers. Both Title 10 and Title 50 operations are often supported using the same space-based capabilities and systems.

Given this dynamic, integration between the Space Force, NRO, and CIA are imperative. The better they work together, the quicker we can get our war fighters and intel analysts the information they need. Integration, however, is a complex endeavor. It includes various aspects of architectures, operations, innovation, procedures, and personnel. So to discuss the current ongoing efforts at integrating the Space Force and intelligence community, it’s my pleasure to introduce Lieutenant General Mike Downs, Associate Director for Military Affairs at the CIA. Joining him is Major General Chris Povak, Deputy Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and rounding up the team is Major General Brian Sidari, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence.

Gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to have you with us today, and let’s jump right into the discussion. So when we talk about integration, there are many ways that organizations can do that with each other. Focusing on architectural integration, how does the NRO and the Space Force share equipment and designs to achieve your various missions? General Povak, let’s start with you.

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

Yeah, thanks General Deptula, and thanks to AFA for putting this panel together and for the conference, and thanks for those in the audience here today. So I think architectural integration has to start from the very beginning of a capability development process, and that’s through architectural design. So the Space Force has got a really innovative process that they call force design, which is looking into the future on the trends of technology, the trends of the threat environment that we have to work in, and the trends of the needs of the war fighting community. And they’re really focusing on what capabilities do we as a service need to provide to act and provide relevant war fighting capabilities on those trajectories.

The NRO plays a critical role in partnering with the Space Force in their force design processes to ensure that the systems that we’re building are designed in a way that’s interoperable with Space Force where the missions do have alignment, things like moving target indication, things like domain awareness. So really through the force design process, we’re sharing, our agencies are sharing information on the evolution of the threat so that we can both be informed on the protective measures that our systems in the future need to have. We’re also sharing a lot of the engineering models so we can actually put these capabilities into real world simulators and test out their efficacy even before you start the acquisition process.

So I would say that force design is a key first foundational area that we’re ensuring our architectures are aligned is through that process. They move into requirements. And for the NRO, we are both a defense agency having responsibilities under Title 10, and we’re a member of the intelligence community under Title 50. So we have the responsibility of taking in requirements for both communities and the future capabilities we build. Those are captured in what we call a statement of capability, which defines the specific requirements, both the objectives and the threshold requirements we have to meet.

It also identifies the interfaces that need to happen between our systems and the rest of the enterprise. And all of that is threat informed. So once those statements of capabilities are founded, we are now working with both the processes through the Department of War, their joint requirements process, and they’re similar on the intelligence community. And both communities get buy-in to the systems that we’re building based on the requirements we all agree to.

And then when you move into the acquisition, when you’re actually starting to build this capability, we have key milestone gateways as you go from concept design to production, where both the Department of War through the Undersecretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment and the IC get a chance to weigh in to ensure that the requirements are going to be met by the technologies that we have and that we have the right budget and the right authorities in place as we build the system. So I would say General Deptula, just to wrap up, I mean, we’re really from foundation through the delivery of a capability, we’re ensuring the synchronization and the integration of our architectures with Space Force and the rest of the Department of War and IC.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Sid?

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

Thanks, sir. And to AFA for putting a panel together and to be on the panel with my friends. I think Chris covered how we look at force design and how we ensure that the capabilities or the delivery work together. I also look at it from the National Space Intel Center because they’re doing the production, right? The Space Force is the 18th member of the IC. So how do we ensure that we have the IC stamp of the threat to inform those processes? So based on the threat information that we’re making the right decisions of what the government, the service and IC are going to purchase.

The second part is when you talk about architectures, what is the data architecture and the information flows? Because that’s incredibly important so that the war fighter actually gets what they need and finished, but then the information flows back to get to the foundational military intelligence, which is the starting point in targeting and the most lethal thing we do in the joint force, joint fires. And so how do you ensure that data comes off at the speed that the joint force needs to make decisions and maintain decision advantage? So that’s how we work together.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

And that’s very good. I mean, I think you covered the question very well. I think what our audience might also find of interest is how the architecture’s changed now from what they used to be in the past.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

That’s a nice softball. Yeah, thank you. No, that’s incredibly important as well because we were talking in the back, growing up, we would wait till stuff came down, then we would fuse it by the human looking at the screen and going to this screen. How do you do that at machine to machine at speed? How do you get rid of those stone age processes to capitalize on an information age force? And so when we talk about how do you do integration at the data level to allow TTP integration to go even faster? So we focus a lot of time on how do you get the data into authoritative holdings and using technology to gain insights and then how do you get that insight verified, validated, vetting so we ensure we meet the standing rules of engagement and then the laws of armed conflict so our combatant commanders can win at speed and scale. So we do a lot of that.

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

Yeah, General Deptula, I’ll add on that. I think from the National Reconnaissance Office standpoint, our architectures have evolved over time in really four meaningful ways. One is through proliferation and we have the recognition that the onesie, twosie satellite constellations, as exquisite as they might’ve been in the past, don’t provide a key fundamental capability that General Sidari just mentioned, and that’s persistence and coverage. If we are going to leverage the capabilities that provide phenomenal foundational intelligence to also support things like real-time indications and warnings, long range fires and target custody, you have to build persistence.

And we are doing that through proliferating our constellations, going from constellation sizes of single digit numbers to dozens and soon to hundreds of satellites. We’re also doing that by increasing the capacity of every single sensor on our system. So every single one of them is putting more data into the hands of the war fighter and the analysts. The second area that we’re building in is automation. And I think General Sidari covered the reason, the why. We are doing that through every single phase of the tasking, the collection, the processing, the exploitation, dissemination cycle. We are building in machine to machine interfaces where that we can focus the authorization of doing a collect anywhere in the world at the machine level and not on individual actions at every step in the process.

The third thing that we’re doing is we’re moving from on-prem computing capabilities to cloud center datasets capabilities. It’s moving more compute capabilities to the cloud, which helps us, what, in the speed of delivering information to our war fighting communities and to the intelligence community and also helps build resilience so that you’re not relying on all of your compute hardware being in one physical location that could be suspect to attack vectors.

Last area is that we are building resilience into our architecture’s soup to nuts from how you protect and defend your systems on orbit through the TTPs and through our partnerships with Space Command and Space Force. How are we defending our cyber train and the NRO manages one of the largest IT fabrics in the world today? And how are we protecting the resilience of our physical infrastructure that is a global infrastructure and everywhere in between? So hopefully that gives you just a sense of where we’re putting investment and how our architecture is changing to meet the increasing demands of both the intelligence community and the Department of War.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

I would just add one other thing, right? We are delivering revolutionary capabilities to the joint force. The joint force needs to evolve their concepts because we’re creatures of habit, “This is how I used to do it.” Well, we need to take a step back and evolve our operational concepts and the concepts of employment to account for these revolutionary capabilities that are being delivered to the joint force. So it kind of goes back to your question as well. And I believe design principles, the design process where you start at the outcome and work back are incredibly important. And every time I’m over at the NRO, you can see they apply those there. How do I just hit the button, make it work, right? That’s my simple, how do I hit the button, make… One touch of one button make the architecture work at speed.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Thank you. Now what about operational integration? How do your organizations work together to fulfill the various Title 10 and Title 50 missions that your shared architecture supports? General Downs, why don’t we start with you on this one?

Lt. Gen. Michael Downs:

Thanks sir. I appreciate it. And again, thanks for the invitation to be here and with all of you today. Let me just first say that the very essence of my job is about Title 10, Title 50 integration, Associate Director of Military Affairs. And to give you a sense of just how important it is to the CIA, my office is literally across the hallway from the director and I meet with the director and the deputy director and the agency leadership every day, all day. That’s just how valuable our director sees integration, particularly with the military.

And my predecessor was General Caine, and he coined a term Title 60, which is obviously Title 10 and Title 50 is what winning is all about. And so I eat, sleep and breathe Title 60. And in fact, on my wall, I have a painting of the Doolittle Raiders. Obviously a lot of great lessons out of that, but one of the key ones is not just that it was an audacious mission, which should guide us every day, but at the same time, you’re talking about two things, a bomber and a carrier that weren’t designed to operate together and they did so extremely successfully. So that kind of to me is the word picture of Title 60 integration.

So the CIA is organized very much like the military. We have our directorates, which are much like our services. DS&T, as an example, does a lot of work in the space domain. And then we have our mission centers, which are very much like our combatant commands. They are both regionally and functionally aligned. So one of the things I pay close attention to is, and I’m synced with the joint staff every day, but what are the operations that the combatant commands are doing and making sure that we then tie our mission centers in with them. I mean, even today I was meeting with one of the combatant commanders and he had a very specific space need that the agency can provide. And so I’ll then make sure that our space department is linked up with them.

So it’s really, really important to stay slashed in and that’s what we do. I would add that one of the keys to success are exercises. There’s a lot of things that we participate in with the military. The linkages are thick and they are kind of at all levels. We will obviously participate in war games, joint staff, we’ll host a bunch, but a lot of times the combatant command exercises are key for us and we do integrate into them and they do two or three things for us. The first is, if you look back on the Global War on Terror, we really grew the linkage between the CIA and the military. And so we don’t have as many deployment opportunities now that we did it however many years back.

And so these exercises offer that opportunity where one of our officers can get to know a major, a lieutenant colonel. But more importantly, we then understand what is a combatant commander trying to achieve in his campaign plan. And so we participate there. And so as it relates to then space, I think you would see that we will support both analytically but operationally and we get a real good sense of what the vulnerabilities are that perhaps a combatant commander is trying to defend against. And so then that really informs how we look at the space domain. So operational integration is our focus and I think every single day we’re doing a lot of that across the department.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good.

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

Ditto. So I think from operational integration standpoint from the National Reconnaissance Office and how we integrate with the National Security Space Enterprise operationally is a couple areas. One is that we’re building joint programs with the Space Force. I’ll give you two examples. One is a program called Silent Barker, which is a domain awareness capability that allows, although the NRO has built and operates the system, the data goes to Space Force to help with their mission to ensure that the nation does not encounter an operational surprise in the space domain. We have to have a better insight than any competitor in the world on what is happening in the space domain, what is a threat and what we are going to do about it.

Second area we’re working together in a joint program is in moving target indication, and that is how we have the best information from space fused with data from other domains and other modalities and other intelligence sources to have the best understanding of what an object is, where it is, where it’s going so that we can hand that trajectory off to the joint force to make decisions to include to take action on. So that’s two areas where we are working operationally in partnership with the Space Force.

Second area that we do for operational integration is that we deploy NRO technical expertise in sitting side by side with analysts at NSA and NGA and at the intel operations centers around the world. We also have them embedded in each of our combatant commands and service components. So you have technical experts who understand current NRO capabilities, limitations, what the next generation of NRO systems that we’re developing and delivering in the next 12 months are going to do for the war fighter and helping the war fighter on real world, real time projects and tuning NRO capabilities to allow them to meet the questions or the needs that they have.

We also now, with that side-by-side partnership, can bring feedback of how our systems are doing back to our developers to tune the capabilities to create enhancements or to fix problems in real time. And I think the last area that I would say as far as operational integration is that how do we understand the space domain better? How do we protect and defend the space domain actively? And that’s why we have a partnership with Space Command and Space Force at the National Space Defense Center and why the NRO is continuing to contribute people and capabilities to make that ops center the best in the world.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

So I straddle both sides. So I am not involved in operations, right? That is the combatant command and the service components, but I also have Title 50 authorities in my current role. So you have to do that balance of what belongs to Space Com. And I call and I talk to all the combatant command 2s and go, this is what you need and then work issues for the service components because as you get older, everybody else is your friend there and you’ve kind of gone to capstone or things like that. So that’s the first one. Also, Title 50 is titled War and Defense. So the Secretary of War has Title 50 authorities and we shouldn’t miss that point. And so it’s how do you request them to do it?

And so I use Title 50 authorities that flow down to enable the service to organize, train and equip and get new capabilities flowing, adversary data right through the National Space Intel Center so then they can support acquisition community. The other one, NRO is not in the analytic production chain, but what do they need to support their capability development requirements development? But also how do I ensure the intel Guardians are trained to then go into our service components or to work in the combatant command so they don’t think Title 10, Title 50. They just think, how do I do my job to win and let the discussion about authorities happen at a higher level?

Because at the end of the day, we’re all using the same data, right? The same data’s coming through there, but how do you then go talk to General Downs, right? How do we call in and go, “Hey, I need to come talk to Space Department? Or I call General Povak. We were just talking in the green room, “I need to come over and talk to you because we figure out a problem that helps everybody.” That’s really the integration because we figured a problem out. I use my authority or my role to go talk to a different member of the IC and then we get everybody on the same sheet because that allows a joint force to be successful and win.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Now obviously you all come from very different organizations. How do you prioritize which missions get attention first? Open question.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

I like how you two just let me handle that.

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

You already had the floor.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

I was like putting my mic down. No. So maybe it’s because my two tours and the joint staff J3, everything’s a crisis. No, it comes from a variety of places. How do you prioritize? Where do you send that one person if they need them? The joint force has an RFF through GFM and where do you send them? I get prioritization from the Secretary of the Air Force, right? When we meet with him, you get them from the Chief of Space Operations or the vice chief. And then you literally talk to your, we talk to the components, the service components, what they need and then engagement on the joint staff. So it’s really easy when the oval prioritizes, right? This is super important, the secretary or their chairman, and then you just have to do it, but it’s not a sprint.

So how do you ensure you maintain readiness so the joint force has lethality? And so how do you come up with this is what we need for a campaign. Where do I use automation? How do you ensure the joint staff has everything they need to win? So that prioritization happens. I say we need ruthless prioritization and I’m okay saying no because when you were younger as a captain, you couldn’t do everything. Now I’m like, I’m not meeting. If I don’t need another promotion board in my life, I’ll be happy. So I’m okay making decisions, but I do not make decisions in the operational side, right? That is not my role. So how do I enable the operational commanders at Echelon to do their job? I wish I knew when I walked into work what number one was going to be, but it changes all day.

Lt. Gen. Michael Downs:

So I’d just add, I mean, my prioritization is really about operations. I’m not so much in development space. So Sid, you mentioned earlier just kind of being dialed into where our national priorities are. So those are pretty clear. And quite frankly, I’m in a lot of meetings with my director. I’m talking with the chairman or his front office a lot or the secretary’s front office just to kind of get a sense of, hey, there’s a lot going on in the world. All you got to do is follow the news. And then how do we make sure that, again, the right CIA organizations are linked up with the military? So we generally take our priorities really from our policymakers.

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

Yeah. I think in the NRO it’s very similar is that we are a capability development agency. So we take our prioritization of which system we develop, how much money we’re putting towards development programs from oversight. And that could be from either the Undersecretary of War, INS, for the Office of Director of National Intelligence, from OMB, from Congress. So we have very clear lines of responsibility of who we’re getting prioritization on the systems that we’re developing.

We’re also an operational organization. And as both of these gentlemen mentioned, we have a very close relationship with our ultimate customers. Those customers could be at the functional managers at the National Security Agency or National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. They could also be customers at the combatant commands. We know that we need to posture our systems to be ready to meet the objectives of both the IC and the Department of War, depending on what is happening around the world and when.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Now, another way we ensure our advantage over adversaries is through continuous innovation. How do you all work on this front to ensure that we develop and field the best technology possible? And General Povak, you’re kind of a natural to start this one.

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

Yeah, sure. I work in an organization full of technologists, so we love research and development. So I think a couple of ways to address how we look at research and development. One, we are committed to investing a specific portion of our budget, our overall budget towards research and development because you know that you always have to innovate to stay ahead of your adversaries. Two, we have close relationships with industry. Right now, the NRO has dozens of major system acquisitions, partnerships with 250 industry members from many of you here in the audience today, over 5,000 subcontractor relationships. So we have access to a broad swath of the industry, many of the same industry partners that the Space Force works with.

So having a continuous conversation with them about not only what you’re building today, but what you need to be building into the future, and then finding forums, whether they’re tech forums, bringing industry in to talk about what their capabilities are, what your needs are, having a regular CEO day so that the leadership of industry has a common understanding of what your needs are, and then to find ways of how you’re having those communications jointly where it makes sense with other actors in the national security space enterprise like the Space Force.

We are a member of the Federal Lab Consortium. So we have stood up recently under our advanced science and technologies organization, a federal lab, we call it the Space Reconnaissance Lab. And what that allows us to do is to enter into cooperative research and development agreements with industry partners and with academia. And we actually have two creatives with university partners, one of them being Purdue University that’s in the exhibit hall and is also a member of the Space Force’s University Partnership Program. So finding ways of having common interest based on the needs that we have and the experience that’s out there in industry and academia and having deliberate partnerships on that, even at the unclassified level.

And then also I would say that we are continuing to focus on the areas where the NRO is probably the leader in the United States government. Things like what is the next generation of Geo-ELINT and signals intelligence sensors that we need to continue our competitive advantage? How are we injecting automation and artificial intelligence into our workflows to make our systems more responsive and more rapidly deployable and relevant to our community? How do we ensure that we’re generating the next generation of hardened microelectronics to ensure our systems are smaller and more effective?

And then how are we ensuring that we build automation, like I said, into how we do every single part of our tasking, collection, exploitation, processing, dissemination in operations, driving automation where it’s best fitted to make us more nimble and responsive> so I would say that’s how I would look at how we’re looking at our research and development through our partnerships with industry, academia, with the services, and then what are the focus areas that we’re leading the nation on.

Lt. Gen. Michael Downs:

So Chris, I would just add to that from the CIA’s perspective, first of all, innovation is just kind of part of our DNA. And our director has just placed a premium on making sure we are on the cutting edge of emerging technology. So we spend a lot of time in that space, obviously. The first reason though is just to kind of understand how adversaries might be using advanced technologies against us and that then informs the entire IC and the Department of War in terms of how we defend against it and what we’re ready for. But conversely, to maintain that leading edge advantage, we have to have a sense of where technology’s heading. And so we spend a lot of time investing in what does the future look like and understanding it.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

I always think back to when Chairman Caine was in your job, he would always say, “If not us, then who?” And that’s really the thought, not the thing. How innovation, we focus on the output of the thing, but we should focus on the thought. And Chris, as you were walking through it and I see it, how do you think through what’s next? And that’s innovation, right? How do you allow the workforce to think through that? What’s the next best thing and not tied for that’s how we used to do it? How do you create the environment so your people can think through it? And that’s mostly what I do or you empower the folks to do from an innovation standpoint because we don’t have the force structure, so it has to be baked in into each individual Guardian that’s in the Space Force Intel enterprise.

There’s a better way to do it, and let’s take those risks to do it. So it’s the thought. The other one is, if you’re doing the same thing two years from now, you’ve absolutely failed because our adversaries, it’s just changing so quick. The strategic environment is changing so quick. How do you keep up with it? And so a lot of that is how do I use data? What are our processes from design principles? But it’s the thought. And so that’s how we bake innovation or that’s how I approach it with the folks.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Now, how do you all streamline workflows to ensure that there aren’t any duplicate efforts or procedural barriers in your organizations to carry out your mission sets? Sid, let’s start with you.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

Yeah, that’s a good one. We were kind of talking it backstage, right? If we’re an information age force, get rid of the stone age processes. How do you enable technology? I joke, my first cellphone was in 1999. Every Guardian was born with a cellphone. They’re born into technology. How do you enable the technology to speed up? How do you put… I have this discussion with some good friends. Everybody goes, “We got to use AI.” I go, “But you’re really talking automation. If you don’t have a process, how are you automating it?” And so how do you make decisions quicker or how do you do the analysis to push out quicker?

And so General Holmes, COMACC used to say, “Future conflicts will be a wars of cognition.” So how do you raise the Guardian joint force up the cognitive ladder and let the machine or technology get there quicker? And so if we’ve always had that workflow and we’ve always had that process, how do you know people are actually still using it? You have to go in and be ruthless with that and go, “We’re not doing that anymore. Who’s the customer and what’s the outcome?” And so that’s how we approach it.

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

Yeah. I guess I would say something similar is that one is that you have to understand as a capability provider, you have to understand the needs of your customer and you get that from having people who are in place with your customer. So they understand the processes they use, the timelines that they’re under, the authorities that they have to govern against or govern within and ensure that the capabilities you’re delivering are relevant to those processes.

The second area is that we are not the only capability provider in the national security space enterprise. And as we’re building joint projects, like how are we doing dynamic tasking, targeting for the joint force, there is multiple defense agencies providing relevant capabilities, whether they’re visualization, their tasking systems, their data fusion systems. So ensuring that we’re participating in informed conversations with NSA, NGA, Defense Intelligence Agency, ourselves, the services to one, share what you are developing, ensure that you have now the understanding of the machine to machine requirements between those disparate systems and the interface standards that govern the facilitation of data passing through so that we can ensure one, traceability of information from requester to sensor back to the requester.

And to ensure that we’re baking in the right authorities and the right steps of the process along the way to ensure we’re adhering to the executive orders and the legalities of how we collect information anywhere around the world. So I would say that we’re working processes, one, by understanding our customers and two, partnering with co-deliverers of capabilities to ensure that process and capability integration is baked in from day one.

Lt. Gen. Michael Downs:

Chris, and I would just add one thing to your point, which is development of space capabilities as we know is often years in the making and the earlier that we’re integrated and we’re aware of what one another is doing, the better we’re going to be in terms of fielding a capability that meets all of our needs potentially. And so I think one of the very simple keys to that, and it’s kind of obvious, but is the relationship piece. You can put boards and all those kinds of things in place and you need them. But similarly, I think the cross-pollinization that you’ll find between the CIA, the Space Force and NRO, that is critical at all layers, not just at the senior levels, but at the junior levels that kind of start sharing, hey, where are we headed and how do we make sure we get integrated into a capability perhaps NRO is looking at?

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

There are lots of people out there who serve in the Space Force and then they move on to the IC. How does this crossover help mitigate some of the organizational prejudices that could derail efforts at integration?

Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Povak:

Sure. I’ll jump on that one. The National Reconnaissance Office is a relatively small organization. I know Sid’s service says it’s by far the smallest. We’re about a fifth of the size of the United States Space Force. A small but mighty force that’s comprised of about a third of our own government civilian workforce, a third military and a third of members of the Central Intelligence Agency. So we are truly a Title 10, Title 50 organization. Of that military component, a large chunk of those are our Guardians. Now, the CSO, General Schiess this morning said in one of his lines of effort to ensure that we all remember that we are Guardians first. We just happen to have a lot of Guardians fortunately in the National Reconnaissance Office.

And I think there’s benefits to both communities for that investment. One is the NRO gets a tremendous amount of benefit from the unique experience and expertise that we get from each of our components to include Space Force Guardians and Airmen. So the things like engineering, space operations, air battle management skills that are critical for how we ensure that the tools that we’re building for the joint force are relevant from day one.

I would say also that the Guardians and Airmen that are coming into NRO also get some professional development experience. They get to work in an environment that is inherently joint between the IC and the DOD. We are, as I mentioned, a small workforce, which means we inherently push authorities and responsibilities down to the lowest level. So our Guardians and Airmen are empowered whether they’re in operations, intelligence, engineering acquisitions, they’re empowered with a lot of responsibilities almost from day one.

They actually get experience and exposure to our acquisition center of excellence, NRO University, opportunities for advanced academic degrees, things that will help them well beyond their tenure in the National Reconnaissance Office. So I think that by contributing Guardians, Airmen, other military members into the National Reconnaissance Office, it’s a win-win for our organization. It’s a win for the service, and it brings our community together on common problem sets in an effective way.

Lt. Gen. Michael Downs:

That’s a compelling recruiting advertisement, by the way, I got to say. One of the things we talked about backstage was just as a general officer, you don’t want to hopefully show up in the joint world for the first time as a one star that you’ve had the opportunity to work in the Pentagon or in a joint force prior to that, so you kind of understand how it works. And I would say it’s very much the same with regard to our space personnel, if you will, space oriented, having those experiences earlier in life.

So we at the agency, much like myself, we have a range of officers that come in to really drive an integration and to include soon we will actually have a Space Force one star come to the agency. That’s how important we think this investment in space is and it starts on the personnel front. I mean, it sounds obvious, but it’s absolutely true because the earlier in life that you understand what another organization, which is very different from yours, what it brings to the fight, the much more adept you are as you move on at integrating these capabilities.

The other thing I think has just been helpful, sir, you asked about Space Force officers integrating into the IC, perhaps a second phase of their career, and we absolutely have a bunch of Space Force officers. And one of the things that helps do, there’s a lot of translation issues that happen. The CIA may not understand what the department means when it’s talking a certain line of effort, but not only do our Space Force officers know how to translate, they also know where to go in NRO or within Space Force or at Space Com to maybe get movement on an issue or deconflict something. And so that’s really, really important and you just can’t put a price tag on how important that is.

Maj. Gen. Brian D. Sidari:

I spent a third of my career joint, and so the services are the joint force and you know who to pick up the phone, you understand when you’re on the joint staff or you’re in a combat and command, you work for that boss. But I think it was General Downs who said like General Caine, Title 60, but you don’t worry about it if you all know each other and you work there and you understand if the outcome’s the same. And we were talking backstage, I’ve never seen the integration compared to when I was an 03, I get it’s different as an 08, but I don’t see a difference.

I’ve never served in the IC. I have great friends that have, and you pick up the phone because they’re military officers, you know each other and you can get things done on behalf of the combatant command by your personal relationships. At the junior grades, it’s an investment. It’s an investment into that organizational culture in the IC you’re going to place them to understand how it works at the strategic level at different customer sets. And then how do I bring that back to the service and how do I put that expertise across the service? And that’s what we look towards.

We have Guardians that are at NSA, we have Guardians that are at NGA, we have Guardians in the combatant commands. But again, if you’re one force and we need to win our nation’s wars, I don’t really care where they’re at, right? I literally care that we’re getting the outcome and the nation wins our fights because as the joint force, that’s our job.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Well, very good. And thank you gentlemen. We’ve run to the end of our time, but I think our audience is much more well-informed after hearing your comments today. So on behalf of the Mitchell Institute to you all and everyone in the audience, have a great space power kind of day.