Episode 37: Foreign Military Sales Reform to Strengthen International Cooperation

Host: Scott King 

SME: Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships (BH) 

Heidi Grant, Executive Partner (HG)

00:02 – 01:20 

When a foreign partner seeks military technology from the U.S. defense industrial base, there’s two ways for them to acquire that capability: Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) and Foreign Military Sales (FMS). In Direct Commercial Sales, the foreign country negotiates directly with the contractor. But in the Foreign Military Sales process, the United States government manages the sale and transfer of that technology with additional training and sustainment support in a way that strengthens international cooperation and the collective security of the United States and its Allies. 

However, a recent surge in demand for hardware and software technologies alike is challenging the current FMS process to keep up, resulting in two recent executive orders and a series of organizational changes to reform and modernize the Foreign Military Sales program.  

Welcome to the Elara Edge. We have two guests today to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the current Foreign Military Sales process and the motives driving the effort to reform the program. 

First is Heidi Grant, Executive Partner with Elara Nova. Heidi is the former Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and the former Director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. 

Heidi, welcome to the show!  

01:20 – 01:21 

(HG): Thank you.  

01:22 – 01:40 

Also joining us is Brad Head, the Managing Director of International Partnerships at Elara Nova. Brad is a retired colonel with the United States Air Force and previously served as the Chief of Defense Planning at the US Mission to NATO and later served as the Director of International Affairs at Space Operations Command.  

Brad, welcome to the show! 

01:40 – 01:41  

(BH): Great to be here. 

01:42 – 01:50 

Let’s begin with the traditional approach to Foreign Military Sales, or FMS. What purpose does it serve? And how is it designed to work? 

01:51 – 03:03 

(HG): Yeah. So I’m going to give a little more background so people know why I’m interested in doing this interview. So I was in the Pentagon on 9/11. Shortly after that, I went and worked at CENTCOM, and that’s where I first met all these international partners that were there to support the U.S. operations. And I learned then that a lot of countries around the world, while they would love to be a valued partner, they didn’t have the capability or capacity to be a strong military partner with the U.S. 

Following working at a couple of combatant commands. I went on to be the Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for International Affairs, and as you mentioned, kind of culminated my career in the government with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. 

But a lot of people don’t have a clear understanding of what is Foreign Military Sales? A lot of people think it’s the US taxpayer dollars financing. That’s not what Foreign Military Sales is. Oftentimes, nations pay every penny of the cost of a sale. It’s a government to government process that’s used and it’s administered by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and you have U.S. government experts managing the sale with a foreign government.

03:04 – 03:51 

(BH): Yeah. I mean, so I’ll add one job that I’ve had in my life that you didn’t highlight in the opening was I ran the Office of Defense Cooperation in Brussels at the embassy, supporting Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union and NATO. 

And I think part of the conversation we’ll have is about that system. But that’s really the front lines interacting with the foreign nation’s military. So, for example, when I was in Brussels supporting the Belgian military, they bought F-35s and MQ-9’s and we did some space cooperation with Luxembourg. 

So space security cooperation is a fairly new thing. And I think that is part of the conversation we’re going to have today is understanding the overall Foreign Military Sales process and procedures and then kind of where some of the challenges are that make it fit for purpose for doing the space security cooperation mission in particular.  

But yeah, so just I think that’s a good context. We’ll get started. 

03:52 – 04:53 

(HG): One other thing I wanted to highlight about Foreign Military Sales, because I always get this question like: ‘What’s the difference between Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales?’ And it depends on several things. The maturity of the country, whether they can manage the sale on their own, and maybe they don’t need U.S. government involvement in the sale. Or if there’s technology security reasons where they’re required to go through Foreign Military Sales.  

But one of the advantages of Foreign Military Sales is the US government looks at it as a package approach. So it’s not just a sale of the equipment, but when they do the sale in the package, they’re going to ensure that the training is in there, the sustainment is in there. 

So for the lifecycle of that capability, where oftentimes if you go Direct Commercial Sale with a U.S. company, they’re not required to do the sustainment piece of it. Oftentimes they do, but it’s not a requirement where this is a requirement that the U.S. government has is this total package approach is what they call it for Foreign Military Sales.

04:54 – 05:23 

(BH): That’s a good point. I mean, this isn’t just about selling specific pieces of equipment. It’s ensuring that a partner nation has the capability that they’re really trying to get after. And the totality of that, including the sustainment over an extended period of time. There’s a lot of countries we could sell things to that would be interested in buying those things, but they may not be able to use them, sustain them, or operate them. 

And so this total package approach, which the government insists on as part of the Foreign Military Sales process, is really focused on that, making sure that we’re delivering capabilities to our allies, partners and friends.

05:24 – 05:34 

So say that I’m a representative from an Allied or partner nation. And I want to buy a certain technology or capability from a U.S.-based defense contractor. 

How do I go about doing that?  

05:35 – 06:35 

(HG): In each of our embassies around the world, the U.S. has trained security cooperation officers that are located there in the embassy in their country. And that is their first point of entry, is to go and talk to the person locally there about their interests, and they can then connect them into the company or into the U.S. government and help advise them which way is the best to go. 

But it’s not going to stop them from talking directly to industry if they want to go and learn a little bit about the technology, direct to industry or direct to one of the services. But oftentimes a country isn’t sure: is it Army? Navy? Air Force? Who would manage the case for them? Our country’s unique that we have such a broad defense base here that there might be several companies that offer the same capability. 

So that’s why I would say it’s best to go into our embassy, who has a broader view of all of the capabilities out there and which U.S. companies offer what they’re looking for.  

06:35 – 09:42 

(BH): Yeah, the Security Cooperation Office is the office that I ran in Belgium and other Combatant Commands called them different things. Now they’ve all solidified around the term ‘military group,’ but at the time I ran the Office of Defense Cooperation and that office was responsible for Foreign Military Sales and then the Commerce Department, would be working if it turned out that you wanted to pursue something through the Direct Commercial Sales route. 

So you didn’t want the total package approach with the U.S. government involvement, and you just wanted to go buy the piece of equipment directly. Now there are certain times that that’s not a viable option for restrictions on certain types of technologies. But those two offices, again, the Commerce Department, if you’re looking for a Direct Commercial Sale or the Security Cooperation Office now called, ‘milgroups’ for the Foreign Military Sales. 

And here I’ll just highlight one of the challenges that we face right now when the space security cooperation enterprise in particular, is the lack of guardians or even space-smart people in a lot of these positions on the front lines. So if you look out at various embassies around the world that are having heavy conversations with their host nation, that’s responsible for building their air and space force team but they don’t have a guardian or even somebody who has any deep experience with space on their team, which makes it challenging. I think it’s even more complicated because the U.S. doesn’t have a catalog of things that they’re actively trying to sell.  

So, for example, when I was in Belgium and Belgium was in the process of replacing their F-16 fourth-gen fighters, they were looking for something more advanced and potentially a fifth-gen fighter. And it just so happened to be that the F-35 was the primary option that was for sale in the world, and they evaluated a couple of different options, but that’s the one they went with.  

But because I wasn’t a fighter pilot, an F-22 pilot or even a real subject matter expert, I think one of the challenges that we’re running into right now, as nations are looking to the U.S. and trying to buy those sorts of capabilities and build those sorts of forces, is that in the absence of those trained experts on the front line and a list of things that we have for sale in the space world, we’ve got WGS, which is a satellite communication network that some countries have decided to partner with us to build for their satellite communication needs. 

But other than that, we have a couple of systems that we can talk to other allies, partners and friends about. Everything else is kind of a handmade wooden shoe. You have to sit down with somebody, have an informed conversation to define very specific requirements that would then get translated through the system to DSCA and then on to the implementing agencies, whether that’s SAF/IA on the Air and Space Force side or other services. 

And so you either need a list of things that you’re actively selling or you need experts on the front line. And we currently don’t have either one of those. I know Deanna Rhyalls and her team in the space division of SAF/IA are actively working on what does that list look like that we want to sell allies, partners and friends? And I know DSCA is working on the human capital side to make sure we’ve got trained experts out there, whether they’re on the front lines at the embassy or on the C field com and their S five teams or the combatant commands, even at that level in the J five teams. So that’s one of the challenges that we’re kind of working through during this period of time right now.  

09:43 – 11:16 

(HG): Yeah. So I don’t see it actually any different than other domains that we have. I think it starts with from a U.S. perspective, what kind of capabilities would be helpful to strengthen the coalition for our international partners to step up to make our capability capacity together stronger? 

Talking about the wooden shoe that Brad just brought up, it’s very similar to fighter jets – where if you look at F-16s around the world, you probably don’t find two that are exactly alike, because countries have the right to ask for unique things based on their sovereignty. 

So that’s one of those things where it’s made Foreign Military Sales very difficult or more challenging, because in the past, the U.S. used to operate things and then we’d say, ‘Okay, now let’s transfer this to an international partner.’ Where in today’s environment, we’re finding that our international partners want it at the same time, we’re getting it.  

Like Brad mentioned, the F-35 as we were just training on the F-35, some of the partners in the F-35, they were also needing training. So they’re asking for things either sometimes even before we get them – non program of records. So that’s why you know you hear this all the time that ‘Oh the Foreign Military Sales process is so slow or it’s broken.’  

I do not agree with that statement. The Foreign Military Sales process is not broken. There’s always room for improvement. But there’s a reason oftentimes for oversight and accountability why things go slow.

11:17 – 13:10 

(BH): Yeah. I would add there’s a couple of different control regimes to protect U.S. sensitive military technologies. There’s the International Traffic and Arms Regulation, ITAR, there’s the Export Administration Regulations, EAR. And then there’s actually one called the Missile Technology Control Regime, MTCR, that are all relevant when you get to space in particular. And if you go back even just five-ten years ago, space was the exclusive remit of a handful of nation states. 

And now we see, with the commercial space sector moving quickly and the price of launch coming down, that more and more nations who historically would never have thought of themselves as a space faring nation now have a realistic pathway to getting involved in some of those areas that they haven’t historically. And so we find a demand signal that’s just growing out there for nations as they think about getting involved and understanding that space is the critical component of any multi-domain operation. 

And you see that in Ukraine and we see that in Iran today, that space is a critical player in that whether it’s the missile defense, missile tracking piece or if it’s the satellite communications, navigation timing, the overhead imagery, or even some of the offensive systems that maybe it use to deny those advantages to our adversaries.  

Nations are seeing the need for those things, and they’re actively pursuing those, and so as they engage the U.S. system, they run into some of these control regimes that would force them to go the FMS route, as opposed to, in some cases, being able to buy those technologies from the industry partners directly. But there’s nothing, as Heidi indicated, it’s not that they can’t sell those things.  

It’s just that there are mechanisms by which we ensure that we make a sound policy decision that’s fully integrated across the whole of the U.S. government, from the State Department and the Commerce Department and the Defense Department in a variety of different agencies to ensure that we’re making the right decisions on the types of technologies that we are willing to sell and export to other nations.

13:11 – 13:18 

And what are some things industry needs to be thinking about to better provide a technology or capability through the FMS program? 

13:19 – 14:53 

(HG): Right. So, a country can buy directly from a company. It’s the company’s responsibility if it’s what we call a dual-use for both commercial and defense to go through and get the licenses needed through Commerce and make sure it’s coordinated with the State Department. So there’s a process, as long as the company has the marketing license to be able to export, the country can go directly to them. If it’s something exportable. 

You know, one of the things I found when I was Director of Defense Technology Security Administration is I think a lot of people weren’t aware of their role looking at the sensitive technology making security Department of War decisions on whether that technology poses a risk. 

And their motto was ‘Keeping the U.S edge.’ And so they review all of these requests from companies to be able to export to make sure that the U.S. does keep the edge. And, you know, that’s a sensitive topic to bring up when you have international partners hear that, but I’ve talked to international partners and they want the U.S. to have the military edge. So they are supportive. We need to keep the edge and that’s what DITSA does.  

One of my biggest recommendations. Now this is more to companies is they need to sit down with the Defense Technology Security Administration early in the process and often because it will avoid them over-promising technology release to different countries. It’s just important to get that knowledge ahead of time before something’s promised to be able to export.

14:54 – 15:15 

(BH): One thing that’s it’s an interesting thing is that you could have an entire complex system that is releasable to another nation, but there could be a single component, a guidance chip or a cryptography chip that’s embedded in there that is restricted in a certain way that would prevent that sale or restrict that sale from a certain country or partner without changing something about the way that thing is built or configured.

15:16 – 16:56 

(HG): I would say there’s several things that the U.S. looks at when they decide, is this a technology that we want to export or not? And one of the first things you’re looking at: is there a legitimate need for this export? And I’ll give you an example, is titanium. And we would look like somebody wanted some unusual amount of titanium. 

Well, titanium is used to make golf clubs, but it’s also used to make weapons. So you got to review that and say ‘Okay, why are they asking? Is there a military need for this? And you also look at does this transfer contribute to regional stability or does it trigger an arms race? 

So you want to look at that. You want to look at human rights. I mean, so there’s a whole checklist of things that you’re going to look at. And one of the biggest things is are they going to be able to secure this technology and protect it. And so it doesn’t get in the hands of terrorists or adversaries. And overall, is that transfer in the strategic interest of the U.S.?  

And this is where as a DTSA director. There was a committee that I used to sit on where it was an end-user review committee, where the DTSA director sits on it. There’s a representative from Department of State and Department of Commerce, and there might be some times where I would say, ‘Well, I’m concerned there’s some risk about the security piece,’ but then the State Department’s looking at it through the lens. Well, this partnership is really important and then commerce is view is like, ‘Well, this is really important to our economy.’  

So oftentimes these three agencies get together. And if at the director level, if you can’t come to an agreement, it can go all the way up to the President and the Cabinet on whether we should transfer our technology or not.

 16:57 – 17:21 

Now there was a recent study that was published by the Bruegel a think tank based in Brussels that showed foreign military sales purchases from European nations jumped from an average of $11 billion a year from 2017-2021 to $68 billion in 2024 alone. 

So given that surge in demand from our international partners over in Europe, how might that be creating a burden on industry to meet these growing demands? 

17:22 – 19:19 

(BH): A little explanation may be helpful. So when I was in Belgium and the Belgian government signed an order for 34 F-35s, in practice what happens is that order comes through The Security Cooperation Office makes its way back through DSCA and ends up in SAF/IA, which is the implementing agency in that case for an F-35 sale. 

And then what practically happens is SAF/IA. In this case, it’s the JPO, the Joint Program Office, because F-35 was handled differently. But that office picks up the phone and calls Lockheed in Fort Worth and says, ‘Hey, you know how you’re already building 1300 F-35A models for us. Well, I want you to add 34 more slot them here, here, here and here.’ 

Put this specific configuration on them. And when they come off the end of the line, slap a Belgian tail flash on the end of them. Then the U.S. government takes ownership of it. And then we transfer it back over to the Belgian government. So we’re essentially, when other countries buy, it increases the scale of the buy that the U.S. government is getting so the fixed cost associated with developing things comes down.  

But again, some of the delay in delivering these capabilities is the fact that if you wanted some of these systems and we see this playing out right now in Ukraine and some concerns in Iran, and I think the President actually had some of the leading defense industry leaders come to the White House talk about needing to ramp up production to the extent that the system itself does everything it’s supposed to do as quickly as it wants to do it. 

And you put in an order for a Patriot battery or whatever the system is, and the industry says, ‘Oh, it’ll be seven years before I can deliver that.’ That’s on the industry side. And so they’ve got to have predictability in the demand signal and a guarantee that they’re going to have the authority to sell those sorts of things to those other nations. 

But there’s an industry component to this that contributes to the frustration and delay. It’s not all on the U.S. government side. And so our industry partners, having the willingness and the ability to lean forward and to take some of those risks within the parameters and authorities that they’re authorized, I think is an important element to add to this. 

19:20 – 20:41 

(HG): Yeah. You bring up a good point, Brad. And I can tell you I was not as sensitive to the industry side of this until I worked for industry. And what happens is, in an international partner’s mindset, the first time they start talking about wanting a capability, they start the clock. ‘I told you ten years ago, I want that capability, right?’ 

But in industry I mean, they have shareholders. They can’t start moving out on it until they actually get an order. You have to be careful how much a company is willing to put in their own funds, not knowing what the order is going to happen or not. 

And munitions is a great example of what we’re seeing now. Allies have been encouraged to put in their weapons order for decades, and now all of a sudden, everybody wants munitions. So, I just, this is something where they need to put in the order to justify companies to add another production line. But if you look at a lot of our major defense primes, the majority of their focus has been more on the U.S., which is really important. 

But I think there needs to be a lot of companies who aren’t set up to do international sales. If you look at where the money is right now and where the need for the growth in military capability, it’s in our international partners as spending increases globally on military capabilities.

20:42 – 22:27 

(BH): When I was at NATO doing defense planning, we were trying to get everybody to get to their 2% metric and the NATO 2% pledge, which was agreed at the Whales Summit in 2014, basically said Allies that are above 2% should stay 2%, allies below 2% should aim to move towards 2% within a decade. 

And then the last little bit in there, the why was in order to fill their NATO capability targets and to alleviate any NATO capability gaps. And then we saw last summer, they’re now committing to reaching 5% of their GDP on defense spending and a subset of that will be in space.  

And so again, I think this demand signal is coming. And so having the conversations early and often to understand what is in the range of the possible. When Allies come and say, ‘What can we do to add value?’ being able to clearly articulate that. 

And then for NATO as NATO, to get to a point where they can clearly articulate to each other how much of what types of things that it will take to deliver the coherent set of collective capabilities that they need to fight the space fight that will be part of any multi-domain operation going forward. 

And then as a subset of that conversation, you then look at, ‘Okay, well, how much of that is going to be a sovereign-national system that I might need to pursue through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales process? And how much of that could I get from a commercial provider? And so as the U.S. anticipates this demand signal coming in the very near future, positioning itself to provide that message on the front side: What’s the clear demand signal?  

If you’re asking, making sure that industry is ready to deliver on that, it will help streamline the process to get to decisions earlier so that the government approval process isn’t the delay. There may still be delays in fielding capabilities, but it won’t be because the system is taking too long and is broken.

22:28 – 22:52 

This brings us to the crux of our conversation today, which is two executive orders aimed at reforming Foreign Military Sales program. And I’d like to take a moment to dive into each of them specifically. 

The first executive order is Reforming Foreign Defense Sales to Improve Speed and Accountability and was signed in April of 2025. So now, we’re coming up on a year since its release. Can you speak to what this executive order set out to achieve? 

22:53 – 24:25 

(HG): That one is largely – it’s about fixing what we would call the machinery of the process. What they’re required to do is create a priority partner list and an end item list. It’s something I know in the Air Force we had already done. But what’s great about this is these partner priority lists will go all the way up through the State Department. 

I mean, we’ve got to remember that the State Department really is the lead agency as far as foreign policy. So anyway, I think the priority partner list and priority end items is a big one. Export-ability by design. Again, something we’ve talked about within the Department of War, but this will be a broader initiative that industry needs to keep in mind export-ability from the very beginning. And this is really I think this is very significant for the space field – the technology there.  

The third thing is streamline congressional notifications and streamline it as normalizing the process through Congress, that’s going to be helpful and consolidated inter-agency approvals will be part of that. 

And then they’re looking at electronic tracking system where it’ll get better visibility not only to the U.S. industry, but to foreign buyers and the transparency in the process will be helpful, and then the other Missile Technology Control Regime restrictions are going to be reviewed because there is some question what is included under that regime maybe should not be and moved out of it and so they’re looking at some barriers for that one. 

Those are the kind of the main things that were in that executive order, which are huge – if we can remove some of those barriers.

24:26 – 24:34 

I’d like to dive a little deeper into the export control element. What’s the significance behind reviewing and revising the Missile Technology Control Regime? 

24:35 – 26:57 

(BH):  When the Missile Technology Control Regime was created, it was, you know, we’re not going to sell ballistic missiles to country X, Y, or Z. 

But now, given the way it was written, there are things that fall into those categories, including those missile systems, ballistic and cruise missiles, but also things like UAVs that weren’t really on the radar when those regimes were invented. And so there’s different categories within there that again, we’ve got to work through and so what I would argue, and this is a point that I think is worth highlighting. 

So as Heidi said: ‘is the system broken or is it just it’s built to be delivered of it?’ So it is slow. One of the things that the service has done, particularly SAF/IA under Deanna Rhyalls team, is what’s called the star baseline. And so the baseline is a process by which the SAF/IA and the service have sat down and figured out what types of things would we be willing to export to certain countries by mission area and very specific subsystems? 

And they’ve got nations in tiers and ways that they think about those things. And what they’ve done is they’ve essentially decided ahead of time. This is not a shopping list. It’s a classified document and is restricted in its distribution. So it’s not intended for Allies to get it and go, ‘Oh okay. Let me go buy that then. Because they said I could have it.’ 

It literally is intended to say short circuit the process. It decides ahead of time that we are willing to, from a matter of policy, export something to a country so that when a request comes in, we can go, ‘Yep, we’ve already decided that this doesn’t need to delay that process any further.’ Now, just because something isn’t in the existing star baseline doesn’t mean that a country couldn’t ask for and potentially be given that. It would just require what’s called the top line. 

So if a country comes in and asks for something and SAF/IA goes and looks and says, ‘Oh, that wasn’t something we envisioned, or we had not decided ahead of time that we were willing to sell that country that type of technology, they would do what’s called a top line review, which would take some period of time, weeks and months to make a policy decision across the whole of government from the United States perspective, to then move that thing forward. 

So again, is the system broken or does it not move fast enough as some of the executive orders have hinted at? This is a concrete step that Deanna and her team at SAF/IA have taken to try and help expedite that process and keep that policy review from taking too long.

26:58 – 27:07 

There’s also a second executive order that came out in early February of this year: Establishing an America First Arms Transfer Strategy.  

What is this one about? 

27:08 – 29:12 

(HG): Yeah. So that one’s a little more at the strategic level about looking at foreign policy and the industrial strategy. This one, they’re calling for a prioritized sales catalog. And again, that was supposed to happen within 120 days between the Secretary War, State and Commerce, which I mentioned to you, were kind of the three main agencies to publish this catalog of what they would like Allies to buy. 

Now, keep in mind, these are all sovereign nations, and they’re going to buy what they want to buy. But this is something where we would say, these are what we would be interested in them growing their capability, what we’d like them to buy. So think of it kind of as a menu reflecting the industrial and strategic priorities of the United States. So that’s one.  

And then the second thing is kind of Promoting American Military Sales – a task force. It’s a new and it’ll be interagency again, which is awesome. And it’ll be led by the National Security Advisor to oversee the implementation and then quarterly performance metrics is another. They’re going to look at all the FMS case execution data and publish publicly for the first time. So that again Allies, industry, Congress can all use it – is the intent.  

And then looking at partner prioritization – favoring allies who have invested in their own defense and hold strategic geography for U.S. operations and contribute to U.S. economic security. 

So when people say, how can I be a valued international partner? Well, are you participating? Are you allowing access? These are the people that are going to be prioritized for the export of some of our best equipment. And again, these are not new concepts. There’s something that for the last couple decades that we’ve looked at, but it hasn’t been integrated and driven from the top of the U.S. leadership and that’s what I think is exciting, is bringing all the agencies together with very clear alignment and focus on international partnerships.  

29:13 – 29:48 

Now, beyond the executive orders, the Department of War has also announced an organizational change – or realignment.  

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency is the government agency that manages the Foreign Military Sales process. The Defense Technology Security Administration is the agency that determines which technologies can be shared with Allies and partners.  

But at the end of last year, the Department said it was moving both of these agencies from the policy directorate of the Pentagon, to the acquisition directorate.  

Now Heidi, you’ve held leadership positions with both of these agencies. So what is your takeaway from this realignment? 

29:49 – 31:18 

(HG): Yeah. So the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and Defense Technology Security Administration, they both worked under agencies and reported directly to the head of OSD policy because, as mentioned, Foreign Military Sales has historically been used as a foreign policy tool. 

Now, as we see a little bit of it’s still going to be a foreign policy tool. You still need Department of State involved, but you’re seeing a shift now more to look at the impact to our industry and using Foreign Military Sales. It’s an important part of our industrial base. So having it aligned under acquisition is where it has shifted. 

So the head of acquisition will be now held accountable for expediting Foreign Military Sales. And looking at it, I think it’s going to be helpful because they’re going to look at it to say, ‘Does it help our industrial base, our supply chain opportunities, or looking at it through a lens of industrial and foreign partnerships?’ So it’s a combination of both, but holding the acquisition community accountable for the timelines contracting process. 

Sometimes you might have to take a trade-off and it’s under the same leader where you take a trade-off that you are going to expedite equipment to the U.S., or are you going to expedite the equipment to a foreign partner? Well, you need to look at that and have those conversations with operators, with policy to make sure that’s being done and aligned to the best interests of the U.S.

31:19 – 33:37 

(BH): And if I could just piggyback a little bit on the realignment. So DSCA is moving out from under the policy side of the Pentagon to the acquisition side of the Pentagon, which I think highlights: the current administration talks a great deal about burden-shifting and burden-sharing.  

Now, the U.S. historically does not like to talk about having gaps and seams, and I get that. But at some level, it just is reality that we’re not going to have enough of the right types of systems everywhere we need them to be able to do everything we’re going to do.  

So for example, when I was in Belgium and they were looking to replace their F-16s with something, and their war plan that they have for the defense of Europe says ‘We need X many fifth-gen fighters,’ and we knew that the U.S. had a certain number they were going to be able to bring to bear, but some are going to be held in reserve for the Pacific Theater, and others are going to be held in reserve for the CENTCOM AOR, and therefore we needed allies and partners to fill in those gaps.  

And so, again, we were very sensitive about talking about those in any kind of detail. But the idea that we’re going to leverage allies and partners as we think about what do these global architectures look like and it kind of gets to that International Partnership Strategy with the service. 

We talk about integrated by design or allied by design. I think the U.S. is acknowledging that it can’t do everything, everywhere that it needs to do. And so as it thinks about building these systems, there are going to be requirements for Allies, partners and friends to contribute to these constellations. A good example would be the Golden Dome, right? As we think about whatever that architecture is ultimately going to look like.  

If, for example, you’re going to have sensors on the ground to look up and monitor things, they’re going to be in other people’s countries. So you’re going to have a mechanism by which you’re having the conversation, ‘Hey, can we put this in your country? But you could just as easily have a conversation to say, ‘Hey, would you be willing to buy and field this system?’ 

So whether it’s ground-based or space-based, as the US builds that out, they look at allies, partners and friends to figure out what they could do. And then to the extent that those countries are going to buy those systems to contribute to those architectures, those processes would run through the overall FMS system. And it fits perfectly with this realignment of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees this whole FMS enterprise, from under the policy side to the acquisition side. 

33:38 – 33:50 

And what are some other actions the United States is taking or should take to facilitate better engagements on the front-end of the Foreign Military Sales process, particularly as space becomes a more prevalent as a warfighting domain? 

33:51 – 34:56 

(HG): Yeah. I think what’s happening now is one, as Brad mentioned earlier, is educating more people on the space domain and space capabilities that are needed, but almost like normalizing space as a domain. It’s no different than any other domain. We need to exercise together. We need to be integrated together for deterrence, and then if needed for war efforts. 

We need to get more guardians educated on security cooperation and through the pipeline, there’s a specific training program that you go through to be that person at the embassy where you become – it’s called a Foreign Area Officer. So we need more guardians to become Foreign Area Officers that have space expertise. 

I mean, we’ve got people that are fighter pilots, we have logisticians, we have intel officers. So each of our different communities are represented. And then you kind of place them where we think we best need them in embassies, where maybe the space capabilities are going to be more prevalent. So that would be the one thing on the human capital side that I know that SAF/IA, they’re working, and looking for the resources to do that.  

34:57 – 36:44 

(BH): Yeah. The specific program there at one point was called the Regional Space Advisor, which was the Space Force’s version of a Foreign Area Officer. I haven’t heard much about it lately. When I was in the government, they were talking about having the first class out there and fielded. 

And it’s just I think, as Heidi indicated, it’s a matter of priority. We don’t have enough people to go around for all the things we have to have them for and so trying to figure out where we would carve out the bodies to fill out this program. 

I think another area that’s related to this is in the FMS world, there’s this thing called the surcharge that. So you’re buying a certain amount of stuff, but then there’s a surcharge that’s on top of that. And that surcharge actually goes to sustaining the entire security cooperation enterprise for the United States all over the place.  

And so, for example, when we were in Saudi Arabia, they were looking and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t have the right space experts, uniformed military bodies who are coming over here.’ But a way to do that is to take some of that Foreign Military Sales money and use that to go get some contract support where you can go identify people who have the relevant experience and bring those people in.  

One of the challenges in the space security cooperation world right now is that there are cases in the pipeline that are making their way through, but there aren’t that many space FMS cases at this point that are generating that kind of revenue that would then go to sustain the system. 

And so I know General Purdy at SAF/HQ and Deanna at SAF/IA, have been trying to identify a pot of money to kind of provide the seed corn to get the momentum going or prime the pump to get that system moving and I think they’ve had some success recently. 

And then Mr. Mike Miller, who’s a the current head of DSCA, and he was acknowledging the same thing where we got to get the space side of the security cooperation enterprise from a human capital perspective, up and running at a level that will then become self-sustaining over time.

36:45 – 39:41 

(HG): And I use analogy again, this is kind of normalizing conversation that we went through the same thing when we were selling F-15s to several countries where trying to get uniformed F-15 pilots to go help with international training. We didn’t have the capacity. We needed pilots in our own cockpits, so we ended up having to do contracted training instead of sending our uniformed trainers internationally. 

So there’s oftentimes it’s kind of looking at like we need like our guardians right now working U.S. priorities and how do we build enough of them then to work on the international business, which is really important too, to build that capability capacity of our partners. So it’s kind of this pull; this tension right now.  

But like I said, I think you’re always going to have complaints about the process taking too long because there’s a lot of people in the process that are trying to get to ‘yes.’ And sometimes it takes time to understand how to put the right security measures in place in order to get to ‘yes.’ The catalog of yes list. That’s easy. The catalog of no, that’s easy.  

It’s this in-between gray area where people are trying to figure out how do we get some of these capabilities to our partners but put the right security measures in place, that oftentimes takes a little bit longer.  

And there’s been FMS reform initiatives for the last decade at least. But what’s unique now and exciting right now to see is executive orders come in from the President’s office, not just to the Department of Defense or the Department of State, but it’s across all agencies to reform Foreign Military Sales. 

But Foreign Military Sales, it’s important to understand, is on the backbone of our acquisition process. So if you don’t reform the acquisition process, you’re not going to reform FMS. So that executive orders came out to reform both at the same time from the very top is really exciting.  

And not only these executive orders, but I think the work that the Space Force is doing and SAF/IA is doing to have this catalog and looking at ways to expedite and implementation plans, working with our partners on that.  

And then there’s also been organizational changes at the Department of War. They’ve moved Security Corporation and Technology Security Administration underneath the acquisition process. So that senior leaders from other countries have one point of entry. 

They don’t need to go to OSD policy and acquisition.All of this is goodness, but like anything, it’s new. Space isn’t new, but opening it up to international partners is still fairly new. 

You know, the hope is that those reforms and this reorganization is going to be able to streamline some of the processes. Those are the big, exciting opportunities that are happening right now that the partners should be watching closely. 

39:50 – 39:53 

And then in your respective capacities as leaders of Elara Nova’s International Partnerships sector, what role does Elara Nova potentially have in this actively reforming Foreign Military Sales process? 

39:54 – 41:32 

(BH): Yeah. I think a couple of things. I mean, one, when we think about who our customer is for Elara Nova on the International Partnerships front: support of the US government, where it’s not adequately postured to execute the mission, which could include people being on the teams that are out there on the frontlines that fill those gaps.  

Two is engaging with allies, partners and friends directly to help them understand and define what those requirements are and understand how to navigate the process. We’ve got people like, I worked in an embassy run by the Security Cooperation Office. Heidi was SAF/IA, DTSA and DSCA like there’s nobody else who’s got that kind of resume. And we’ve got other people with deep experiences at a variety of levels that can help people understand and define those requirements and then map its way through the process. 

And then the third: helping U.S. industry trying to understand and trade those foreign markets and understand how do I navigate the landscape: whether it’s ITAR, EAR, Mission Technology Control Regime? How do I position my capabilities so that Allies, partners and friends are aware of it and would be interested in building that? 

And again, as we have conversations and talk about what’s your architecture, what’s your priority mission area, what’s your balance between sovereign-national and commercial? And to the extent that its sovereign-national and you’re buying your own systems using that exploit-buy-build model, if you’re going to go buy our systems, how do you define those and how do you effectively engage? 

And so we got people who can help on all of those fronts. Whether you’re designing the architectures and helping refine the requirements on the front side, navigating the process or shaping the demand signal, if you’re an industry partner, we’ve got the ability to do all of that, in a fairly unique way, particularly as relates to the space domain.

41:33 – 42:02 

(HG): It’s been great to be part of the Elara Nova team and just see the demand that’s come in from the international partner for Elara Nova expertise again across all domains, which is exciting, but specifically in the space domain. But the architecture where Elara Nova can be helpful is connecting the different domains where there are expertise, but it’s an area where there are not a lot of expertise in the international environment. 

So Elara Nova is positioned and ready to help close that gap.

42:03 – 42:37 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a strategic advisory firm, Elara Nova is the trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain.  

With the trusted insight to deliver your decisive edge, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in national security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge. 

Time for a New Approach with Satellite Control Network

The Satellite Control Network (SCN) has provided critical operations and support to our Nation’s military and intelligence satellites, along with our civil satellites and spacecraft, for over six decades. With a significant change in the threat to these systems and increasing numbers and volume requirements, the U.S. Space Force should undertake a comprehensive view of the SCN acquisition and sustainment strategy to make a revolutionary change to optimize this essential infrastructure. Elara Nova Founding Partner Maj Gen (Ret.) Roger Teague, and Partner Col (Ret.) Mark Hughes provide their insight regarding the elements of this change and desired outcomes in “Time for a New Approach with Satellite Control Network.”

Read more here…

Episode 36: Digital Infrastructure Modernization to Lay Foundation for Zero Trust, AI

Host: Scott King 

SME: General (Ret) Tim Haugh, Senior Principal Advisor at Elara Nova, former Commander at U.S. Cyber Command and Director of the National Security Agency 

00:02 – 01:34 

When we think of the word “infrastructure,” things like roads, bridges, and the power grid often come to mind. But there’s also “digital infrastructure,” which the National Institute of Standards and Technology defines as ​​”the ability to store and exchange data through a centralized communication system.” 

The Department of War kick-started the year with a series of steps to enhance the resiliency and reliability of its digital infrastructure that underpins military operations. In early January, the United States Space Force announced it will be overhauling computer networks at each one of its bases, according to a $12.5 billion task order through the Base Infrastructure Modernization program.  

Also in January, the National Security Agency released the first two products of its Zero Trust Implementation Guideline, while the DOW launched its Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy. Altogether, these actions demonstrate the growing imperative to prepare the military’s digital infrastructure to take advantage of emerging technologies and counter evolving threats. 

Welcome to “The Elara Edge” here to discuss the modernization of the Department’s digital infrastructure is retired General Tim Haugh, Senior Principal Advisor at Elara Nova. With over three decades of military service with the United States Air Force, General Haugh previously served as the Commander of United States Cyber Command, Director of the National Security Agency, and Chief of the Central Security Service.  

Sir, welcome to the show!  

01:35 – 01:36 

I’m excited to be here. Scott. Thanks for having me.  

01:37 – 02:03 

We’re excited to have you and looking forward to the conversation today. Let’s begin with a look at the role of digital infrastructure in modern day military operations. Perhaps one of the best ways to understand this is by taking a look at the relationship between the space and cyber domains.  

From your perspective: how do the space and cyberspace domains interact when it comes to military operations? And how did this relationship factor into the early days of standing up the United States Space Force? 

02:04 – 03:48 

Yeah absolutely, Scott. They are inextricably linked. When we think about what it looks like to warfight space, the foundation of that is also what’s happening terrestrially on the ground: how we control satellites, how we leverage technologies in space to sense, to communicate, and to fight. All of those are tied to how we operate within cyberspace, both to leverage those capabilities on space, to be able to control them, but also to ensure that they’re secure. And foundationally, when we think about what space does as part of our warfighting doctrine across all domains, having security in cyberspace is absolutely essential. 

At the time, I was the 16th Air Force Commander and in support of Space Force leadership, as they stood up the service. And one of those decisions was how will the Air Force provide support to the Space Force in terms of the Air Force network and then being able to support space operations? 

And as the choices were being made, one of the most critical were what were the sets of expertise that the Space Force would need? And one of those choices in terms of the career fields that were identified as essential to the future of the Space Force is cyber and clearly building out expertise was critical and that will only become increasingly important.  

As we’ve seen in the recent conflicts that have occurred, particularly within Ukraine, the contest for the ability to have assured command and control, through both terrestrial and through space – absolutely essential – and that really drives towards what infrastructure that then needs to be built, sustained, operated and defended to have assured operations in both space and cyberspace. 

03:49 – 04:01 

The Space Force task order to modernize its digital infrastructure follows a similar task order to do the same for Air Force bases across the Pacific.  

Can you describe what the Space Force and Air Force are looking to do here? 

04:02 – 07:02 

In this case, and what the Space Force wants to modernize in their digital backbone is all of the infrastructure that allows every Guardian to be able to interconnect, whether that’s to the Internet, whether it’s the services that are available inside of the Department of War networks or the ability to connect and operate through the domain, through both unclassified and classified networks, and then making sure that infrastructure is well positioned to be able to provide the right capabilities to the Space Force and every Guardian – in terms of routers and switches that interconnect networks and interconnect bases to the broader network – is an investment that’s clearly being made through the Base Infrastructure Modernization program.  

It is also the computing infrastructure that every Guardian and Airman leverage every day when they come to work. It’s also the infrastructure that runs our hospitals and runs space operations and runs air operations on a flight line. 

So all of those require the ability to have relevant technology to be able to drive not only the capabilities that are required to fight and win, but also provide a user an experience that allows them to come to work, log on, get to work and be successful and that requires investment. 

And the investment and the priority to be able to ensure that infrastructure is in place is also going to be the foundation for how capabilities like artificial intelligence will be integrated and the compute power that is required at the network edge to be able to operate and do that, particularly as we think about contested environments. 

At first, it needs to provide the foundation to be able to meet the mission needs of the Space Force and the Air Force for the contract in the Pacific. So it has to be sized, it’s got to be capable enough and then the support to be able to operate and ensure the maintenance of all of those systems – uptime and resilience to be able to make sure those missions run – has to be one of the first priorities.  

The second component is ensure the architecture is defendable and is in compliance with the direction that the Department of War is taking in terms of the policies of how we modernize networks, how we secure them, and ultimately how we build them using a zero trust-based approach, because the adversaries are relentless in cyberspace. 

What that looks like today, whether that’s China, Russia, North Korea, Iran all bring different subsets of capability. But particularly China is focused on being able to take away strategic capability from the United States and having resilient infrastructure is the foundation to ensure that can’t happen.  

And I think the approach, as we talk through today of that mixture of improving the underlying base infrastructure, building out in zero trust principles and setting a foundation for the integration of AI, it really does start with the foundational infrastructure that is secure and defended.

07:03 – 07:20  

We’ve heard General Stephen Whiting, the Commander of US Space Command, previously refer to cybersecurity as the “soft underbelly” of military operations. 

What do you think makes cybersecurity and digital infrastructure particularly vulnerable to either state-backed or adversarial attacks?  

07:21 – 08:40 

There are a number of factors, that particularly within military services that have brought vulnerability. One of those is lack of investment. So at key times, if we don’t upgrade these capabilities, you can fall into a situation where the vendor no longer supports them and that technology debt brings risk. It also brings less functionality. So these investments are critical.  

The other is how do we integrate weapon systems into these architectures and ensuring that there is coherence in how the services think about the interaction with the defense industrial base and set a clear set of standards on what is expected as we build and field new capabilities and ensure that they can immediately integrate into an architecture that doesn’t create seams. 

And then finally, we’ve got to be able to build this in a way that can adapt to the threat environment and in how we secure things like the identity of every individual and every agenetic AI capability that we intend to deploy. We’ve got to be prepared for a changing architecture in demand signal based off of the emergence of these technologies and ensure that they can be integrated in a coherent way that maximizes the opportunity and doesn’t bring additional risk. 

08:41 – 08:46 

I’d like to emphasize that idea of risk. What would an attack on the digital infrastructure of military bases look like? 

08:47 – 11:50 

Yeah, I think at that point, first and foremost is we have to be able to have situational awareness in both our space and our cyber domain in a way that’s commensurate with what we’ve learned in air, ground and the maritime. That is the first thing a commander needs. They have to have situational awareness so they can make good decisions about risk. 

The second component in this discussion is around resilience because we’re certainly going to be targeted in an area of tension and in crisis. We’ve got to be resilient and expect that there are going to be very aggressive attempts to compromise our networks and compromise our partners, both in industry and our foreign partners and Allies.  

The approach that China has taken to targeting the critical infrastructure of the United States is a really good example of the types of things we would see targeted on military bases: things like water treatment, energy generation, critical functions inside of telecommunications or networks. 

They have shown that if there are vulnerabilities that they will continue to attempt to enumerate those vulnerabilities and take advantage of them if they exist. And then once in a network, they will look to compromise the identity of key system administrators that have privileged accounts that allow them to move laterally and ensure that they would be able to have deep access if we ever are in a crisis. 

We’ve seen that in our critical infrastructure. It’s been well articulated in various reports done by the intelligence community and by Homeland Security and those are things that we understand that methodology and how to defend it.  

One of the key things that they would attempt to exploit are vulnerable aging systems and so upgrading those is critically important. And then the ability to implement zero trust would be the area that would defeat or make more difficult the ability to take on different identities within organizations and networks. So we will see adversaries looking at every one of these networks. They’re going to be looking for vulnerabilities now enabled increasingly by artificial intelligence and they will take advantage of them if they see them. And that is the environment we live in every day would only be accelerated in a crisis.  

We’ve learned a lot of lessons in our support to Ukraine about what does resilience look in a modern warfare environment. And we have to know that we can scale, because certainly all of the domains rely on space to be able to deliver situational awareness, communications, particularly in extended range environments and so we need to ensure that the ground segment, the terrestrial component, the cyber elements of spacecraft are secure and resilient because they will certainly be aggressively targeted. 

And I think these types of initiatives that we’re seeing, in terms of foundational investment and direction on AI and zero trust are going to be things that are going to be really important to implement aggressively to buy down that risk.  

11:51 – 12:06 

Now, the task order was designed as a quote “Enterprise IT as a Service” solution to be delivered through an Indefinite Delivery-Indefinite Quantity or IDIQ contract. 

What exactly does this mean and why is that important? 

12:07 – 13:47 

The idea behind enterprise IT as a service is being able to leverage the strengths of the industry to bring current technology and resources to be able to build and maintain networks. In essence, be able to say, take an area that previously would have been maintained by an Airman or Guardian, bring in expertise from industry, and allow them to both operate and sustain that base infrastructure to allow Guardians and Airmen to be focused on other types of operations that are critical to our warfighting missions. 

And this is a further expansion of what the Air Force has done at a number of bases. Now building it out at each of the Space Force bases, and also bases across the Pacific for the Air Force. This is an extension of that approach. It’s giving them flexibility in terms of the number of potential vendors they could leverage that they’ve already identified as qualified to do the work against a pretty high ceiling of $12.5 billion. 

So it’s a commitment to building out the infrastructure, putting the resources behind it, and then having a bench of vendors that are qualified to do the work to ensure that as the Air Force and the Space Force expand this approach, that they’ve got the right expertise. The opportunity within the contracts is to also clearly state what the cybersecurity standards are and what’s expected of the day-to-day of how the network should be configured, how it should be defended, and then also what happens when an incident occurs. 

And I think the build out of this model based off of the previous work, should allow for a deep understanding of how to do that. Now it’s going to be about scaling, underneath this particular contracting approach. 

13:48 – 14:06 

At the same time this modernization effort is underway, the National Security Agency, released the first two products of its Zero Trust Implementation Guideline.  

At a basic level, can you define for our audience what zero trust means and then walk us through these two initial implementation products: Primer and Discovery phase? 

14:07 – 16:51 

Zero Trust is an approach to security that does take time to implement and is complex.  Previously, when we thought about defense of a network, we thought about the perimeter, the network edge. What zero trust brings is an assumption that that perimeter is going to be breached. 

And how do you defend your network, your data and your users in an environment where you give least privileged access – only giving access to data, applications, tools, infrastructure for the things that an individual is authorized to do and only for the period of time when it’s authorized. This approach, when implemented, gives an opportunity to make sure that not only are you secure at the network edge, but you can be secure internally against very aggressive threats. And if one member of your team is compromised, you don’t lose the security of the entire network.  

And what NSA has done in terms of implementation guidance is to break that down into five parts for services and commands to implement zero trust. 

In the first release is a Primer – helping organizations understand what all goes into organizing as a zero trust architecture, and which modules make most sense for those organizations to begin with and lay out how to implement and mature those areas to be able to meet what the expectation is from the Department of War. 

The second component, which is part of the first phase of implementation, is what NSA has identified as discovery – create visibility and understand the data, applications and the assets that are within your architecture, and then begin to set policies that implement authority guidance for every function in the network. It really does set a baseline for how zero trust can be implemented, and then sets the conditions for the phases that follow to meet the Department of War expectations. 

As the implementation guidance is put out as the DOW CIO continues to clarify exactly what expectations are, there are opportunities for individual programs and vendors to be lead turning these and thinking about ensuring that they put the baselines in place that will allow for implementation and integration of capabilities, platforms, technologies, applications into these networks using a zero trust approach. 

And that’s going to require continued discussion between industry and government. But clearly setting the roadmap for where zero trust goes. There’s an opportunity for industry to follow. 

16:52 – 16:55 

And what will zero trust ultimately look like in a military operation? 

16:56 – 17:51 

Well, what we’d see in an effective zero trust operation? As an example, if a vendor is going to provide an update to a capability that’s on a base – today, that in different programs and different bases, they might have different authorities.  

Under zero trust their authorities would be very narrow and would only be authorized during the window of time that they are upgrading that system or doing some form of maintenance function. Very similar to how in if you’re maintaining a system on the flight line, you’re going to tag in and tag out. You’re only going to be operating on that aircraft in certain windows when you’re authorized.  Zero trust provides the same type of approach that you only have authority to manipulate that system in windows of time and within your span of authority. That reduces risk to the overall architecture, but still allows that system to be updated and maintained. 

17:52 – 18:08 

This brings us to the third element of our conversation, and that is the Department of War’s recently released Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy. 

Certainly AI become a major talking point in national security circles in recent years,  but generally speaking, how does AI factor into this conversation about digital infrastructure? 

18:09 – 21:39 

I think it’s really at the forefront. The Department’s strategy to accelerate implementation of artificial intelligence requires capable infrastructure that is secure and needs to continue to grow the compute capacity that fuels the implementation of artificial intelligence.  

The idea behind what artificial intelligence can do, the running of algorithms, the use of agents, the autonomous use of capabilities, all of that needs computer power to operate. 

And depending on the scope and scale, the amount of data and the expanse of simultaneous things that you’re going to ask those agents and capabilities and algorithms to do requires an increasing number of computing power. And you can get that computing power through a couple of different ways. One can be on-premise, computational power that are investments in servers and data centers that allow for control of that. 

The other can come through any of the number of cloud providers that are a part of the architecture and how you choose to organize that really becomes important in terms of what’s available to every Guardian and Airman in terms of computational power to run models and algorithms and agents and it also is an incredible bearing on cost.  

If portions of the infrastructure are going to be inside of the military services, then you have to have all of the infrastructure from data centers, the ability to cool those data centers and ensure their operations have power, water, cooling, to be able to operate. So that’s an additional infrastructure that has to be sustained. 

If it’s chosen to leverage our large, managed service providers and cloud providers for that computing capacity, you’re going to fund them. But they have to build out that architecture and sustain it. So those are choices that don’t have to be made completely. It’s likely a balance of the two that will ultimately be relied upon.  

But if we’re going to build out more infrastructure, there will be more requirements for things like water, cooling, power that will be critically important and have to be sustained and defended inside of the Department’s architecture. 

And increasingly, that’s going to have to be at the network edge, not just at the center of a network. And this will be an evolution of how we’re able to make that compute available to every Guardian and every Airman, regardless of the type of contested environment they’re in. This is really foundational and these are areas that are going to be really important as the Department determines what those investments look like.  

The document really sets out aggressive intent from the Secretary of War to first move out on pace-setting projects that are really about setting conditions to in terms of ensuring that the infrastructure is in place, thinking about the data that is required, the models and the policies to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence across warfighting, intelligence, and the broader enterprise within the Department. 

This will certainly drive investment. It’ll drive planning, and then it will drive the services to think about where artificial intelligence will be most effectively integrated to enhance capabilities within their respective service.

21:40 – 21:52 

Thank you, Sir. And I’d like to go through the three pace-setting projects laid out in the strategy: warfighting, intelligence, and enterprise.  

Let’s start with the first one: warfighting? What is this one about?  

21:53 – 22:44 

I think the big picture of this – this is really about where does artificial intelligence fit in the ability to execute the warfighting missions across the Department? And this will be very foundational when we think about how we gain situational awareness, how commanders make decisions, how we communicate those decisions, and the autonomy that we give to platforms and weapons. 

And this pace-setting project will really bear out in terms of what are those areas that also now need to be invented in terms of how we test these capabilities and that partnership between industry and government as the acceleration of artificial intelligence isn’t just done inside the services, but inside vendors and inside of capabilities that will be delivered.

22:45 – 22:51 

And how about the second pace-setting project: intelligence. Can you elaborate on what the Department of War is aiming to do here? 

22:52 – 23:44 

The Department is setting some clear benchmarks to think about how intelligence will be integrated closer to the edge as a warfighting capability. This is an area of a tremendous advantage for the United States: our ability to sense and make information available to commanders around the globe. The challenge set forth by the Secretary is not only to do that in real-time operations, but also to accelerate the work that brings together that intelligence and capability development. 

So two major, I think, directions will be how to make different sets of intelligence fuzed for commanders at all echelons. And the second being, how does that intelligence really get integrated more quickly in capability development earlier for individual capabilities to be able to be enhanced and infused with artificial intelligence as a core capability.

23:45 – 23:47 

And how about the third one: enterprise?

23:48 – 24:25 

This is thinking about how does the entire department come together and leverage these sets of capabilities and building out the not only just the ability to have the infrastructure available, but it’s how do artificial intelligence bring more capacity and capability to the broader enterprise of warfighting that occurs across all of our military domains, and to be able to capitalize on that and do it faster than an adversary in a very contested environment. 

So I think these three areas of warfighting, intelligence and enterprise, are a clear set of a foundation and intents laid out by the Secretary of War.

24:26 – 24:34 

So now that this strategy is out there – what happens next? What steps are being taken to implement the strategy and then, ultimately, what does success look like? 

24:35 – 26:43 

Well, I think first is each service and command has been given some clear direction to build plans to establish AI integration leads within their organizations and then evaluate their mission for where artificial intelligence makes sense and can be rapidly infused in the areas the Secretary has outlined.  

The next phase of that is in those areas – where will dollars go? What will the investment look like? And that investment will have to span across the ability to generate the requisite compute, the ability to ensure that the right data is available and is accessible at the right level for models and algorithms, and then ensuring that the Department and each service has the talent to execute it. And I think those areas are going to definitely require investment and they’re going to require significant collaboration with industry. 

Given the fact that many of these technologies are still being invented and the rapid evolution of models and what agents are going to look like, there’s a tremendous opportunity for investment in key areas. The Secretary laying out the set of priorities will now begin to get into individual projects, as services and commands start to identify their key requirements and the areas that would most benefit by infusing artificial intelligence. 

Inside those opportunities are places for investment. There’s places for experimentation and then aggressive implementation to ensure continued advantage. So I think you’re going to see those emerge and then success looks like the ability for us as a warfighting organization to be able to deliver capabilities at speed, to be able to integrate data for decision, and also to have weapons that have new capabilities across all domains that we can ensure operate consistent with the overarching intent and policy and guidance that exists across the Department in terms of warfighting, consistent with our laws and our values.

26:44 – 26:57 

Our interview today covered three elements pretty comprehensively: digital infrastructure, zero trust, and AI.  

The Department of War is actively taking steps toward these ends. So what do these actions signal to industry? 

26:58 – 27:54 

I think each of these provides an intent, and I think that’s the best thing that the government can do is clearly articulate intent and share that with industry. So in this case, whether it’s here’s the intent for the future of the architecture. Here is the intent for what it will look like in terms of how the government wants to secure that architecture using zero trust principles and with an expectation that all capabilities are going to be infused by artificial intelligence. 

They’re setting the roadmap and that is probably the most important thing that, in terms of the public private partnership, is a clear understanding of intent. And that intent should only become more clear, as the Department articulates priorities inside of Golden Dome, inside of other major programs that are going to be driving and implementing those things that are consistent with the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy.

27:55 – 27:57 

Can you elaborate on how Golden Dome ties to this conversation? 

27:58 – 30:12 

Where the Golden Dome program needs to start in terms of the types of priorities that the President has given them, and then building in the resilience and speed necessary to be able to make those decisions within really incredible timelines. 

The challenge of being able to identify, any and all threats, to the homeland and then to be able to act on those threats. 

 It’s all about speed and the ability to identify the threat, understand it, give orders, and then have capabilities that can respond with requisite speed to be able to mitigate those threats. We have known how to do this as a nation and been prepared to do it in very specific scenarios. But now those scenarios are so diverse and growing in terms of the threat and the speed of the threat.  

It really does demand a command and control structure that is always on, always available, and integrated with the right data sources to have situational awareness that can provide the right data to the decision-maker, and then the ability to execute command and control in a way that can be executed very quickly from decision-maker to shooter, and to be able to assure that not only can you track and have custody of of every one of those threats, but you also understand your effectiveness in real-time to mitigate those threats.

So I think speed is one of the clear tenants that comes from the demand signal. The other is, of course, it’s got to be secure. These will be foundational capabilities in defense of the homeland. It must be built on a bedrock foundation and then it’s going to also require just incredibly resilient communications to ensure its availability.  

The digital infrastructure is what ties it all together: every sensor, every base, every shooter, every command and control node in a way that gives that situational awareness and gives that power to be able to make decisions, create outcomes, and understand the results of those operations. And the resilience and the capability that are provided through that infrastructure can be an accelerant to the command and control for Gold Dome. 

30:13 – 30:25 

Thank you Sir, and what opportunities exist for commercial and industry partners to contribute solutions to anything we’ve discussed today: whether that be digital infrastructure, zero trust, AI, or command and control in Golden Dome? 

30:26 – 31:25 

There’s a menu. A large part of this is thinking through resilient communications in many different ways. That’s leveraging different parts of the spectrum. It’s leveraging different technologies. 

It’s about being innovative at every vendor to implement quantum resistance. It’s about how we think about the applications that are required to knit it together. And then what’s the underlying compute that allows it all to operate at speed?  

Those are all opportunities that allow for ensured resilient communications in ways that we can continue to evaluate, whether that’s in the space segment, whether that’s within traditional RF bands or if it’s leveraging a diversity of our managed service providers in terrestrial networks. All of those have to be meshed together in a way that assures command and control and assures availability for the leaders that are going to be empowered to make those decisions. 

31:26 – 31:37 

Now, in addition to serving as a Senior Principal Advisory at Elara Nova, you’ll also have a guiding hand in the firm’s new Cyber, Data & Communications sector. 

What should our listeners know about its new CDC sector? 

31:38 – 32:35 

Yeah. I think everything we’re thinking about now is how do you integrate capabilities faster? How do our domains interoperate and how do we ensure within the defense industrial base and with broader industry, how do those capabilities be brought to bear in a way that they can be effective from the outset and meet the demand signal that’s coming from the Department and from each of the services? 

Elara Nova brings a really deep portfolio of cyber experts that have served across all elements of our intelligence community and the military services and when combined with all the other expertise that exists in air and space that both have served in the Department and are current in state of the art of what’s happening in industry is invaluable to be able to accelerate that work in a way that will produce an outcome that really brings back the best capability for the nation. 

32:36 – 33:10 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a strategic advisory firm, Elara Nova is the trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain.   

With the trusted insight to deliver your decisive edge, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in national security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge. 

Episode 35: Department of War Seeks Solutions for Emerging Counter-UAS Mission 

Host: Scott King 

SME: Lt. Gen. (Ret) David “Abu” Nahom, President of Aeronautics & Missions Systems sector at Elara Nova (DN) 

Col (Ret) JP “Spear” Mintz, Managing Director of Aeronautics & Missions Systems sector at Elara Nova (JPM) 

00:02 – 01:40 

A series of escalating events in recent years has demonstrated the growing prevalence of drones in surveillance and military operations. In 2024, unidentified drones flew over a military base in Langley, Virgina. In 2025, Israel used drones to take out Iranian air defense systems in a coordinated attack, while Ukraine launched “Operation Spiderweb,” using drones to damage and destroy aircraft deep within Russian territory. 

Now, a new report from the Department of Defense Inspector General uncovered a series of challenges for defending the United States’ military installations from similar drone incursions or attacks. The report coincides with updated guidance from the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force 401, an Army-led organization tasked with the counter-Unmanned Aerial System (or UAS) mission. The updated guidance requires military installation commanders to prepare their own counter-UAS plans within the next 60 days. 

As part of this effort, the Department of War is actively seeking new and innovative solutions for the counter-UAS mission. 

Welcome to “The Elara Edge,” we have two guests today, joining us to discuss the inherent challenges of the emerging counter-UAS mission, as well as some of the solutions that are being considered. 

First, we have retired Lieutenant General David “Abu” Nahom, President of Elara Nova’s Aeronautics & Mission Systems Sector. General Nahom previously served for 36 years with the United States Air Force, culminating in his roles as Commander of Alaskan Command, the Alaskan NORAD Region, and the Eleventh Air Force. 

Sir, welcome back to the show! 

01:41 – 01:42 

(DN): Great to be here, thanks again Scott.  

01:43 – 02:02 

Also joining us is the Managing Director of the AMS sector, Dr. JP “Spear” Mintz. Recently retired from the Air Force, then-Colonel Mintz commanded in the Air Force’s Spectrum Warfare Wing and also served as a Special Advisor to multiple senior leaders including at NORAD and US Northern Command, among others. 

Sir, welcome to the show! 

02:03 – 02:05  

(JPM): Thanks Scott. Appreciate you setting this up for us. 

02:06 – 02:24 

Thank you both for taking the time to join us today.  

Now, when it comes to Unmanned Aerial Systems, or UAS’s, the United States Air Force already has a well-established means of identifying and categorizing these drones – specifically by Group Numbers. 

Can you walk us through these group numbers and how we understand the differences between them? 

02:25 – 05:36 

(JPM): Yeah, you bet. So the group classification here, at least as it references Group One to Group Three. It’s based on, a couple of things: size, weight, it’s operating altitude above ground level. So a Group One drone, 20 pounds or less, flies at less than 1200 feet above ground level or AGL. What you’re thinking about really here is your hobbyist quadcopter types, the kind of things nearly anybody could buy off the internet. 

The next group, Group Two, the size is up to between 21 and 55 pounds, flies up to about 3500ft above ground level. And that’s your mid-sized drones thinking of things like a ScanEagle, etc. These are usually going to be things that have a military or state-backed flavor, because although some of the hobbyist ones could potentially reach this category, the cost and proliferation of these Group Two drones is not nearly as much as it is with Group One.   

And then Group Three, which is up to 1,320 pounds and up to a flight level of 180. So you really think of these as smaller unmanned aircraft and not normally what you might think of as a drone in traditional parlance.  

And these groups matter here because of a number of things. So one is size. So at least from a radar cross-section perspective, it’s a lot easier to detect a larger UAS, a larger drone than a smaller one. And then of course, the larger the UAS, the more fuel and payloads they can carry over a much larger distance.  

The second what matters is the altitude at which they fly, because in radar, the closer it is to the ground, the more interference you have from things like trees, ground clutter, buildings, etc. and not only that, but you might also reduce your ability to actually detect the UAS just from a purely line of sight perspective. And then also, operating altitude is important because at higher altitudes you generally have higher speeds, right?  

And then third weight matters when it comes to the collateral risk of engagements with these things. Because a larger UAS, a 1,300 pound drone laden with explosive crashes into a populated area, it’s very different than a 18 ounce quadcopter that has nothing on it except for a camera. 

And so all of these factors matter. Also, in terms of identification. [If] you want to identify a UAS. You do that in order to make some assumptions about its intent. Is it a large one traveling at high speeds, pointed at a target you might consider critical on the blue side? So you think maybe it’s weaponized?  

Or is it a child operating their quadcopter they got for the holidays around an airbase because, you know, he or she loves the Air Force, that it just wants to fly or curious about what’s at the base or wherever it is. 

And this identification and intent are important because you have to decide what you want to do about it. Do you want to use a weapon against it? Do you want to do nothing about it? Do you want to make a phone call? And when you think about engaging this with a weapon, something that could take out a smaller Group One drone may not be effective against one of the larger Group Three drones and vice versa. 

And the inherent challenge lies here in a similar situation of a car driving along the side of an airbase, right? You don’t know who’s in there, what’s in there, what they’re doing. It could be just some people showing up to the base, some tourists looking at something they’ve never seen before, or you could be developing a problem there. 

So you can’t always assume intent from simply the size or shape or speed or even position of an aircraft. So you have to be ready to respond and I think that’s a really important topic to get into.

05:37 – 06:11 

(DN):Yeah, [with] the types, what’s interesting, too. Is that how you control them, too. These smaller ones that are less, they’re less sophisticated. They may be line of sight where the person actually controlling it is in some kind of visual of the actual system. 

When you get to these larger ones, these could be beyond line of sight, whether that is through some kind of a satellite feed or some kind of other network that has been established. 

And usually as you go up the groups, you’ll see more of the beyond line of sight and the ability to control these things at further away distances. But I actually have to have somebody inside of the quadcopter itself for the Group One.

06:12 – 06:15 

So how can the Air Force respond to a drone incursion or attack? 

06:16 – 08:45 

(JPM): Well, Scott, there’s a couple of ways to think about this. And it’s not as simple as a scaling problem. Just thinking about the number of shots you have to take or how you might engage this to defeat one or more of these, including a swarm. You have to take into consideration what laws are in place. Policy and regulations are needed to make sure that these UAS’s aren’t proliferated out into the wild, and so anybody can get their hands on them at any time. 

 Some of those are clearly civilian dual-use technology, so you can’t put limits on that. But some of the bigger ones of course, you can. You want to have some of those technologies retained for military use. 

Another thing to consider is defending forward. So if this were a standard military operation in which you were protecting a base or a location from an air attack, you’re going to conduct intelligence operations to try to figure out who’s out there, do a threat assessment of why they want to attack you, how they’re going to do it, what are their capabilities to do so, etc.. And what can you do really, is to defend against those threats forward. Can you take out their capabilities forward, whether that’s kinetically, non-kinetically or in some other way?  

There’s also, of course, what you would think of as deterrence. You can deter your adversary from doing something by showing them they’re not going to succeed in their drone attack or their drone swarm operations, or at least if they do something, it’s not going to be effective or cost effective to them if they go ahead and conduct this operation.  

 I think the cost-effective nature of this is really important, too. If we have these small, cheap drones making attacks or incursions into our airspace, it’s not cost effective from our perspective to expend exquisite expensive AMRAMMs, Patriot missiles, etc. to take them out. Those weapons are best used for the targets they were designed for. 

That’s why they’re so exquisite and expensive, because they’re very good at what they do. But if we have something like the APKWS which can be modified to achieve the same results at a much lower cost without having to waste our expensive weapons, that’s a real benefit. So there’s also non-kinetic means of responding, but we can get into that in a bit. 

But what I wanted to say is that it’s you’re not just going to go straight to shooting something. You have to detect and then determine intent, right? You detect, identify you have to determine intent. You have to make a decision on what you’re going to do about that, and you’re going to pair an effector to it, meaning to match a shooter and a target. 

If you decide you are going to shoot it, then you have to actually use the effector, right? You have to shoot whatever you’re going to shoot or however you take this down. And that all takes time. And that whole process from detect to shoot and even assess whether or not your shot was effective, is part of what we think of as a command and control structure that needs to happen and put all of those things together. 

Sir, do you have anything to add on that?

08:46 – 10:26 

(DN):One thing Spear hit on is the command control piece is going to be one of the hardest pieces. And you think about what Golden Dome and Joint Task Force 401 and some of the things that are coming forward right now in terms of homeland defense.  

But when you look at that command and control piece, think about what the size that Spear talked about for a type three. It’s not much different than a small general aviation aircraft. And how do you discern between one and the other? 

And so that piece, that’s where that command and control is going to be so key about what is a threat? What is not a threat? And be able to do that in a timely manner, where then you can pair the weapon like Spear talked about and take offensive action if that’s what’s needed. 

I think in my experience and my background of working with NORAD. I think that’s going to be the hardest part. And especially in a homeland about that command and control piece, discerning what is a threat and then getting after it in a timely manner.  

And I’ll tell you, the other part of that, too, is policy piece, too. What can you do in the homeland? If it’s just a hobbyist just trying to stir things up. What is America willing to put up with, with collateral damage when you start shooting weapons over an American city and shrapnel and things start falling down? What can we do? What can we not do? I think these are important things. 

And then when Spear talked about the non-kinetic piece. A lot of the non-kinetic, is also going to have an effect on air travel and other things we do, like cell phone service and a number of things that we rely on every day as a society. 

What are we going to be willing to do without, in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum? Whether that’s G.P.S.? Imagine in a city we shut down GPS to avoid a swarm. Well there goes all the Ubers and the Waymos, and you think about everything else we rely on every day in society. 

So, these will be important questions moving forward. Spear back to you. 

10:27 – 13:27 

(JPM): Yeah. Thanks, Abu and so, Scott, to kind of move on to your question about defeating these systems, we do have non-kinetic mechanisms, like Abu suggested: things like denying GPS, potential cyber attacks against whoever is controlling the drones, [it] could be responding in the RF spectrum or even network hacking these systems. Abu also mentioned the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, or JIATF 401, and it was just announced that, JIATF 401 contracted for two of these DroneHunter F700 counter drone systems. 

These DroneHunters can deploy a tethered net to go capture a drone or UAS, intruding in airspace in a way that minimizes the potential for collateral damage. And oh, by the way, they’re reusable. So in some situations and again, some drones, that will make a lot more sense than firing an AMRAMM or a Patriot missile. 

And then when you think about non-kinetic effects, one of the benefits is because there’s also less collateral damage on those. You don’t have two systems out there exploding and then causing debris to fall on civilian populations. But you also have to consider who has the authorities to use these particular actions anyway? And this is because the counter-UAS problem, especially in the US, but in many countries, is a problem that lies in the seams of law enforcement and military operations. 

Traditionally, lines are very well codified in law and for good reason about what the military can do and what law enforcement needs to be doing. And we want to make sure that the appropriate authorities are being used to detect, identify and respond to whatever potential threat that we’re talking about here so that you can achieve the desired outcome, while making sure that we’re protecting our civilian populace in the ways that the Constitution intended. 

So if you look at the kinetic side, there are times when you will need to use the kinetic side, because you either may not have a non-kinetic option, or the non-kinetic option may just not be as effective. And in some cases, you may get an indication that an attack is coming until the very last second. So you have to find ways to absolutely make a stop to whatever’s coming into your airspace. 

A kinetic effector you can think of as a gun that could be a handheld shotgun to an actual military style weapon, like a 20 millimeter that is carried on an aircraft, 30 millimeter aircraft. Or it could be a modified rocket like the APKWS. And there are other emerging technologies like we just talked about, can be sent out to go in and not only take these things out, but also just track them down and figure out what it is that they’re doing. 

And then there’s another solution which kind of spans what I’d say is there’s a seam or gap between the idea of a kinetic solution and a non-kinetic solution, and that’s directed energy which is now starting to come into its own. There are lots of systems out there that use RF energy, microwave energy, or even laser energy to shut these things down or damage them, right? 

But even those come with really important collateral damage considerations. And so while in some ways they may be better than launching a big heavy explosive missile over a populated areas. And in other ways, they’re not. Because if you think about the air traffic that might be behind your target flying, you know, behind it. And if you’re trying to lase a drone and accidentally lays the pilots of an airliner passing overhead, that could have some serious negative implications. We don’t want to be doing that. 

So you also have to consider how directed energy has potential collateral damage as well. So as these technologies develop, we’ll continue to see those things emerge.

13:28 – 16:01 

(DN):Yeah, I think the good thing is an industry is being unleashed on this problem set. And you’re seeing solutions every day come about that, even a couple of years ago, I would have never imagined. We’ve realized as a nation what a problem this is. 

We’ve certainly seen some of the cases. I know, Scott, you said you want to get into later on, talk about what went on with Ukraine with that complex attack using small UAS’s. But there’s also been a lot of cases in America that garner attention, like the swarms that were over in New Jersey, not too long ago. We certainly had a problem at Langley Air Force Base a few years back as well, with drone swarms.  

You’ve seen other small things where airliners have hit drones and done damage, and that’s garnered some attention. You saw where you had the California wildfires last year, and they had two very effective Canadian firefighting aircraft. 

One was grounded for a long time because it hit a hobbyist drone, and the drone was just watching the wildfires. And so people are starting to realize that these are a problem, not just for military use, but the proliferation, actually you can get on the internet or go down to Best Buy, and buy this type one UAS’s for almost nothing, and you can fly them just because you’re curious, and you could be a huge impediment to a firefighting operation or a police response with helicopters or, any number of things. 

And so I think, now that it’s getting a lot of notoriety, I think that’s good. And I think, industry is responding, and I think the technology will be there.  

Some of the response of those UAS’s in New Jersey. I mean, they’re right in the approach corridor of Newark Airport. What do you do at that point? And I’ll tell you from the ground, especially when it’s nighttime and you look up – you don’t know the difference. You see a red light. That could be a drone 100 yards away, or that could be an airplane ten miles away. And that light will look the same.  

 Again, it goes back to that command and control about what is the threat. And then what do you do about it? Because some of the things Spear went into, are absolutely spot on. When you look at the homeland, it’s such a complex area, but I think a lot of the areas we’re going to operate in are going to be equally as complex, whether that’s a European theater. 

Certainly, many of the South Pacific areas, when you’re talking about in Japan and Korea Guam and some of these places that have quite dense populations and busy airports. These will be challenges that the technology is going to have to solve because, it was very easy to put these quadcopters up there. 

And I think even easier to make these swarms and some of these things that are so impressive. You see, it’s amazing when you’re watching swarms where there is at halftime of a football game or whether that’s in some kind of a military operation, like you saw that the Ukrainians use and the Israelis use in their complex attacks in Iran, but now it’s time to figure out how to counter that one when necessary and I think that’s where we are. 

16:02 – 16:11 

I’d like to dig deeper into the emerging role of UAS’s in military operations. Can you elaborate on this role, particularly with recent examples like Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb?” 

16:12 – 17:17 

(JPM): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Operation Spider Web, from what we can gather from open source reporting, was a June 2025 surprise drone attack on Russian air bases using small UAS’s. And by using special operations forces, the Ukrainians were able to position these small one-way attack drones near the edges of these Russian strategic air bases and then launched attacks on the aircraft there while they were on the ground. 

You look at this from a cost perspective. You get a number of small, relatively cheap one-way attack drones that took out several strategic Russian aircraft, probably hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. And from an asymmetry perspective, there’s a lot to be gained from that.  

The other thing that’s really important, that operation, and I sort of alluded to this earlier, but it’s this idea of reduced tactical warning time. If you position these drones around the edges of an airbase, you no longer have minutes, much less hours to react, to detect, to identify, determine intent, facilitate the command and control we talked about, select the effectors and then time to even make the intercept. You have seconds to react at best. And so now we need to find ways to close that entire kill chain in the counter UAS mission so much more rapidly.

17:18 – 20:37 

(DN):One other interesting thing to get from the open source. If you look at where these attacks were, these were not airbases right around Ukraine. These were air bases in the heartland of Russia, very, very far away from the fight. Where more than likely they thought they were fairly safe from any kind of attacks from the Ukrainians because they weren’t really going that deep. 

So, I think it was a huge surprise, a huge wake up, not just for the Russians, but I think the rest of the world, too. Where you can think you have these airbases with very expensive, exquisite equipment that you’re sheltering there and they became vulnerable very quickly.  

And you look at what the Ukrainians, attacked. They attacked nuclear capable strategic bombers. And they damaged and destroyed quite a few of them, which is significant to the Russian strategic defense of their nation. To me, what I took from it was a wake up call. 

And like Spear said, maybe you put something, a critical element a couple hundred miles from your border because you think you’re safe from attack. But next thing you know, you have a swarm of drones that comes out of a garbage can or a truck, right outside your gate. And seconds later, you’ve lost some really key element to your defense or a key power grid or something very critical to your nation. 

And so I think as you look at the defense against these swarms, again, they don’t carry much weaponry or if they’re small, but put it in the right place at the right time could be very significant. And I thought even though Spider Web was an amazing example of what the Ukrainians were able to achieve.  

I still think the Israeli example about how they use small UAS’s, in conjunction with more conventional forces like F-35s and, and F-15s and other was very unique because these small UAS’s were able to really enable a very complex attack very far from home.  

In the case of Israelis, you really had a complex operation that involved something as simple as a quadcopter and something as complex as an F-35 really in the same operation. And I think they really showed how effective these could be to do, some things as part of an operation, like maybe take out an air defense system or take out a key communication node, or take out maybe a city power grid, something that you could do with a swarm of small drones, especially if you can get it in close. 

And I think that’s what both the Israelis and the Ukrainians were able to achieve. They were able to figure out using, frankly, special operations to get these things close into the fight and actually have them be part of the more conventional fight and I think that’s something we’ve got to be very attuned to.

Now, it may be different in the Pacific because the distances are different with all the oceans, but it doesn’t mean you couldn’t float some of this over on a ship. There’s plenty of ways that people who say that these don’t apply to the Pacific, I think, are missing some of the broader point. This was, to me, was a display of how you use something that you wouldn’t expect to be part of a complex operation and really enhance what they were able to do. 

And in the case of the Israelis shutting down the air defense systems that the Iranians had and then they were able to bring in much more conventional firepower in because, you know, as effective as these swarms can be, as impressive as they look, these small quadcopters, these type one UAS’s don’t carry a lot of firepower. 

But in the right place at the at the right time can be quite effective because in the case of the F-15’s that came in pretty quickly after with a lot of firepower, were able to get through and do quite a bit of damage, neutralize the air defense systems and allow Israel to achieve their objectives pretty quickly.  

If you think about the distances from Israel to Iran and what they’re able to achieve. It was just nothing short of amazing.

20:38 – 21:29 

(JPM): Yeah, I mean, this really comes down to the asymmetry in air warfare. If you think in the past there’s an air base that has aircraft that can just take off, fly for minutes to hours to get to their targets, then perhaps go attack another airbase. There was a lot of parity there in terms of operational timelines, but what we saw in Operation Spiderweb is that the decision time was reduced to near zero. 

If you have minutes or hours to prepare, you can detect, you can identify, determine intent, you can harden your defenses. You’re going to reposition aircraft and you can launch. But when you only have seconds to respond, it underscores the absolute importance of a number of things [that] we talked about the speed at which you can detect this threat, determine what it is, assume or determine the intent behind it, and then being able to command and control, match effectors to targets, and then use them with the appropriate authorities to make that response happen in a fast enough manner. It’s really challenging the current air defense paradigm. 

21:30 – 21:55 

Okay, so let’s get into some of the solutions. At the end of last year, the Air Force put out an RFI, or a Request for Information, for technology that would modify an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (or APKWS) that would be capable of taking down Group 1 to Group 3 drones. 

Spear, you referenced the APKWS earlier, so maybe you can start us off with this: what is APKWS? And how has its use evolved over time?

21:56 – 22:20 

(JPM): Yeah, so the APKWS, or the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, it’s a laser guidance kit that converts a 2.75in rocket into a precision guided munition. It was originally developed as the AGR 20 for US service, and it’s got a laser guidance section. And then the rocket, motor, warhead and fuze are drawn from existing inventory. So you think of this as like an add-on kit that can use an older, cheaper weapon in a new way. 

22:21 – 24:38 

(DN): I was actually in the desert back in 2016, 2017, 2018, in Qatar, working at the [sic], when we started using this on our aircraft and really, what it boils down to is the ability to get after targets in a very, very cost effective manner. We call it “the right side of the cost curve.” 

You know, when you’re taking out a target that the enemy may have built up. You’re talking about maybe a $10,000 car, and you’re using a $2 million missile to take it out. This got us on the better side of the cost curve where we could do things very cheap and at mass. You could put quite a few of these things on an aircraft, and you could load them very quickly. 

And we found them to be very accurate, especially in low risk areas, where the aircraft could get pretty close to their targets, which was at the time when we were in the counter-ISIS fight, with what was going on in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan at the time. These were extremely useful, in that air to ground. 

What happened over this time as we’ll get into the RFI, is we figured out that you can use these things and other things that are moving slow like UAS’s. You know, when you look at what you’re defending and you think about the ground, it just completely makes sense.  

Let’s get away from Europe or the homeland. Let’s start talking about the Pacific, where what we’re defending is air bases and other key nodes and islands and other places around the Pacific. 

We know what the enemy is aiming at. We know where we got to be with our defensive systems. And that’s on the ground right next to these air bases and other locations that we’re defending. It’s the hockey analogy. We know the opposing team wants to put the puck in the net. So you put the goalie in front of the net.  

So if we can figure out how to use something like this, that low cost, many rounds, low collateral damage, because even on these islands [there] are collateral damage issues. If you think about some of the places that we are stationed around the Pacific, there are cities and there are quite a bit of urban sprawl in some of these islands. So you are concerned with the low collateral as well.

If you could figure out how to do this on the ground, this would make a lot of sense for getting after that and not having to launch a very expensive Patriot missile, for instance, against a very low cost UAS. Rather, save the Patriot for a theater ballistic missile or something that it was truly designed against coming at your airbase or your area in the Pacific.  

And again, very, very inexpensive UAS’s, and we were using very expensive missiles on them. It’s that cost curve that we’re never going to win against. This really helps us get after that. 

24:39 – 26:11 

(JPM): I mean, if you think about it, APKWS it was originally designed not to target airborne threats, but now it’s being used to target those new low-cost airborne UAS threats. There’s a couple things that are really important about this. We talked about the cost of these both high end exquisite weapon systems like the AMRAMM versus the APKWS. 

But think also about the opportunity cost of using those AMRAMMs, or Patriots other exquisite weapon systems to target drones. When we think about inventory and replacement of those shots. Like, I would rather have my fighter aircraft save their AMRAMMs for what they’re really needed for to target other fighter aircraft or other large aircraft. So in addition to the cost differential here, there’s an inventory advantage as well. 

The other thing this does is it provides as a new launcher opportunity. So instead of a fighter aircraft carrying these APKWS, we might have a different form factor available, like a ground base launchers, including ones that the RFI is asking about.

And then finally, this presents an opportunity for a lower collateral damage weapon. So instead of something large, like an AMRAMM, especially if you’re near a place where there’s a higher risk for civilian population, something like an APKWS, would be lower collateral damage, certainly not zero. 

But if you’re in an empty area where there’s no civilian population around or population around at all, then collateral damage considerations might be a little less important.   

But as we know, there are a lot of these kind of UAS incursions around very populated areas and airports, houses nearby, etc. so providing a lower or zero collateral damage weapon is extremely important to the future of countering these sort of threats. 

26:12 – 27:19 

(DN):The first time I saw this technology being used in the Middle East, it was amazing. Because if you look at the rocket technology that they’re using, other than the guidance packages, which Spear, talk to you earlier, I mean, the technology that goes back to the Vietnam War. 

We’ve been having rockets and the launchers that use it very similar to that for a long time. It’s just something we had never thought of. And it really was a mix of operators and engineers coming together, figuring out a very effective, a very cheap way. And the cheap is important, because, again, when the enemy can put up thousands of these targets, we can’t be shooting millions of missiles at all of them. 

At some point, we’ll run out of those missiles and we will run out of money, too. It was such a huge thing to get into our aircraft for air to ground and it was really the innovation to bring it in air to air, by some test pilots and engineers in the test world, and then operationally, it was proven out in the deserts in Syria. 

And now you look at a ground-based version of it. Then again, what’s the next thing for APKWS? Maybe there’s something that we can go even further to enhance our base defense and our and eventually our homeland defense as well. 

27:20 – 27:22 

And so what makes an RFI like this important? 

27:23 – 28:47 

(JPM): So let’s talk just for a second about what an RFI is. It’s a Request for Information. It’s an exploration of what’s out there and what’s in the market. What it’s not is a request for proposal. It does not signal that there is a direct impending contract coming out of this. But I think that’s important because it’s asking about the same precision guided, 70 millimeter rocket concept for a ground launch and then aimed at Group One and Group Three UAS’s. 

So these small drones think DJI quadcopter all the way through tactical UAS, which are really just small aircraft. And now the RFI just came out in November and the responses were due at the end of 2025. So I think right now the Air Force is chomping on the information that they received.  

So I think this RFI is important for another reason, which is that it’s signaling that the Air Force is coming into its own about this idea of base defense and investing in air base defense. 

And I think that’s important and good in a way, because the counter-UAS fight is really an air superiority problem. And while a lot of history would show that air base defense is a very small part of that, clearly this new UAS threat is proliferating and causing that particular style of threat causing threat to air bases is so much bigger part of air superiority now. 

And of course, the Air Force has air superiority is one of its core functions. And this conversation goes to show that air superiority is not just fighter jets fighting over a large swath of water 50 miles away from each other or more. It goes all the way from small UAS’s all the way up to hypersonics, ICBMs and beyond. 

28:48 – 31:44 

(DN):Well, there’s other reasons too. If you’re going to defend a base – to be airborne, you can’t be airborne forever. You have to actually get the airplane in the air. It’s going to have to be in some kind of a position where it can intercept. If you can do it from the ground, it is much more efficient to do that.

If you know we have a critical base let’s say on a South Pacific island and we know that that is vulnerable. We put what’s defending it on the ground. We don’t have to have the airplane airborne, with gas and with tankers.  

We put it on the ground and it’s a cheaper, more efficient way to actually defend a point. Now, the difference is what if I have to defend a very large area. That’s why you’re going to want things airborne as well. There is a mix of that. 

When you look at the air base defense piece and what Spear’s alluded to is we’re going to be in many places. And I keep going back to the Pacific fight because that’s certainly a fight we center on in how we look at investment across the Air Force. We’re going to be in many places.

We’re going to be getting there very quickly. And we may not be able to rely on anyone else to provide the air base air defense. So we may have to bring something in and we can bring in light quickly. Very effective. Defend these locations against all myriad of threats. And, the type one, two and three. 

So a relatively small aircraft right on down to the quadcopter. You can go buy it out at Best Buy or Walmart. These things can and very, very cheap enter into this world, as you’ve seen in the Middle East and other places, and the ability to mass these things in locations that can be very not helpful to air operations, even whether they have offensive weapons or not. 

You put a swarm of these things near an air base. It’s really hard to operate airplanes. We have problems just with physical birds, let alone birds that are made of metal like this around an air base. And so as we move throughout the Pacific and we move quickly, thinking about the ACE concept and how we’d actually operate, the ability to defend our own air bases, it’s going to be more and more important as we get further and as more of this proliferates. 

And it’s not just about a small non-state actor using something like this. It could be a state actor. And this is a part of a more elaborate, complex attack using very small UAS’s, and at the same time maybe theater ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and other things to use in concert with each other.  

And you certainly see that in the homeland. You’re going to hear them talk about critical infrastructure and what needs to be defended in the homeland as we go further down this Golden Dome conversation. So it will be important to have some kind of ground-based interceptor system like we have around the National Capital Region right now.  

But at the same time, America is very large. And you’re going to have to have systems like this that have the ability to get up and move and go from point to point very fast, to defend large swaths of our nation. Certainly when you start thinking about Alaska and the Pacific, Hawaii, Guam and all the areas that we would have to defend, we couldn’t just be on the ground. It would be very difficult. That said, we know there’s the critical places we’re going to have to defend, like the National Capital Region or other critical locations for our nation. 

31:45 – 31:58 

The rising need to address the counter-UAS mission also coincides with the United States’ renewed emphasis on homeland defense, namely through the Golden Dome initiative.    

So what role and relevance do drones and UAS’s have to the Golden Dome conversation? 

31:59 – 33:55 

(JPM): With Golden Dome, if we back up for a moment, this idea of defending the homeland against air and missile attacks is something that has a long history in NORAD and in U.S. Northern Command.  

And the systems that we have now, were because we produce capabilities. So the threats that existed at the time and the priorities that we had in terms of funding and the technologies that we had available. If you go back and read the executive order for Golden Dome, it’s now an idea of how do we focus not only on ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, advanced cruise missiles, next generation aerial attacks, and as a homeland defense type of initiative? 

And so the counter-UAS flight is absolutely relevant to Golden Dome, but it’s certainly not the entirety of it.  

 But there are really there are overlaps. And these overlaps are really important because Golden Dome will be a layered system or system of systems, and not just from a physics perspective in terms of what areas you might be defending, but also how you might do this, because you’re going to need capabilities that will overlap in terms of what we talked about earlier in the detection, identifying, determining intent, command and control, selecting and responding with effectors is going to apply across the board there.  

Even if those detection mechanisms and the effector mechanisms may be very different depending on the type of threat. And so what you’re going to need are systems that can be integrated together, or a system that can detect hypersonic threats and ballistic missile threats, as well as systems that can detect these small UAS drone threats, in order that a greater and more integrated command and control system can help the authorities and operators decide. 

What should we do about this? What can we do about this? What timelines do we have?, What authorities do we need? And then of course, at the end game, what are we going to do against this thing? Is this going to be a kinetic kill? Is it going to be a hand off to law enforcement? Is it going to be something else? 

So as we look at this, some of the questions that Golden Dome is going to have to ask and answer and is asking about authorities, about collateral risk, collateral damage systems, they’re going to apply to this counter-UAS mission. And I think it’s going to require a collaborative approach among all the teams that are looking at this problem set.

Sir, over to you. 

33:56 – 34:57 

(DN):Yeah. I think I’ll just kind of narrow in on the that the C2 aspect, the command control aspect, and it really is great to see that the Joint Interagency Task Force, JIATF-401, is working with the Golden Dome team in terms of the command and control, because it’s going to have to be seamless across all domains. 

Where I think Golden Dome really, again, go back to the executive order. We’re thinking about ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hyper glide vehicles, some of these even space weapons coming from and emanating from space. There are attacks that could be more conventional. Right on down to, even cyber and really any domain, and if we’re truly going to be safe as a nation – what Golden Dome intends.

The counter small UAS fight could be something just that specifically, or in the case of if you go back to, we talked about, the Israeli case in Iran, it could be part of a complex attack on our homeland and so the command and control structures are going to have to be seamless across and I think that’s a great indicator to industry, about where they focus their technologies because they’re going to have to have to be able to be seamlessly integrated across all domains. 

34:58 – 35:05 

Now, moving forward, what should industry’s takeaways be from the growing relevance of counter-UAS as part of these homeland defense conversations? 

35:06 – 36:33 

(JPM): Yeah, that’s a great question, Scott. I think the biggest thing that industry should take from this – is this is a real need. It’s not just a passing fad. It’s an emerging threat that’s not only causing real problems today, but it’s going to continue to emerge and evolve.  

And so looking not only at this RFI, but the wider Golden Dome initiative and what’s going on around the world, industry should take this time to start investing in and exploring ways that they can contribute to the counter-UAS flight, and whether that be in detection, in identification, command and control, or some kind of effector as well.

And there are a lot of new technologies out there. And I think that’s what’s interesting about this mission set, is because of the small, cheap, proliferated nature of these threat drones themselves.  

What you’ll find is that a lot of nontraditional companies can and are putting offerings into this space where in the past they didn’t or couldn’t compete because traditional air defense technologies were very expensive, required a lot of R&D just because of the nature of the threat, needing a missile to go many, many, many miles and detect high fast targets. 

But now this new threat in this new space allows for greater and faster innovation from smaller defense companies, and also nontraditional and nondefense companies. Because, again, it’s not just a military challenge. This is also a law enforcement challenge. So it’s a civil air space. It’s a public safety challenge. And so there’s opportunities for companies both in the U.S., outside the US for defense and non-defense, large and small, to be working on these technologies. 

And they’re not working on a military technology. Maybe they’re working on a law enforcement, public safety technology because they’re going to need this as well.

36:34 – 38:57 

(DN):I think the challenge we have for some of these companies, too, is that, as they develop technology, is how you bring this into some kind of a program where they, these small companies can have the steady stream of money that they’re going to need to stay in business. 

You know, many companies are coming up with an amazing technology. But if it doesn’t get adopted, that company can’t stay in business if they’re not able to sell it. So I think that will be a challenge, of the government, finding the right technologies and bringing it into a program where you can keep these companies moving forward. 

 And then in many cases, some of these small companies will merge with larger companies are merging their small companies. That’s so they can continue on. But that’s where the Valley of Death is very real when there is actually money and small business innovation efforts, SBIR I, SBIR II, other places, STRATFI, that small companies can find money to continue to develop their products. 

But then to get to that point to some kind of a program award, sometimes it’s a very large leap. It’s very hard for these small companies. So I think that’s something for us to watch. I think that’s something where Elara Nova can be quite effective as we help some of these companies manage that Valley of Death. 

 And whether that’s pairing up with a company or whether that’s looking for other avenues for funding so they can stay alive and then making sure that the government sees their technology and sees how applicable that can be to this fight because, the secret sauce is really going to be in some of these small companies and some of it’s just amazing technology as we bring it forward, it’s not always going to be a large companies.  

But in many cases, the large companies, like the Lockheed Martin’s and Northrop’s, the BAE’s and others are very important because they do have the ability, to extend the funding and have the structures to not only, to continue to develop the technology, but then to scale it, at the necessary speed that the Department of War is going to need moving forward. 

 And I think the industry is so far, doing a pretty good job responding and so I look forward to more indications from the government of exactly what they’re looking for, so industry can stay focused. We do have the best industry in the world. And we will figure out how you can make this command and control, where you have a handful of small UAS’s around an airbase like we had at Langley a few years ago, and we’re able to quickly identify where they are, who they are, and then apply the countermeasure to neutralize it if it is truly a threat or if it’s not a threat – let it go, or if it turns out to be a manned general aviation airplane that just wandered into the wrong airspace, you let it go, and then there you deal with it in terms of a civil matter. We’re not there yet, but I think we’re getting there very fast and it’s great to see that the country is focused on this.

38:58 – 39:09 

In what ways does the dual-use implications for counter-UAS mission, also present a unique opportunity for the government to establish a public-private partnership that would accelerate the development of counter-UAS technologies? 

39:10 – 40:50 

(JPM): Yeah, so I think if you think of this as a dual-use technology or a dual-use technology space, there’s of course the military applications. And particularly in the U.S., we’ve seen opportunities to spend money on countering this threat, both for US air bases, for U.S. air bases overseas, etc. but that’s still a relatively small subset of what this problem space could look like. 

If you think about every police department in the country, every police department perhaps in the world needing something like this system or something to counter threats in this space from both local and national safety objectives. I mean, just from a counter-UAS perspective, the need to detect, identify and determine what you’re going to do about it is not simply a military application, right? 

You need to do that in law enforcement and public safety, as well. And so this need is going to be proliferated across the globe if it’s not already there. And any place where these drones could cause problems. And there’ll be different ways of handling them as well. We don’t need to get into this discussion about whether every police department’s going to have something that can shoot down a drone because they may take a different approach. It’s not really us to say what’s going to be, but they are going to need something to detect, identify and then make a decision on what they’re going to do about it.

But it also does beg the question about what types of law or policy we need that are essentially the equivalent of a police officer pulling over somebody that’s speeding, right?A drone not where it’s supposed to be or approaching someplace it’s not supposed to be. It’s kind of like somebody’s speeding. So what’s the counter-UAS equivalent of a police officer putting their blue lights on to pull somebody over.  

So as the U.S. technology evolves, policy evolves and norms evolve. How we think about these aircraft and how they operate in the national and international airspace, we’re going to have to rethink how we work together from a civil and military perspective, so that we can take advantage of these new technologies while also keeping our population safe. 

40:51 – 42:25 

(DN):I think the dual-use is actually really going to be very effective because for the same reason Newark Airport is not going to want to have small UAS’s flying around the final approach corridor. They’re going to want a way to detect those small UAS’s and get them away. 

And whether that is some kind of a non-kinetic effect where they can actually move them away, or whether they physically take the things down, because there is a need in both the commercial and military sector, I think the technology is going to advance that much quicker because, on the commercial side, they come up with a way to keep UAS’s away from a busy airport in a downtown area like Newark Airport, New Jersey. 

Then we probably can use that very similar technology at Anderson Airbase in Guam. And for an offensive drone swarm there’s probably some various similarities in that technology.  

So I think that’s probably a good thing that this is a problem both in military and civil area, and you saw that, last year with those devastating wildfires in LA County, when they had that problem with drone swarms, some of them were good because they were police departments and others. Others were not. 

They’re just a hobbyist wanting to see the fires. And next thing you know, you were having impacts with small drones with aircraft and causing a lot of damage to those aircraft that were trying to fight the fires. And you’re also seeing in places like say the Super Bowl. 

Well, they’ll put a TFR or a Temporary Flight Restriction over the Super Bowl. So, aircraft don’t fly near it for security reasons. We’ve done that since 9/11 with large events like that. What about the drones and the hobbyists? And then and all the other things that are taking place around an event like that. And so I think the dual-use nature of the dual-use problem is going to help us solve this quicker for both sides. Spear, anything else on that? 

42:26 – 43:08 

(JPM): Yeah, I mean, if you look at similar technology advances, there were times when, for example, the Global Positioning System, the GPS, and specifically the receiver that you needed to figure out where you were, it used to be huge. And then you have organizations like DARPA that miniaturized it to make it more usable on the battlefield. But since then, I mean, you’ve got GPS receivers on everything to include your watch, your phone, etc. so the continued miniaturization of that, due to the commercial applications of GPS, the military now gets to take advantage of the fact that those receivers are now so much cheaper and so much smaller.  

And I think the same thing is going to happen with a lot of these technologies. So it’s really beneficial to the military and the civilian world that there’s a dual-use nature to this because it’s going to help accelerate, bring down the cost and size of all of these things.

43:09 – 43:18 

As the respective leaders of Elara Nova’s Aeronautics & Mission Systems sector, how can Elara Nova support the development and acquisition of counter-UAS technologies? 

43:19 – 45:04 

(DN):Our intention for the Aeronautics and Mission System, the AMS side of Elara Nova is to help these companies navigate, not only the government side of things and working through the innovation efforts as well as getting into programs. 

But as well as helping them tell a story about if they have a technology, where that can be used and how – present that technology, whether it’s to another company. If they’re going to be paired up with another company, or if it’s to the government or to an international partner as well. 

I think that’s one thing we do well, in AMS – is we have a lot of operational experts, and we can help them tell that story really well. We can also help them navigate, whether they’re looking for that SBIR I effort, that SBIR II effort they’re looking for. How do they get in front of the right person at the Department of War or whether that’s one of the Combatant Commanders? 

Who is that right person you need to get in front of? And when they get in front of that person, what story should they tell? And I think that’s something we’ll be very effective at.  

And then looking at the larger piece of the Golden Dome, we’re very involved with Golden Dome. I know a lot of it is on the space side. General Guetlein and his team, many of them came from the Space Force, but it is an all-domain effort. When you look at how you’re going to defend the nation and much of Golden Dome is going to be outside of the space sector, we talked a little bit about it right here about the integration with JIATF 401, the command and control networks, etc. 

Many of these small companies are coming to us with questions about Golden Dome, about how would they fit in? How could they become part of a broader consortium as part of this large-scale effort to defend the homeland? And I think we’re putting ourselves in a great position to help these companies tell their story, figure out how they can integrate, figure out how they can get funded and ultimately get into some kind of a program of record, and then proceed from there. Spear, anything else on that? 

45:05 – 45:34 

(JPM): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this counter-UAS mission poses a great question for us to figure out how the Aeronautics and Mission Systems sector can provide complementary expertise or a high quality outside look to these companies developing these technologies. I mean, these companies are already staffed with brilliant people that developed awesome technologies, and they have great operational depth. And the answer we believe that AMS can provide them with expertise that can complement and leverage the strengths they already have within their company to ultimately get capability into the hands of those that need it. 

45:35 – 46:14 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a strategic advisory firm, Elara Nova is the trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain.  

With the trusted insight to deliver your decisive edge, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in national security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.

Securing Space: A Plan for U.S. Action

The Council on Foreign Relations Space Task Force, co-chaired by Elara Nova partner Lt Gen (Ret) Nina Armagno, published a new report: “Securing Space: A Plan for U.S. Action.”

The report outlines a series of findings and recommendations for the United States to immediately address the strategic challenges and existential threats found in today’s space environment.

Episode 22: Department of Defense Budget Must Realign to Space-Based Threats

Host: Scott King

SME: Gen (Ret) John E. Hyten, Senior Principal Advisor at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy (JH)

Lt Gen (Ret) Nina Armagno, Executive Director of International Partnerships at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy (NA)

00:02 – 01:43

The United States Space Force requested $29.4 billion for Fiscal Year 2025, a two percent drop from the previous year. The final budget, however, has yet to be passed as the federal government is currently operating under what’s known as a “Continuing Resolution.” 

This is a reality the Space Force has become familiar with. For half of its existence – or about thirty of the past sixty months since the Space Force was founded – the military’s newest service has been operating under a Continuing Resolution.

The Space Force was founded in response to the threatening actions of near-peer competitors in space. But without the appropriate funding to build and maintain a strong and capable Space Force, the national and economic security of the United States remains at risk.

However, even the traditional Department of Defense approach to building and resourcing its force structure, which begins with the budget, leaves the Space Force with only a marginal amount of the funding it needs. 

Welcome to the Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security,” I’m your host Scott King. I’m joined today by retired General John Hyten, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Senior Principal Advisor at Elara Nova: The Space Consulantcy, as well as retired Lieutenant General Nina Armagno, the first director of staff with the United States Space Force and executive director of international partnerships at Elara Nova.

Together, they co-wrote a recent opinion editorial, published by SpaceNews, stating that it’s time to re-focus the DOD budget away from legacy programs to resource against the modern, space-based threat.

General Hyten, Sir, welcome to the show!

01:44 – 01:46

JH: It’s great to be here.

It’s great to be with General Armagno, always.

01:47 – 01:49

And General Armagno, thank you for taking the time to be here today.

01:50 – 01:51

NA: Thank you. Scott.

01:52 – 02:14

As of our recording today, Congress and the DOD are operating under what’s known as a “Continuing Resolution.” This is in lieu of a passed budget for Fiscal Year 2025. 

Now, many in our audience are likely familiar with Continuing Resolutions, but for those who aren’t, let’s set the table here:

What is a Continuing Resolution? And how does it affect the Space Force’s overall budgeting and planning process?

02:15 – 03:12

JH: So a Continuing Resolution real simply is the fact that we don’t have a budget for this fiscal year. Therefore, the Continuing Resolution said we will comply with last year’s budget limits and budget programs, which means no new starts can happen.

Which means any changes in budget can’t be done because we have to operate at last year’s budget level. That means any relatively new program that started the last couple of years probably has a required budget increase that is needed in order to deliver the capability. That budget increase can’t be executed because it hasn’t been passed by Congress.

Therefore, all of these programs are delayed. The inefficiencies waste of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, and most importantly, from our perspective, you can’t deliver the required capability that we need for the nation because we can’t fund the programs and so many space programs in today’s day and age, are in that – that category of we need additional funding in order to execute and we can’t execute them.

03:13 – 03:52

NA: And if you look at the Space Force budget in particular, you’re probably looking at about a $4 billion deficit, but that doesn’t tell the full story. The full story is the impact on the new starts as General Hyten just mentioned. And for a new service trying to consolidate capabilities from across the other services – that’s one thing.

But what the Space Force is really working on are new capabilities, using new technologies for new missions and the impact to delaying those programs is significant, not just for the Space Force, but the entire joint force and our nation.

03:53 – 04:23

JH: It’s kind of a little bit of a Catch-22.

We actually build our budgets assuming that Congress passes a budget on time. So that come the 1st of October, with the new budget, the new program is executed on the 1st of October. Here it is, the middle of February, soon to be March, and there’s no budget. That means the last six months we’ve been wasting time and money because of the law that says there will be a budget on the 1st of October, we build our budgets assuming that there will be there on the 1st of October. So it’s a little bit of a Catch-22 because they’re never there.

04:24 – 05:02

NA: And so guess what the entire Pentagon has been working on assuming the new budget’s going to be passed? They’re already working on 2026. I mean, that whole thing’s probably being blown up by new presidential priorities, of course. But traditionally the approach is it’s typically carved out to be a third, a third, a third. A third goes to the Army, a third goes to the Department of the Navy, which includes the Navy and the Marine Corps. A third goes to the Department of the Air Force, which is Air Force and Space Force, roughly. But the newest service in town only garners about three percent of the overall DOD budget and has been flat over the last year. This is harmful.

05:03 – 06:06

JH: And the other piece of that puzzle that really hurts the Department of the Air Force is that the Air Force in their budget, is the only service that has a pass-through element of the budget.

That pass-through element I think in the 25 budget was roughly $45 billion. That goes straight to the intelligence community. That doesn’t come to the Air Force. It was put in the Air Force a long time ago when that budget was hidden from the world. Nobody knew that budget exists. Everybody knows that budget exists right now. In fact, we can pull out the Air Force budget, and look at it.

So when you go one third, one third, one third, the Air Force one third includes $45 billion for somebody else. So we actually don’t have, we the Department of the Air Force, don’t have one third. We have about one fifth and when you actually are trying to build an Air Force, that’s why we have ancient airplanes. I mean, the newest B-52 is like 63 years old.

We can’t build our new space capabilities because they’re paying other people’s bills, and it’s almost untenable. But you basically can’t have an Air Force and you can’t have a Space Force unless you change that fundamental structure.

06:07 – 06:29

Funding for the Space Force has increased year-over-year since its inception. The outlier, however, is the latest budget request for Fiscal Year 2025, which came in at about $600 million less than the previous year. 

If passed that way, this budget request would still put funding for the Space Force at around $29 billion. But even so, is that enough?

06:30 – 07:33

NA: No, it’s not enough. What is the actual number? Well, I don’t have it. But I’m sure it’s not enough. This is a service that’s barely five years old. Every indication is that it needs to grow. 

I hear today there’s a ceiling on the Space Force budget. We are flat-lined and I know decisions are very difficult within the Space Force and within the Department of the Air Force.

But I don’t believe that flat-lining the Space Force should have been one of those decisions. I know Secretary Kendall has said right before he left that the Space Force budget should probably double, but perhaps he had an opportunity to, at the very least, put some more funds into 2025. There are nuances. I know there’s a story behind the story, I get it.

But the service hasn’t been around long enough to have those deep relationships with staffers on the Hill, or within the Pentagon. And I think some of that lack of experience contributed to this flat budget.

07:34 – 08:51

JH: To me, the defense budget should be all about ‘How do we respond to the threats of the world? Right now, the most significant pacing threat that we have is China. China is basically building air and space capabilities and strategic capabilities to challenge the United States in the Pacific.

The second one is Russia. Probably even more concerning in the near term. They’re building the same thing. Why have they been building those things? They’ve been building those things because they realized the American way of war depends on air and space capabilities, period.

Therefore, seems to me like the threat demands an increase in air and space capabilities, an increase in naval air and deployment capabilities. And the third priority would be the United States Army. If you look at the numbers, it’s actually the reverse, which means, and don’t get me wrong, the Army is critical in the Middle East, will be critical in anything to do with Russia. 

But if we’re going to deal with the threats we have to do, you shouldn’t see a declining budget. You should see an increasing budget. 

And so it bothers me when the threat does not drive our requirements. When it’s all about the threat. I would expect to see a robust capability to defend the capabilities we have on-orbit and deny adversaries the use of capabilities against our forces on the ground, at sea, and in the air and I don’t see that.

08:52 – 09:04

And with respect to the role of space-based capabilities in joint military operations, how might an under-resourced or under-funded Space Force adversely affect its ability to support the other services like the Army and the Navy?

09:05 – 09:53

NA: Space is used in every operational mission. Certainly every joint operational mission. Every single day, the other services use capabilities from space. Just think of satellite communications, GPS, weather, missile warning. These are fundamental capabilities that all of our operations, our plans. We rely on the fact that they’re going to be there. With a flat budget and other priorities coming down, especially now from a new administration.

And I’ve seen those hard choices. I’ve seen the Space Force and the Air Force have to make very hard choices about those capabilities. You know, what gets funded? So you certainly can’t make everybody happy. But it’s even worse when you’re not even starting on a level playing field.

09:54 – 10:49

JH: So you kind of put two and two together and you see it as up to three.

And the reason is because the bills that General Armagno just described for PNT, comm, missile warning, all of those bills have to be paid and they have to be paid upfront because every military service requires them. Now we’ve moved into a contested world in space where we have to worry about somebody threatening us in space, threatening those capabilities that I just described that are the must-pay bills. 

And so the Space Force lays in the capabilities that are needed to go do that offense, defense, fires however you want to describe it. They lay in those capabilities. And then we can’t get a budget, because Congress won’t pass a budget and so all of that money that is programmed can’t be used.

And then the waste in the Space Force budget is astronomical, no pun intended, because of that same issue. That’s why when you add two and two, you get three because you have the must-pay bill and then you have the inefficiencies put in, because we don’t have a budget.

10:50 – 11:04

And, Sir, you mentioned the need for the DOD to pay their bills upfront – which leads into my next question.

Can each of you elaborate on the role that Congress plays in this process, and how can the DOD work with Congress to streamline these efforts to receive the funding that it needs?

11:05 – 12:54

NA: The budget gets sent over to Congress. But then what Congress says, and I think to this day, though, they will tell you – they get the president’s budget and they throw it in the trash and they start over with their own priorities. The president’s budget is not literally in the trash. I mean, it is the foundation of what the executive is posturing for and supporting and trying to get Congress to align.

Then come posture hearings where the Department of Defense and all the other, most senior leaders of our government, come to the Hill and it’s a parade of briefings. 

Following that is lots of engagement and what I found in trying to fight for programs and advocate for budget, for the space programs in the Air Force when I was part of AQS. General Hyten and also led AQS earlier in his career, the acquisition for space, essentially in the Department of the Air Force. I found that bringing them in early, bringing the staffers into program briefings, your acquisition strategies and plans to help them understand what you’re going after.

I found that to be very helpful. We did it very deliberately with a program called “Silent Barker,” which is space-based space situational awareness. So satellites in-orbit that can also monitor that very domain and I found that this was a program that the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office were working together at the direction of Congress.

The best thing we did, was we went to the Hill, talked to staffers before the program was even announced, or certainly approved, and they certainly felt like – and they were – part of the program from day one and part of the decision-making.

12:55 – 14:51

JH: So Congress’s number one job is the power of the purse to pass a budget. That’s their job, not the president’s job, not the Supreme Court, the Congress of the United States, the Senate and House of Representatives together have to come up with a budget.

Now, they’re supposed to come up with a budget by 1 October. So they lay in a series of briefings. General Armagno called them “posture hearings.” They lay those posture hearings, usually for a Combatant Command like STRATCOM or Space Command or Central Command or Indo-Pacific Command. They lay those posture hearings in usually early March. You have the Secretary of Defense usually comes in the posture hearings in late February or early March kind of leading the way.

Then you have the Combatant Commanders after that, then you have the services come in. And the job of all those people, the SECDEF, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Deputy Secretary, the Vice Chairman, all the Combatant Commanders, and then the services is to defend the president’s budget to Congress. The schedule is the schedule. You’re going to go ahead and schedule those things.

I can’t tell you how difficult it is as both a major command commander, then a Combatant Commander, and then the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to have to go testify to Congress on the president’s budget when no president’s budget was submitted to Congress, because the schedule is going to be the schedule, and everybody thinks the budget’s going to be there other then it’s not, then you have to stand and answer all their questions on these future programs when you have no budget. So when the budget does come over, then you basically have to do it all again.

What General Armagno described is a great way to do it. You bring the staffers over, you educate them as fast as you can, but you’re behind the game trying to get to October 1st, and then you do this every year.

So the waste that goes to the taxpayers is horrible. But the education of the Congress, which is the job of the Department, I mean, we don’t lobby, but we have to educate Congress on what we need – that is damaged tremendously when the leadership of the Department can’t talk about their priorities to Congress because they don’t know what they are yet, because the president hasn’t decided. So it’s, it’s just a raw mess.

14:52 – 15:07

Here I’d like to lean into each of your respective careers and experiences working with the budgeting process.

Starting with General Hyten, Sir, can you share some insights from your experience as the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

How can we overcome some of these budget challenges?

15:08 – 16:15

JH: The first thing I’ll say is that as a whole, Congress has become dysfunctional the last ten years. But the amazing thing to me that surprised me in all my three four-star jobs, Space Command, Strategic Command, and Vice Chairman was how much each member of Congress, Senate and House of Representatives were interested in educating themselves and trying to do the right thing to build the budget that they have to do.

And when you take the time to go talk to the members and talk to their staffs on a frequent basis, they will work hard to do the right thing for the country, and things will end up in the bills that you think are impossible, because they really it’s just this tight margin between the Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

It makes moving things as a whole very difficult. But if you take the time to actually go across the river and explain to Congress what you’re trying to do, they will do their absolute upmost best to include those things in the budget, and you can move these things forward. We could actually move fairly quickly, if we could solve this overall problem of passing the budget on time.

16:16 – 16:22

Thank you, Sir. And to take it one step further – is there a particular program or specific experience that really encapsulates this effort?

16:23 – 17:34

JH: An initiative that we had when General Ellen Pawlikowski was Commander of Space and Missile System Center. I was AQS, head of acquisition of the Pentagon. Our desire was to buy more than one satellite at a time in production and that was against the law. The law said, if you go to production, you have to fully fund that program.

Well, fully funding a satellite program back then, it was a multi-billion dollar satellite. And I’ll just make up numbers. And it was for the Space-Based Infrared System, the Advanced EHF system. If we paid for one, it would cost roughly $2 billion. If we paid for two, it cost us $3 billion.

In other words, a billion and a half dollars a satellite. So we could save the taxpayer $1 billion each on both of those programs. So we could save the taxpayer $2 billion if we could just spread the funding out to buy two. But that would cause a change in the law. But General Pawlikowski and I, we spent tons of time on the Hill educating both the staff and the members of Congress.

What would happen if we did that? And son of a gun. When the law came out, they changed the law to allow us to do that for those programs. That was remarkable.

17:35 – 18:05

NA: Another example, last Secretary of the Air Force, Secretary Kendall, worked with Congress on the law that says there should be no new starts under a Continuing Resolution and he was able to get an exception.

There was a new program the Space Force wanted to start. I think it was a Replacement GPS or some smaller program, and that was being used to kind of test out the new exception to the law and more of that kind of work needs to happen, because laws can be changed.

18:06 – 18:47

JH: That’s the thing to remember, because the Congress writes the law, the president signs them into action. Any law can be changed. People think the acquisition program is inflexible, that there’s only one way through the process. This is the way it’s going to be.

If you actually read the Federal Acquisition Regulations, which are basically the compilation of all the laws that have passed over the last number of decades, on how you buy things, pretty much every way you want to buy something is included in the law. 

And oh, by the way, if it’s not, all you have to do is get Congress to change it, which means the right person, or the right military leader has to go over and explain. And then Congress can and does on many occasions change the law for the benefit of the country.

18:48 – 19:01

Now, General Armagno, you served as the first director of staff at the United States Space Force, where you had a hand in crafting the very first Space Force budget. 

So, Ma’am, what perspectives can you share from this first-hand experience?

19:02 – 21:06

NA: Well, it was really difficult to build the first Space Force budget because there was really nobody in the Pentagon yet. General Thompson was leading a team of maybe 30 of us.

I was asked to come over as a two-star to help him and everyone else, all of our expertise, all of our ‘budgeteers,’ if you will. Was back at Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs. So we really had to communicate well. It starts with a strategy. You start with trying to fulfill your overarching strategy and goals for the service.

Brand-new service. A lot of that wasn’t yet defined. As a service, you start with budget guidance. Now, we did get that guidance from General Raymond. You take the guidance and then you realize when you’re done with this process, there’s way more that you want to pay for that you want to do than you could ever possibly finance it.

So there’s a lot of competing requirements coming from other services. Congress as well, has their favorite programs and projects. 

And so one example of how hard it is to pivot your budget. There was a recognition, especially during that time, that space domain awareness was so crucial and important for our new Command, U.S. Space Command.

It was important to their planning, to their missions. And the Space Force coined a term ‘Pivot to SDA.’ But I saw, especially in those budget deliberations, I saw that SDA, especially the ground-based radars and optical telescopes, were talking about space-based systems as I just mentioned, Silent Barker. I saw those budgets get cut. I mean, they just couldn’t stand up to the pressure of the other things that the Space Force was trying to do so early on snd so even if your strategy and the guidance is written as ‘Pivot to SDA,’ if there’s no money behind that, there’s not much of a pivot.

21:07 – 21:47

Thank you, Ma’am. Now this declining budget request is also indicative of a broader trend that we’ve been witnessing in defense spending over the years.

In 2022, U.S. defense spending came in at just over 3.4 percent of our GDP, or Gross Domestic Product. The Congressional Budget Office forecast that this spending will continue to decrease by another percentage point by 2034. 

That would put our defense spending at nearly half of the running average of 4.2 percent of GDP Congress has traditionally allocated for defense spending over the last half century. 

From your perspectives, what has triggered these broader declines in defense spending from Congress?

21:48 – 22:51

NA: The national debt is a problem. We also see rising non-discretionary fund needs. We see an aging population that needs to be cared for. And when you see how large the defense budget is, there have been efforts along the way to decrease the DOD budget. I remember something called “Sequestration,” back in 2012, 2013, 2014 time rame, which was a ten percent budget cut for ten years that the Congress passed into law.

Yeah, I know the DOD has a big budget, but I can tell you from somebody, a commander on the ground, it was really difficult basically cutting programs that were non-mission, but they were the the essence of what made a base, a community, for example, or the Air Force feel like they were part of a community.

And I think today you see just different changing congressional priorities and you see a focus on the perceived and probably real bloat across our entire government budget. That’s what I see.

22:52 – 24:30

JH: I see it that way, plus a little different. I agree with everything that General Armagno said. But the little different comes from, well, two things. And these are things that former bosses taught me.

And since I’m going to quote them, I’ll tell you they were. General Mattis once said, “America’s the richest country in the world. We should be able to afford survival. We should pay the bills that we have to pay in order to do that.” 

But then it was General Bob Koehler when I think he was at STRATCOM, when he said that because the budget at the time was $700 billion, he said, you know, if you talk to the average guy in the street and and say, you know, the defense budget is $700 billion, 700 billion with a ‘B,’ they would assume that we have a pretty darn awesome defense for the $700 billion.

We’re approaching a trillion now and right now, we are the least efficient acquisition bureaucracy that I’ve ever experienced. We pay sometimes ten times more than we need to for something. We keep things around much longer than we need them. We waste enormous amounts of money through Continuing Resolutions, and if we actually spent our money correctly, that amount would be plenty to build a defense.

But there’s so much waste and you started this discussion with the Continuing Resolution. That’s money you never get back. That’s just gone. So we got to stop wasting money. We got to get rid of bloated bureaucracies. We have to delegate decisions down to lower levels so people can make decisions and move quickly and effectively energize our budget. 

So number one, we should pay the money we need to pay for survival. And number two, when we see waste, we should kill it.

24:31 – 24:40

So where do we go from here? What needs to happen not only with regard to the budget for FY25? But for the defense budget process as a whole moving forward?

24:41 – 25:22

JH: You know, everybody thinks that the president’s budget is the budget. It’s not, it’s just the start of the discussion. So the actual budget, what goes to space in FY25 will be decided by the Congress. I know that the current administration is going through a quick re-look at the 25 budget to come up with what I would hope they make some different recommendations that were in the previous version.

And then Congress has the opportunity to change things, and I would hope they would do it strategically with regard to the threat. And if they do that, the budget will align where it needs to be. But there’s a lot of political pressures from local communities all the way up to the companies that actually have the work, that will put huge pressure on it.

But if I had one thing to say, it would just be focus on the threat. If it doesn’t respond to the threat we shouldn’t be doing.

25:23 – 25:57

NA: I totally agree with that. And I just wanted to highlight that Representative Bacon, who as a Congressman in Nebraska, he wrote an opinion recently where he says enough about talking about innovation and working on new technology.

And I think it kind of goes along with what General Hyten and saying he wants tough choices to be made based on priorities. Those priorities should be based on the threat. But he says it’s time to actually set priorities. Congress fund those priorities and move out quickly on producing systems.

25:58 – 26:32

JH: If I was Secretary of Defense, and thank goodness I’m not, but if I were Secretary of defense and I went to my posture hearing before a budget was even submitted, perhaps I would do nothing but talk about the threats and the capabilities that are required to deal with the threats.

Somehow we forget that that’s what we’re all about. Our job is to defend the nation against all threats. Everybody that wears the uniform, everybody that serves in government, swears an oath to the Constitution and embedded in that is the ability to defend the United States.

And if we’re doing things that don’t. I would say stop that and reprioritize against the threat that should inform Congress where the budget has to go.

26:33 – 27:02

NA: And as the threat changes, which we’ve seen it change over the last ten years to the point where there’s a theory that the next war will begin in space, the next war will begin in cyber. It’ll be unseen. It won’t be somebody crossing a border. It won’t be a build up along a border.

It won’t be a bullet fired. It will be in the space domain and therefore a restructuring of our national defense is probably in order here.

27:03 – 28:25

JH: If I was an adversary like China or Russia, looking at the United States, you don’t have to be a military scholar or a historian to say, if I was going to start a conflict with the United States, what’s the first thing I have to do?

It’s not actually attack the United States. The first thing I have to do is I have to insert doubt into the American population about our ability to achieve our objectives. I don’t do that with a military confrontation because the American people – rightly – believe and trust the United States military will dominate anybody on a battlefield. And oh, by the way, we will.

That’s not the way you start. First you take our eyes, ears, that’s space. Then you influence cyber to incur doubt. Then you attack the United States through chemical and biological warfare that nobody can see. Nobody can figure out where they’re coming from. And if you look at the way we responded to COVID in the not very coordinated activity we had responding to a COVID virus, all you have to do is insert that doubt, and then you challenge the United States with military force because now the doubt is across the American people.

So it’s not through the Army or the Navy or even through the Air Force originally. It’s through space, cyber, chemical and biological warfare that’s unattributable and those things we actually don’t do very well defending ourselves right now and that should be one of the highest priorities we have, because that’s how conflict would start.

28:26 – 28:41

Thank you, Sir, and in response to how the nature of warfare is changing. 

What are some of the technologies, capabilities, and mission areas that the Space Force needs to prioritize in communicating with Congress so their funding efforts can be resourced appropriately?

28:42 – 29:33

NA: Well, you can look at it in basically two buckets. One bucket, what is needed to fight tonight in space, but in support of every other domain. That would be capabilities like anti-jam communications, protected PNT – position, navigation and timing.

And then there’s another bucket. What about a war that extends to space? What about a war in space? Those technologies definitely are being discussed at classified levels, but we can talk about the vulnerabilities of satellites and vulnerabilities in the space domain. 

Satellites have no defenses. Zero. None. Well, one technology would be on-board sensing – an on-board sensor that could simply provide a satellite its own warning or its own sensing of something nearby or an approaching threat.

29:34 – 30:51

JH: So I was lucky enough to serve at the four-star level for a long time, through three different administrations. And without going into detail, which would be inappropriate for so many reasons, classification as well as discussion with presidents, I’ll say with the three presidents I worked for directly: President Obama, President Trump and President Biden.

At some point during that time, I had a discussion with them about offense and defense. At some point in the discussion, they would look at me and say, all three of them, right? Now think, President Obama, President Trump, President Biden, three different people as you can imagine, but they would look at me and hold me accountable, rightly so in saying, ‘Didn’t you tell me years ago that we needed to build a more resilient space architecture because we don’t have the ability to defend ourselves? And then that would change the whole discussion about offense and defense, if we had a resilient space architecture. How come you haven’t built a resilient space architecture?’ 

And by the time I got to President Biden, that had been going on for like ten years. But it was the same question from three different presidents, three different things.

You said multiple times, we need a resilient architecture, and then you don’t build it. Now we’re building it, slowly because the status quo still wins in the discussions. But, again, it’s all about the threat.

30:52 – 31:27 

NA: And looking at the threat, it’s also very difficult to defend 1 v 1. So Russia, China proliferating on the ground, for example, anti-satellite capabilities, jamming capabilities, to counter 1 v 1 would be a fool’s errand. It would be very expensive.

And so it’s out-thinking your adversary out-maneuvering your adversary and putting capabilities in motion and funding them, most importantly to counter. But it can’t be platform centric. It has to be mission-area centric.

31:28 – 32:59

JH: So I’m looking at some of the things are adversaries do and learning from that is important.

A couple years ago, in the early phases of the Ukraine crisis, Vladimir Putin threatened to deploy and perhaps employ a nuclear weapon in low-Earth orbit. Everybody says that’s nuts. Why would he do that? Well, let’s think about what they’ve been trying to do in counter space. They spent an enormous amount of Russian treasure and time building a direct ascent anti-satellite capability that would take out one satellite.

And then they deployed that basically to threaten us. And then in the early stages of the Ukrainian conflict, a commercial company proliferated across the heavens, is being used against them. And that direct ascent ASAT they spent enormous treasure to build – tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to take out a ten or $100,000 satellite that doesn’t do anything to damage it.

So what’s the only option he has to actually threaten that capability? A nuclear weapon in low-Earth orbit, which is the dumbest thing in the world to do. It impacts them. It impacts us, impacts the world – it’s horrible. He’s got no way else to threaten us. 

We need to pay attention to what they’re doing, what works and what doesn’t work, and fill the void in the criteria so we never are in the point where we would ever consider what we did in the 1960s, which was build a nuclear-tipped ASAT capability. We did that in the 60s. That’s horrible. But we need to be smart about what we do and learn from our adversaries.

33:00 – 33:21

NA: And, you know, it’s not 1 v 1. It’s not space versus space. We can counter our adversaries from other domains.

We can counter our adversaries by using the levers of national power, like diplomacy, information – yes – military might, but also economic power. So there are many, many ways to get after this problem.

33:22 – 33:42

JH: There’s no such thing as war on space. There’s only war and all tools of the government, so if somebody attacked us in space, I want the adversary to know we may not come back in like we come back in a different way that will be more damaging to you than what you just created to us, because the goal is to win the conflict. The goal is not to win the battle.

33:43 – 34:11

Thank you. 

Now, I want to leave time for another major recent development that will have significant budget implications. And that is the Trump administration’s executive order, titled “The Iron Dome for America.” 

This order directs an assessment for a missile defense system for the United States homeland, while also signalling that space will play a big role in this initiative.

So can each of you elaborate on the role of space and what Space Force programs might be involved in this Iron Dome?

34:12 – 36:27

JH: So the first thing to say is that I would recommend that anybody listening to this go back and look at the Strategic Posture Commission Report of 12 bipartisan people that met a couple of years ago and came up with recommendations for missile defense that even talked about coercive threats against Russia and China, that we needed to have a defensive capability for that.

And a lot of that has turned into what President Trump is calling an Iron Dome for America and I think that’s good. But the first thing you have to realize that if you’re going to have any kind of missile defense capability, you can’t shoot anything you can’t see.

So the first thing you have to do is be able to see the threat and characterize it. Right now, the threat is moving from just a ballistic threat that we can see pretty well to cruise missile and hypersonic threats that we can’t see very well. So the first priority to deal with those threats will have to be to build surveillance systems to deal with that.

Now some of those surveillance systems will be terrestrial, but most of those will be space-based, and they’ll have to be changed. And some of those, by their very nature, will have to be low to see the dim targets that are going to be cruise missiles and hypersonics. So coming up with an integrated architecture of ground and space to be able to see and characterize all the missile threats that threaten America is the first step to an Iron Dome.

The second piece is that we have to go after the rogue states, the North Koreas and Iran and make sure we can defend ourselves against that. And then the coercive threat from Russia and China, which is a low number of low-yield weapons, threatened to be used like in Ukraine to change the equation because we don’t have a like capability to respond to that.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a small number of defense capabilities in order to take out those capabilities, so we didn’t have to respond in kind with a nuclear weapon? 

Now, those capabilities can be broadly built, using ground -based, air-based, naval-based systems in order to deal with those kind of threats, but ultimately to get to an Iron Dome for America, you have to get to a capability that can attack many targets with one capability, because otherwise you get to the problem we were talking about earlier with the ASAT capability.

You’ll never be able to build enough interceptors, so ultimately, on the weapons side, to achieve the vision that President Trump has defined, you’re going to have to move into space.

36:28 – 37:12

NA: From what I’ve read, the Defense Department is taking this in phases. They know they can’t build the whole thing today with today’s technologies and today’s budget.

So we know that current systems will certainly participate in the Iron Dome. Our current missile warning systems, even though they can’t see all threats. Those will be part of this architecture. Our strategic communications systems in space will be part of this architecture. The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture that the Space Development Agency is building will be enhanced and part of this architecture as well.

So it remains to be seen exactly how it all will fit together in the end. But they do realize that they’re going to use what we have and build upon it.

37:13 – 37:37

JH: That’s why I recommend the Strategic Posture Commission and I have to admit, I was one of the authors.

So, you know, it’s somewhat self-serving. But what we laid out was the phased approach. What you do near-term, what you do in the mid-term, and then what you do in the far-term in terms of technologies to change the game and everybody on the commission agreed with those recommendations, which tells me that’s a pretty good starting point.

37:38 – 37:58 

Now, the executive order also states that funding for this Iron Dome for America should be included in the Fiscal 26 budget request. As we mentioned before, we currently don’t even have a budget for 2025. 

So what needs to happen to make this a reality to incorporate such a monumental effort such as this Iron Dome, into the Fiscal 26 budget?

37:59 – 38:42

JH: So the first thing that has to happen is the Missile Defense Agency needs to divest itself of all production and sustainment programs, period. Which means they don’t do any production sustainment, all they do is research and development. Then the services responsible for producing, sustaining THADD, Patriot, ground-based interceptors. All those capabilities that are out there and the Missile Defense Agency can just focus on: ‘What do we need in order to get to the long term future?’

And you lay in the capabilities of applied research and technology, basic research and technology all the way through in order to build that, you can actually do it in the 26 budget pretty easily, but not if 80 percent of your people are doing production sustainment, because if that’s your organization, your culture is production and sustainment, not innovative moves to the future.

38:43 – 39:20

NA: And to be sure, this will be very disruptive for the status quo that the Pentagon is used to and to some extent, the other services.

And if you bring it back to the role of Congress that we talked about as well. I read that Senate Republicans are proposing a $150 billion more for the defense budget for 26. 

Will that all go to the Iron Dome? Doubtful. And even if it did, there will still have to be tough choices and programs and projects that are killed among all services to afford to do what this very ambitious project is asking us to do.

39:21 – 40:11

JH: I assume it’s going to be the Missile Defense Agency. But however this team is formed, the Space Force needs to have active members on the team.

If you look at the UCP that’s out there right now, this integrated global surveillance mission is a Space Command mission, and therefore the Space Force is the primary service provider for that capability. So the Space Force needs to be heavily involved in that. 

And then as the threat gets played out in this group, the smart people in the Space Force should look at and say, you know, I’ll look at directed energy, I’ll look at kinetic energy, and I’ll look at all those things and they can do trades pretty quick because they have the capability to do that and say, this is what space could provide in those areas.

And then you could say, what is the technology readiness of it? So what would it take in order to improve technology readiness levels of those capabilities and lay those programs in to do that? If you have the right people in the room from the Space Force, they can lay all those pieces out and you can have an integrated approach.

40:12 – 40:20

Together, you also wrote an OpEd that was published recently by SpaceNews. What was the motivation behind writing that OpEd and why release it now?

40:21 – 41:20

JH: So, Scott, you can probably get my answer. It’s all about the threat. And we’re not responding to the threat, and the budget doesn’t reflect the threat that’s out there today. And we’re not making the right decisions as a nation for how are we going to deal with that threat? And because we’re not making the right decisions, we’re lagging in the capabilities as we need to deter this kind of threat. 

The last thing anybody in this country should want or anybody in this world should want, would be a war between the United States and China, or a war between the United States and Russia. 

Nothing good can come from that. But in order to deter you actually have to have real capabilities, and those capabilities have to be seen by the adversary, and they have to strike fear into the adversary, so they decide when it’s an opportunity to act or not. They make the decision, “Not today.” And that’s got to be every day going on to the future. 

And so the reason we we wrote the OpEd was to emphasize the point that resources are not being put in the right place, and we need to adjust where we’re putting the resources.

41:21 – 42:10

NA: They’re not. And actually, you know, failure to act is not an option. 

What China is doing in space: intercepting our satellites. That is a maneuver that brings us one satellite closer to another. It’s not stopping a mission or intercepting and turning something around like you would think in the air domain. An intercept is a very close pass. They’re doing this all the time to our satellites. They are practicing tactics and techniques.

They’re getting ready to do this to the United States. We can see not only their build up, we can see them practicing their TTPs. The threat is so very real and can be seen. Now the budget needs to be re-prioritized and re-worked to meet this reality.

42:11 – 42:28

Now, each of you represent Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy in various capacities. So how is Elara Nova and its team of partners and consultants, prepared to provide the experience and expertise necessary to build and maintain a strong and capable Space Force – a process that begins with the fiscal budget?

42:29 – 43:13

JH: I tell you what, we have some pretty spectacular Guardians right now that understand the pieces of the space capability.

But what we don’t have in large numbers are Guardians that understand the entire enterprise. What Elara Nova understands through the leadership and the folks that we’ve hired, is we understand the entire enterprise and how to bring enterprise capabilities together and integrate the “eaches” to build something that is much broader. We have consultants that do that. We have advisors that do that.

When you use Elara Nova, you get all of that capability. Right now, I believe, and I wouldn’t be involved with Elara Nova if I didn’t believe this, that we fill a critical void and the capability by providing that enterprise approach. I think that’s the unique thing that Elara Nova provides.

43:14 – 43:50

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security.

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.

Episode 23: SPAR Institute Begins Latest Effort to Develop Nuclear Propulsion for Space

Host: Scott King

SME: (DD): Donna Dickey, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy; aerospace engineer with decades of experience at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force Research Laboratory

(BT): Brad Tousley, PhD, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy; former director of the Tactical Technology Office at DARPA

(TC): Tom Cooley, PhD, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy; former chief scientist at Air Force Research Laboratory

00:02 – 01:26

Late last year, the United States Space Force allocated $35 million to the Space Power & Propulsion for Agility, Responsiveness & Resilience – or SPAR – Institute to develop nuclear-powered systems for spacecraft propulsion. 

The institute demonstrates the latest effort by the Space Force, in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory – or AFRL – to explore nuclear fission as an energy source in space. If successful, nuclear energy can enable the Space Force to “maneuver without regret,” among other capabilities. 

Traditionally, maneuvering in space has been generated through electric or chemical propulsion, both of which have their respective limitations. Nuclear fission, however, which splits an atom’s nucleus within a controlled reactor to generate energy, carries significant advantages compared to its electric or chemical propulsion counterparts.

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King. We have three guests today, for a roundtable-style discussion on the use of nuclear energy in space. 

Donna Dickey is a partner at Elara Nova the Space Consultancy, and an aerospace engineer with decades of experience working with agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – or DARPA – as well as the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Donna, welcome to the show.

01:27 – 01:28

DD: Thank you.

01:28 – 01:39

Also joining us is Doctor Brad Tousley, a fellow Elara Nova partner, and the former director for the Tactical Technology Office at DARPA. 

Dr. Tousley, thanks for taking the time to join us today.

01:39 – 01:40

BT: Thank you. Glad to be here.

01:41 – 01:50

And then we have Doctor Tom Cooley, an Elara Nova partner and the former chief scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Dr. Cooley, thank you for joining us.

01:51 – 01:52

TC: Absolutely, glad to be here.

01:53 – 02:04

As mentioned at the top, the United States Space Force directed $35 million to the SPAR Institute to develop nuclear-powered spacecraft propulsion.

But what is the SPAR Institute, and the purpose behind this funding?

02:05 – 04:27

TC: The Space Force with luminaries like Joel Mozer and others really recognizing and wanting to focus the basic research investment at universities, towards things that are going to be game-changing for the Space Force. 

And so amongst other things, this type of university consortium idea emerged.

And one of the topics that really stems from, General John Shaw’s catchphrase, “maneuver without regret,” meaning that we need to be able to operate and maneuver satellites without having to think about how much the lifetime of that satellite has now been spent, because we have just used fuel that would otherwise be used for station-keeping and whatnot.

That concept of maneuvering without having to think about the cost of this national asset [that] has just been diminished because you have maneuvered is one of the concepts that really has shaped much of the sort of long-term thinking and goals for the Space Force.

It’s very clear that maneuver is a critical capability for the Space Force. And that was not something that we had to think about in the past. And so when, Joel Mozer and others, looked at, ‘Well, what are some of these long-term big ideas and capabilities that are going to require major technology breakthroughs?’

The ‘maneuver without regret’ certainly informed that. And when they were talking about what could universities sink their teeth into and provide a viable option and viable capabilities for the future. I mean, we’re talking about the long-term, right? That we’re not thinking these are going to be operational capabilities in a year or two.

This is fundamental research that needs to be done. And so when they were standing up these university consortiums, this was one of the key ideas that emerged: nuclear power in space.

It’s long been identified, but we just haven’t been able to bring it into the portfolio. And so ‘How do we do that?’ It’s the kind of, really meaty question that we can put into academic worlds and have them sort through this. And so that’s, if you will, some of the origins.

And then with the award going to the University of Michigan to lead that effort, bringing together a lot of other really top universities that are able to contribute different components to this. That’s how it was formed.

04:28 – 05:25

BT: Scott, if I could jump in, one of the additional points I want to add to what Tom just said is that, SPAR is an example of, I’ll call it a university research initiative. The Department has used these techniques many times before to catalyze universities focusing on a particular challenge or a particular area the Department needs. 

And it does two things:

One is it focuses them on the problem. And so in this case, the Space Force can engage with the Institute to specify details of the problem in a way that can be very collaborative. 

The other piece of it equally as important, if not more so, is the human capital side of it. The graduate students and the students that come out of the Institute can help go into the Space Force or supporting the industry in general in this area for the long-term.

And that’s something that these university research initiatives tend to set up. When you have a five-year project, you’ll get a bunch of students all the way through a Master’s or Doctoral program focusing on different areas of the technology that is needed in this case for, in this case, space nuclear power and agility and that could be really beneficial as well.

05:26 – 05:39

And as it relates to “maneuvering without regret.” I have a two-part follow-up question:

1. What does “regret” look like in space?
2. Say we have this capability – what opportunities does that open up for the Space Force?

05:40 – 07:03

TC: So what space hasn’t really had is the in-space logistics. Clearly, there’s a lot of work that goes on with logistics on the ground. But in terms of in-space logistics and by logistics we mean refueling and just upgrades or maintenance repair, anything like that. We just haven’t done that because it’s really hard to do in space.

You have to get to the satellite. You have to be able to operate on that satellite. You have to refuel. Otherwise, I mean, there’s we need to think through that. And so what does regret look like? 

Well, it means that, ‘Gosh, you know, something broke. You used all your fuel. 

You now no longer have an otherwise perfectly good asset in space to do a critical national defense job.’ And so regret is losing that asset because of the inability to have that logistics chain that again, we sort of take for granted. 

So, that’s the main thing is that we really have to start thinking through, ‘How do we get that kind of space-specific logistics?’ And it all comes back to being able to get to and from your satellites, maneuver them.

Put them where you need them. If you lose an asset on one side of the GEO belt, and you’ve got a perfectly good one on the other side. ‘Well, how much fuel is it going to take and how long will that take?’ And that’s a trade. That’s a very direct trade.

07:04 – 08:05

BT: Scott, I also think that from a pure physics perspective, the latent energy in the nuclear reaction is simply far more per unit volume compared to chemical or standard electric and we know that on Earth. But the part of the problem on Earth is there’s a regulatory issue in terms of the safety. But if you think purely in terms of the physics and the energy density and what’s possible, you can get a whole lot more when you rely on nuclear power, but you have the regulatory, you have the policy, the concerns with debris and all that, and that’s inhibitive.

But if you can successfully get past that, it completely changes the architectures and systems in space that – we depend on for resilience. Well, one of the reasons for proliferation is we’re concerned about resilience. So we’re just going to send a whole lot more things up there because we’re concerned about the resilience.

Once you go back and you rethink of it in terms of nuclear power as a source in space, it completely changes all of those considerations. The ability of moving an asset around that we have, to be resilient against the threat, to be more survivable, to provide distributed ISR capability.

It all changes once you have nuclear [power] in space. All of it.

08:06 – 08:08

DD: And you wouldn’t have such big solar panels or any at all.

08:09 – 08:11

BT: Exactly, exactly. Absolutely.

08:12 – 08:31

I’d like to pause here and dive deeper into the two primary energy sources that we’ve traditionally used in space: electric propulsion and chemical propulsion. 

Let’s start with electric propulsion, which Donna, you just indicated is commonly generated through solar arrays.

Can you share more about the benefits or limitations of electric propulsion in space?

08:32 – 08:55

DD: Sure, to start with the limitations: electric propulsion has very low thrust, so maneuverability is limited. And it depends on energy from the solar arrays, which trickle power into the batteries. 

Low thrust is absolutely fine for many spacecraft, but for maneuvers like collision avoidance in congested space – you’d rather have much higher thrust and reaction times also.

08:56 – 09:47

BT: In terms of ISP, electric propulsion is just wonderful. The problem is that you can’t generate enough power with conventional means to power electric propulsion to get substantial impulse that you need to really change an orbit quickly. 

You can with nuclear power. But you can’t with electric. But electric is extremely efficient. So they tend to be used for station-keeping for long-duration missions, for things where I can afford to have a much lower impulse per unit time.

The power-added efficiency from a solar array. The advancement in the last 15 years has been very linear. It’s very incremental. There’s no factors of ten improvement in a solar panel. So if you think of a solar panel conductor, solar drive assembly and ride it through the bus to some propulsion system, it’s very linear.

There’s no factors of 10 or 100 improvement. There just isn’t. And so in order to get more power, you just got to get bigger, bigger, bigger arrays. So [if] you can shrink those arrays to almost nothing. It gets a whole lot better for a variety of reasons.

09:48 – 09:57

TC: And they don’t work in eclipse.

So, you’ve got to calculate that and oversize it with batteries and the like. That’s not something you need to do with a nuclear power [source].

09:58 – 09:59

And then what about chemical propulsion?

09:59 – 10:42

BT: Well, chemical is the standard like we’re thinking about today’s traditional chemical thrusters. And the capability there is the ISP is a little bit less. The impulse is a lot more, but there’s a limited amount of it. You are volume-constrained or weight-constrained. So there’s architectures being considered.

Well, I’ll just refuel on orbit. Well that comes back to logistics. Now I’ve got to launch it, right? Now, I go back to the launch weight from the surface of the Earth. I mean, one of the discussions of going to the moon is, from the water ice, can I extract hydrogen and oxygen to make chemical propulsion on the moon?

Because the gravity is a lot less and I can get things off the moon as opposed to launching it from Earth [I can] launch it from the moon. But once again, this is coming back to chemical, which can be consumed relatively rapidly compared to nuclear.

10:43 – 11:02 

DD: You really just want the heat that it creates. The heat that you can get from a reactor is much better than the heat you can get from a chemical reaction and combustion.

And that’s where you get twice the efficiency of a chemical rocket and yet you still get the thrust of a chemical rocket. So it’s kind of the best of both worlds.

11:03 – 11:22

Thank you. Now, the SPAR Institute is looking to develop a means for deploying nuclear energy in space – specifically through “nuclear fission.” 

But still, the term “nuclear energy” can be a pretty loaded one in today’s world – especially in national security circles.

So can we clarify what we mean by “nuclear energy” in the context of this conversation?

11:23 – 12:08

TC: Yeah, I think the main thing is to differentiate nuclear energy from a nuclear weapon. And a lot of times the public doesn’t necessarily understand that. And probably the main concern for this community is the policy.

And if we look at the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, it’s very clear to not put weapons of mass destruction and specifically nuclear weapons in space and so that’s not what we’re doing. We’re not putting a nuclear weapon. We’re using nuclear technology to simply generate electricity. So if you go back even in the 80s and some of the key most successful space programs that we’ve had, we had RTG, radio– help me out, Brad.

12:09 – 12:10

BT: Radioisotope thermal generation.

12:11 – 12:43

TC: It’s one of those terms that we, an acronym that we all know what it means, but you forget what it means. So those were the core of the Voyager, and anything that’s going to the outer planets and that is fundamentally nuclear technology, nuclear energy, for the source of energy. So that’s what we’re really talking about is using nuclear energy, but using it as a reactor. So that is a harder thing to do. It’s taking – I’ll put the stink bomb out there and say it’s taking the Three Mile Island reactor. Making it safe to launch [and] putting it in space.

12:44 – 13:49

BT: Another factor to think about, Scott, is nuclear weapons: the uranium or plutonium is assembled in a critical fashion.

It’s driven together to design and create an uncontrollable reaction. That’s for the maximum energy consumption. 

And in the case of a nuclear reactor, it is critical. But you got a moderator in place that is designed to control the reaction in a way that you can sustain it for a very long period of time.

And then, you leverage that in the case of hydrogen or whatever for chemical propulsion effects or combined effects, or you can use it just to generate electric power. 

I mean, I think that’s one of the reasons why some of the early studies about well, going to Mars specifically with chemical versus nuclear thermal.

It’s like you get 2x half the transport time with what’s available today. So that shortens everything up. I think the reactors can operate quite a long time. It’s going to be well past the lifetime of the spacecraft. So that’s one of the issues with nuclear power in space is the policy side of disposal.

What does disposal mean? Where do you send it? Where do you put it? Particularly, if the reactor is going to be long-lived compared to other spacecraft, or how do you shut it down? 

From a mission-assurance standpoint. I mean, all those things are part of the trade space.

13:50 – 13:56

Can you share a little bit more about what Three Mile Island was and how events like it influence the public’s perception of what nuclear energy means?

13:57 – 15:33

BT: Yeah, so I would put this way: Up until Three Mile Island, Japan, France and the United States, in the free world, were probably the three leading countries in examining and using nuclear power for peaceful electric power generation purposes. 

And the accident at Three Mile Island, which stories [have been] written about the series of errors, human and machine and otherwise, that unfolded. It basically caused a couple of reactors to go through a partial meltdown. 

And the impact of that on U.S. public policy. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Atomic Energy, it basically set us back in the development side of nuclear power for decades. Japan and France continued forward. We didn’t. It never changed the physics. But the bottom line was the accident caused a complete change in the public mindset of whether this technology is safe.

That’s the long story short. But, yeah, the Japanese have had their own problem, though. They had – it was actually a trip I took with DARPA in 2014, we went to see Fukushima, which was where they had the great undersea earthquake in the Fukushima prefecture.

And the Japanese had a similar problem with the tsunami hitting the plant. So they’ve had their own. The French have never had a major accident. The Russians of course had Chernobyl. But it doesn’t change the physics of it.

And I’m hoping this time around with a lot of the new capital, with the need for AI data centers, for the desire to go to space with longer range systems, I’m hoping that this time around, we’ll we’re going to get ourselves the next step beyond past limitations.

15:34 – 15:41

So where do we go from here?

And how do we evaluate the trade-offs between those advantages, against some of the challenges that still need to be overcome?

15:42 – 17:55

TC: Principally again, if you could have a maneuver without regret. So essentially implementing an electric generator or nuclear electric generator that you could then utilize a high efficiency, high ISP, electric propulsion. And now, if you have 100kW, kinds of scale of power available, then you can start to get some pretty decent thrust out of that.

When we talk about electric propulsion, we kind of mentioned it earlier, we’re talking about very, very low thrust. We’re talking about very low force because it’s that ion thruster that’s using a very small amount of that ion. You know, I mean something like xenon, and then accelerating that to very, very high speeds using the electrical energy and then being able to change the Delta V of your spacecraft. We usually think about it in terms of micronewtons or even millenewtons, right?

On that scale of force from one of these electric ion thrusters. If you go from, again, having hundreds to 1000W to now 100,000 or a megawatt, you can again reasonably put that into an ion thruster and now you’re getting into a Newton, type of force. Now that doesn’t hurt your head so much to think about.

Well, what will it take to actually change your orbit, change your altitude or change your inclination? All of this takes a lot of thrust, a lot of Delta V. So, that’s really the principal reason why the Space Force has become interested in it. 

However, there are a lot of other things that you could do with this kind of energy and if we sort of shift over to our NASA brethren, if you want to spend any time on the moon, you’re going to spend 14 days in daylight and 14 days in night, unless of course, you’re standing right on the pole. 

But that’s a very, very harsh, harsh environment. And you’re going to want something that’s going to heat it. You’re going to need energy. And so it’s a very logical thing to be looking at nuclear energy for human habitation on the moon, even in Mars, you need to have some sort of source of energy that is not dependent upon the sun, which requires then a bunch of batteries. So this is the basic, sort of things that are driving initially, the push for nuclear energy.

17:56 – 18:18

DD: And then you get the bigger engines.

Even in the ‘60s, the earliest reactors they had were 300MW. So you can imagine they can get 1500 seconds of thrust and at 55,000 pounds. So, that enables going to the moon much quicker, going to Mars much quicker. And not having people spend 18 months in a can.

18:19 – 19:18

TC: So there’s one thing that we haven’t yet talked about, but it’s that you’re generating all this heat.

You use the heat to turn it into electricity somehow have to get rid of that excess heat. That is one of the major drawbacks from going this route. The good news is organizations like DARPA, and others have been looking at materials that, again, can maintain much higher temperatures and be effective radiators for a higher temperature nuclear reactor. 

So that’s one of the reasons I think that’s forcing this discussion, is that we can start to see a path towards developing those technologies that will make your thermal management system not the same size as your solar cell of equal generation and that’s almost your beginning point for most of these satellites is how big do I have to build my thermal radiator, in order to have…and you know what, Donna, what you just said is a 300 megawatt. Like, wow. How big would that heat thermal radiator be? That’s big.

19:19 – 19:21

DD: The amazing thing is that the engine was not that big.

19:22 – 21:35

BT: That just goes to show the power that these nuclear systems for electric purposes can generate is enormous. The phrase that was given to me was “Yeah, Brad. What good does it do to remove whatever 2000m² of solar array on a satellite if I’ve got to turn around to replace it with 2000m² of radiators? You’re still launching a lot of mass with the radiators, as well.“

So I’m hoping that the SPAR Institute, one of the things they can work on, is new techniques for thermal management and heat rejection. How do you do that? It’s going to be a big problem. It just is.

So, they talked about the capabilities. When I think about the risks there’s really three things that pop to mind.

One is risk on-launch. And there’s just the whole nature of: do you launch the system integrated? Do you launch it distributed? You can imagine taking reactor components and launching on three different spacecraft, three different launches. There’s different ways of doing it, but there’s a risk on-launch. And there’ll be regulatory, there’ll be policy, there’ll be mission assurance of that. So that’s one thing that has to be addressed and will be addressed and it’s just a challenge we’re going to have to work through. 

The second is mission assurance during operation, just because I launch and get it into orbit, I’ve got to have the mission assurance, like any other system, to make sure that it’s going to operate in a nominal way during its entire mission lifetime. So that’s the second parameter. So if people thought that mission assurance was already stringent, it’s going to go to a whole new level when it comes to nuclear power systems in space. 

And then the third is disposal. At end of life, there’s a whole set of risks and trades about how you do that. And even in fact, if you look at the Committee on Peaceful Use of Outer Space back in ‘92, were thinking through some of the principles of nuclear power sources in space.

And they talk about what’s okay. It’s okay to do a nuclear reactor – RTGs – for interplanetary. That’s not a problem. It’s okay to put them in high orbits. And it’s okay to put it in low-Earth orbit. But you gotta be able to store it in high orbits afterwards. This is all because – in the example of interplanetary, it’s not coming back.

So disposal is billions of miles away from me. Well, what does that mean in LEO, HEO, MEO or GEO? So there’s a whole set of things that deal with disposal and how that is effectively done. So that’s the way I think of the risks: launch, mission assurance in operation and disposal.

And all three of those must be addressed.

21:36 – 21:41

DD: I would also add collision avoidance. Goes with the requirements on the spacecraft to be maneuverable.

21:42 – 22:15

This is not the first time that the United States has looked toward developing nuclear energy for space. 

And primarily, there are two ways nuclear energy is being developed, the first being “nuclear thermal propulsion,” or NTP – which uses a propellant to split an atom within a nuclear reactor to generate heat, which then can create the thrust to maneuver a spacecraft.

One program that looked at this approach was the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application – or NERVA – which ran from the mid-1950s to the 1970s.

What’s the story behind NERVA?

22:16 – 22:53

DD: So there was a precursor called the Rover program, kind of Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission. And then NASA came in and took over in 1959 from the Air Force. And it’s an upper stage engine, using nuclear thermal propulsion and with hydrogen as the propellant.

They developed several reactors. The amount of power they could produce increased, and then they integrated it into an engine and started testing in 1964, and then went all the way through to the end of the program. And they [held] multiple tests, multiple reactors in terms of like 20 reactors. And, they never did launch it. Unfortunately.

22:54 – 23:13

BT: My understanding from going back through the history was Congress started to defund it in 1967 because of the cost of the Vietnam War.

They were balancing that versus a whole bunch of other national security things. And then I guess Nixon actually canceled the entire program in ‘73. But like Donna said, they did a lot of work and made tremendous progress. But – no launch.

23:14 – 23:20

And can you elaborate on some of NERVA’s progress? How would you describe the program’s legacy, today?

23:21 – 23:47

DD: I think it gave you a bunch of engineers and the experience to know how to deal with it and what policy problems – I’m sure they looked at launch and what it was, and it gave people an idea of how you would run a program for the future – which I think leads to things like DRACO and other programs that are going because without having that as the precursor and knowing you could even fire it, which they did on the ground.

Let us know that it’s possible.

23:48 – 24:05

BT: I’m biased, but technically this goes to the Three Mile Island thing, Donna. I wonder if the TRISO approach –  where you launch the pieces and either humans or autonomous systems assemble it on-orbit.

Maybe more tractable from a mission assurance standpoint and a safety on-launch that may help get past some of this. I don’t know.

24:06 – 24:17

DD: And autonomous, additive manufacturing, everything has come so much farther that perhaps you can put the risky part on a smaller, very reliable launch vehicle, and you can take more risk with the other parts.

24:18 – 24:38

Now, we just mentioned DRACO, which actually leads into my next question. DRACO, or the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, is an ongoing program overseen by DARPA. 

Dr. Tousley, based on your previous experience with the agency – can you explain what the DRACO program’s goals and objectives are?

24:39 – 26:37

BT: So DARPA started the program. It’s important to remember that DRACO was done, started, and is being executed in collaboration with NASA. There are two programs going on these days that are in direct collaboration with NASA for a variety of reasons: technical, policy, Outer Space Treaty. One is DRACO and the other is LunA-10. 

They’re both being done because whether it’s nuclear reactors in orbit or whether it’s infrastructure on the moon, both of them have to be in strict compliance with the Outer Space Treaty and public and policy perception. 

In the case of DRACO, it’s focused on nuclear thermal propulsion. It’s focused on the demonstration of the capability in orbit. I will say that the program is in the process of being re-baselined.

I will say that the program has a lot of technical challenges. We mentioned thermal management. That is arguably the biggest challenge that program is dealing with, is effectively managing the thermal dissipation and how that’s structured in a spacecraft, so that’s one piece technically and we’ll see where it goes. 

I do want to point out if we’re going to refer back to NERVA, when I looked at a line in the numbers: in 1970 dollars, they spent $1.3 billion on NERVA over the life of it. So if you consider 1970 to today’s dollars, [that will] give you an idea of the magnitude of what they spent at that time.

We haven’t come close to that with DRACO and JETSON and all the rest of them. We haven’t even come close. So it’s a huge amount at that time, maybe that’s 8 to 10 times the amount compared to today in terms of real dollars. 

But the one thing that gives me promise is, separate from DRACO and JETSON. The fact that a lot of private and venture capital is flowing into this because they assess the potential of the value of nuclear power on the ground and in space. The fact it’s coming into it. Maybe this time it’s going to help the government together to get over the hump of the funding and the challenges.

It’s not easy. It’s just not easy. So we’re going to have to get the staying power. But DRACO right now, they’ve re-baselined. I know they’ve got technical challenges, and I know they have program challenges that DARPA and NASA together are working through.

26:38 – 26:43

Can you elaborate on that disparity in funding available? 

Is it just the risk-averse nature of the “nuclear topic?”

26:44 – 28:11

BT: So, think of three things: there’s how much money do I spend on a project versus where can I spend it elsewhere? There’s the regulatory and policy. And then there’s the conservative mindset.

I don’t mean public, but I mean just reticence to try something new and risky. I think all three of those things combined make nuclear projects more difficult to work through. It’s not just in space, it’s on the ground as well, because you will always find people that say, “Yeah, you can do that, but I can do it this way. It may need more coal, it may be more natural gas. It may need something else. But I could do that today, because it’s safer.” 

‘Yeah, nuclear is much better. But look what’s happened in the past. Look at Three Mile Island, look at Fukushima, look at Chernobyl. What if that happens?’ So I think that just makes…and I’ll be blunt because I met the former director of the national Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a part of the Defense Science Board.

It just makes the NRC really, really, really conservative. The effective risk posture is no mistakes. None. The French have dealt with this for years, and they don’t seem to have the same mindset of zero tolerance for any mistake. They have a risk management profile that allows them to deal with it. 

Three Mile Island; nobody died from it. Nobody. I went to Fukushima and saw how the Japanese, they are going to spend thousands of years cleaning the land up the way it originally was. The Russians with Chernobyl, they just dug a hole and buried everything, right?

So we don’t have to be like that, but our mindset surely got to be a little more tolerant of risk calculus to allow us to make progress. The physics don’t lie. It’s always going to be wonderfully efficient.

28:12 – 28:45

Now, I’d like to shift to the other process for leveraging nuclear energy – and that is nuclear electric propulsion – or NEP.

This process uses nuclear fission to positively charge gas propellants, which in turn generate electricity to power an engine.

One such effort looking at this is JETSON – or the Joint Emerging Technology Supplying on-Orbit Nuclear Power – program.

Dr. Cooley, I understand you have a direct connection with JETSON from your time as chief scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory. 

So can you share what the JETSON program aims to accomplish?

28:46 – 31:13

TC: Yeah, sure. So let me tell you what I know about the JETSON program. And we really have to go back to the Department of Energy in Los Alamos who had a small program that was, I’m gonna call it a “hallway experiment,” because it was not well-funded, but it was to develop a small reactor, and run that for a period of time.

And that was, if I recall correctly, it was called KRUSTY and so out of that program, some of the engineers up at Los Alamos National Laboratories formed a small company called Space Nukes. And so Space Nukes had, again, this heritage of working on a very low power and I don’t recall – several just kilowatts of power.

So in the grand scheme of nuclear reactors, again, we’re very much on the low end of this. But it started the idea of, “Well, can we take this relatively small device and use that for all the benefits that we’ve talked about in terms of space energy?” 

And so the JETSON program really emerged from that idea and, with Space Nukes and a number of other larger primes who are involved in that, including Lockheed Martin.

But essentially, if we want to understand what exactly was announced or what the program is, it is funding Intuitive Machines based in Houston. You have again, I’ve mentioned Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse. All of these companies are looking at, I’m gonna defer to Brad in terms of some of the risks associated with it, but to take a small reactor like what was done, in the hallway of Los Alamos.

And I believe they did that actually out at the Nevada Test Site that they’ve created this small reactor and can you get it into space? And so the purpose of that is, again, to go back to electric thrusters, so, powering an ion thruster using this electric energy. But the hard part of this really is the reactor getting that into space safely, so that you can use it for, again, myriad purposes. Specifically, though, for the Space Force funding, as a thruster.

So this is just a really important distinction. The DRACO program is a nuclear thermal propulsion, NTP, and the JETSON program is NEP, nuclear electric propulsion.

31:14 – 31:30

Now, I also want to call out a separate government looking to develop a mobile nuclear reactor that can be used for primarily land-based purposes: and that’s Project Pele by the Strategic Capabilities Office. 

Dr. Tousley, what relevance does Project Pele have to this conversation?

31:31 – 33:16

BT: Yeah, Scott. So Project Pele, is an attempt to develop a prototype reactor and put it on a military base to demonstrate the efficacy of essentially remote power sources for basing that are in distant places, right? And the Strategic Capabilities Office has been looking at this. The reason I think it’s important to note this for consideration is that in this case, investment and research development for terrestrial power sources can affect longer range advancement for small modular reactors that could be used in space.

And so I think that’s something to note that the nuclear power industry is watching as the Department advances, in this case a small modular reactor that could be used on a military base. Military bases have different regulatory authorities of what they can deploy on their own. In the particular case of Project Pele, the construct is there’s a base up in Alaska, Eilson Air Force Base.

It’s very remote. It’s difficult to get fossil fuel sources in there in the winter to resupply. So they’re greatly constrained about when the logistics that can show up and support that base exist. The theory is if we get a small modular reactor up there to power the infrastructure, to power some of the systems that are up there – that would be a lot wiser to do that.

So that’s why SCO helped to pay for this project going forward. Some of the same performers that Tom pointed out on JETSON are in the trade space of consideration for these small reactors. But the reason I bring it up is it’s in the Department. It’s under different authorities and policies. They’re doing it for terrestrial mobile power purposes, but if they make progress and they develop it – I think it’s going to continue to help the business case for continued investment to get through the challenges in space, as well.

33:17- 33:29

So, now that we’ve reflected on some of the historical and ongoing programs developing nuclear energy. What happens if we’re ultimately successful in finding a way to safely and efficiently deploy nuclear energy in space?

33:30 – 33:38

DD: Obviously going to the moon, going to Mars and making a more efficient use of space in our own cis-Earth space.

33:39 – 34:03

BT: Yeah, I completely agree, it means you can move around without regret. It means, “Hey, maybe I can put systems on the moon that I can’t today. I can operate through the night. Maybe I can start thinking about true manufacturing, logistics, and resupply in space in a way I can’t do today.” I could see a future where you dedicate all kinds of reusable launch to get nuclear capabilities up in orbit.

You assemble it up there, and then everything in space is powered with nuclear. I could imagine that 100 years from now.

34:04 – 34:07

DD: And that opens us up to the resources of what the solar system.

34:08 – 34:11

BT: Absolutely. [It] changes everything – changes mankind’s assumption on everything.

34:12 – 35:28

TC: It really does. One of the other things, too, that I get excited about and I think is really emerging is all the debris in space.

When you think about how many rocket bodies we’ve launched historically, all this material is up there that is essentially a danger to operating in space. You have to keep track of it. Not so much the big pieces as the little pieces, because there are so many more of them. But the idea of being able to reuse all this material that’s there, you have to re-manufacture that. You cannot do that without a tremendous amount of energy, both to actually go grab the thing and maneuver it where you need it, but then also to actually turn it into something useful, right?

This also goes for, again, using in space natural resources. If you want to go catch an asteroid. We need to be thinking about those types of opportunities. You can’t do that unless you have a lot of energy and you have some infrastructure. 

And to Brad’s point, that’s exactly the kinds of things that nuclear energy will start to flip the thinking to where we can utilize all these dead rocket bodies that we’ve put up there, other satellites, other things of that sort. Solve two problems at once: Building the future infrastructure, at the same time, cleaning up the old one.

35:29 – 36:35

BT: What I learned one time was, thinking through sailing ships, steamships, to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. When the United States went to a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, it was because the distances and the deployments we had, put such a burden, infrastructure-wise, on conventional fossil fuel-based sources to get our ships around the world that with Rickover and others, we got over the hurdle – the whole regulatory side of it.

The nuclear Navy’s incredibly safe and now the entire U.S. Navy really depends on nuclear power for a global power projection. Well, if you think about the heavens, my gosh, there’s no more of a natural analogy of using nuclear power in space than how we changed the U.S. Navy’s operations globally with nuclear power. It makes perfect sense. I mean, like Tom said, for lack of a better term, imagine if you had a nuclear-powered recycle truck or trash truck in space.

It might make sense to use that to clean up all of LEO of all the dead satellites. It doesn’t make sense with conventional propulsion to do that, but with nuclear, it might make perfect sense. And then you clean everything up once at the end of life, you don’t have to de-orbit it at all. You move it some ways distant into outerspace.

You know, It just changes everything.

36:36 – 36:46

On this idea of “recycling” or even extracting natural resources in space – what value does a spent rocket body or an asteroid have in a “recycled” or second life, so to speak?

36:47 – 37:47

TC: You kind of have to think of it as a raw material resource. You’re not going to use it as is, but you’re going to need to break it down. Now, that depends on what you’re starting with, but let’s just assume we have to go back down to its raw material basis. The only way you’re going to do that is with a lot of energy and then again, have the infrastructure.

This is not going to happen in the next 5 to 10 years. This is a long-term goal. But if we in the United States want to be leading that change, leading that new emerging industry and capability, we need to be investing in it now and being willing to take the risk.

Going back to what Brad sort of laid the groundwork: we have to be not so timid, and so scared of the specter of a Three Mile Island, which thanks for pointing out – no one died from that. We need to be thinking more broadly about how do we advance these technologies and enable companies to emerge and support them with policies, support them with the technology that it’s going to take to ultimately bring about that future.

37:48 – 38:08

And then how about In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing (or ISAM)? 

Dr. Tousley, you suggested earlier that one solution to getting nuclear-powered systems into space might be launching materials separately before assembling the system together in space.

So what opportunity can ISAM serve in this nuclear energy in space question?

38:09 – 39:10

BT: My thought about the in-space assembly and manufacturing of nuclear reactors is very specific. The biggest concern with launching a reactor is the material itself. It’s not the reactor structure. So you could imagine, for example, if you launch the reactor structure with one rocket and then the material, whether it’s TRISO pellets or otherwise, you launch them in distributed launches elsewhere where they’re actually spatially separated on the launch vehicle, the risk of an accident, or the risk of re-entry of any of those is minuscule at that point.

The problem is when you put it all together in an existing infrastructure and then you attempt to launch it, there is some concern in the mission assurance community that something bad could happen on re-entry. But one of my points was if you separate them, you separate the material from the actual structure of the reactor itself. You can separate things in a way that the risk goes almost to zero.

That’s just an example of how creatively we can make sure that we’re adhering to the Outer Space Treaty, and we’re adhering to safe, effective mission assurance practices.

39:11 – 39:34

Now, I’d like to bring it back to the SPAR Institute – a multifaceted effort across eight universities and 14 industry partners, that are all tackling different aspects of the nuclear energy development problem.

So how does the SPAR Institute reflect the collaborative approach – between government, industry, and academia – that is necessary to address these complex problems in national security space?

39:35 – 40:16

BT: I mean, if I remember correctly, I think University of Michigan is the lead. They’ve been involved in quite a few really demanding R&D projects in the past.

I know they’ve got a strong group on propulsion, electric propulsion. It looks like it’s a five-year effort, $35 million. That’s why it’s smaller in comparison to other programs and efforts. But one of the reasons I made the comment about human capital is – that I would argue that the biggest benefit we’re going to get from that is going to be funding these graduate students to work in an area that is critical to us.

So, in other words, they may only work on this effort for 2 or 3 years, but then they could end up working in the industry, supporting the U.S. government in this for the next 30. That’s the value. It’s the collaboration. It’s getting these people engaged.

40:17 – 40:44 

DD: You know, one thing we’re not addressing is what other countries are doing.

Competition is really the key. Having things like the SPAR Institute just creates new businesses, new technologies, and it just keeps the American engine going.

If other countries are doing that, their engines are going too, and we want to do some things that lift all boats. But I think we should really focus a lot on doing it for ourselves and knowing that it will lift other countries, too.

40:45 – 41:15

BT: At least with DARPA, I think DRACO and LunA-10 are examples of the U.S. government and NASA working together in a way that reinforces the value of the Outer Space Treaty and yet enhances our technological advancement in a productive way.

It’s not clear that other countries truly merge their civil and their government space programs together in a way that supports the Outer Space Treaty as opposed to ruptures it. But I know that we spent a lot of time as a nation focusing on doing things collaboratively, in that way.

41:16 – 41:25

And what about commercial and industry partners? What opportunities exist for them to be part of this effort in finding a solution, through programs like the SPAR Institute – or otherwise?

41:26 – 42:31

BT: There are a number of companies that are getting into 21st century small reactor concepts. Believe it or not, I don’t think it starts with space. Most of the money is flowing in. It’s coming from private capital. It’s coming from a lot of the big technology companies specifically for one reason, and that is that it’s pretty clear that the nationwide demands on data center needs for processing, computation and memory are driving huge growth in data centers.

And because of that, it’s pretty clear that that growth is going to drive stresses on the United States power grid. And I think a lot of these data companies know it and many of them are investing their own money in new starts that are focused on advanced nuclear reactors and power systems. They realize it’s going to be 10-15 years to get through all the regulation side of it, but they believe that there’s a pony there, and so many of them are investing in that.

I think the U.S. government’s going to benefit from that in terms of people, technology advancements. They’ll be questioning business practices, the policies, all that. The U.S. government is going to benefit from that. I’m bullish on that.

42:32 – 42:45

I want to go a step further on this role of private capital. We discussed earlier some of the funding shortfalls that resulted from events like Three Mile Island.  

But can you share more on the value private capital can provide in overcoming those funding shortfalls?

42:46 – 44:11

BT: So, I’ll put it this way in the past Three Mile Island the infrastructure necessary for nuclear power is enormously capital-intensive.

And it was a question of well, are we going to go down the nuclear path with all the challenges? Are we going to default back to traditional fossil fuel-based approaches. After Three Mile Island, the assumption was we’re going to go back. Don’t want to deal with this again. We have all this electricity that we could gain from hydroelectric.

I’m not even going to include solar because it’s contribution is so minuscule. But solar, oil, natural gas, coal those things can generate most of the baseload production we need. What’s happened in the last ten years is the rate of growth of demands on the power grid from the data centers has grown so fast, and the criticality that the United States and the economy is so important that the U.S. government didn’t need to convince a bunch of companies this is going to be important.

A bunch of these companies all by themselves, realize the cost per kilowatt hour is going to go up. It’s going to put more of a demand. This is a supply and demand challenge. They realize the demand is growing and so they’ve identified a portion of their capital is dedicated to venture capital investment in these new companies. Compared to – I’ll just put it bluntly – compared to DRACO, JETSON and Pele, it’s going to dwarf that and I think the U.S. government will benefit from that.

The thing, I will say, they won’t invest in the we that we have to think about in the Department and from an Elara Nova standpoint. The challenge the JETSON and DRACO both have is this thermal management issue. They’re not going to address that. Nobody else is going to focus on thermal management in space.

They’re not.

44:12 – 45:32

TC: I’ll just chime in and say that I agree with Brad’s assessment that the terrestrial demand for nuclear energy is going to drive the train. And, I’m really excited, though, to know that there are a number of space-focused companies that are thinking hard about how to bridge that gap, and think through all the safety and assembling something in space.

If it’s up to me, I would suggest that we should have a program that’s not DRACO. That’s not JETSON. That’s going to think through and enable other companies to enter this and learn the lessons about how do we do this safely? How will we assemble something in space? Can we focus the ISAM community, for example, on this very problem?

Those are the types of things that I think very much fit into the role of government. And that I’d like to see the government, take the leadership role and then give something like, a vision for investment communities, for companies to rally around and know that there’s going to be a longer-term funding stream as well as an end user at the end of the day.

Those are some really important components to be able to actually take all of the great seed corn that we have going into a program like SPAR and put it into a brand new industry.

45:32 – 45:40

And to really drive home the opportunity of using nuclear energy in space – what would this capability mean for the Space Force and its Allies?

45:41 – 45:59

DD: So they can maneuver without regret.

Spacecraft are going between 7 and 17,000 miles an hour. So it’s not easy to change your orbit. And it takes either a lot of fuel or a lot of time. Maneuvering without regret means having satellites and systems that can eliminate regret with new capabilities.

46:00 – 46:13

BT: It’ll allow us to maneuver without regret and in particular with our partners and allies. We can collaborate with them on the capability, enable them to do it as well. And I think it’ll change the entire free-loving world’s ability to protect our space assets and be resilient.

46:14 – 46:29

TC: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. We want to be able to drive the train in terms of policy, how it’s used. Again, utilizing the resources that today is space debris. Those are the types of things we want to be on the front-end instead of watching others do that.

46:30 – 46:49

Each of you are partners at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. How does the complex nuclear energy discussion we had today – from its opportunities and risks, to the technical, policy and funding challenges that still need to be overcome – represent how Elara Nova is well-suited to be a key partner in these challenges?

46:50 – 47:39

BT: I think there’s 3 or 4 things, critically, we could do. Number one, we can support companies that are trying to grow into this area. From the standpoint of those that are outside of the U.S. government, they want to get in – that’s one thing. 

I think we can help bridge the gap on discussing and talking to folks about some of the policy challenges, because at Elara Nova we do have a lot of folks that are former military, former Space Force that understand that. 

I think we could help ring out some of the wheat from the chaff on the technical stories. So if there’s companies that have technical capability, but they want to get an assessment from folks that understand technically the challenges and understand how the Space Force operates, we can help them refine their messages in a way that’s really productive for them.

And then the last thing I think is just from a transition standpoint as they achieve success. We can help them understand what are the challenges to the transition, the great work that they’ve done into operations and into production for the Space Force.

47:40 – 48:17

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security.

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.

Episode 24: The Rise of Commercial Space in Christian Davenport’s “The Space Barons” 

Intro/Outro: Scott King (SK) 

Host: Mike Dickey, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy; former Chief Architect of the United States Space Force (MD) 

SME: Christian Davenport, reporter at Washington Post; author of “The Space Barons” (CD) 

00:02 – 01:23 

(SK) Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King, and we have a new, special edition series to present to you today: “The Elara Epilogues,” where the space industry’s leading journalists and authors will join Elara Nova partners to discuss their published work covering today’s ever-evolving space environment. 

Founding Partner Mike Dickey, former chief architect of the United States Space Force, will be your host today. And joining Mike as our inaugural guest is Christian Davenport, space industry and NASA reporter for The Washington Post. 

Together, they’ll be discussing Christian’s 2018 book: “The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos.” The Space Barons catalogues the rise of today’s commercial space industry, through the lens of the billionaires who founded – and funded – their own space companies at its outset. 

But the conversation won’t stop there, as Christian shares with us a few teasers from his forthcoming book: “Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race.” The new book, “Rocket Dreams,” is set to be released in the fall of 2025 and picks back up where “The Space Barons” concluded seven years ago.  

With that, thank you for joining us and onto the show… 

01:24 – 02:09 

(MD) Christian, first. Thank you so much for coming on Elara Edge Expert Insights on Space Security. Our audience is primarily those who have a keen interest in the security and economic aspects of space, and certainly the role that the new space industry plays, [it] continues to be an important and a fascinating topic for a number of reasons that I hope we’re going to discuss today. I’m sure we will.  

And you wrote the book on this: Space Barons, and it captures those very early days of this new order. And we appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about the early days. Also I understand, spoiler alert that you might have a new book coming up, and I hope we can also use this time to talk about that and to bring Space Barons into current context seven years on, as we await the new release.  

02:10 – 02:33 

(CD) Yeah, Mike, thanks so much for having me. It’s a real pleasure. I’ve been following, you know, what you guys have been up to over there, and it’s just such a fascinating time, which has, you know, kind of what led me to write the books. But, you know, as I say, I’ve got one of the best beats in all of journalism. 

I just wish the news would slow down a little bit because there’s so much going on. But yeah, no, it’s a real pleasure to be here and I’m looking forward to the conversation. 

02:33 – 02:44 

(MD) Fantastic. Well, let’s rewind the tape and go back to the very beginning and what prompted you to write the book Space Barons and put it down in book form? 

You’re a newspaper journalist by trade?  

02:45 – 04:40 

(CD) Yeah, so I’ve been doing a lot of things at The Washington Post. I was a metro reporter. I covered local politics. I went into editing and was covering the military for a long time, [I] was embedded in Iraq and in Kuwait and was then assigned to a beat on the business desk to cover the military-industrial complex as it were. 

And in the 2014 timeframe, along came a guy named Elon Musk, who held a press conference at the National Press Club here in Washington, D.C., to announce he was going to file a lawsuit against the Pentagon, specifically against the Air Force, for the right to be able to compete for national security launch contracts. 

And I remember going to that press conference and thinking, ‘Who the heck is this guy? What is SpaceX? And why would you be dumb enough to file a lawsuit against the government agency that you want to get contracts from?’ And anyway, he started the press conference by talking about bringing back the Falcon-9 booster and trying to catch it. 

And in those days, they were trying to build the reusable vehicle. But by bringing it back to hover it over water at a specific spot in the ocean, and I’ll confess, Mike, I had no idea what he was talking about. But I thought it was really, really interesting and I ended up writing the story about the lawsuit, but ended up doing some research into SpaceX, into reusable rockets, and saw then, of course, that Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin was trying to do that. 

And you know, one of the key mantras in journalism is ‘Follow the money,’ right? That goes back to Watergate. And I said, ‘Well, if some of the richest people in the world are investing their money in space exploration and advancing the state of the art and the technology, maybe we should be paying more attention to that.’ 

And so that’s when I sort of decided I need to start covering this, so that’s how it came about. 

04:41 – 04:54 

(MD) Yeah, fascinating. How did you go about writing? I mean, those are pretty unique individuals. We’re going to talk about some of the other individuals in the book.  

Did they all give you access? Or, you know, how did you go about your research and your interviews and did everybody want to talk to you? 

04:55 – 07:15 

(CD) Yeah. For the first book, “The Space Barons,” I did interview Elon and Jeff and Richard Branson and Paul Allen at the time. I think it was one of Paul Allen’s last interviews before he died. But I did, and it wasn’t easy with Jeff, in particular. 

You know, I work at The Washington Post. He owns The Washington Post. I think a lot of people thought that, ‘Oh, he would get access because of that – with his ownership.’ In fact, we treat him the way we treat everybody else and he’s a very difficult person. 

He doesn’t do a lot of interviews. Blue Origin is very secretive, particularly then. So it took months upon months to get Jeff to sit down with me. In fact, and I tell this story in the book, what I ended up doing was I did a lot of research into Jeff and his fascination with space. I mean, he says now, ‘Space is the most important work I’m doing.’ 

And he’s focusing all of his efforts on Blue Origin, his space company. But at the time, he was still the CEO of Amazon. And people didn’t even really know anything about Blue Origin. But I knew that space was one of his key passions, from his very early childhood days and the time that he spent with his grandfather. 

And his grandfather – as it turns out, was working for the Atomic Energy Commission in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and was one of the first employees ever over at ARPA, the predecessor to DARPA and he helped stand up that agency.  

And I do believe that Jeff’s passion for space and his desire to have his companies AWS and Blue Origin serve in the national interest and to work alongside the government and the Pentagon comes from his grandfather.  

Anyway, in my research about Jeff and his grandfather I had come across a press release, from I believe it was 1961 or 1962 when his grandfather left ARPA to go back to the Atomic Energy Commission and the press release even had a picture of Jeff’s grandfather on it. And anyway, he was in Washington, D.C., at some convention, and I kind of buttonholed him. 

And I showed him the press release, which he had never seen. And I said, you know, ‘I’m doing this research. I’m working on this book. I’ve been trying to interview you. Here’s the level of research I’m doing. I’m just trying to impress you.’ And then he finally relented to do it. So that’s the story of how I got that interview, but it took months to get it.

07:16 – 07:42 

(MD) Each of those early space entrepreneurs or early space barons had their own dreams and wishes and vision for what they wanted to do. Elon and a multi-planetary species. Bezos and saving the planet. Robert Bigelow wanted space hotels. Richard Branson wanted suborbital tourism. Andy Beal wanted a commercial heavy lift rocket. All of those things ended in very different ways.  

So what is it about either the timing or those individuals, you think, that led to those different outcomes?

  07:43 – 09:58 

(CD) Yeah, and it’s interesting. And they do come at it with very different approaches and very different mindsets. But there is a common thread through all of them. And that is to lower the cost of the access to space. I think there was a concern among all of them that the technology in space had not kept up with the advancements in technology that we had seen in computing power, you know, with the internet. 

And we saw so many different aspects of our society make these giant leaps forward that they were witness to and not only witness to, but that each of these quote unquote, “Space Barons” is to a certain degree, helped progress, and that we’re part of that. Whether it’s with Amazon or Tesla or what have you. They’re part of this technology movement and wanting it to move forward. 

But space is so difficult that it requires an enormous amount of capital upfront, which is one part of it. Elon famously funded SpaceX the first four launches with $100 million of his own money. Jeff was self-funding Blue Origin, actually, even to a large extent up until now. And so you needed that immense capital to come in because the barrier to entry is just so high when it comes to space. 

As Jeff says, ‘I could start an internet company because the phone companies had put down the cables that became the internet. There was an invention called the Postal Service that allowed me to deliver books to people’s homes. There was this invention called the credit card so that I could take their money.’ That infrastructure was in place. That’s not necessarily true in space, so I think what they’re trying to do is build the infrastructure.   

The other key part of it is, it was a willingness from the government, from NASA and the Pentagon to say, ‘You know what? We can outsource some of these missions to the private sector.’ 

And today, you know, I think we look at that and it’s routine. But back then that was something of a revolutionary change to allow the private sector to step in, in this way and trust them with vital missions that had always been part of the national enterprise that now were being taken over by the private sector and that is a significant paradigm shift that allowed this industry to take off. 

09:59 – 10:30 

(MD) Yeah, I definitely want to come back to that and spend a couple of minutes in a little bit, because as we get beyond “The Space Barons” book and probably into the field of your new endeavor, that becomes more and more important as we come to 2025. 

But back on the individuals. So there’s this sort of rivalry, either explicit-implicit, I’m not sure. But everybody sees some of these individuals as in a rivalry.  

Do you think that the rivalry is driving some of their behavior, or is it just that they have these overlapping passions that just end up sort of creating a rivalry? 

10:31 – 11:51 

(CD) I do think there is a rivalry and there has been between all of them. These are fierce competitors who have gone into various industries, whether it’s Amazon and taking on booksellers like Barnes and Noble or moving into retail to take on Target and Walmart and K-Mart. Elon with Tesla taking on Detroit. They’re fierce competitors.  

What we’ve seen, however, is a domination of SpaceX lapping Blue Origin. And Elon has said this, that he lamented the fact that for a long time he didn’t have a clear rival and was goading Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin to move faster. 

And he was urging Jeff to forget about Amazon. You know, ‘Amazon is set. You need to be focusing on Blue Origin,’ knowing that in the end, that would make SpaceX better to have some competition. I truly believe that. And I think that SpaceX’s success has been something of a roadmap for Blue Origin and for many other companies. 

That A: you can be successful. And B: Here’s one way to do it. There’s a lot of argument now that SpaceX has maybe gotten too successful, too big, and is there really a broad commercial space industry or is there just SpaceX? That’s sort of an interesting dynamic, but I do think in any business like this, there is real, real competition.

11:52 – 12:08 

(MD) Your book takes us inside a Valentine’s Day 2006 conference, where some of these eventual Space Barons got together and started talking about what the commercial space industry might look like.  

What are the kinds of things that they were dealing with, and how on-track do you think they were? Now, looking back on that and talking about the right things?  

12:09 – 13:48 

(CD) Yeah, you know, if you look back on it now, you can say like, ‘Oh, well, weren’t they prescient? And they saw this coming.’ Because we do have something of a commercial space industry. I mean, I think if the space barons, in a sense, posed a question, I mean: ‘Is there this commercial space industry?’ And I think the next book that I’m working on sort of answers it with a resounding “Yes,” because anytime you put human beings in a commercially owned and operated rocket could say, “Yeah, that’s a big deal.” 

You have a proliferation of a real market and a real space economy beyond just the billionaires that to some extent is self-sustaining. Businesses win, businesses some lose. They come and go and there’s some continuity of purpose with government being able to rely on them. That’s looking at it through the prism of today.  

If you went back to then, I think it’s fair to look at them and say, “You guys are nuts. This is never going to happen. Space is so expensive. It’s so difficult. It requires such expertise. I mean, getting a rocket to orbit is such an immensely difficult proposition. To think you can do it is – you’re either wildly arrogant or you’re just incredibly ignorant because you have no idea what you don’t know.” And yet, over time, they persisted. 

So I think you go back and you look at that. And there had been previous efforts to build a commercial space industry to move the technology forward. That had all failed. And I think there are a lot of skeptics who say, ‘You’re never going to do this, this is always going to be a national enterprise and it’s just sort of the one thing the government has to do and has to do exclusively.’ And now we’re seeing obviously that change.

13:49 – 14:21 

(MD) You talk about this public-private kind of relationship. Was there people on the government side that you would also highlight that allowed these kinds of things to happen, that were also prescient in: ‘Look, we need to start investing in some of these companies?’ 

And I think of people like Steve Walker at DARPA who gave SpaceX some money to do those first four launches. And then you’ve got, of course, all the NASA input, which has been huge. But Mike Griffin as the administrator has thrown his weight against it. The different program managers – who are the government people that you would put in this periphery of the space barons? 

14:22 – 16:34 

(CD) Yeah, and you named a few of them. I mean, you know, DARPA looking for innovative technologies, funding SpaceX early on and giving them some seed money. And there were people within NASA these – when I talked to Elon about it, when I interviewed him for “The Space Barons” there were sort of these rebels inside the alliance who was like, ‘You know what? We need to place a bet, at least. Not saying we should turn anything over to the commercial sector, but maybe we give them some seed money to see if they can make it.’ 

And if, you know, you go back again, put yourself in that context in that time where you have two disasters with the space shuttle and the sort of idea that the space shuttle is coming to an end, and we’re not going to have any way, the United States government, NASA, is not going to have any way to fly humans anywhere. 

And in fact, we’re going to turn that capability over to Russia. This country that we defeated in the Cold War space race to the moon is now going to be flying our astronauts, which nothing symbolizes the concerns about the lack and the complacency in the government enterprise in moving the technology forward, than the fact that NASA couldn’t fly astronauts. 

And so I think you saw people within the government saying, ‘We have to try to do something different, even radically different.’ And sort of a step-by-step approach, starting with, “Okay, is it possible that they could fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station? Is that even something we could consider?” And you sort of see that beginning to come up in the Bush administration. 

At the time, you know, you mentioned Mike Griffin. There was this idea like, “Okay, maybe we’ll place a few bets to see if they can do that, but there’s no way we’re going to let them fly astronauts.” I mean, there was sort of a red line there.  

Then you see the commercial sector starting to fly cargo and supplies. It’s working. Obama comes in, there’s no space shuttle. We’re paying Russia $70-80 million a seat for rides to the International Space Station and then they’re saying, “Well, maybe we can do that.” 

So it’s not something that happened overnight. It was sort of an incremental approach that took place over time and I do think there were individuals within the agencies who saw that happening. And then, of course, companies like SpaceX were proving that they could do it and overcoming enormous skepticism to gain their trust.  

16:35 – 17:00 

(MD) So one of the earliest bits of seed money, and maybe you can’t even call it that, but it was the Ansari X Prize and Peter Diamandis, you know, kind of had that concept to create this prize and you can explain it for our listeners.  

But do you think that was necessary? Important? Useful? And would there be room for another X Prize of some sort, do you think, to continue it? It was supposed to be an accelerant for the industry. Do you think it did that?  

17:01 – 18:45 

(CD) Well, so that’s such a great question. So the Ansari X Prize is this contest to see if a commercial venture, [with] no government money can send a vehicle to the edge of space and back and do it twice. 

And there were, you know, a lot of stipulations about weight, mass and that sort of thing and it was successful. Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, the famous inventor, aerospace engineer, came up with SpaceShipOne and they won the Ansari X Prize and I think it was heralded as a moment, as a breakthrough, that, “Yes, this can be done.” 

If you go to the Air and Space Museum – you can see this winged space plane that looked like it had no business flying in the air or, you know, it looked like a paraglider. And yet here it was, going to the edge of space and back on these really hair-raising rides that I think recalled bold, ambitious, swashbuckling days of early aviation. 

I mean, these were incredibly dangerous and risky and edge of your seat, pushing the frontier, pushing the technology. And they did it. But did it touch off a greater revolution? I think the answer to that at the time is: “Not really.” It showed it could be done, but even today, we don’t have a lot of regular people going to the edge of space like they envisioned. 

We do have space tourism. We do have Virgin Galactic, which is Richard Branson bought the rights from Paul Allen and started Virgin Galactic, which has gone through many iterations and is going through another one now and isn’t really flying. Blue Origin is flying, but the cadence isn’t very fast. They’ve done a number of space flights, but they’re not flying people on a regular basis. It’s enormously expensive. 

So it didn’t touch off that revolution that I think a lot of people had hoped it could, but I don’t think it was a complete waste. It did show that it could be done, and in that sense helped pave the way for where we are today.  

18:46 – 19:41 

(MD) So I kind of want to zoom out now and just talk more about some of the things we’re already touching on the economic relationships between the government and these commercial companies. And I’ll go back to my generation considers the Apollo Era was the golden age of space and it was all about the competition, as you already brought up between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on putting a man in space and then putting a man on the surface of the moon. 

And you talk about in the book how the resolution of that competition in the favor of the U.S. ended up driving some complacency, at least on the side of the U.S. government.  

Now, it doesn’t feel like we’re in a complacent age, right? There’s just a ton of activity going on, in fact, two commercial companies put landers on the moon and so with that competition in mind: between governments, between companies. You know, what are the parallels and the differences between then and now in how we’re innovating in space?

19:42 – 21:54 

(CD) Now, that’s a great question. And here’s one of the things that just jumps out at me, Mike, because I do believe we are in a space race, as we were during the Cold War – really against China. 

China has shown amazing progress. Four for four [on] moon landings. First country to go to the far side of the moon. First country to retrieve samples from the far side of the moon. They have a space station in low-Earth orbit. They’ve operated a rover on Mars and one of the things people don’t realize is there are flags on the moon, and they’re not American flags. 

They’re Chinese flags. And I say that because obviously during the Apollo era, we planted flags on the moon, but they have been bleached white, according to NASA scientists, by the radiation environment, by the harsh environment of space and being in that vacuum, that they’re essentially reduced, maybe even to tatters, but certainly not recognizable as American flags today. 

China has now planted flags. One made out of a composite material designed specifically to withstand the harsh environment of space and to last for years, if not decades. The second flag they put up on the moon during the far side sample return mission, was actually done using an ISRU-like technique, In-Situ Resource Utilization, where you use the resources of the moon. 

And they were able to take a form of volcanic rock basalt, which is, you see a lot of on the moon. They use samples, obviously from Earth, melt it to lava and using that lava extract out these very, very thin threads, let it cool down and then weave the threads into a Chinese flag. 

That, again, is an ISRU technology and is designed to withstand the harsh environment of space. But here’s the thing. At least from where I’m sitting, and I may turn the tables and ask you this: to the American public, I think during the Cold War, we all knew we were in a space race with the Soviet Union. We all knew about Sputnik. We all knew about Kennedy’s charge.  

It just doesn’t seem to me that it resonates that we’re in this great power competition with China in space and it’s not just civil space, but clearly national security space. And I’m just sort of curious from your perspective, you know, why isn’t it resonating and what are the stakes for that? 

21:55 – 24:29 

(MD) Well, I mean, you’re absolutely right. It doesn’t get the kind of publicity that it got. There’s a million other things that the populations are worried about, now. It’s not really that bipolar world, it’s more multipolar and all the complexities that come with that.  

And the other thing is that a lot of the things that we do in space are information, right? It’s ones and zeros. You don’t see it all the time and where Elara Nova sits – our wheelhouse is the national security business and we understand probably more so than the general public of just how integrated space is into everyday life and the danger that comes with anyone who wants to interfere with those activities in space would interfere with everyday life. 

It would readily become apparent if things started to happen in space that were against our interests, and because of some of the things that have been going on that we’ve been talking about: the lowering the barrier of entry, technologies are getting smaller, you can put better things in smaller packages. It’s really allowed lots of countries now to become space-faring countries. 

China has obviously had the most resources to put to bear here, and they’ve created the ability to interfere with the things that the U.S. will do in space for the civil economy and for national security. So we worry a lot about our forces who are deployed all around the world suddenly being exposed to vulnerabilities that the Chinese can create by nefarious action in space. 

And really, that’s why, the first Trump administration created a United States Space Force is to begin to address that competition in the national security arena to make sure that we could continue to do what we need to do in space, and that if the day comes, we could disrupt what others might try to do to us in space that will affect, again, not only our forces, but all of the economy, not just for the U.S., but around the world.  

The interesting thing with China is because they’re doing so much in space, they’re also becoming somewhat dependent on that domain. And you hope there’s a bit of an understanding that we really don’t want to do something in space because it’s going to affect everybody equally. Now, more equally than probably in the past. 

So let’s go back to this idea of investing, putting investments in space. And you talked about [the] Commercial Orbital Transportation System – 2006. And now NASA has really upped their game, right? There’s commercial payload services, commercial cargo, commercial LEO destinations. They’re talking about doing a Mars return with commercial ideas.  

NASA is kind of all in here. 

Is that good? Is that bad? Is it tilting this the economics of the market at all in ways that we should pay attention to?

24:30 – 27:22 

(CD) Yeah, no. It’s such a fascinating evolution, and it shows the depth of this conversation that takes us from those early days of COTS and cargo delivery and then saying, “Okay, they can do that. Maybe they can fly astronauts to the space station. Okay, well, maybe they can fly astronauts to the space station. Maybe the commercial sector – they should be the ones who build the spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon and to build the uncrewed spacecraft to do the scouting missions under the Eclipse program to go to the moon. And maybe they should even build the spacesuits that the astronauts are going to wear on the moon.” 

And so you’re seeing the enterprise go, and it’s allowed, I think, of what Thomas Zurbuchen, who was the head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate when Eclipse was born, saying ‘The commercial sector can move faster. NASA will make a relatively small investment. They can maybe get other businesses investing in them, wanting to do science, wanting to send payloads to the lunar surface that help subsidize the cost that allows NASA to quote ‘Take shots on goal.’”  

But some of those are going to miss. And you think of a national mission, and you’re going to put in a lot of work and a lot of costs and a lot of time to make sure that it works.  

Well, that’s not the way the commercial sector works. They’re going to move faster, they’re going to experiment, and they’re going to fail and you have to wonder if they fail. What is the tolerance for that?  

And we’ve now seen a company like Astrobotic didn’t quite reach the lunar surface. Intuitive Machines got there a year ago, first successful landing since the end of the Apollo era of an American spacecraft. First commercial spacecraft to reach the lunar surface. But it wasn’t a perfect landing. A leg broke. It ended up on its side. They tried again earlier this year. Again, it looks like they went into a crater. Maybe they toppled over. [They] were able to operate for a little bit. I mean, they reached the surface but [it] wasn’t perfect. So there is a trade-off there and that might be okay with experimenting on an uncrewed vehicle. 

But when you talk about astronauts on-board, or if you even talk about the cargo and supplies that have to go up and service those astronauts, you need success. And you need that to be reliable. And you know, even SpaceX, which is the leader in all of this, recently has had some problems with the Falcon-9, even some concerns about Dragon recently. Starship, the last two flights, the ship has come apart and you know there’s no emergency abort system with Starship the way there is with the Falcon-9 and Dragon. 

So I think people look at this success and they want to cheer it and, “Rah rah, way to go, American innovation.” But there have been some setbacks, and you are wondering what the appetite and what the right balance is supposed to be between government and between the private sector, and what sort of oversight should there be? And I’m sure there are a lot of people a lot smarter than me who can figure that out. For sure.

27:22 – 27:44 

(MD) Yeah, and I think you’re right. It’s those challenges are interspersed with successes, right? So Firefly got their [system] upright? They’ll get a whole lunar day of science and so that’s a win.  

So it’s a balance, as you rightfully say, of how much risk are we willing to take? How much failure is fine because you’re failing forward and you’re continuing to make progress, right? 

27:45 – 28:11 

(CD) Right, and let’s be clear. I mean, those failures, we use the term failure. But failure is actually a very positive term, particularly if you learn something and you get better and that you’re failing in a test environment, in a real world environment, in the vacuum in space, and you’re going to learn about the technology and the engineering in ways you just cannot learn when you’re on the ground doing simulations and so they will get better.  They have gotten better, and they’ve shown enormous progress. 

28:12 – 29:15 

(MD) You know, I’ll say on the national security side, it’s been a little bit slower on the uptake in terms of the big investments in commercial. You mentioned launch services? Got it. That one’s pretty well set just because of the frequency and now it’s very reliable.  

But it’s been nascent in other areas. You know everybody the Department of Defense talked about wanting to harness more commercial, but you know the remit for national security is you can’t fail in ways that are going to have catastrophic implications for either our forces or our objectives overseas and domestically. 

So it’s been a little bit my opinion, Mike’s opinion, has been a little bit tepid. I think actually, the leader here is the National Reconnaissance Office, who have been buying some of the commercial imagery and other types of products from space companies.  

The Space Force has some, again some of their own nascent ideas about how to bring commercial in. But the level of investment isn’t like what NASA has in terms of really sending a signal to the market that says, ‘If you build it, we will buy it.’ And we’re kind of not there yet. So I think that debate on the national security side is going to continue to unfold. 

29:16 – 29:32 

(CD) Yeah. Well, actually I’m curious about that. And if I could turn the tables just one more time, I’m curious why you think that is? Is it because the culture at the Pentagon is just more entrenched, that there weren’t those like, quote unquote, “rebels” that we saw at NASA early on, or it’s just a bigger bureaucracy. 

I mean, why do you think it hasn’t taken hold that way?  

29:33 – 31:42 

(MD) It’s certainly the culture is a huge part of it. And the culture being a couple of things: one is the requirements that the government has are a lot of times not tightly aligned with commercial market objectives, right? So the Department of Defense needs things that don’t have its own commercial markets. So maybe we have to do those things ourselves, is what the question is. 

And this idea of control when things are really getting bad, when countries are fighting with each other, when potentially economies are colliding with each other, right? In a big conflict like that, will the commercial companies still stand by their contract? I’ve seen no indication that that wouldn’t be the case, but those are some of the control issues. When you’re with the military, you want control on all parts of your system.  

Now we do other things with commercial within the Department of Defense – that we buy vehicles that come off of commercial product lines. We buy services in a lot of places but the closer you get to the actual combat itself, it just gets a little more dicey from a cultural perspective of how much you want to have within your own control, and how much you want to have in a contractual relationship with another entity? 

Certainly, the industry builds everything that the military has, so it’s really about that contractual relationship and who ends up owning and operating the end product at the end? So I think there’ll be more, but I don’t think it’s going to be as robust as some of the civil activities that we see going on.  

So, Christian, let’s talk about where the money come from. The Space Barons had money, right? They created companies, became billionaires and then were allowed to channel that money into their space dreams. Then you went into a world where a lot of these smaller companies tried to come in and be part of this market. 

They were mostly venture capital funded, so they were probably giving up a bunch of equity in the company for single millions and tens of millions of dollars. We went through this unfortunate period in 2021 of SPACs that were really more about the bankers making money for the bankers and not doing well by the companies. 

That sort of flushed out now and now we’re seeing a maturation in those capital markets where becoming more private equity, institutional investors and even now, banks getting into debt financing for companies that have good revenue. So how do you see that as part of this overall space economy and moving forward? 

31:43 – 33:00 

(CD) Yeah, I mean, I think early on it was that old adage, you know, the quickest way to become a millionaire in a space business was to start out as a billionaire. 

And you did see a lot of ebbs and flows. And it has matured. And that’s in large part because they see the way the government, NASA and to a lesser degree, the Pentagon, is investing in these companies and relying on them and providing a real service so that there is sort of a backbone for these companies. 

And, you know, there’s that other leg of the stool that the companies have shown the capabilities to be able to do it, which gives, I think, the markets a lot more confidence. I mean, I think initially, you know, space investment was for hobbyists, it was for enthusiasts. Now it’s become much more mainstream. Is it still incredibly risky? Yeah, I think it is. 

But I think it’s the upsides can be really high, particularly if the Pentagon gets involved, and particularly if these companies can dramatically lower the cost of access to space. And then you begin seeing what Jeff Bezos calls the ‘unleashing of an economic dynamism,’ like what he saw with the internet that allowed companies like Amazon to flourish, that there’s going to be a next wave of space companies building on top of the infrastructure that’s already there to do things like in-space resource utilization, mining, those sorts of things. 

33:01 – 33:38 

(MD) Let’s dig a little bit into the infrastructure piece. I mean, you’re right. Jeff Bezos has his story about: Amazon worked because the internet existed, because there were roads to everyone’s houses, there was a Postal Service that he could ship through, a payment system where people could sit on the couch and pay for merchandise. So now, if you think of infrastructure in the area of space, certainly launch, that’s got to be first. You have to have launch to be able to get to orbit. But there are probably other things that will help further unleash the space economy.  

What do you think those items are, and what kind of services could commercial market bring to create infrastructure that then all of a sudden makes it easy for everybody else?

33:39 – 35:45 

(CD) Yeah. I mean, I think and I’m guilty of this. A lot of us in the space press corps, we focus on launch. We focus on the rockets, we focus on the astronauts and we focus on the billionaires, too. But there’s a whole subset of issues that don’t get enough attention that are vital. 

And those are the technologies that we’re going to need to create a self-sustaining economy in space and a permanent presence in space. That’s power generation, transportation, habitation, mining, all of those technologies: solar cells, nuclear power, being able to get around. And I don’t think we see a lot of government investment into that and I don’t know that even we see a lot of private sector investment. 

And that, I think could be a hiccup at some point down the road. I mean, I think Blue Origin is focusing on that perhaps more than others. I mean, there is a story in the new book, “Rocket Dreams,” I actually visited. They have a secret laboratory outside of Los Angeles where they’re working to melt the lunar regolith, the moon dirt, and turn it into solar cells. If that technology can be achieved, that would really be amazing and help unleash all the other sorts of things that you see in space and have those technologies. 

The other one, from a civil point of view, is, I think, back to a time where I visited General Purdy when he was at the 45th Space Wing down in Cape Canaveral. And he said something to me that always resonated with me. And that was, for the first 50 or 60 years of the space age, we were focused on getting to space, perfecting the way of building the rockets and the spacecraft that could get us to orbit. 

Now, for the most part, that’s a soft problem, and what we’re focusing on now is being able to get through space, being able to change orbits, to move around, to go from one place to another, to point A to point B, service satellites, do reconnaissance, do all sorts of things in space that are very difficult, but that I think opens up a lot of possibilities, as well. 

And when he said that, the light bulb kind of went off in my head to sort of think about where we’re going in the future and what are the technologies that are going to be needed going forward. 

35:46 – 36:31 

(MD) Even the infrastructure we have in orbit today that allows you to communicate to the Earth and, and navigate because GPS signals are floating through space. But you get out to the moon. You don’t even have those basic things. So the companies were talking about Astrobotics, Intuitive Machines, Firefly, have to bring their own infrastructure to communicate all the way back to Earth. You know, that adds weight, and it takes away from the things that they’d really like to be doing on the surface of the moon. 

So yeah, having a communications infrastructure, navigation and timing infrastructure around the moon. All that could unleash that particular part of the space economy too, so really fascinating to think about. I’d add one more – regulatory environment for doing commerce in space, right? 

And having space hotels and doing all the other things. That’s going to have to advance quite a bit, too. I don’t know if you had thoughts there? 

36:32 – 37:07 

(CD) Yeah. I mean, I always look back. There’s a law passed in 2015 signed by President Obama that gives companies the right to the resources they mine on the moon or other celestial bodies, which I thought was an interesting breakthrough. It will be interesting when that’s tested. 

And then you talk about the regulatory regime, too. I mean, I immediately started thinking about space debris and just all of the stuff that’s up in space, too, that it’s space is vast, a lot of real estate up there, but it’s increasingly becoming congested. But I do think in a lot of ways the technology is outpacing the regulation. 

37:08 – 38:04 

(MD) The individuals we’re talking about have for 20 years, you know, decades have been sort of focused on what their end objective was, be that Bezos or Musk, Richard Branson, I mean, they’ve all been just plugging away for 20 years making this thing happen. 

The government, talk about the government again, isn’t quite as good as staying the course. So President Obama in 2008 canceled the Constellation program. And that was kind of one of the things that said, “Well, I guess we’re going to have to push more money forward into the commercial market to help get our work done without that government-owned and operated program.” 

We seem to be maybe at that point, again, with Artemis, lots of money going into Artemis, long schedules that seemingly are always delayed. 

You know, what would be the implications of making changes to that? And compare that alongside with these space barons who have been taking the long view for decades and slowly getting to where they want to be. Not as fast as they’ve talked about or wanted to in the beginning, but they’re getting there.  

38:05 – 40:21 

(CD) Yeah. I mean, so it’s a great question again, and I think it depends on sort of the context: and when you cancel Constellation, you know, there was this glimmer of hope that the commercial sector would be there, would be able to fill in the gaps and maybe take over. Now, fast forward to where we are today, and you see that. You see the Falcon-9 launching what? You know, 100 times last year, going from well over a hundred times this year. 

You know, Blue Origin finally got New Glenn off the ground. ULA with Vulcan flying. You’re seeing [from] a launch perspective, a lot more advancements. Starship had a couple of recent setbacks, but on the other hand, they’re now catching the booster with some frequency. So a lot of people have been concerned about today’s Constellation would be, right, the Space Launch System rocket, potentially Orion, which NASA has invested many billions of dollars in. Together they’ve flown one time.  

The GAO has said the cost is about $2 billion per launch. SLS is not a reusable rocket, relies on the RS-25 engines, which were used during the Space Shuttle [and] developed in the 1970s. But today you could see if SLS went away, and I do think people are starting to come around to the fact that SLS’ days may be numbered, I don’t think it’s going to be canceled tomorrow. 

I think they’ve already built it and paid for a number of these rockets. So you could see the Artemis II mission to launch a crew around the Moon on the Orion, potentially even Artemis III going on SLS in the ‘26-’27 timeframe. Then by then do you have some of these alternatives online, and not just online, but online in a way that they are, as we talked about earlier, safe, reliable?  

[You can] really can put humans on, have proven themselves. You have complete control over them, complete faith in them. You know, I think we might be closer to that. I mean, I thought it was eye-opening when someone like Scott Pace, who was the executive secretary of the National Space Council under President Trump in the first administration and a long proponent of SLS, said something to the effect of, ‘We need an off-ramp for SLS.’ When even he is saying something. I think maybe the writing is on the wall to a certain extent there.

40:22 – 41:13 

(MD) Yeah, just even if the means change, staying committed to the ends, you know, ends, ways and means I think is important. And NASA’s just been kind of jerked around back and forth over the years as administrations change and budgets change. 

But I think having a goal and if we’re able to bring in other technologies and commercial actors to help achieve that goal – that’s great. But maybe we should stick to the goal and be in it for the long term.  

So I’m going to give you a softball question here in “Space Barons,” you structured space barons in – there are three sections of the book. 

And you had a one word title for each section. And they were “Impossible, Improbable, and Inevitable.”  

So they seem to be three great words, you know, how did you come up with that? And now I’m looking forward to the new book. And what is the era between 2018 and 2025? What’s one or two words you’d use to describe the recent history?

41:14 – 43:31 

(CD) Yeah, I’m glad you caught on to that. I do think those three words encompass the narrative of the book, but also the journey of space exploration in the commercial space sector. Like, it’s never going to happen. Well, maybe it will. And yeah, it’s happening. And as I said earlier, “The Space Barons,” I think, poses this question like, ‘Is this really going to happen? Is it really inevitable?’ And this book, the next one, Rocket Dreams, answers that with, “Yes.” And you’re sort of seeing it take over.  

And so the new book is also broken up into three sections that sort of gets to that in a symbolic way: Earth, and then going to orbit and then going to the moon and beyond. That, you’re sort of on the ground, and then you’re going with people and extending this public-private partnership to low-Earth orbit with COTS, with astronauts, and then applying that with Artemis, building the landers and spacecraft that are going to go to the moon and beyond. 

There’s a lot of questions now: Are we going to the moon? Are we going to Mars? And these books have to sort of end on ideas, not events. And here I am trying to finish up a book that’s going to come out later this fall and position it for there, and where are we going to be? And in some ways the destination, while important, doesn’t matter as much as the means of ascent. 

And what I mean by that is the technologies that we have to be able to get to the moon, to get to low-Earth orbit or to get to Mars. And if we have a New Glenn, if we have Dragon, if we have Starship, if we have Neutron from Rocket Lab, if we have Vulcan, and we have Firefly and Astrobotic and all these companies, Intuitive Machines, building these technologies, then it’s like, are we going to the moon or Mars or low-Earth orbit? 

And then the answer becomes, “Yes, yes we are.” And we can go to all of those because we’ve built technologies that can go to all those. So that’s sort of the structure that I’m building here is building on that platform that we saw at the end of Space Barons, building through to go to low-Earth orbit and extending that out to the moon and to beyond, and not just on a civil space program, too. 

We tend to be so focused on big rockets and astronauts and all of that. But I think the national security space enterprise is incredibly important, as well. And you’re seeing much more of that as we’ve obviously talked about.  

43:32 – 44:28 

(MD) I’m struck by the fact that we’ve been talking here for about an hour now. And we don’t have real solid answers, right? We have questions and observations and certainly progress. And frankly, that’s probably what makes this business so exciting is there’s continued forward motion. Every once in a while, a backward step, but a really exciting time to be part of the space industry to be, I’m sure from your end, writing about the space industry and being in the middle of it in that way. 

Christian, it’s been a really fun conversation on a topic that continues to inspire and fascinate so many people. And it’s not only those of us who are close to the industry, but this whole new generation of space enthusiasts, who I expect they’re going to continue to make the impossible, inevitable. And I, for one, am excited to get my own copy of “Rocket Dreams,” as soon as it comes out. I hope you’ll come back on the Elara Edge to talk about it. 

And let me thank you again for coming on. And please, you take the last word.  

44:29 – 44:44 

(CD) Well, thanks for having me. It’s a real honor. I’d absolutely come back to talk about “Rocket Dreams.” And it’s fun to follow, you know, all of the work that you all are doing there. And I’m going to be calling you when I put my hat on for my day job at The Washington Post, for sure. But again, it’s a real privilege and an honor. So thank you.

44:45 – 45:29 

(SK) This has been the inaugural episode of “The Elara Epilogues,” a special edition series presented by “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge. 

Episode 21: Quantum Technologies to Reinforce Position, Navigation and Timing Capability 

Host: Scott King 

SME: Major General (Ret) Kim Crider, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy (KC)

Lieutenant General (Ret) Harry Raduege, Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy (HR)

00:02 – 01:52 

China’s rapid rise in quantum technology has triggered a call-to-action for the United States to accelerate their own investments in quantum research and development. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technology Tracker, China surpassed the United States in quantum research back in 2021 and has been growing their lead ever since. 

This lead in published research can be an early indicator that China is on a faster pace toward adopting and deploying quantum technologies in space – which, in fact, China already demonstrated in 2016, when their MISIUS satellites used quantum technologies to encrypt its communication links. 

Now, nearly ten years later, China’s quantum efforts continue to advance – with plans to launch more quantum-equipped satellites in 2025. 

That’s why the United States must respond in kind. According to the Quantum Economic Development Consortium – or QED-C – a stakeholder group founded under the Quantum Initiative Act of 2018 – the United States must make greater investments in quantum research and development – and pointed to the immediate ways quantum technologies can specifically reinforce our Position, Navigation and Timing – or PNT – capabilities. 

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King, and we have two guests today that are here to help us understand what quantum technology is – and how it can be applied to PNT and other space mission areas.  

Our first guest is retired Major General Kim Crider, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. General Crider previously served as the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for the United States Space Force, and is returning to the show as one of our resident experts on emerging technologies like quantum.  

General Crider, welcome to the show! 

01:53 – 01:54 

KC: Thanks, Scott. It’s great to be back with you. 

01:55 – 02:16 

It’s great to have you back, Ma’am.  

And also joining us is retired Lieutenant General Harry Raduege. Before becoming a partner at Elara Nova, General Raduege served for 35 years in the United States Air Force, where he held roles as the Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, and Manager of the National Communications Systems. 

Sir, thanks for taking the time to join us today. 

02:17 – 02:18 

HR: Thanks for having me, Scott.

02:19 – 02:43 

Our primary topic today stems from a recent report by the Quantum Economic Development Consortium – titled “Quantum Sensing for Position, Navigation and Timing Use Cases.”  

But before we get into exactly what quantum technology is, I’d like to fully define the Position, Navigation and Timing mission, first. 

So what is PNT and how does it relate to a United States Space Force mission area?

 02:44 – 04:39 

KC: Yeah, thanks Scott. So position navigation and timing – PNT – is what it stands for. There are actually a number of technologies that we use to determine location, orientation and time associated with a particular asset. So when we think about position, we think about an asset’s location or orientation, either in two or three dimensions. 

When we think about navigation, we think about its current and desired position  – where it’s heading and any corrections to the course or to the orientation and the speed.  

And then when we think about timing, we need to understand a specific point in time, such as a coordinated universal time. We all  have these time standards. UTC is one time standard. So PNT applies different technologies through a variety of systems and processes to do just that, establish position, navigation and timing. 

Now, the primary way we do this is through what’s called the “Global Positioning System,” or GPS, and GPS is essentially a U.S. government system of satellites in space and receivers the ground, that when linked together – provides our PNT capability. G.P.S. basically transmits broadcast signals from satellites in space that contain, precise time information which allows GPS receivers on Earth to calculate its own position in terms of latitude, longitude, altitude, and then by measuring the travel time of those signals from multiple satellites, and does what we call a ‘triangulation,’ to pinpoint its location and enable synchronization with those satellites, and with those transmitters. 

So GPS is that system provided by the United States Space Force that delivers position, navigation and timing, but it’s driven by allowing receivers to calculate where they are and the time at which they are, and triangulate that from a variety of signals that are presented from that GPS constellation. 

04:40 – 06:00 

HR: Yeah. Scott, let me just add to that – in the military of PNT, we use it for tracking of friendly or what we refer to as ‘blue forces.’ We use it in accuracy and in precision bombing in the military against combatants, and very importantly, to avoid hitting civilians or historic places and monuments or other invaluable assets. 

We always think of GPS because we refer to it all the time when you’re driving your car, you’re in your boat, or you’re just on the ground hiking, you want your GPS receiver to receive that signal on your position. However, I learned a while back, during the Y2K roll over. 

That timing – it is actually the most critical part of GPS satellites. And let me just mention the fact that we move all the finances of the world economy using the timing of GPS and so seconds or small parts of seconds, difference in timing and clocks when you’re moving tens of thousands, trillions of money each day across the world economy, it would make a big difference if the timing is off just slightly. 

06:01 – 06:07 

So what threats exist to our GPS systems today? And how can these threats compromise our PNT capability? 

06:08 – 08:08 

KC: There’s a number of threats to position navigation and timing and to the systems that provide that. I’m sure General Raduege can speak on this as well, given his experience in operating these systems and ensuring their availability to joint operations. You can imagine that position, navigation and timing is absolutely critical to warfighting operations in addition to all of those industry sector needs that General Raduege was referring to: the ability to accurately know where troops are on the ground or at sea, the ability to communicate effectively in a time-synchronized environment, the ability to assure precise targeting is really important to all of our joint operations, to be able to work effectively and collectively, we need to have really strong PNT. 

But PNT is vulnerable to a number of threats. We know for certain that our GNSS, our Global Navigational Satellite System, which is essentially the system that delivers that capability through the Global Positioning System satellites – that that is jammed every single day. There’s jamming and spoofing of those signals every single day, where there is intentional interference with those signals that I was talking about earlier by relatively low-cost jammers that are not easily tracked, so that’s a real problem. 

Cyber attacks is also a challenge and we’ve seen that, you know, denial-of-service is a real challenge to PNT. And then of course, because these signals emanate from space, you’ve got a lot of challenges just by virtue of the fact that you’re operating in the space environment. There’s space weather that can be a factor.  

And then there’s the supply chain, which is certainly a challenge for many of our space systems that we rely on a very secure and assured supply chain for these capabilities. These satellites themselves, as well as the receivers on the ground or in the other domains. General Raduege, what else would you add? I’m sure you’ve seen some of these threats play out.

08:09 – 09:03 

HR: Sure. Absolutely. While all the ones that you’ve mentioned are with us every day, but we’ve had over the years, I have to say we’ve had constant improvements to our GPS system, but it’s still vulnerable and susceptible to both natural and man-generated negative effects. 

And General Crider has mentioned a number of those. I think the only thing I could actually add is the fact that GPS is susceptible to not being received in underground or underwater, or in valleys or canyons, in the polar regions, and sometimes even just being indoors where you have a roof or cover over your head and that’s where the satellite signals can’t penetrate. So that can also be a threat to you not being able to receive needed PNT updates. 

09:04 – 09:23 

Thank you, Sir. And to bring it back to today’s topic of quantum technology – the QED-C report introduces this idea that quantum sensors can be leveraged for PNT. 

But what exactly is a quantum sensor? And how can this technology provide a solution to some of these PNT challenges that we were just discussing? 

09:24 – 10:07 

KC: A quantum sensor is really a sensor that is able to precisely measure changes in electric or magnetic fields. What is unique about quantum technology is that it collects data. It makes its measurements at the atomic level – very, very, very finite, precise changes in the way atoms act in these sorts of fields, which are not necessarily discrete changes. 

They change in a waveform and so if we can understand these atomic level changes, we can have a much more precise understanding of what’s going on with more precision and more accuracy about what’s happening in the world around us. That’s, in a nutshell, what quantum sensors do.  

10:07 – 10:47 

HR: Yeah. Let me just add the fact that quantum sensors can really provide this precise navigation and information that General Crider has just described, but also to provide that where GPS signals are unavailable and unreliable, as we talked about just earlier. 

But they can also better resist jamming and spoofing, which is one of the big problems today that we’re experiencing with our GPS satellites. And frankly, quantum sensors can provide a very necessary backup and an alternative to our PNT information that complements our traditional system that we use today. 

10:48 – 11:06 

And to that last point, Sir, the QED-C report goes another step further by identifying four specific types of quantum sensors. 

I’d like to start with the first two: which the report identifies as quantum magnetometers and quantum gravimeters.

What exactly are these technologies and how do they work?

11:07 – 12:41 

HR: Well, Scott, let me begin by saying quantum magnetometers, can detect and measure minute changes in magnetic fields, which allows for a more precise means of navigation that we commonly refer to as “MagNav.”  

Similarly, quantum gravimeters can also detect and measure minute changes – but in gravitational fields. When applied for navigation purposes, we call this “GravNav.” 

And what’s unique about both of these technologies is that they offer new ways of mapping the planet so that our forces can understand where they are in a given operational environment.  

Now, the QED-C report points out an important distinction – and that is that these technologies are passive. Which means they can operate at any time and in any weather conditions. And this can have a major influence on joint force operations, particularly when they’re operating in remote or what the report calls “featureless” environments like an ocean or a polar region. 

I’ll also add that they can serve commercial applications as well, such as monitoring changes in polar ice caps, locating areas of offshore wind power, detecting wildfires from space and in mining critical resources such as hydrogen, helium and numerous other rare materials. 

12:42 – 14:01 

KC: These are very interesting technologies and General Raduege is pointing out some interesting applications of them where they’re really best-oriented towards whether it’s navigation or positioning. But what’s interesting about these kinds of sensors in my mind is that they rely on looking for anomalies in either the magnetic environment or in the gravitational environment. They look for anomalies, and they match these anomalies to known gravitational maps or magnetic maps. 

That’s the approach that General Raduege was referring to when he was talking about MagNav and GravNav. These are really interesting approaches that, as he mentioned, are passive. They’re not impacted by weather, which is certainly a big difference to what we see in the traditional PNT environment provided by GPS – that it’s an active system. It’s transmitting and receiving, and it’s therefore affected by things that are happening around it.  

These other quantum sensing technologies are passive. They’re listening. They’re sensing what’s happening in the Earth’s environment and that, in and of itself, allows for it to operate in a way that can provide some benefits that GPS currently can’t. 

14:02 – 14:11 

The other two technologies the report identifies are quantum accelerometers and quantum gyroscopes.

How might these technologies apply to PNT?

14:12 – 15:33 

HR: I’ll start this one again, Scott. Quantum accelerometers can measure changes in both the movement of an object – and the speed with which it moves – or its “acceleration.” 

And likewise, quantum gyroscopes can detect the object’s orientation – or the angle in which it might be rotating.  

An important feature to note here is that these technologies can actually be networked together to identify and detect not only where an object is moving, but also how quickly it’s going to get there.  

So whereas the first two technologies we mentioned offer ways to understand where our forces are by mapping the surrounding environment, these technologies have the potential to provide highly accurate measurements of our movements within those surroundings – as well as those of our potential adversaries. 

I’ll also just mention that this can have outsized implications for other mission areas like space domain awareness. Where we can use these tools to understand another satellite’s position, orientation, and movement in relation to our own assets in space. 

The same applies to other assets, systems, and forces in other domains, as well.

 15:34 – 16:49 

HR: Yeah, that’s a great example. And to add another perspective about this idea of a quantum accelerometer is that it’s measuring acceleration. So it’s really trying to understand the changes in motion of something which gives us a whole other set of information than we might not get otherwise. 

Let’s say that you have a US naval vessel, whether it’s a ship or a submarine, maybe it’s operating in the polar region where there is limited availability of GPS, or there is a very specific GPS outage that those vessels are contending with. 

So as that ship is moving along, it’s going to need some additional support. If there was a quantum sensing device on the ship, it could create a picture of the gravitational field. Now, we’re getting back to gravimeters, and the GravNav approach that we talked about earlier, which could sense the gravitational field around the ship. 

As the ship moves along, those sensing devices and the computers that they’re connected to could overlay maps of the Earth’s gravitational field to determine the ship’s precise location as it’s moving. So that’s a very specific example of how quantum sensing with gravimeters can be networked together with an accelerometer to provide position, navigation and timing support to a US naval vessel operating in a remote or contested region where GPS might be compromised. 

16:50 – 17:05 

Thank you, Ma’am. 

Now, the QED-C report really seems to emphasize that these technologies are complementary in nature. 

In other words, they should be integrated into our legacy systems like GPS, as opposed to outright replacing them. 

Why is this an important distinction to make?

17:06 – 19:00 

KC: Certainly, it’s important that these are complementary for a variety of reasons. One, while some of this technology is out there and is being applied, it’s still very much emerging.  

So we need to let this technology emerge and we need to continue to figure out best ways to apply it where we can. As these technologies emerge and as we put these sensors in place, and we begin to best determine how to use these capabilities to support PNT in a networked capability, and then networking it with our more traditional systems, we get that added resiliency, which is always critical to joint military operations: having a variety of different capabilities, from a variety of different types of technologies, providing the critical position, navigation and timing that we need.  

And so that’s really important that as these technologies come along, we’re integrating them in and we’re getting that added resiliency.  

And then the third thing, of course, that I would reinforce is that GPS, GNSS and the systems that provide the same sort of capabilities as GPS does around the world. There are other capabilities around the world that provide GPS. We continue to work towards the ability to have standards and have the ability to operate with these other systems.  

There’s infrastructure, there’s investment in that infrastructure that’s in place today. We need to be able to leverage that as we’re continuing to look to integrate these new technologies. So leveraging our current investments in the US capabilities and with our international partners, taking advantage of the resiliency that a network of PNT-provided technologies can offer and allowing these technologies to emerge, I think, are the three reasons why, we’d want to see these capabilities act in a complementary way. 

19:01 – 20:06 

HR: Yeah. Let me just foot stomp and reinforce the fact that quantum technologies can be very complementary and should be to legacy PNT technologies. First off, as I mentioned earlier, current PNT technologies are still very useful and are continually being upgraded. One example of that is M code that has been added to resist jamming that has been a problem. 

And in reality, however, most legacy and even new systems have become susceptible to new threats, or vulnerabilities and other shortcomings. So it’s good to have a complementary capability, especially in such a critical area of endeavor and need.  

Also, the fact that critical infrastructures and of course, our nation has identified 16 critical infrastructures. They require and demand alternative means and systems for providing reliable performance and service to all of us. 

20:07 – 20:34 

And on this note of quantum sensors working with legacy PNT systems in a complementary way – the report indicates one such example being that quantum sensors can provide a level of verification – or validation – that the information our forces are receiving from GPS is both reliable and secure. 

Can you elaborate on how quantum technologies can verify that our legacy PNT systems, like GPS, are functioning as they should? And are not compromised in any way? 

20:35 – 21:39 

KC: Yeah, it’s a really great point, Scott, and I’m glad you brought that up, because, as we pointed out earlier, our traditional GPS system that provides position navigation timing is subject to a number of threats to include jamming and spoofing and interference from space weather, obstructions of the signal if we’re in highly congested areas where the signals just can’t be picked up. 

So these are real challenges. When those signals are disrupted in whatever manner, or if they’re subject to some sort of a cyber attack as well, these quantum sensors can provide verification that those signals are correct and that the traditional system is working as it should to provide position, navigation and timing to the systems that are relying on them. 

So you might go into a GPS-dark area, but these other sensors are still working. So when you get back up and connected to traditional GPS, you can continue to move on. I think that that is a really critical piece of the resiliency puzzle.

21:40 – 22:17 

Thank you, Ma’am.  

Now, the QED-C report also called for the federal government to make greater investments into the research and development for photonic integrated circuits or “PICs,” a core element to quantum technology. 

Specifically, the report calls on the government to provide “size, weight, power and cost” standards for these PICs, which essentially function like microchips that the QED-C suggests will help establish the economies of scale necessary to accelerate the use of quantum sensors across industries.   

So how can the government help standardize this key part to a quantum sensor? 

22:18 – 23:16 

KC: Yeah, I mean, I think the government can certainly look for ways to invest in the development of PICs. Similar to a microchip and how we’ve seen the government get behind ensuring that we have a foundry in the US, that we have capability to have an assured supply chain to build out these photonic components, such that we can create the PICs that would provide the capability that we need for these sensors in a very low size, weight and power context is really, really important. 

So for the government to get behind that, maybe put some legislation in place to reinforce funding for development and distribution of PICs, certainly within the US as kind of a critical resource that we need to be able to have access to, as we continue to drive towards the application of quantum technologies is going to be very important. 

23:17 – 23:53 

HR: Let me just add that General Crider makes a great point. And frankly, the government must work with others, like the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, to actually encourage these market studies, and that could benefit various technology developers and we’ve always found that pilots and testbeds that are sponsored by the government and others are so helpful. 

And frankly, all you need to jump start everything and a big development is one big success story that comes out of a successful pilot and a testbed. 

23:54 – 24:13 

Thank you, Sir. 

So this next question applies specifically to the testing and validation of these technologies – which General Raduege, Sir – you just referenced in that the government can do through these pilots and testbeds. 

But what are some of the ways the government can support the development of these standards to vet the effectiveness of these emerging technologies? 

24:14 – 25:45 

HR: Standards and validation methods are absolutely critical in establishing a foundational framework for benchmarking standardization, testing and validating performance of technologies. And user confidence will then accelerate adoption of things that are successful. And let me mention that it was DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative that aims to verify and validate if any quantum computing approach can actually achieve utility scale operation, meaning that its computational value exceeds its cost, and to do this by 2033.  

And let me just add one last point here. The National Institute of Science and Technology – or NIST – has done magnificent work for our nation and frankly, the world in standards and validation. But their Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project, which they established in 2016 to develop algorithms that would protect federal agency machines from encryption-breaking tools of tomorrow, I think is absolutely critical work because we all know that encryption is very, very important to be able to maintain the security of our nation and everything we do today.

25:46 – 27:20 

KC: Yeah. The only thing I’ll add there, Scott as General Raduege has hit on on so many important points is that the federal government certainly wants to continue to reinforce the emergence of these really important quantum technologies, and will do so by ensuring that there is funding provided for these kinds of organizations that General Raduege mentioned, as well as other government labs, research institutes, FFRDCs, academia as well, who can all get behind and be part of: ‘How do we drive out the standards for these solutions? How they’re going to work. How they’re going to interoperate. Verifying them and their capabilities. Having testbeds to test them out, to test out the performance standards.’  

These are all really important areas that our research labs and academic institutions and other organizations like NIST are getting involved in, but by having federal funding and push and integration and certainly, within the DOD, there are organizations that can work at the OSD-level and down into the services to do that management collaboration that needs to be done to assure that we can get these standards built in and these processes for tests and verification and validation against standards built in. And do that, in a very organized and focused manner so that we can get these capabilities into production and into actual application and use to support our warfighting operations. 

27:21 – 27:38 

Aside from establishing standards for testing, there’s also an opportunity for the government to serve as an early investor in quantum technologies.  

But what are some ways the DOD can leverage the capital markets and institutional investors to also financially support some of these quantum research and development efforts? 

27:39 – 29:44 

KC: Yeah, Scott. Similar to how the DoD has leaned in on reinforcing the importance of artificial intelligence, for example, and the application of AI to provide competitive advantage by providing small business investment dollars, by standing up organizations that can look for those emerging technologies and those companies that are providing those solutions in early stage concepts and prototypes, and working through the SBIR-STTR process and the funding that goes along with that. 

We want to do the same thing with quantum solutions, as they continue to evolve. In doing so, the government can apply its innovation funding, Small Business Innovative Research – or SBIR – dollars, science and technology research dollars – STTR – and working closely across agencies like DoD, the Department of Energy and NASA as General Raduege  pointed out, really engage that innovation community.  

And now that we’ve got specific programs like STRATFI and TACFI, where strategic and tactical level investments that can be made, are matched by the industry partners and their investors, we can further incentivize the investment community to get involved, because they see the dual-use commercial applications of these technologies for example, to enable position, navigation and timing in a variety of commercial and government use cases. 

Just as General Raduege pointed out in the very beginning of this episode: PNT is not just for military purposes, although that’s absolutely critical for what we’re trying to address here at Elara Nova. But it’s also very critical to just position and navigation and timing that’s so important to a variety of industry sectors like transportation, finance, and agriculture. 

We need these quantum capabilities to enable PNT and augment PNT in all of the industry sectors. So industry investors want to get on board with that, and they want to invest in these technologies. They’re looking for signals from the government that the government is equally investing and looking to put its Small Business Innovative Research dollars behind them. 

And then government and industry investors can come together through these STRATFI and TACFI programs and match the investments to get a bigger bang for the buck, if you will. 

29:45 – 30:22 

HR: Well, these areas that General Crider has just mentioned really do point out and reinforce the fact that quantum really is transformational. 

And General Crider mentioned AI or artificial intelligence, and it’s something that seems like in many ways was suddenly thrust upon us not too long ago. But, you know, as far as I see quantum in comparison with AI, it seems like quantum seems to be arriving more subtly, more deliberately, and perhaps even more impactfully as the future goes on.

 30:23 – 30:51 

Now, General Crider, I want to ask you about some parallels in this discussion, with one of our previous episodes in which Founding Partner Mike Dickey and Dr. Brad Tousley, an Elara Nova partner and a member of the Defense Science Board, discussed a recently-published Defense Science Board report that called on the government to strike a delicate balance when investing in emerging technologies.  

Can you elaborate on how this delicate balance the DSB advocates for – applies here to quantum? 

30:52 – 32:16 

KC: Yeah, it’s a great episode talking about the recommendations from the DSB.  

And as you point out, Scott, one of the important recommendations is that the government can be an anchor tenant for very important emerging technologies and should be an anchor tenant, but also has to be very mindful of avoiding vendor lock.  

Essentially, as the government can go in early, can lean in and should lean in, in many cases to ensure that certain important technologies like what we’re talking about here, quantum in general, photonic integrated circuits that are really important to enabling all of these quantum technologies that we’re talking about, including sensing, can be developed, can be accessible in the U.S., in particular.  

So the government go in early, assure that these solutions are being developed, that they’re being tested and verified and standardized in some manner, that there is an assured supply chain for them. But by the same token, provide on-ramps for others. So be mindful of the fact that there needs to be a way for other providers of these technologies to come in. You can’t go in so much with an early provider that it locks everybody else out. And so that’s, I think, what we have to be careful of. And I think that the prior episode does a really good job of talking through that – it certainly applies here.

32:17 – 32:33 

Thank you, Ma’am.  

Now, General Raduege, this report also comes at a time when China is believed to be leading the United States in quantum.  

How does this report – and its findings – reinforce the imperative that the United States be the first to develop and adopt these technologies?

32:34 – 33:44 

HR: Many have been saying that China is ten years ahead of the U.S. in quantum. And I’ve also heard the Chinese believe that whoever wins the race to quantum – wins. That’s a pretty bold statement, but it’s also a big challenge for the United States and I want to give an example of how the Chinese might be ahead of the United States. 

China has already successfully demonstrated the use of quantum communications between satellites and ground stations through the MISIUS satellite, and this was the first quantum satellite that they actually launched and it’s marking a crucial milestone in the development of secure space communications. This was launched by the Chinese in 2016 and operates in a sun-synchronous, nearly polar orbit and that is a development that has been going on now for quite some time in the all-important area of quantum communications for the future.  

33:45 – 35:46 

KC: That’s exactly right, General Raduege. As we talked about earlier, we need resiliency. We can’t rely on one single solution, one single set of technologies. We need resiliency to create competitive advantage and you can be certain that our adversaries, in particular, China, is looking to invest in quantum technologies for the same reasons. So wants to be able to assure position, navigation and timing, because of how important it is to military operations, and is looking to make sure that it’s got the kinds of quantum sensing solutions that we were talking about here to provide that added resiliency. 

Let me just reinforce a couple of points here too, that having quantum capabilities can certainly be a competitive advantage to reinforce position navigation and timing, create that resiliency, and really to create that degree of precision and accuracy that is going to be a game-changer. I mean, quantum solutions are going to be a game-changer. 

It’s a whole other way of applying technology to get much more precision in our ability to sense, in our ability to establish position, navigation and timing, in our ability to communicate and in our ability to compute data. Once quantum computers come online and our ability to encrypt and safeguard systems from being hacked and provide cybersecurity. So quantum solutions are going to be a game-changer. 

If the United States does not invest in quantum research and continues to cede to China that advantage, we will be left behind, we will lose our ability to compete effectively, given what quantum solutions will be able to do in terms of that added precision and accuracy that’s so important to targeting, to understanding the environment, to being able to create effects.

35:47 – 36:04 

Thank you, Ma’am. Now, Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy has positioned itself at the forefront of national security and commercial space.  

So how can the space consultancy you’re both a part of support the growing investment, development and integration of emerging technologies like quantum – for the space domain? 

36:05 – 36:37 

HR: General Crider and the other Elara Nova founders have, assembled an impressive group of educated, experienced, smart, resourceful partners who also have vast individual networks of connectivity and collaboration and that assists us in allowing Elara Nova to meet these challenges of the future in space and beyond in all domains of technologies and industries. Thank you. 

36:38 – 38:13 

KC: Thanks, General Raduege. Yeah, we certainly are very honored and fortunate to have such a team of experts, including General Raduege, amongst our partners who bring experiences from across space operations, all of the space mission areas I alluded to previously, across air, ground, sea and cyber mission areas as well from a joint context, working very closely with space throughout their careers, from both a military perspective, the intelligence community, as well as individuals on our team who just come from the industry sector themselves and have been building and applying technology solutions to meet the needs of both military and intelligence community requirements. 

As these new technologies come forward, Elara Nova sits in the center and really works to try to help identify where the best applications of these technologies will be, how to engage the entire community of industry, government, academia to work through the various issues that we touched on from a quantum perspective, how to bring these capabilities forward into the innovation systems and processes that the government has established. 

That’s what Elara Nova does. We work with industry partners around the world. We work with the tech innovation community, we work with the investors, and we work with the government to bring all that to bear and we are excited to help drive emerging technologies forward, like quantum, to enable the needs of our nation and to assure our space superiority and that of our allies as we continue to leverage space for our national security interests. 

38:14 – 38:50 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.

Episode 18: 2024 Election Presents Promise and Peril for PPBE Reform to Deliver Space Superiority 

Host: Scott King 

SME: Shawn Barnes, Elara Nova Partner 

00:02 – 02:24 

Over the past decade, China’s rapid rise in adopting and deploying innovative technologies has sparked a new “Great Power Competition,” particularly in the space domain. According to Major General Gregory J Gagnon, the chief intelligence officer for the United States Space Force, China’s “strategic breakout” in space is evident by the country’s more than 1,000 satellites on-orbit today, and a demonstrated capacity to launch over 200 satellites each year. 

To put into context just how rapid China’s rise has been, Major General Gagnon also noted that in 2014 – China was only able to put 24 satellites on-orbit in a single year. 

Meanwhile, the budgetary process for the Department of Defense (DOD) – known as the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution or PPBE – is increasingly unable to keep up with the rapid innovations of modern technology. And in the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act – or NDAA – Congress mandated a Commission on PPBE Reform to deliver guidance for modernizing the DOD’s budgetary process. 

Last spring, the Commission on PPBE Reform issued its Final Report – with 28 recommendations across five critical areas. And now, with the 2024 election underway, the inevitable change in administration – regardless of the election’s outcome – presents both promise and peril for PPBE reform. 

Welcome to the Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. I’m your host, Scott King. And our guest today is Elara Nova partner – Shawn Barnes, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Congressional Budget and Appropriations Liaison. In this role, Shawn successfully advocated for the Air Force and Space Force budgets for fiscal years 2023, 2024, and 2025, securing critical funding for future operations.  

Now, Shawn is here to discuss the Commission on PPBE Reform’s Final Report, and the implications for the next administration – regardless of the 2024 election outcome – to see their recommendations through and deliver space superiority to the warfighter.  

Shawn, welcome to the show! 

02:25 – 02:29 

Well, thank you very much, Scott. I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak with you today. 

02:29 – 02:43 

Of course, now, we hear the term “space superiority” used a lot these days. So first and foremost, I’d like to define what that is, in the context of this conversation.  

So can you describe what we mean by “space superiority?”

02:44 – 03:25 

Yep, absolutely. So, I think for the purposes of this discussion today, we ought not to focus on the doctrinal definition, which is really very mission-oriented and focused on making sure that you can provide space capability at a time and place of your choosing. 

But rather think about space superiority and having the space capabilities that provide us superior capability to both support the terrestrial warfighter as well as defeat any potential adversary and, of course, deter adversaries. So that’s when I think of space superiority for the purposes of this conversation today – that’s what I mean. 

03:26 – 04:07 

Thank you, Shawn. Now, the current budgeting process the DOD uses today is known as PPBE – or Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution – and it’s been in place for quite a long time. 

But last spring, the Congressionally-mandated Commission on PPBE Reform published its Final Report advocating for a new approach to the budgeting process for defense acquisition.  

I’d like to tie this into our need for space superiority – so can you describe why this commission was necessary in the first place? And in what ways might the PPBE process be restricting our budgeting process to acquire the military capabilities the DOD needs to maintain space superiority?

04:08 – 06:35 

Yep, as you said, the PPBE process, formerly known as PPBS, had been put in place by Robert McNamara back in the Kennedy administration in 1961 because, frankly, the defense budgeting lacked any sense of real discipline. And it was done, in a fairly ad hoc manner. Now, that ad hoc manner gave it flexibility, but it lacked oversight by the Hill and the Department of Defense. And so, McNamara’s approach was to take what was a fairly loose system and put a significant amount of rigor and discipline into it that I think served the nation pretty well for several decades. 

At that time, however, the pace of change was relatively slow. It was critical that we tie budget to strategy and clearly the nation had in mind, strategy to be able to defeat the Soviet Union and so, to have that PPBE process was important.  

As we have moved forward, and the world has continued to change – what we find is that that pace of change is now at a point where the PPBE process, as it currently exists, no longer serves us as well as it should.  

And space is not unique in suffering the challenges that the PPBE process has today, but because the pace of change is even faster in the space domain than it is in the air and the maritime and the terrestrial domains in general, and that pace on both the adversary as well as the technology, because that pace is so much faster in space, the impact of not being able to make those changes at an appropriate pace, is even larger. 

It typically on a well-oiled PPBE process is about two years from the time that the services begin their work to the time that money is actually appropriated and often it’s more like two and a half years. Well, frankly, the world changes a lot in two and a half years, and we need to be able to act more quickly. 

And so the Authorizers, in this case, the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, through the National Defense Authorization Act, put in place a Commission to look at the PPBE process and make a series of recommendations as to how that might be improved.

06:36 – 06:47 

So you described how the pace of change is accelerating, but can you put that into context with China’s advancements in space? And how does that factor into this need to re-assess our budgeting process? 

06:48 – 08:12 

Yeah, and it isn’t just the pace of our adversary. It’s actually the pace of technology and opportunities as well. And so there were really two – those two key factors that drove the need for this Commission. 

If you take a look at what China has been able to do over the last decade, it is truly remarkable. They have gone from being a country that was clearly following, but learning, to a country that is now, on the verge of leading in many, many different areas. Some of that is quantum computing, their air and missile systems and tremendous growth in their space capabilities. So China has gone from being a potential near-peer competitor to a pacing challenge – and I think some would argue – they are an out-pacing challenge and one that we need to take very, very seriously.  

At the same time, the pace of change in technology has also created opportunities that we need to be able to take advantage of and frankly, the United States’ greatest attribute is its innovation in the private sector and so being able to take advantage of that innovation in the private sector is absolutely critical to our ability to stay in front of a pacing challenge like China.

08:13 – 08:20 

And specifically on the pace of innovation for space technologies – how does this present both an opportunity and a risk for the DOD? 

08:21 – 09:36 

So there’s a couple of major things that have happened in the space industry. There’s several, but a couple of, I think, very important ones. One is the cost of launch has been reduced dramatically and that’s been driven by competition and that competition now allows us to be able to launch much, much, cheaper than we ever have been before. 

In addition to the cost of launch, the frequency of launch is now up at a very, very high pace and so, that part of it gives us access to space in a way that we hadn’t had before. That also drives the opportunity to launch things that are less expensive and launch more frequently because that cost of launch is down. 

The other side of that is the miniaturization. We have been able to frankly, stuff more capability into a smaller box and then put it onto satellites, which now allow us to be able to do things that heretofore have had to be done on very large, very heavy, very expensive systems and so having lightweight, small capabilities, that can be networked to outperform large satellites has been a significant driver and allows that innovation across the ecosystem.

09:37 – 10:18 

Now, I’d like to transition to the Commission’s Final Report itself.  

The Commission published 28 recommendations across five critical areas. And, I’d like to go through each of these five critical areas and have you provide some perspective on what the Commission is trying to achieve. 

The first critical area described in the report was to “Improve the Alignment of Budgets to Strategy.” 

To this end, the Commission recommends replacing PPBE with what they call the Defense Resourcing System – or DRS.  

In what ways might the current PPBE process have misalignment between budget and strategy? And how would the DRS present a solution for that misalignment? 

10:19 – 14:16 

So first of all, absolutely critical that budgets align to strategy and not the other way around. And frankly, as much as we say every year that we want to have strategy-driven budgets, in the end, what very often happens is that we figure out what our strategy is after we put the whole thing together, despite all the intentions to the otherwise. 

So today PPBE stands for Planning Program Budget and Execution and what the Commission is recommending is that we simplify that a little bit and so they wanted to describe it as the Defense Resourcing System. 

And they think about it in terms of Strategy Development, Resource Allocation and Execution. So sort of a three phase as opposed to a four phase, but they make recommendations for each of those parts to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of each of those three phases. 

So it kind of starts with the timing of some strategy documents: our National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, National Military Strategy – those will continue to be foundational documents. But coming out of that then is some guidance that today we call the Defense Planning Guidance and that document, typically is not particularly impactful for the development of the budget by the services. 

It is used as a grading mechanism once the services provide their budget recommendations to OSD, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the way that the services do that for a couple of reasons.  

First of all, it usually comes too late so that by the time the Defense Planning Guidance or DPG arrives on the services as a finalized document, the services are largely done with building their budget submission.  

And the second is, is the Defense Planning Guidance, frankly, does not make the kinds of hard choices that need to be made by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and I think that a more rigorous discussion upfront, that includes senior leaders across the Department of Defense, not just within OSD, then leads towards a document where those hard decisions about where we can accept risk can be made in a more substantive manner.  

And there’s a couple of things that the Commission has recommended that will assist with that. One is – is to have an ongoing strategy discussion within the Department of Defense that has periodic and timely updates to strategy, and by timely updates what I mean is that it would be in front of the main efforts to actually develop what today is called the “POM, the Program Objective Memorandum,” which is really the services’ submission to OSD for their budget and so the Department of the Air Force has a single POM, that includes both US Air Force and US Space Force and some other Department of the Air Force administrative housekeeping kinds of money in it and in the future has a different term to it.  

So, that’s an important part of what they’re looking to do is have that continuous strategy development and update that’s driven by things like wargames and senior level conversations, so that seniors understand the sort of expectations that would be put forth for when they’re developing their budget.  

A second part of that is to understand the budget in a way that you can show that it is related to strategy. So even when we do budgets that are highly-aligned to strategy, it is often difficult to explain that to Congress and to the public in a way that is compelling and so being able to adjust the way that budgets are explained, and displayed, and documented will be an important part of aligning to strategy. 

14:17 – 15:02 

You mentioned the POM – which together with the Budget Estimate Submission make up what the service submits to the Office of the Secretary of Defense – or OSD – for the DOD portion of what ultimately becomes the Presidential Budget. 

Now, the future term you referenced for this step in the process the Commission suggests calling the “Resource Allocation Submission” – or RAS – which would replace the POM and the Budget Estimate Submission by consolidating them into a single RAS document that will streamline the budget submission process.  

So if these changes were to take effect – how would a better alignment between budget and strategy help with adopting innovative space technologies? Particularly with respect to the pace of innovation that we were discussing earlier? 

15:03 – 16:30 

I think there’s a number of opportunities there. If you think about, displaying your budget material in terms of an overall capability. 

So let’s think about strategic missile warning as an example. Strategic missile warning is done through a combination of satellites on-orbit and large radars on the ground and the people that operate them and the connections between them all coming together to provide that warning of incoming, intercontinental ballistic missiles. Today, the way that the budget is displayed, it would show each of those piece parts as something different from each other and not be done in a holistic manner. 

And because of that, it makes it very difficult to make trades across different programs within a capability set. So now, if I have an innovative capability to – let’s just say that I’ve got some sort of new magic that allows for a much greater fidelity coming from satellites, maybe that means I don’t have to have the same sort of capability on the ground or from a different set of satellites. 

So it is difficult to take advantage of that innovation today in a way that allows the most efficient use of budgets in the future and so being able to pull all that together in a more holistic fashion allows the more effective on-ramping of technology.  

16:31 – 16:40 

The second critical area the Commission identified is to: “Foster Innovation and Adaptability.” 

How does the Commission recommend the DOD do this? 

16:41 – 20:23 

This really gets into sort of the Resource Allocation phase, by and large, although some of it is also in the Execution phase. Part of what they recommend is to increase the flexibility primarily in what we call “operations and maintenance funding, O&M,” which is, funds that are only good for a single year. 

So when they’re appropriated, ideally on October 1st of 2024. They expire on September 30th of 2025. If they’re appropriated on March 1st of 2025, they still expire on September 30th of 2025 and so you only have so much time to be able to expend those funds. And because of that, at the end of the year when you haven’t necessarily spent all funds in the manner that you had intended, there is a mad rush to spend money, as quickly as possible and not necessarily in the most effective manner. 

So one of the things that the the Commission recommends is to take a small portion of O&M funding, and they think about 5% to be able to say, “Let’s roll that over and make that two-year money or three-year money,” so that you don’t have a mad rush to spend every last dollar, even if you’re not buying the most important things and I think that that would make better use of the taxpayers’ dollars. 

Another thing that they talk about is, during the budget execution, the ability to move money around a little bit easier. There is something called, “Above Threshold and Below Threshold Reprogramming Authorizations.” 

And when something is Below Threshold, it means that the services can move money around and if it’s Above a Threshold, then they have to ask for permission from Congress and it goes to the two Appropriations committees and the two Authorization committees, and then sometimes also the intel committees depending on what that money is.  

And they have to get permission from all 4 or 6 committees to move money from one program to another program, or from one color of money to another color of money. And that is not necessarily the most effective way to do business, so if they were to raise the Above Threshold Reprogramming Threshold, then the Department of Defense could move more money around.  

They also point out, though, the need to be able to do that in a way that maintains transparency with the Hill because, frankly, absent that transparency, it is very, very unlikely that the Hill would approve changes that would be significant in that.  

A third is, the limits on Continuing Resolutions. So a Continuing Resolution goes into place almost always on October 1st, just like it has this year and what that means is you can spend on the same things that you spent last year and basically at the same rate that you were spending them. But it doesn’t take into account the new things that you want to be able to do and it also doesn’t take into account that you want to maybe stop doing some of the things that you were doing in the previous year. 

So we have now moved into a Continuing Resolution for Fiscal Year ’25 that is spending at the same rate and on the same things that we had in Fiscal Year ’24. What it doesn’t allow us to do is new things and those are called “new-starts.” Now there’s reasons to not want to have new-starts as part of that authority, but it does certainly reduce the flexibility and reduce the timeliness of being able to get new capabilities going. 

20:24 – 20:46 

Thank you, Shawn. And so this leads us to the third critical area, which the Commission defines as “Strengthening Relationships between DOD and Congress.”  

You just mentioned the need for more transparency, especially between DOD and the Hill. So what are the current communication gaps that often exist or sometimes exist between the executive and legislative branches?

20:47 – 22:16 

There is a bright line for discussions between the executive branch and the legislative branch, with respect to budget and the timing of budget decisions. And I think that that tends to lead to a relationship that is not particularly collaborative and I think that that is something that needs to be adjusted, quite frankly. 

I believe that early and more substantive discussions between the Department of Defense and the Hill on the kinds of challenges that are faced, both from a budgetary standpoint, but from a capability standpoint, a threat standpoint, as well as a sense of changes that the Hill should expect to see in future budgets would help with the transparency challenges that are there today. 

So when the Hill receives a budget and they’re surprised by what is in it, you’re starting an uphill battle. If, on the other hand, we could have some of those conversations early and often, then when a budget’s delivered, they would say, “Yes, we expected that you would be making these changes.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that they would be accepting of them, but it would mean that they’re not surprised by them and I think that that would go a long way toward a more collaborative relationship between the Hill and the executive branch. 

22:17 – 22:49 

And specifically as it pertains to classification – or even over-classification in some cases – this can complicate some of these communication efforts.  

So one recommendation the Commission is putting forward in this critical area – is to establish classified and unclassified communication enclaves.  

How would these enclaves, both in a classified and unclassified sense, help inform our congressional leaders so that there aren’t as many surprises when the President’s Budget is unveiled every spring? 

22:50 – 24:15 

So in terms of the over-classification. The challenges are a couple. One is, not everyone on the Hill would be clear to the most highly-classified material, whether that is threat material – what our adversary is up to – or, how we intend to address the threat with a set of capabilities that we have and when not everyone is cleared to that information, it gets stovepiped in a way that isn’t helpful sometimes and so being able to reduce the level of classification, prudently, will be important in the future. 

The second is that if you want to gain support from your constituency, the taxpayers are the congressman’s and the congresswoman’s constituents. They need to be able to explain things and so it’s got to be simple and they’ve got to be able to do that at an unclassified level. And so the more that we can talk about our capabilities and the adversary’s capabilities in an unclassified way, the easier it will be for the Hill to explain why it’s important to their constituents because they can’t very well just say ‘Just trust me. We have a problem that we need to deal with.’ 

Because that, frankly, doesn’t go a long way. We have a skeptical society and for good reason and so I think being able to explain in clear ways at an unclassified level will be very important. 

24:16 – 24:38 

Now, these communication efforts even extend to the varying roles of Congress and their respective relationships to the DOD. 

For example, different committees in Congress serve the role of “Authorizers,” while others serve the role of “Appropriators.” 

Can you describe why it’s important to understand the difference between Authorizers and Appropriators and how they relate to the DOD budget? 

24:39 – 26:26 

Authorizers – the HASC and the SASC –  House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, they’re the ones that write the National Defense Authorization Act, which is primarily a policy bill. It has numbers in it to authorize funding.  

But in the end, that authorized funding is not what actually gets put into a budget. So the Authorizers primarily are developing a policy bill that has dollars associated that give a sense of the sorts of money that would likely be available.  

The Appropriators build a budget and it is very light on policy. But they do focus very significantly on the specific dollar amounts by program, by budget line item. They are less concerned about whether or not the Department of Defense has the right requirements, as they are: “Are they making the right use of taxpayers dollars?” 

Because that’s their job. They are the appropriators that will appropriate budgets that eventually get spent. And so, their budget development and their oversight role is focused very clearly on that and so that’s a very data-centric demand. 

And it is, in the end, the money that’s appropriated that matters when it gets to be spent. And there are sometimes different views on, on things between the Authorizers and the Appropriators. And that can create some tension on the Hill, but it can also create some tension in the Defense Department when the Authorizers would say, “I want you to do A at level X,” and the Appropriators say, “Well, I want you to do B at level Y,” because in the end, you can’t do A at level X if you don’t have money to do that and you have to obey the appropriations law in the end.

26:27 – 26:44 

The fourth critical area evaluated by the Commission is to “Modernize Business Systems and Data Analytics.” 

Can you explain how the DOD currently manages its budgetary data? And how would a single, common platform the Commission is proposing improve decision-making for the DOD budget?

26:45 – 28:11 

I’d start by saying there is no single system that the Department of Defense uses today. 

What the Department of Air Force uses is different than what the Department of Navy uses, which is different than what the Department the Army uses. And, oh, by the way, it’s different from what OSD uses, and different from what OMB uses and so you’ve got multiple databases, and so just the challenge of moving information from one database to another lends itself to mistakes. 

And it lends itself to having funds go into the wrong budget line item and because those mistakes can, frankly, be pretty significant, we spend an awful lot of human time and effort to reduce those mistakes. Well, that’s not a very effective use of human beings. We should have humans do what humans are good at, which is making judgments and let machines do what machines are good at, which is transferring data from one database to another database. And even better yet, having a single database that we can all work off. That really only makes sense.  

So I think that there’s, some real opportunities there. And I think the data analytics would, both tie capabilities together and understand, “Oh, if I cut something out of a program, A, that will have significant impacts on programs B, C, and D, even though, they may not be tied in your head in the same way that, that they actually are implied.” 

28:12 – 28:25 

Moving to the last critical area, the Commission aims to “Strengthen the Capability of the Resourcing Workforce.” 

Why is it important to strengthen the knowledge base of personnel that are managing the budgetary side of acquiring space technologies?  

28:26 – 29:33 

So I like to use the terms ‘Recruit, retain and refresh.’ Because refresh, indicates that maybe, it’s time for changing some people in and out and it also means that they continue to be educated on what’s the latest in the greatest.  

In today’s world, we have financial management professionals. That is, an AFSC within the Department of the Air Force to be an FM professional. And obviously the civilians do the same things. They are FM professionals and they’re certified in the same way that we have acquisition professionals.  

On the other hand, the people that today build the POM may have gone through a few days training, and maybe they have some years of experience, but there’s not a certification program for developing a POM for doing that resource allocation piece. 

And so it’s something that comes with a lot of experience and there are some classes in it, but there’s nothing like the sort of professional piece to it that we have on the comptroller side of it. And so I think that there are certainly some opportunities for more formalized training for those folks that go into that – I think would be significant value added.  

29:34 – 29:55 

Thank you, Shawn. 

Since its release, the DOD announced an Implementation Plan for the Commission’s previously issued “Interim Report,” which came out in August of 2023. 

Now, based on both the Implementation Plan and the DOD’s response to the Final Report – what do these signals suggest about the DOD’s key takeaways from the Commission’s findings? 

29:56 – 31:57 

The reaction of the Department of Defense to the Report has been overwhelmingly positive, and overwhelmingly forward-leaning. 

The Dep. Secretary of Defense, Secretary Hicks, stood up a team to begin implementing as many of those things as were within the Department of Defense’s control as they could. That signals that the Department of Defense understands that there are significant limitations to the current system that we have. 

Now, there are many things that are outside the Department of Defense’s ability to implement on its own and will take collaboration with the Hill. And I think that the Department of Defense is very willing to engage in that collaboration and I think that there are portions of the Hill that are looking forward to that, and there are portions of the Hill that are somewhat resistant to that. 

And I understand that resistance. They want to ensure that they can provide the appropriate oversight that’s necessary and I think that that’s absolutely critical, it’s the way that the Constitution drives things. 

So I think it’s incumbent on the Department of Defense and the Hill to work together to understand how can that necessary transparency be put in place in a way that then allows some of the other changes that I think everyone agrees the goals for the changes, which is more rapid, and more agile, reaction to both the adversary as well as the opportunities of innovation. 

There is no one on the Hill that says we need to slow down. To a person, it is: “How can we adjust faster?” So the goals – there is great agreement on. How you get to those goals is going to continue to take some work. 

But I think the main signal from the Department of Defense’s Implementation Plan is that they take it very, very seriously and that they are more than willing to work with the Hill to implement as many of the recommendations as possible.

31:58 – 32:38 

At the time of this taping – we are in the heat of the 2024 election. And by law, the Presidential Budget – for the upcoming fiscal year – is presented to Congress on the first Monday in February. 

Regardless of election outcome, there will be a new incoming administration, as well as a new Congress. 

So, in order to make sure that the Commission’s Final Report and its findings don’t fall through the cracks, so to speak, and also considering the quick turnaround time from Inauguration Day in late January, to a Presidential Budget in early February – what key points from the Commission’s Final Report should the incoming administration consider as it prepares its next budget? 

32:39 – 34:31 

The first thing I would do is I would commend to the incoming administration – read the Report. The entire report’s fairly long, but the executive summary is 20-some odd pages. It is absolutely worth the, you know, half hour or 45 minutes to read the Report and understand the kinds of challenges that are there. 

The second is for the new administration to take a collaborative approach with the Hill, and to try to set that up as quickly as possible, and set up a relationship between the Department of Defense and OMB and the Hill – that is one that looks to collaborate on solving the nation’s problems. 

From a practical standpoint, talk to the commissioners, talk to the chair and the vice chair of the Commission about what their findings are and, frankly, behind closed doors say, “Is there more that you would do?” Because my view of the Commission’s Report is that, while there are some very, very positive, substantive recommendations. 

I think that they probably would have liked to have recommended more, but they knew that they were unlikely to be received as well. That’s what I would commend the incoming administration to do, whichever administration is elected. 

And by definition, as you said, the next administration is going to be a new administration. You’re going to have a new Congress. I expect that there’ll actually be significant turnover on both the House and the Senate side and so you’ll have a number of freshmen members that will be willing to take a fresh approach. 

And this will be a great opportunity to be able to say, “Hey, let’s maybe bury the hatchet in some cases. Let’s take a fresh approach. Let’s take into account the seriousness of the world that we face, and determine as a nation that we are willing to adjust some of the conventions that we’ve had in the past to address the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that face us today.”

34:32 – 34:50 

What about the status quo? Despite this unique opportunity with a new President and a new Congress – what if the Commission’s findings are neglected and their recommendations aren’t implemented, or lost in the transition?  

Can you reinforce the imperative for why the Commission’s Final Report needs to be taken seriously? 

34:51 – 35:40 

I will tell you, I think we live in perilous times. And, I commented earlier that, I don’t think that China, in many ways, is a pacing challenge. 

I think it’s an out-pacing challenge. And I think that the sooner that our nation comes to understand that, and that’ll start with a new President reinforcing that. The sooner that that can happen, the sooner it will be easier to put in place the changes necessary to get after that. 

If we fail to take advantage of the innovation that the commercial world brings us and when I say the commercial world – industry in general – we will find ourselves playing second to China, within the next five years. And I don’t think that that’s a place that our nation wants to be, and it’s not a place that the rest of the world wants our nation to be. 

35:41 – 36:04 

It seems to me, the Commission’s findings seem to really be pushing for a delicate balance between maintaining the discipline needed for a budget, while also implementing some flexibility to adapt and innovate in the modern era.  

So can you tie these critical areas and these recommendations to that delicate balance between budgetary discipline and flexible adoption for innovative technologies? 

36:05 – 37:26 

I think you hit it spot on, Scott, that this is about that balance between discipline and agility or flexibility. And when you take a look at the 28 recommendations that are there, they generally are about adding agility and adding flexibility, but they do it in a way that doesn’t remove the discipline. 

There is great recognition and respect for the role of the legislative branch in this, and that the PBBE Commission was very smart to take that approach. 

It is in the main – their recommendation that we seek a more collaborative relationship between the executive and legislative branches, which would then facilitate the sort of agility and flexibility, because you have a relationship that at least has a modicum of trust that’s associated with it.  

There will always be a need for checks and balances and there will always be a need for oversight on the part of Congress. And there will always be a need for the budget to begin and end on the Hill. I mean, they are the ones that are responsible for doing that. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tremendous opportunities for greater collaboration and a greater sense of trust between the executive and the legislative branches and that, in my mind, is really what the Commission’s Report is all about.

37:27 – 37:43 

Now, what role can Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy, and its partners such as yourself – not only support the commercial space industry developing these innovative technologies, but also the government partners looking to adopt them and deliver space superiority to the warfighter? 

39:49 – 38:44 

Listen, I was attracted and started working with the Founders of Elara Nova, based on their personal credibility. I’ve known the Founders for many years, and each of the individuals are fantastic human beings.  

As I got to know Elara Nova better and got to understand the 70-some odd consultants that are part of it. I’m amazed at the breadth and the depth of experience. You’ve got folks like myself that understand the resource allocation process very well, that understand the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch very well. 

You’ve got other folks that have been, program managers and program executive officers, and leading large acquisition organizations within the Department of Defense. And then you’ve got folks that are experts at private equity and venture capital, folks that have started their own companies, and all of that has been kind of within the space ecosystem and so when a company wants to work with Elara Nova, they get the benefit of all of that.

38:45 – 39:22 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.