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 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. 

Episode 19: Defense Science Board Offers Commercial Pathway to Integrated Deterrence 

Host: Scott King (SK) 

SME: Mike Dickey, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy (MD)

Dr. Brad Tousley, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy and Defense Science Board member (BT)

00:02 – 01:43 

SK: In November of 2022, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering commissioned the Defense Science Board – or DSB – a Federal Advisory Committee serving the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to study the commercial space market and how their systems can be leveraged to support Department of Defense – or DOD – objectives.

The study came in direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier that year, when commercial space systems provided critical capabilities in support of Ukraine’s defense. The use of these commercial space systems in Ukraine, however, was not planned in advance – but rather occurred organically at the onset of the invasion.

Now, the DOD wants to apply the lessons learned and capitalize on similar opportunities to integrate commercial space capabilities into their own military requirements.

The study concluded in May of 2024, when the Defense Science Board published its “Final Report on Commercial Space System Access and Integrity,” which provided five recommendations toward what the DSB determined to be its bottom line objective: “Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations.”

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King, and today we’ll be exploring the Defense Science Board’s Final Report and how its recommendations offer a pathway toward integrating commercial space capabilities into military requirements. 

Returning to The Elara Edge today is our first guest: Mike Dickey, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy and the former Chief Architect of the United States Space Force. 

Mike, welcome to the show!

01:43 – 01:44  

MD: Well thanks, Scott. Glad to be back. 

01:45 – 02:01 

SK: We’re happy to have you.  

And our second guest today is Dr. Brad Tousley, who in addition to being a partner at Elara Nova, is a member of the Defense Science Board and directly contributed to the Final Report we’ll be discussing today.  

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

02:02 – 02:03 

BT: Thanks, Scott. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

02:04 – 02:29 

SK: Now, the Defense Science Board’s Final Report comes at a time when the budding relationships between the military and the emerging commercial space market is drawing more and more attention. 

I’d like to begin by understanding how we reached this point. Why are commercial companies – and the institutional investors financially supporting them – entering the space domain? And why has this development captured the DOD’s attention? 

Mike, let’s start with you. 

02:30 – 04:03 

MD: Yeah and it’s very interesting. This is what we call dual-use technology. Those technologies that the commercial world is maybe focusing for commercial purposes can be transitioned into military use and vice versa. 

Just a couple of examples, in the communications business, the military needs communications worldwide so that they can transmit orders from commanders to troops in the field, ships at sea, airplanes in the air. But it’s also the same technology that brings you the World Series, for instance.  

And in the imagery market, the imagery can be used to find Russian convoys on highways in Ukraine. And it can also be used to monitor crude oil movement through ports around the world, which has obviously important impacts on the market.  

PNT – positioning, navigation and timing. You use that to put bombs in very precise places to limit collateral damage. You also need that for precision farming, so farmers can increase yields in their crops by knowing where exactly to put fertilizer.  

So, all of these technologies have a whole bunch of markets they can address. So when you’re an investor, you look at total addressable market and, by doing both military and commercial things with your technology, you get access to much bigger markets and coupled with the reduced barrier in access to launch, has made it cheaper to get to orbit so now something that’s more doable from an investor’s capital.  

But those are the kinds of things that have driven the ability for commercial to come in and play in this world and not just sovereign governments. 

04:04 – 05:11 

BT: I would just add two minor points to that. 

Number one, there’s a physical attribute within space that’s a little bit unique here, and that is that in other, I’ll say, warfighting domains, you can separate capabilities, military and commercial capabilities. But in the space domain, because of orbital dynamics, everything is intermingled. So what that means is – if I already have commercial capabilities in space and they’re growing because of the market pull, like Mike talked about, those systems are going to be physically GEO-located with military needs. So I think that’s one reason why you’re seeing this growth.  

The other is the cost of launch, particularly in the last 15-20 years, has come down so much that as interest rates stay low, the private capital that’s always seeking the maximum return in a capitalist society – that return is going to be seen as promising. 

And I think space has seen that. And when the fact that when launch comes down by a factor of ten and interest rates drop, all of a sudden you see these opportunities, venture capitalists are going to take that money, they’re going to flow it wherever they think there is a return. And space has been really arguably the hottest area of growth the last five years and all of the market projections indicate it’s not going to slow down for 10 to 15, 20 years.  

05:12 – 05:52 

MD: In the government’s Fiscal Year of 21, which was kind of the peak of where commercial investment was before the pandemic and a bunch of other things, the commercial market was investing in those dual-use technologies about $15 billion a year. 

The Space Force’s budget in Fiscal Year 21 was $15 billion a year. So you literally had two Space Force’s worth of budget that you could apply to the problems that that the military had if you did that in the right way. And so that’s a huge opportunity for the Department of Defense to leverage that kind of investment. 

And we’ll talk about all the different ways that they can leverage it. So I think we’re still in a long period here of a lot of outside money coming into the space business. 

05:53 – 06:22 

SK: These market developments have sparked a series of commercial space strategies across various DOD organizations. 

But effectively integrating commercial space capabilities into military strategy also presents complex challenges, the first of which is the somewhat broad understanding of what actually defines quote – unquote “commercial space.” 

Dr. Tousley, can you explain how the Defense Science Board defined “commercial space?”  

And how does this understanding influence the government’s relationship with the commercial space market? 

06:23 – 07:12 

BT: Within the Terms of Reference and within that study, we really defined “commercial” in four buckets. We defined things as commercial innovation, which is more on the research end – which think of AFWERX and SPACEWERX and DIU and the things they are funding. 

Then the second bucket we kind of identified is commercial development. So think of commercial systems that are being built and the government is trying to buy them in bulk for government use.  

Then the third thing is essentially buying a commercial product, which means systems the commercial world is already building, and we just want to buy copies of it. 

And then the last is services. The commercial world always builds things and offers them to customers for services, in this case the Department of Defense, the Space Force, the intelligence community.  

They want to be acquiring these services, so we think of them in terms of those in bulk: innovation, development, products and services.   

07:13 – 08:26 

MD: The language here is really important because companies will come in and say, ‘Well, I’m a commercial company.’ So they think that that opens up a new world for them. But again, the language is important. What makes you a commercial company? If the government wants to think that when you say you’re a commercial company, you have something with a big market and you want the DOD to be one extra buyer in that market, and so you can just kind of buy at the margins. 

That’s typically not been the case with some of these space companies, because the commercial markets in space have still not truly matured except in communications, probably, you can say that that’s a mature market.  

But all the other markets, it’s still not mature. So really what these companies typically want is for the government to kind of be an anchor customer, to be their first customer, to be the biggest buyer of that product or that service. 

And then allow that to be a demand signal to the rest of the world that a commercial market is possible through these products and services. So, it really starts the conversation, perhaps in a bad place because you can be one of those where you’re just one of many buyers or you could use the Federal Acquisition Regulations to buy in a commercial way and I think a lot of times that conversation will kind of spiral and slow down the progress between the commercial companies and the government.  

08:27 – 09:33 

BT: With the emergence of this robust commercial market. We think it’s important for the government as a wise customer to understand how they can affect the market in a good way or a bad way. 

You have these companies, they want to grow into all these addressable markets. And yet the government what you really want long-term is you want a good, robust ecosystem of competitors. 

So the prices stay in a margin range that’s acceptable. You can understand it. And so as some companies succeed and some fail, you aren’t totally reliant on one company. So the concern is that depending upon how the market unfolds, the government needs to be careful not to get themselves locked into a vendor lock.  

Now, if I’m a commercial vendor, I want vendor lock. I want you to buy everything I have and don’t buy anything from my competitor. That’s capitalism. That’s my market drive.  

But on the government side, when you’re supporting the warfighter and delivering operational capability. You want the capability, you want the best, but you also don’t want to be dependent on one vendor because you don’t know what will happen down the line. 

You want prices to stay in control, and you want competition. I mean, that’s good. So there’s that balancing act that the U.S. government has to be concerned about and that’s kind of what we call out in terms of being careful of vendor lock. 

09:34 – 10:40 

MD: There are ways to navigate through that. It can get complicated and it’s tough, but an anchor tenant really means that, ‘I’m going to go in and I will put down the first investment in this technology. I’ll be the first customer. You know, I’ll be 51% or more of what you’re doing with the anticipation that other markets, the other markets are going to mature, other customers will come and you’re part of that customer pie will reduce over time.‘ 

You know, the government’s been bitten by this a little bit. And even in space with the first commercial imagery contracts, there were a couple of providers for that. As the government’s fiscal situation changed over time, the government couldn’t be anchor tenants for two. That sort of reduced to one and then now you get into this conversation, well have I created vendor lock because I was an anchor tenant? 

So there’s a real concern, I think some of that gives the government pause on wanting to do that again. But I think they can find ways to back out of that. 

You can have on-ramps for other vendors. You can switch to a different type of a model where, ‘Okay, the government’s going to have to start just defining requirements,’ kind of like we used to do back in the day. But those things are all sort of painful for all parties, but it’s a necessary part of maturing what it is we’re trying to do here.

10:41 – 12:49 

BT: One of the other things that we discovered in the course of this study was there is not unanimity of understanding across the Department, and I mean all the services of what the law and what the policy allows the United States government to buy or to leverage. 

And what I mean by that is we actually went to some of the general counsels of the services and said, ‘What do you understand as inherently governmental functions in space? And you did not find agreement across the board. And specifically what we discovered was it was very explicit in the law, in that pretty much the only thing required for the U.S. Air Force, I’ll say with the Air Force is nuclear command and control is a military and a government function. Period. 

That will never, ever be commercial. But there are a host of other things that said, ‘No, that could be commercial, no it can’t.’ And what we discovered was that the difference in interpretation comes down to what’s the law say versus what is your policy. And unfortunately right now there’s not complete concurrence across the Department that’s causing part of the concern. 

For example, is missile tracking, is that only military or could there be elements of that that could be commercial? Well, in fact, there are elements of that could be commercial. The law doesn’t specify missile tracking as being only military, and but the policy does. And so if there’s commercial entities out there, for example, that are developing infrared sensors for crop monitoring – is that commercial? Well, no, that’s only military.  

So the reason I bring it up is that it’s important in understanding the emerging market dynamics for the government to be able to understand and operate that way. And unfortunately, we’re not there yet. But one of the things that we recommend is that there being careful look at the integration of capabilities. 

And the other term we came up with was, integrated deterrence, which means that capabilities of the entire United States between military and commercial requires integrated operations early on. 

We’ve identified that integrated operations are not happening in the planning phase upfront. So what happened in Ukraine. It wasn’t planned in advance. Our recommendation is these sorts of capabilities are emerging quickly now. Let’s think about integrated operations, upfront integrated contracts, all that. Get that laid out now and not try and have to respond later. 

12:50 – 13:05 

SK: And within those four definitions to “commercial space,” the Defense Science Board placed a specific emphasis on what it described as the more near-term elements: commercial products and commercial services.  

Dr. Tousley, can you explain why this emphasis was necessary? 

13:06 – 14:12 

BT: Frankly, when we started digging in on it – in those four buckets we identified from a near-term standpoint. There’s tremendous opportunities, particularly in commercial satellite communications and communications as a service. 

There’s particular opportunities there right now. There’s still questions about how that service model operates and how much the Department should leverage. There was concerns about essentially multi-year funding and color of money and working capital funds in terms of how those models could be implemented.  

The second was there was a variety of products that you can buy right now. And in fact, whether you consider it a product or a service the, you know, what was going on in Ukraine was very clearly something – it’s happening quickly – so from an near-term standpoint, helping the Department arrive at a set of recommendations to implement that right now, you could think, ‘Well, why didn’t you go into more refined evaluation of Space Development Agency with commercial development or DIU and SpaceWERX and innovation’ like that’s already going on quickly. 

We’re not necessarily going to stop or change any of that or we don’t have major recommendations at the moment. But on the services and the product side, there’s stuff already happening and we thought the Department needs to address that quickly.

14:13 – 14:40 

SK: Now, to this end, the Defense Science Board – led by retired General Ellen Pawlikowski and Mandy Vaughn – published five recommendations toward integrating commercial space capabilities into military requirements. 

The first recommendation calls on the government to “implement an end-to-end framework to better integrate existing and planned commercial capabilities into national security architectures.”  

Dr. Tousley, can you elaborate on how the DOD can do this? 

14:41 – 16:05 

BT: The most direct one is to work within a working capital fund within a commercial services market – do the integrated operations upfront and tie those into the warfighting Combatant Commander’s plans – those are not done today. 

When a commercial company wants to set up a service-based contract, that’s typically a multi-year process. Yet within the, you know, Plan, Program, Budget, Evaluation process. We do that every year. There’s colors of money, there’s appropriations within Congress, all that’s very carefully prescribed by law. The problem is when the law sets it up this way. 

But the commercial world operates in a multi-year service contract. How in the heck do you make that work out? General Pawlikowski was very explicit that that has been worked in the past. She had to work that in her time as the head of acquisition for the Air Force and the phrase she uses is ‘working capital fund.‘

There are working capital funds that have been set up across various parts of the Department of Defense that are used for just this purpose: to establish, essentially, funds that allow services to be executed in a multi-year process where the equities of the government’s appropriation process are respected.  

And her recommendation is that – the Board’s recommendation is that – it more broadly gets adopted by the Department and really robustly attack the working capital fund as a model to operate that. But it’s color money, color money, it’s appropriations. It’s the way our government operates, the commercial world just doesn’t operate that way. How do you get the benefit of both? 

16:06 – 16:27 

MD: So General Pawlakowski is certainly right. I mean, in space, the commercial, the communications market over which 80% of the Department of Defense communications travels is all done under a defense working capital fund that in the last few years, that’s been on the order of $8 billion for a bunch of different communications services, so that model is there and it’s a good way to proceed.  

16:28 – 16:54 

BT: And I think part of the reason that we we picked up on the near-term challenge and opportunity in SATCOM because as Mike said, the commercial SATCOM leveraged by the Department of Defense is such a dominant point, that getting that more integrated upfront is, to us from a model standpoint, that’s the number one recommendation we came up with. 

Can be done, should be done. There’s an example of how it works financially. It will leverage the most out of the commercial market and it will provide the biggest benefit to the Department of Defense. 

16:55 – 17:14 

SK: The second recommendation is to “integrate evaluation of and provision for commercial space services into institutional processes.” 

This recommendation ties back to the PPBE process that Dr. Tousley – you referenced earlier – so in what ways might commercial space services be factored into the DOD’s budgeting process? 

17:15 – 18:26 

BT: Part of what’s happening is from a Combatant Command perspective. That is not necessarily done upfront. It’s done after the fact. And so from an annual standpoint, if they’re going to budget within the support of working capital fund, that it needs to be prescribed by law in a way that the Department recognizes it as part of the Space Force budget. It’s identified appropriately. It’s also clearly understood by the commercial market as an addressable market. 

Part of how you get the best out of the commercial marketplace is to make sure that the addressable market, which is how they evaluate what they’re going to spend money on, make sure it’s clear to them what the addressable market is. In many cases, there have been not necessary communications, but in other, I’ll say, remote sensing, sometimes the commercial markets, like I don’t actually know what the Department’s going to spend. 

Or they’ll say one thing and then six months later, when the actual budget actions go through, it’s one-tenth of what they said. And so that lack of transparency makes it difficult for public or private investors to figure out just how big is the market going to be and how much capital can I deploy. 

Given that this is an emerging market and the United States has a tremendous amount of private and public capital that can be brought to bear. It’s the government’s interest to leverage that to the maximum effect. 

18:27 – 18:57 

SK: Now, the PPBE process was the topic of our previous episode on The Elara Edge, when Elara Nova partner Shawn Barnes discussed the findings of a Congressionally-mandated Commission on PPBE Reform. 

The Commission on PPBE Reform advocated for the creation of a new budgeting process it called the “Defense Resourcing System.” But whether or not the Commission’s findings are implemented, how do the recommendations similarly coming from the Defense Science Board remain relevant to whatever budgeting process the DOD adopts? 

18:58 – 20:22 

BT: So I’ll be going on a limb here because we didn’t actually look at that. But here’s one way to think about it: If they’re able to adopt a multi-year acquisition reform and they’re able to tie into working capital fund-like models, I think it’ll be great because I think coming back to the point, the commercial market just needs clarity of what the market is. 

So that’s their interest here and you always want to think of this in terms of constituencies within our system of government. So, the industry partners would like the clarity. So if it’s able to be laid out as a multi-year approach, it’ll more carefully align with services. From a Congress perspective, as long as the appropriations process, they get to review it and look at it as a multi-year appropriation. 

And they get to assess and evaluate it. I think their equities are served. The Department’s equity is going to be served. If we can set up a working capital fund model, because that means they’ll understand year-over-year what’s the burden on their budget.  

And you know, from a Combatant Commander’s perspective, or the supporting command’s perspective, if they know what’s going to happen over a multi-year process, it allows them to support the operations plans better. 

I’m sure they don’t want to go through the process wondering every year, ‘Well, Congress appropriated this, but not that. How does that support my need? I don’t have it.’ So I think it’s great all around.  

I just I think the PPBE annual process was set up long ago when technology did not innovate as quickly, but now the technology, particularly in space, is innovating so quickly. 

How do we respond to that? So I think it’s great.  

20:23 – 21:00 

MD: And I’ll say another aspect of the multi-year. So we talk about working capital funds. So the working capital fund basically creates a checkbook that the government can use each year, but it’s using at, in the spot market basically. So a requirement comes up. And now, we go ask the commercial servicing providers to give bids and then we select one. 

But that bid is for today and you don’t get the best pricing. If you can say, ‘Look, I’m going to do this, but I’m going to, I want to do it for two or three years.’ You’re going to get much better pricing. The cost will go down for that service to the government and it provides the benefit of giving transparency and clarity to the investors and the companies. 

21:01 – 21:40 

BT: Scott one other thing I think was in, in our recommendation, in terms of working more effectively within PPBE, was the ability to allow program executive officers to move funds in between program elements year-to-year, because sometimes one program might under-spend on a service or product, the other might have a need. 

And so that was one of the things we recommended that within a broader portfolio, the Department go to Congress and say, ‘We’d like to have more latitude of shifting funds from one to the other, because in many cases, the funds were underneath the program executive officer in total, but not within specific elements, because some programs are doing better than others.’ So we recommended – provide that flexibility. 

21:41 – 21:59  

SK: This leads us to the Defense Science Board’s third recommendation: “incentivize trust and build resilience among commercial providers.” 

How does trust factor into this budding relationship between the military and its commercial space partners? And are there any examples of how the DOD can effectively do this? 

22:00 – 23:05 

BT: We identified a few things. 

Number one it’s kind of a top level framework on the resilience and trust. The government has concerns about whether or not they can trust the performance and the security and the reliability of a commercial system. On the other hand, the commercial world knows that they depend on the government to help provide some clarity about the threat situation. 

So there’s a need to work together on both sides. And we thought that one way of thinking about it is from a market perspective, include resilience as a quality of service requirement. The government and the contractors acknowledge it’s going to cost more for that. But as long as that’s priced in and considered a part of the economic model, then the vendors know what they have to do. 

The government knows, ‘Okay, I’m going to get this enhanced capability as a function of increased pricing.’ I think that’s good and that’ll establish that market for premium pricing, which doesn’t exist today. There’s – it’s a gap in understanding. 

And then I think, you know, without getting into further specifics, just to improve sharing of indications and warning, because the government has an awareness from a rapid timeline of what’s happening more than the commercial world does. Having said that, as proven in Ukraine, many aspects of the commercial world, once they know the situation, they can respond very quickly.

23:06 – 24:36 

MD: The Department specifically, U.S. Space Command has a commercial integration cell that sits at Vandenberg that’s been very focused, for obvious reasons on SATCOM over the years it’s been in existence. 

And in that case, there are representatives from some of these commercial communication providers that sit with the U.S. Space Command and are aware of ongoing operations, are aware of threats. They have clearances and so they are able then to go back and translate those potential issues into enhancements or upgrades or defensive cyber operations or whatever on the commercial side to be able to continue to provide the service.  

That has got to grow and they recognize that has got to grow. There’s now, I think some remote sensing providers in that, as well. 

In addition to that, which is probably the deepest level of integration, there’s also the Space ISAC. There’s a set of these ISAC information sharing organizations across a bunch of different infrastructure elements within the U.S.  

Space is one of those – the Space ISAC is the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center – and they share things that they’re seeing amongst themselves, at an unclassified level to help everybody sort of up their game in defense and understanding what’s, what’s coming at them so they can provide a more robust product. So there’s a lot of data-sharing that has to go on. 

It is happening and, U.S. Space Command is going to expand as the markets expand for more access to these different mission sets with remote sensing, PNT, whatever else we get, is going to expand to commercial integration cell, too, in response.  

24:37 – 25:04 

SK: Now, the fourth recommendation requests that the government: “develop a suite of capabilities to monitor, assess and respond to adversaries and adversaries’ use of commercial space capabilities.” 

This recommendation explicitly acknowledges that just as the DoD wants to leverage the commercial space capabilities available today, there is a risk that our adversaries can do the same.  

Why is this acknowledgement important and how can the DOD mitigate that risk? 

25:05 – 25:57 

BT: Yeah. So this is one where most of our discussions and recommendations are not in the open document. There’s some classified stuff, but, I’ll put it this way. The commercial world and the U.S. government acknowledge that adversaries will also want to use some of the same commercial capabilities that we would want to use.  

That’s pretty obviously known because if part of the commercial market for a commercial capability happens to reside over a foreign territory of concern to the U.S. government, then you have to know that multiple parties are going to try and use that capability, so that was an acknowledgement – everybody knows it. And yet the commercial vendors, particularly those in the United States, are very concerned about making sure the U.S. government is happy – happy in general. 

So I think other than that, we’ve acknowledged that and there were a variety of discussions happening behind the scenes about how to best protect the U.S. government’s interest in this area and not damage commercial industry. I’ll just leave it at that. 

25:58 – 26:21 

SK: The fifth and final recommendation of the Defense Science Board’s report states the government must: “account for maturity of the commercial market when making decisions on how it regulates, invests and buys commercial space services.”  

In what ways can the maturity of a given space capability influence how the government approaches its relationship with those relevant commercial partners?

26:22 – 29:02 

BT: This is all in the vein of how can the U.S government leverage this capability while not damaging it and at the same time support the robust growth in the commercial sector?  

I think the first thing is the DOD has got to account for maturity. And I’ll give you an example of the commercial market: the GEO commercial SATCOM market. It’s pretty mature. I think the government knows that. The government relies on it. pLEO market a little less mature. Cislunar market, very immature.  

So my point in making those three comparisons is that when the government is making decisions on how it’s going to, you know, regulate, invest and buy these services, the government as a wise consumer of the commercial market needs to account for the maturity of those systems. 

It’s just important for the government to constantly do that maturity assessment of these different markets to figure out if it’s going to regulate, invest or buy because the government is a dominant player. As Mike said, if the government’s 51% of your customer, that’s very important to the commercial sector. So that also means the government can be a damaging influence if it’s not careful. So I think that’s the first thing – account for maturity. 

The second is I think just to avoid over-regulation, the commercial sector is always going to complain about regulation and anything that can inhibit their approach to work to obtain as much of the addressable market as they can because that’s their capitalist tendency. But avoid the over-regulation because a lot of commercial entities in the United States are concerned about over-regulation inhibiting their competition internationally. 

You know, because if the government’s concerned about over-regulation, because there’s a perception of, ‘I got to do this, I go do that to protect my own equities,’ but then you damage the very commercial company you need to depend on. 

Then at the end of the day, you’re left with an international company and nothing domestically. And I’ve talked about this with the vendor lock. Invest for market creation – now that’s a very sensitive statement. Not market monopolization. You don’t want market monopolization, not because of any particular vendor, I don’t think and I don’t think anybody the DSB believes that a dominant vendor is – without competition. 

I don’t think anybody would think that’s in the best interest of the Department of Defense in the long-term. Maybe in the very short-term – it’s fine. But long-term, I don’t think anybody would think this ever works out well where you have a monopoly. It isn’t. So I think the government as a wise consumer and customer needs to think about ‘How do you invest for market creation and not market monopolization?’ 

And then the last thing is, this gets back to the law-policy, ‘what’s inherently governmental?’ Be careful and try and minimize unique requirements when you’re buying commercial services. In order to maximize the commercial service, you’ve got to keep the requirements within what’s feasible, as close as possible to that commercial product, or the commercial service, because that allows you to keep the costs down. 

29:03 – 29:18 

SK: The Final Report concluded with a specific emphasis on what it viewed as its bottom line: “Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations.” 

Dr. Tousley, how do each of these five recommendations align to that bottom line objective?  

29:19 – 30:39 

BT: The bottom line about ‘Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations’ means I’m gonna put myself in the Combatant Commander’s shoes. In order to do an effective job of planning in advance, because you always want to have your plans all set to deal with potential contingencies. 

If I’m going to have my plans well-crafted and articulated in advance, the commercial sector, if I plan on using them, needs to be a part of that plan upfront. It can’t simply be something I’m going to respond to.  

For example, in Ukraine, that only happened as a happenstance. That was not planned in advance. The whole point of integrated operations and integrated deterrence means all kinds of capabilities like that. We ought to be doing plans, the budgeting and the work in advance, to provide the maximum capability to the warfighter.  

The way I view it is, economic power is a critical element of our national and our military power. And if the commercial sector has capabilities that can support the United States Department of Defense and the intelligence community, we’re going to want to do all this planning and the work upfront to have the capabilities integrated.  

You should be doing warfighter training right now. I don’t believe that we do a lot of training with the warfighter on the leverage of commercial communications in all of our war games today. But we should. So that’s kind of the foot stomp. Let’s get to work. Let’s we’ve got a lot of capabilities that could be integrated today. Let’s get to work and do it. Let’s do all the work upfront. And let’s not just wait for the next conflict to figure it out on the fly. 

30:40 – 31:01 

MD: Yeah, kind of the bottom line is that several of the military leaders have expressed is you want the adversary to look up into space and say, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of stuff I have to deal with and it’s frankly too hard. I’m gonna have to pursue my objectives in other ways and not take the fight to space.’ That’s the integrated part of this. We could have the same conversation about partnering with Allies as well.  

31:02 – 31:25 

SK: Going back to the purpose driving the Defense Science Board’s study, to facilitate the DOD’s understanding of the emerging commercial space market and how it can serve national security objectives – how does this also pertain to the expertise found at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy? 

And how can Elara Nova partners support these efforts at the cross-section of commercial space capabilities and military requirements? 

31:26 – 32:09 

MD: Elara Nova lives at the intersection of the three things we’ve been talking about here today: the government, the industry and the investment markets. And also with international partnerships is another part of integrated deterrence. The people that we have on the Elara Nova team and all of our partners, Doctor Tousley and many others. 

They spent time in government and or they’ve spent time in industry and or they’ve spent time in the investment markets and that expertise, all of that expertise doesn’t exist in any one place, either in the government or the industry. And so we offer an opportunity for those different players in this space, to have that conversation to mature the discussion to come up with specific recommendations and I think that’s where we can help out. I hope Brad sees it the same way.  

32:10 – 32:25 

BT: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think that Elara Nova, we’re a bunch of like-minded people that really want to see us, know U.S. capability pushing forward for integrated deterrence. We want to support the marketplace. And obviously, in order to do that, we are laser-focused on helping our customers achieve maximum success in doing that.

32:26 – 33:02 

SK: 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 20: Defense Civilian Training Corps, Certificate Programs Emerge to Develop Space Workforce

Host: Scott King

SME: B.T. Cesul, Ph.D., Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy

00:02 – 01:41

Towards the end of last year, Ms. Katharine Kelley, the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital at the United States Space Force, announced the military’s newest service was engaged in a pilot program called the Defense Civilian Training Corps – or DCTC. 

Similar to the more commonly known Reserve Officer Training Corps – or ROTC  program – the DCTC is a congressionally mandated initiative to streamline university graduates into civilian careers at the Department of Defense.

And while the DCTC is a program seeking to cultivate the space workforce of the future from the top down, other grassroots efforts, such as certificate programs at small engineering schools, are seeking to provide a hands-on space workforce from the bottom up. 

Welcome to The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King, and joining us today is Elara Nova partner, Dr. B.T. Cesul. During a 20-year career in government and defense contractor service, Dr. Cesul served as a defense intelligence analyst focused on space and counterspace systems engineering, while also supporting space warfare education programs at DOD-affiliated institutions such as the United States Air Force Weapons School, the National Space Security Institute and the Defense Intelligence University.

Now, he’s here to provide some perspective on how the DCTC, as well as some of these other grassroots programs, can fulfill the emerging workforce needs across the spectrum of space: from active-duty Guardians, to civilian space experts within the DOD.

Dr. Cesul, welcome to the show!

01:42 – 01:44

Hi. Excited to be here. I’m really looking forward to this discussion.

01:45 – 02:12

Now, before we get started – I think it’s fair to say that for the broader public – when they think of the Department of Defense, their first thought is of our active-duty service members and their senior leaders. 

But according to the Government Accountability Office – nearly 770,000 civilians work in the Department of Defense – that’s around one-third of the DOD workforce. So broadly speaking, can you describe the traditional role of the civilian workforce within the DOD?

02:13 – 04:17

The civilian workforce in the Department of Defense plays a huge role in providing continuity and long-term technical expertise in a lot of different areas. The active duty folks are by nature and by inherently as part of their military service, are rotating positions in order to do career advancement, gain a broadening of skills that make them more effective as a leader in higher positions of authority as they go on through their career.

The civilian workforce is there really to backstop that long-term expertise and continuity in between processes, philosophy, strategy, technical competency that’s required to make the Department of Defense the premier technical warfighting force of the world that it is. 

Especially when you start talking about space programs, many space acquisition programs, as much as we’re trying to reform the acquisition process to make them faster, many of these are long-term programs that require in-depth technical knowledge, at like graduate school levels of education and technical competency in order to achieve success.

So the civilian workforce provides a lot of that in these programs. They’re the program managers. They’re the chief engineers that go on between these programs and live between the inherently rotational nature of the active-duty force that also supports these programs. So civilians have a huge role to play.

I’ll tell you from personal experience, one of these areas where civilians play a crucial role is in the intelligence field.

A lot of times, the relevancy of a piece of intelligence information that you would see, in the current day is linked to events that happened five, six, seven years ago in an adversary country. So having the ability to have those civilians that are able to follow that portfolio over multiple years and establish that long-term continuity and familiarity with the information allows the intelligence assessments to come out with a better cause and effect relationship or assessment at the end of the day, then it would be if someone was consistently rotating every two years and having to pick up twenty years of history on a program in a two-year period, in addition to that they have their additional duty assignments and other things like that. 

So, in many areas of the space ecosystem within the Department of Defense, the civilian workforce plays a huge role in making sure that these programs go through success.

04:18 – 04:34

Thank you, so back to the reason that we’re here today. At the end of 2024, the Space Force announced they were engaged in an ongoing pilot program called the Defense Civilian Training Corps.

Can you share a little bit about the DCTC? What is it? And why is a program like it necessary?

04:35 – 05:16

Yeah. So the DCTC, as, documentation from the Department of Defense indicates it’s a program that looks to increase the available pool of applicants for defense acquisition programs.

So the program utilizes partnerships with civilian universities. At this point four universities: North Carolina A&T, Purdue, University of Arizona and Virginia Tech, to collaborate in almost a civilian-ROTC type of program where the students involved in this program sign up for a curriculum program that’s developed by the DOD, by OUSD [Office of the Undersecretary of Defense] for acquisition and, essentially they take a dedicated course load focused on defense acquisition programs.

05:17 – 05:22

And what are some of the challenges the DOD faces in hiring these civilian employees?

05:23 – 07:09

Yeah. So the biggest [challenge] for outgoing college students to get into the Department of Defense workforce, especially in the cleared spaces, is that lack of a security clearance and lack of familiarity with defense processes. So a lot of times in civilian universities, even the best ones that have extensive relationships with the Department of Defense, across the different branches or the intelligence community.

A lot of times, the ability to transmit the knowledge as to how the DOD works and “speak defense,” is lost in the transmission to the degree requirements for an academic program. The traditional ROTC students that go through those programs and turn into active duty folks. They get a lot of that through their summer training and through their formal ROTC education.

But for the civilian going into the Department of Defense, it can be a pretty radical shock. I remember when I came out of college and went right into the Department of Defense, there was so much I didn’t know about different acronyms and contracting and relationships to contractors and how the different organizations and branches interacted with each other, even just on a processes level.

That this type of program, the DCTC program, looks to solve that bridge of getting a more ready-to-go workforce coming out of college and one of those big issues is that security clearance problem. So I think everybody’s well aware of the documented problems with getting large numbers of professionals cleared out of the security industry, into defense positions.

But the backlog of security clearances that’s happened for the last, basically since the 9/11 ramp-up in 2001. So it’s over a 20-year problem of how to get those entry-level people cleared faster. At one point, the backlog was 24 to 36 months to get a security clearance. And that’s just not sustainable for a younger workforce that’s looking to enter and be productive right away. 

So this program aims to jumpstart that process by allowing the students to get into a contractual relationship with the government, without a defined billet and a final employer, and that allows them to get the security process started ahead of time.

07:10 – 07:14

Now, what are some of the advantages for students participating in the DCTC program?

07:15 – 08:46

From my looking at the program, there looks to be three key advantages to the students participating in it. One is, the dedicated curriculum that they get on the defense acquisition process, which they would not get in a regular civilian degree program.

It looks like the curriculum that they’re getting – would be equivalent to a professional education that you would get after starting in a full-time job, then you’d have to go away on long-term, full-time training for or additional remote classes for, so having that integrated into their undergraduate experience is a big advantage for the students.

The second is the opportunity to get the internships at their potential employers. So that way they can get a firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to work in some of these offices, especially when these offices can’t be entirely clear in terms of what they’re doing or overt about what they’re doing. 

I remember my first opportunity when I went to work for the intelligence community coming out of school. I had to do all my interviews for potential positions with that employer, but they couldn’t really tell me what they did. So it was a lot of winks and nods and just ‘trust us.’ If I would have had the opportunity to do an internship or co-op at a classified level with that employer, I would’ve had a much better idea of what I would be walking into and the culture, the capabilities, the work tasks, the daily life that I’d be experiencing. 

The third advantage, I think, for the students participating in this program is the financial one. So having the opportunity to offer the scholarships that offset the cost of tuition, plus cost of attendance in the form of a stipend is really advantageous.

And honestly, that’s a big draw for the ROTC program, too, right? A lot of students can get their college education and high-quality institutions paid for by the government in exchange for the years of service and the uniform, at least at a minimal level. So, bringing that type of economic benefit to civilian students that are coming into the workforce should be a big draw.

08:47 – 08:54

So how does the DCTC program relate to a more typical pathway for a student interested in pursuing a career in space?

08:55 – 13:06

The typical path in the space workforce really went along two different paths. One was if you were prior active duty, and the other is if you were a strict civilian.

So if you were a strict civilian, you would typically have to come from one of the top ten, top 20 types of academic engineering schools with a formal degree in engineering, usually aerospace or electrical engineering, sometimes mechanical. You would have to have a university campus experience where space was integrated into the university curriculum, either formally in a degree program or with a lot of research laboratories where those students would have experience working with faculty or graduate students on those types of space programs.

And typically the student would come out also with a graduate degree. There were entry level, bachelor’s level types of jobs available. But if you really wanted to get into the national security space area, typically the employers that were hiring either at the cleared defense contractors or within the Department of Defense, those would be more your typical, like, Master’s level students, at least.

So that was a pretty long training passage to get in. And then once you got in, a lot of times the civilian entry level employees, again, unless they came from a family that had military connections or they were lucky enough to have one of these very, very select internships or co-op positions with someone like a Boeing or a LockMart or a Raytheon, where they got to work on our defense program, they would have to spend the next, 12 to 18 months just learning how to “speak defense.”

What does formatting look like on a memo? What’s a staffing process? Why can’t I just go to the contractor that I want and tell them to build me something? Why do I have to have a competitive acquisition process? So all these types of lessons learned, would add to the educational experience that those students would have to have both on-the-job training and formal post-graduate education.

So what that did, though, in the defense space area, though as well, would lead a lot of employers, especially the contracting side, to look to hire from an active duty background and were separating out, or came from other contractors and in certain communities because of the requirements on the acquisition side, when these commercial contractors have to respond to proposals and things, there was never really a built-in option into the contract to grow a workforce. You had to come with the workforce that was cleared, that was experienced, that was trusted, and sometimes even known within the community for their expertise in order to win the contracts. And so that necessarily biases the hiring process towards, like I say, those who had prior existing contacts or, came out of the active duty side with the experience on that.

So what happens is that it becomes a vicious cycle in the hiring process because those people with that experience level that are necessary require a higher salary and with a higher salary, you then have to bid a higher hourly rate for those people’s services. And so then the contracts start getting higher and higher in value because you have to have that experienced workforce.

There’s no real pathways to build an entry level workforce into some of these defense programs. And so you get this vicious cycle building up of ‘Okay, so now you have a smaller cleared pool of workers that could go after this specific type of work, but now you have to pay them more in order to keep them in your company.

Or if you want to go after or try to win work from an incumbent, you then have to go poach people from other companies. And then, what’s the number one way to poach someone? Offer them a bigger salary. Well, you offer them a bigger salary than they come with a higher hourly rate and so now the cost for the program gets higher.’

And so the government side and the acquisition side, costs start growing without any control because the labor costs keep going up because you have to keep the same shrinking pool of experts, especially with this downturn in population that we have from the cleared defense workforce of the 80s and 90s to now, so that you have a smaller pool, you have a lot more work that’s being requested by the Space Force to the defense industrial base, both inside the government and exterior to the government.
And so necessarily, your costs are going to go up because the competition for those resources are getting [smaller]. So it’s simple supply and demand. So I think what a lot of these programs like DCTC and some of the other alternative education programs that we’re going to talk about in a couple minutes, what they’re going to try to solve the problem was: how do you develop a bigger pool of applicants and space development, the human capital development problem – if you will – so that a lot of these programs can continue to go on without breaking the bank on the continuous vicious cycle of competing over smaller and smaller human capital resources to go after an increasing number of problems.

13:07 – 13:40

That does lead us into the next phase of our conversation. While the DCTC is an academic program the DOD is implementing from the top-down, there are some other grassroots efforts looking to engage the DOD – and the Space Force in particular – from the bottom up.

Prior to your role with Elara Nova, you had first-hand experience developing some of these academic programs and as I understand it – continue to be involved in some capacity with them today.

Can you share with our audience some of the alternative education and workforce development programs for space that exist today?

13:41 – 19:14

So even from my earliest days as a government employee, I had a passion for education and got involved in a lot of different development training programs. So whether it was, the revamp of the military space professional education programs at the National Space Security Institute, where I helped re-develop the space intelligence curriculum as part of a couple of the different core series.

But also within my own squadron helping to develop the first IQT – MQT program for space intelligence professionals, the Counterspace Analysis Proficiency Program, at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.

All of these things that I’ve done have been with the knowledge and goal that we just don’t have enough people to work these space programs, across the defense industry that are needed. Everybody wants more space capabilities, but there’s not enough space folks in the community. And there’s a number of statistics out there that show, basically we are going to have a shortfall in the space professional workforce, probably between 50 to 75,000 people per year starting in around 2030, based on the current graduation numbers and the current estimated job requisitions that are going to be out there across both government and industry.

So one of the things that I’ve done since I left government, started a little bit while I was in government, was try to forge better connections between academia, and the defense community and the space defense community in order to try to find ways to get creative on solving some of these workforce development issues from a strict volumetric perspective – we’re just not graduating enough students.

But since I left government, I’ve been involved in the traditional academia programs, working at places like Ohio State and Penn State and the University of Michigan on kind of traditional: how do you add additional classes into an existing curriculum, or maybe provide guest lecturers or seminar courses to increase the visibility and accessibility into how the defense space program works and how students can get jobs in that.

So I’ve been doing that for a number of years, but one innovative thing that I’ve been involved in the last two years that I was really proud of was, we started a program with some support from the state of Michigan to look at developing a new way to train space professionals without going through the traditional, theoretical engineering design type of curriculum that’s offered at a lot of the legacy aerospace engineering institutions.

So at a small school called Lake Superior State University up in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, my previous company, I was brought on contract, and we helped develop from scratch a Space Operations Certificate program. And so the idea there was to build on the idea of certificate programs, which have been around now, and they start gaining popularity at civilian institutions in terms of micro-credentialing, right? Targeted pragmatic education and specific job skill development across a number of areas, but try to focus on the space operations portion. 

So how do we get more folks that can work at the ground stations and at the data centers and at the operations centers for the military that have the pragmatic skills on what is necessary to do space operations.

How do you manage a satellite’s life? How do you manage solar charging and command uploading and anomaly resolution? Without having to necessarily go through a four-year traditional aerospace engineering design degree. 

So we worked with Lake State, who didn’t have any space experience at all. They were a small engineering college, technical college, 1700 students. And they had a robotics engineering program and a mechanical engineering degree program, but they didn’t have any space legacy. So we started from scratch and through the Chippewa County Economic Development Corporation and State of Michigan funds, we worked with the university to develop a one year program that was two classes, focused on introducing students to a very fundamental level of space operations.

So not necessarily deriving the equations of orbital mechanics, but showing them the final: this is a TLE and this is what it means. And these are the key factors of how to figure out things like orbit maneuvers and link budgets and satellite lifetime and radiation exposure limits. So, giving the students the equations in boxes type of technical competency, but then also integrating laboratory classes that allow the students to exercise what they’re learning in the classroom in an experiential learning environment.

So we developed labs in orbital mechanics and satellite orbit determination and, digital twinning and a couple things that we’re most proud of is using a facility that’s also was developed with state of Michigan money called the Homestead Mission Operations Center, which is a brand new, from scratch, satellite ground station, built just south of campus to support potentially commercial and government research activities in doing space communications.

And we worked with that, with RedWire Space and Oakman Aerospace and a couple other companies to develop a mission operations center, that the students could actually work in. And it had live active satellite antennas, and we had state of the art digital simulators to do mission simulation and so the students actually went in and did satellite communications for real as one of their laboratories.

They ran a mission, a real mission operation simulation, similar to what the government folks would use in places like, Air Force Lifecycle Management Center or Space Systems Command where they’re doing simulations in AFSIM and other state-of-the-art software packages. 

So now instead of a student with a robotics engineering degree from Lake State who really wants to get into the space industry, but they have no relevant experience, they can point to, ‘Oh, I’ve got a robotics degree. And I went through the Space Operations Certificate program, where I actually did live satellite operations and mission control and anomaly resolution.’ 

So now I can go to a place like, Raytheon or Naval Research Laboratories or someplace else that’s doing space robotics work and say, ‘Hey, I actually know, I can link this together. I know orbits, I know ground station operations, I know link budgets, and I can make it relevant to my increased technical discipline.’

And that helps the students build a narrative that’s more attractive to potential employers when they’re going through resume searches and keyword searches, right? That are generated when they go through these job applications.

19:15 – 19:26

It seems to me that this Space Operations Certificate program is really targeted toward a niche skill set. So how does it differ from some of the more traditional pathways for space careers that we discussed earlier?

19:27 – 21:56

Yeah. So traditionally, if you went to a four-year university for an aerospace engineering degree and you wanted to do space stuff, you would do all the theoretical classes and orbital mechanics and space systems design and space environment, where they’d each be a semester long or more.

You’d work on senior design capstone projects, but you’d be focused more on the theoretical design side of a space system. So what are the optimization variables for? Or how do I pick my reaction wheels and how much Delta V do I put on spacecraft and things like that. Which are great skills, they are still needed. They are – you go to a defense contractor or a requirement generations shop. You need those type of systems engineers, design engineers, that are playing in those fields. 

But what we don’t have is a lot of times, those kinds of, working level, the grunt work at an actual satellite ground station, ‘How do you actually do command uplink? How do you actually do data downlink and processing? How do you plan pass times? How do you optimize your network of satellite dishes that you have in the ground to communicate with your constellation of satellites in order to get the data, the tasking and data down, up and down from the satellites in a way that meets your customer deadlines or your requirements for executing a military operation?’

So those types of skill sets aren’t necessarily attractive a lot of times too, to the students that come out of an MIT or a University of Michigan or a Stanford who just spent their last four years doing intricate design and optimization on variables or the design of a new reaction wheel and control arm associated with it.

They don’t want to go and sit in a terminal, or at a ground station and do satellite operations or go out and do field maintenance on a remote satellite operations system. And a lot of these other students at other schools that don’t have this traditional space background, they really want to do that. 

They want that hands-on work. They want that technician, that field work, in addition to using their engineering knowledge that they gain. So this is what we’re trying to do with this program is provide a way to bridge that gap between the operator technician level that’s really needed to make these things work in actual ongoing programs. And the design back at the factory type of operations, that go on in traditional engineering background.

So that’s what this program is trying to do, is bridge that gap and for the Space Force specifically, that’s a huge need. If you take a look at the career fields in the Space Force, the number one populated career field in the Space Force right now in enlisted and officers is space operators. So the Space Force recognizes that having this operations focus is a need.

And so that’s what we’re trying to fill with this program, So we want to provide them the opportunity to get their foot in the door in the space industry with some of these entry level positions, providing a pragmatic service that has application. So we think these types of programs fulfill that need.

21:57 – 22:03 

And then – does this Lake Superior State program have any immediate connections to – or engagements with – the Space Force today?

22:04 – 23:35

Yeah. So we’re actually, and as part of my work, I still am on adjunct faculty staff with Lake State advising the program as it matures.

In addition to my day jobs that I do with Elara Nova and with Umbra. We’re working actively with Space Training and Readiness Command. So Space Force’s STARCOM, to look at different educational initiatives. When I helped design this program at Lake State, we did it with the mindset of we want to have as much duplication or at least, synchronicity with existing Military Basic Training programs.

So whether that’s the officer undergraduate space training program or the enlisted undergraduate space training program that the STARCOM runs where, that’s your first training assignment you get when you enter the Space Force as an officer or enlisted, you go to someplace like the Vandenberg Schoolhouse, or you go to Colorado Springs for a two or three month course set to get introduced to the idea of space operations and space technology for the Space Force.

So we built the curriculum with the mind that we wanted to, to replicate what was going on in those other training environments and STARCOM has actually been very receptive recently in some conversations that we had. 

Our ultimate goal for the Lake State program is to get reciprocity recognition from STARCOM that this program could be equivalent to one of those other introductory training programs. 

And the idea there is that we can increase the volumetric throughput of students through this type of basic training, so that we’re not overwhelming the Vandy Schoolhouse or Colorado Springs, so that there’s not a six month or eight month or 12 month waiting list to get these new Guardians coming into these programs, we can service that need through a variety of partnerships with civilian institutions and military institutions. So we’re looking at replicating this program at other schools as well.

23:36 – 23:46

Now, understanding that this certificate program is still a pilot program in and of itself, in what ways is it similar to some of the other top-down efforts like the Defense Civilian Training Corps?

23:47 – 26:16

There are some similarities. So from what I’ve seen out of the DCTC, there seems to be a focus on hands-on experiential learning. And that’s what we also want to provide in the certificate program – is that experiential learning, not just lectures and simulations, but actually letting the students get their hands on doing real things.

And that seems to be the focus of the DCTC, as well as getting the students in hands on real life situations where they’re working in program offices, learning that acquisition process and execution in a real world environment. And on the space operations side, that’s what we want to do, too. We want to get these students interacting.

You know, there’s a lot of great simulation and training tools out there. Students can sit in front of monitors and screen time all the time. But there is a difference between sitting in front of a computer simulation that’s preprogrammed, and even the anomalies are preprogrammed that you have to respond to a lot of times in these simulations. Vice – having to go out and set up the antenna yourself at a communication station and do the verification that you have RF energy coming into your antenna, and your software works together, and you’re having to do things like reposition to get more gain or turn the volume up on your software-defined radio in order to get the data down and make sure that your software can do the decoding and understanding what you’re seeing in the signal strength – all these types of things that happen in the real world, in real time with hands-on learning. 

Those are the type of things that really start building that intuition for entry level employees that normally would take years or even decades to gain. Students are gaining that now in this type of academic experiential learning programs – right away.

And so that’s what we’re really trying to do with a lot of these certificate and alternative education paths is solve that human capital development problem in the space workforce with a combination of of book learning, traditional lecture material, watching videos, but also getting them hands-on experiential learning with industry standard software tools, with real life experiences in doing satellite operations.

So this type of experiential learning, again, builds that intuition and that intuition, that’s the thing that’s missing right now in crafting, what General Saltzman wants is that Space Warfighter Mentality, right?  I’ve heard General Saltzman say that he’s got plenty of R&D engineers that know how to do simulations, but he doesn’t have a cadre of space warfighters yet. 

And so part of these experiential learning programs, that’s what we want to build, is that intuition, that inherent knowledge as to how things work, not just how they’re supposed to work, that can provide that jumpstart into building the other things that fold into a Space Warfighter Mentality where we actually know – you know it’s the difference between, doing the flight simulator and then actually getting it in F-15 and feeling the G’s yourself and actually going through the whole checklist and flying a plane and having things go wrong in-flight that you have to correct. That’s what we’re trying to do with these types of programs to provide space for a better cadre.

26:17 – 26:25

So Dr. Cesul – what do you see as the next steps for this program to better meet the Space Force’s workforce development needs moving forward?

26:26 – 28:15

At some of these smaller schools, we’re trying to stand these programs up. It’s also helpful to try to find other partners in the region that don’t have these capabilities, so that you don’t have multiple smaller institutions competing for the same pool of students and duplicating resources replicating the program.

So one of the things I’m trying to help with on the state of Michigan side is utilizing individual programs that are being developed at these smaller schools in niche areas. So for example, Lake Superior State, their space operations program. There’s another smaller public school in the state. There’s work on a space for cyber certificate program.

And so what we’re trying to do now is partner up with other smaller regional schools that maybe have one or two or three students in their cadre that want to do space stuff, but that doesn’t make sense to stand up an entire program for one or two or three students. But however, if you have six or seven universities that each have two or three students every year that want to do space stuff, and you can link it to singular programs, well, now you’ve got a certificate program that’s pumping out 20 to 30 students a year. And now that starts to become viable for the school that’s developing that certificate program.

So that’s one of the things that we’re trying to generate, and trying to build on with that program specifically in the state of Michigan, is developing those reciprocity agreements and tuition-sharing agreements at the administrative side, so that students from other smaller schools can take these programs remotely on the academic side or at the at least on the lecture side.

And then when it comes to the experiential learning, proceed with the experiential learning opportunities with the labs. They just come up to campus for one or two days, three times a semester to do the labs. 

So we think that’s replicable in a lot of areas where that type of collaboration and cooperation exists, so that you don’t have to have the flagship university always driving the thing.

And, you can take advantage of some of the cost savings that you get. Some of these universities with a lower tuition or registration costs. So you can increase the opportunity to access these types of learning opportunities, really more of a democratization of the space learning experience, than what has occurred in the past.

28:16 – 28:52

So, to summarize, it seems that – ideally – we’re going to have students coming through the DCTC program that will have both immediate security clearance and familiarity with the DOD’s acquisition process by the time they start working for the DOD.

In tandem, we may also have students coming from certificate programs like the one out of Lake Superior State University, that can provide some of the hands-on support at the ground-level. 

So, in what ways do these efforts – both from the top-down and the bottom-up, come together to create a workforce development solution for the human capital needs of the United States Space Force?

28:53 – 30:39

The simple answer is it’s a numbers problem. Now, you’re now not graduating, 100 students a year out of a flagship university.

Now you’re graduating three, four, 500, students a year out of a series of universities that have the relevant skill set to start filling some of these positions, and then they naturally get the increased depth and knowledge and experience by going through these entry level jobs, through on-the-job training and on-the-job experiences. So, replicating these types of certificate programs across multiple universities just increases the throughput. And really that’s what we’re dealing with now, is a volume problem. 

We have really excellent, technically competent people coming into the space ecosystem for the defense and for industry. We just don’t have enough of them to fill the problem sets in the programs that we need.

A quick example: when I came into the space field as a Master’s graduate in 2001-2002 time frame, the average launch cadence per year was five to ten launch vehicle opportunities with maybe a launch of ten to 20 satellites. If you launched 20 satellites in a year, that was a really good year for the space industry.

Now we’re looking at government entities like the Space Development Agency talking about thousand satellite constellations. So just the sheer volume of increase of space operations that’s going on from launch, from managing constellations, to the building of satellites, to the test and evaluation of these satellites at the factory.

A lot of these satellites, they still have to go through things like thermal vacuum testing. We don’t have enough thermal vacuum engineers and enough thermal vacuum chambers to do the throughput for all these different systems. So, just having that ability to increase the throughput of folks in the workforce that can do those jobs, that can increase and fulfill some of these desires that we have for these large constellation operations or for the huge increase in commercial space activity that we’re anticipating.

That’s really the goal at the end of the day, is trying to just increase the numbers and that’s what these programs are doing.

30:40 – 31:03

Since its initiation five years ago now, the Space Force has placed an emphasis on this idea of strategic partnerships.

I’d like to tie this emphasis back into the DCTC and these alternative academic programs we’ve been talking about today. 

What do these programs demonstrate about the future of partnerships between the Space Force and academic institutions to develop the space and civilian workforce of the future?

31:04 – 33:22

Yeah. So I’ve had a number of discussions with STARCOM folks and other just general Space Force active duty folks about this exact question. And, it’s not just the DCTC program. There are a lot of other programs that the Space Force is involved in, in terms of establishing partnerships with academia and it’s beyond what traditionally has been done when a service would reach out to academia.

The two main ways were either, the most mature way was the establishment of a university-affiliated research center. A UARC, which is the university equivalent of an FFRDC. So places like Johns Hopkins, APL or Utah State SDL. And they would get, you know, that congressional advocacy line item funding on a year-to-year basis to establish the linkages between the service and the need for an in-depth, long-term R&D research base to draw upon to feed their next generation programs.

And then what we’re seeing more recently is more of a partnership on that human development side with programs like the University Partnership Program, the UPP, that the Space Force started, the DCTC, where they’re trying to get after that problem of not just funding the traditional, go do a research lab at a university and fund my research lab type of relationships that happened in the past.

But getting more to that, recruiting and human capital development problem set where, ‘Hey, we realize we need to do more things like internships and co-ops and sponsored research programs for undergraduates on campuses that don’t necessarily result in a traditional, you know, SBIR type of research program.’ But more of a ‘Hey, we have a quick design project that we need a study on, or we need a digital model built for a certain space component in the next six months.’

And it’s not a multi-year fund to a professor’s graduate student lab for ten years type of relationship. It’s a ‘No, we need this one-off type of relationship where we get things done fast.’ But also it allows us to kind of pre-evaluate some of the candidates that may be coming from your school into our hiring process.

It allows us to establish key relationships with professors so that they know that they can start to establish recruitment pipelines for hiring, because even the professors realize, the undergraduate senior student in year one, in year four might be my program manager that’s evaluating my research proposal down the road. So now there’s motivation on the academia side as well to establish these partnerships for workforce development, because they realize there’s a pipeline there for not just providing the nation with expertise, but also kind of establishing their pipeline to potential funding sources in the future.

33:23: – 33:53

Now, Dr. Cesul, you are a partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy, which has positioned itself as a strategic partner in various aspects of space – whether that be national security space, international space, commercial space, and even the investment community. 

But what about academic institutions and their role in workforce development across the spectrum of all of these space stakeholders?

What opportunities exist for Elara Nova to engage these institutions in support of the Space Force’s workforce development goals?

33:54 – 36:56

Yeah. So the one thing that Elara Nova brings to the fight overall is experience and expertise.

And in standing up these different academic programs around the country that I’ve been involved in, whether it’s the Lake State program or, or helping other universities figure out how to establish a curriculum to start a space program from scratch. 

A lot of the on-staff faculty have limited experience in space, or if they do, their ideas about how to interact with the defense space community has been limited to Air Force Office of Scientific Research proposals or NSF grants or 6-O level basic fundamental research out of AFRL.

They don’t really know the front doors or the back doors or the intricacies and connections between different acquisition offices, policy offices and even warfighter offices in terms of how these things that they’re doing at their campus actually impact real-life space operations. So, one of the things that I found is that bringing on experienced industry experts into the development of both curriculum and programmatic goals for some of these academia programs has been really helpful.

It’s jumpstarted the program. It’s provided the universities a cost-effective way to bring that expertise onto their teaching staff or into their research staff, without having to hire a traditional tenured faculty person, right? There’s a lot of different things, like professors of practice and consulting agreements and contract faculty opportunities, where folks from Elara Nova can provide some of that expertise to these universities in terms of, ‘Hey, this is really important, this is what you should be emphasizing. This is what the new policy guidance coming out is.’

So that type of expertise can be useful to the academia community in starting up some of these programs. And then for the government, it’s providing that linkage, right? 

The career civil servant who’s never done anything outside of sit in his one building, from GS-7 through GS-14 or SES level. They may not have that network of linkages and connections to both academia and to industry that some of our experienced Elara Nova partners have established over time.

So some of the value proposition that we can bring to this development of the human capital development program set is, the ability to make those linkages and provide our expertise in real-life, developing some of these programs to make sure that there’s utility to the three stakeholders. 

You’ve got the students – providing them value and to their dollar that they’re paying in tuition that they feel like they’re getting something out of this program that’s useful. 

To the academia side, in establishing these programs and running these programs so that we can provide a cost effective way to continually increase their expertise and provide linkages to the current events.

What’s really happening? What’s the latest thing that’s going on? How does this policy change affect what they want to do? 

And then to the government side – because now we’re providing that pragmatic linkage all the way back to the training portion, right? So that the government knows that they have a trusted path that’s been developed with a curriculum and a set of values and a set of experiences that really will pay off in the end to the government hirer that wants to have that human capital that can contribute on day one, not so that they’re waiting 18 months, 24 months for someone to get up to speed, to be a productive employee in a government office where budgets are tight and personnel is tighter.

36:51 – 37:26

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 25: TraCSS Delivers Space Situational Awareness to Spacecraft Operators 

Host: Scott King 

SME: Charlie McGillis, Elara Nova partner, former Director of Intelligence at 14th Air Force (Space); former Senior Vice President at Slingshot Aerospace; Vice President, Public Sector, The Provenance Chain Network; TraCSS Independent Review Board member 

00:02 – 01:44 

A 2009 on-orbit collision between a defunct Russian satellite and an Iridium communications satellite created more than 1,800 pieces of debris that signaled an emerging need for a space traffic management system. Since then, space has only become more congested with the rise of a commercial launch market that has enabled affordable access to space for commercial, civil and military space programs alike.  

This influx of on-orbit satellites inspired the 2018 signing of Space Policy Directive-3 during the first Trump administration, which declared the need for U.S. leadership in establishing a space traffic management system to mitigate the risk of future on-orbit collisions through a coordinated effort between the United States Department of Defense – or DOD – and the Department of Commerce.  

This joint effort also produced a new program, the Traffic Coordination System for Space  – or TraCSS – which late last year achieved initial operating capability in cataloging on-orbit assets and delivering space situational awareness – or SSA – data to spacecraft operators. 

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King. Joining me today to discuss TraCSS and the broader challenges in space traffic management, is Elara Nova partner retired Col Charlie McGillis, former director of intelligence at 14th Air Force (Space). Charlie is also a former Senior Vice President at Slingshot Aerospace and currently serves as Public Sector Vice President at The Provenance Chain Network, as well as a member of the Independent Review Board for TraCSS 

Ma’am, welcome to the show! 

01:44 – 01:46 

Thank you! It’s great to be here with you. 

01:47 – 02:04 

It’s great to have you. Now, in September of 2024, the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, reached a big milestone in achieving initial operating capability. 

But let’s go back to the beginning. Can you describe what TraCSS is and what problem it’s looking to solve? 

02:05 – 05:16 

TraCSS is the first civil space traffic coordination initiative and it was mandated by Space Policy Directive-3, or what we call SPD-3. And this was actually signed by President Trump in 2018 during his first term and it had huge bilateral support. So it leverages government and commercial capabilities to provide that actionable space situational awareness.  

And it does it for free to both civil, commercial operators for space flight safety. And this has been transitioning these capabilities from the Department of Defense. And it’s important to note that this is a free basic service because whether you have one or 1000 satellites that are flying, safety is paramount. And the data is actually used by academia and industry too, to do research. 

But also the Office of Space Commerce through SPD-3 was charged with more than just TraCSS. They actually have a policy and advocacy role as well, where they work with industry, foreign governments, organizations to promote that safe and sustainable operations and to grow the U.S. space commerce. They also authorize and supervise the U.S. commercial remote sensing satellite operations, which has actually changed over the last five years. 

This directive, the SPD-3, it aims to address the growing challenges posed by the increasing volume of space traffic and orbital debris, ensure that safety, sustainability and also leadership in U.S. operations in space.  

And I would like to kind of go back for a minute, because I think it’s important for people to understand, why is this becoming a Department of Commerce mission [when] before what it was all done by the Department of Defense?  

It was actually back in February of 2009 where we had our first ever accidental collision between two intact satellites in orbit. One was a Russian defunct satellite. So not operating, but still up in space, and an active Iridium satellite. So a satellite communication satellite and no warning was issued, right?  

Think about two planes flying. Visual flight rules and not being warned that the other one was actually approaching each other. And, so this collision happened and I talked to the person from Iridium, and he goes, ‘Yeah, I get this call from the DOD and he’s like, you need to come to this classified place, right? Show up at what is Vandenberg now-Space Force Base and had no idea.’ They knew something was wrong with their satellite, but didn’t know that the collision had happened – so huge awakening.  

And at that time in 2009. Not a lot of satellites orbiting. You know, it was about 120 military satellites and about over a thousand active commercial satellites. This is what started what we know today as space-track.org where people can go and get the conjunction data messages and so that’s when those warnings actually started to happen was after that collision event. So it’s important to kind of know that.  

But now today, you fast forward. Tens of thousands of satellites are orbiting in space and so we have to keep that safety paramount and it’s both civil, commercial and government operating in that domain all at the same time.

05:17 – 05:29 

Now, just to add a little more context: can you share what makes a collision between any two objects, whether they be a spent rocket body, a satellite, or other debris, exponentially more harmful in the space domain?

05:30 – 06:29 

That’s a great point. You know, in space, when two objects actually collide. Think about them going over 17,000mph, which is huge and then they collide and it creates this debris. 

Well, that debris stays up there for decades, even could be 100 years. Now satellite owner-operators actually have to be able to maneuver and avoid that debris. And you can actually see I’ve been to the Air and Space Museum where I’ve seen small specks of debris hit like the Hubble Space Telescope or the ISS, and it can cause significant damage. 

Even something very small can cause huge damage to a spacecraft. And I actually liken it to if you have an oil spill and how it permeates the water. From a maritime perspective, that is going to continue and think about the millions of dollars, billions that it takes to clean that up, That’s what it is like in space. It’s that collision. If it happens in space it will have significant impact for decades. 

06:30 – 06:43 

It seems like the keyword that came out of SPD-3 and other supporting documents around TraCSS is “space situational awareness.”  

Can you define space situational awareness for our audience and explain its relevance to national security space interests? 

06:44 – 08:06 

From a space situational awareness perspective, it’s really just about knowing where that spacecraft is? What is its trajectory? Where is it going? 

It’s important to know those things. Just understanding where the objects are in space from a military perspective because you have both civil, commercial and government all operating in that same space and so you have to be able to determine who is who. 

If a conflict begins, you can’t just have like a no-fly zone like you do in the air domain or a maritime blockade. In space, you can’t do that. And so you have to be aware of wherever all those objects are and that’s what space situational awareness is. 

And I know some people kind of confuse SSA space situational awareness with space domain awareness. There’s a huge distinction between the two. When you talk about space domain awareness. 

It actually adds into, for a military perspective, that intelligence information: now what is the intent of that object? What is the adversary doing? Is it hostile or not? What are its behaviors? Is it a bad actor? And so you get into more of what is the intent and the capability of that specific object or that satellite? 

Those are two good distinctions between SSA and space domain awareness.

08:07 – 08:23 

Now civil, commercial, and government assets in space all serve a variety of purposes and missions.  

But why is understanding this difference between space situational awareness and space domain awareness an inherently important step toward protecting those assets in space – no matter their purpose? 

08:24 – 09:24 

I’m going to give a little critique for those of us that are such space nerds, but we don’t do a good job of talking about why space is important. I mean, those of us that are in the business, we understand it implicitly, but the global public doesn’t understand that you actually depend on space every day of your life. 

If you were on your phone, if you use your GPS to get from point A to point B. If you went to an ATM machine and took money out of it – that uses space. If you filled your car up with gas – that uses space. That is a critical piece from an economy perspective in order to understand that we use it every day. 

But it’s also important from a national security perspective. We use space for GPS and targeting and communications and trying to get intelligence like imagery and signals intelligence, missile detection capability, electronic warfare. So there’s a lot of military capabilities space enables – and so we need to protect and defend those assets. 

09:25 – 09:48 

The space traffic management mission began as a responsibility of the DOD. But the TraCSS program actually operates under the Office of Space Commerce, which is housed within the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – or NOAA. 

Can you elaborate on how TraCSS is part of this broader trend of transitioning the space traffic management responsibility from the DOD to the Department of Commerce?

09:49 – 12:35 

You know, as we talked about the historical piece of it with the collision in 2009. Basically, the DOD stood up and said, ‘Hey, somebody needs to do this, from a global perspective and so we didn’t have as many satellites on-orbit. 

It wasn’t a huge drain on DOD assets. But as we’ve seen that number of satellites increase difficulty, not just from a government perspective, but also a commercial perspective, having over 10,000 satellites. It’s a huge responsibility to have that global safety of flight perspective. Between the DOD, they said, ‘Hey, this isn’t really our mission to do this – safety of flight. It’s to protect and defend those assets, those military assets, and provide those capabilities for national security.’ So that’s when the decision was made. ‘Hey, somebody else needs to do this mission.’ That’s when the Office of Space Commerce was stood up, with the direction of SPD-3. 

And then later let’s track through history that that’s when it was just a year later that the Space Force and U.S. Space Command was stood up too, in realizing that there’s more going on in space from a competitive, contested perspective that we’re seeing with China, especially in Russia. From a national security perspective, we need to be able to protect and defend our space assets.  

What we’re seeing happen on orbit today is troubling, not only with the number of satellites China has launched, but the capabilities that they’ve launched. And because you can see it, it’s not like it’s hidden because you can track it in space and you can track that behavior and that intent, whether China has – they have a grappling arm, you know, and they’re able to move a satellite from one position to another and take it to a graveyard or, just recently they, we call it a mothership and a baby. 

You know, they have a mother satellite and they release another object out of that satellite. That’s huge to be able to track those capabilities, the intent of that, if we knew everybody was doing things for public good, we wouldn’t have to worry about it. But we know that’s not the case. 

From a commerce perspective, the decision-making was, ‘Hey, DoD assets that we use today to do space tracking. So today we use radar assets, we use optical assets. And then there’s actually some space capabilities, as well. But it doesn’t give you 24/7 coverage from a space safety kind of perspective. 

And so the thought was, ‘Hey, we need to also use commercial providers in order to do this and to support those commercial operators. It was in order to be able to provide that capability from a commercial perspective and bring it and support a strong commercial aspect of a space ecosystem.

12:36 – 12:45 

Now, Ma’am, you mentioned radar and other optical assets. But can you speak to how the U.S. government, and specifically the DOD, traditionally monitored the space environment? 

 12:46 – 13:54 

The DOD actually uses that same assets as commercial uses: radar, optical, and space-based. They use a system, a legacy system called SPADOC – Space Defense Operations Center system – that analyzes that data and processes it. 

DoD is trying to modernize that infrastructure with a new system called ATLAS — Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System. It’s still not operational yet, but my understanding is it’s on track to achieve initial operational capability (IOC) by the end of 2025. It’s been a long road. 

But, let’s be clear: DOD wants to focus their efforts on adversary satellites. And this is why the Commercial Integration Cell was first stood up, which is what I was a part of for about three years and it was brilliant. General Raymond was the Commander at Vandenberg now-Space Force Base, and he goes, “Hey I’m having to track all these satellites and if I knew where the commercial satellites were, and they told me where they were, then I wouldn’t have to track them and I could focus on that adversary.” This allowed DOD assets to be focused on the adversary and be able to coordinate and share information with commercial partners. 

13:55 – 13:59 

And in what ways is TraCSS different from that traditional approach to space traffic management? 

14:00 – 16:34 

We think about the capabilities that we have today from the infrastructure, cloud-based, being able to do agile software development, being able to field iterative upgrades and capabilities, and being able to do that on a modern infrastructure is huge.That’s what they’re trying to do in ATLAS and it’s taken them a long time because they’ve had to take those legacy systems, make sure everything works before you transition over from legacy to a modern system.  

Whereas TraCSS could start from ground one and build it up, a lot easier so they’re able to ingest that data from the DOD. But also bring in that commercial data, in order to supplement and be able to have that 24/7 coverage and tracking capability. And so today, as you mentioned in the beginning, they have a minimal viable product. They have beta users on it, [it] started in September of ‘24 and now they’ll start to actually onboard other owner-operators. 

The Office of Space Commerce has taken a very, I would say methodical and iterative approach to putting out the capability. They had Pathfinders with commercial data providers and they went out to the customer, the commercial satellite owner-operators: What do you need as this basic service? 

And I think that was brilliant. Anybody that’s selling a product goes out and finds out from the customer, what do you need? Now I will tell you, most satellite owner operators don’t want to pay for things. They want it for free. They’ve been given the data for free and so defining that basic service was a give and take. 

You know, what are we going to continue to do as a basic service for spaceflight safety?  And then what are we going to, you know, what do you as a satellite owner-operator, if you want more data and more analytics, you’re going to have to pay for that, and you’re going to have to go to, you know, a company and, and get that additional [information]. 

So as TraCSS has iteratively built this capability, it will be the same. They are able to today do what we call ‘all versus all.’ So think about all the satellites in space. You take all their data and be able to say, ‘Do analysis against all of those satellites against all the others. And where’s my risk? Where are the riskiest collisions that are going to happen.’  

And then they would spit out a conjunction data message to those operators. ‘Hey, there’s a close conjunction happening and you probably need to maneuver.’ But it really isn’t their decision to maneuver. It’s up to the operator to take that data in and do that maneuver on their own.  

16:35 – 16:48 

Now, realistically speaking, how many of these satellites on-orbit today, have the capacity to maneuver on their own? Can you speak to how TraCSS being built out iteratively might get to a future where this becomes a reality? 

16:49 – 18:58 

It’s a great point. And it’s kind of scary to think of how many satellites are able to launch and they have no maneuver capability. I mean, in other words: they have no propulsion, they have no gas, and they’re not able to maneuver.  

And should that policy or those regulations change? Probably. You know, at least in today’s environment, you should have some kind of capability to do a maneuver if a close approach is coming up, just because as we talked about. If there’s a collision in space, this is a massive impact to everybody that’s operating in space and to everything we depend on space for. So you need to be able to have that maneuverability and be able to move out of the way if there is a close conjunction.  

So most people, you hear you’re traveling at 17,500 mph and you think, “Wow, that must feel like zip, zip—bling, bling, right? And really in space, it’s actually more like moving incredibly fast in slow motion. Because there’s no atmosphere and everything is relative, things happen gradually. So even though you’re speeding around the Earth, you typically get plenty of warning—usually a seven day advance notice or a three day if there’s a close conjunction—and that buffer gives you time to plan and actually execute that maneuver safely, which is crucial in the space environment. 

But some of the other challenges from an Office of Space Commerce perspective, they were stood up under SPD-3. The Office of Space Commerce is actually under NOAA, that causes complications when they’re trying to let contracts because they have to do it under NOAA’s rules and they can’t do it under really Department of Commerce rules. 

The other issue is that SPD-3 is a policy. It’s not a law. Policies can be changed. And so really that formal authorization of having that infrastructure for TraCSS needs to be elevated out of NOAA and into the Department of Commerce. There is some law that has been introduced on the floor called the Safe Orbit Act that would actually do this and formally create and appropriate the funds to do that, which is super important. 

18:59 – 19:03 

In what ways is the space traffic management mission suitable for commercial space opportunities? 

19:04 – 21:00 

The Office of Space Commerce has brought in commercial data companies and also a commercial vendor to build that infrastructure. So it’s been commercial from day one and they’re ingesting the DOD data, but it really is supporting the space commercial ecosystem. And when TraCSS is fully operational, which is expected in early 2026; the intent is to bring down spacetrack.org site, the original DOD space traffic management system, which – if you’ll remember – was instituted after the 2009 collision. 

So from data augmenting the commercial vendor for the infrastructure and then also even the data layer, presentation layer as they are calling it is a commercial vendor, and they’re building it in such a way that it’s modular so that they don’t have vendor lock. They can bring in somebody else from an infrastructure perspective. A new innovative data provider could come in and say, ‘Hey, I have this new capability and we have better data than the other ones have,’ and that data could be bought. 

The balance to me is you provide that infrastructure, from a government kind of perspective. But then you buy commercial sources to augment and sometime in the future, it may be that commercial actually has better capability than the government. 

But from a Space Force perspective, you know, they don’t want to have to be able to build everything that’s costly when they can actually get it from a commercial perspective. So I think it’s in line with both from a national security perspective, but also from an economic perspective and a commercial perspective. 

It’s using the commercial innovativeness that we have, to supplement and provide that warning to those commercial space operators. So fundamentally build the infrastructure? Government. Like air traffic control – and then provide the data, buy the commercial data in order to supplement that and use commercial resources to keep it going. 

21:01 – 21:09 

Now, we’ve discussed the influx of civil, commercial and U.S. government assets in space, but how do international space assets factor into this effort?  

21:09 – 23:16 

Yeah. Super important because space is global, right? And it’s not like you have this contained airspace. And so as we’ve talked about, it’s got civil, commercial and government and that includes anybody internationally. It’s not just U.S assets that are flying in space. The Office of Space Commerce actually engages internationally. 

And that’s one of their roles and because of that Office being established, they bring that credibility from a U.S. space leadership perspective. [That] doesn’t mean that you’re not engaging with other countries, which they are and they, it’s actually interesting. I was fortunate enough to participate in what they call Track 1.5, and it used to be that it would just be government-to-government meetings. 

Well, between the National Space Council, during the Biden administration and then with the Office of Space Commerce, they actually said, ‘Hey, commercial is so important to this, we need to have these Track 1.5 meetings. And so it was government and commercial coming together to engage international partners.’ And I was fortunate to be a part of that for France and Japan 

But they’ve continued that with other countries within the EU, the United Kingdom, India, Australia and others. Being able to engage on a government level, but also on a commercial level with these international partners is very important: one for them to understand the capability that TraCSS brings. What are those capabilities? What are you going to get for free to be able to have safety of flight, but then to also partner with others that want to build similar systems? 

And the one that comes to mind is within the EU. They have a SST. So Space Surveillance and Tracking system and it is similar to TraCSS. And it takes in national military data, but also commercial data. So kind of the same model. That coordination between what EUSST is doing and what TraCSS is doing is a great example of that collaboration internationally.

23:17 – 23:34 

Now, Ma’am, you mentioned that the United States has TraCSS and the EU has SST. But do they have the same standardized data?  

If they don’t, how do they reconcile those differences in how they format and share that data? And what might that mean for the imperative of good communication between these two partners? 

23:35 – 24:36 

I don’t think we’re there yet. I think that we’re close and that’s part of the conversation, that needs to happen. And even when an owner-operator shares their ephemeris, you know, their location, with whether it’s the Department of Defense or Department of Commerce for TraCSS. 

Even that format had to be adjudicated and agreed on. Like, ‘Well, how am I going to send that to you?’ Because they all have different systems and so that data format is really important, but part of this is those conversations between the Office of Space Commerce and EUSST is what is that data format that we want to agree on from an international perspective. 

There are commercial companies that do validation and verification of space data. So if you have two different data sources, you want to be able to determine quickly, which data is more accurate. This is going to be critical and something that the Office of Space Commerce knows and needs to be incorporated into TraCSS at a future date.

24:37 – 24:46 

What about this idea of a universal, internationally recognized space traffic management system.  

Can you elaborate on the possibilities that exist there, but also on the challenges in making that a reality?  

24:47 – 27:04 

From Charlie’s perspective, in a world of space is global, would it be nice to have one international system like air traffic control? Yes. But I think because of the dual-nature of space between civil and let’s just say government national security, that’s going to be hard to do because people are not going to want to be sharing all that data. They’re going to want it to remain a national prerogative. Do I share that data or do I not? Because there’s something going on in space. 

From a space safety perspective. You’re going to have, at least to begin with, these regional, whether it’s EUSST, or TraCSS, or maybe Japan sets up their own system regionally, and so they’re going to have to be able to collaborate and coordinate amongst themselves. 

And so it gets to the data standard that we talked about, what’s the adoption of the technical SSA standards that we need? How are we actually going to share that information? And what’s the direct engagement with those spacecraft operators? 

An example, I would use is if you have a Japanese satellite, do they give their data to the Japanese, you know, whatever that entity is and then that data is shared? They don’t actually have to share it with both TraCSS and EUSST, and you want to make it simple, because once the data is in there, you can share it broadly. And then it is that making sure that you work closely amongst the different players and I think that globally many people want space capabilities. 

An individual country, it’s like a coming out party. It’s like a debutante if you have space capabilities and so being able to actually share that information is super important.  

You talk about a one system, I just don’t see that happening anytime in the near future. Russia has kind of put something on the plate to propose a single centralized SSA system. But let’s be clear, China doesn’t share their information with us today. The only way to track where their satellites are, are through the capabilities that we have today. There is no sharing going on. 

So you would have to come to the table and say, ‘Globally we are all going to share and we’re all going to follow these norms of behavior and these rules.’ And I think we’re a little far off from that.

27:05 – 27:11 

And how does that speak to the imperative that the United States be the one to take a leadership role in space traffic management? 

27:12 – 27:59 

I mean, there are other nations that are taking a leadership role. Probably a few years ago, the UK actually came out with some very strong norms of behavior policy that they introduced to the UN. Amazing to see that leadership come out from the UK. 

From a US perspective, we have been the leader, we have had the global space traffic system and so we need to continue to be that leader, both from an economic and a national security perspective. 

That engagement with the commercial owner-operators in the norms of behavior. TraCSS has been a huge proponent of that, whether it’s their engagement with the commercial side and the commercial owner-operators or it’s with governments, or with the UN. They’ve really been pushing this standard from day one. 

28:00 – 28:12 

In the meantime, the TraCSS program also recently sought feedback on its Collision Avoidance or COLA Pathfinder program? How does this COLA Pathfinder program fit into this broader TraCSS effort? 

28:13 – 30:25 

When TraCSS first started, this was one of the areas that DOD, it was one of their highest priorities, not just to offload space traffic, space safety part of it, but also collision avoidance.  

Let’s go through that mission a little bit so people understand it. You have a launch. And you could have one or 60 [satellites.] And so the hardest part is tracking and cataloging those objects once they’ve been released from the rocket. From a DOD perspective, that was taking a lot of time in order for them to do that. 

Because when you have that many objects, it’s hard to discern which object is which? Is it satellite 1000 or is it satellite 1002? Being able to do what they call COLA, is cataloging those satellites. Being able to bring in commercial capability to fill that gap, is huge because obviously from a safety perspective, you want to catalog them as quickly as possible. 

You know, detect them, identify them and catalog them right after they’re deployed and that takes a very focused capability, in order to do that. And I actually think this is a great mission for the commercial sector to be able to do.  

They can do it much quicker than DOD can because of the additional capabilities that they have. And I’ll be honest, because they don’t have legacy systems. They’re able to get it in quickly and see it. And it’s normally, sometimes they have capability where the DOD doesn’t have capability, like they have an optical telescope, maybe where the DOD doesn’t have an optical telescope in order to see that. 

So from a commercial company, I can now have those capabilities to have broader coverage across the globe. Commercial can put capabilities maybe where the DOD hasn’t been able to put capability. You could put capabilities in Asia and Australia, capabilities in Chile and South Africa. 

Whereas DOD has to go government-to-government and go, ‘Okay, can I? It’s like having a base, right? Can I have basing rights in your country?’ Commercial – it’s a transaction. So you can add that capability. 

30:26 – 30:37 

And so what are some of the other capabilities that the DOD can look to the commercial space industry to provide solutions for? And how does TraCSS lay the foundation for those future capabilities to come to fruition? 

30:38 – 31:46 

Obviously, the space safety. They’re able to add data. I think this COLA mission. I also believe we’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting there from an innovation perspective from a in-space assembling and manufacturing. 

You know, so being able to actually re-gas or have mobile propulsion for a satellite. So now you’re not actually limited to the propulsion that was on the satellite when it launched. Or being able to maneuver a satellite from one position to another or being able to fix a satellite. And I actually see in a future where you could maybe capture the debris in some way. That’ll change the dynamic of how we operate in space. 

TraCSS is the first step of getting to that future, because you have to know where those objects are in space in order to have that capability to do what we call an RPO rendezvous in proximity [operation] – like to be able to have another satellite come up to another satellite – is not a simple mission.  

You have to have very exquisite data in order to be able to do that. TraCSS is the foundation to be able to bring those additional capabilities and that innovation to space.

31:47 – 32:00 

And Ma’am, from your perspective as a partner, what role can Elara Nova and its broad team of partners and consultants serve in supporting the government and its commercial and international partners for the purpose of space traffic management? 

32:01 – 33:02 

Elara Nova brings that voice to all the conversations that we have, whether it’s in the commercial sector or the government sector, or civil. And whether you’re engaging, and having those conversations, on The Hill or with international partners.  

From my perspective, Elara Nova can help commercial businesses understand what TraCSS is about and the capabilities that it provides? And how do they actually integrate with that capability? Whether you’re building a propulsion system or whether you’re launching satellites, you need to understand this and where you are in that ecosystem. Everybody has a role in keeping space safe, no matter where you are in the ecosystem. 

And then from a government or international perspective, it’s being that voice that, ‘Hey, we do need this infrastructure. We do need this foundation from a TraCSS system for U.S. leadership, not only for our economy, but also for national security, and being that bridge, especially on the international side of bringing partners together.’

33:03 – 33:40 

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 33: NATO investing in space capabilities to enhance multi-domain operations, establish deterrence  

Intro/Outro: Scott King (SK)

Host: Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships, Elara Nova (BH) 

SME: Air Marshall Sir Johnny Stringer, Deputy Commander of NATO Allied Air Command (JS) 

00:02 – 00:57 

(SK): Welcome to “The Elara Edge.” I’m your host, Scott King, and we have a new special edition series to present to you today: “The Elara Edge: International Insights Edition,” where the leading figures in international security share their insights and perspectives directly with you, our listeners.  

Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships at Elara Nova, will be your host today. And joining Brad as our inaugural guest is Air Marshall Sir Johnny Stringer, who at the time of this recording was retiring out of his role as the Deputy Commander of Allied Air Command at NATO. 

Together, they’ll be discussing NATO’s evolving approach to space since the military alliance first declared it an operational domain in 2019, as well as how commercial space providers should be considering opportunities to support NATO in its space warfighting efforts.  

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

00:58 – 01:22 

(BH): Welcome to The Elara Edge International Insight Edition. I’m Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships at Elara Nova, where we specialize in strategic advisory for space, aeronautics and mission systems. Today, I’m honored to speak with Air Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer, the deputy commander for NATO’s Air Command, which includes command of NATO Space. Sir Johnny has been in his role since August 2022 and has served as acting commander since May.  

Sir Johnny, it’s great to have you on.  

01:23 – 01:24 

(JS): Great to be here, Brad. Thanks. 

01:25 – 01:34  

(BH): All right, Sir. 

Let’s start back at the beginning. Take me back to the Watford Grammar School where you went to school. What was it about the Royal Air Force that captured young Johnny Stringer’s imagination?  

01:35 – 02:43 

(JS): Yeah, I think, I think I just always have been interested in aircraft. I mean, I probably built an unhealthy number of Airfix models as a kid. I mean, I was lucky enough my elder brother was about five years ahead of me. He went into the Air Force and I go to see a bunch of things, which he was doing before I had to kind of make any substantial calls. 

So I got a bit of a privileged ringside seat. I was able to go flying with a family friend on a couple of occasions. Once in a Chipmunk which was [fabulous] and it just kind of really struck me as something exciting and interesting and different. 

And then I joined the Air Cadets when I was in school, which again gave me another set of insights into the Air Force. And when it came to the sixth form, sort of the last two years of school, school and off to university, I applied for sponsorship from the Air Force, and I was lucky enough to get it. 

So I landed a flying scholarship for 30 hours, and then applied for sponsorship at University of the Air Force, as well. So I went on to university in 1987 as an RAF University Cadet at the hallowed rank of Acting Pilot Officer. But that was it. 

02:44 – 03:04 

(BH): Very cool. So it sounds like you’ve had a pretty remarkable career. Looking through your resume, you flew the Jaguars over Yugoslavia, the no fly zone in northern Iraq, you commanded a Squadron. You flew the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain Memorial flight. When you look back on your career… Was there a moment that stands out to you as kind of one of your key moments in your career? 

03:05 – 05:15 

(JS): I think you’re right. I have been really fortunate, I think. And there is kind of a series of moments, really, maybe that’s the kind of thing you come back to. I mean, I always say you never stop learning, and every day is a school day. And I’m aged nudging 56. I still think that is entirely true. 

I was lucky enough to fly with and learn from some exceptional people. Jaguar Force is particularly dear to my heart because you had to work very hard to get every last ounce out of an aircraft that was great fun and very challenging to fly. But at the end of the day, a Typhoon Eurofighter had two and a half times the thrust, a much bigger wing, a radar, a whole bunch of other things. 

But then [sic] was where I did just shy of 2000 hours. I met my wife there, kids were born there. And it was a great example, I think, of excellence in the Force, but one that didn’t shout about it. And anybody who ran any risk of getting above themselves really was politely but quite quickly brought back down to Earth. 

So I learned a lot in those times and then, back to being fortunate, maybe even privileged of flying Spitfires and Hurricanes, which really resonated [with] my first degree was History. My background was single seat fighters. And then to get a chance to fly what our predecessors, our forebearers had done during World War II, and most obviously, of course, the Battle of Britain was phenomenal. 

I mean, really very, very sobering and quite moving. And, but don’t get me wrong, I will [also] say a great challenge and fantastic fun. I was just playing down to 100ft, doing a lot of work-up for display season. And with less than six hours on a Hurricane. So it was great. 

Very well supervised, folks, by the way. But it was immense fun. So all the way through not just my flying career but in staff, you learn all along the way, and I think anybody who doesn’t think that is kind of in denial, really. You learn automatically about leadership and approaches to problems and sort of approaches to people and those are some things you just cannot teach. You just have to develop through doing. 

05:16 – 05:54 

(BH): Very cool. Yeah, it sounds similar to an answer that I’ve heard from many people throughout my career that squadron command is the pinnacle of your life because that’s where you’re closest tied to the mission and the people that are doing that mission. 

And then the farther along it goes, sometimes the more disconnected you get from that kind of tangible, everyday interaction. All right, so from here, let’s kind of fast forward to August of 2022. So you stepped in to become the Deputy Commander of Allied Air Command there at Ramstein and so you’ve come from a career of primarily national service in the RAF. 

And now you get into a leadership role in a multinational alliance. So I guess what surprised you most about that transition? And then kind of the role that you find yourself in now? 

05:55 – 09:00 

(JS): Yeah, I don’t know if I’d quite use that term, but what I would do – back to people you learn from. So at that stage, NATO was 30 nations. 

We are now obviously at 32 with the accession of Finland and Sweden during the time I’ve been out here. But learning from people, and I do mean this. I was privileged to be the UK Air Component Commander in the Middle East in October 2016 until October 2017. It was a period where we were conducting ops to retake Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a whole bunch of other [sic]. 

And who was my CFAC, my three star American Air Component Commander? “Cobra” Harrigian. And Cobra had just handed over to Scorch Hecker, here at Ramstein. And the reason I mention Cobra is every day I got a masterclass in how you run a coalition. And at that stage, I think it was 17 or 18 nations’ air forces within the overall Operation Inherent Resolve coalition. 

 And as I said, I just learned a whole load about the realities of coalitions and how you manage and bring nations along with you. The good and the difficult and the bad and the ugly. And I recognized at the time, and I reflected on that in August 2022, how much I’ve stored away from that year. 

But then, of course, being what was I at that stage? 52. I’ve done a bunch of non-Air Force jobs. In fact, from leaving Squadron Command, I’ve spent, no, even the frontline before going back to Squadron Command. I’ve spent almost twice as much in joint and international appointments as I have in core Air Force ones. So I’ve been very lucky to have been engaged with, exposed to, nations [and the] realities working and the rest of it.  

I think the bit which I would say, just broadly on things, which has always kind of been a thing I aim to subscribe to is it’s very easy when you are confronted with big alliances, lots of nations, and the rest of it, to drive for consensus in all things. 

And at one level, of course you would. But really consensus, if you’re not careful, becomes the lowest common denominator, the thing which everybody will accept and you’ll never get to move things along. So as my team will know, I routinely say, ‘Look, guys, we may lose arguments because of positions, which we just can’t influence elsewhere or dynamics which were not cited on. 

But we’re never going to lose an argument on multi-core analysis because at some point, it’s almost certain that you’ll come back to a discussion or a decision. So let’s just make sure that we are as objective and rational as we can be because context and circumstances change. And what we want to do is make sure that the position we set out was not swayed by anything but was the most objective advice we could provide.

09:01 – 09:20 

(BH): Well, as you’ve kind of taken on that role. I’ve seen you speak in different forums and you’ve written a little bit about this, and you’ve talked about two “long shadows” that still haunt NATO’s military. And I wonder if you could kind of recount that metaphor for us today and kind of explain what that means to you and why specifically use the phrase ‘Shadows?’

09:21 – 12:12 

(JS): Shadows is a metaphor that’s been used in many areas over things. And I think the reason it kind of appeals to me: long speaks for duration – back to that the moment – and shadow, of course, is the area that’s denying light being let in or indeed it’s the shade that’s been set by something that you may have done for many years, both of which I think are true here.  

And so for me the first long shadow started in 1990 with we’ve won the Cold War. And, it is no surprise, is it? In fact, it was a conscious decision in so many nations to go “Fantastic liberal democracy has triumphed. It’s the peace dividend all round. I don’t need to invest in defense in the way I did.” And that leads to, in a way, a second long shadow: not quite as long as 32 years, from 1990 to February 2022 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

But the second [shadow] is what was 15 to 20 years long. And that was counterinsurgency operations done at range against a particular type of threat, vicious but limited. For the air component in particular, no real threat, putting more threat to your operations on the ground than to you in the air because you were fighting people who had little or no counter air capability, if I can call it that. 

Your biggest threats were running out of fuel or oil, and we benefited from an almost all-seeing permanent ISR stare. Sure, we never had enough of it, but we were not contested. We weren’t fighting for spectrum dominance. Electronic warfare didn’t really happen and we got very comfortable in the way of fighting that was also expeditionary. 

And importantly for us, that means a long way away from home bases. There were spikes of deployment activity, and you came back to a safe home environment where you reset for the next go. And so that era of the two parts here: one ‘hey peace dividend, [we] don’t need to spend on things we did before.’ 

And the second of discretionary niche type operations at range, really got a bit of a rude wake up call in 2022, except, of course, it’s not just 2022, is it? It was 2014 in Crimea and it’s 2008 with Georgia before that. So I think it was a kind of natural human instinct to go elevate it to the grand strategic.  

When it was being thrown in doubt by what our adversaries or competitors were doing, we applied a lot of optimism bias because it didn’t suit the happy picture, we told ourselves. And really, we are coming out of those two positions, I think, Brad.  

12:13 – 12:31 

(BH): One thing that I think about sometimes is that, you know, for over 30 years, NATO conducted operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places in full view of our potential adversaries who were watching and studying and learning how we do things. 

So what does it mean strategically when you’re facing peer competitors who had three decades to study your playbook?

12:32 – 14:37 

(JS): Yeah. So kind of 2 or 3 things here. I think the second offset strategy – this isn’t an exhaustive list, but this is the era of first era stealth technology, precision munitions, the real exploitation of space-based capabilities, and systems miniaturization. 

Back to space: precision navigation, Satcom, ISR I mean, the whole lot. And of course the first time people really saw it was 1991. But the reality is you could almost date the kickoff to part one of that with the first use of the Paveway 1 in Vietnam in 1968. So that combination of technology, thinking, tactics, training and then overall theory of victory was phenomenal in 1991, but it looked remarkably the same in 2021. 

We’ve taken it, polished, honed it. But the fundamental tenets of it were the same. But at the same time, we had conceptually as well as physically dis-invested in many areas, some of them very key. And I would say that amongst that list, for me, top of the tree is integrated air and missile defense. 

That’s why there is so much focus on that now. Linking to your point, which is, our adversaries and competitors saw that model first shown to the world in 1991 and actively sought to not only neuter it, but to turn some of our approaches to warfare almost against us and we sat there and went, “Eh, it will be all right, because, you know, as I said, liberal democracy has triumphed.” 

Well, no, it hasn’t. So, we have to now re-configure ourselves against that reality. And again, I hate to say it, we have enjoyed an unnaturally long period of relative peace in Europe and elsewhere and if we want that to maintain, then best we prepare – sadly, for war. Once again, the Romans had it right.

14:38 – 15:01 

(BH): So, I think if we flip that around a little bit in the last three years, we’ve had an opportunity to watch Russia, in particular in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Neither side has seemed to have achieved air superiority and it’s kind of bogged down. You said if either side had this, war would still not be happening. 

So how out of the long shadows that you’ve described in NATO, keep us unprepared for what we’re seeing right now, today, play out in Ukraine and Russia? 

15:02 – 17:56 

(JS): So back to 1991. And that was on one level, it was a recognition of that air superiority. But also, by the way, space superiority, ‘Who was threatening our space-based systems in 1991?’ 

We’re going to be fundamental to allowing all of the components to exploit the freedom of access and freedom of maneuver that air superiority was providing and space-based systems. And that’s one of the key things which our opponents have sought to neutralize in the decades that followed. There is a reason why one of our key missions is what we would call counter anti-access and area denial.  

And this is not solely to free up maneuver, and access for the air component. It’s to ensure freedom of access and freedom of maneuver for everybody. So, air superiority continues to underpin joint operations. It is the way that you prevail. It is also, frankly, the thing which our adversaries look at and I think worry the most about when they look at, in this case, NATO capability and Western air power and what it provides. 

But you have to fight for it literally and metaphorically. The metaphorical is you need to keep investing in back to those five T’s I set out from the U.S. experience after Vietnam and underpinning the second offset strategy, you got to make sure that your thinking allied to I mean, frankly, probably the fastest and most concurrent series of technological advances that I think any of us have seen. How that all comes together. How that with imagination and will applied to it, starts offering different ways in warfare to you, combine not just a single domain. 

Then how do you practice for it? And I’m sure we’ll come on to it. But of course, one of the things is you don’t show in the real world what you might have to do – for real in the future. So that places, by the way, a real premium on synthetics. And then how does that map to a theory of victory?  

Now, of course, in NATO a theory of victory for a defensive alliance sounds a rather strange phrase. Actually. It’s your theory of victory. And I know I’ve said this before, but I truly believe it – you need to build forces that can demonstrably win. And if you’ve done that, you will get deterrence as a byproduct. If you try to build forces that deter you already, I think, intellectually not in the right place. 

17:57 – 18:16 

(BH): That’s a great distinction. So you threw out a phrase there, and I want to pull on that thread for a second. You didn’t say it exactly, but “multi-domain operations” is a word we hear thrown around a lot in NATO discussions these days.  

Can you kind of unpack that for the audience? What are multi-domain operations and how is that different from the way we thought about things previously? 

18:17 – 21:27 

(JS): Yeah, and it’s a really fair question. So when I was setting out on my frontline career, certainly in the first few years, you would have seen the move to the discussion of and this is a great non-word my apologies, but discussion of joint-ery and the fact that we were going to bring air, land and maritime and it would have been seen in these three domains: air, land and maritime, together. 

And of course, you kind of go, ‘Well, you saw a lot of that in World War Two. You probably saw bits of that beforehand, [but any] bits in there might have been a couple of domains.  

So we did get pretty good. We actually designed things like staff colleges around being joint and everybody came together. For the UK, it was a [sic]. But I think we always knew that it was actually done really well. 

It was considerably more than just three military domains. But even with the recognition of space and cyber as being domains in their own right by nations or NATO – take your pick. There was something far more than that. And I think multi-domain operations, if we are really true to the term, have to include all instruments of national or for an alliance like NATO: alliance power. 

So how do you, for example, fuse intelligence agencies with more traditional military means, with non-military means in the domains. Commercial space, a great example but not the only one. With in protracted campaigns, things like economic warfare, not just traditional military warfare. I mean, how do you fuse that all together, whether it is for specific operations or how it underpins a means of campaigning? 

And again, I think back to some of the stuff which we did, led by the air component in the AOR in Iraq and Syria when I was out there. A lot of what we’re talking about now, we did. But we did it as a kind of episodic thing for certain events. 

And I think if you’re really serious about multi-domain or all-domain operations, it’s a default. It’s not the thing you do occasionally and you do a kind of lower level of activity at all other times. But then it places a real premium I think on two things. So the first is: what does your command and control look like that fuzes all of this together? And that is way more than just tactical C2 in the moment. It’s even how do you share information and data of different classifications across different agencies in different nations? Always a challenge.  

The second one, perhaps, which is the less obvious, which is how do you educate your commanders and your staff to flourish, to really excel in this space? Because if you don’t do those two things, you can buy as much flashy equipment as you like, but it’s not going to perform as you need it to.  

21:28 – 22:42 

(BH): That’s great. I know command and control in particular is one that, in my career, we struggled with, I know JADC2 and ABMS are some of those initiatives that the US Air Force and the US joint force have tried to get after that command and control and all that information and connecting that down to a commander, who’s got to make decisions and it’s been a challenge to build the systems that enable that and I assume NATO struggles with some of the same things. 

Okay, so with that set as a broad context, I’d like to drill down. Our audience is primarily a space audience. So focused on just space for just a second and I’ll start with a little bit of a story. 

Two years ago, in October of 2023, I was on a trip with a couple of, a handful of colleagues from the US space enterprise, including Deanna Ryals, who you know well. We were at Allied Command Operations on the first day of STEADFAST DEFENDER and General Cavoli, who was the SACEUR at that time, during the first commanders update briefing the first afternoon of the exercise. 

Said at one point, ‘Hey, where’s my lead space guy?’ There’s an army lieutenant colonel there, who kind of raised his hand sheepishly and said, ‘Sir, I think that might be me.’ And he said, ‘Okay, cool. How much space stuff do I have?’ And so the guy said he thought about it for a minute and he said, ‘Sir, you don’t have any space stuff. The nations retain everything they’ve got. They might make it available to you on the day, if you ask nicely and they don’t have anything else going on.’  

So how much of that has changed since that conversation two years ago?  

22:43 – 26:52 

(JS): Yeah. So in a way, one – an interesting conversation because NATO as NATO doesn’t own fighters, destroyers, main battle tanks and a bunch of other stuff. But by what its members provide to the alliance, it has access to a load of stuff. 

And you could go down the route of chasing satellites with a NATO sticker on the side. By the way, we used to have a few satellites that were NATO-funded and owned. 

And rockets. Now I don’t have rockets either, have I? But just look at my routes now to put payloads on orbit. And by the way, look at the cost, compared it per kilo compared to where it was even ten years ago. But the cost of physical ownership of the stuff really doesn’t worry me. The assured access to the capabilities I need definitely does. 

So, okay, am I going to be able to get stuff from nations’ brackets and what can I get from nations or multinationals or alliances or the other, that’s commercial, and also provides what I need. And this is not, by the way, something that’s come out to the field since you had that chat two years ago. But the commercial driver in space has been there for decades. We all know that.  

Back to 1991, look how much satellite communications was being born by commercial bearers even then. So there’s a bunch of things which had been absolutely underpinned by the commercial space contribution. I think, what is changing, I’m not going to say has changed. 

What is changing from even two years ago, you are getting an increasingly better educated middle and more senior echelon, across the Alliance and therefore, of course, in nations. About not just reliance on space. I mean, that’s one thing, but the opportunities and how you can get the capabilities that you need. You don’t need to have, for example, unless frankly, you’ve got the need and/or the resources to do it – very expensive national-only military systems. 

Some nations do for a bunch of reasons, but a number of spacefaring nations don’t need to be in that place. And in fact, some of the more imaginative ones don’t have anything there at all. But boy, are they very good at leveraging other options. So the continuing indeed probably slightly exponential rise in the importance of and provision of service from commercial is really, really important. 

The second one, I think we’ve probably been less successful at squaring. And again, it may not be the most obvious thing to focus on which is even the youngest – air power – of the three traditional domains, is now about 110 years old in military air power terms, you could argue a bit longer ago if you go to balloons, but that’s a lot of time to develop capacity in numbers. 

The Royal Air Force was at something like 1.3 million people at the end of World War II in it, we’re about 32,000 or so now. But the point is, we’ve had decades to devote to develop people and capacity in structures, space is still quite juvenile in this regard across a bunch of nations. So the one thing which I think we’ve probably not seen as much change as we would have liked in two years, although the arrows are going in the right direction, would be on our space cadre. 

Our workforce, who are either in the early stages of or are developing nicely in their space component or space domain careers, because you can have as much stuff as you like. Again, if you haven’t got the means to exploit it, you’re not going to get the maximum return. So for me, the workforce is really important. Exploit commercial and get everybody on the same rising tide as well, because all of the NATO nations are or can play in this area.

26:53 – 28:38 

(BH): And it’s interesting, you see nations like, I know Romania, has a couple microsats up monitoring the Black Sea. And then you see even nontraditional space players are now starting to get involved in the space game. I think that that gets back to the point you alluded to earlier, where commercial space, the price of launch has come down and the proliferation of commercial providers doing a variety of things that has made it more accessible, I guess, something to think about is. 

NATO didn’t actually declare space an operational domain until 2019. Can you kind of help us think through like, what was it that got them to a point in 2019 that they thought, ‘Okay, now is the time to declare that.’ And then kind of a second part of that question, when I look at the space domain, it seems complicated because the systems tend to be very classified. 

I know on the US side it’s hard to talk about sometimes. Even within the service, across mission areas, there’s classification issues. It seems to me that the space domain is kind of at this inflection point where it could go the way of nuclear or it could go the way of cyber, in the NATO construct. And what I mean by that is, NATO is a nuclear alliance. 

They’ve got an HLG, you know, a high level group and a nuclear planning group, and there’s a handful of nations that have nuclear weapons. There’s some others that operate nuclear weapons. But the entire alliance is a nuclear alliance and has coherent conversations about the translation from conventional to nuclear.  

And I would contrast that with the cyber domain, which is the other kind of newer domain. It was a little bit older than the space domain, and in here, we see this conversation where, where we say, ‘Okay, I’m not going to tell you what I can do, just ask me for an effect. And if you want the power to go off in that building from 10 to 2 on Tuesday,’ I may be able to do that or whatever the ask may be. But we really don’t talk about it.  

And so, kind of how did we get to where we’re at on declaring space an operational domain and as we look forward, do you see it going kind of the way of going nuclear or the way of cyber, where we’re going to have a fulsome conversation and be able to talk about space coherently at the alliance level?

28:39 – 30:06 

(JS): Yeah. So this is my assessment but I think it was probably two things. The first was 2019 is also about the same time, as you see the emergence of a revised family of plans in NATO. So deterrence and defense of the Euro-Atlantic area, the DDA family of plans, so that was genuinely a really important moment for the Alliance.  

And of course, it did pre-date Ukraine. So there were people who were looking at the direction of travel, and going, ‘The trend lines here are not good.’ But our approach to planning and plans is fundamentally different. So I think that’s one key driver. The second is it was just becoming increasingly counterfactual, wasn’t it? 

You could not [put] a hand on the heart and say, ‘Space is not an operational domain.’ When you saw the number of nations who were getting into the space game, the expansion of military, the rapid expansion of commercial, the fact that it absolutely underpinned our way in warfare from a very basic tactical level. We come back to a classic: ‘Imagine a day without space.’  

But to then say, ‘Hey, but it’s not a domain, would have been, frankly, unsustainable.’ For fans of old Kings, this is Canute and his throne. That the waves of the tides have already gone well past him, so I think it was an overdue recognition. Now, of course, the challenge is what do you do with that statement?

30:07 – 30:34 

(BH): All right. So, to drill down a couple levels of detail. You’ve got the NATO Space Center there, that’s working on a couple of different products that are going to help flesh out: how do you operationalize that domain? The first one is the Mission Essential Task List, and the second is a campaign plan. So if we can kind of talk through those a little bit. 

So start with the Mission Essential Task List or METAL. What’s the process? What’s it designed to achieve? And kind of on a foundational level, is this an attempt to answer the question: how much space stuff do we need as an alliance?

30:35 – 33:08 

(JS): So METALs as a concept has been around for some time. I think in a way, the Mission Essential Task List approach is a way of basically applying some rigor to what is it that we actually need to do? So rather than the whimsical, ‘Hey it would be quite nice to do this or it’d be quite nice to do that.’ It’s very much context threat based, mission based, right? Included in the title.   

To discharge what we have been asked to do implied, as well as specified tasks. How do we aggregate that down to each individual task that supports what the component needs to do? And I think we were somewhere around 350 or so METALs for the NATO space component. And by the way, some of these are really, not binary, but singular. So some of these are very, very specific tasks.  

But if you have properly unpacked your mission right down to the essential tasks to discharge it, you’ve now got the right framework to go, ‘All right, structurally and in process and in capability. What do I now need to deliver those METALs? But it doesn’t stop there. How do I now take that? 

And of course NATO is not unique in this. How do I now take that to inform policy discussions about what it is that I need to do as a component, because on one level, it is defining what it is that you need to do and helping you do it better. On another, it is also providing the provenance when you go in to say, ‘Hey, here are my three priorities as the Space Component Commander.’ And by the way, I can track these all the way back to a set of METALs. 

That when I aggregate into some functional areas, they tell me what I need to do. So it may sound very kind of angel on pinheads, boffins discussion, but actually it is absolutely about framing how we do our task. And it has been really, really helpful for us because you can trace back why you are making bids for more workforce, why you can set out the expanded mission set and the requirements that go with it, and how you then have, as should rightly be the case in an alliance of 32 that is a defensive alliance. How you then have what are some quite challenging policy discussions? 

33:09 – 33:47 

(BH): That sounds like a bottoms up approach to operationally defining your requirements that you then get to communicate out to the 32 nations and say, ‘Hey, we collectively need to have this much of these sorts of capabilities to come together in a coherent way so that we can execute the space mission that we know we’re going to have to be able to execute in the next fight.  

Let’s pivot a little bit to the campaign plan. So, to me, this seems to be where the strategy meets execution. So if a METAL tells you what you need to do, a campaign plan. Well, I guess I’ll ask you, but I think a campaign tells you how and and kind of when you’re going to build the capability to do that. 

So if you could walk me through the thinking on what does the space campaign look like as you guys are developing that now? 

33:48 – 37:44 

(JS): You’re absolutely right. Strategies are great, but at some point you’ve got to implement them. So the campaign plan seeks to bring together not only a number of lines of work which are underway, but also some stuff we know we’re going to have to do. And I’ll come back to the three priorities in a moment. The other point I’d make is we are kind of on the cusp of phase three and phase four, just getting into phase four of the five phase space domain implementation plan. 

But that was derived in the late teens. And the context – back to just how rapidly some things are changing in the space domain. The real world has left some of that behind. So one of the things that the campaign plan also does is go, ‘Okay, how do we bridge from what was an effective implementation plan but has now been overtaken by events into something that is anticipating to the best extent we can future requirements whilst rooted – back to METALs – rooted in the mission requirements of now.  

Who are the stakeholders in that? How do we bring everything together? And how do we make sure that that is properly scored against all of what military folk would call the lines of development, things like infrastructure, training, organization, doctrine, what NATO would call DOTMILPF-I or the British because they’re just being difficult would call tepid oil. 

But the campaign plan really sets a chart out for us. It does it against three key areas. There’s other stuff, of course, but those three are: to establish what we’re terming unified space C2. The second is enhancing our capabilities on space domain awareness, but also space-based ISR. Which we’ve recently picked up the responsibility for, for NATO. And then the third area is how we embrace and develop the ability to deliver combat space effects.  

And that is probably the most obvious one, which is a very live policy area of discussion in NATO at the moment. But as I said, back to my Conute example, the reality is not only do individual nations in NATO have some long-established combat space effect capability, you can now contract for it commercially, from some providers. 

So, not only are you in denial, you’re just completely counterfactual. If you think somehow NATO can stay out of that bit, because the first two are softer and we’re kind of more happy with them. I’m sorry. The world and indeed, the space domain is just not like that.  

One of the things, and to be honest, it’s probably overdue. But one of the things we’ve done this year is formalize a meeting of the key folk in the space component here at Ramstein, at HQ NATO and Allied Command Transformation, a couple of others and bring them together, around twice a year. 

We’ve actually had three meetings this year, and we’ve had three because we’ve really wanted to put the burners on for the space campaign plan. And that will be, I think, one of the sort of really good, high level entities that ensures that we are staying true to not only the priorities we’ve identified, but the means of implementing them. 

Because, as I said, some of this stuff is always challenging, as it should be in NATO, because you’re going to have to get agreement at the 32, i.e. you’re going to have to get all 32 nations to agree to some of it.  

However, you also want to be able to inform national space capability activity and also commercial. So there’s a load of goodness out of this and having that better kind of small ‘g’ governance over it I think was probably overdue.  

37:45 – 38:28 

(BH): There was a summit in The Hague got together and amongst other things, committed to spending 5% of their GDP on defense. 

3.5% of that in the kind of the way that it has historically been talked about it at the 2% level if we track back to the Whales summit in 2014. It seems like that creates an opportunity as nations are going to invest significantly as the space domain is unfolding and you keep referencing the commercial. 

I think that’s absolutely a key player in a lot of this conversation. And so as we think about that, is NATO in a position to clearly articulate to the nations and their industries out there that are listening to this, as they think about what are the capabilities that they need to fill? What are the priorities that they should be getting after? And how they kind of connect all those dots together that you just mentioned?

38:29 – 40:45 

(JS): Yeah, I think the scorecards are a bit uneven. I think there’s been some really good progress in some areas. I think the alliance’s persistent surveillance in space as a concept is a good thing. And I think, again, we are going to really learn through doing, certainly in the next 12 months or so. I think, elsewhere, if I’m being honest, we have probably been a bit slow, or indeed there are bits which have been missing. 

So most obviously the NDP piece of the NATO Defense Planning process has not paid the attention to space that it should have done. And we’re actually going to address that in the imminent refresh cycle that repeats on this 4 or 5 year look in step one. The other thing is to come up with the space [sic] so that nations can actually commit against. 

So all those things which, if we were discussing it in another domain, would be the bread and butter, but again, probably a little bit of a hangover from only really agreeing that it was an operational domain in 2019. It’s just, which I know sounds poorly, doesn’t it? Six years later and we’re still playing catch up. But the point is, I think there is now a real sense of need as well as urgency. 

And for the commercial sector, I think there’s probably a few things that stand out. The first few nations have a shedload of spending power and they’re either going to do that individually and, or they’re going to do it through NATO. That creates a fantastic environment to both develop, sell and compete in. 

And I think space may well be one of the most vibrant, commercial-public alliance ecosystems that we’ll find. And I think you only have to look at, for example, back to space domain awareness. Look how many commercial companies are playing in this area. And, there are so many providing some really good, niche stuff that when you fuse it all together, it provides a really helpful suite of capability. 

So there’s kind of a great opportunity, alongside that requirement. And I’ve always thought that space is arguably the dual-use domain. So why don’t we just really exploit that for the benefit of everybody?  

40:46 – 41:13 

(BH): No, I think that’s right. And I think in the US context, we see in the Joint Commercial Office under Barb Golf, the building a commercial space domain awareness, which could be the core of a NATO space domain awareness picture that nations then layer on some sovereign national capabilities that kind of get to the exquisite, niche capabilities that you need above and beyond that core space picture that you’d want. 

Rather than having 32 nations develop their own space picture, we just got the core of a commercial picture that we augment with national sovereign systems. 

41:14 – 41:47 

(JS): I think what Barb and the team have done with the JCO is phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. And if you want to advert for back again to imagination and will and innovation applied to a core area, the JCO is a fantastic example. And again, with how it’s mechanized or operationalized the space ops center here at Ramstein contributes to one of the three sequential eight hour watches in any 24 hour period. So JCO is really impressive.  

41:48 – 42:35 

(BH): Going back to the list that you expounded on during the talk about the campaign plan. I think you said something to the effect of, ‘We need to embrace and develop combat space.’ And so a couple thoughts here I’d like to get your kind of reaction on. So I was at a conference earlier this year in Toulouse, France at the NATO Space Center of Excellence. 

And one of the allied space leaders said something to the effect of ‘you may not be interested in offensive space, but offensive space is interested in you.’ So I wonder if you could kind of unpack that and here I’d also like to kind of pull in China. We haven’t talked about China. We’ve talked a lot about the European threat. 

But it seems to me that space is in the area because it’s global and astrographic, where I’ve heard some Allied leaders say that this is the one area where we can have a coherent conversation about the challenges that that China poses to us militarily and in other ways. So if you could kind of reflect on that kind of offensive space?  

42:36 – 44:51 

(JS): I would probably, for reasons you’ll understand. I mean, I won’t get drawn too much into nations other than to note that, of course, there are a bunch of vocab out there who I think we could accurately start now saying as being at least competitive. And therefore, you know, we need to be very much aware of what they are doing and what they are investing in. 

One of the things I always say when they visit the space ops center is compare and contrast for the want of a better phrase, the orbital track graphic of Russian systems with the orbital tracks of Chinese ones. So in terms of the national strategic investment in the space domain by China being no doubt, as to what it looks like and it is multifaceted. 

 I think there is also something that is absolutely true in what you said. Any sense that you can delineate space as a domain is, I think, for the birds because, it’s all around us. And in terms of what it can actually provide, how it underpins normal life let alone military capability and operations. 

And I think the quote from Toulouse and I was there as well. It is a truism. It comes back to my main point. It doesn’t matter whether you kind of feel uneasy about this or it feels a bit aggressive and not like, you know, and can’t we keep space as some sort of sanctity area?  

 The decision has already been made for us. And therefore to be in denial to that would be analogous for example, in the air domain to go, ‘Hey, they put a lot of offensive capability but I’d really rather not go there myself, in which case you just going to be walked over.’  

By the way, and really important for NATO is back to something I was chatting about, you know, earlier that you don’t build forces to deter you build forces to win. And therefore you have got to in all five domains as recognized by NATO. You’ve got to show that you mean business. And then if anybody threatens you there, they are going to come off significantly worse and therefore building the capabilities you need to assure your deterrence is really important and space to me is no different than the other domains.

44:52 – 45:35 

(BH): Yeah, I totally agree with that. So, I’m looking at the time and realizing that we’re running close here. And so I want to kind of give you a chance to kind of wrap up with any final thoughts. I’ve got a laundry list of other questions, and if we had more time, I’d love for you to go through them all. But I know you got, you’ve got to wrap up your job, exercises going on and household goods and making the transition back to the UK. 

So I’ll ask one kind of follow up question and kind of give you a chance to [provide] any last thoughts. But, as you look out over the next 3 to 5 years, I mean, so it was declared an operational domain in 2019, and you’ve been with it since 2022, in your NATO capacity kind of helping guide and shape the space domain as you look out over the next three years, you know, where do you hope things are going? Where do we need to go? What are the priorities that we need to prioritize as we look forward over the next period of time? 

45:36 – 47:15 

(JS): You can always come up with an interesting shopping list, but I think by and large it comes down to two things. The first is we have to up the pace at which we’re developing our people. 

That’s nations so that their own space cadre is developed, but that selfishly also means that they can put more people into the NATO space enterprise, because we’re going to need them and we need to be imaginative in how we do that. And that includes, for example, working out what our overall space education and training capability is in the nations. 

Base-lining what a foundational series of courses looked like and then ensuring that every course, no matter where it is, is 100% filled because it can be multinational, because we’re educating and training to a set of standards. Loads behind that. But if you just took workforce numbers as number one. 

And then the second is we need to make sure that as we continually refine the family of plans, the space capabilities that we are putting into those plans are assured to SACEUR. So he knows that he’s going to get what we promised him on the ten. I’m actually quite confident in that space because, again, where a number of them are being commercially driven, there is a logic and motive there anyway, but some of the other stuff will remain largely, if not exclusively, a military space requirement. We need to make sure the nations are funding that adequately. 

So that as I said, you know, SACEUR knows that when he’s calling for forces, he’s going to get them. So those are kind of the two for me, Brad. 

47:16 – 47:34 

(BH): Thank you very much for that, Sir. That’s a great way to end the conversation. Again, I wish we could keep talking for a while, but I know you got bigger and better things to go do. 

So I appreciate you taking time with us today. Again, this has been Air Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer, the Deputy Commander of NATO’s Air Command. And Sir, we wish you all the best as you make the transition back to the UK and whatever comes next for you. 

47:35 – 47:37 

(JS): Thanks, Brad. First beer on me.  

47:38 – 48:23 

(SK): This has been the inaugural episode of “The Elara Edge: International Insights Edition,” a special edition series of “The Elara Edge” podcast. 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.

Episode 31: From GSSAP to RG-XX, Space Force Bringing “Solution Diversity” to Space Domain Awareness

Host: Scott King

SME: Col (Ret) Ken Bowling, Partner at Elara Nova

00:02 – 01:33

To better understand the space operational environment, the United States Space Force has traditionally relied on military-operated constellations like the Space Based Space Surveillance system (SBSS) and the Geosynchrnous Space Situational Awareness Program (or GSSAP), both of which provide space situational awareness data that simply identifies and tracks man-made objects in orbit. 

But space situational awareness data, also known as SSA, is vital to a broader Space Force imperative for space domain awareness, or SDA: which goes another step further in not only identifying and tracking man-made objects in space, but also understanding their intent and behavior, as well.

Now, the Space Force wants commercial space companies to provide their own SSA data to the SDA mission, through a new program, currently known as Geosynchronous Reconnaissance & Surveillance Constellation (or RG-XX). 

Welcome to The Elara Edge! Here to discuss these space domain awareness programs, and the opportunities and challenges of bringing commercial SSA data to the SDA mission, is Elara Nova partner Ken Bowling. A retired Colonel with the United States Air Force, Ken commanded units at both Group and Squadron levels, and brings with him over 25 years of satellite research and development experience, and space situational awareness expertise. 

Sir, welcome to the show!

01:34 – 01:35

Thank you. Glad to be here. 

01:35 – 01:45

We’re happy to have you. Now, Sir, let’s begin with GSSAP. 

Can you introduce us to this Space Force program and its role as it relates to the space domain awareness mission?

01:46 – 03:24

Yeah, I’ll do the best I can. Just keep in mind that everything that I say regarding GSSAP and any other space-based capabilities that may or may not be actively part of the Space Force inventory. My answers and comments today are based upon open source media, not anything that I may have picked up in my time on active duty while I was in the U.S. Air Force, serving in the space community.

So GSSAP has been around for a while. It’s development effort – it was not well known, if known at all, as it was supposed to be. In 2014, roughly, when we were still the Air Force and Space Command was part of the Air Force, it was a capability at Geosynchronous orbit that provided space situational awareness through persistent and, relatively speaking, nearby, meaning it was actually in geosynchronous orbit with other geosynchronous objects such as communications satellites and other things, in such a way that it was able to survey and surveil geosynchronous orbit.

And in recent years it has served its purpose well, according to all sorts of published media on it. And they’re even talking about today – openly – about a next generation RG-XX, follow on or whatever you want to call it. They haven’t given it a name yet, a formal name. And I think it even includes the potential to have commercial vendors provide some of that capability. At least they’re not being excluded from the conversation.

03:25 – 03:42

Now, you mentioned that GSSAP wasn’t well known when it was first fielded by the government. But how has the operating environment in space changed over time, to the point where Space Force officials are not only publicly acknowledging GSSAP’s existence, but openly talking about fielding other space domain awareness programs, as well?

03:43 – 06:56

Yeah, it has and really, the world has changed. Not the least of which has been the threat over time, but also just the way the U.S. Space Force, since its activation as a new service for the Department of War, now, the mindset about space and space warfare and space operations has changed dramatically.

Over the years it was abundantly clear that there was very little space threat, other than the launching of a rocket and a satellite on board was a rough ride, and it was a tough environment to survive and then once you got on orbit, whatever orbit you were in, there were all sorts of things that you had to survive: temperature changes, radiation environments, maybe micrometeorite hits and so forth and so on. Things that were just part of the space environment, and a lot of weapons systems were built to just survive those environments. 

Almost no thinking was put into operationally – how do they survive an attack by an adversary. Not just non-kinetic attack, but potentially kinetic attack and we’ve seen that our eyes were opened in the late 90s when we saw the threat of direct-ascent, anti-satellite weapons, we call them direct ascent ASATs, both by Russia and China and even the United States shot down a failing satellite ourselves and so we’ve acknowledged for a long time that that threat is real. 

We’ve also acknowledged that just overcrowding has become a threat. But now we see, according to open sources, maneuvering satellites that are in and around other satellites deliberately, as one general stated it – General Guetlein – he referred to that looking a lot more like “space dogfighting” than just curiosity by one nation about what’s going on and what you can do in space.

And so with those kinds of thoughts, we have seen a transition in open source conversation about a more warfighting posture for our space capabilities, where things like DOTMILPF and we can talk about what that may or may not mean for this discussion, along the lines of the kinds of things that the Army, the Navy and the Air Force think about when they think about designing weapons systems that they know are going to be engaged by hostile forces in their natural environment: at sea, below the sea, in the air, on the land, and now into space where we have to consider not just adversary effects from one domain, the ground, into the domain of space, but perhaps from space to space. 

Operational satellites attacking other operational satellites is really what we’re talking about as a change. And clearly programs such as GSSAP and any follow-on that may happen, as well as in a low-Earth orbit version like SBSS and like capabilities, can play a role in that future warfare construct. 

06:57 – 07:15

And before we dive any deeper, I think it’s important to clarify the distinction between space situational awareness (SSA) and space domain awareness (SDA). It’s something we’ve covered on the show before, but can you reiterate for us the difference between SSA and SDA?

07:16 – 10:18

Sure. So space domain awareness is defined as the persistent fuzed understanding of space objects, behaviors and intent across all orbital regimes that enable warning – and here’s a big word – attribution, defensive maneuver, targeting and assessment. So my way of thinking about it, as a guy who was grown up in the Air Force and spent the first half of his career in the airplane technology business, is the kill chain.

So SDA is not synonymous with, but it’s overlaid against the concept of the kill chain and the kill chain in the Air Force is: find, fix, track, target, engage and assess. We call that F2T2EA. SDA is very much like that. It’s pretty easy to, for example, attribute when a MiG is on your six or you’re about to shoot down a MiG if you were an Air Force fighter pilot.

It’s pretty easy to attribute that’s a Russian tank, and I’m in my Army tank because we’re fighting tank to tank. Space is a little more difficult, but really it’s not conceptually any more difficult except for that seeing a little Russian flag on a satellite, or an American flag on a satellite, or seeing an Allied flag on a satellite. It’s really kind of hard at the distances satellites operate at.

So assessing and attributing the threat is very, very important. You don’t want to attack a friendly satellite because it’s so far away you can’t see its flag that is flying and if they simply don’t fly a flag, then you’ll never see one anyway. So there’s a lot that goes into space domain awareness, especially when you’re trying to attribute an attack and trace it back to: where did it come from? And that has a lot to do with space situational awareness and there’s the link. 

SSA intends to know where that object came from the day it was launched, and never lose track of it. Maintaining track custody for the life of that object is critically important and that’s the linkage between SSA and space domain awareness. Now there’s overlap there as well, but especially in the kill chain where you have to engage and assess.

And how do you close the fire control loop, knowing that I have to pull a trigger some time or another, and I need to know that I got it in my sights and that can be aiming, if you will, can be part of SSA if you will. And then after you do it, we would call that bomb damage assessment in the Air Force.

But that’s the assess part after a kill chain action occurs. How did we do? Do we need to shoot again? Were we successful? How successful were we?  So those are the linkages. But again SDA is much more than the SSA mission and it’s much more akin to the kill chain mission.

10:19 – 10:28

And so how are these changes in the operational environment in space – affecting how the Space Force and its commercial partners think about developing and manufacturing their satellites?

10:29 – 14:02

The commercial space industry is still fairly much a benign space environment focused activity. So much so, they fully expect their satellites to die on orbit and re-entry in some short amount of time. And they actually have a business model set up on that predicted outcome for their satellites that they will succumb to the environmental effects, particularly radiation on the hardware, because radiation is really, really tough on electronics in orbit. And we’ve known that for decades, and they rely on that, and they rely on it for a good reason. 

One, it’s way cheaper to use parts that are not built for space, but built for inside the atmosphere and under the protection of the magnetosphere of the Earth’s ball. And when they fail, they see that as an opportunity to upgrade the next replacement satellite with new technology, not just replace the satellite, but update and refresh the technology in the satellite.

Instead of having to deal with parts that have gone obsolete, they just replaced the part with a new part, at least for the life of several generations and then when that part becomes obsolete, they’re not worried about it. They just replace it. So that’s a very benign mindset. That’s like changing a tire. When my tire wears out, I’ll just put on a new tire on my vehicle that does not scale into military operations.

No more than a tire on my car scales into the treads on a tank, or on an MRAP combat vehicle. They’re totally different kinds of tires. Ones at best, run flat. The other ones can take an RPG round and still keep going and those are very different drive mechanisms: military versus my tire on my car.

And so it’s more parallel for the commercial world to think like a car tire than to think of it as a tank track or an MRAP tire. Now, militarily, we’re not much further along today than the car tire. We don’t have, other than to know and perhaps attribute an attack to an adversary because we had custody of that object until it attacked us.

We have very little defensive mechanisms. We don’t have any armor. We’re working, and I know we are, because it’s happening all over the DoD on cyber defense capabilities so that our satellites cannot be attacked through cyber means. But I would not claim that they are fully cyber-hardened in every aspect, because what is? 

Electromagnetic attack is another form of attack that we see in the battlefield. We see it with GPS, usually from the ground to ground-based receivers. So the satellites are working fine, but receivers can’t receive a signal because there’s a local jammer jamming the receiver, overpowering it. Well, theoretically, a satellite could be on-orbit and do RF jamming so that that satellite couldn’t receive commands from the ground, just like the GPS receiver in my vehicle couldn’t receive the signal from space. It works in both directions. 

And then kinetic attack, however crazy that seems because especially at low-Earth orbit, we’ve seen a kinetic attack. We’ve seen anti-satellite weapons destroy satellites. We’ve even seen satellites collide with one another inadvertently and the debris field just trashes an awful lot of the orbit and at GEO it may even be worse, or even more troubling, because we have a lot of very strategic assets out of geosynchronous orbit.

14:03 – 14:10

Now, as the Space Force considers how to best protect and defend their assets on-orbit. What requirements that they need to be thinking about?

14:11 – 16:51

Requirements for military capabilities are almost always classified because they’re based upon threats and threats are almost always classified because they’re based on intelligence. And intelligence is classified because of how they discover intelligence. So it’s hard for me to speak about what requirements are out there today. But if the conversation in open source is to be taken, just as it’s stated, a lot of people are beginning to think about: how do we change requirements?

And I can’t tell you specifics. I can give you some ideas, like, ‘Would we ever lower the bandwidth of a satellite that we want to launch?’ And it’s very expensive to lower like a communications satellite – will we want to lower the bandwidth it’s capable of so that we could put some heavy armor. Just think of something is as benign as a Kevlar vest. I’m not talking about tank armor. I’m talking about just something that would absorb a BB, but a BB moving at seven kilometers a second. And that’s what people don’t really understand, is that a satellite in low-Earth orbit is traveling at about seven kilometers every second. You don’t have to shoot it. It’ll just crash into it.

But if you have something coming at a crossing trajectory, it can easily be traveling at anywhere from a few kilometers a second to many. And we don’t put any shielding on those. So are there requirements to protect them from a BB? Even a paint flake from some former mission where the paint came off of a rocket body and it’s still drifting in some decaying orbit, but still, there in low-Earth orbit. But you might run into it or it might run into you.

It happens to the space station all the time. And so some of the things that they think about on the space station are probably informing requirements about kinetic things, and also things like lasers. 

So what would we do about those? What kind of sunglasses do you put on your optics so it doesn’t get burned by a laser? What kind of filters do you put on your antenna? Your apertures? So they’re not overwhelmed by an RF energy source? What kind of filtering do you do? How do you shield front-end electronics, whether they’re optical electronics or their radio frequency electronics, what kind of protections would you put on those? Is a question that I’m sure they’re all asking as a requirements thought process. 

And there are other potential vectors of threats – I’ve already mentioned kinetic. But I’m sure they’re going through those and if I would be doing it, I’m sure they wouldn’t be doing it. I just don’t know what the threats are today – that’s classified.

16:52 – 17:03

Now, RG-XX is the first Space Force program to require its satellites to have a capacity for refueling. How might the ability to refuel change the calculus for maintaining a space domain awareness constellation of satellites on-orbit?

17:04 – 19:02

Almost all satellites carry fuel on board to adjust their orbits to fine tune the orbit. And then if and as those orbits shift and degrade, and all of them do, regardless of whether it’s geosynchronous, middle Earth orbit or low Earth orbit, they all shift. There are some maneuvering capabilities to readjust those orbits. 

Well, what about fueling them for more than just to avoid a collision? How about to avoid an adversary? So some of those things ought to be thought about. And then maybe do you refuel them? There’s a lot of talk about on-orbit maintenance, on-orbit resupplying with fuel.

I mean, if we’re worried about one satellite attacking another satellite as an adversary, what about a friendly satellite refueling another satellite, or maybe replacing a battery? Not that you could do major maintenance. It’s really kind of hard to do anything. But if satellites were designed to be refueled and there was a satellite designed to fuel and they had a standard, a common interface standard, think a KC-135 or a KC-10 or any of the refueling aircraft and all of the recipients of that fuel, they have a common standard about how do they refuel with a refueling probe? For example, and then how about on-orbit battery changes? 

Those are probably the two that I would say. I don’t think we would change a primary payload like an optical system or a communications system. You’d probably just launch another satellite or have a spare. But that’s another thing to think about is how resilient are you on the ground and how rapidly can you get from, ‘Hey, I need to replace or replenish a constellation or at least one satellite I get from there to on the pad and on-orbit. How fast can I do that? How many spares do I need to have in the pipeline on the ground, ready to go? Because I’m worried that I have to replenish GPS, or I have to replenish some other major constellation element that provides critical capability to the warfighter. 

19:03 – 19:20

And with respect to replenishing a capability or maintaining mission assurance, what are the implications for the Space Force’s acquisition professionals who are responsible for fielding the weapons systems that go on-orbit? What are some of the unique challenges and considerations they need to be thinking about?

19:21 – 22:54

For weapon system acquirers. There are many that have been trained to do it. Optimize for different things. Always: cost, schedule and performance are part of the acquisition consideration. Those are the three pillars. Risk is often added as well. For space systems because they have been so expensive over the years as technology went from very nascent to now much more well understood. 

The optimization historically has been on: we’re spending so much money we have to make it last for a long time. We got to get the bang for the buck, and if we’re in for $1 billion for a constellation, what difference does it make that we’re going to go for $1.2 billion? But we’re going to get five more years out of it.

So they were optimized as all systems are, but they’re so expensive. It was like they’re too big to fail. But as you go along, it’s taken so long for us to get this through all the proof that it’s going to work. We realize along the way that some of the technology we’re already putting in there is already becoming obsolete.

So even during the manufacturing, even late in the design phase, they realized we need to change out a part, not because it was bad, but because we’re going to have to make 5 or 10 more of these satellites, and that part is no longer going to be available, particularly electronics, particularly circuit chips and other critical components that are very near and dear to computer technologies.

And as we know, Moore’s Law says they change every couple of years. Everything is refreshed. So that’s been a challenge. We optimized space systems for long life, and at some level we traded off cost to make sure that performance, that long life performance was guaranteed. So that’s been the historic path. Tomorrow’s path is – it’s a spectrum.

It’s not this or that. It’s somewhere along the spectrum. We’ve been over here on mission assurance that satellite cannot fail for 10-15 years. And the Army looks at things differently. And I’m not saying we should be like the Army, but again, on the spectrum, some things are going to get blown up, some things are going to get broken.

And two things are true about that mindset: And think even the Air Force is like this: aircraft have to land and get repaired, and they’re built to have redundancy for battle damage. All of those elements of everything else they can land and pull into a hangar and be repaired. A tank can be brought back and repaired. An aircraft can go into a depot and be repaired, and a ship can go into a drydock or into a port and be repaired. A submarine, same for it. 

Satellites don’t land and they don’t come back for repairs. And I think it is damaged and it breaks the mission. They’re just no more than orbiting rocks. They might as well be a meteor. So the idea about surviving is often tied to: you don’t get a second chance, not even one. Unlike almost all other military combat capabilities.

Where you do get a second chance to at least fix them. You know, if they are destroyed? Well, that’s one thing. But if they’re just broke and they can’t do the mission, you abort the mission or you come back after the mission, you fix it and you go back out the next day ready to fight. Can’t do that with satellites.

22:55 – 23:06

Now, RG-XX is widely-understood to be a commercially driven solution to space domain awareness. But what are the advantages or disadvantages to leveraging commercial capabilities in this way?

23:07 – 27:50

Commercial space situational awareness capabilities could contribute a lot in some ways and in other ways they don’t help much at all. In the ‘help a lot.’ There was a time when there was an open source discussion about commercially launched satellites. It would be in their best interest to take with them localized space situational awareness.

For example, a commercial satellite having 3 or 4 cameras that had short range but high field of view awareness of what’s going on around them and remember commercial entities have to cover insurance and there were a lot of those insurance companies that were interested in knowing whether or not the failure was the manufacturer or whether it was hit by a meteorite or whatever, because there were certain things that were included in those policies, and there were things that weren’t included in those policies.

And then there were other people that just wanted to know, is my capability being messed up by somebody else, or do I have some kind of intermittent failure? And so there was a lot of talk about, for example, for a communications satellite, was there another satellite in its field of view to a downlink station so that it was not able to communicate properly because something was blocking its line of sight. And so knowing that that might or may not be happening was of interest in conversation some number of years ago. I think that still is a valid point. 

Just like cars today, if you drive a modern car today, you have cameras all over it that can see what’s around you. You do it so you can change lanes. You can do it so you don’t change lanes. You can see when you back up and you can see it even when you’re driving forward. And there are people who mount cameras in their car in case some driver in front of them is doing something chaotic, they can record that for insurance purposes.

So if it applies on the ground in the automotive industry today, you might make that same claim applies to commercial assets on-orbit today. So that’s my linkage there. I think if it applies in vehicles, it applies in airplanes. If it applies in those places, why wouldn’t you? If it protects you or provides you some information that is very low cost for the benefit, you may reap from it. A bit of an insurance policy, and if you can provide that data to the warfighter on-demand or at request, then the warfighter may find some very important benefit to that same information that would be equivalent to the Department of Transportation collecting the camera imagery of every car.

Now, there’s a lot more cars than there are satellites, but boy, if they had it, they would be able to keep traffic a lot more regulated than we might imagine. Well, with much fewer assets on-orbit still having more SSA would provide a lot of benefit in a lot of ways to include just basic space traffic accidents, but other things as well, particularly threats and risks that exist on orbit. So the commercial side has that. 

Now, a dedicated commercial space situational awareness asset. Now they have to make a business case. They have to make a business case that building something, which starts with coming up with a design, getting an investor to fund the design to the fruition of production and then launching on-orbit and on-orbit our operations for who knows how long, years perhaps.

What’s the return on investment to that capital or commercial company? That’s a serious consideration. If the government sees that in their business case as more affordable or affordable enough to have it, plus dedicated assets, then I think there’s a lot of people who would agree with that. But the price tag is really going to be the deciding factor.

How much does it cost to fund both a dedicated military version of space situational awareness in any orbit regime, and buying imagery or buying the service from a commercial provider of space situational awareness data simultaneously, or instead of. And what are the operational risks? And of course, a lot of people worry, ‘Well, if I don’t have control of it, it doesn’t feel like it’s part of the military.’

And that’s been a concern about all kinds of military capability provided by commercial. Notice we don’t have commercial aircraft carriers. We don’t have commercial bombers, we don’t have commercial tankers. People talk about tankers, but they don’t have commercial tankers for civilian airlines. You know, how far do you go with commercialization of military essential technology? That is a current and will be an ongoing debate for years to come.

27:51 – 28:01

And to go one step further, can you elaborate on the differences between how a commercial company – compared to the Space Force – and how they would use space situational awareness data?

28:02 – 30:36

Exactly. In fact, the Air Force doesn’t care at all about liabilities associated with who does what to whom.

Now, I will say this. The Air Force is a good steward of space, perhaps the number one steward of space, in that they care a lot about not being the cause of any destructive activity on-orbit. In fact, a lot of the money we’ve spent over the decades was not only – do we not want to fail because we lose the mission, because failure in space leaves a lot of risk for everybody, the entire ecosystem of space, particularly in individual orbital regimes.

So to be clear, the Air Force is probably concerned about liability not because of insurance purposes, but because they have to operate in that domain and it’s a little bit like polluting your own well where you drink water from. You don’t want to do that. That’s my analogy of the Air Force. They don’t want to pollute their own well, where they get their drinking water. In meaning they are very careful about the space environment.

That said, the behavior of adversaries or other space-faring activities is not really the primary concern of the Space Force, although they spend a lot of money and effort. And what I mean by that: they buy ground based radars and ground-based electro-optical systems, space-based sensors, to make sure that, like ships traveling the seas, we don’t want collisions.

We spend a lot of money at sea to ensure lines of communication on sea lanes are open and safe, with the Navy and the Coast Guard, and we do kind of the same role in the Air Force or Space Force. Excuse me. To make sure that the lines of communication and the space lanes of operation, we’ll call those orbits, are available and safe, and the electromagnetic spectrum is protected so that somebody is not inadvertently jamming somebody else in space, we spent a lot of money on those things. 

But in terms of liability, whether or not a communications satellite that is a commercial company that makes money selling bandwidth to like television or radio and if they were being deliberately attacked, that would matter to the Air Force, because that’s an attack. If it’s some kind of accident or some kind of failure that doesn’t threaten freedom of operations in space. But affects the efficiency and efficacy of the business, they kind of don’t care. But if it has to do with operations in space or an attack on a U.S. or Allied commercial capability by an adversary, they would care a lot about that.

30:37 – 30:48

You also spoke of the space domain awareness mission’s inherent relationship with the kill chain. What are some concerns or challenges that might need to be overcome to incorporate commercial capabilities to this mission, effectively?

30:49 – 34:01

So let’s just make an assumption that the sensor technologies are available and maybe they’re fielded. So let’s say they’re on-orbit. The next question is: ‘How do you utilize those sources of information, those sensor sources in space domain awareness? How do you fuze that data? How do you agree that it’s valid?’ 

And I’ll just set aside cyber for a second. Just that is a whole very other discussion. But assuming you know that the data comes from a reliable source that’s done their bidding to be a cyber secure source: ‘How do you know that it’s military quality? How do you validate it? When it’s delivered commercially, you can’t dictate to them to go through a certain developmental testing and evaluation process that a military generated satellite had to go through, or an operational testing evaluation set of wickets that a military satellite has to go through. 

There are operational acceptance things where the warfighter uses military equipment, and then they go, ‘Okay, it’s capable and accepted as a military warfighting capability, and we will now write it into our O-plans as an available capability that a Combatant Commander can count upon.

As he writes his O-plan, as we are supporting him for his warfighting mission in some AOR. Well, how do you do that with commercial technology? So I’m trying to think of an analogy like, theoretically, logistics can be provided for commercially and things like we outsource trucking companies to move cargo, we outsource aircraft companies to move cargo, or we outsource even ships, not military ships, to move supplies to islands like Guam or whatever. 

Logistics is a common user of commercial capability across that spectrum of war communications. We have outsourced some communications capabilities to the terrestrial-based communications providers. But outsourcing space situational awareness, if you’re going to use it in space domain awareness and the kill chain, and there’s going to have to be some serious policy decisions that are going to have to be made about: How do we utilize those commercial capabilities in the kill chain?

I can even see for the intelligence community, broadly speaking, that imagery or other information from commercial assets could be used in intelligence, especially phase zero or prior to phase zero, if you will, prior to hostilities beginning – to do like intelligence preparation of the battlespace, just having awareness prior to the warfight. But once things have gone from phase zero and you’re moving forward in the fight, that’s going to be the big question: is can we use commercial sources then or not?

34:02 – 34:15

And, earlier this year Space Systems Command held an industry day that had over 150 companies expressing interest in RG-XX. 

What’s your reaction to that level of interest from industry for a program like this?

34:16 – 37:25

I’m not surprised that a lot of industry is very interested in this concept of providing whether it’s at Geo, because remember, GSSAP is Geo, but it’s not the only place where we need SSA. I’m not surprised that there were a number of companies that wanted to provide from space domain awareness to SSA at Geo and everything in between, even from the ground.

I’m not surprised at all and I’m really glad to hear it. The real question is industry days are often set up so that they get great feedback from industry about approaches, trade-offs, requirements. Even their questions can inform thinking about doctrine because they’re really first-order questions. We’re talking about the most important thing to understand is not that you want SSA, but what requirement, what military mission, what doctrinal requirement are you trying to satisfy with this?

For people who think GSSAP, they may think, ‘Oh, something that flies around in Geo and looks at stuff. Okay, well that’s cool, but how does it do that? Why does it do it that way? What is it satisfying and could it be done another way? And the answer to that often is found in the creative thinking of industry.

So the reason why we have industry days are to fetch those ideas from the experts or the engineer. The government doesn’t know the answers, but the engineers and the technologists within industry are where the questions come and there’s a lot of long standing large primes that have ideas. 

But there’s also a lot of innovative small businesses, startups with great ideas who think about technology very differently than we have historically because they didn’t know what historically was: what we call “nontraditional space providers,” where traditional said ‘Get a government contract and then you can develop a commercial capability because you’re anchored with money from the government, and now you can afford to spin off the commercial capability.’

These guys never did business with the government. They’re only thinking commercial and so why wouldn’t General Purdy go out and ask them about their ideas? Of course he would, and we are all counting on great ideas coming from industry for whatever this next version is, I don’t call it the GSSAP follow-on, I just call it a space domain awareness tool.

That’s after what we have on orbit and available today, and RG-XX could wind up being something very different, or several things that are very different than what GSSAP is, which is why I hesitate to even put any hard linkage to GSSAP though GSSAP and SBSS were two of the – I wouldn’t say the earliest – but to really operationalize space situational awareness from on-orbit capabilities.

And there have been other things that were experiments. There are things that were experiments that they tried out operationally. There have been things to do this even before those two programs, but really, they were the two bigs that started out early.

37:26 – 37:43

And Sir, you mentioned Major General Stephen Purdy, who as the Space Force’s top acquisition official, indicated he wants to take a multi-vendor approach to RG-XX.

Can you speak to the advantages both for the commercial sector but also for the Space Force, by taking a multi-vendor approach? 

37:44 – 39:48

It’s very, very dangerous, in my opinion. And I say dangerous, not in the danger, like life and death danger, but certainly in terms of taxpayer responsibility to become solely dependent by the federal government and the Department of War on a single vendor for any critical technology and almost anything that goes on-orbit, we’re not going to spend that kind of money for things that are not critical.

So if you have one supplier of the capability, chances are the risk is you’re dependent on that supplier forever and their success and failures always result in a greater or lesser degree of risk for you, potentially budgetary and predictable budgets moving forward. If you have multiple vendors, you get more than one choice and you get a little bit, hopefully of inherent competition.

And as we’ve heard, and sometimes it’s been proven not always proven, that competition drives better price solutions or cost solutions. But what you also get, and this is the part that I am a greatest fan of, is you get solution-diversity and the reason why I like solution-diversity, meaning I solve the problem through the following thousand things.

You solve the problem through your thousand things and we have capabilities that meet the requirement, but we solve the problems differently for an adversary. Those two different solutions provide a more complex calculus for how to defeat those different diverse solutions. 

So one solution might be to jam something like this and the other solution might be to jam something the same way, but it doesn’t work on solution B, it only works on solution A. So you’ve complicated the adversary’s problem-solving scenario, and thus driven up the cost to him to have to have a more advanced offensive capability, because you have inherently put in defense by diversity of design.

39:49 – 40:02

General Purdy also shared that this RG-XX program would be unclassified, in that it will be open and available to Allies and partners through the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales program. 

Why is that significant?

40:03 – 43:32

Classification decisions is strictly within the military’s and the executive branch’s domain. So that’s not my expertise to make classification decisions. 

But we have lots of cases where we share technology, even classified technology, with our Allies and we have Allies that span the spectrum of some cases we share some of the most sensitive classified information with them. And in other cases, it’s military technology. And it’s not even classified. But we still care about it because it’s important. You might even call it controlled unclassified information, but it’s very important either way. Wherever we are on the spectrum – it matters.

I can easily conceive of providing space domain awareness capability, such as even GSSAP today, and other ones like ground-based radars that we have today. I could easily see providing that to Allies. I’m not saying we’re doing it, but I could certainly see us doing it. 

It would make sense in some scenarios if the risks, and I’m not in a position to make the risk decision. But if the risks, according to those who advise the Secretaries of the military’s departments and the Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of War, I should say, and even the president and National Command Authority up to them, any number of technologies that are sensitive have been and are being provided to Allies.

This is no different. Now how do you sell it? Especially first off, do you restrict it? Like so, if it’s commercial capability, how do you restrict it if you don’t want it sold to just anybody? And we have procedures for that. Like you can’t sell an F-16 regardless of how much you want to to any old country in the world, because it’s an American product and you can only sell it when you get the approval of the government to sell it.

Same would be true of this, even if it was commercial technology. We have rules called ITAR, International Traffic and Arms Regulation, but FMS use cases are adjudicated not necessarily under ITAR, but they have some similar similarities where they grade the country, the ally that we are looking at selling the technology to and then how do we insert elements of that we want to protect and how do we protect those elements by still broadly providing that technology to them.

So when you add commercial into there, it’s even more interesting because now that commercial, it might be something the adversary wants to buy a piece of because he’s an ally or he’s not an adversary at moment A but moment B he is, but he’s become dependent on it.

So why would he stick a stick in his own eye if he’s going to be using it? Why would you put salt in your own wound if it’s going to hurt but you don’t want it to hurt? And so when the commercial guy comes in and the world can buy it and they find it valuable, as long as they’re buying and they’re not going to poke a hole in it if it hurts them because they need it to.

So they don’t buy military capability, but they often buy commercial capability for military purposes. And if we’re buying it and they’re buying it, why would they ruin it and or spoil it? And if they become dependent on it, it’s kind of like GPS has a lot of foreign allies, and even adversaries utilize GPS. If you’re in combat and you become dependent on using the U.S. capability, the global utility of GPS, why would you jam it if you need it? As an example, and now translate that to commercial, why would you disrupt the commercial capability that you’re paying for if you need it?

43:33 – 43:46

So to summarize: how do you think this transitional moment from military-operated GSSAP to commercially-driven RG-XX reflects how the Space Force is re-thinking its approach to space domain awareness?

43:47 – 44:37

So I don’t know the details of RG-XX, except for to say, what I’ve seen in open source. But I believe two things are true about how Space Force is evolving. 

One, they’re serious about a warfighter mindset, and they know that the capabilities that a system like GSSAP, including GSSAP today provides is critical to those warfighting capabilities that the Space Force knows they need moving forward.

Secondly, they are going into this with their eyes wide open, with the notion that it is possible and even reasonable, if not preferable, for some commercial capability to be included in that mix. Whether it’s 100%, 50% or 2%, somewhere in some, none, or all. They’re looking for commercial solutions to help them in that pursuit. 

44:37 – 44:47

Then as a closing question here, what opportunities exist for Elara Nova to contribute to complex conversations and military programs, like we discussed today?

44:48 – 45:44 

So Elara Nova is loaded with a lot of space domain talent. We have a large array of space professionals in this company, and that’s just the senior leaders. The partners Elara Nova has well over 90 partners, many of whom, if not most, have either space domain backgrounds in some form from rocket launch to command and control to payload development, to full-blown satellite development and operations and sustainment of space capabilities that Elara Nova can provide expertise across the entire spectrum of space domain from inception to operations and even disposal. And so if I were looking for expertise, I would choose Elara Nova as an expertise provider any time.

45:45 – 46:23

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space and aeronautical domains, 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.

Episode 30: Orbital Watch to Enable Sharing of Classified Threat Information 

Host: Scott King 

SME: Charlie McGillis, Elara Nova partner, former Director of Intelligence at 14th Air Force (Space); former Senior Vice President at Slingshot Aerospace; TraCSS Independent Review Board member 

00:02 – 01:27 

In today’s congested and contested space environment, commercial space companies must now prepare for a variety of threats that can compromise their systems on-orbit: from incidental collisions with space debris, to counterspace threats like cyber and electronic warfare attacks, as well as kinetic strikes. 

Meanwhile, the inherently dual-use nature of space systems, which often support both national security and economic purposes, further reinforces the imperative that the United States Space Force communicates threat information with its industry partners to ensure resiliency of our nation’s space capabilities. Now, a new Space Force program, Orbital Watch, aims to do just that: facilitate greater information-sharing with industry partners for both unclassified and classified threats.  

Welcome to the Elara Edge! Returning to the show today is retired Colonel Charlie McGillis. As the former Director of Intelligence at 14th Air Force (Space), Charlie provided tailored, responsive, local, and global space effects in support of national and Combatant Commander objectives. She is also the former senior vice president at Slingshot Aerospace and is a currently serving member of the independent review board for the Traffic Coordination System for Space (or TraCSS) which we’ve previously discussed on the show. 

Ma’am, welcome back!

01:28 – 01:29 

Thank you. It’s great to be here with you. 

01:30 – 01:43 

Thanks for making time to join us again today. 

Now, Space Systems Command first announced the Orbital Watch program in April of this year. So let’s start there: what is Orbital Watch? And what problem is it aiming to solve? 

01:44 – 04:11 

Let’s start with the problem first, because I think that’s really important. But there are threats to the US national security interests that are actually happening in space today. Those actions are being taken by our adversaries, and that can impact space operations. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a military, civil or commercial spacecraft. So that’s the problem that they’re trying to solve.  

SSC Front Door, which now is the U.S Space Force Front Door, began an initiative to communicate unclassified threat information to commercial vendors to help them make decisions on risk management. 

They’ve announced two specific phases and so first a vendor has to register with the Front Door and you can share an idea, product or service and so basically the Front Door is using this what I would call a Rolodex of ‘Who do I need to talk to? And potentially who do I need to buy capabilities from?’ 

For Orbital Watch, it only requires a basic registration. Sending in this information. The company doesn’t have to do any kind of training and no specific information controls are needed. This first phase is just a distribution. A one way. They’re going to send information out to the vendors that have registered with the Front Door and so they disseminate an unclassified threat fact sheet prepared by Headquarters Space Force Intelligence to over 900 companies because they are operating in this domain with all the other space operators and they could be impacted by this threat.  

But it is important to note: it doesn’t give the vendors an opportunity to ask questions like they see something in the threat assessment and they go, ‘Oh, well, I’d like to know more about that?’ There’s no opportunity to do that. So it’s really just a one-way direction. 

In phase two, what they’ve announced is that they will actually introduce a secure Commercial Portal that will enable that two-way information flow of sharing. If that commercial satellite got an indication something happened to them, they could actually share that information then with the Space Force. I also believe that in this two-way portal, the Space Force could share information with these operators if they saw something.  

So I think it’s significant to have a two-way portal so that the commercial company can ask questions. It’s not just a one-way street. So the commercial company may be the one that first detects that threat, they can actually give that information to the military and it could be disseminated more broadly. So that’s why the two-way portal is certainly significant.

04:12 – 04:17 

And so why is it important for Orbital Watch to be rolled out in this kind of phased and iterative approach? 

04:18 – 06:21 

I think it’s important one: because they need to share the information with the space operators that are out there. They’re the clearinghouse. They are the ones that are getting all the companies coming in and registering with them so they kind of have the rolodex. But it’s also important in this phased approach, because they are going to have to figure out how to share the classified information, and that’s going to take time. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s also complicated. 

First of all, let’s talk about what does it take for a company to get a security clearance or an individual like myself. So that company actually has to get a facility clearance level to even get individuals cleared. 

My understanding when the incident happened with Viasat, when they experienced this jamming, the Space Force deemed, ‘Hey, there’s some other operators around that probably should know that information.’ So they were actually able to do what we call a one-time read on of classified information to inform those other space operators that, ‘Hey, there is this threat, you need to be aware of it.’ So you can do that, but it’s not normal.  

The next phase would be to set up a cadence of that dissemination that matches almost in near real-time or close to it. There was a threat. You may have not much time in order to respond to it, and so they need to be able to get that information out quickly.  

But it’s also important to note that not all vendors can process or store that classified information, even at CUI data – controlled unclassified information – you need to be able to have special permissions and so what’s not clear to me is how the Space Force is going to enable this for commercial space operators who don’t actually have an existing contract or what we call a DD254. It’s a form that says, ‘Hey, you’re on contract with the Space Force. You now, because of the contract and the work that you’re doing, you need access to classified information.’ 

If you don’t have that, I’m not sure how the government is going to go through sponsoring these companies to have access to classified information.

06:21 – 06:33 

Can you share how threats in space have evolved over time and why better information-sharing, particularly at the classified level, is required to both prepare for and respond to these evolving threats?  

06:34 – 10:02 

So really, over that last ten years or so, we’ve really seen China rapidly field space and counterspace capabilities. ISR. So intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance satellites, Satcom – how you communicate? Also large constellations. And we’ve really witnessed more advanced maneuvering and the willingness to expend fuel to conduct rapid maneuvers demonstrating tactics, techniques and procedures that could be used for space warfighting.  

Some examples: China maneuvered two satellites, the Sinjan-21 and the Sinjan-25, into extremely close proximity, where they conducted a probable satellite refueling experiment in GEO. And then also there’s a series of satellites called the TJS series of experimental satellites that analysts believe carry out classified missions including signals intelligence, early warning missions and satellite inspection activities to support the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Now some TJS satellites have demonstrated the ability to maneuver in orbit and inspect or approach other satellites, potentially for surveillance, interference and counterspace operations. 

And we saw this back in 2018 when TJS-3 maneuvered close to a US ISR satellite.   Now, some may say, ‘Well, those could be commercial use as well.’ That is true. But they can also be modified to serve a counterspace purpose. 

So especially for RPOs, if you do a rendezvous in proximity op, you could be doing it to refuel. You could be doing it to actually look at the satellite. Is there something wrong with it? If I have an anomaly with a satellite. But you could also be looking at it. What is that satellite? Taking pictures of that satellite from on orbit. Or maybe you’re listening – it’s a SIGINT kind of capability. So just being close to another satellite, you can kind of use it for military purposes.  

And the other piece besides these large maneuvers, increase in satellites on orbit. There has been widespread jamming and spoofing of GPS signals in and around specifically conflict zones. So think about Ukraine. We’ve seen this explicitly with Russia, but also in the Middle East.  

Commercial satellites are being targeted, and in fact, in many cases, the commercial satellite could know something is happening before the military. They could actually be the indications and warning. 

The other one is we know in unclassified sources and threat assessments that are out there that Russia and China have a laser capability. So they could actually lase a imaging satellite, and that satellite would know that that is happening as well. That would be another indicator that something is happening in the space domain.  

And so Russia’s been very vocal about this and about its intention to consider commercial assets used by the U.S. military as legitimate targets because of this.  

This is why it’s so important to understand the behaviors that these satellites are doing and is it showing intent to do harm, or is it really just for a commercial use? And so you really have to watch that pattern of behavior and what are those satellites actually doing on orbit? 

This is why it is so important to share this information not only at the non-classified level, but also the classified level to commercial operators, especially those that are in service to the US government for military purposes as it may impact their space operations. 

10:03 – 10:14 

I’d like to go back to an example you brought up with the 2022 cyberattack on ViaSat. Can you expand about how that attack offers something of an example of how a program like Orbital Watch would work?  

10:15 – 11:26 

Yes to be more specific, on the Viasat example that happened at the beginning of Russia invading Ukraine, the Viasat satellite experienced that cyberattack that you mentioned. They are part of the Commercial Integration Cell and so I’m sure that they shared this information with the CSpoC the Combined Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Space Force Base, who has the responsibility to execute operational command and control (C2) of space forces to achieve both theater and global objectives. 

And so this is a good example because when Viasat experienced this, it was kind of like an indication warning: something is happening or going to happen. CSpOC would have the responsibility to share this information with EUCOM (the actual Combatant Command responsible for supporting Ukraine. And in this case, the cyber attack was part of the Russians coordinated offense to effect Ukraine’s command and control during the invasion. Now simultaneously, the CSpOC could simultaneously tell other space operators that they can anticipate this kind of action through Orbital Watch so other space operators would know that if they experience a similar attack that it might be intentional and not incidental. 

11:27 – 11:46 

Now, Ma’am, you just reference another information-sharing effort: that being the Commercial Integration Cell. But there are other efforts as well, including the Joint Commercial Operations Cell (JCO) and the Space Warfighting and Analysis Center (Space ISAC). 

What’s the difference between Orbital Watch and some of these other information-sharing programs?

 11:47 – 15:39 

It’s super important to understand the difference between these because it really depends on where you are as a commercial company and where you are participating. 

Now Orbital Watch is this basic service. It’s with the Space Force that are disseminating threat information one way, today, and these are usually members that aren’t part of the Commercial Integration Cell. They don’t have a contract – that DD254 – with the Space Force, so it’s one-way communication.  

So with the JCO. So Joint Commercial Operation cell, so that integrates commercial capabilities into the mission by supporting the protect and defend mission. When you operate through these regional cells they operate 24/7 and they’re staffed globally. Allies participate in it. But the JCO leverages this commercial data in the sensors and analytical services to provide timely, non-classified space domain awareness. 

And what they do is if they see things on orbit then they alert via what we call NOTSO or Notice to Space Operators for high-inter space activity such as these satellite maneuvers we talked about – or space launch. But if you’re part of the JCO this requires training. They have a very specific methodology. You have to onboard with the JCO and you have to do this training. So that’s one. 

The other one is the Commercial Integration Cell and you have to be invited to participate in this and I was part of this organization almost nearly at the beginning. And it actually started with what we call a CRADA. So a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement and so these CRADAs – it’s no money exchanged. 

It’s just an agreement between a company and the Space Force that allows sharing of information and it allowed them to sponsor companies to have access to classified information. Now it’s kind of progressed and so these companies do have DD254s and they can get information.They practice at exercises. They come and participate. They have a person that sits on the floor at the CSpoC that provides cooperative information sharing, but it also requires training. 

And they do contribute to military planning and to the Combatant Commands that are around. So that’s the CIC. You have to be invited. You do training. You can share classified information.  

And then last but not least is the Space ISAC. This is a ‘pay-to-play.’ If you’re a company and you want to share information, you can pay to be a member of the Space ISAC. 

Now they distribute those NOTSOs I talked about from the JCO, which adds more information sharing and concerns about everything that’s happening in the space operational environment. But the Space ISAC also focuses on cyber monitoring. They actually aggregate inputs. They have a 24/7 ops center, and if a commercial operator experiences something, they can report it to the Space ISAC ops center. Then Space-ISAC actually works within the intelligence community, reports it up, and they will try to then disseminate that information to other operators. 

They do have to be careful because sometimes there’s proprietary information in there and so they do have to kind of what I call ‘whitewash’ it, the information – so you don’t know. But that’s the role of the Space-ISAC. 

So first of all, you know, we’ll kind of go back: phase one Orbital Watch: just pushing information out at a non-classified level. JCO you have to have training. It is for space domain awareness specifically what is what’s happening in orbit? 

CIC. You have to be invited to it and you have to be able to have access and do classified information and then Space ISAC – pay to play. You can pay to play to be a member of that organization.

15:40 – 15:52 

To take that a step further – what factors should Space Force leadership consider to make sure that they’re not duplicating these information-sharing programs, but rather reinforcing collaboration between the service and its commercial partners? 

15:53 – 18:30 

So remember, the goal of these data-sharing efforts is to provide a more secure, resilient space infrastructure. So even though the government can’t tell them what to do, the more information you share – people are going to do things that make sense and that are in their interest. They don’t want to collide with the satellite. They don’t want to have a threat and so sharing that information allows them to respond to those evolving threats. 

Some would say there needs to be clear lanes in the road on what each of these efforts should share. But in reality, in Charlie’s opinion, the Space Force can’t overshare. They can’t, especially at the not classified level. Their biggest challenge has been and is removing the classification barriers. Space is still over-classified and some movement has been made, but I would say not enough. As we grow these commercial capabilities, there’s very little places to hide in space.  

I mean, we talked about the JCO. It’s all commercial capability that can look up, have space domain awareness, and so everybody can see it. We need to emphasize that this coordination needs to happen and needs to be integrated among the government, commercial and Allied partners to remove the unnecessary classification barriers.  

I did hear recently the same comment at the AFA conference. There was an international panel and we need to remove some of these barriers to be able to share information not just with our commercial partners, but with our Allied partners as well. 

And the other thing I like to bring up here is: this is a great effort by the Space Force, but there’s always been other organizations for many years that have been sharing what’s going on in the space operational environment.  

CSIS, Center for Strategic and International Studies, CASI, China Aerospace Studies Institute, ISR Integrity puts out a I think it’s bi weekly something they call Integrity Flash. You can go look it up and get on their website and get specific information about what’s going on in the space environment from a threat perspective.  

DIA Space Threat Assessment, the Secure World Foundation does a Global Counterspace Capabilities Report, and DNI actually does an annual threat assessment as well that includes space. So there’s a lot of information out there already at the unclassified level. 

But it does take expertise to be able to read the information and understand what’s going on. This effort with the Space Force, with Orbital Watch, is trying to get it to a place where everybody can understand really what’s going on in the space environment.

18:31 – 18:41 

Now with that in mind, what are some of the current challenges that need to be overcome or other risks to be considered when it comes to implementing a program like Orbital Watch, effectively? 

18:42 – 21:21 

Yes. So this is not a small endeavor. We kind of talked about. This is going to be a huge undertaking by the Space Force in order to do this. So first they need to establish how to give a commercial partner access that doesn’t require them to have a contract.  

Now, let’s step back for a minute. So with sharing classified information is not easy. You have to be on a secure line. You have to be in a specific place. You have to have the need to know and you have to have those clearances. 

This is, in my opinion, going to be key: who are they going to share this information with and who can they get that done?  

So recently there was actually a DARPA program called BRIDGES, and they provided 19 companies clearances without having that contract and very successful, it was launched to solve the dilemma of why can we not share information with these companies?  

And it gave them that clearance so that they could then continue to produce the technology that they were doing and understand the ‘why’ behind it. What capability is it going to bring to the warfighter? It did identify that this program is a great start to what the Space Force needs to do.  

They’re actually working with the Commercial Space Office (COMSO) to expand this, but my concern is scalability. How are they going to be able to scale this? They talked about 900 vendors for sending out this information. How are you going to rack and stack who gets first and who’s last?  

So we talked about how getting the clearances is one thing, but actually having the facility to share that information is also important. So they do that normally in these facilities, especially at the higher classification levels in a place called a SCIF. Not every company is going to have the money to build their own SCIF and so you need a way to be able to share that information [and] have it accessible. And what I will say on that is there are companies that because they saw this as a pain point, companies don’t have the money in order to invest in this. 

So they’ve actually started basically where you can buy space, rent space at a SCIF for your company. So you don’t actually have to do that huge investment that will be helpful and the Space Force should consider this. Maybe it’s a way to share that information in a better way. So think about if you have a portal, you’re able to walk into a secure facility and actually log on and get this information. 

And maybe there’s a person on the other end that, Hey, you have a little chat and you can go, Hey, I have some information, or I want to be able to ask you a question about something that was shared, but you got to have those facilities in order to be able to do that to make sure the information is secure.

21:22 – 21:45 

On this concern for the scalability issue: you mentioned that there’s already 900 vendors receiving unclassified information in phase one of Orbital Watch. 

At the same time, we’re continuing to see unprecedented growth in a space economy that is further projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035 – so can you elaborate on this challenge within the context of the growing commercial space economy today? 

21:46 – 22:47 

Yeah, the commercial space economy is booming. We’re seeing new entrants every day, and it’s just crazy to me the amount of innovation and people that want to be involved in space. 

And you’re seeing that continually climb. And so when I talk about that 900 number, that’s what the Front Door said, that they sent out to 900 vendors this unclassified threat assessment and so being able to scale that – now, let’s say all 900 don’t have to be U.S. companies either. There could be Allied companies in there that are also interested in providing those capabilities. 

But to be able to scale that and provide those clearances, they’re going to have to decide quickly which capabilities do I want to continue to have this innovation and continue to build? They’re probably going to be the first ones: being able to scale this at a large number like 900. It’s going to be tough, and there’s going to be some, in Charlie’s terms, ‘haves and have nots.’ 

22:48 – 22:52 

And going back to the Front Door program – why is it appropriate for Orbital Watch to be part of that effort? 

22:53 – 24:23 

So the Front Door program, it really allows commercial companies. It’s a one stop shop. If you want to do business with the Space Force and you’re a company and you have an innovative idea, it’s really important for space startup companies to be able to come in and go, ‘Hey, I have this neat, innovative idea. I want to tell you about it and how it can help you.’  

And so it gives them a method, a way to be able to register with the Space Force. And then the Front Door actually takes that information. They read it and they take the ones that they think really could apply those capabilities and help the Space Force. 

And they basically go and share this information with the PEOs. The PEOs are trying to build the programs and get the capabilities to the warfighter as quickly as they can and the Front Door is used as that one stop shop. That clearinghouse.  

So I think it’s because they do have this capability to basically have the rolodex and the clearinghouse for industry and make sure that then they are connected and I know a lot of the PEOs take briefings from some of these companies and go, ‘Yes, this is how I can use it.’  

Now, what I will say is, I also know that there are companies that don’t have those clearances, and they are developing capabilities that could help on the classified side. So that’s why I think this program is so important to get to that classified level, because they will now be able to share that information and have those more meaningful conversations.  

24:24 – 24:43 

We’ve also seen a series of strategy documents get released during the tenure of General B. Chance Saltzman – the Space Force’s Chief of Space Operations. Namely, the DOD Commercial Space Integration Strategy and the Space Force’s Commercial Space Strategy. 

In what ways does the Orbital Watch program align with these strategy documents? 

24:44 – 26:31 

Orbital Watch aligns with both of those documents. I’ve heard General Saltzman say in his remarks at AMOS and also in his remarks at the AFA conference recently, that he can’t do it without those partnerships. In the DoD strategy, it actually outlined department wide guidance on policy and procedures, whereas in the Space Force one, it really focused on the service specific use cases, and it needs to foster that effective collaboration and integration between government and industry.  

By sharing the unclassified threat information – it allows these commercial partners to build and operate secure, resilient space systems that are integrated into these national security architectures.  

So let’s be clear. There are commercial space satellites that are used by our military today and so fostering this rapid response will ensure that the warfighters have what they need based on the threats that we’re seeing.  

I also believe that it’s really about situational awareness. Industry needs to understand what is going on in the space environment if they are going to support government, US and our Allies, and it is making sure that the commercial providers become active players in our national defense.  

And it is about two-way sharing. We talked about commercial maybe being that first line of defense. They’re going to get the indications and warning that something’s happening and so they need to be able to have a mechanism to be able to share that information. And so I really believe Orbital Watch operationalizes the policies and objectives found in these strategies. And it creates a platform for real-time risk awareness and being able to share secure information and it also sets the new standards for commercial integration in the National Space Security Strategy.

26:32 – 26:42 

And say the Space Force implements both phases of the Orbital Watch program effectively – what advantages will this ultimately bring to the Space Force and its industry partners?  

26:43 – 28:53 

I see four advantages. The first one is enhanced national security and space advantage. 

General Saltzman talked about that sustained partnership that he needs with industry is crucial for that US to maintain its edge in space, but it’s also essential for both national security and how you and I actually live on Earth today. That’s how we get access. It’s how we go to the bank teller. It’s how we get gas in our car and so space isn’t just there for a warfighting perspective. It’s also there to support us here on Earth every day and so super important for space operators. They need to be able to operate freely and provide those services.  

But the US has to also know that the threat is increased – if the need arises. They need to be able to take action where needed and we are seeing that increase, as we already talked about, right, with China and accelerating its efforts. So that’s number one.  

Two is the integration of those commercial capabilities. Commercial gets to decide whether it’s going to maneuver or not based on a threat that it has, you still need to be able to share that information. 

And if you have that collaboration and now the government knows that, hey, this commercial asset is or isn’t going to maneuver, they can then make better decisions based on that. So you have to be able to integrate those commercial capabilities.  

And that actually improves the third one which is operational effectiveness. So commercial partners can fill key mission gaps, especially like satellite communication, imagery and the Space Force has really moved to this model of ‘buy before you build it.’ Commercial is filling that gap and bringing those additional capabilities that they need.  

And then lastly is clear role distinction. So government will retain control over inherently government missions such as defensive and offensive space control. But where they can include commercial capabilities, it really alleviates the government from having to do that for their mission – being able to do those four things are kind of the advantages that I see for the Space Force today.

28:54 – 29:11 

Thank you, Ma’am. Now I’d like to take a moment and look back on the last time you joined us on The Elara Edge – when we discussed the Traffic Coordination System for Space, otherwise known as TraCSS. How might a program like TraCSS benefit from, or if at all, collaborate with something like the Orbital Watch program?  

29:12 – 31:56 

TraCCS is for civil space safety and we kind of talked about that in the earlier podcast. It just provides that positional data, making sure that space operators are safe in space, almost like air traffic control – so they don’t collide. 

Now, previously I mentioned the difference between that positional data and threat information and we kind of went through that. But let’s reiterate it here for those that didn’t have that opportunity: positional data is where that satellite is in space. It’s where it is. It doesn’t tell me anything about that satellite. Like what does it do? What is its function? 

And so the threat information is going to not only include that positional data, but it’s going to provide an assessment of that intent – based on the capabilities of that satellite. So in other words, why is that satellite maneuvering to a new location and why would that be a threat to a commercial satellite. So it really provides the ‘so what?’ 

So that’s kind of the difference between what TraCSS – very positional [and] what Orbital Watch is trying to do with providing that so what? Now TraCSS in the future I think could ensure based on what they’re doing – sharing that positional data with the Space Force. They might have other data sources actually that Space Force doesn’t have because they’re buying commercial data, and that could be taken into account for those threat assessments. 

And what they would inform space operators of is maybe debris-causing events. Now this could be a collision. Two satellites collided. I have to tell you about the debris that’s there flying in space. It could be nothing nefarious happened. Two satellites didn’t collide, but something caused some debris. And then it could be an offensive action, like, say, an ASAT missile gets launched and it actually hits a satellite, which has happened in the past. China has done it, Russia has done it. India has done it. Blown up their own satellite and it’s caused debris. A lot of the debris is still up there in space. 

So those could be things that TraCSS does. But for these unclassified threat assessment, I could imagine the Office of Space Commerce kind of putting a hot button, as I would call it, right on TraCSS to help disseminate that information. But what I don’t see is the Office of Space Commerce playing a role in producing these threat assessments. That’s not their mission. 

Their mission, based on the SPD-3, is to really do space safety, not from a threat perspective. That’s the Space Force’s mission. And they provide that to make sure that space capabilities are provided to the joint force. And so I do see the joint force, like U.S. Space Command, its mission is to deter aggression, defend national interests, which could actually be commercial and civil satellites. They need to maybe defend those national interests, and when necessary, they’re going to defeat those threats.

31:57 – 32:08 

And then as a partner with Elara Nova, how can the strategic advisory firm serve as a facilitator between the Space Force and industry partners seeking to participate in programs like Orbital Watch? 

32:09 – 33:30 

I believe Elara Nova can act as a critical bridge between the Space Force and the commercial partners by advocating for and enabling this improved data-sharing framework, and it considers both current operational needs and based on the historical classification challenge we have had. I see Elara Nova as a facilitator for data-sharing and understanding that collaboration.  

We can help advise companies in order to make sure that they get registered with the Space Force Front Door and what it might take to actually navigate that facility clearance and the personnel clearance requirements and we can help guide them to be responsible space operators.  

Now, as we work with maybe some new entrants to the space economy, those space operators need to realize that there is norms of behavior that need to be followed as a space operator and so we can help educate them on that.  

The other one is on policy advocacy. I know Elara Nova does a lot of this already. But we can continue to advocate and support these initiatives and really to reduce that over classification. And it’s really important to do that so that we can share information not only with our Allies, right? Who we are operating [with] day in and day out, but also with our commercial partners that we’re doing this with.

33:31 – 34:07 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space and aeronautical domains, 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.