Time for a New Approach with Satellite Control Network

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

Read more here…

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

Host: Scott King 

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

00:02 – 01:34 

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

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

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

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

Sir, welcome to the show!  

01:35 – 01:36 

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

01:37 – 02:03 

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

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

02:04 – 03:48 

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

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

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

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

03:49 – 04:01 

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

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

04:02 – 07:02 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

07:03 – 07:20  

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

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

07:21 – 08:40 

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

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

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

08:41 – 08:46 

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

08:47 – 11:50 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11:51 – 12:06 

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

What exactly does this mean and why is that important? 

12:07 – 13:47 

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

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

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

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

13:48 – 14:06 

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

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

14:07 – 16:51 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16:52 – 16:55 

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

16:56 – 17:51 

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

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

17:52 – 18:08 

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

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

18:09 – 21:39 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

21:40 – 21:52 

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

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

21:53 – 22:44 

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

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

22:45 – 22:51 

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

22:52 – 23:44 

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

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

23:45 – 23:47 

And how about the third one: enterprise?

23:48 – 24:25 

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

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

24:26 – 24:34 

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

24:35 – 26:43 

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

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

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

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

26:44 – 26:57 

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

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

26:58 – 27:54 

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

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

27:55 – 27:57 

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

27:58 – 30:12 

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

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

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

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

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

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

30:13 – 30:25 

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

30:26 – 31:25 

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

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

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

31:26 – 31:37 

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

What should our listeners know about its new CDC sector? 

31:38 – 32:35 

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

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

32:36 – 33:10 

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

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

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

An Upgraded Network to Better Integrate Emerging Technologies, Counter Evolving Threats 

The Department of War (DOW) kick-started the year with a series of steps to enhance the resiliency and reliability of the digital infrastructure underpinning military operations. In early January, the United States Space Force announced it will be overhauling computer networks at all 14 of its bases under the Base Infrastructure Modernization program. Then the National Security Agency released the first two products of its Zero Trust Implementation Guidelines, while the DOW launched its Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy. Altogether, these actions demonstrate the growing imperative to prepare the DOW’s digital infrastructure to take advantage of emerging technologies and counter evolving threats. 

“Space and cyberspace are inextricably linked: the foundation of warfighting in space is dependent on having a secure digital infrastructure on the ground,” said Gen (Ret) Tim Haugh, a Senior Principal Advisor at Elara Nova and the former Commander of United States Cyber Command. “Digital infrastructure is the computing infrastructure that every Guardian and Airman leverages when they connect to the Department of War networks. If the Department doesn’t upgrade these systems, they can become vulnerable where a vendor can no longer support them, which adds risk through technology debt, less functionality and an inability to integrate weapon systems into national security architectures.” 

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, “digital infrastructure” is defined as ​​”the ability to store and exchange data through a centralized communication system.” As such, the Base Infrastructure Modernization program aims to create a unified and secure network and communication system across all Air Force and Space Force bases worldwide.  

“Whether it’s to conduct space operations or air operations on the flight line, those capabilities require a digital infrastructure that is powerful enough to win the fight and provide a user experience that enables success,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “This investment is critical because it sets a clear set of standards for the defense industrial base to build and field new capabilities as the threat environment changes. Modernizing the digital infrastructure will also lay the foundation for integrating future capabilities like artificial intelligence and establishing the compute power required at the network edge.” 

The Vulnerabilities of an Aging Digital Infrastructure 

Space Force leaders recognize that threats in cyberspace are constantly emerging and evolving, heightening the imperative for resilient and reliable systems. General Stephen Whiting, Commander of United States Space Command, once referred to cybersecurity as the “soft underbelly” of space operations. 

“One of the key elements adversaries would exploit are vulnerable and aging systems, and that’s why upgrading them is critically important,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “China has shown that if vulnerabilities exist, they will take advantage of them. We would likely see similar attacks on our military bases that we’ve seen China take against critical infrastructure in the United States: going after infrastructure like water treatment, energy generation and critical functions inside of telecommunications or networks.” 

The task order for the Space Force’s modernization efforts, to the tune of $12.5 billion, follows a similar task order for Air Force bases to receive advanced wired and wireless technology upgrades that will enhance connectivity, cybersecurity, interoperability and data readiness at bases across the Pacific theater. It will be processed as an Enterprise-IT-as-a-Service solution through an Indefinite Delivery-Indefinite Quantity contract designed to streamline modernization to adapt to a quickly and constantly evolving threat. 

“The idea behind Enterprise-IT-as-a-Service is to leverage industry expertise to bring in current technology to build and maintain our digital infrastructure, allowing Airmen and Guardians to focus on other critical warfighting operations and missions,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “The first component to these upgrades is to provide the foundation to meet the mission needs of the Space Force and the Air Force and ensure the network can support their operations. Then the second component is to ensure the architecture is defendable and in compliance with Department of War policies for cybersecurity.” 

An aging digital infrastructure also increases the vulnerability of a “zero-day” attack that can be difficult to detect and often lead to data breaches and compromises, much like the recent disclosure by Ivanti that affected several government agencies and Allied partners.  

“Increasingly enabled by artificial intelligence, adversaries are going to be looking for vulnerabilities at every one of these networks and they will take advantage of them if they see them,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “Once inside a network, adversaries will look to compromise the identity of key system administrators that have privileged accounts to move laterally and ensure that they would retain deep access to our networks for future targeting. This is the reality of today’s operating environment, so it’s critical to upgrade our digital infrastructure and implement zero trust to defeat or complicate their ability to take on different identities within DOW networks.” 

A Foundation for Zero Trust and AI 

The modernization effort will also lay the foundation for implementing a new zero trust framework to enhance the resiliency and reliability of the Department of War’s network.  

“Zero trust is an approach that is founded on the assumption that your perimeter is going to be breached,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “Zero trust creates an operating environment with the least privileged access, which means only giving access to data, applications, tools and infrastructure to an authorized individual only during the period of time in which they’re authorized to operate.  

This approach makes sure that not only are you secure and resilient at the network edge, because you still won’t lose security of the entire network if one of your team members is compromised.” 

Toward this end, the National Security Agency (NSA) recently unveiled its Zero Trust Implementation Guidelines, beginning with its two initial phases: Primer and Discovery Phase. 

“NSA has coordinated all the necessary activities to implement a zero trust architecture into five parts,” Haugh said, who previously served as the Director of the National Security Agency. “The first phase, Primer, helps organizations understand which modules to begin with for laying out zero trust implementation to meet the Department’s expectations. The Discovery Phase is about creating visibility and understanding the data, applications and the assets that are within your architecture.” 

A fully implemented zero trust architecture can then create pathways for integrating emerging technologies like artificial intelligence in a way that will be reliable and secure. That’s in part why the DOW simultaneously released its Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy that laid out seven “Pace-Setting Projects” across three mission areas: Warfighting, Intelligence, and Enterprise. 

“The Department’s strategy requires a secure and capable digital infrastructure to grow the compute capacity needed for greater implementation of artificial intelligence,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “Everything AI does – from running algorithms or using agents and autonomous capabilities – requires the power to compute. You can get that compute through on-base servers and data centers or cloud providers that are part of the overall architecture. This strategy intends to make that compute available to every Guardian and every Airman, regardless of the type of contested environment they’re in.”  

Digital Infrastructure and Golden Dome 

Artificial intelligence and the autonomous processing of trusted, effective and secure data will also be instrumental to future military operations, particularly for homeland defense initiatives like Golden Dome.   

“The biggest challenge for Golden Dome is the diversity of threats: the Department is prepared for specific scenarios of certain threats, but the nature and speed of those threats are diversifying,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “But Golden Dome demands a command and control structure that is always on, always available and integrated with the right data sources to have situational awareness that can provide the right data to the decision-maker, enabling the ability to execute command and control in real-time to mitigate and defeat those threats. The digital infrastructure is what will tie every sensor, base and shooter to deliver the command and control structure necessary for Golden Dome.” 

General Mike Guetlein, the Director of Golden Dome, has expressed that command and control is his first priority. Like all space and military operations, command and control requires a trusted and secure digital infrastructure at its foundation. That’s why Elara Nova has now established its Cyber, Data & Communications business sector to support industry in delivering the secure and trusted solutions that will empower the warfighter to deliver on mission requirements across domains.  

“Elara Nova offers a deep portfolio of cyber experts that have served across all elements of our intelligence community and military services,” Gen (Ret) Haugh said. “When combined with all of the air and space experts in our portfolio, Elara Nova brings a unique set of talents to bear on hard, cross-domain problems like Golden Dome. Our experts have served in both the Department and industry, which makes them an invaluable resource to accelerating integration of data and emerging technologies in a way that will produce a successful outcome for our nation.” 

Elara Nova is a trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/.    

Resourcing Strong and Capable Space Force Begins with Budget Reform

The United States Space Force requested $29.4 billion for Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25), a two percent drop from the previous year. The final budget, however, has yet to be passed as the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution that expires in mid-March. While the Space Force was founded in response to the actions of near-peer competitors in space that threatened the United States’ national and economic security, declines in funding for the Space Force, compounded by the inherent restrictions of continuing resolutions and the financial burdens of legacy defense programs, are compromising the Space Force’s ability to effectively resource against the space-based threat. 

“A continuing resolution means we don’t have a budget for this fiscal year, and so we have to comply with last year’s budget limits and existing programs,” said General (Ret) John E. Hyten, Senior Principal Advisor at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. “This means no new start programs can begin and any other programs that require a budget increase to deliver a needed capability can’t be executed. Therefore, several space programs are consistently delayed and this inefficiency wastes billions of taxpayer dollars.” 

The Space Force has been in existence for a little over five years, or about 60 months. For roughly half that time, the Space Force has been operating under a continuing resolution. This can provide significant barriers for a new military service seeking to adopt rapidly evolving technologies. 

An Underfunded Space Force 

But even if a budget for FY25 was passed by now, the traditional approach to developing the Department of Defense (DOD) budget means the Space Force would still only receive a marginal amount of funding it needs. 

“Traditionally, the DOD budget is typically carved out in thirds,” said Lieutenant General (Ret) Nina Armagno, executive director of international partnerships at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. “One third goes to the Department of the Army, another to the Department of the Navy and the Marine Corps, and a final third to the Department of the Air Force, which includes funding for the Space Force and the intelligence community. But this approach means the Space Force only garners about three percent of the overall DoD budget – that’s harmful to our national security.” 

Space capabilities underpin joint force and military operations in other domains, and recent adversarial actions demonstrate they are developing their own space capabilities to threaten the United States’ national and economic security. That’s why, in a recent Opinion Editorial co-written by Gen Hyten and Gen Armagno published by SpaceNews, they argued it’s time for the DOD budget to refocus away from outdated legacy programs to reflect the modern, space-based threat. 

“The defense budget should be all about responding to the threats right now, and the most significant threat is China building strategic air and space capabilities to challenge the United States in the Pacific,” Gen Hyten said. “The second is Russia, which is probably even more concerning in the near-term. Russia has realized the American way of war depends on space capabilities and that’s why President Vladimir Putin has threatened to deploy and perhaps employ a nuclear weapon in low-Earth orbit.” 

A Changing Threat Landscape in Space 

Russia’s threat to deploy a nuclear weapon in space comes in response to the United States’ shift toward proliferated architectures in the domain.  

“Russia spent an enormous amount of treasure and time building a direct ascent anti-satellite [ASAT] capability that would take out one satellite,” Gen Hyten said. “But then in the early stages of the Ukranian conflict, a commercial company with a proliferated satellite architecture essentially rendered the ASAT capability useless. Now, Putin has to threaten that capability with a nuclear weapon because he’s got nothing else in the inventory, so we need to pay attention to what our adversaries are doing to fill any voids.” 

Therefore, as the nature of warfare and the threat landscape has changed, so too should the budgeting process. 

“The first thing an adversary will do is take out the ‘eyes and ears’ of the United States in space,” Gen Hyten said. “This will be followed by cyber influence and chemical or biological warfare that will insert doubt into the American population about our military’s ability to achieve its objectives. Then an adversary will challenge the United States with military force because now the doubt is across the American people. That’s how conflict could start and defending ourselves against those threats should be the highest priorities reflected in the budget.” 

Defense Spending Declines Undercut Strategy 

Further exacerbating this shortfall in necessary funding, however, is the broader decline in recent defense spending by the United States Congress. In 2022, U.S. defense spending came in at just over 3.4% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Congressional Budget Office forecasts this decrease will continue toward 2.5% GDP by 2034. For context, these percentages are lower than the running 4.2% average for total defense spending in the United States over the past half-century.  

“The FY25 budget request being essentially flat was a huge failure, and even Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the Space Force budget should probably double,” Gen Armagno said. “Every indication is that the Space Force budget needs to grow, because the Space Force is acquiring new capabilities and new technologies for new missions. Any delay to those Space Force programs is significant, particularly for its support to the entire joint force.” 

The budget process begins with developing a strategy based on the threat, but when there is not enough funding to acquire the capabilities needed to fulfill the strategy’s broader goals, difficult decisions must be made on prioritizing certain programs or capabilities. This results in program cuts that can compromise the joint force. 

“We learned in the early days of standing up the Space Force that there were tough choices for funding the new service,” Gen Armagno said. “For example, we prioritized Space Domain Awareness under a strategy called ‘Pivot to SDA.’ But we soon realized that there were competing space priorities and requirements from the other military services and Congress, against limited available funding. Without the appropriate funding, our budgets for ground-based radars and optical telescopes necessary for SDA got cut.” 

DOD, Congress Can Overcome Budget Challenges 

However, solutions exist for Congress and the DOD to effectively adapt its budget and force structure so that the United States can secure its national and economic security interests in space. 

“Congress writes the law that the president signs into action, but any law can be changed,” Gen Hyten said. “People think the acquisition program is inflexible. But the Federal Acquisition Regulations are the compilation of all the laws that have passed over the decades, and Congress can change the law for the benefit of the country. If the DOD educates Congress on what they’re trying to accomplish, Congress will do their utmost best to include those imperatives in the budget.” 

Gen Armagno points to two recent examples that reflect how the DOD and Congress previously worked together to overcome budget challenges to acquire necessary space capabilities: the Space Force’s Silent Barker program and former Secretary Kendall’s request for “Quick Start” approval for Resilient-GPS under a continuing resolution.  

“When I worked space programs in the Air Force, we successfully communicated with Congress and their staffers regarding a space-based situational awareness program called ‘Silent Barker,’ so Congress understood its priority and the acquisition strategy before the program was even announced,” Gen Armagno said. “Then another example is former Secretary Kendall working with Congress to get an exception to the ‘no new start’ rule under a continuing resolution for Resilient-GPS in the FY24 budget. It was a great idea, and more of that work needs to happen in working with the Hill, because laws can be changed.” 

Iron Dome Highlights Need to Fund Space Imperatives 

Now, a recently issued executive order from the Trump administration, “The Iron Dome for America,” will also require significant investment in space-based capabilities that must be incorporated into the Space Force budget. This new effort only strengthens the imperative for adapting the DOD’s budget and force structure according to the modern threat environment.  

“You can’t shoot anything you can’t see, so the first priority will be to build an integrated terrestrial and space-based surveillance system to see and characterize all the ballistic and hypersonic cruise missiles that threaten America,” Gen Hyten said. “Then you have to build a capability to attack multiple targets with ground-based, naval-based and air-based systems to neutralize those incoming threats, so you don’t have to respond in kind with nuclear weapons.”  

General Hyten points to further solutions already proposed in the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States in 2023. 

“The Missile Defense Agency needs to divest itself of all production and sustainment programs to the appropriate Military Departments. This means the Missile Defense Agency can just focus on the research and development for the long-term missile defense capabilities of the future. This can be done in the FY26 budget, but not if a majority of the MDA is focused on production sustainment and not on innovative moves toward the future.” 

Balancing the national security needs against the threat, so that they’re reflected in the budget, represents the complex problems Elara Nova and its partners are prepared to provide solutions for.  

“The budget must reflect the threat that’s out there today, and we need Space Force Guardians that understand the entire space enterprise,” Gen Hyten said.  “Elara Nova partners fill a critical void in providing that experience, expertise and analytic capability to developing the enterprise approach necessary for establishing the United States’ national and economic security in space.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

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.

Washington Post Reporter to Release New Book, “Rocket Dreams,” in 2025 

Christian Davenport, a space industry and NASA reporter for The Washington Post, has announced a forthcoming book: “Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race.” The new book, set to be released in the fall of 2025, picks up where his previous book “The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos,” concluded seven years ago. While his journalism career began as a metropolitan reporter and editor covering local politics in Washington, D.C., it was Davenport’s experience as an embedded reporter in Iraq and Kuwait that enabled him to recognize a unique story idea that led to writing “The Space Barons,” during a 2014 press conference. 

“I was assigned to cover the military-industrial complex when, in 2014, Elon Musk held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to announce he was filing a lawsuit against the Pentagon, specifically the Air Force, for the right to compete for national security launch contracts,” Christian Davenport said. “But Musk started the press conference by talking about building a re-usable launch vehicle that would bring the booster back by catching it. I wrote the story about the lawsuit, but during my research into SpaceX’s efforts to develop reusable rockets I found that Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin were trying to do that, too.” 

At the time, the idea of a re-usable launch vehicle that would return to Earth was unproven. But Davenport took to heart an old journalism mantra that harkens back to Watergate: “Follow the money.” 

“If the richest people in the world are investing their money in space exploration and advancing state of the art launch technology, then we should be paying more attention to that,” Davenport said. “So I interviewed Elon, Jeff, as well as Richard Branson and Paul Allen, for ‘The Space Barons.’ But while each of them approached their space companies with very different mindsets, there is a common thread through all of them: to lower the cost of access to space.” 

A Starting Point for Commercial Space 

The billionaires’ ambitions were diverse: Musk wanted to colonize Mars, Bezos wanted to reduce human impact on the Earth and Branson licensed technology from Allen’s StarShipOne to establish suborbital tourism. Each of them self-funded their space company’s efforts to varying degrees, but it was Allen’s original aspirations to win the Ansari X prize that today is viewed as a catalyzing moment for commercial space. 

“The Ansari X Prize was a contest to see if a commercial venture can send a vehicle to the edge of space and back – twice – without government money,” Davenport said. “When Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, the famous inventor and aerospace engineer, came up with SpaceShipOne and won the Ansari X Prize, it was heralded at the time as a breakthrough moment for commercial space. But while it showed it could be done, we don’t have regular people going to the edge of space like originally envisioned.” 

Davenport’s “The Space Barons” also takes readers inside a 2006 Valentine’s Day conference where the billionaires gathered together to brainstorm how to move the commercial space industry forward.  

“Back then, it would have been fair to look at these space barons and say, ‘Commercial space is never going to happen,’” Davenport said. “Space is such an expensive and difficult proposition that requires immense expertise. So there were a lot of skeptics who thought space was always going to be an exclusively government enterprise. Yet, over time, the space barons persisted.” 

The motives behind the Valentine’s Day conference meeting have clear repercussions that still resonate today. 

“In a sense, they posed a question: ‘Is there a commercial space industry?’” Davenport said. “Well, the next book, Rocket Dreams, answers that question with a resounding ‘Yes,’ because anytime you put human beings in a commercially owned and operated rocket is a big deal. Today, we’re seeing a proliferation of a space market and a space economy beyond just the billionaires.”  

The Government’s Role in Commercial Space Growth 

A key shift in making today’s space market possible, however, was the actions government agencies made to facilitate the commercial space industry’s growth.  

“There was a willingness from the government, from NASA and the Pentagon, to outsource some tasks and space missions to the private sector,” Davenport said. “Today, that outsourcing seems routine, but that was a revolutionary change to trust the private sector with vital space missions that had always been part of the national enterprise. That was a significant paradigm shift that enabled the space industry to take off.”  

It took key government figures like NASA’s Mike Griffin or DARPA’s Tony Tether and Steve Walker to advocate for the government to embrace what was – at the time – a budding space industry.  

“In the context of the time, there were two space shuttle disasters and the end of the space shuttle program, which meant the United States government would rely solely on Russia to get our astronauts to the International Space Station,” Davenport said. “So government officials began thinking about doing something radically different to access space. It started with industry partners flying cargo and supplies to the International Space Station before flying astronauts – but it was an incremental approach that developed over time.” 

The Modern Commercial Space Industry 

Today, that once-emerging commercial space market has established itself as a projected $1.8 trillion space industry by 2035. As such, government agencies will be looking more and more to their commercial partners for a variety of space missions. 

“We’re seeing the space enterprise understand that if the commercial sector can fly astronauts to the space station, then maybe they should be the ones who land astronauts on the moon and build uncrewed spacecraft for scouting missions,” Davenport said. “The government can also get investors involved to help subsidize the cost of these missions. However, the commercial sector works by experimenting to move faster, which means at times they’re going to fail. So it will be interesting to see what the government tolerance level is for that.” 

The balance of success and failure can perhaps be described by two recent commercial space endeavors funded by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. In early March, Firefly Aerospace landed their Blue Ghost spacecraft for a successful two-week mission, but Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft had an imperfect landing that left much of its mission goals unfulfilled. 

“It’s a balance of how much risk are we willing to take, because whether it’s astronauts on-board or even the cargo and supplies needed to service those astronauts – the government requires success,” Davenport said. “Even SpaceX has recently had problems with its Falcon-9, Dragon and Starship spacecraft. So while we often celebrate the success of American innovation, some of these setbacks call into question how much government oversight there should be.”  

A New Space Race 

The government has a vested interest in the success of commercial space companies, primarily because the United States has once again found itself in a modern-day space race. 

“China has shown amazing progress for moon landings, as they are the first country to go to and bring samples back from the far side of the moon,” Davenport said. “They have a space station in low-Earth orbit and have operated a rover on Mars. But what many people don’t realize is there are no longer American flags on the moon. The flags from the Apollo era have been bleached white by the radiation and vacuum environment, meanwhile China has planted two flags: one made out of composite material specifically designed for space and another made with in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology so it can withstand the harsh space environment.” 

In “The Space Barons,” Davenport catalogued how the commercial space industry rose up to meet today’s space race needs by delineating the book in three sections: Impossible, Improbable, Inevitable. But now that the commercial space industry is well on its way, “Rocket Dreams” will showcase how these companies will reach their destinations and achieve their goals in the modern space race. 

“‘Impossible, Improbable, and Inevitable,’ encompass the narrative of ‘The Space Barons,’ but also the journey of space exploration in the commercial space sector,” Davenport said. “This next book, ‘Rocket Dreams,’ takes a more symbolic approach to its three sections: on the ground, on-orbit, and to the moon and beyond. The book ends more on ideas, because there’s a lot of questions being asked and certainly progress that is being made, but these unpredictable variables are what makes it an exciting time to be a part of the space industry.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

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.

Chinese Advancements Raise Stakes for Faster Adoption of Quantum Sensors 

China’s advancements in quantum technology have 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 published quantum research in 2021. China’s lead in published research can be interpreted as a faster pace toward adopting and deploying quantum technologies in space for military purposes, which China already demonstrated in 2016, with plans for launching more quantum-equipped satellites in 2025. In response, the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) is similarly advocating for more research and development to support quantum technologies in space, specifically to reinforce the Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) mission.  

“PNT is a combination of technologies that determine location, orientation and time associated with a particular asset,” said Major General (Ret) Kim Crider, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. “Currently, the United States Space Force delivers PNT capability through the Global Positioning System (GPS) of space-based satellites. By broadcasting signals between satellites in space and receivers on Earth, GPS systems can calculate an asset’s position, while tracking and predicting its movements according to a given time standard.” 

The Military and Commercial Value of PNT 

While GPS is owned and operated by the United States government, it is just one satellite system providing PNT capability under the broader Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Allies and adversaries alike have fielded similar PNT capabilities under GNSS and through satellite systems of their own: Russia’s GLONASS, the European Union’s Galileo constellation, China’s BeiDou, Japan’s QZSS and India’s IRNSS/NavIC.  

But the PNT capability provided through each of these systems are widely seen as ‘dual-use,’ serving both commercial and military purposes.  

Consequently, these systems are subject to near-constant attack.  

“There are jamming, spoofing and cyber attacks against our GPS signals every single day, in addition to the changing space weather conditions that can also compromise these systems,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “Each of these threats create denial-of-service challenges for the Space Force, particularly because PNT is critical in warfighting operations to accurately understand where troops are on the ground or where ships are at sea, while enabling effective communication between forces in a time-synchronized environment.” 

Quantum Creates Resiliency for PNT 

That’s why the QED-C, a consortium of quantum industry stakeholders established under the National Quantum Initiative Act of 2018, published a recent report that underscored the immediate implications quantum sensors can serve in reinforcing compromised PNT capabilities or support forces in GPS-denied areas.  

“GPS signals may not be able to reach assets that are underground, under water, in valleys or canyons and sometimes even indoors, where a roof provides a cover that the satellite signals can’t penetrate,” said Lietuenant General (Ret) Harry Raduege, partner at Elara Nova.  “The polar regions can also be a GPS-denied area because of their extreme and remote location, while also becoming more globally contentious as potential areas of future conflict.” 

Quantum sensors, however, are inherently more resistant to jamming or spoofing than legacy GPS systems. 

“While GPS actively transmits and receives signals, these quantum technologies passively sense changes in the Earth’s environment,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “Quantum technology collects data and makes measurements at the atomic level, which means they can track precise changes in the way atoms interact in electric or magnetic fields. Therefore, these sensors can create a more precise and accurate understanding of what’s going on in the environment around an asset in a way that GPS currently can’t.” 

Quantum Sensors and How They Work 

The QED-C report describes two types of quantum sensors that support mapping and navigational efforts: quantum magnetometers and quantum gravimeters.  

“Quantum magnetometers and quantum gravimeters can detect and measure minute changes in magnetic fields and gravitational fields, respectively,” Lt Gen (Ret) Raduege said. “So these technologies offer new ways to map the planet, particularly for remote and featureless environments like oceans and the polar regions.”   

With these sensors, operators can identify and orient military assets through what the QED-C report calls “magnetic anomaly-aided navigation (MagNav),” and “gravitational anomaly-aided navigation (GravNav)”. 

“These sensors look for anomalies in the magnetic or gravitational environments, and can match these anomalies to known magnetic or gravitational maps,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “For example, a U.S. naval vessel operating in the polar region with limited GPS availability can rely on gravimeters to detect anomalies in the gravitational field around the ship and verify any changes with previously known maps of Earth’s gravitational field.” 

Quantum technologies can also go beyond mapping capabilities for PNT verification, to also include quantum accelerometers and quantum gyroscopes that measure an asset’s changes in motion and angle of rotation, respectively.  

“Quantum accelerometers and quantum gyroscopes can be networked together to dramatically improve the accuracy and reliability of our sensing capabilities for measuring an asset’s movement,” Lt Gen (Ret) Raduege said. “These tools can also be directly applied to the space domain to provide highly accurate measurements of a satellite’s position and orientation, as well as objects in its surrounding environment to support the space domain awareness mission.”  

According to the QED-C report, quantum sensors are particularly valuable in how they can be integrated with legacy GPS systems to enhance their accuracy and reliability. 

“It’s important that we network these emerging technologies into our traditional GPS systems to get that added resiliency in providing PNT capabilities to joint military operations,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “When GPS signals are disrupted or compromised, these quantum sensors can verify the accuracy of those GPS signals while also providing an alternative PNT capability for joint forces operating in those GPS-denied areas.” 

Quantum sensors are relevant to various commercial industries as well, such as agriculture, transportation, communications, financial management and even mining for critical resources. As a result, the QED-C proposed several recommendations for the federal government and its industry partners to invest in greater research and development of quantum technologies in a way that facilitates the broader industry’s growth. 

Investing in Quantum R&D 

One priority is investing in the research and development of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), or microchips that transmit, process and sense information through light-based particles called ‘photons.’ PICs are viewed as faster and more efficient than traditional electronic microchips, which primarily transfers information through electrons. 

“The government can invest in the development of PICs similar to how they have taken steps to establish a foundry for electronic microchips in the U.S.,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “We have to ensure there is a supply chain for developing these photonic components, such that we can create the PICs necessary for quantum sensors.” 

The QED-C report also emphasizes the role of partnerships between the government and the quantum community to identify opportunities for standardizing the size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) criteria of PICs used in quantum technology.  

“Reducing the SWaP-C elements of PICs would enhance their reliability and facilitate the economies of scale needed to broaden the application and commercialization of quantum sensors across industries,” Lt Gen (Ret) Raduege said. “The government must work with organizations like QED-C, academic institutions, think tanks and other industry stakeholders to encourage market studies, pilot programs and test-beds for developing quantum technology.” 

Further, by providing third-party validation and verification requirements, like those coming out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative and National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the government can ensure that the quantum technologies it adopts has been proven to be accurate and reliable.  

“The federal government can fund organizations supporting standardization and validation measures of emerging technologies, and also support the research labs and academic institutions that provide test-beds for establishing these performance standards,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “Then the DOD can work with the military services to facilitate the integration of quantum capabilities into warfighting operations.” 

Quantum, PNT, and the Joint Fight 

With the effective development and deployment of quantum sensors, particularly with legacy PNT systems, the implications for supporting joint force operations across domains can be significant. 

“Quantum sensing technologies can support the military across all the different elevation levels that joint forces operate in: from the subsurface to the surface level, which includes both maritime and land domains, as well as the air and space domains,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “We need that resiliency to create competitive advantage, particularly as China is investing and developing quantum technologies for the same reasons.” 

Enabled by the expertise in emerging technologies from the likes of Maj Gen (Ret) Crider and Lt Gen (Ret) Raduege, Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy is particularly equipped to support partnerships that facilitate the development and adoption of quantum sensors across space mission areas. 

“Elara Nova can identify the best applications for these emerging technologies and how to engage the entire community of industry, government, academia partners to work through these issues from a quantum perspective,” Maj Gen (Ret) Crider said. “Together, we can bring these capabilities forward into the innovation systems and processes by establishing standards, developing early prototypes, and integrating these technologies into new and legacy systems to create effects that assure space superiority and preserve our national security interests.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

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.

Academic Institutions Prepare to Meet Space Force’s Accelerating Human Capital Needs

Ms. Katharine Kelley, the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital with the United States Space Force, recently announced the military’s newest service was engaged in a pilot program called the Defense Civilian Training Corps (DCTC). While similar to the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), the DCTC is a congressionally mandated initiative to streamline university graduates into civilian careers at the Department of Defense (DOD). While the DCTC exemplifies how the government is initiating partnerships with academia from the top down, grassroots efforts like certificate programs at engineering schools are preparing to engage the Space Force from the bottom up. All together, these initiatives demonstrate how the Space Force can engage academic institutions to foster the workforce it needs among its civilian employees, active-duty Guardians and industry partners. 

“The Defense Civilian Training Corps program looks to increase the available pool of applicants for defense acquisition programs by partnering with civilian universities,” said B.T. Cesul, Ph.D., partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. “DCTC students receive a curriculum on defense acquisition that’s developed by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, while also facilitating an accelerated security clearance process and preferred access to civilian DOD positions upon graduation.”

According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly 770,000 civilians work in the DOD. But while these civilians make up around one-third of the DOD’s total workforce, they provide an outsized role in enabling military effectiveness. 

“Active-duty leaders inherently serve rotating positions to broaden their skills and facilitate career advancement, which makes them more effective leaders in higher positions of authority,” Dr. Cesul said. “The civilian workforce serves in roles like program managers and chief engineers to backstop the rotational leadership process with the continuity of processes, philosophy, strategy and technical competency that makes the DOD the premier warfighting force of the world that it is today.”

On-Boarding Challenges for Civilian Employees

Students interested in pursuing a national security career, however, often face challenges understanding the vernacular and technical jargon of the DOD and its bureaucratic processes.  This challenge extends to the DOD’s industry partners as well, as the on-boarding process can be a burdensome and time-consuming endeavor for students entering the workforce. 

But now, the DCTC program is streamlining the learning process for students at four universities: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Purdue University, The University of Arizona and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 

“The DCTC program integrates the defense acquisition process into the curriculum,” Dr. Cesul said. “This gives students the equivalent experience of the full-time training typically found when on-boarding to a job with the DOD. Students also get first-hand experience working in DOD offices through a summer internship opportunity, all while receiving scholarships and a stipend that offset the cost of tuition.”

Further, the DCTC program enables students to get a head start on receiving the clearance credentials relevant to their career. For the Space Force, which has inherited classification policies that the service is looking to modernize, the opportunity to jump-start the clearance process is also an advantage.

“There is a heavy demand signal for a cleared workforce to support the Space Force, because most of their activities are inherently classified based on legacy classification rules,” Dr. Cesul said. “Students entering the workforce want to be productive right away, and a security clearance process that takes months to years to complete may motivate highly qualified candidates to look for other career opportunities outside of the Space Force or in other industries. So the DCTC program presents a contractual relationship between students and the government to initiate the security clearance process without a defined billet or a designated employer.” 

Accelerating Space Workforce Demands

The streamlined clearance process for students will inevitably support the DOD’s industry partners, as well. Typically, commercial companies in the defense industrial base often favor hiring retired or former active-duty service members for their workforce to better position themselves for government contracts. 

“Commercial companies responding to proposals require a cleared, experienced and trusted workforce to win that government contract,” Dr. Cesul said. “But that also means there is a smaller pool of available candidates that meet this requirement for a clearance-credentialed workforce that is also familiar with the DOD’s acquisition process.”

Meanwhile, the demand signal for a space workforce continues to accelerate.

“We are going to have a shortfall in the space professional workforce, probably between 50,000 to 75,000 people per year starting in around 2030, based on the current graduation numbers and the current estimated job requisitions from both government and industry,” Dr. Cesul said. “This is going to create a cycle of competition over smaller human capital resources against an increasing number of problems – which will inherently raise costs for space programs.”

Certificate Programs for Space Operations

But efforts to develop the space workforce of the future go beyond the DCTC and other government initiatives, as grassroots efforts like space-relevant certificate programs are emerging at small universities.  

Before on-boarding as a partner at Elara Nova, Dr. Cesul helped initiate one such pilot program at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. 

“The Space Mission and Operations Certificate program aims to develop pragmatic skills for space operations requirements,” Dr. Cesul said. “The program introduces students with a technical engineering background to a fundamental understanding of space operations through labs on orbital mechanics, satellite orbit determination and digital twinning.”

To facilitate an experiential learning environment for its students in the certificate program, Lake Superior State University engaged the Homestead Mission Operations Center – a satellite ground station developed to support commercial and government research activities for space communications. 

“We used state of the art digital simulators to give students the opportunity to experience satellite communications with Homestead’s live satellite antennas,” Dr. Cesul said. “This lab experience parallels what a government employee experiences in places like the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center or Space Systems Command. Furthermore, a student can point to this certificate as a complement to their engineering degree, which will be an attractive narrative for potential employers in the commercial space industry.”

These pilot programs can also provide a valuable workforce counterpoint to the engineers and designers that traditionally come out of aerospace engineering programs at legacy four-year institutions. 

“These students without a traditional space background want more hands-on work at a terminal or ground station, operating a satellite or conducting field maintenance on a remote system,” Dr. Cesul said. “This certificate program provides a bridge between the system designer to the field technician necessary to actually operate these systems for defense programs, which is also a huge need in the Space Force right now.” 

The Need for Alternative Space Education and Training Programs

Now, the Space Mission and Operations Certificate Program is seeking to engage with the Space Force’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) to evaluate opportunities for integrating their program into existing Basic Military Training programs. 

“We designed the curriculum to replicate other training environments, and the ultimate goal for the certificate program is to get recognition from STARCOM that this program could be equivalent to one of their other introductory training programs,” Dr. Cesul said. “Then by replicating programs like this at other universities, we can increase the volume of students receiving relevant basic training. This opportunity demonstrates how the Space Force can address workforce needs through a variety of partnerships with civilian institutions, while not overwhelming the traditional training programs at Vandenberg or Colorado Springs.”

While Elara Nova is already embarking on support at the various elements of space: government, industry, financial and international partnerships, the space consultancy can also provide expertise to academic institutions developing the space workforce of the future.

“Elara Nova brings experience and expertise to the fight,” Dr. Cesul said. “The value proposition for these education programs is the ability to link real-life experience and expertise to program and curriculum development. Elara Nova can provide those pragmatic links from academia to training, so the government recognizes that there’s a trusted path to on-boarding a productive employee in a government office from day one.”

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/.