With ed concerned im a senior fellow here at hudson and it is my great privilege to host dr. Griffin at hudson again, a little over a year since we last had a conversation about his priorities as the head of research and engineering at dod, and im not going to give him the long full introduction because you know who he is. The most qualified person in washington to take on the hardest problems at dod, and so what i plan to do today is have dr. Griffin get some opening remarks about his priorities and some things that may or may not have changed since the last time we spoke and had a conversation here at hudson. He and i will engage in some back and forth and dialogue, talk about what he mentioned in his opening remarks and then it is my hope to allow some time for questions from you, the audience here at hudson. Without further ado, dr. Griffin. Thanks rebecca. Its a pleasure to be here. Specifics of the last time is here was in april 2018. So that was two months after i was confirmed as the undersecretary, and it was still three months before i i was the head of an actual Legal Organization within the department of defense. We were still working on establishing a charter and all of the bureaucratic things one does to convert legislation into executive branches institutions. So in the time, in the 15 months since ive been here, we have been busy. We have filled out the senior levels of our organization. I think many of you know the deputy undersecretary, lisa, as well as our director for Defense Research and engineering doctor mitch and mr. James. Of course we also have under Us Missile Defense Agency which has not changed. The director has changed we not vice admiral john hill running the organization, Lieutenant General greaves was in trouble crackdown mode when i took over. Now vice admiral hill is on station for the next several years. Steve walker is director of darpa as he was then and we will expect will continue. So weve got our senior team in place. We have had a number of successful tests and demonstrations, and more to come. Most critically for some of our mutual interests, we had sdg 11 just this past march, if i recall correctly, the date, and very successful missiledefense test, one of our real highlights and many other things as well. We have estimated or are in the middle of incrementing some organizational standouts, the Space Development agency as well as some organizational changes. We are currently working on moving those strategical military officers go under darpa to better align our team. And weve added a lot of cooperative initiatives in science and technology with our allies and partners. Last year when i spoke, hypersonics was possibly, in fact, i stated right out that was my single highest priority. Over the last 15 or so months, i would say we have made an awful lot of progress in getting that and i have actually elevated other things that are maybe less flashy but even more important, such as microelectronics and 5g to our priority stack. And of course, space, because without space, we cannot do anything. Incorporated an assistant director structure within our organization where for each of our key priorities we have an assistant director to be responsible for the strategic shaping of that priority. , we willle, we have shortly be bringing on board and assistant director for 5g which i have mentioned and other things. Similarly for other things. Lots of work we have to do. And will be trying for a while trying to get our arms around the overall orchestration of the dod technical portfolio and priorities. , we are trying to rationalize that with how we do our engineer prototyping in a world in which i think it is recognized we have to do Something Different and Something Better than dod 5000. O we are working those issues broadly speaking, our focus is on doing the right things and doing the things right. That is kind of our motto. So let me stop there, i want to give you as much time as you want for your questions and also for the audience. Rebecca the first one is a general one since the last time we spoke. Hypersonic defense and giving us the hypersonic threat was your priority and it still is important to you and to your what you are doing. But 5g is also now a priority. Getirst question before we into details of those, how do you come up with your priorities and what informs your priorities, what are you looking at and how are those decisions made . Secretary mattis emphasized when he was on station as acting secretary shanahan emphasized is our new secretary, emphasizing the National Defense strategy is our core. That is our guideline. With regard to modernization which is, that is what research and engineering is about is our modernization plans. That is our touchstone. Doingry thing that we are can trace its roots back to that. Ist said, if everything equally important than nothing is important. Also it is fair to say i am not bizarre tsar. , came into office wishing intending, wanting to make a big deal out of that. Not just defense, not just andng with chinas offenses russias offenses but i want to be the offense. We want to hold others hostage. Bad behavior to be something with which we can deal. And hypersonic capability is a key to that. Came here wanting to push that button at the other end of the spectrum, issues like microelectronics and 5g to which i was i would say well less sensitive and well less educated , the department has taken that on, has taken on 5g as a Major Initiative at the secretary of defense level and so our research and engineering, was handed that priority and said go do. Ourre and i mentioned deputy undersecretary a few minutes ago, dr. Porter was by name assigned as the dod lead for 5g. We are, we are developing initiatives, we had a program planned, we have put that before congress and goes before omd this coming year. We are hiring an assistant director for 5g. Outsideone where others ourselves felt this was sufficiently important that it now has become a big deal for us. Can you explain briefly what it is and you talk about a new initiative you will be planning for 5g, what is it you are most concerned about an flesh that out for us about the initiative. Broadly speaking, we are aware that commercial initiatives in telecommunications far outstrip anything that we can do and would want to do in dod. We are struggling to become the doa on the tale of telecoms g. We have National Security needs and to the extent that we can exceed the competitive environment or encourage you to grow in directions that are relative to us, we want to do that so how can we help there . Use cases, when we talk about 5g, we talk about greatly increased bandwidth, greatly increased download speeds, we talk about an enormously points, number of touch socalled internet of things where everything is connected to the net in one way or another. That thate cases for abound, smart ports, smart depots, smartt factories. All of that, all of those things have commercial applications but they have National Security applications. If we can make available our infrastructure for experimenting and prototyping and environments canh different competitors work in different areas and be assured their proprietary information is protected, if we can provide then use where local , regional, municipal state permitting is not required because they are operating on the dod base. All of those things can speed progress in 5g development which again the development will not be led by dod. We will be looking to be good customers but if we can help enable that involvement we can do that. Ms. Heinrichs you mentioned sco. There was an article that said you had done away with spending justification for some of these. Do you want to comment . Articlefin i saw that this morning. The folks who like to send me bad news lost no opportunity to send that to me this morning. I talked with our acting point, i should say corresponded. , io from my own knowledge was completely incorrect. The essence of the article is i budgeteersng our dod for our billiondollar blank check for whatever we want to do. Not likely. That stupideen since i was in my teens. Of a strategy to ask the comptroller and cape for a blank check to do whatever you could always you ask. I gave up on stupid requests like that along time ago. That is not what we are doing. Were scrubbing every program we have carefully. Very carefully for the coming budget year and we are going to request money for those programs we deem worthy. But we are not asking for a blank check. Ms. Heinrichs back to the prioritization question and hypersonic defense. There is still a priority and we still have not developed the thersonic event, especially hypersonic cruise missiles which are holding our strategic assets at risk and we would like to only on offense of answer but defensive to dissuade Something Like that from happening to begin with. The key to building that defense you talk aboutd, living up to it, was about a missile tracking later. They can track the Hypersonic Missile from birth to death. President trump mentioned this in the Civil Defense rollout and that there was not a whole lot in the budget when the budget came out. Still, thek about degree that we are still vulnerable, the need to have this and how the tracking sensor layer needed for this is going to fit into the larger architecture that you have planned for the development. I tend to be longwinded and this is going to be even worse with that question, that is a broad question. Let me try to take it from the top. Since my confirmation hearing, a couple of key points. The u. S. Developed not all but almost all the significant body of Underlying Research and hypersonic flight. It is a very difficult domain. We chose not to weaponize it. Perspective we do not think the world needed a new class of weapons. It was not an extent and from which we should defend ourselves and we did not need a new offense of capability. You are seeing articles in the public press that the u. S. For progressedde has not with hypersonic systems development. That is true. That was a deliberate choice. Our adversaries and again he will find me saying all the time, the u. S. Never declares anyone to be an adversary. They are clear ourselves to be be ourthemselves to adversaries which is frustrating and we have to respond. Our adversaries are developing, have developed these systems and their capable they are capable. The advantage offered by a itersonic offense is that over flies air defenses as we understand them today and under flies our Missile Defense is so it goes into the gap between air defense and Missile Defense. It is a new class of defensive system. That is required to deal with it. It is also extremely highspeed. By definition of hypersonic threat. That means that it can fly faster fast enough, low enough that by the time we can on defensive radar systems, it is nearly too late to close the kill chain. It would be difficult to close that kill chain for one threat but in a raid scenario, you just cannot get there from here as the expression goes so he have to see them coming from further out. Our longrange radar is as good as they will get so if the hypersonic threat as it does outruns our longrange radars, what is your next step . Were, if this were exclusively a land conflict, one option would be to forward some deploy some radars although they themselves become rick become targets. It is a theoretical option. Iswe look to the future, it a maritime conflict. Not enough islands and not enough ships to populate the earth with radar even if we thought that was a viable strategy. What else is available . You have to go to space. We can see what we need from space but because these hypersonic threats are 10 to 20 to 20dimmer, they are 10 times dimmer than Strategic Missile threats. That is we need to be closer to the action which means lower down which implies that we need a proliferated layer of sensors because we cannot see these things from a few spacecraft in geostationary orbit. The requirement we asked lead you to a proliferated sensor layer and relatively much lower orbit. That is how we get to that point. You are completely correct in atr opening comment that this years Missile Defense review, President Trump quite correctly enunciated the need for such a layer and yet our budget did not show it. It can take a little bit of time for the bureaucracy to catch up with the elected leadership. Because this year we will be making a stronger try and getting the funding for that space layer for the budget. I hope i captured all your questions. Ms. Heinrichs the one little piece, how does it fit into, we talked a little bit in the green room about how the Space Development agency as a whole that the space center layer is one part of it. Dr. Griffin true. Ms. Heinrichs you have to think about what it is you want from that old totality of what youre trying to do in space before you get to the missile tracking part of it. Dr. Griffin you do. For the space develop meant agency which was chartered by the acting secretary shanahan to basically oversee the where going to deploy and expedite its deployment, the first task the space develop meant agency was asked to take on was the socalled communications transport layer. Resilient highly proliferated mesh Network Communications system in lower [inaudible] similar to what you see commercial companies talking broadband by having different requirements. For National Security purposes rather than moneymaking purposes. Comes layer, why is that the first thing. The sensor layer is critical but if it cannot talk among itself it will not be effective. Communicate if you will forgive the term, under lays every other layer that we wish to deploy, whether it is for space situation or awareness or hypersonic Threat Detection domaincking or maritime awareness or whatever. Whatever other functions we want , they are enabled by the ability to communicate in a resilient fashion which we do not have today. That is why that is first. Dr. Griffin to be clear, the h the acronym,s there is money for that and we will be developing it parallel. Dr. Griffin there is money in the budget for hbtss. I would not be surprised to see us try to get additional funding for that. Draft, the rfp was sent out a while back. We have had responses to that. So we are proceeding in parallel on the sensor layer. The sensor layer does have to mesh with the overall architecture. Dr. Griffin i heard some confusion, if we need this, there is a great sense of of emergency to get at that missile in the indo pacific in particular. If he wanted to go faster and do it immediately, we would keep it within mda. There is an agency there. What is the wisdom and moving it over to its own new agency. I dont know that anything is being over to the Space Development agency. The Missile Defense agency was not charged with or chartered to commsa calm slayer layer. The interest of management twociency, we consolidate developments into one, that is a decision for different place and time. Probably not even me. Mdat now it remains under and transport Layer Development is under sta. Dr. Griffin right. In height it will be in space. Hypersonic defenses, it touches space, it touches ground detectionit touches and tracking algorithms and fire control algorithms. It is dealing with the hypersonic threat is even more of an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary problem than ground Missile Defense was. Having spent quite a number of i left nasa being closely involved again with the Missile Defense agency on ground Missile Defense, i got to the point where i regarded the ground Missile Defense system is being more complex than the space shuttle. I honestly came to that view. That was saying something. The problem of dealing with the hypersonic threat is even more complex than dealing with gmd. Because of the requirement for persistent, timely global awareness. The hypersonic threat proposes. Ms. Heinrichs that is a great segue. Defense home against the icbm threats from north korea and as iran develops as well. Will defendsaid we the homeland homeland against these rogue states. New killeveloping a vehicle for the system to increase its writer liability to handle the threats that continue to progress when we have stopped, there is a stop order. Do you want to speak to that and comment on the plan for an d, especially the kill vehicle component and whether there is something mokb whichget to the is the followup. Dr. Griffin i need to be careful. We never want to get into classified topics in public environment. Youre right. We had a reason a redesigned Kill Vehicle Program to follow kill vehicle,ful the e kv that is deployed today. In alaska and california. Tohad a followon program deploy as you know 20 more. That was in development program. Sometimes develop meant program encounter problems. So we found some results in testing that were not what we would have wanted them to be. After a certain amount of due wereence, we decided we not going down a path that was going to be fruitful. So we issued a stop work on the kill vehicle and spent, i say i, i and the team because i have been involved regularly. I and the team have spent the last three months studying alternatives. We are close to the end of that and when we get to the end of that we will tell you what we can tell you in a classified mode. We are pursuing a program and it will be a followon kill vehicle development. We did have to drop back and get forwardr to progress because we were going down the path that was not going to bear fruit. We are fixing that. Every time we talk about what we are doing to improve the system it seems like there is this narrative that mainstreamd in information that gmd is not reliable and it is not up to where it needs to be to handle what our policy dictates. The north Korean Missile threat. What is your confidence in the technical ability . Last two, wethe dont want to use of our spare rounds to doing testing. The last highspeed intercept tests that we have done using the deployed system were extraordinarily successful. And very hit to kill aggressive scenarios with the deployed hardware. I dont want to go beyond that. Ms. Heinrichs that is great. Dr. Griffin they were successful, i have a great deal of confidence in the capabilities of that system. Rounds, as ire like to say with all the systems you get to the point where you cannot buy the parts anymore. You have parts obsolescence issues. If we want more rounds we will have to have a redesigned kill vehicle and we are pursuing that. But the system we have in the ground today is obviously quite capable. Have anrichs once we do space tracking layer, that is not just for the hypersonic. Dr. Griffin not at all. That can track anything. Ms. Heinrichs that would qualitatively improve love but reliability. Tracking layer. Existingin are detention and tracking capabilities are quite exquisite. As i said, they were not thegned to address hypersonic threat. What we are trying to do is develop in additional set of capabilities. It is not to replace but to add on. When we add on the new sure itties, i am 100 will have a lot more customers than just hypersonic defense. Ms. Heinrichs while we are talking about gmd, the Missile Defense review policy document policy. Fin i dont do my second fondest hope in life is never to do policy. [laughter] ms. Heinrichs a lot of what you said is [inaudible] policy. It is still the policy of the u. S. To provide a defense of the and the against threats Missile Defense review said we are going to primarily rely on Nuclear Deterrence to handle the ategic threats to handle threats. We are not able to provide a defense against not aand russia or is it technical problem, is it a policy issue . I dont want this to come out sounding like we are our policy is not together because we are. We get along famously. We are well aligned. I think he would have to say the departmentd of defense policy, it has been National Policy that we are not trying to defend against china and russia. That that level of threat is a step up. A technical step up. We know how to do it. Ith existing technology it would require buying systems that we do not have today that would require buying more of the systems we do have. It becomes a budgetary priority. He would be spending money on Missile Defense systems that we are spending on other things. That is a Budget Priority discussion and it is a deterrence policy discussion within which i dont engage. It is not a technical issue. How to do it. Dr. Griffin that includes capabilities that already exist today and we talked about directed energy and other technologies we are working on. You are talking about the hit to kill technologies. Dr. Griffin if the u. S. Wanted a mucht, we could deploy wider span of hit to kill technologies that we have today. Todays systems are designed to counter rogue states. If you want more, you can buy more. We have not chosen to do that. Ms. Heinrichs my last question missilee north korean problem still exists. Even as this administration coming up with a peaceful conclusion to the north Korean Missile problem. Aspect, eithergy things that you perceive that we should be pursuing with a greater sense of urgency that would close some gaps that are there against the north korea missile problem because again, the mdr said Missile Defenses, we understand the measurement of policy and power diplomacy. They are not in conflict. Are not destabilizing. The u. S. Should be pursuing with a greater sense of urgency even as we pursue negotiations. I dont want to offer a comment beyond what the Missile Defense review has offered. And beyond the president s speech when it was rolled out. I think it was a superlative speech. It is it was a great review. Let thewe will have to system catch up with the leader from a Technology Point of view. We are we are ready to support. Enough. Richs fair i will take some questions from the audience. Say yourll on you just name and affiliation before you ask your question. [inaudible] a few years ago during the department of the f35 lockheed lost a terabyte of data to china. Government spelled billions of dollars trying to resolve the issue and make changes. We are putting a lot of money into research into bellmen and new technologies. The government doing to ensure that technology is delivered on compromise uncompromised and the taxpayer does not have to keep paying for things that are compromised. I am research and engineering, i am not the cio. I dont know anything about any of that so i will not comment. Over here in the yellow tie. As you consider the 5g rollout for the dod and the hyper microwave weapons, are you considering protection against those devices in your specifications as you move forward . That is with part of a broader question. The simple answer is yes, of course, let but let me elaborate a little bit. 60 pleaseage of 5g stated is everything is part of the network to my right . It is a bit hyperbolic, only a little bit when you talk about the internet of things. The disadvantage of 5g is that if everything is part of the system, everything is part of the attack surface. With all aspects of cyber security, everything electromagnetic now becomes a potential threat. As well as a potential promise. Iphone input your front of a radar and expected to survive. A highpowered microwave attack will kill would it seeks to kill. For other forms of electronic attacks because of electronic warfare, cyber warfare, cyberattack and there is a word line between those, we are going to have to learn how to do with it. In brief, we are going to learn how to have trusted medications in an trusted networks. We will never be able to certify perfect hardware. Moreover, the National Security communicator community is to go places where people dont want us and they have to do is we have to do things they dont want us to do and we will not be able to bring our own networks. I found the National Security community has to accept as a starting proposition that we have to be able to operate in an environment where it is not that we suspect it is not trustworthy. We know it is not trustworthy. That is one of our ground rules. Some of this is a math problem. How do you assure yourself of trusted communications broadly notking in an trusted trusted hardware. We are working on it. Ms. Heinrichs the lady here in the sweater. That the assistant directors are working on individual or combined roadmaps. Can you talk about the status of those roadmaps and how they will be publicly articulated . Dr. Griffin probably not. Ms. Heinrichs in any form. Dr. Griffin were working on modernization roadmaps in different technologies and they are related to one another. It is impossible to think about developing a communications transport layer without the people who are working on what cq design of the network should be, just to pick an example. But no, in this environment, i am not able to go in any more detail on that. Thank you. Im a journalist with a russian news agency. [inaudible] was related to a recent incident in russia during the test of a Nuclear Powered missile. According to trump, the u. S. Has [inaudible] but more a vast. Does it mean the u. S. Is developing the same technology . Thank you. Dr. Griffin i dont have any comment on that. Over here, right there. Yeah. And with tritt bloomberg government. It wanted to ask about the space to bellmen agency. You touched on some of this during your comments. It does seem Like Congress has been reluctant to back the agency, house appropriators want to see more plans. Yourave also recently lost director. I wonder if you feel that the organization is stumbling out of the gate and can you comment on the status and the health of the sta . Sda . Thank you. Dr. Griffin the sda is busy. We had [inaudible] press was therefore part of the industry days. Pursuing both with internal resources and through the network of government and university laboratories. We are pursuing architectural design. Sensor requirements, communications requirements, all of those things. So we are quite busy. They the sda was chartered in march by the acting secretary. With a mixedo far reception on the hill. Committees oversight broadly speaking. The views of those oversight committees range from full support to as you said, lets see more plans. Is neither uncommon nor unexpected when you are rolling out a new approach. Let me hit rewind for a moment. 2018, skipof january. In 2018, we got a law from congress, the National Defense authorization act directing i name the deputy secretary of defense to provide a plan to how we were going to manage space with the new department of defense subtext of that, you dont get asked to specify such a thing if everybody is happy with you. Happy. Text is we are not becausenot a surprise in prior several years, a variety of senators and congress , mike rogers has to mind that comes to mind that we want to see a different approach to managing space. The deputy secretary took that seriously. Worked very others closely with him and later that summer, we rolled out a plan central to which was the creation of space to bellmen agencies which would have expedited hiring and acquisition authorities and would be threat driven. The key to that is we need to move quicker. We are executing on 15 year timelines. To do Something Different. If we do everything the same way you should not expect a different outcome. Also in the course of last summer as you know President Trump called for a s. I am a huge fan of that idea. I could not be any more of a cheerleader. And so in our submission to congress, the socalled 1601 report addressing section 1601 of the and eaa, if the congress it chooses to approve space force and the space to bellmen agency should be realigned under it. And it is aess congressional option, we understand that. If congress does not choose to approve the creation of the space force and the sda will r e. N aligned under the Space Development agency is our approach to the spacemove on with Architecture Development that we need to supplement our existing capabilities. A show of ask for hands for people who think you can stand up a new agency to do , never beenet done done before in the history of humans, if you think he will stand up that agency with turmoil and [inaudible] i cant execute a shopping trip to home depot without turmoil and commotion. We are going to stand up a new agency without a certain amount of churn. Not do it if we did not think it was necessary. So iink it is critical and am going to continue to use and others will continue to use every bit of our persuasive power to convince the congress this is an agency worth standing up and worth funding. Acting secretary of the air force donovan and i could not be on the need aligned for sta. If congress chooses to create a space force he will inherit it. His is not an example this is not an example of power struggles within the dod. We are getting along very well and i think all the key decisionmakers are completely why the on the need for sda and what it is trying to do. I cant say it any better. The lady over here. I will finish off by saying dont expect us to stand up a new capability with no management churn. If that is your expectation, go somewhere else because it cant deliver it. I am reporter with voice of america. I was wondering what your Current Assessment is on north koreas missile capabilities especially after they launched 10 projectiles over the last weeks. Dr. Griffin i have no Public Comment to make about north koreas missile capability. Wouldould assessment belong to our Intelligence Community and that is not my job. Ms. Heinrichs i just hosted the director of Defense Intelligence agency here we talked a lot about missiles and that is on our website. We have time for one last question. We will go here in the back. You can ask it racially. Briefly. One question on iran. Thatyear congress was told he said the assessment of the pentagon for iran to acquire Hypersonic Missiles was extremely high. I want to know what the assessment is today and has iran intensified [indiscernible] i am sorry you wasted your question. In thee time, i am not intelligence or assessment business. If i were probably could not comment. It is easy to say i will not comment. Hosted thehs i special envoy to iran and we discussed about how irans Missile Program has not has continued to improve since the jcpoa. Program andlow the that transcript is on the website as well. With that, please join me in thanking dr. Griffin for his time. [laughter] [applause] [indistinct conversations] the cspan cities tour is on the road exploring the american story. In many ways in galveston county, the way it is a lens in the way the county is changing. It is one of the fastest areas in terms of growth in the country. With help from our spectrum Cable Partners we take you to bozeman, montana. Most famous formation is the hell creek formation and that is where we go to hell find triceratops and trex. They are known from the formation and we have that here in montana. Is he is an incredibly loved author and he gives voice to the working people of montana. Watch the cspan cities tour of bozeman, montana the saturday at 6 p. M. Eastern on cspan2s book tv. Working with our cable affiliates as we explore the american story. Saturday on American History tv. Antenna clock p. M. Eastern on railamerica. Communists on campus. Yes, they are coming, their mission proudly proclaims the violent overthrow of the democratic system and our nation seems unbelieving, even not concerned. Sunday morning at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on oral histories. Detailing how the festival came together. I said if we took it outside, suppose we had hendrix and jock and joplin. Maybe 50000 and he said there would be have there would have to be 100,000. My wife said there would be more than 300,000 just like that and i swear i looked out that terrace and i saw that field. Was spaced out, of course, i was looking at a dream that came true. At six on american artifacts artifacts,rginia on their exhibit of 400 years of african American History. They were not content with their lot, they wanted to resist their enslavement and they tried to run away. Unfortunately, they were not successful. They were captured and as punishment for their attempt to escape, Robert Carter got permission from thert
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