Transcripts For CSPAN Asst. 20240704

Odysseus spacecraft landing on the moon. This is about one hour. Im the director of the Defense Industrial group. I am delighted to be able to welcome you to this event. Delivering for the war fighter, the importance of executing Space Acquisition programs. It is a true privilege to be able to introduce the honorable frank cavelli. He serves as a Service Acquisition executive for Space Systems and programs within the department of the air force and as the chair of the Space Acquisition council. Before his current role, he served as the Principal Deputy director of the National Reconnaissance offer. Officer. Of always been complex the standup of the United States space force in 2019 over the opportunity to develop a clean sheet approach for Space Acquisition. Before the discussion begins, it is worth noting the multiple lines of effort secretary cavelli has undertaken. He issued new Space Acquisition tenets in 2022, a bill for going fast and he recently released a memo covering Space Acquisition Program Management skills in december 2023. All offer pragmatic principles and steps gained from experience both successes and failures in delivering space capabilities. Secretary cavelli thank you to coming thank you for coming to csis and we look forward to opening remarks. It is such a pleasure to work with cynthia and her Defense Industry initiatives initiatives group. And to benefit from the term and his knowledge she has not only in Space Acquisition but the Defense Industrial base at large. I also share her welcome to the arvo frank cavelli, assistant secretary of the air force for Space Acquisition and integration. I was fortune to meet him when he was the Deputy Director of the natural National Reconnaissance office years ago and what really stuck out to me was how he pushed to do the Mission Better and break down barriers. He was one of those folks that would not settle for the answer of thats how weve always done things in a really pushed in a way that works medically beneficial in the war fighter benefits from today. I was pleased when i heard you were nominated for this air force position. I knew you would bring that same mentality to the department of defense. With that, i wanted to turn the floor over to secretary cavalli for opening thoughts and then we will have a few questions. For the audience in person and online, in person, we have a qr code so we will open up the end for bastions. Click on the qr code and that will take you to an online submission and provokes online, there is a button on the event page that you can click to ask a question. Questions i get through as many as i can. Welcome. Thank you, it is all about the big push in space and going fast. One of the key factors in that is program execution. It is really about delivering programs on schedule and that work. Every time we Delay Program or we overrun a program, basically, we use funds from future investments and modernization or future investments in r d to cover the overruns. That takes away the essence of speed. Three memos, and i am done with memo writing. I wanted to get out there in terms of guides so that the formula for going fast is insured and there is some professionals and i want them to have. It comes down to executing. It is easier said than done. The government needs to get it and their strategy and in their source election plans of a warning contract of awarding contracts that are realistic in terms of schedule, costs, and organizations that can do the job technically. Once under contract we have awarded a realistic contract, managing the baseline day today and deliver the program on cost and on schedule, a key element of speed. We need industries because there is a historic precedent where Industries Like to low bid programs. The government likes to award to the low bid and the government has to fix the program down the road. That has to stop. We need to have situations where industries submit to us realistic costs and schedules and have the skills to do the job and the government needs to manage the baseline and deliver on cost and schedule. We cannot afford to rob our future to pay for the past. That has been a big theme of mine, i wrote the third memo, it is all throughout the nine tenants i put together back in october 2022 and it is what i am pushing forward over the course of the next year or so. On that, in the last few years you have issued Space Acquisition tenets, a formula for going fast, and this memo on execution and recommendations for Program Managers on how to successfully execute a program. I guess my question is, why did you do all of this . Reading those memos, they seem like such common sense, solid items. Why did you need to do it . I am fortunate that i have an Amazing Organization supporting me in terms of the basic commands and other agencies as well as my own staff at the pentagon. I think congress is branding and separating out the roles because i think there is such a small part of the air force and i am not quite sure how much attention they would actually get from the sab4. By having me in this role they may be able to streamline things dramatically. My program and oversight has access to me 24 7, there is no prebriefs or staffing of packages or huge bureaucracy. The reason for hiding the memos is the commander intent, this is how i want you all to behave. We need to go fast and we have threats against our system in space and architecture grew up in a time where things were really expensive and we have a large a satellite over many years of development and but them all in, that is the predominant air force architecture, gps is down in medium absorbency. We need to transform the big, juicy targets at geo, too much more diverse orbits of our system. We need to do that with speed given the threats we face with folks out there. The tenants really were in the form of here is how we can behave she fast and then the memo was here are the skills i expect you to learn as professionals. It is all tied towards going fast and setting the commander intent. I have been really impressed with the, i like keeping things short and nobody likes to read, it is not like reading stuff really long. I think three pages would be the longest memo. Im not writing those sorts of things, i am making it easy to read. So far, something simple like delivering the ground before launch, i have had such a positive response to the team on that and i think it is something no one has ever said to me before. We knew that was always the case, we were not always perfect but we always strived to make reforms. Why do you want a satellite that you cannot use . Or the life of the vehicle and that point of time . Im not sure anybody has ever said to the great folks out at the sea and they have responded and they are opening things accordingly now. It has really changed. I will tell you why i think that. I happened to be on the 2004 breach on servers. Somebody picked me to help undo out beyond that. We were talking to the contractor and we went to the ground pieces and we were predicting at the time that the first death would be in 2000 nine, the thing the irg came up with it. They said they would not have ground before they launched it. How could you not have ground inflation for your watch . That was the culture, that was not a priority for them. That really stuck with me my whole time at the inner robe. The ground needs to be there. Sometimes we use the word Space Acquisition very monolithically but there is much nuance and there is a different type of space capability that we are acquiring on a big, exquisite to the smaller systems to ground at all etc. Can you give me a sense of what these memos and what this particular recent memo on execution, how do you make this tangible . You have got the train has left the station on the big programs and challenges with the gps ground station and spaceman and control. How do you day today in the pentagon bring those tenants to life when you have programs where trains have already left the station . For the Traditional Programs who already left the station, the best thing to do is manage them. Get them over the finish line and get them finished. For my trouble program, atlas, and goe, what we do is, i need biweekly with every epo, they are allowed to tell me anything they want to talk about. For those three trouble programs, the Program Managers meet with me every two weeks separately and walk through statuses of the program. I think having a dedicated individual learning about the program and they have been able to really put a focus on these things, we are not over the hump yet of the programs and alice has made some significant progress. All their really nice job of it. Ocx keeps having challenges. I think we just moved down a bit further than i had hoped, we hope it will be further out. Just meeting with the team and having a dedicated individual who is focused on the Space Acquisition itself i think is making a difference. For those programs we started nexgen gl and polar, stuff that was already well in acquisition like ocx, i think the trick is just to keep a focus on and deliver on schedule and put the emphasis out there that the program managed to deliver on schedule, that is the expectation that i have. What is on the Space Development agency, there is an example of this approach and the emphasis on speed. What has been most challenging there in terms of execution and what lessons are you learning they are feeding back into inconsistent . You cannot build big fast. You cannot. I got that experience. Sea has shown if you build a smaller systems you can build fast. When you use commercial buses, lockheed is using the trans orbital bus. Northrop is using an arrow bus with airbus. When you build smaller and you take advantage of a commercial bus and you take advantage of existing technology, not reinventing the wheel, waiting antennas on, you can go fast. People are starting to take note of that and see that, speed can come from that kind of formula. Let us shift the gears here, reauthorization, last week at the air force Association Warfare symposium, the secretary announced 24 key decisions to optimize the department of the air force for great power competition. Some of the things that stuck out to me on the space front where the space futures command and an officer Training Course which i thought was interesting. We have yet to see the details about the space future command, can you share some insights on how you would expect the new futures command to impact Space Acquisition . I loved everything we do with the great power of competition. I think the country is fortunate to have secretary kendall in that role because he has done amazing things. You noticed that there was not much note on the space side because that we have been working it since the day i arrived. I like the thought of the space futures command a lot. Their roles, it will be to help us prioritize on the investments. We have not done a good job in terms of optimizing our r d pipelines to go from what do we need as a space force to getting these things into basic r d and demonstrations. And into operations. Space futures commands will help prioritize what we should be going after. I will have a role from the perspective making sure that we execute those things and that we do demos that will lead to real operation abilities as opposed to demos for the sick of doing demos. That is one of the key things. The secondary kendall has said that the u. S. Must be ready for a kind of war that we have no modern experience with. That urgency and a security picture, do you see that permeating within the Space Acquisition portfolio . They are fond of saying that it is china, china, china, i like to say it is speed, speed, and speed. The tenants and the former are designed to change our culture to go faster. We build bigger systems, sevenyear, 10 Year Development cycles, it is really we cannot do that anymore. We are fortunate that the march environment has changed so much you can go smaller and much more positively and today. We even have been driving from my arrival on speed across the whole acquisition space portfolio. Part of that speed needs to be applied to the front end of the acquisition process which is requirements and i will say forced design. We have an Organization Called the swac. They are designing and then leading requirements and what we should build. My question for you is are we actually seeing different Acquisition Strategies emerging from that work . Or vice versa . Are your acquisition tenants being fused into what the swac is doing . It is a fabulous organization and doing some really great work and we work closely with them. If you look at where swac pushed for this layer for Missile Warning as our future is beyond the traditional kind of processes that we are building with nexgen polar, that is a great system. Swac has done a fantastic job understanding the technical trends and actually driving proliferation, something that we are going to do on our side, they are due on their end. I think it has worked really nicely. That does go into their forced designs. Your tenants as well, does that go into their foresight . Ok, fixed price, that has been a hot topic among our Industry Partners and you have advocated in your memos discussing fixedprice contracting as an area of emphasis. It has received mixed reaction from industry, you are trying to move faster and shift to these architectures, the existing systems, you are also still developing new complex systems, nextgeneration or Strategic Communications by be examples of that, can you add a bit of nuance to this topic . When you used fixedprice contracts . How you think about risk . How do you think about incentivizing industry . The formula we wrote was specific. Build smaller, low nre< use existing technology low nre, use existing technology, the low nre and using existing technology, use it to drive speed and when you are fixing prices you are not doing the first of a kind, something new. I am confused by some of the bigger groups who say they are against that. I have not said im going to go build the next generation battle star galactica has never been built before base price. What i said was smaller, existing technology, fixedprice , ready to launch. I think that depending on situations that if you have a high nre, there are different strategies. I think the space force has done a nice job with the middle tier acquisition stories where they may actually be bringing on things and building stuff and designing and move on to an action beyond that. We look at each acquisition individually and we try to marry it up with the best strategy. We are doing smaller systems and using technology, fixedprice works just fine. We look to replenish our nuclear control systems, there is a higher degree of radiation, hardening that will be needed and we have seen in the past couple weeks or so acutely, the capabilities that we needed. That will require designs that may not fit the contracting mold. That program which is the evolved strategic start, program, the strategic stat com program. The military acquisition reducing egg prototype, it seems like we spent a lot of time doing tech Risk Reduction or Technology Maturity and it is not as far along as i would like for us to use fixedprice, having built a real payload or going to the prototype of the satellite and maybe it is time to go off and do something fixedprice. Given the amount of nre that is on the program, as we revise the strategy, we are looking at going more towards the traditional model or Something Like that. We were talking about this earlier, there is appetite suppressants that is required both on the government side and setting requirements as well as on the industry aside being realistic about what they can offer at a certain cost. How do you think about that . I want industry to make a fair profit and i want the government to get a capability that it once on call and on schedule. I see industries properly. Do not low bid me i think we are going to awarded it and then fix it later. Im at the point where i cannot afford to keep paying for poorly awarded contracts. I would rather cancel stuff and start over. I need the industry to get out of the mode of low bidding and government in to the mode of awarding proposals we can actually execute. I want to jump to commercial as well, this is another hot topic, commercial data and services, the department of defense and leadership are saying the right thing on commercials, but that the program and budgets do not necessarily match that rhetoric. They are critiquing the dod acquisition models and funding models are not well aligned with purchasing commercial services or perhaps can take full advantage of efficiencies within commercial operations. What do you think needs to change to enable greater acquisitions of commercial space data and services . What i have seen is in the past is we look at every program as a stovepipe. You might have multiple programs that are in the space. Each one is a separate program with a separate set of requirements. Until recently, you were not looking at them as a mission area. There are some amazing individuals who are now changing the way that we do business and looking at requirements from a mission perspective. Satellite communications as an example, when you get programs like space awareness and telecommunications, they put it together and i broken into programs, you can envision how commercials play a better role. That is a trick i learned from my friends over at westfield in terms of putting all the requirements together and to seeing what can be allocated to commercials first. We are taking a similar model within the department. Having the latest revised draft, we wrote those in the approach to actually start bidding the requirements together and looking at what can commercials do first . Once we found out what they can and cannot do, look at what programs they need to do to get the rest of it. That is a paradigm breaking shift from how they traditionally have been done. What we need to do is get out of program by Program Requirements and look at portfolio requirements. Folks say that is it. What role do you see the government playing in establishing or creating the market demand in these new areas of commercialization . The response of space, we spoke about that last month. Situational awareness. Even a space servicing on the horizon here . Yes. Is it truly commercial if the government has to be anger tenant has to be the anchor tenant . If the government is the only tentative user it is not truly commercial. I think the government needs to figure out how to set a demand signal. The strategy will come out from the space force, it is quite good and in that strategy, i was impressed with the fact that you kind of say these are the things that are inherently governmental like Nuclear Command and control. Like a Missile Warning. He is or the other things we think the commercial market may play a bigger role on like we are doing today like space awareness and satellite communications. I think part of that strategy when it comes out is going to be have a signal where we see commercial playing bigger role for us as opposed to just having the commercial having a get. The market demand upfront, what the commercial sector goes off and invests capital in . We are fortunate that the space economy is in a boom right now. We are just, an amazing set of companies that are just, a new one pops up every day, they are really cool and space. I think the opportunities are almost endless. What i want to hit upon is that i know i am sure you will ask somewhere along the way, the value and has anybody made it over the valley, there has been an announcement of the rocket lab and the aerospace. That is awesome. That is really cool that the space economy is booming so much of that we have choices out there to go off and do for critical programs like what they are doing with prompt two. Trounce two. They do missile processing and they are good at it. We are not going into more Traditional Program software, we are looking at someone who is doing it. I see a lot of innovation and i feel a lot of your company is coming into take on a bigger role that has been done traditionally. I think there is an amazing space economy in the United States today. Went to key in on what you said earlier which is inherently governmental. Sometimes we hear from the outside of commercial cannot do this because it is inherently governmental or two, we do not own or operate it, starling is an example where there is concern, it can be shut off. How do you think about that . I have been looking into this, a lot of it comes down to the human decisionmaking, not necessarily the system capability that is being acquired. How do you reconcile and speak through those . For any of those who run a contract, i have never seen a company in the government stock stop following a contract. It is not up to individuals, it is up to the contract. I am not worried at all about the commercial services and it not being there. I think it will always be there. The more use commercial and the more adversarial commercials, the better off we are. I want them to believe that every star link, piper, every satellite is a military asset that is being used by the department of defense. That would drive anybody crazy. It is tens of thousands of satellites. The more commercial we use, the merrier. It will only make us more resilient. What is the governments obligation . That is a whole Different Technology challenge. Your recent memo on essential Program Management skills includes an item on understanding how industry operates and what mode what motivates them. How do you think about ways to improve the governments understanding of industry and also understanding how private Capital Works is really important. I have learned a lot by reading 10k. I have been encouraging my staff and all of my managers to go out and read the annual 10k report and understand the earnings. I learned so much reading like a big prime, i had no idea coming from the state side of the house, i think 26 of all of the revenue at Lockheed Martin in a year came from the f35 program. That is huge. The quarter of all of their revenue comes from a single program. I was doing research trying to figure out how much money lockheed and boeing was making and i ended up stumbling upon all of these 10ks to figure it out and i learned a ton about the company and i have been bring that message to my team saying it is important. I grew up and i got an mba and i know about the ratios and understand Free Cash Flow and property and revenue and all of that mischief. I want my Program Managers to understand what drives industry and it is a good thing. I want industry to make money, make revenue and make profit and i need my guys to understand that. My folks need to understand that you have to understand what else is on the companys plate. If you are working with a space factory and my friend has a huge program, may be friend at nasa as a huge program, we are the only cost running factory, you are not delivering on schedule because you are paying the bills for everything coming out of the factory when they are having issues. You need to be knowledgeable, what is being done by the company, the understand the risk to the program. What i find interesting is you back the capitol, this is not a u. S. Taxpayer dollars, this is capital going to these firms for them to to the upfront and the government can buy a service, investors need to know where the need to place those dollars. The innovation unit, the private capital, strategic capital, they do a lot of that work and they have a lot of great friends at space works then i do it as well. They do a fantastic job in engaging industry and putting out the demand signal. The space and Industrial Base, we observed that a cindy and her team have done a phenomenal work, the Industrial Base, supply chain, things like munition shortfalls that are in ukraine and in israel. What is the state of the space Industrial Base to support the spaces Acquisition Strategy . I think the economy is great right now, a lot of choices across different organizations and companies. I hate covid caused me to be delayed and we know about supply chains, this is not new on the base side of the house. We have to be smarter in terms of our companies ordering stuff earlier. We tend to have people who want to make excuses, i get companies coming in and saying i am late for covid, covid has been over for a couple of years now. They still use it. I have seen a lot of smaller Space Companies have absolutely no issues with supply chains. I have seen it more fundamentally and bigger primes about supply chains. They were the ones who have the resources and assets to actually do something about it and be smarter. It all comes down to plan early. By your parts early, get your orders in, we will be organized and be effective. I cannot stand when they tell me thats a supply chain or covid is why they cannot meet their schedule. I think it is a lack of planning why they cannot meet their schedule. On the ammunition shortfall issue, there is some significant investment required to facilitate eyes are passive ties or more. Those are decisions that have to be made a couple of weeks in advance. Is there any analogy for the space Industrial Base . My friends in the army have been doing a magnificent dog. They have been partisans in terms of capacitors and things like that. Again, if you plan properly and you are proactive you should not have any issues. That is on the space aside, i cannot speak for air or ground. Machines and saying i am late getting to the moon because of covid. I will come back to Intuitive Machines here. Publications, it was announced last month a new dnd classification policy for Space Programs that rewrote 20yearold policies. How significant is that for you and what tangible changes will we start to see within the Space Acquisition portfolio as a result of that policy change . One of my tenants back in 2000 avoid swacs and reclassifying it. It limits our ability to innovate and chair and one of the great things about space is it is a great enabler for the joint force, it is the integrator with the air domains and the sedo mans and the ground domains. See domains and the ground domains. It takes programs that are in individual stovepipe staffs and brought them to the eps level so that we can actually start to share more amongst ourselves and integrate space and become the great enabler. I am excited about it and i have a team actively working looking at all of the programs and taking them out. What i loved about when you were at anna rose who challenged the team, the system, if there is a policy issue, we can fix it and change it. You pushed on the culture as well. We had a general in last month we talked about how they respond to space but he talked about a macgyver mindset. I want to build on that cultural and paradigm shift. A couple of changes in the paradigm shift, particularly as we go down the path towards a more liberated architecture. First, with proliferated architecture, it becomes less about the satellites. You have hundreds of thousands of satellites and those in space but more about that networking software, the current architecture, processing. Yet our entire acquisition system programs, budgets, they are aligned around the satellites. How are our acquisitions systems adapting to that shift . Let us talk about macgyver first. Macgyver using stuff around him, to get out of a jam. Again, that is how we get speed is by using existing technology. The one thing i have noticed even in my previous job before and in the department is engineers worship technology. It is not new, it is not worth doing. If somebody has this and says it works, but if youd let me respin i can get you 10 more efficiency, we worship technology, this one is off with a shelf and you say i can get this focal point better for you and add this on top of the end we say go and do that. We need to stop worshiping technology and using technology that is available to us that goes fast. When we do that we get Better Technology refresh, let us take space infrared, think of programs in the late 90s, i liked 2009, at last i delivered in 2022. The first tech refresh was nexgen geo, we have a 25 year gap in tech refresh because of a slow Development Cycle and worked a big. Fda has an opportunity to onramp a new Technology Every 2. 5 years. Every 2. 5 years. That is stunning. That is amazing. People say do not want to use existing technology, i do not want to go new, i want to use it like macgyver did, existing technology and come up with more and more devices every three years and add new capabilities that are available. It will change and help get us past the debt and i have a chance and think about that, 25 years for any new technology to go from on orbit down to now every three years im able to update the technology. That is dramatic. Macgyvers case is the software and networking and data processing. The focal point, the star trackers. It is the payload. As used in the commercial bus as opposed to building a bus themselves. I think about how we focused on space, i do not think so. If i look at my budget, there is a bunch of stuff that went on. Ford, major brown a system being built in different pieces for a major system being built a different pieces for Different Ground components and contracts led for the round core. You have the ground piece. You have atlas, there is a dramatic amount of round programs out there including fda has their operations ground segment, that is out there and that is being built right now. I radium and gd for satellites. With radium and gd for satellites. This is a paradigm shift as well, the space force is with your old shop on a space based system to track moving targets on the earths surface. With so many satellites in orbit, these legacy satellite tasking approaches may not be effective, think about uber and supply demand matching. My sense is when you are at the nro, the technology was not the issue. It was more of the culture, and policy. What is your observation and how are you looking at this year . It is policy. We are clearly moving away from airborne assets and moving into space. It is the right thing to do from our perspective. The policies about space isr were written in the 1980s and 90s when we were trying to sort of manage a much smaller constellation of national systems. I think the policies of the dod needs to review the policies about technical isr systems in space and allow them to have the same control, same classification and same direct downlinks that as our systems have today. I think if we draw our space to be Like National technical means, the country will lose and these systems that we are building with the isd, they allow for unclassified data down and direct downlink to theater and shift and army units and are air force planes, weapons flight updates. They need to be really past and owned by the public defense. It is all doable. I think the legacy policy needs to be updated. One more coat or question from me and i would not audience questions. Programming and budgeting. Space Development Agencies have smaller satellites and it is breaking another paradigm. Rather than these large spikes every several years in the budget, they are requiring a steady state of funding 2 billion, 4 billion a year for satellites around architecture and etc. That is much more aligned to a Software Model of incremental improvement over time. How do you see, you talk about Acquisition Strategies, that paired with programming and budgeting processes . How those are being adapted to the different approaches . We have all adapted to that approach already and i do not think it requires any change, it is a matter of having the steady stream for each of the sponsors as they get put in place. We have some stuff under contract for trump already. They are already thinking about what will happen. It has not required any kind of changes in how we do budgeting, allowing the capability to go. I think the real thing to look out for is adoption of these services. We are in demo mode for sga and we are 23 satellites up on orbit, tracking, the other ones, transport, it is a demo mode, a demo ground. We start launching satellites transport in september, we deliver a ground system this summer. I think once we get those on orbit, the trick will be bringing on board the services, getting people to actually use them. That is the magic of sb 8. Build stuff quick and they can get a orbit quick and they can prove that it works. It will be adoption, once we get toronto in it. Are they services are fully the services you put in space . If you do not use it, it is not worth doing. Congress are used to seeing procurement, seeing two satellites, they are spreading that out . I have not seen anybody have anything but support and that is kind of neat. They deserve all of this report that they get because they are actually doing it. They are delivering the programs, delivering them on schedule and they work. When i first did the first block of launches back in march of or april of last year, i thought five of 10 of the satellites are ready. It is a base credit. You can take a risk on the spacecraft. They all work. Pretty impressive feat. If i look at a program when it comes to risk, and were happy to take risk, nexgen is 4 billion a copy, no risk there at all. That program fails, that is 4 billion of taxpayer funds gone. I am glad you hit on that because that is a great issue of in terms of how you look at risk . But is a paradigm shift if you are buying dozens, you can afford to take more risk and if one or two fail, your mission is still. A 4 billion dollars spacecraft any day. We have had many audience questions come in, i will start with the university students, this is from american university, how does the recent spacecraft landing on the moon yesterday, the first u. S. Landing since the early 1970s, how does it affect the program you are working on . I think the big thing to see is that commercial got to the moon, that is cool. It also showed that Innovative Companies have capabilities to take advantage of. We need to open our aperture and not rely on the traditional primes in space. Take advantage of the primes across all of the other machine Type Companies that are evolving out there. I think it is eyeopening from the standpoint of extremely difficult tasks being done by a commercial company, congratulations to that team. From tony at bloomberg news, hello, this is more than the Lessons Learned, when impacted and arose what impact did and anna rose have on your current approach to Space Acquisition management . I can talk about the challenges the company had around and i heard the operations and the Lessons Learned and findings. There is a lot there. It all comes down to realism. You need to have realistic programs, he did have a crime that has expertise to execute those programs. When you award a costplus contract, all of the risk is 100 square on the government. That was one of the, one of the operating briefings, a senior team of individuals who came in, they said to a bunch of us at the time, junior officers, that you could possibly do with the cost volume and contract and competitive environment, throw it out. It is worthless. There is no benefit to giving you an honest and realistic answer unless you drive towards that. The nro has in a magnificent job in making cost realism essential in how they do their reviews. It is something that we are trying to adopt more into the space. How do you do cost realism . It comes down to awarding a contract they can execute on cost and schedule so that you are not in a constant state of throwing money at it and fixing it later. That is one of the lessons i learned. Courtney from the news says you have sent in the past that the space force will use lists when necessary. Have you used this tool and are there any programs on your watch that you might be considering it . Yes. I am not supposed to comment about the watch list according to my general counsel. I will leave it at that. [laughter] ok, you can come talk to him after. We have built in from a european an independent Research Organization and asking the question of given the objectives of optimizing research and development pipelines, how can companies such as norway, the arctic regions play a role . Is there new guidance and is there new guidance in engagement programs for international r d elaborations. . No new guidance just yet as we optimize those pipes but there is a great role for allies and for example, the eps or, and those systems, i forgot what the r stands for, but the capitalization we are hosting them on the payloads going up. It is really kind of neat. We have had great opportunities scaling with the allies whether it be things like our deep space radar system, we are putting that in australia and england. We have had great opportunities with norway on epsr. With japan and others. I think it is always a lot of great opportunities in the r d perspective with our allies. I have questions from an industry participant. Given the news that has emerged on russia potentially developing some sort of space based nuclear antisatellite weapon. The question is more as we look at what Space Development agencies are doing and the push for lowearth orbit architectures including areas of Missile Warning, reporting to banning eggs in that basket given threats in that domain . How do you look at proliferation is one part of the strategy. Are there other things we should be looking at as well . Given us sum of these extremes given some of these extreme rats . One approach is resiliency and other approaches include diversification of orbits. Look at the history of the department, most of our is cps. Or Missile Warnings or dotcom capabilities. I am an advocate for proliferation everywhere. We should be proliferating more neo and geo. Are taking steps through proliferation but i also see other orbits and trying stranger orbits too as well. A question, i saw wes in the audience, great to see you. How has oversight from the hilt changed since the establishment of the space force . Has it helped or hindered . Congress has been such an amazing supporter on all things space related. Every committee has been fantastic to work with and a huge advocate. There is pressure on me to go fast and there should be pressure on it to go fast and i am hoping that we are meeting expectations. I think that what the hilty to set up the space force was what the hill there to set up the space force was right. We have had nothing but support from the hilt. The grandfathers of the space force. That movement started in congress. Thanks to chairman rogers and jeff cooper. Tom carico is a phenomenal caller. His team put out an excellent report on space based sensing for Missile Warning and tracking. How would you characterize the importance of fire control quality, tracking requirements, for spacebased senator development and what is being developed and what can we expect for fire control quality tracking for Missile Defense purposes . It is a great question. We are starting off with just trying to track. You saw on valentines day, we watched the missile Defense Industry make two missiles and for the last four, checking satellites. I think over the course of the next year we will get those systems up and running. We will learn a lot about our ability to actually track from space and i think once we learn that i think we will get a lot of insight into what do we need next in terms of getting to control . Next question, our friend at the space corporation, great to see your name show up here. When a lot of work on personnel side of the space force. How do you envision the future of operating environments as the service balances acquisition and operational goals and what impact does that happen on the future workforce . Is it shift to more automated and contractor operations . On strokes like the commercial sector . Or will there be a significant presence at ground stations do the mission . That ties into some of the initiatives with the integrated missions, you are bringing acquisitions and operations closer together. Hello john. I have always been an advocate that our biggest threats are our ground. I would love to see a future and i am thinking way out there that more satellites are autonomous. I really see a future where there are economists satellites with onboard processing. Think about what is in your iphone today, there is no reason probably cannot be doing more with processing and taking it wherever we need to. I envision a day down the road, maybe 20 years where there is a lot less ground stations and a lot less operators. If you think about where all of these commercial companies are going with erect to phone and direct to phone kind of service, you can go through a commercial provider or providers in terms of the systems. I see a future that is autonomous and i think that makes it much more resilient. A ground station with a lot of people and a lot of Network Connections could be vulnerable to cyber. That is my personal view of the future. I really like what the chiefs are doing with the imd construct. If you think about it, it is nothing more than an integrated product team. Let us go work on the problems. Unless i am really happy and i have proposed a cheap proposal to continue, i think it is a great idea. I think about the acquisition and operators, i think about starling being used in ukraine and the jamming russians have attempted to do. Im envisioning there is an off center where you have the coders next to the operators and in real time making the changes adapting on the fly. That is also embraced by state forces. Two more questions here. One is you are up against two big deadlines, march 8th Congress Needs to pass a budget or we back to a government shutdown, and the kicker here is by the april 30th, if we do not have all of the bills are we have sequestration again. What is the impact . There are two really bad impacts, the first is we worked really hard to put together a set of Operational Imperatives and the first year of funding for those imperatives is a work. And so, basically all of our great ideas that the secretary drove and the team put together in terms of modernizing the department is all on hold without healthy 24 budget and that would be a shame if we do not get that. The second big impact, the second big impact to us is launched. Apparently, what happens is you can only do what you had last year. We only bought three rockets, this year we want to buy 10. Seven rockets in our purchase which means seven should sit on the ground longer than they should and we cannot afford to do that. Resiliency and that hurts us. I hope the budget passes. It hurts really bad. Last question from Adeline Chang with our Aerospace Security program, a fellow with the horizon program. People who want to get into public service, they bring them to dz and have them do fellowship, we are glad she is here, she asked how do you ensure that your principles and programs endure pastore tenure in the pentagon . It was for that reason, we have the staff logo and signed by me. It is part of the historical record, and so, i hope that keeps them around. There is nothing much more to codify them around. To strategy strategy i had of keeping them short and easy to read also helps because more people are more likely to read them as opposed if i wrote a thesis on what you should do in a Space Acquisition. I would not want to read it. Reading a couple of pages and having the chance to read these simple and easy kind of guidelines and rules. I think it will indoor. Frank, it is such a pleasure to have you here, im glad we could finally make it happen. It is so clear, even from the short discussion how much we see your passion, drive, and your push, not selling, but taking on the macgyver mindset and pushing it through the department. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] friday night watch cspans campaign trail, a roundup of cspans Campaign Coverage providing a onestop shop to discover what the candidates across the country are saying to voters along with firsthand accounts from political reporters, poll numbers, fundraising data, and campaign ads. Watch the campaign trailid