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 ha wantethem 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