Training or in need of repair. Frank kendall defended the plan to gradually phase out reliance on Russian Rocket engines for u. S. Space launches. Testifying, kendall argued the base needs tomorrow for look for alternatives. Some leaders argued that an immediate end to the use of Russian Rockets is appropriate. They could replace the rd180 engines by 2020 at the earliest. Here to speak to that topic is beauchammp, gutt undersecretary for air space. Thanks for having me. There is a lot of talk on the use of russian engines, and actually development of alternatives to those russian engines for the space launches. Can you talk to me a little bit about the potential of the alternatives that are under development right now . Sure. This is an exciting time in the space the air force requires two launch services to be ability to launch the full range of payloads into orbit. We dont have that today. To incentivize those developments, we will let contracts that will fund the development of new engines and new rockets so that we can have the ability to launch all of our payloads. The air force doesnt buy rockets or engines. We contract for launch services with american companies. It brings you were an interesting point because there has been a lot of talk about the commercialization of space and that there is this commercial boom. Can you talk about what is appropriate for the commercial side to take on versus what needs to stay in government . Sure. For most of the last 50 years the government has been the driving force in innovation in space both through its requirements and through its investment. Over the past decade and a half or so, more and more of that investment is co commercial industry as they have seen opportunities to profit from operations in space, in communications, in remote sensing, and more recently in launch. We are taking advantage of those capabilities wherever possible. There are always going to be some missions that are inherently governmental. Missile warning for example. Only one customer, the government, requires those sorts of services. But wherever we can, we want to make sure we are looking at commercial services to be able to reduce costs and improve our flexibility. Ok. That makes sense. The Competitive Landscape for space launch opportunities has been a big area of focus. We have seen some new players emerge. There had been the focus on mainly one provider. We are seeing more Companies Come on to the landscape. How important is the competition in terms of the number of companies that really can compete in the space . How import of course our policy is assured access to space, which means at least two launch providers. But in addition to having the ability to have a fallback if one of our providers were to have a setback, we also want the Competitive Forces that multiple providers brings. That helps to keep launch costs down and invent advise innovation so that we can to be the best in the world. Can you talk about the efforts 20 expand competition a little bit . What is happening to allow more companies to play in the space . We have let a series of contracts to develop Additional Technology for launch, to help reviolate lies the u. S. Launch Industrial Base revitalize the u. S. Launch Industrial Base. Those contracts are almost half a billion dollars between this year and next year. What they will do is ensure we have a pool of competitors when we g services in the coming years. Those contracts will be awarded to multiple providers, all based upon the technology we are trying to incentivize. Any time line . We expect to go from Rocket Propulsion systems this year, to full rocket launch capability next year. That will take some time for them to develop. We expect the certification to complete in the 20212022 time frame. Great. He world watched as spacex managed to land one of their rockets at sea. They had a couple of failed attempts. From d. O. D. s perspective, were you watching . How significant are those innovations . I was watching, and it was exciting. Even more exciting than watching that rocket land on the barnidge was watchin people in the control center for spacex. It is the kind of thing we havent seen since the apollo program. I am excited about it, and i think it is going to bring a loft benefits both to the government and to folks around the country. Absolutely, it was. It was fascinating watch. Space has become increasingly contested, which is pass nating with adversarial countries launching their own satellite systems. Talk to me a little bit about what d. O. D. Is doing to respond to that expanding threat. Sure. Space brings tremendous benefits to the military to project forces around the world and protecting our interests. Potential adversaries have noticed the way we use space and are replicating their owe own capabilities. The u. S. And its extensive Sophisticated Network of sensors to be able to identify potentially malicious activity in space and toe take action to avoid it if it were to come to that. Thank you so much for joining us. It was terrific having you. Thanks, jill. Worth noting. If you want to hear more, catch his keynote speech at our april 27 brek n. S. A. On assured communications. Vivid c 4 irs. Com. We have somehow it felt like everything was moving in slow motion. If i didnt react, things could have gotten messy in a hurry. I mean just got that sweet ride with a great rate from navy federal. I was not about to let anything happen to her. Just looking out for my wingman. Open to the armed forces, the dod and their families. Navy federal credit union. Welcome back to defense news. Reporter laura sat down with the director of darpas technical office. I was at the National Space foundations space symposium last week, and i know you were there, too. I know you saw the generals speech. Can you tell me your thoughts on the Space Enterprise vision he rolled out . Absolutely. I was at the National Space symposium in Colorado Springs last week. There were a number of great speakers, and general heiden was there. While he was there, he talked about the Space Enterprise vision. The purpose of vision is to lay out a plan of action Going Forward for the u. S. To better sbe Great National security and defense capabilities along the lines with commercial and nasa, to integrate those systems better than they have been in the past few years. There are a number of changes he talked about and that others who ave talked about in order to provide u. S. Capabilities and essentially laid out this vision that covers ground, Situational Awareness and architectures in space. It will be very important Going Forward to show how we can integrate the u. S. Capabilities. Another cool topic that was on display was darpas fs1 space plane. The purpose of the program is to design, develop and demonstrate a reuseable suborbital plane that could go altitudes, between 80,000 and 250,000 feet and release a seconds stage. We want to attack the first stage to show you can launch from the ground, release the seconds stage to go to orbit and bring that plane back down to the ground safely and reuse it 24 hours later. Recently, spacex has others have done a good job of getting a reuseable system back down to the ground. But they havent shown you can turn it around in 24 hours. They want to do that to rapidly launch a satellite on demand, and then though show you can do it again 24 hours later. There are two reasons for this. It is a great defense capability to have, but it can radically change commercial arc tech tours. If vendors know they have a satellite ready to go, and they can get it launched in 24 hours, that is a great commercial enabler. There has been the question. Do we not have more small satellites because of no launcher or because of the satellites havent been ready made and to go. The purpose is to validate 10 times in 10 days with the suborbital space plane. Who are some of the we have boing, Northrup Grummon ondraskova and one other. We expect them all to bid into phase two and phase three. We think that other vendors will compete. There has been a tremendous set of advancements in propulsion and rocket systems in the last 1824 months. We felt it was important to open up the competition in face two and three Going Forward. On a related topic, hypersonics. Darpa has two programs in this area. We have two programs going on joint with the air force right now. One is hawk or hypersonic advanced weapon project. The two programs are two different ways of trying to develop a prototype demonstrator or weapon capability that would operate at hypersonic speeds. You boost a glide vehicle up to a high and then it would flied its way all the way to the target. How do you handle the thermal management, how do you handle the grade conditions and egress the target. In the case of hawk, a similar concept, o. J. Instead of a vieding vehicle, and we have a scram jet engine, and that scram jet engine would propel it all way to the target, and it would go through the same sort of ingress conditions. There has been a lot of work on hypersonics over the past couple of decades. What are some of the challenges in this area . There are a couple of key challenges that come to mind. First is the ability to do effective modeling and testing in wind tunnels. Simulating the flight conditions on the ground is an extremely dustin problems. So darpa is working with nasa to get the wind tunnel challenges. The second flight demonstrators in programs. What we are trying to do with both of these is show that the prototype or the flight test costs are very affordable. If we think can he can do that, we can get more flight tests, reduce more of the risk and gave the air force more confident Going Forward so they can take the next step after darpa. Who are the commercial Industry Partners you are looking to work with. In the case of the hypersonic perhaps, they are more of the traditional defense organizations. It has been published on web who the current performers are, and Going Forward they would all be interested in competing Going Forward into any subsequent program. Stay tuned for more welcome back to defense news. Laura continues her interview with dr. Bradford touslew. They discusshe Phoenix Program. Another program i am fascinated is the Phoenix Program. Can you tell me about that . Sure, the Phoenix Program is is a program we have had going on for a number of years looking at capabilities and technologies to rearc teekt the geosing us in orbit. You have low earth orbit, medium and high orbit. In the geosing us in orbit, that valuable or bit, looking down on a particular point on earth and stay there. We are looking at the type of arc tech tours we can do to improve the geosynchronous orbit is robotics. Human space flight is dangerous because of the radiation environment. If you are going to do any sort of construction, fixing of assets, you want to do it with robotics. So phoenix is looking at that. The second thing is to essentially retrofit or improve spacecraft. They are looking at modular subcomponents of the architecture. Then the phoenix robotics two require tools, and those tools would be property up to the orbit in a container in a pod that could be a posted payload ridealong. We are essentially wrapping it up now. The satlets and pods we are attempting to qualify in low earth orbit with ride shares. Then the robertics portion is folded into a Larger Program called rsgs where we would enter into another publicprivate partnership. We would bring the robotics technology, a launch after negotiation with the customers and we would bring the integration experience. What a commercial partner would bring is their own satellite bus, ground stapin the reason the Business Case is so important is once we would complete a sixmonth demonstration with a commercial vendor, the department we feel we have the risk reduced from a technology standpoint, but we would want to acquire it later as a commercial service. The asset would be transitioned to the commercial organization, and they would take it and continue to operate it in geo in a business arrangement for revenue. The reason for that is even though the orbit is valuable from a defense standpoint, it is even more from a commercial standpoint. The ability to inspect an asset in geo, the ability to fix a stuck pennedage like a solar array that didnt deploy, the ability to install pay loads after launch, all those things are valuable from a commercial standpoint. That would be a key part of the but we would do a demonstration together and transition to a commercial organization thereafter. Do you see this capability now . We do not see it. There have been three or four organizations that have talked about life extension or other capabilities. But they told us they were not prepared to take the technical risks alone to validate and reduce the risks in practice. That is one of the things that darpa does from the standpoint of early investments that can provide breakthroughs later. Georobotics, they said we will go after that, and once we can reduce that risk to practice, we can take it and operate it in a commercial standpoint. Then in a space and enterprise division, if there was a d. O. D. Satellite late on that had a problem, we could enter into a commercial agreement with this company, and they could inspect our satellite and m there are insurance providers that would love to have the knowledge of exactly what went wrong with a commercial satellite. That would help them to assess on what to do from a compensation standpoint. On this weeks money minute feature, personal fans expert jane tench mack tells us what it might be like to look at new strategies for retirement. All the basics of being in the military were taught in boot camp. If only the basics of finance were taught that would be great. According to the council for economic education, only 17 states require personal finance training for high schoolers. It is up to parents for make sure kids learn how their current spending habits can affect future success. You can give them the three money basics. How to create a budget, how to make saving a priority and showing them the tools currently available to become better money manager. Creating a budget easily online or by using mobile banking apps. It only Takes Minutes of research to find one. To make saving a priority, especially if your child is working, meens telling them to pay themselves first. The best and most automatic tool is direct deposit to a savings account. Now they are budgeting and learning about sachingse and interest rates. Once they have the basics down, you can move on to building credit and using loans. Today teens are growing up in a complex world. Do them a world of good by running them through a financial boot camp of your own so they can be ready. Thank you very much. We will see you next week. When we return, army times editor, Tony Lombardo visits a special train site in wojnarowski and gets a first we were making a move. The dewe had to. Made we knew that if we came in too high, it would cost us big time. We had to stay low. We locked it in and rode that low rate from Navy Federal Credit union all the way to our first house. Its a splitlevel ranch. So cute open to the armed forces and their families for over 80 years. Navy federal credit union. West virginia. 26 Service Members will embark soon around the world for missions with the united nations. First they training side in West Virginia to hone shooting skills and learn evasive driving. Strap yourselves in. Army times editor Tony Lombardo has the story. We are here at the Summit Point Training Center where Service Members are learning shooting and driving skills. They are going abroad with the u. N. , and these skills could save their lives. In the rolls that we are going to perform, there are a wide set of skills you need to bring to the table, one of which obviously is if we are going to fulfill those roles, then it is not exactly a stable region. They need some kind of assistance and support, and you never know what is going to happen. For force protection reasons, for the safety of you and your team, you need to be able to get out of a wide variety of different situations. We are jerned by dave mcgirk. Thank you for wiegele here. Thank you. You are the chief of operations. Can you talk a little bit the u. S. Military Observers Group is based out of vearks and we are focal point for obsers sent to Peace Keeping missions around the world. We are going through training that is predominantly for example used on force protection. They come from all specialties across all services. We would like to bring them here and give them a foundation of training. So when they go to force Protection Missions in africa and haiti, they have a good base of skills. They are learning scooting skills and driving skills. Can you talk about why that is so important . Our officers are deploying to five different country in africa. Some of them go to haiti. As you well know, around the world, the complem threat has evolved. What we like to do is bring them here because we get officers that come from all specialties, all skill sets and walks of life. We want to give them foundation of training that allows them to be successful and coming home safely. One thing is shooting, and the other one is driving today. One of the things i like best about the driving is the adrenaline pump. You get to go fast and do things that arent normally considered legal or encouraged. But with all the safety meshes they have in place out here, they set conditions for us to push boundaries. When you drive, you are a safe driver, and you know when to brake or get off the road. But to be put in this position is different because your mind is going 100 miles per hour. This training is awesome for any situation you could be faced with in the future. You do a the leadoff highspeed training, but it is not necessarily like what you see in hollywood. Can you talk a little bit about some of the myths that people believe and that you debunk here . Sure there are a lot of hollywood myths we go through. Things such as barricade breeching. You dont have to be going 40 or 50 miles an hour pushing another car out of the way. It can easily be done at 10 to 15 miles an hour. In the pit maneuver, if something happens and you have to push a car from the side, when you make physical contact with another car, it is not going to explodes. We want to make sure they understand these con accepts so that they have those tools and they are not afraid to use them when they need them. Chris, thank you, and lets get down to the track. Alright. Lets get going. We are about to go through the serpentine part of the track, that means we are going to be weaving in and out of cones at high speeds fmentsd we are going fast right away here. Wow. I see why you call it the serpentine track. Tell us a little bit about what scenarios Service Members might find t well, oversoutheast as they are driving, if they get themselves into a bad situation, maybe an attack, or maybe they are being chased or Something Like that, they have to be able to maneuver this vehicle. If they twined up hitting those cones, cars, animals or people, then it is just going to compound the issue, and it may put them in a situation where they cant get out of and they may create some injury. Is this fun the first time through . I would imagine it is fun for them to go through. It is fairly entertaining for us. Let me talk alingts bit about the barricade breaching or ramming as the nontechnical term. The hard point is just going to pop right out of the way. Everybody is ready. I am going to push forward, not o far, nato too fast, and not too fast. And go. That vehicle just pushes right on out of the way. It was amazing how easily he pushes that car right out of the way from a short distance. Do you want to try it . Sure. That would be awesome. Come on. You drive. Hands on that wheel. Go, full throttle. Go, go, go, go, go there you go. That was easy. [laughter] thats it. That is all it takes. For defense news tv at the Summit Point Training Center in st virginia, i am Tony Lombardo. Looked like fun. Thanks for watch cant. I am jill. Visit us as defensenews. Com no continuous coverage of national and international d defense spending . Tune in next week to finds out. Thats all for this week. Have a great one [music] dr. Charles stanley he is a loving, trustworthy, sovereign god. Hes not just this being out yonder. He is thehe has personhood. Hes a personal god. Loving god. God of grace, and love, and mercy, and kindness. And has a pathway for each one of us to walk if were wise enough to follow him. Male announcer today on in touch, the faith to follow. Announcer join us during the program and follow along with the sermon notes. Go online to intouch. Org followalong, where you can create your own notes and access the integrated bible verses from todays message. [music]