Coxs supportspan as aublong wr television providers. Giving you a front row seat to democracy. A discussion on the air force and its efforts in space assistant air force secretary for Space Acquisition frank also talks about the recent commercial spacecraft landing on the moon. This is about an hour. [background noises] [bac welcome. Im the director of the Defense IndustrialInitiative Group here at the center for Strategic International studies. I am delighted to be able to welcome you to this event. The importance of executing Space Acquisition programs. It is a true privilege to be able to introduce the honorable frank the assistant secretary of the air force for Space Acquisition and integration. Secretary it serves as a source 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 secretary served as the Principal Deputy directoror of e National Reconnaissance office has long served operational knowledge and experience across National Security space missions. Of always been complexd tes dd enabling new architectures and capabilities. The standup of United States offered the opportunity to develop a approach for Space Acquisition. Before the discussion begins it isit worth noting the efforts tt the secretary has undertaken to tackle this problem. He issued in october of 2022 a formula for going fast in Space Acquisition in april of 2023 and recently Space AcquisitionProgram Skills in december of 23. All offer pragmatic principles from experience of success and failure in delivering Space Capabilities. Secretary, thank you for coming to csis, and we look forward to emarks. Ening to benefit from the tremendous knowledge in the Defense Industrial base so i also share her welcome to the honorable frank, assistant secretary of the air force and integration i was fortunate to meet him when he was the Deputy Director of the 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 is one of those folks that wouldnt settle for the answer of thats how weve always done things and pushed in a way that alwas beneficial so i was so pleased when i heard that he had been nominated for this position because■ i knew you would bring that same mentality to the department of defense. With that i want to turn the floor over for some opening thoughts and then we will have d online we have a qr code is so we are going to open up for questions. Click on the code and that will take you to be an online submission and if you look at the event page theres about ten where you can click to ask a question and i will get to as many as i can. Welcome. Thats been theig push and one of the key factors its about delivering programs on a schedule that works. Every time we overrun a program basically we have to use our future investments and modernization to cover those overruns and that takes away so we put together these memos and its exactly what■am wanted in terms of the formula for going fast is short and the skills that i want them to have, but it all comes down to executing and its easier said than done. The government needs to get into the habit and their Action Strategy and the selection plans of awarding contracts that are realistic in terms of schedule and cost and that can do the job. Once under contract, it is managed relentlessly day today to deliverer the program. That is a key element of speed and we need industries help because there is a historic precedent and the government to reward and then has to fix the program down the road because of a proper bid on the program that has to stop. We need to have winwin situations, realistic cost, schedule, and the government needs to manage the baseline on e schedule. We cant afford any more to pay for the past and so thats been a big theme of mine. One of the reasons i wrote t throughout back in october 2022 and its what im pushing for. Youve issued Space Acquisition a formula for going fastr and now the recommendatin for the Program Managers on how to successfully execute■z a program. My question is how did you do all this . They seem like such common items. m fortunate that i have N Organization supporting me in terms the pentagon, but i think congress was brilliant in separating the rules because i think its such a small part that im not quite sure how much attention they would have gotten. By having me in this role weve been able to streamline things dramatically like they have access to me 24 7. Theres no staffing of packages or bureauccy. But the reason for writingre the memo is almost like the commanders intent. Want you all to behave. We need to go fast and have threats against the systems in space. The architecture grew up in a time where it was a pain in the neck and over many years thats the predominant air force, space first, architecture. We need to transform from those targets to a much more proliferated system and the way to do is in the form of heres how i expect you too leas professionals but its all tied towards going fast and setting thee commanders intent and so far ive been really impressed with keeping things short. The twitterm;■0 generation i thk three pages was the longest memo so that was intentional on my part making it easy to read. Ive had a such a positive response i think it is something that no one has said before. We knew that was always the case. We strived to deliver using a life of the vehicle at that point in time but im not sure anyone ever said to the great folks and dave responded plan the programs t accordingly. Someone picked me to go and help out beyond that and i remember we were talking to the prime contractor and then we saw the ground pieces and we were predicting at the time 2009 they said they wouldnt have it before they launched it. But that was sort of the culture that wasnt a priority for them so that stuck with me my whole time that the ground needed to be there. Sometimes we use the term space t acquisition very monolithically but theres a spectrum of different types of Space Capabilities that we are acquiring to some of the smaller systems. Can you give me a sense of the particular and how do you make this tangible . The train has left the station Space Command and control. How do you bring the tenants to life when you have programs where the trains have already left the station . The best thing to doe is finish line. For my trouble programs, atlas and biweekly a half hour phone calls. They meet with me every two weeks and walk through the status of the program and i think l just having a dedicated person worried about the sce programs we are able to put a focus on these things. We are still not over the hump on the programs. I think theyve made some significant progress. They justs had their agile sprt and they did a nice job with it so im optimistic on that program. They keep having challenges and i think we just moved out a little bit further thanow i hop. Meeting with ofju the team and having a focus on space itself is starting to make a difference, stuff that the trick is to keep a focus on it and delivered on scheduleee and put mxat■s emphasis out. Of the spacement agency, what has been most challenging they are in terms of execution and whatos lessons are you learning that you are feeding back . Everyone is starting to see that you■v cant build big fast. So its shown when you build a smaller systems you can go fast like less than three years. Northrup is doing a great job. When you build a small veranda take advantage of the commercial best the existing technology youre not reinventing the wheel youre putting the antenna that exists. Shifting gear so the free optimization. Last week at the associations s worker symposium, the secretary and athe general announced 24 key decisions to optimize the department of the air force for eat power competition. Some of the things that stuck out to me was the establishment of the futures command and a common officer corps that was interesting. We have yet to see the details about the futures command but can you share some insights into particular how would you expect the new futures command to impahepa acquisition . I left everything we did. Thee fortunate. I liked the futures command a lot, but one of the■l was going to be to help us prioritize these investments. We havent done a good job in terms of optimizing the pipelinesin to dr entity and the demonstration to operations. So its going to prioritize the things we should be going after and that we do demos that are going to to the capabilities. They might be ready for a kind of war that we have no experience and so that urgencytt permeating from this ptfolio . Very fond of saying china and all i can say is it is speed, so the tenants were designed to change the culture to go faster. We will rebuild bigger systems and really we just cant do that anymore but we are fortunate that its changed so much youosy so weve been driving since on my aival. Part of that used to be applied to the front and which was requirements and so we have this Organization Called the space were fighting Analysis Center they are responsible for that. The modeling and analysis of the different Space Architectures but then the requirements on what we should build. My question though areti we seeg different acquisition rategies emerging from that work ororat e versa it opens different designs. If you look at the arrival they push for this morning beyond the traditional. Something we were going to do on our side so i think its worked out really nicely. But they do a great job tracking and that does go in to the design. Hot topic as youve advocated and in the memomo explicitly the fixedprice contracting as an area of emphasis and it has received mixed reactions so while you are attempting to move er a and shift these architectures with existing systems, your office is still developing new complex systemsee Strategic Communications might be an example. Could you add a little bit of nuance to the topic and how did you think about the risk and incentivizing industry . That is a great question. The formula was very specific. Build smaller using existing technology and used fixedprice. But existing technology i need to drive speed but when you use the fixedprice, you are not doing the first of the kind and so im confused by some of the bigger problems against that. They shouldnt be against that. I havent said im going to go build the next generation thats never been built before fixedprice. What i said in the formula was smaller existing technology, fixedprice. Ive been pretty clear about that. That is the situation. Theres probably different strategies. Theyve done a good job of the acquisition stories where theyio might actually bring out multiple vendors and try to design then move on to action beyond at each individually and ry to marry it with the best strategy of existing technology. Replenish the Nuclear Command andy control systems there is n the last week or so the capabilities needed that will require design work that may not fit that contracting mold. ■ te evolvedr strategicgram we are working on. I was under the perception but it seems we spent a lot of just doing theisk reduction. Its not as far along as i woulw probably like to build a payload over the sidelights and maybe its time to go off and do something fixedprice, but given the amount that has to go on the program and of the feedback ive gotten from the industry as we revise that we are looking at more of the i traditional cost. You and i were talking about this a little bit earlier theres a little bit of an appetite suppressant required both on the government side setting the requirements as well as the industry side being realistic about what they can offer. How do you think about that . The whole thing needs to be the capability on the cost and schedule. The reality is dont think that we are going to award it and then fix it later. Im at the point now i cant afford to keep paying for the poorly awarded contracts. I would rather start over so i need the industry to get out off the mode and into the realistic proposals that we could actually execute. I want to jump to commercial as well and this is another hot topic. Many have been critical that the Department Leadership is saying the right thing on commercial but that the progr■zams intonsee budgets dont necessarily match the rhetoric. They are also critiques that the ca models and funding models are not well aligned to purchase the commercial services or it can■ take place within the what do you think needs to change to enable the greater acquisition of the data and wha, we look at every of the portfolio. Each one is a separate program and until recently, we werent looking at them as a mission area and so theres some amazing individuals who are now changing the way we do business and looking at the requirements in the mission perspective so its the Satellite Communications together and when you get programs like this and using all the requirements together from deseven different start to envision how they can play a better role. Thats a trick i learned from my friends in terms of putting the requirements together to see what can allocate to commercial first so we take a similar model in the department and having seen the latest, will we wrote those words in part of the approach to start bending the requirements together and looking off the top what can they do first then once we find out what it can and cant do you start looking at what programs do i need to acquire to get the rest it. That is a paradigm shift. I think what we need to do is get out of the program by programrn requirements what role do you see the government plg ablishing or creating market demand and some of these newer areas of commercialization and thes on the h it truly commercial, thats one thing to think about and ive always argued in myits ths not truly commercial. I do think the government needs to figure out how to send a demand signal. The strategy is going to come out and in that strategy i was impressed with the fact that we say these are the kind of things that we think405 are inherently governmentalo . But these are other space awareness and i think part of that strategy is going to signal where we see a bigger role for us as opposed to. I think the opportunities are almosti endless. That is booming so much that we have choices out there to go of. If i look at the Space Systems command theres an amazing house they do all the Missile Warning processes i see a lot of newer companies coming in to take on a much bigger■ role and theres an amazing space economy. Sometimes we hear from the outside the commercial cant do this because its inherently governmentalwh or we dont own r operate it. Maybe it is an example there where it can be shut off. Ive been looking into this and a lot of it comes down to the decisionmaking. How do you reconcile land think through those . Ive never seen a company stop following thep contract. The more we use commercial and of the more adversaries agree, the better off we are. I want them to believe that mily asset. That i■b■ s tens of thousands of satellites, so the more commercial reviews the merrier. Are we seeing an active discsi obligation is. Thats a whole Different Technology challenge. Your recent memo includes an item on understanding how the industry operates and what motivates them so how do you think about ways to improve the understanding of how private capital3 works. Ive been encouraging my staff the report. I learned so much reading like i had no idea i think 26 . I s doing research trying to figure out how much money they n thesdecades to figure it out and i learned tons about the company. M i knew how to do the ratios. I want them to u the industry. You have to understand what else is on the company place. My friend is a huge problem going through the factory fixedprice and we are the only program in the factory you are paying the bills for Everything Else so our folks need to be knowledgeable about what is being done by the company they are about to work with this isnt a u. S. Taxpayer dollars to the capital going to the firms to do the upfront researchdevelg and then thehe government servie for those investors they need to know where they need to place those dollars. It works with the private capital and weve got a new office of capital that does a lot of the work and friends as well so the department of defense has a fantastic job of engaging industry. Wee have observed and i know some phenomenal work and in ukraine and israel shift building capacity, so what is the state of the space strategy . We are seeing a lot of opportunities. Theres two phrases i absolutely hate. Covid and supply chain delay. We know about the challenges. Its not new. It just means we have to smarter. But we tend to have people who want to make excuses and i still get companies saying im late because of covid. Its been over for a couplofth years now. A lot of smaller Space Companies have no issues with supply chain. Its more those that whine about supply chain and i think those are the ones that have the the assets to do something about it and be smarter. It all comes down to just plan early. Get your orders in or be organized and effective. We cant stand when they tell us why they cant meet their schedule its a lack of planning. On the munition shortfall issue, theres some significant investments required to faci