lieutenant general shawn bratton. live coverage on c-span. >> the release of the 2024 commercial space strategy comes at a pivotal moment.

the u.s. government had a monopoly and the space force can draw solutions from a commercial sector. the russian invasion of ukraine has demonstrated how data can be for u.s. government for national security purposes. these developments bring to the floor questions of adversary against space systems owned by u.s. space commercial operators and the space force should address this challenge. the space force has released long anticipated strategy which outlines how the space force plans to incorporate commercial systems and explore partnerships with and send signals to industry collaborateors. the strategy addresses the questions safeguarding space assets in conflict. what does it mean for the future of space security and how will it shape the future of u.s. space force.

to discuss these questions, we are fortunate to be joined by deputy chief of space operations, strategy, plans and programs and requirements lieutenant general shop bratton who will insights on the future of space security. as the chief strategy and resourcing officer, he has overall responsibility for the strategies, requirements and budget of the united states space force. general bratton has led a military career and served in staff positions and northern command director of space forces, commanded 175th cyber space operations group and deputy director for operations united states space chand. prior to this command he was the first exander of space training and ready command. thank you for your leadership and moderating is clemen tine stallinger the director of the

program meetings like this are essential in developing sustainable nondevelopmental strategies to face the challenges. the center honors the legacy of service of general brent scowcroft and his commitment to the cause of security and support for u.s. leadership and partnership with u.s. allies and partners and mentorship. consistent, the center's forward defense program connects stakeholders to promote enduring military advantage for the united states, allies and partners. its work identifies strategies, capabilities and resources for the united states to prevail in future conflict. this event is public and on the record and encourage audience to

direct questions to identify yourself and affiliation and we will be collecting the questions throughout the event and we will pose some of these questions to lieutenant general bratton and join the conversation by following@a.c. scowcroft. thank you for joining and i would like to turn to the moderator. >> thank you for joining us and fantastic to see folks in the audience and thank you to our turning in online. we have an hour today to dig into u.s. space forces space strategy. i'm going to pose questions i would like to include questions from in person and our audience and please pose your questions

to askadorgan i will pose and identify yourselves and affiliations and kind of know who is asking the questions. thank you for being here. congratulations first and foremost on the release of your first ever space strategy and striking acknowledgement of the transition that is taking place in the space environment over the past 20 years and new kinds of space actors. we have a booming u.s. andal gid space and increased access to space than ever before so that creates a bunch of opportunities

and potential challenges and adds to a congested and contested space environment. to kick us off, walk us through why the space force decided to release this strategy and how it outlines the broader goals and missions of the u.s. space force? >> thanks for letting me come here. we were talking before the show and first time coming to atlantic council. thanks to you and the team for everything you do and hosting us today for the audience here and online. it sounds like you are an expert. with the introduction, you nailed it. we are trying to do so many things and the environment is changing fast. and we have worked with commercial industries. it's not like a brand new idea to work were commercial. what general stats man wanted

from the team and charged my team was to hold ourselves accountable. how do we think about with our interaction with commercial and maybe a little uncomfortable and go into new areas and haven't partnered with commercial as much and build on this long history and worked with commercial partners like satellite communications. but write that down and measure ourselves against it, hold ourselves accountable and get feedback most importantly from outside the department on folks on how are we doing and how can we do better. you have to put something out there and whether they like it or don't like it, actually read it and give a feedback. that was the primary goal of writing something down and publishing it. >> and i'm hoping today we can get questions from the

commercial folks in the room and hopefully. so pose your questions or post your feedback. i want to talk about what difference. the generals can say that it pivot to a new model the interrogates -- commercial and commercial. so is so new about this model, a way of doing business and maybe if you could reflect a better in practical terms what kinds of different new or improved mechanisms and approaches will the space force take with working with the commercial sector that is different?

>> i think there is a lot to talk about. historically, we have always received commercial services, paid for commercial services in ways we were sort of very comfortable satellite and partly driven by the rapid increase in commercial space capabilities that we see over the past 10 years and even shorter time frames so that increased commercial development brought new capabilities available to us. the reality for the department of defense is we think about how do we leverage commercial to be more agile and move out of our traditional stovepipes of acquisition products and take advantage of rapidly moving commercial enter prize and in ways we have to stretch

ourselves. i'm going to lease satellite band width from you but beyond that services this goes to your point on integration, not just better contracts and agility aspect but how do we work with commercial with what might be a spectrum of conflict and what does that look like and interoperability and integration in light of having commercial partners with us and we have taken some steps in this area. and operations center out there is maybe a step we are trying to push ourselves to go further. in some of some of these new

missionaries where we haven't talked about commercial partners in integrating in this way and we are trying to push some boundaries. we don't know the answers or have a crystal clear. but the possibility is there and leverage commercial to help us provide that clarity and see where we can go in some of these areas. >> to take a step back, i want to talk about how the space enenvironment is evolving. the ultimate goal of the strategy is to create a more diverse, resilient architecture. from a competition perspective why is that needed and how will the strategy help the space force with the modernization and

resiliency of space architecture? gen. bratton: both strategies are laying them out. that's an attribute. tay is probably true for any organization. but we want to make sure we have the best chance of success and create the greatest opportunity of success in delivering a capability whether it is the traditional satellite communications or surveillance and recon acance activities. how do we think about our reliance on commercial and integrating them as a partner. how does that change through the spectrum of conflict. may be easier to see.

as you transition like competition and conflict, i'm sure there are commercial industry and what is their level of comfort and have these conversations now and think about one of the mechanisms we use to leverage commercial. we'll need it. we can't afford just to build everything that the space force wants or objective force or force we need for competition and conflict. commercial offers so many opportunities to input peace time to leverage that. in some ways the agility and innovation we see commercial's ability to flex and change and respond. what we would say a threat but change in market condition and

how we have observed that across the space enterprise is amazing to us and trying to harness that energy. >> i do think what struck me was the dimension of integration and commercial across the competition. that stuck out to me what that looks like in engaging in commercial. and you mentioned the office of the commercial innovation strategy. and comes on the heels. how do the two documents relate? gen. bratton: we worked closely with the team and strategy

department within the space force. there is a lot of sin kron niecessation there and making sure we release the right documents in the right order at the right time and we were looking for from the secretary of defense and from that level and addressed a couple broader topics within the space force. and we are focused on protection of capabilities during time of conflicts and continue that delivery mechanism. there are folks on the same things but a different understanding in the obligation of the service to do that underneath the guidance of the secretary. i appreciate the work, the policy team as they worked with

us on sort of kept that was in our document and i wouldn't say we colluded, but we did meet and discuss some ideas and some things we were looking from them. so there was a lot of sin kron niecessation of the documents. >> just to pull the thread, i guess, reading the d.o.d.'s space commercial strategy. 13 missionaries. and allocate those missionaries into three different categories. first being government primary missionaries where the government will remain performing those functions. combat, command and control and position, navigation and timing. the second is hybrid where

hybrid mix of government and commercial and cyber space operations, satellite communications and third, commercial primary missions where most functions will be performed by by commercial. so then in the space strategy, you have eight named missionaries highlighted. how did you land on those eight missionaries and how they aligned with the d.o.d.'s 13 and what eight missionaries do you have an order in which you are prioritizing those or is every child equal? gen. bratton: there's a background discussion how we articulate and ask the budget team they are articulated and in doctrine, we articulate them another way.

there are different thoughts -- it does outline the is 13 and where the policy started. of those we took the ones that we thought -- i don't know if comfortable is the right word but the one we thought we could integrate with commercial ones and did not address. they called out and here's the areas we are not. we identified the eight that are more willing. great discussion is what is in the hybrid model or how much are you willing to go, 30%, 40% or 50%. well, we're not sure if we are too far, well that's too much reliance on commercial and you wrote a paper on this last fall that i thought was great. just to give you proposes -- props.

but it went right at this issue on. we have an obligation to provide for the joint force to protect our spacecraft and exaights on orbit. and so if we are talking about interoperability, we can't draw a line and say this is we are not accepting commercial in this space and find ways to bring them in and capabilities they have and tear ability to respond to threats and what we have seen in current conflicts within the world, those are capabilities tay we want access to. we are trying to find that balance and i wouldn't say we have settled on a percentage but it's the discussion we want to have on how much can we bring in. more is better. we want to have a discussion with industry, well, how does it

look like to industry, what is your level of comfort and committing and gets to contract language but committing to providing those services. what does it look like to a commercial company and the dialogue beyond which, interoperability and integration, we just shoulder-to-shoulder operations and sharing information and discussing threats, we're demanding or asking depending on the language that we agree on for specific services at a time and place to meet the needs of the joint force. but i see that very clearly through the military lens and i need to see what industry thinks of it and why public strategy that we have to write this down and get it out there and get reflections and feedback and

things we won't have thought about. that sounds great from the department of defense but here's what it looks like from the commercial side and goes into the why as to start those discussions in a more meaningful way. >> as a followup of those eight missionaries. some missions might shift from government, primary to hybrid and commercial primary. and as they mature and military requirements evolve, could i ask a tricky question to answer, what are the missionaries that are going to transition from that government primary to hybrid and the eight physical ones you have in mind. if you task the commercial

sector to double down, what kinds of capabilities would you be most interested in seeing commercial mature? gen. bratton: i think and the answer is where are we willing to put our money. domain awareness is on the uptick and we are relying on commercial to keep track and providing data and sharing data of what is happening in the domain. maybe we are already there. there will be continued growth in that area. when i step beyond those and those that enlisted, start talk about navigation and timing and

environmental monitoring, i would say we are probable there in earth observation in in electrooptical. i think we are already there. but some of these other areas we are trying to understand what is possible and what makes a. i smiled and talked about mobility and logistics. that is our least mature area. we don't know what is the case for utility and a lot of discussion from u.s. space command and how do we think about that and when we went full

commercial in a area that is immature and saying commercial lead us to, we are not sure of what to make of it. like we know what we need for navigation and timing and very mature area and we hold little more tightly to that one. it maybe is an example and taking risk here but we want to not have to figure this out on our own but partner and leverage commercial. and tay drifts about how we think about futures command and how we are trying to get our eyes further down the road and see if they can help us figure it out. >> you touched on this on concept levels and to embrace it

requires a bit of a mind-set and what the government and commercial sector. reintegrating with the commercial sector not just contracting out services. what are your thoughts from this cultural shift that needs to take place to embrace. and what is overreliance? how do you measure that risk? gen. bratton: we had that discussion in relation to the budget. and building a budget for any given year.

the true proof is when we don't spend money to develop a capability and rely on commercial for that. in space these things have been done by the department of defense for the joint force. i think there is a little bit of soul searching of let's understand why it makes us uncomfortable and being able to measure the risk. if we rely 100% on commercial for any exaibilityd, how do we ensure that capability is going to be there when we specifically in conflict? and there are areas where we would be unwilling to take that risk or sort of inherptly military things that we would

keep in the department. but there are's a lot of areas that stand both ways, domain awareness and we want to keep keep track of an adversary all the time. if it's the capability that is threatening to us that makes the joint commanders uncomfortable, how do we feel relying on a commercial company to keep track. how do we feel about that in air or land domain and there are lessons how they have drawn this line and navy and air force contract things out and there is a long history there. in these areas, it's just new to us, so we are learning and commercial is going to help us get more comfortable and many examples where we have a great association with the commercial industry and delivered for us every time. but i think it's a two-way conversation and we have to look

at what it means to the commercial industry as well, what makes them uncomfortable and then contractual language and how do you implement that. >> on that two-way conversation, i want to talk about risk to the commercial sector. and you have seen the benefits of commercial satellite, spacex, silent constellations. like, who, what, when, how do we protect those commercial assets should they be part of the commercial infrastructure.

this is a space force only kind of thing to answer, but how were you thinking about the risk factors and services. [indiscernible] gen. bratton: we have invited commercial to come and participate. the discussions end up right in this space what is the department and what is the space

force going to ask for and the existing language before conflict and leaves us some sort of discussion about insurance and indeem any fix. and i think the d.o.d. level strategy goes right after addressing that point and there are some things now and where we may need legislative help if we decide to go down that road. can we clearly articulate and what we need it and do we on the department of defense side understand the total capability? are we relying on 100% commercial or something less than that. is it augmentation? this is interoperable operations

which increasing our reliance and as you are setting up these goals and there is much to learn here. and set up these vehicles, this is bay we are going to ask you to do, what does it look like in a conflict, what is the risk the companies are assuming and mitigate that risk as we are trying to mitigate for ourselves. i don't know that we have rearrived at that instate. the discussion has to continue and i am fascinated to know what it means to commercial industry. >> i had a follow-up on that, but i want to -- gen. bratton: it's populating. >> one quick thing, can you elaborate on this process with

commercial companies. dissemination of actionable threat data. how are you going to navigate that at different classification levels? gen. bratton: we have done this in other areas. when there is a threat within the united states and we make that public and maybe we don't reveal how we know about the threat. we have done it in the air domain. how we articulate and share that information. well, maybe the best area for us to learn from is cyber space domain where companies and government sharing threat agreements and protecting classified material. and a lot of that is -- not

every threat is on the pathway to war. sometimes it's an environmental threat and risk of collision and just this interoperability. i think we know how to do this in some areas and areas where classification is a barrier, we have to tear that down and do that in lots of ways and still protect whatever secrets we need to protect. >> some really interesting questions coming in here. question from doug navarro. general braxton that -- brat

ton, if you talk to the industry, they do not believe what the n.r.o. truly leverages what they could do. could you talk about that? >> i thought the inclusion of s.r.t.'s -- i think there is a lot of discussion on that and maybe it makes us uncomfortable and commercial has a lot to offer. it is forcing us away, we just want to buy imagery from you. this goes back to the comfort discussion of how comfortable is the department in this case the space force in our dependency.

and there are a lot of incredible capability across the u.s. government in this area. but there is still a demand signal for more. budget, and we can do it cheaper, faster and better. let's push into that more and not just buy product from them but partner with them and adjust our procurement strategies. that's the step that's not been taken that commercial is looking, and these are services contracts where you keep buying stuff and ask me to keep doing more. maybe it pushes us there. i think some of the work that space development agency is doing for the space force as part of the space force is really leading us into new areas and increasing reliance on

commercial partners to operate systems that traditionally we would have operated or be much more of a shoulder-to-shoulder partner than just send me data, band width or whatever it is. we are making some head way. there is certainly room toll grow. >> we have a question here we do not have the name identified, do current. [indiscernible] or will they need to be changed? we talked a little bit about this in the green room. gen. bratton: that's a great question. right now we are creating a commercial space shop there that is a separate line.

the answer to the question is probably no, we can do better. we have to be careful to fall back on the definition of commercial. this isn't about procurement paying a company to build a spacecraft we will then fly. that is not what the strategy is about. this is about moving to that integrated -- trying not to use the word services because it is more than that as i think about it. but into that integrated operations, owner-operator of constellation is going to fly side by side with us and take a percentage of mission off the government shoulder and conduct that mission. i don't think within the codes we have figured out how to do that or even in a program office. the material leaders are thinking about that and leading us in some ways space systems

agencies. and i don't think the funding structure is sophisticated. that is a long answer to say no, i don't think we are doing that yet. >> we have a question from starfish space. alex, what is industry's role or responsibility in u.s. leadership as far as establishing norms of behavior in modern space operations? this question is thinking about the importance of reducing operational surprise. >> i think that's a great question and i talked to folks -- i think industry will lead. they move faster. they have innovative ideas almost ahead of government. the discussion of norms and behavior and how do we think of

traffic management and the department ofcommerce looking at that. lot of ways and industry will have a much louder voice. and so there are certainly a partnership there and we see it in spectrum management now and natural tension that occurs there. the norms and behaviors space as commercial industry moves out in what is happening and what we see in lower orbit and places not going for the department of defense but civil space with nasa and think about human space flight and rules and regulations associated with that. what we see is the government

trying to reduce the bureaucracy and red tape and allow commercial. i think there are some examples where the government has done well. we can always do better. the more commercial needs and here's the rules. industry consortiums as they are put forward and how they should work, did i don't know if -- i talked about a couple of companies, how can i help with that. folks on standardization and plug and pay loads that kind of thing. industry can come together and maybe the government's role provides the venue or consortium where industry comes together and solves the problem for us. >> so one thing that we haven't talked about is the we are the

atlantic council and talk about our allies and spreghting space systems into this hybrid space architecture, how do you plan on doing that? and space forces and i guess it's a similar but different challenge. what are the challenges that really exist that exist? gen. bratton: i think later on colonel benson is going to be around and owns this problem. but this is art force design which is the process we use to determine the capabilities that we need in time of conflict. within the space force we don't have the resources to buy all the things we wish we had.

commercial being one big player. but that is another space we work in. we have had great meetings. these reoccurring forums. and i think declassification where it helps in this space and talk more about the capabilities and where we are spending our money for the space force and have the allies if they are willing to have that same discussion back to us and just like we talked about with commercial. where is that percentage or that comfortable space ok if one of the partner nations is investing, the proof is in the budget. i do not invest in space domain awareness and use that resource in another area of need and going to rely on my partner nation to do that.

i think they are eager to hear from us just as we are eager to hear where ruin investigating and noninvesting. colonel benson is going to sort that out and the mechanism we use to have that conversation. that process should be same discussion we have and the same sort of slide deck that we use with allies is what we use with commercial. here's where we plan to invest in your company. we are not going to buy or build in that case. general stalts man has been demanding of the team. we are close and we have the capabilities and some reflections out in the document that is down to the budget detail level and trades we are

willing to make. >> the list comes down to this. question here from mike sinclair. mike says u.s. commercial space is a key advantage that the u.s. enjoys over strategic rivals yet it is different than aerospace primes which are big and established. given this nature of many commercial space entities are you ensure cyber resilience that space is going to rely on? >> i think that support in cyber from commercial is one of the areas that i described. it all goes to the risk assessment of what burden are we

going to lay on the company to make sure that cyber protection that makes the government more comfortable but we recognize that slows things down and makes things more expensive and at the same time, it bise -- buys down risk and it's a discussion to articulate the risk and the tradeoff as we work with each of the companies on, are we willing to go faster to have less cyber reserves and willing to accept risker in testing of a new capability. these are the same decisions we make. it's that same discussion in understanding the burden on the commercial company and being upfront, capping our expectations in the language and the commercial company

reflecting back on hey, i can deliver that, government, if you ask me to do this, here are the consequences to schedule or budget, wherever they come in. it's that free-flowing discussion that happens in the cyber area. >> another question here. some anonymous but we talked about in the green room and we spent a lot of time atlantic council and great stuff out there in the commercial sector, how exhausting those innovations more quickly from the government side is difficult. part of that challenge is actually knowing what's out there. this question gets at that, which is how can the private sector provide solutions on its capabilities to inform space

designs and architectures? gen. bratton: the acquisition organizations are trying to through their front-door program or industry daze have -- days. i'll talk about the futures command. we have identified in our force design process the need to look a little further down the road especially and secretary kendall has been driving us on emerging technologies and trying to understand and leverage new technology. but we put with technology, new concepts. lunar concepts are great to talk about. we think there is value there and futures command will look at that. what sometimes we haven't done a great job of understanding on the government side and my time in the space force is, what is the military utility associated

with space refueling? but we have to sort of derive the specific military utility case. before that, demonstrations and tons of dollars to flush it out makes sense. but we are going to bring this into our forced design process that is part of the kit we need to fight a war we will have to wring that out maybe better than we did in the past. does repealing make me more competitive in peace time? does it give me an advantage in wartime? we were just using war gaming to determine that, but where is the evidence that refueling makes in those specific scenarios. and once we understand there is military utility here and how we

would measure that and go to the space war fighting analysis center and talk about space vehicles and different ways to implement that capability. industry can help us in each of those steps. industry will always know before government or they will know the technologies' piece and what is on the horizon. concepts come from all comers and whether bringing new concepts that we hand nt thought of it. we have the response to wring it out not in a room by ourselves, but those who understand the technology and how it can be used. i think carl benson knows the answer to that question because now are we going to invest in

this or not. and a procurement decision where now frank qua vessely is in the mix and talking about spending mung money on this or going to a commercial company, we have to answer that question. i think in the discussion with commercial, i have a lot of meetings with companies and a lot of great ideas out there, i don't always see the military military, not because it's not there, i need to take it and wring it out in some sort of venue. companies have said here's what the military utility is and the evidence behind is really helpful on the government side. but i'm expecting everyone to bring that. we need to partner up and go through it together. futures command guys, that is

their charter. we have a new idea. what does it take to implement the idea. that is the charter of the new organization we are creating. >> yes, commercial don't necessarily know what you and government need. you don't know what's out there and commercial is back and forth. gen. bratton: they'll destroy it on the back end, when is something obsolete and does the new capability replace an old capability? because we hang onto the old stuff and get new stuff in. i wish i could offload some of these stuff and someone would work through that as well. but that's a challenge.

>> can't do it all. a strategy is only as good as its implementation, what do you think of the biggest challenges or issues to navigate to imprement this strategy to put into action. and looking ahead maybe two years from now, maybe three, four, five years from now would be an example of successful implementation? what would you hope to see in that time frame and what would good look like? gen. bratton: so we can measure these things and hold ourselves accountable to the words in there. that's a challenge and strategies, and they sit on a shelf and get dusty. we are thinking about and actually have some playing against metrics of how do we

measure the implementation and then over time. if we want to see developing the stray guy, increase percentage not just from procurement of hardware from commercial but procurement of services, increase transition of mission in some ways, i think that is crystal clear metric we will be able to measure. the reality is somewhere in the middle, there will be some cases, has all s.d.a. and receivers of the date afa and sharing data and maybe i'm not buying telescopes because great companies are taking care of that business. what is that look in terms of timing and how -- the space

force obligation within the department of dense but to provide that signal to the world for free. that is a tougher one to measure how be benefit. there is great discussion of how g.p.s. responds to billions of dollars in industry and a partnership that is in different use of the word than what we have been talking about in the commercial strategy but something that government has done and companies have done incredible things we never would have thought of. but back to the point of it is, metrics are important and where are we spending our money and if we measure the change in what's been allocated in a program office or within our organization, today and come back in three years, how much of the budget now is going to

increasing commercial services or commercial operations. i think that would be a great way to do it. is this working for you guys, what's the metric on the industry side? how is that measured and do they field this has been a successful partnership if we think it's great and the industry doesn't, that's probably not success. >> final couple of minutes i wanted to share any concluding thoughts, anything you want to touch on that lands on our audience? gen. bratton: thanks for letting me come out here for the first time and i would love to come back we are eager to get

feedback and on the specifics though of, this is what is working and this isn't. and great forp ums and taking the gloves off. you have to have thick skin to take the punches. you have to stop chiefling. that is helpful when commercial companies are. mr. aderholt: vow indicating and they said you know what would be helpful is this and not just for my company, but for the group. areas where companies have come together and i see this where they are more protected environment and discussing amongst themselves and sort of not gang up on government but articulate to government, here's

what's helpful and what you need to do and what you are messing up. we take that seriously and that voice is loud when it is amplified that way by many voices. the opportunity to create those forums and this is one of those venues and hear from groups and companies is super dwhrep helpful to us. if i could help create those environments, i would be helpful for industry to do that. we have to hold ourselves accountable and see us deviating, call us out on it. you asked for change but not willing to accept it. it will be comfortable moments on the government side and how we think about risker especially in the transition of conflict.

that is important for us to articulate and understand and where the rubber meets the road and space force and took seriously these obligations to provide services to the joint force and protect our assets on orbit and deny that to our adversaries. that is sacred ground and realizing that we can do that job better commercial partners and further innovation of our allies and keep moving on that road. but speak up, be a load of voice and we would like to hear from anybody. >> congratulations again the putting forward really driving towards integration with the commercial sector and a credit

to you for articulate. and welcoming feedback from our side. our commitment is to continue to have meetings like this and help get some of that feedback. you heard it hear first. it helps share the understanding and align so thank you so much and articulating this tremendous inaugural commercial strategy. thank you to our audience being here and look forward to staying in touch. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org