Transcripts
What You Missed on The Vector Episode 20: “Defense Ready Strategies for Commercial Companies”
Written by: Morsiell Dormu
In this engaging episode of The Vector, Kelli Kedis Ogborn, Vice President of Space Commerce & Entrepreneurship at Space Foundation, talks with Sean McKay, CEO of Precision ISR and retired Air Force Colonel. Together, they delve into the concept of “Defense Ready” technology, explaining how companies can position their innovations for both commercial and defense applications, especially in today’s increasingly complex space landscape.
Highlights include McKay’s insights on:
- The “Valley of Death” in tech development, where many promising technologies struggle to bridge the gap between innovation and defense use.
- The critical need for small companies to align with emerging defense requirements and address compliance, cybersecurity, and supply chain security.
- Future trends in defense and commercial space industries, such as the emphasis on space situational awareness, modular spacecraft, and advancements in data fusion and real-time command and control.
This episode offers a comprehensive look at strategic positioning in space technology, the importance of national security considerations, and the role of private capital in facilitating innovation. Whether you’re in the defense sector or a commercial entity, Episode 20 provides essential insights into dual-use strategy for today’s evolving space industry.
Episode Transcript:
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Vector where we discuss topics, trends, and insights driving the global space ecosystem. I am your host Kelli Kedis Ogborn, and today we will be discussing strategies and considerations for dual use technologies and capabilities, specifically for national security and commercial use cases and customers. I would be remiss if I did not mention that this conversation falls on the 23rd anniversary of 911, which reminds us of all of the threats and vigilance that we must keep within the global ecosystem and specifically within space. This is a very timely conversation as it is becoming more congested and contested. My guest today is Sean McKay, who is a retired Air Force colonel and the current owner and CEO of Precision ISR consulting. Sean brings more than 27 years of leadership and program management experience within the Department of Defense and intelligence community. As a retired Air Force Colonel, he has successfully led teams and delivered advanced ISR aircraft sensor and space systems managing a $4.3 billion budget for the US Air Force and 27 foreign nations. He also has deep expertise in legislative and budget processes. Having served as a defense legislative fellow and resource analyst in the private sector, Colonel McKay’s achievements include building a $22 million business development pipeline and securing over $86 million in new business for clients. He continues to lead precision ISR with a focus on ISR systems, defense acquisition and business development, and recently has expanded his role as acting US president for the Fuse Federal Enterprise. Sean, thank you so much for joining me today.
Sean McKay:
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Well, I am excited about this conversation primarily because throughout your career as I illustrated in your biography, you have really dealt with this topic intimately on both sides through the US government and the private sector. And I have a lot of questions and considerations for you today, but before we dive into it, I’m curious if you could just tell us a little bit more about your background and your company as it relates to this dual use conversation.
Sean McKay:
Well, absolutely. Well, thank you for the kind intro. I appreciate that when I did get out of the military, I didn’t realize that what they call GovCon was kind of a rare thing that it’s not as well understood as I thought it might be. So my background, as you said, I worked my way up through the space enterprise. My first assignment was in Space and Missile System Center now SSC Space Systems Command out west, and I got to work on this program called the Defense Support Program. So that’s an infrared missile warning satellite. It’s a constellation of satellites, and I was able to be the launch and anomaly resolution lead for two launches and got to experience that firsthand as a second lieutenant and first lieutenant. And that essentially got me hooked on space and I spent a good 18 years around the space enterprise working in command and control, working on space sensors, working on delivering ground systems, as well as being on console for a number of national security launches and space system launches. So one thing to mention when I say national security, that does imply the National Reconnaissance Office, so I was very fortunate to work there on a couple of assignments.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah, you’ve definitely seen it from various angles, various mission sets, various capability needs. And I think what’s interesting about this conversation is we’ve actually never had a discussion on the vector yet about the national security consideration of space. And our space industry birthed from a space race. I mean it was national posturing, first technical progression, scientific advancement, secondary and tertiary. And so even though the ecosystem has expanded to have different types of needs for capabilities that is never too far behind, and especially in today’s environment, as I postured in the beginning, national security considerations are not just there. They’re growing. Last year in 2023, we had an 18% increase across the board globally in national security spending to the tune of about 57 billion. And so companies and really small and large that are considering growing their share within space have to understand that there is a use case and a need on both sides, whether it’s commercial or national security. And one thing I want to throw out at you is that you say often this concept of being defense ready, and so I would love to have that be a scene setter to this conversation. What do you mean by that?
Sean McKay:
Yeah, so really with my background in Air Force space, national security space, when I started Precision ISR in 2018, we were really thinking about that competitive landscape in full what they call programs of record. And those are programs that have a budget line that is appropriated by Congress and that’s what a program of record is. So that’s the mindset that I came into industry with and then I learned about small business activities and I did not leverage the small business activity as much as I would’ve liked to when in active duty learning about it. Now I wish I had known about it. Now the Air Force in particular and the Space Force now have expanded that small business opportunity quite a bit and they’ve looked at it differently. So when I started engaging in the small business innovation enterprise, and I’ve built my team to have some specialty there, but we look at this with a program of record, what they call a level three program manager or a level three space professional view.
Sean McKay:
So that’s the maximum certification that the DOD or Space Force provides in those fields. So we’re looking down market to some of the smaller companies, innovation and things of that nature. And after working in that space for a couple years, I realized that there was a gap. We hear DOD leaders and space leaders talk about this thing called the Valley of Death a lot. So it’s the technology valley of death where you’ve got interesting and useful things and it’s a struggle to connect them to programs of record and systems that are deployed and in operation. So thinking deeply about that problem with the perspective of a acquisition and space professional, we came up with this idea of defense ready. So it is specifically set up to address that valley of death problem of bringing innovation across the line. And the part that I think is underappreciated, it’s kind of the boring stuff.
Sean McKay:
There’s a lot of compliance things, there’s a lot of security things that you got to do. So even if what I usually say is on a requirement, that means you have built some technology that is meeting a need in the Department of Defense or the Space Force. So you think you’ve got something good, you’ve got a strong engineering team you’re building, but for some reason the Space Force won’t buy what you have in some cases they simply can’t because of cybersecurity concerns, supply chain concerns, even the way that your company may be set up. Do you have foreign nationals in your company? There are a number of considerations beyond even just the accounting system and that can get complicated later on, but that’s not something that has to be addressed right up front. So there’s a number of things that we put in this vertical and precision ISR that we call defense ready to try and help move companies and technology and get them associated with programs of record. So it makes a difference for the war fighter.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I want to make sure that we emphasize a point that you made there because I think it would often get overlooked, but you’re absolutely correct that it’s oftentimes the small things that trip people up because while you’re focused on developing this large system or really an eye to the prize of a future mission set, it’s all of those little things along the way that can really make or break your business model. And for those that you give advice to, and especially what you’ve seen, what I’ve noticed from some companies is that oftentimes as they’re developing something, they don’t necessarily see the future needs maybe from a military perspective, right? Because they’re like, this is cool science, this is a really needed gap in the commercial sector, but the defense portion that may not be an initial stakeholder for them is sort of secondary. So what are some key strategic considerations that you’ve seen for developing these dual use technologies to ensure that they are beneficial in both commercial and defense sectors?
Sean McKay:
So, I think the most important thing is to be focused on a need, on an emerging requirement or even what’s called a big R requirement. The big R requirements are really hard to get access to. So what that means Big R, that means it is a requirement that has been vetted through the DOD system up through the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. So that is the pinnacle of the requirements process. That includes the joint staff and basically the chiefs of the US military services, and they approve the requirements from an operational perspective. Now, those are generally classified, so that is very difficult for a company, especially a new entrant or a Silicon Valley startup to get access to the no kidding DOD or Space Force needs. They don’t know what specifically to build. So that’s a serious challenge and that’s something that we stumbled across in Precision ISR when we started many years ago, is that my team and I bring that expertise of prior knowledge or we can’t talk about the specifics, but we can say this is in the right direction and knowing it’s in the right direction, then you can have positive engagement with the Space Force and people who can facilitate connecting you to other people to develop your technology and your thoughts.
Sean McKay:
And this is something that Dr. Roper identified several years ago when he was the head of Air Force acquisition because he really changed the way that the Air Force looks at the small business process. And so it was under his tenure that they created works that then built into Space Works. And I really like the way that they thought about this program. They basically said the Air Force and the Space Force are a large operation and that they did not talking from their perspective said, look, we don’t know everything we need. So they decided to let a whole bunch of small, what they call phase ones, so very small contracts, small period of performance, three months, but it’s essentially paid business development, paid engagement where you can go, if you can get your idea funded for just a little bit of money on phase one, it gives you an actual contract that you can have positive engagement with the Air Force and with the Space Force to talk about your idea. So it’s a great way to enter into the system and figure out if you’re close to a requirement or being in need or solving a problem for the operators. So that’s really the most important thing, but it is hard to get at the actual specific requirement oftentimes for new entrants.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
You’re right, and it’s one of those where you don’t want to completely say that the strategy is trying to read tea leaves. There is a framework to it. And I’m curious from your perspective then, because part of why space is an interesting domain, and it’s true kind of across all innovation ecosystems, but specifically for this one as well is as you mentioned, there are programs of record, there are acquisition vehicles for things that we know we need, but there are also capability gaps that we don’t know exactly what we need, but we know that the market is trending that way. And so for these companies, how would you advise them to assess these needs both now and in the future, to be able to start building systems that could be used maybe in both domains or one first and then the other when it’s relevant, but what could they do to put that into their strategy?
Sean McKay:
So, there is quite a bit of guidance out there that is helpful. It is worth looking at some of the, again, a little bit boring, but look through the national security policy, national security strategy. There’s a lot of things in those documents and those are the pinnacle of the policy documents and that’s what the DOD budget is actually built on. So a lot of people talk about things, but it’s not a priority until it’s actually funded. That’s when you’ve really have a priority. So look at the national security documentation that is publicly available, the DOD comptroller, and that includes the Space Force will publish the budget, they’ll publish the budget priorities, and you can take a look at what’s being emphasized and why it’s being emphasized. So that’s a really good place to get a context for the idea that you have as a startup or as you’re building your small business or if you have commercial traction and you’re thinking about opening up line of effort or another revenue stream into the Department of Defense. And the Department of Defense is very interested in leveraging available commercial technology. They’re not the best at it yet, but it is a challenge for those defense ready things we were talking about earlier. But there is a definite interest to pull in commercial readily available technology to solve defense and space force problems. I may not have answered your question just right, but that’s at least some context that companies can think about it.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
You did answer it because really it’s understanding the resources available and drawing some sort of inference from what they’re saying, right? So there’s no perfect answer. It’s just knowing what’s out there. And I want to shift the conversation slightly because you sit in this very unique perspective of you’ve been a stakeholder and now you engage with stakeholders and stakeholders. It’s interesting that word means many different things to different people, but when we’re talking about the space domain, there are lots of different stakeholders, especially in the mixed alphabet soup within the government and specifically DOD and then commercial entities that all have different priorities. They have different timelines, they have mission sets and they classify ROI differently. And so how do you engage all of these various actors both on the commercial and defense sectors to really make sure that it aligns with objectives and expectations of what’s being built? I know that’s a big question, but
Sean McKay:
Yeah, really it is legitimately incredibly challenging, especially for a commercial do use company that does require a decent amount of capital. It makes it even more challenging because I’ve worked with, and I am working with a number of CEOs for companies at various different stages from pre-seed in the investment world to series A, series B, series C that are raising increasing amounts of money and they have a commercial type business and then they have a defense type business. And there’s different emphasis on which side of the business is resourced more or less depending on where they are and what their products are. But thinking about this and observing it and participating in both sides, the communities are quite different. The investors require a certain rate of return at a certain pace
Sean McKay:
That is a requirement. So the commercial enterprise must value profit, they must value speed to revenue. And they are on a clock. They’re on a clock is they are burning engineering resources. They want to keep the overhead and minimal to be effective and return dollars to their investors. And that is a hard and fast requirement in their world. On the defense side, they value mission. This is often lost, but the Department of Defense is an effectiveness organization. It is not about efficiency. We want it to be efficient. That’s helpful, but it’s about winning wars, it’s about deterring aggression. That’s not an efficiency sort of question. So the Department of Defense doesn’t want to spend a dollar more than it has to deter aggression or to be able to detect and do the things in space. It needs to do so very different value propositions and it’s different. They use different words, they speak in different jargon and the techniques that you sell things, for example, sell things in commercial, sell things in defense, it’s a very different approach that doesn’t translate particularly well.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I may borrow your way of phrasing that it’s effective, not efficient. I will attribute it to you, but that is a really fantastic way to encapsulate that viewpoint. And so from your perspective, is it possible to have a similar strategy with divergent points or like you mentioned for your other client, is it two completely separate strategies and maybe business arms that engage on a cadence and a timeline that makes sense for the customer?
Sean McKay:
I think there’s definitely overlap on the technology and engineering and the solution sets can be similar. The challenges come in that the Space Force and the Department of Defense because of the security requirements, because of the classification, because even with a phase two, so that’s about a $1.5 million contract in a small business sense, there’s still about 60 to 70 terms and conditions that you have to go through as a small business to be compliant with on the contract. And as you get higher dollar values, those terms and conditions continue to grow. So it’s different because you have to incur a decent amount of overhead to do business effectively with the Department of Defense. So companies want to be a prime, they want to be the lead provider, and that’s another step change of requirements and things that you have to do to be compliant to be customer facing to the DOD.
Sean McKay:
And there’s quite a bit of what seems like extra work that incurs cost with questionable overhead, sorry, with questionable return from a commercial standpoint. So it can done, it’s just challenging. And I think the place to emphasize is really the care abouts on the engineering, the technical solution, and tread somewhat cautiously because if you’re going to go into the no kidding work of space in the Department of Defense, it has to be more than additional revenue than an additional revenue stream. You have to be a little more committed to it. They’re like, yeah, we’ll just open up this revenue stream and get some additional dollars from Department of Defense. They have an 800 plus billion dollars budget, that should be fine. That budget is oversubscribed two to three times and the department wants to do a lot more than it can afford. So it’s a competitive sort of thing to get a dollar from the government and there’s a lot of requirements, so you have to be in it for more than just opening up another revenue stream.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s a great point. Having personally come from A DOD background as well, the technologies and the companies that end up working with the government really do have a passion and they are mission driven in a lot of ways of really believing in what they’re bringing forth. I have a separate question that I am curious about, and it’s because you mentioned in the initial stakeholder answer about investors, which across the board they are a very, very critical area of people to bring into the conversation. And often what I have seen for smaller companies that are trying to leverage investment from private capital, they have often used government contracts, whether it be national security or interest from a civil mission perspective to be able to posture need, want customer set to the investor community to show that there is viability and a buyer or interest. Is it the other way around? So from a government customer, does it help these companies to already have private capital or a potential commercial entity signaling that they wanted as well?
Sean McKay:
Very much I would say yes. And it often depends on the stage of the company. So I think really on the earlier evolutions of when you’re moving from a startup to a small business to a larger small business, I think it’s really important to have the commercial markets have that functioning because defense takes a long time.
Sean McKay:
And so, there’s a lot of frustration on the industry side, especially with the dual use companies trying to get to a contract, trying to get to some revenue, trying to get something out of the Department of Defense. And I think it’s underappreciated at times the size of the Department of Defense. And so I start to think, well, is it reasonable for small companies to think that the DOD with literally 3 million people in the Department of Defense working with the headquarters of the headquarters, that you’re going to get a contract out of the Pentagon or something like that in a couple months? It takes a little bit of time. It is a large bureaucracy. There are absolutely areas that are optimized in the DOD to get things done quickly and effectively, but in general, a new company is trying to break in from the outside, it’s going to take some time. So just from a business point of view, you need to have some sort of source of investment or revenue just because it’s going to take a couple years to really get traction in the department.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Absolutely, and I imagine too, there just needs to be a better clarity and understanding of what those timelines look like. I have also seen companies that might apply to a grant, as you mentioned, as small as an SBIR or put something forth as an RFP, but then they just wait. And that can take 3, 6, 9 months a year and there needs to be a plan B on how to sustain and scale business operations in the interim to make sure that you are still able to compete. My question and the framework I really want to come back to now is you mentioned in the beginning everybody in the r and d innovation world, we love the concept of the Valley of death because companies live and die in the valley of death or they can, for those watching that may not be familiar with the TRL scale, we’re about to reference the TRL scale.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
It’s technology readiness level, so you can google it to know what we’re talking about. But generally from my experience, I have seen companies either engage the next phase user too late, so they’ll wait until they’re at about a four or five and then think if I build it, they will come situation, which we know is not true or it’s too early. So it’s partially communication, partially timing, partially capabilities. And when you have seen companies try to bridge this gap, what have been the main challenges in both communicating the need but also designing the technology that can really help with this effective transition between commercial and defense applications?
Sean McKay:
So, I think maybe if I approach it as what I’ve seen work, so what works and the company, you need to have enough capacity and resources to be able to have a multi-vector approach. I’ll use the word vector in here. So there’s an industry facing sort of approach. So you need to understand where you sit in your competitive landscape, in your area, the term that’s used all the time, how are you differentiated? What’s different? Why are you better, faster, cheaper, something, pick one at least. But you’ve got an industry facing approach. You need to also think about what is your executive branch? Who is the preferred military service? So I’ll say space force. So who are you talking to in Space Force? Why? And Space Force is a multi-headed sort of dragon because you should be working with the labs if you’re early and really important, you need to get to the space operations people, the people that are operating the systems.
Sean McKay:
And that’s particularly challenging, but you want to again be working towards a requirement or satisfying a need or an emerging need. And the people who create that demand signal are on the operation side. So the ops people work their needs up, the system through the Pentagon gets approved as a big R requirement and then the acquisition elements out at Space Systems command, now they have something to build to. So talking with the builders, the people that let contracts and acquire things, they’re not able to do anything unless they have an operational requirement. So you need to understand where you sit with industry and then you need to try to figure out where that operational requirement is that you’re tending to build something to satisfy that need and connect the operators with the acquirers. So you’ve got your end user and your customers that are understanding what you’re offering when you’re offering it and try to facilitate some agreement that your solution meets their need.
Sean McKay:
As you scale up a bit larger as a company, then you have to add on your congressional engagement line of effort as well. So especially if you have something disruptive, something new that the bureaucracy is not used to acquiring or it’s not a requirement or it satisfies a requirement in entirely different way. So one of the really disruptive ideas that have worked on is this idea of a space plane, right? So there’s a few companies that are working on disruptive ideas on how to get to space. The Department of Defense is not levied a requirement for a space plane. They levy a requirement for space access. So it’s a different way of answering the question, and that typically takes some congressional engagement as well. And now to add complexity, those stacks of lines of effort need to be coordinated as a company. When you get some feedback from Congress, if you’re able to talk with professional staffers and folks like that, they’ll give you their opinion, they’ll let you know their thoughts. Now you’ve got that feedback, you need to move that feedback into your executive branch engagement and let that inform your industry facing messaging, marketing, communication. And now, so you’ve got all these messaging marketing levels of effort going on at the same time, it is challenging to keep those orchestrated, otherwise you step on your own message and now your audience doesn’t understand what you’re offering because it starts to get confused. So that takes some time and effort and experience to keep all those ideas coherent, understood, and coordinated across that whole spectrum of people and things.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s a really critical point though, because I truly believe that the best business strategy is the ability to pivot. And oftentimes I think what can also trip up innovators, not just in the Tech Valley of death, but before, after, but specifically within too, is being so in love with your idea and your approach that you’re not willing to change based on customer need and input. I’m sure based on your reaction to that, that you’ve seen this as well. But it is a challenge I think for some folks because in their mind they developed this widget for this necessary need or capability and understanding that might not be the fit. It can really break people’s brains sometimes with understanding how to pivot, why to pivot and really understanding they need to, otherwise the business might fail.
Sean McKay:
Defense may not be the space, the Space Force mission may not be the place for the technology. There are some things that the Space Force is already doing and has been doing. And from the commercial side, it may look like a great idea and it actually is a great idea. It just may have been done 10 years ago and folks don’t know about it.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah, that’s a good point. I want to shift in the last sort of minutes we have together looking at the future, and as I mentioned in the beginning of this podcast, there has been an increase in global spending for national security across the board, and primarily it was driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and really the understanding of space as a critical infrastructure and a lot of the ground and space applications that play into that. From your perspective, what do you think the increase of focus of space applications from a military aspect and both the budgets will affect in the years to come for the industry? What does signal, how should people think about it?
Sean McKay:
Well, so on things that are going to be required in the moving ahead, the foundational element that I talk about a lot is space situational awareness.
Sean McKay:
The volume of space is incomprehensible practically, especially if you start to contemplate the cis lunar volume. So that’s the space between the earth and the moon. It’s a lot of volume. So if the Department of Defense Space Force wants to operate in anything close to those type of regions, they need a lot more information. So everything, all operations are going to be based on the awareness of the domain or the situational awareness of what is going on in space so that then they can plan and execute different operations to meet different user requirements and support again, operations. So that’s a foundational element. There’s a number of companies that are aggressively pursuing that, which is excellent as they should. And Space Force has brought some of those companies in and leveraging a more modern approach to software and fusing of data and things like that. So that’s excellent, but there’s going to be more emphasis on that there is a need for not just a broad awareness, but also an exquisite awareness of the space situation. I think. So it has been documented in some of the strategy documents, general Salzman, he wants to know intent. That’s a hard one.
Sean McKay:
When an adversary or a neutral spacecraft is moving, the Space Force wants to know why it’s moving. Is it just a station keeping operation? Is it changing orbits? Well, why is it changing orbits? What does that satellite have inherently embedded in terms of its capabilities and why is it moving for what purpose? So the Space Force really wants to know intent, and that becomes a multi intelligence data fusion problem with a, and also gets into a large data trend and analysis. So you want to know where the satellite, what is its pattern of life, what is it doing different? Why is it doing something different? So there’s really a lot there that can be worked on. There’s other things that I think are equally important because the Space Force needs to move quickly. So how do you move quickly? You can buy commercial services. So they’re working hard at that and I think they’re also looking the way that they buy things.
Sean McKay:
So, ideas like very modular spacecraft, buses. I think there can be multiple answers to that question. I think standards, standards within the spacecraft are incredibly important. So, this kind of just worked itself out with the launch industry, but there’s this thing on launch vehicles called an ESPA ring. And an ESPA ring is where you mount a number of small satellites right below the faring of the boost booster rocket, so you can put additional satellites in a booster rocket and get them to space. That became a default standard, not because it was deliberately thought out to create a standard of how to mount CubeSats or small satellites to a piece of hardware in a launch vehicle. It was there, it was used long enough that became the standard. So having standards within the spacecraft between the sensors, the power system, the solar panels, the thermal device that sheds heat, all of those things, if there were standards, would allow the Department of Defense Space Force to move quicker in a more modular way to get the best of the best and meet their operational requirements faster.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
You hear this concept of standards also shift into a lot of the regulatory conversation, just having some sort of guardrail around need and use case so that commercial companies can at least be developing in a way that can be complimentary and integrated to whatever systems they’re going into. And I laughed, I smirked when you were talking about the trying to quantify intent because that is a very, very difficult thing specifically as the domain, as I mentioned in the beginning, is more contested and congested, and we have commercial entities, nations and civil space missions like science missions, all engaging in the same ecosystem. It’s difficult to know if something is posturing, if it’s threatening or if it’s actually just a demo.
Sean McKay:
And that’s the mission requirements are very challenging. They’re difficult. So there’s opportunities for commercial industry if they can solve some of these really difficult problems that makes ’em a better commercial company, makes their commercial offerings better, that in order to do that really is worth thinking about security. It’s worth spending a little bit extra money to make sure that you don’t create a number of new RFS or radio frequency, a number of radio frequency access points to your satellite, to your system that can be compromised. So the Space Forces is talking about this a decent amount saying we want to use commercial services, they want to move optical communication inherently more secure. So laser comms and space. And that the more compliant you are with a traditional space force program, the easier it is to buy that service or buy that capability. But there’s a business decision involved in all of these because it costs more. It may not close your business case on the commercial side. So that’s how you get kind of pulled apart as a dual use small company between these two communities that are optimized for different things.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah, optimized for different things. My final question for you, and you started to allude to this, I’m just going to pull a little deeper on the tech side. When looking at the future, you’ve mentioned the need to know the right kind of questions to ask within this operational environment and really understanding and expanding upon space situational awareness. If you could look at the next three to five years from a tech capability aspect, where do you think priorities should lie? And the reason I ask this is there’s a lot of emerging conversations about the use case of ai, the enhancements necessary for digital engineering, quantum computing, potentially changing the landscape. Where do you think emphasis should be or what may be coming?
Sean McKay:
I’m really pretty interested, and I think there’s a lot of room on the data side. There’s a lot of systems that are already available and the Department of Defense is working on a timeline as well. So they have a few years and some events that could take place that they need to be prepared for. And so that’s not much time to really launch, deploy, train, operate many new systems. So I think that the opportunity in the next two to three years is really on the data side and really in the area of command and control.
Sean McKay:
Some people define it as C five or C two, but really moving the data across the globe, getting a rapid understanding of the scenario, moving data from almost like sensor to shooter that the Department of Defense and the Space force is part of this is absolutely about what’s called the kill chain. So you want to understand the situation and maybe it’s not actually putting a munition on something. It could be just having awareness of something of interest is moving around. That is still in effect, closing the kill chain. You need to find something, you need to track something and you need to have that custody of whatever that something is
Sean McKay:
For space force purposes. So there is a need to do that as rapidly as possible in near real time. And you want to bring to bear as many assets and diverse information sets as you can. So that is a very interesting area. That’s very achievable addressable in the next couple of years with some new innovation. There’s more innovative ways, there’s commercial techniques, but it has to have the rigor of a defense solution because these are things that you don’t want to get wrong. We’re not using AI to identify stop signs, right? Google maps or something. The consequences are much more severe, is there are people’s lives on the line, American’s lives on the line. So the system has to work every time. And that’s again, another very stringent requirement. That’s a high bar.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s a critical point too, because you can’t just build something and iterate upon it later. As you mentioned, space systems are hard and complex and costly for those exact reasons, and we can’t forget that. Sean, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with us. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation and learned a lot from you. So thank you.
Sean McKay:
Yeah, this was great. Thank you for taking the time.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
No, we appreciate having you on. And to everyone listening, thank you so much for joining the conversation, and please remember that there’s a place for everyone in the global space ecosystem. We’ll see you next time. Bye.
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