Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather “Lucky” Penney. Here on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DOD, industry, and other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy, operational concepts, technology, and policy when it comes to air and space power.

So this week we’re going to talk about cyberspace as in cyber and space like space. Cyber’s an integral element of virtually every facet of modern military operations. The linkage between space and cyber is undeniable because every aspect of space is derived information that transits a cyber domain. And just as importantly, the command and control of satellites and integration of space domain awareness, information all rely on cyber. Naturally. Since its inception, the Space Force is placed great values on cybersecurity and leveraging cyber effects to achieve its mission.

And leading many of these efforts is the S6, the Space Force staff element responsible for cyber and data. And that’s why [00:01:00] we’re thrilled to welcome to the podcast, two of the leaders spearheading these efforts within the S6. First, we have Colonel Nathan “Crazy” Iven, the acting Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Cyber and Data.

Crazy, great to have you here.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: No, it’s awesome to be here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And we also have Mr. Seth Whitworth, the Associate Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Cyber and data as well. Seth, welcome to the Aerospace Advantage.

Seth Whitworth: Hey, thank you. Super excited to be here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And we’re also pleased to have our senior fellows at MI Space, Charles Galbrath. Socks?

Charles Galbreath: Hey Heather, great to be-

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Show me your socks! Show me your socks.

Charles Galbreath: I have astronaut socks today. Yes. Yes.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Sweet.

Seth Whitworth: We didn’t coordinate this, but I brought space socks as well..

Charles Galbreath: Alright! Very good!

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Oh you have space socks as well?

Charles Galbreath: It’s contagious.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Because that’s awesome.

And Jen Reeves, Boots, as well. Boots, great to have you on board.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: As always, I love doing these. Thanks for having me.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So when the Space Force stood up, it’s small size led to new organizational constructs that merge several functions together, but the S6 sounds like you might be shifting to a more traditional approach.

The S6 is the Deputy Chief of Space [00:02:00] Operations for cyber and data.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: So we brought together a lot of disparate pieces that were already existing in this staff, focused on really a broad area across cyber and data. It included cyberspace operations, cybersecurity, communications, IT for the Space Force, and importantly, data across the Space Force.

This was an effort that we’ve been working on for a while. We started it back in 2024 and we finished and successfully stood up the Space Force S6 in November of 2024.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, and I think one of the really cool things is as well, it’s a more traditional structure. When you look at a space staff or any type of joint staff, we really tried to consolidate where there was power to be gains and efficiencies.

So whereas other departments might have their folks working in the ISR realm doing IT specific things, we work with RS two to pull that function into the S6 as well, so that we could have the benefit of pulling the IT, C3T community together all under one roof.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So that’s really important because that means [00:03:00] that the S6 isn’t just the business end of it, so it’s not at your email and things like that.

Because what the Space Force does is so dominantly cyber focused, you’ve got all of that within the S6, which makes your operations really operational.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. It includes operational networks, like SATCOM and the satellite control network, and so it includes what we call mission comms or war fighting comms as well.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So this is quite a departure. I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, it sounds so old, but back in 2020, when we were standing up the Space Force, we stood up the Chief Technology and Innovation Office. And so it had digital transformation and it had data, but it also had some elements that are not part of S6, like science, technology, and research, as well as analysis the traditional S9 function.

Now, I know that those are probably gonna be transitioning to what will become Space Futures Command in the near future, but it sounds like that digital transformation side, the data side [00:04:00] certainly are merging with some other organizations and activities. So cyber operations used to be part of the three, so that’s now part of the six, is that right?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: That’s correct, Charles. we really took all those disparate pieces across the staff, so the folks who are doing cyber operations and the SATCOM team and the Spectrum team that used to be part of COO under the S3. Those have transitioned to the S6.

Charles Galbreath: Wow. Okay.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So being a small service of only 14,000 individuals, and that encompasses your officers, your entire enlisted core and your civilians all together, the Space Force leverage is support from the Department of the Air Force.

So in your mission of cyber and data, I’m guessing you get a lot of help from the Air Force Chief Information Officer or SAF/CN.

Can you talk about the relationship and how S6 is different from CN?

Seth Whitworth: You want me to take this one and start?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, start this one.

Seth Whitworth: Okay.

I think one of the really important things being such [00:05:00] a small service is that we’re gonna have to leverage relationships everywhere we go. It’s not just within the Department of the Air Force, but within DODCIO, across our component partners in the Marine Corps and Navy, leveraging those relationships is really what’s gonna be able to help set us apart. So as we look at SAF/CN, we work with our A6 partners to kind of establish this concept of one department, two services. And while SAF/ CN represents the department, we represent the unique Space Force needs that we bring into the enterprise as well as the war fighter comms areas as Crazy mentioned. But we also work together to ensure that the department is holistically providing those services and those capabilities.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So you rely on the foundation that the SAF/CN provides you, and then you just do the service specific elements of the cyber and the data, within the S6, is that right?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: That’s correct. We look to implement the policy that was, put out the department level. But also focus on the things that are important to the Space Force. And in some cases, specifically in the area of weapon systems, the department of the Air Force, CIO, delegated specific authorities in that [00:06:00] area for us to be able to execute in that area. Because as you mentioned before, we are incredibly focused on the mission part of cyber.

Charles Galbreath: Let’s pull on that thread a little bit about mission versus administrative networks. Because a lot of people think about the

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah the business IT versus operation.

Charles Galbreath: Right the business IT,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Right.

Charles Galbreath: …NIPRNet, SIPRNet things like that. That’s the admin, the business side. But when you’re talking about mission networks, you talked about satellite control network, but there’s other aspects that we need to be rolling in here. The relationship with SAF/CN, that’s more on the admin side.

Is that right, or are they providing support across the board?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: They have the overall authority as the CIO for the department. They have statutory authority for those CIO responsibilities that still apply to the weapon systems, but because both services have unique focuses for their mission systems.

They delegated specific authorities to each of us to be able to execute on that. By design, we look to leverage [00:07:00] all of those what we’ll call enterprise services. That include NIPRNet and SIPRNet and a lot of the transport that we rely on both SAF/CN and our Air Force partners.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s funny because I often think of space as providing a lot of the transport for Air Force data. But it actually is mutualized, especially when it comes to terrestrial operations.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, I think we’re large as we look across the department, we’re seeing a lot of convergence on these.

You know, it used to be really easy to be like, oh, that’s an admin network, that’s an operations network. The benefits of the commodity IT that you can procure today is greatly benefited by interconnections, and so it’s very important that the Space Force be able to represent those interests when we talk about NIPR and SIPR, JWICs and SAP IT, not just a we do mission they do admin, but a we do this holistically together.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And especially as we begin to look at disaggregating kill chains and those long range kill chains and looking at those cross domain effects, we’re really gonna see, I think what you mentioned, Seth, about it, that seeing that kind of convergence [00:08:00] is gonna become even more so as we look across the space domain, the air domain, the terrestrial domain, and how we are able to integrate those capabilities, I think you’re spot on there. So what’s unique about the Space Force is, we mentioned kind of in the intro, is how cyber focused it is because of all the data and the way that you do your operations.

And the Space Force was stood up largely because of increased threats to our nation’s space capabilities and the need for the United States to gain and maintain that space superiority. And some of those threats are actually in the cyber domain. So what’s cyberspace threats jeopardize space superiority, and how does the SF S6 contribute to mitigating those threats?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Since the beginning of the standup of the Space Force, and even well before you always heard senior leaders talking about cyber being the soft underbelly of the Space Force. And that’s still true today, but I’d say it’s pervasive. Look, space operations and cyberspace operations are inseparable. [00:09:00] If we don’t have secure, reliable, access between our weapons systems to complete those long range kill chains, then we’re not gonna be mission effective. And when you look at where the threat has been over the past year the number of launches that China has put up, the fact that in a competition with our adversaries, they are also putting up significant numbers of communication satellites – networks in space. And at the same time, we’re watching them actively exercise jamming capabilities to go against our networks that are completing those kill chains in space. And we also see them trying to integrate capabilities like AI into their counter-space and counter-cyber capabilities.

Seth Whitworth: I think one of the really unique things for the Space Force is that unlike the other services, we experience our [00:10:00] domain fully through cyber. We have very few of any people ever up in the domain and so the ability to leverage, not only cyber effects, but the cyber enablers that exist is going to be key to the Space Force operating and ensuring space superiority.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So I’d assume that assuring cyber capability, so cybersecurity is key to space superiority. Boots and Socks, i’d really like to hear your perspectives on this.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, so when we think about the space architecture, we tend to focus a lot on the satellite.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Charles Galbreath: But there’s actually a whole network of systems that interact here.

There’s the ground element, there’s the link as well as the satellite. And that cyber terrain, if you will, that now has inject points potentially that an adversary could exploit.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Charles Galbreath: And so securing those apertures, securing that network so that you don’t inject a virus that maybe even an AI enabled virus that could then take out the ground network, for example, and [00:11:00] disable multiple satellites at once, you’ve gotta control those entry points and monitor them and then provide robust defenses. And so I think what the S6 is doing from a policy perspective as well as from an operational perspective now is making sure that they’ve got those barriers and those monitoring skills in place to defend that network.

It’s funny to hear you say cyber is the soft underbelly of space because for years we’ve heard that space is a soft underbelly to the Department of Defense and so it’s the soft underbelly of the soft underbelly. That’s pretty soft, but you’re doing everything you can to make it as robust as possible.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah we have to be very conscientious about the kind of reconnoitering that the PLA is doing within our networks. Because it isn’t just about viruses, it’s about their ability to intrude the network and then be able to perhaps take control or, make actions within the cyber domain that could be a real problem. Boots?

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: Absolutely, and remember that we come from a place where early space operations included a lot of discreet networks. [00:12:00] In other words, everything about them was all contained. You had kept- (inaudible)

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. Yeah. Wasn’t opened up.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: -on the ground. And then but what has happened over time, of course, is that the internet, which is now part of everything, is very useful to us, in that those networks may already exist that we can take advantage of, but of course, securing them is exactly what we’re talking about right here.

It’s a growth opportunity on the space side of the house, I would say, and it’s going to continue to get bigger and the importance of this.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, and also you have to integrate, the space cyber networks in order to be able to execute those long range kill chains and be able to integrate with the other domains, whether or not that’s air, sea, or land.

So there’s a demand signal from the other services onto the Space Force to open up those networks and not keep them closed. So a closed network might eliminate any of those entry points that you talked about. But on the other hand, it also means that it can’t support or be integrated into those long range kill chains or other cross domain [00:13:00] effects.

And so there’s that-

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: Exactly.

– demand signal is actually increasing the vulnerabilities to our space assets.

Seth Whitworth: If I could add one more piece, I think it’s gonna be really interesting, especially as we look at some of the legacy systems that existed on the Space Force, you know, we can’t just pull a satellite back down and re cyber harden it. So,

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Right.

Seth Whitworth: We’re gonna have to use some really unique and kind of creative techniques to ensure that that cybersecurity exists before we can open up those networks. It’s gonna require some very talented individuals to go in and do some different and creative things. Which I think we’re for sure building in the space force as we look to modernize our workforce.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: Well if I can, that actually makes me think about other things that are happening in the Space Force that you guys will definitely have a role in. And Space Force has recently published several documents. Including Space Force Doctrine Document one, as well as kind of my favorite, Space War riding the framework, you know, a framework for planners.

So how do you guys in the S6 contribute to meeting these desired end states provided by these key documents? Right? [00:14:00] Operationalizing essentially.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, Boots, i’ll tell you, we are not that far away from some of those closed legacy networks you talked about earlier. Seth was right. It’s gonna take some creativity to integrate both old and new technology as the demand signal gets out there.

And I am with you. I love the War Fighting document. I think that was a great addition to what we have published from the space force standpoint. But back on doctrine document one, the way we define space superiority, we talk about orbital warfare, electronic warfare, and cyber space warfare. And we acknowledge that in the space domain, all of those have offensive and defensive components. So they are mission areas that we recognize that the space force is required to organize and train and equip forces for because we are part of the joint force. At the same time there are a lot [00:15:00] of mission essential functions that have to happen at the same time, creating these mission networks the cybersecurity of those networks.

So it’s both something we provide as a mission area, but also an essential function that we do for the Space Force at the same time.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, and I think as we look at some of the foundational documents and we start to talk about those foundational needs again, I alluded to it and it’s my favorite topic to talk about, which is the workforce. And Charles, you remember as we stood up CTIO, digital workforce was one of those core components.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely, absolutely.

Seth Whitworth: That’s absolutely one piece that we have pulled into the S6 because it’s not just about your traditional cyber or IT people that need a DCWF work role. As we talked about the Space Force experiences its domain through cyberspace, and so we need all of our members, all of our guardians, civilian and military, to have that core foundational knowledge.

So as we leverage newer technologies in the AI realm, as we work to integrate these data pieces, folks understand what’s coming and going from their terminals. And it’s not just a follow the checklist and click the box.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So you, you’ve both talked [00:16:00] about how cyber and the total force, enlisted, officer, and civilian all work together to achieve this. And, and just like you can say in the air domain that air superiority isn’t just air-to-air combat space superiority isn’t just orbital warfare. It’s all of these aspects coming together. So, you play a critical role.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, Seth, I’m glad you mentioned, these newer technologies and the data realm and all of that because, we’ve been talking about space and cyber in your space networks, but those datalinks, the data centers, and all of that’s gonna be a crucial component of this.

And a major focus has been leveraging the commercial market. Last year, DOD and the Space Force, both published strategies for leveraging this commercial space services, capabilities, and technologies, but some of these are still emerging markets. On the digital and cyber side, they’re relatively mature, multi-trillion dollar markets with companies like the Big Five, right? Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. How does this dynamic impact your approach to commercial integration for [00:17:00] achieving cyber resiliency?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Bottom line, there is no way to do this mission area without support from the commercial marketplace. In fact, if you look at the primary weapon system we employ today on our current and our legacy systems, defensive cyberspace operations space, we call it DCOS that’s actually a collection of both government and commercial tools in order to do that defensive cyber warfare mission.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, and to add on to what, Crazy said, it’s gonna be important to find new and innovative ways to leverage those commercial providers. I meet with a lot of folks who talk a lot about, an authority to operate and the complexities of which exist from bringing in the commercial partners. There are a lot of smaller businesses, if we step outside the Big five, that have amazing capabilities that we just struggle to integrate based on some old policies. So, as DODCIO works to blow up the RMF, in the Space Force we’re gonna work to help transition the focus [00:18:00] from compliance to cybersecurity, cyber resilient by design.

You won’t have to chase an ATO if you chase cybersecurity first. We do it in reverse a lot of times. We work on the ATO as opposed to working on implementing cybersecurity.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay, but let me back you up because you have a couple acronyms there. I wanted to deconstruct…

Seth Whitworth: Oh, absolutely

Heather “Lucky” Penney: for our listeners, ATO Authority to Operate, right?

Seth Whitworth: Yes. Yep. it’s the package that you submit that says you may run your software or network or service on a government system.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay. So is the authority to connect part of that?

Seth Whitworth: Authority to connect is part of the ATO. It’s a subset of it and a different piece. You typically need an ATO to get an authority to connect.

So you might have a system that can operate and then the connect says you can establish between two systems.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And what’s the RMF?

Seth Whitworth: RMF is the risk management framework, and you’ll notice it’s just RMF. But oftentimes in DOD becomes the RMF and C for compliance. That’s where we really need to shift away from. That’s what DODCIO is working to do. Which is, hey, this can’t just be a compliance mechanism. We can’t waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in [00:19:00] months and months and months just to check a compliance box. We really need to target cybersecurity upfront.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. It’s very much, like effects based operations.

One of those topics that we talk about here at Mitchell a lot. It’s not necessarily are you checking the box, but are you achieving the effect that you needed to. And in this case, it’s protecting and defending the networks that you’re operating on.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s about a holistic risk perspective.

Again, as the system kind of established, the networks and systems were in a silo, and so an authorizing official was only evaluating that one silo. But all of the networks are interconnected and we’re sharing data and we’re pushing these pieces. So we need authorizing officials and we need a framework that allows us to evaluate the whole risk picture as opposed to just the one system snapshot in time.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And to be able to do that at speed, right?

Seth Whitworth: At speed, yeah, absolutely. It can’t take years or even months at this point. The technology’s advancing at a pace that makes that uneffective for the department.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah.

Charles Galbreath: So I want to go back a little bit to the discussion of some of the tech companies that are out there. You know, Heather mentioned the big five, Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, [00:20:00] and Microsoft and Crazy you said, we can’t do what we need to do in the Space Force without great cooperation with these organizations. But what are you seeing in the technology in investments that they’re making?

What new technologies are emerging that you think offer the most promise for defending our networks, in the Space Force?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: So, Charles, I think one of the places that commercial is ahead of us and can really help is they have already started the shift. And in some cases, I’ve seen some companies complete the shift where they look at things from a data centric perspective instead of a network centric perspective.

Charles Galbreath: Interesting.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: And, you know, we are locked into some of these long acquisition timelines. You heard Seth mention cyber resilient by design. As we take this more data centric approach and we work with the acquisition community, we’re not going to talk about specific cyber [00:21:00] tools that are essentially bolt on, but it’s something that’s designed in from the very beginning so that when we’re building any space system, we’re taking the cyber defenders into account who will operate on the system because it has those inherent capabilities, not because we had to bolt it on.

And I think I’ve seen the move for commercial to be able to focus on the data versus here is a network.

Charles Galbreath: Interesting.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah. I think that’s really important, especially as tools, mature and adopt. And the tools that exist today will be different tools tomorrow and different tools in the future. So we need to make sure that we’re building those foundations to be able to plug in those tools and capabilities as we go.

And it’s not this constant, chasing mechanism.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Because that’s essentially modernizing your capabilities, right? So just like we would modernize a radar on F 16 as an example, modernizing the cyber tools that you use is part of modernizing your weapon system in addition to maintaining the security and the viability of those networks.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Absolutely. When you focus on the [00:22:00] speed, it’s a continuous modernization. It’s not something we think about in terms of deploying in blocks to the weapons system, and that especially when all of this is software driven, we need to get in the mindset of continuous modernization.

Charles Galbreath: Are you talking about DevSecOps, development, security, and operations? And so that’s a software term that gets a lot of discussion, but maybe not outside of the software community.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: No, well, it is, but I-

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Seth, I see you got all excited there.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, I am excited because it is continuous. The second you say I’m cyber secure or I’m modern, or I have the perfect thing, you don’t anymore.

Charles Galbreath: Right.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Seth Whitworth: You have to constantly be- and it’s not just software, it’s the hardware that we use underneath. It’s all of these components. You have to continually be modernizing and planning for that modernization.

Previous DOD acquisitions kind of had this waterfall effect where at some point you were just sustaining that, and that concept has to change.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah. You’ve seen the Secretary of Defense really lean into that with the focus on the software [00:23:00] acquisition pathway, and we’ve had several systems migrate in that direction now.

Charles Galbreath: And the rate of change, particularly on the IT side, or the software side, the digital side, however you wanna call it, that happens at a much faster rate than traditional hardware systems. So you have to constantly evolve.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: So we talked earlier about the size of the Space Force. Making matters worse, you also operate in the largest area of responsibility. So, this means our guardians must be efficient and as effective as possible.

In many cases, this drives the need for integrating digital capabilities like ai: artificial intelligence, cloud computing, things like that. How is the workforce continuing to evolve with respect to these technologies?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Hey Boots, I’ll take that one first. It is one of the Space Force truths that Guardians are going to be uniquely trained, educated, given the experiences to be space [00:24:00] warfighters. In the S6, we take that one step further and we say digitally minded space war fighters. They have to be able to, and we’re not just talking about the cyber folks here, everybody has to be able to leverage that cutting edge technology. And as a small force, we’ve gotta figure out unique ways to do it. And you mentioned AI. Last year we held our inaugural Space Force AI challenge. And it wasn’t just about a competition, it also had learning components involved so that we could teach AI literacy to the force. But it allowed folks to get together in these to build teams as part of learning opportunities, and we had about 350 plus folks participate in this last year with three teams that got to present their AI solutions to a board of senior leaders. And those folks were recognized at the Space Power Conference last year in [00:25:00] December. We have also just put out our announcement for the second annual AI challenge.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And are they trying to solve a problem?

Are you giving them a specific problem to solve or just saying where can ai advance, space operations?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, we’ve given them a broad range, whether that’s in mission systems, whether that’s in supporting infrastructure, but the problem is the key. Like what problem are you going to solve?

And then how can you leverage AI to do that is the focus. So we’ve given them wide range in what they can pursue as part of this challenge.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: Well and if I may, remember when you and I worked together, actually when I was still wearing a uniform, we were actually seeing applications with ai applied to the POM. And how we were maintaining data and getting, help with decision tools for the POM for our budget. And who would think that that [00:26:00] is where you’re gonna actually see ai. So it’s a cool thing that you’re letting everyone have like a broad range of opportunities and options because we were using it for the pom for crying out loud for decision making tools.

It was great. And you’d never think that so cool stuff.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah. In the business systems space, it’s all about saving guardian’s time. And there were a lot of things that you and I did that were very manually intensive. And, you know, everybody’s still using Excel today.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: But it really applies across the spectrum of autonomy.

I mean, we have been using machine learning techniques and space situational awareness for years. And there are probably a lot of other applications and operations that we haven’t even discovered yet.

Charles Galbreath: Crazy, you mentioned something that just kind of warmed me up inside, and that was, within the S6, you think about being digitally minded. And it reminded me that the CTIO, which no longer exists, but one of the first [00:27:00] documents we put out was a vision for a digital service, and we talked about how guardians needed to be digitally minded.

So it’s great to hear that concept is still continuing, even though CTIO is becoming something for the history office to monitor.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, for a second I thought you were gonna be really excited about the POM and that’s where we’re gonna go down, but, I am equally excited about, you know, the vision for a digital service and it’s something that we for sure continue to focus on in the six. It may look a little bit different, it may not be the same construct.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah.

Seth Whitworth: But I, I may be biased here, but I am fully convinced our Guardians are the smartest in the department.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Period.

Seth Whitworth: Hard stop. I talk to a lot of them. For us, it’s about unlocking that potential and enabling the tools and the policies and the capabilities to do it. As Crazy talked about, we look at the Gen AI challenge and we open it up to the rest of the department. We just said, “you have to have a Guardian in charge. The Guardian has to be the team lead.” Since we’ve made the announcement, I’ve already had several other folks reach out and say, “Hey, can you help me find a Guardian? We want to help tackle a problem.” And so, again, I [00:28:00] think Space Force has a real opportunity to kinda lead the forefront here, and tackle these complex problems.

Charles Galbreath: That’s awesome.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: So another aspect to offset the size of the Space Force is the incredible network of close allies. It’s truly one of the United States’s greatest strengths.

So let’s hear about how the S6 works with our allies and kind of what goals you’re getting after.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah Boots, Allied by Design, is an important concept for us. You see it in, we’ve talked about SATCOM. We’ve been partnering on SATCOM for a while but recently from an S6 perspective, we were asked specifically for our expertise in mission networks and data sharing to help support the combined space operations, the CSPO initiative. Given the global nature of space activities and we talked about how we all experience the domain through data, if we’re going to experience the domain through data together with our allies, we’ve also [00:29:00] gotta be able to share that data so we all have the same understanding.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Oh that’s a tough nut to crack, right?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: It is. This effort’s been going on for a little bit over 10 years with 10 different countries.

We were recently asked to come in and help aid connectivity through the mission partner environments and how to share data. So we have been having meetings over the last several months with what are the initial steps we can take to bring those together. So I’m really looking forward to what the team comes up with over the next year.

Charles Galbreath: So Crazy, you talked about some of these efforts been going on for 10 years. The S6 has only stood up since November of 24, so about seven months now. But even in that short time, you’ve had some meaningful successes.

So can you tell us, give us an example of what stands out to you as one of the highlights, from that short time, and then also what are you looking forward to here in the near future?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, when I look back to where we were when we started the [00:30:00] original planning team to stand up the S6 and where we are now, I’m really amazed that it’s only been a year. When you look at where we’ve brought cyberspace operations together, where we’ve started implementing some of the defense cyber workforce roles across our military guardians that are doing cyberspace, and we’re starting to integrate that across the civilians as well, when you look at what we did with the AI challenge and really the things we’ve done in data. It was when we decided how to name the S6 was an interesting conversation-

Charles Galbreath: it’s what comes after five, right?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yes.

Seth Whitworth: But right before seven,

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: It’s tough because right now, general Burt has so many numbers in hers we can’t always go in order.

Charles Galbreath: That’s true.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: But, we settled on cyber and data. And it’s funny, a lot of times everyone says, well, you can’t say [00:31:00] cyber without some other qualifier, but that was kind of the point here, was that it encompassed all of it and we really wanted to focus on data because of that was important. We put out several requirements documents over the past year one particularly for the data component and the data team within the S6 has an action plan that they execute every year.

And we’ve made a lot of strides. One of the, one of the programs that successfully transitioned to the DOD software acquisition pathway was the unified data library. And part of that was based on work that was done defining the requirements for that. So there’s been a lot to be excited about for the past year.

Charles Galbreath: It’s awesome.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, and I think as we stood up, I’m truly proud of the team that kind of came together and didn’t allow a single ball to drop. Didn’t miss a beat, just took up their new mission set and really chased down and started running things. Over the past year, Crazy and I have been acting in these roles.

I really think we’ve accomplished a lot. But one of the big focuses has been on the [00:32:00] relationships that we’ve built. We made a decision early on that we were gonna target relationships as something that we absolutely wanted to build as this new organization stood up.

And that’s relationships from the DAF to the DOD to mission partners, to defensive partners. We really went out there and said, you know, we want the S6 to be a force for good and something that can be a true enabler.

Charles Galbreath: So Seth, you said you and crazy have been acting in these positions and that’s true.

And for a while I was acting as well, but for our listeners, Colonel Nathan “Crazy” Iven has been acting as the services S6 for how many months now Crazy?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: We stood up the interim-

Charles Galbreath: Not to put you on the spot to do math here, but

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah.

Charles Galbreath: Over a year.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: It has been over a year. It’s been almost a year and a half if we go back to CTIO days.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah.

And so for any other military service, that role is done by a two or a three star, right? So when we talk about the size of the space force and how deep the bench is, [00:33:00] here’s a great colonel who’s been acting as a two or a three star for over a year, almost a year and a half. So we need to grow the Space Force folks.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: We do. Seth was absolutely right, talking about targeting partnerships and relationships. Our DOD teammates have been instrumental in making sure that the S6 was successful as we stood up. Outstanding support from the Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Navy, all of the six staffs that live in the Pentagon have been incredibly supportive.

Because when you look at the relative size of our team compared to theirs, there’s a significant difference there. One of the things that we’re really excited about is the bringing on of the actual S6.

Charles Galbreath: Woo-hoo!

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Ms. Charlene Laughlin will be coming to be the new S6 from being the vice director of the Joint Staff J6.

So it comes with a lot of operational [00:34:00] experience, coming from the joint staff and we’re super excited for her to come on board.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, fantastic. And Crazy, I think it also speaks a lot to your leadership and Seth, to your leadership and the power of your integrity and character and influence, as well as the foundational importance of the Space Force, in the cyber and data domain that you’ve been able to establish these relationships that the other services have been so supportive.

So, thank you and congratulations to the good work that you’ve done setting that pathway for the Space Force. There’s clearly a lot on the Space Force’s plate though, so, what challenges does Space Force still face with respect to cyber and data, and how can industry help with those challenges?

Seth Whitworth: Yeah. You know, we’ve talked a lot about it today, but I’ll hit it again. I think it’s that this community, this area is going to be ever changing. And so as we look to industry, and it’s not just industry, but as we look to academia and those other pieces, it’s helping us make sure that, one, we’re not falling behind and we’re keeping up with the trends and changes that are happening on an almost daily [00:35:00] basis. When we look at how we conduct operations in cyberspace, while there are some differences there’s gonna be a lot of similarities to how big banks protect their networks to how the Stock Market makes sure that it stays up with five nines. So I think we can leverage a lot of the capabilities and tools that are leveraged in industry as well. It’s just finding the ways to integrate those and implement them inside the DOD community.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, I think that integration is key. One of the challenges that industry can help us overcome is how do we integrate proprietary data or proprietary ways of doing business into the broader DOD ecosystem. Because, we’ve been talking about this for a while. We’re trying to avoid vendor lock, but we’re looking for the faster spin that industry does to be able to bring that into the ecosystem.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, it’s a challenge to simultaneously protect intellectual property, how that company stays in business and makes money with how you integrate [00:36:00] to present a synchronized and synergistic architecture for the Department of Defense and for the Space Force against potential adversaries. Yeah, it’s a real challenge.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I’m glad you brought that up, because leveraging both the military elements and stuff that the Space Force brings uniquely as well as our commercial and our civil markets, is really gonna be key to our broader national power. General Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, talked about the need to stay in competition and not escalate into conflict when it comes to space.

So he wants to be able to control that escalation ladder. And the Space Force’s Theory of Success. Competitive endurance is a central guiding document to that approach. so how does the cyber and data element of the Space Force contribute to this competitive endurance?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: One of the key elements of the CSOs theory of success is avoiding operational surprise. And the ability to detect and preempt anything that’s happening in the operational environment, particularly from a cyberspace [00:37:00] side. Like I said before, it is impossible to separate space operations and cyberspace operations. And so there’s a key role there to play from a cyberspace operations perspective and being able to achieve space superiority. But it really applies across all the mission areas, whether you’re talking about space domain awareness being able to fuse intelligence or surveillance or reconnaissance data and being able to report that in a timely and accurate way so that commanders can make decisions.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: So I think there are just a number of things, writ large that, Our cyber and data discipline and awareness and skills and all of the things that we have to be focused on how they contribute. Just sort of writ large.

For decision superiority, you talked about that already Crazy. It’s super important. It goes back to very basics, right? Protecting our mission systems. We’ve mentioned that multiple times. [00:38:00] Our persistent awareness, to enable what we’re doing in the realm of situational awareness. And then one of the things that I think is most important is understanding, trying to help understand, what’s happening in the gray zone, malicious behavior, right? Seeing what’s going on, understanding the jamming, the spoofing, the surveillance. All of that has been mentioned earlier and it’s just, super important.

Cyber hygiene, zero trust architecture and active defense measures, ensure our mission continuity without having to escalate.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I think that’s really, insightful there Boots, because if you have a resilient architecture, if you’re able to maintain control of your operations, if you’re able to trust your data, that prevents you from having to move up the escalation ladder because you have control of your operations.

This is the foundation of space superiority that provides that competitive endurance.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, absolutely. We have to be able to deny that first mover advantage. You know, we have to make sure, or we have to make a first strike in space. Not only impractical, but self-defeating, discouraging our adversaries from [00:39:00] taking such an action in the first place.

And that is gonna rely on those resilient architectures. It’s gonna rely on baking, cybersecurity in upfront, not the bolt-on after effect. It’s having those assured networks and comms and ability to operate and maneuver and ensuring that our adversary is not able to move first.

Charles Galbreath: You know, last year, we had our workshop focusing on the theory of competitive endurance, and what we threw some scenarios at the participants, over the next 25 years, and one of them was a satellite being hijacked via a cyber means, and then being used as a potential kinetic weapon. So we baked into that exercise something about cyber, but what was really interesting to me was some of the other challenges that we presented our participants came back with cyber solutions.

So even a Russian nuclear asat, they’re like, well, maybe there’s a cyber means that we could make that system null and void. And so it was a responsible counterspace campaigning using a cyberspace effect to nullify a first strike. And of [00:40:00] course the domain awareness. There was another scenario where we had, a massive, potential buildup by China of space-based weapons. And so monitoring that large domain of activity and keeping track of everything that required the data fusion of all of the sensor feeds into one coherent picture. And so it was another example of, using a cyber or, a digital means to achieve an effective understanding and avoiding that operational surprise.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, Charles, I think providing as many options as possible to national decision makers is extremely important. Also, in this area, the way we describe maneuver in the cyberspace domain is important.

US Cyber Command has always taken a defend forward approach. When you talk about maneuver and avoiding operational surprise, in some ways, that means maintaining constant [00:41:00] contact with the enemy.

I n cyberspace and in cybersecurity, we have always gone with the assumption that if you aren’t, you will be hacked. And if we recognize that, but then based on how we understand our cyberspace terrain, how we understand the feeds from the sensors and how we position our defensive cyber warfare force, that is how we maintain constant contact.

Even if they’re right there, it avoid operational surprise.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s really fascinating. And Charles, I’m glad you brought up the competitive endurance workshop. And we will include a link to that in our show notes. But there are also current examples of conflict to learn from regarding the cyber and and data space domain.

So based off what we’re seeing in Russia and Ukraine and Iran and Israel, what insights or unclassified observations on cyber warfare, that the Space Force needs to account for and what are they, in your opinion?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: If you are just scanning the headlines over [00:42:00] the past month, the amount of activity in the cyberspace domain as a result of ongoing political actions. Dramatic increase if you just look at, the month of June compared to the month of May. So that’s the real takeaway.

That is that it is inevitable and it impacts all aspects of national power. It’s not just on the military side, and in some cases the ones and zeros don’t discriminate. And so you have to be ready for some of that.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: That’s a really important point. Ones and zeros don’t discriminate.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. And you know, we talk a lot about how space is baked into every part of our daily lives, but so is cyber and maybe even more so for many folks. So protecting it as you said, Crazy, it’s not just a military necessity, it’s a national information, economic, decision making priority.

Seth Whitworth: Yeah, and I think you don’t even have to look to some of the conflicts that are ongoing currently. In early October [00:43:00] 2024, media outlets reported that PRC State sponsored hackers had infiltrated US telecommunications companies known as Salt Typhoon. If you look at that component in a non-conflict and what impacts that can have across the entire spectrum as we’ve talked a lot about today, everything is interconnected, everything is networked.

And so where do those pieces, you know, play and how can we ensure that we’re moving ahead and banking in that cybersecurity piece. Just up upfront.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: Yeah, Seth, I think what you just said is so, so important. Because what it essentially means is that civilian infrastructure is fair game.

Because we are so interconnected with what our military systems are, government systems, civil systems, international systems, but they’re all interlaced. And so it ends up being that civilian infrastructure is fair game. And that’s very interesting because we don’t have very clear lines when it comes to, well, was that a malicious act? Was that an act of war?

What was that and how do we treat [00:44:00] it differently? For example, if it was a military network versus a commercial network. I think these are big issues, that are being brought to the forefront right now, because the events are happening more and more frequently. And then on top of that, one of the things that I think is most interesting is narrative and attribution, right? What are we saying about this? What are our allies saying? What are our adversaries saying? Then what does the rest of the world think about it? What do Americans think about it? Is it a big deal for them or is it not a big deal until, I don’t know, your iPhone doesn’t work anymore.

I mean, when’s it a big deal? and I think there are lots of interesting things that because it’s cyber and because of how cyber is set up in our world today, not just from a military perspective, but how it is so built into everything. There are questions that have to be asked, that probably have been asked, that probably don’t have good answers yet.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Hey Boots, you brought up a really great, point of view [00:45:00] because this gets back to the competitive endurance and controlling the escalation ladder. If you have the resilience, if you can secure, if you can prevent or rapidly, deny the adversary and advantage within cyber, you might be able to attribute so that it gives you decision space without having the escalation, the uncontrolled escalation on your side of having to endure the adverse consequences to your national society.

Seth, you brought up our banking systems, the market and so forth, that would be utterly devastating when it comes to cyber. So being able to control that and prevent adverse consequences through that security is really crucial. And again, there’s no clean lines here, right?

There’s no clean lines between military, civil, military, commercial, and so forth, especially when it comes to the cyberspace. Gentlemen, I’d love to give you some last remarks. So as we close out the podcast, any takeaways that you really wanna leave our audience with?

Seth Whitworth: Hey, thanks. I really wanna start a thank you to the Mitchell Institute. This has been wonderful to [00:46:00] get out here and talk about this. As Boots just alluded to, sometimes people just don’t really realize how much is cyber and how much those pieces. If my iPhone works and turns on, I’m good. But it’s all intertwined. It’s all inter networked. And specifically for the military and our ability to conduct cyber effects, it’s really important that people have a deeper understanding of how those things go.

And so I wanna thank you for having us on today to talk about cyber and data and why it’s so important not only to the Space Force, but to the broader DOD to the federal government, and to everybody out there because we can’t do space without cyber. And the American people rely on space for their every day.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Seth, I’m glad you said that ’cause I was about to say that as well. Thank you for being here because it’s very clear after this conversation that if we don’t have the cyber, if we don’t have the data right, we can’t have the Space Force. And if we don’t have a space force, none of the joint force operations are able to function.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: It’s great to be able to hang out with some old teammates today on the podcast. This was fun. You know, we talked about the importance of the space and cyberspace to the [00:47:00] organized training and equip mission we have at the headquarters, the Space Force. I’m super proud of the work that the team, and I’m gonna expand the team really to the collective cyberspace community within the Space Force.

We are a small force and even within that force the folks that the S6 represents is a small group. But a lot has been done in this past year. So I’m super proud of the work they’ve done. It’s really a sign of the importance of the mission of cyberspace and the importance of data to our domain.

And I’m really looking forward to what’s gonna happen over the next year as we move forward.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you so much. I mean, although the Space Force is much smaller than we need it to be, y’all punch way above your weight. So Crazy, Seth, Socks, and Boots, thank y’all for being here and, we look forward to having you back again.

Seth Whitworth: Hey, thanks so much.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Thank you.

Charles Galbreath: Thanks.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: Thanks again.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And with that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guest for joining in today’s conversation. [00:48:00] I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued support and for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard today, don’t forget to hit that like button or follow or subscribe to the Aerospace Advantage.

You can also leave a comment to let us know what you think about our show or areas that you would like us to explore further. As always, you can join in on the conversation by following the Mitchell Institute on X, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and you can always find us at mitchellaerospacepower.org. Thanks again for joining us and have a great aerospace power kind of day. See you next time.

Gentlemen, can you describe your mission and how the organization was formed?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Sure. As you mentioned, cyber and data were spread.

Charles Galbreath: Hold, hold on, Hold on, I’m sorry, Shane. Crazy. Can you sound a little more enthusiastic?

I mean, even, even from your, from the intro. Great to be here. [00:49:00] It was, it was a little lackluster, so you might want to redo that one.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: He’s, he’s even keel

Charles Galbreath: And then

Heather “Lucky” Penney: He’s, he’s even keel

Charles Galbreath: For the discussion of

Yeah. Let’s talk about the mission. Yeah, sure.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Which is funny. Boots has never seen me animated.

Charles Galbreath: Can we get a,

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: You and I have done some briefings, have we not? Man,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Blood pressure.

Jennifer “Boots” Reeves: That’s awesome.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Nice and low. Yeah.

Can you talk about the relationship and how S6 is different from CN?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Sure. The,

Seth Whitworth: This one you can probably go, I suppose

Charles Galbreath: If I have to,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And how does the SF S6, contribute to mitigating those [00:50:00] threats?

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Sure. We’re I think the post chat, you’re just gonna all be, I’ll be bloop, you know, bloopers,

Seth Whitworth: I’ll just start jabbing him a little right before he go, goes to answer. That way we get a,

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: We get it out of there.

Charles Galbreath: Sorry, Shane.

 

Seth Whitworth: How’d we do my, that was my first podcast.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Dude. You guys rocked. That was after we gave you a little bit of a

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, I know. I’m,

Heather “Lucky” Penney: you know, i’m,

Seth Whitworth: it’s funny.

I’m glad you broke out because the way you started, I was like, oof.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: This is the first time I haven’t done so-

Charles Galbreath: Great to be here.

Col Nathan “Crazy” Iven: Yeah, I know.

Seth Whitworth: It’s like an asmr video. Hey, thank you all for coming.