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.

This week, it’s time for the Rendezvous, our monthly look at what’s happening in Washington DC when it comes to air and space power, plus important national security trends we should be watching around the globe. The headlines have been busy, so there’s a lot to discuss. And to be clear, we’re recording this on Wednesday, the 2nd of April.

So, if world events have developed since then, we’ll catch that on the next episode. And with that, I’d like to welcome our Washington experts, Lazer Lazarski and Sledge Harmer. Lazer.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Great to be back.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And Sledge.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Good to see you as always.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: We’ve also got General Houston “Slider” Cantwell.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Great to be here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Doug Birkey.

Doug Birkey: Hey.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And Charles Galbreath.

Charles Galbreath: Great to be back.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And everyone’s gonna bring some key air and space perspectives. [00:01:00] So Charles, we normally start with a HIll update, but the Mitchell Institute hosted Chief of Space Operations, General Saltzman last week. It’s a big deal. Anytime we welcome Service Chief to the office. And by the way, for our listeners, we’ll include a link to that in our show notes, and you can always find it on our webpage. But anyhow, getting back to that, what were the main takeaways from General Saltzman’s presentation?

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, thanks, Heather. It, it was like you said, it was great to have the Service Chief back with us here in our new building and for Schriever Space Power Series.

The biggest takeaway was when he said, you know, there was a fundamental disconnect between the criticality of what the Space Force is doing and the funding it is receiving.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Mm mm-hmm.

Charles Galbreath: Right?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And it, and we’ve talked about that a lot.

Charles Galbreath: We have talked about that a lot, but it was very, very exciting slash worrying. I don’t know what the right word is here, but when he said we could take another $10 billion right now. Right? In the near term to help kickstart our activities. And for those doing.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:02:00] Let’s call that heartening, right? To hear, to hear the service chief say, not only do we need the funding, but we could actually obligate and spend it in a useful manner right now.

Charles Galbreath: Right. So there’s different ways to look at this and you’re absolutely right. Having the service chief be willing to state that that’s what they, they need and that they are able to put that on contract if they were receiving it. That is all very, very exciting. The downside is they haven’t gotten it.

And thanks to continuing resolutions, spending power has been decreasing over the past couple years. But bottom line back to $10 billion is roughly 33% growth from where they are at now. And frankly, that 33% growth could probably continue for the next three to four, maybe even five years. To get the space for spending at where it needs to be to counter the threats and deliver the type of capabilities that, you know, are called for by Congress standing up the Space Force, you know.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and frankly that any joint force operation relies upon.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I mean, space is foundational to our every service employs.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely. [00:03:00] And we need to be able to defend our space assets and hold at risk adversary space assets because they, China in particular, are accelerating at breathtaking, jaw dropping, mindboggling… there’s been a lot of descriptions about how quickly China is moving out.

Another aspect of General Saltzman’s comments, were that they’re going to be releasing the Space War fighting strategic framework in the near future. And when General Deptula asked him about that, he said, you know, for those on the inside, it’s not gonna be that revolutionary. But what it is, is a common vocabulary to describe space superiority and the activities that need to occur in order to achieve it.

And that’s important because we have to normalize the discussion about what is space superiority? How do we achieve it? How do all of the different organizations within the Department of Defense contribute to it? Why is it so critical and what do we need, capabilities, personnel, et cetera, to achieve it. So, I’m really looking forward to the release of that document and the discussions that we’ll be able to have to help further normalize of that because of that [00:04:00] document.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Because I mean, for decades we’ve been prohibited from even saying warfighting and space in the same sentence. So, the fact that this is coming out with a vocabulary that we can use to describe space warfighting is huge.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, so the cat’s outta the bag there were saying space war fighting and it’s not something that we wanted as the United States, but it’s something that our adversaries have brought us to because they are contesting it.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, Lazer and Sledge bring us up to speed on the hill. Charles described yet another cr we don’t have an FY 26 budget request. So, what are folks doing? Because we’d normally be flooded with the stand standard budget hearings at this time of year. What’s going on?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: I know I was more excited listening about what’s going on in space, but well we’ll go over to the hill. It’s been busy. Matter of fact, I’m sure Sledge and I have been passing each other multiple times on the hill over the last couple weeks. Congress is focus on getting the government up and running and preparing for FY 26 bills. And then politics aside, the first order of [00:05:00] business for the Senate with a new administration is to confirm all the new administration nominees and get them into positions across the different federal agencies.

‘Cause the country can’t, I mean, just like the military, we cannot operate on actings. We need appointed and confirmed leaders in all the positions so they can start executing, you know, what is being, dictated down to them and what we’re gonna be doing. And everybody knows it’s a messy process. It’s subject to holds and filibusters, but the Senate’s working its way. There’s roughly 1,300 nominees, there’s about 64 confirmable positions in DOD. And thank goodness the defense nominees are finally getting hearings. We had the Secretary of Defense, secretary of the Army, secretary of Navy are all confirmed, and the process was slowed a little bit because you have to have complete paperwork and the paperwork was not complete and you can’t schedule hearings.

But the good thing is we’ve already had hearings to include, secretary of the Air Force, but on the 27th of March, the 1st of [00:06:00] April, so it’s a total of five there. We’ve got another four coming on 8 April. At the same time, Congress is working to get a budget resolution and that’s just the top line, spending numbers, and instructions on how we’re gonna operate this year, how Congress is gonna operate.

It also includes reconciliation, which we discussed, last podcast. And while it’s not done yet, it looks like there’s gonna be some movement in the Senate. So, hopefully maybe they’ll get a budget resolution done by the end of April or early May. And then simultaneously getting into what you talked about at the very beginning is FY 26 bills.

So, Congress members, staff committees are doing everything they can to build the FY 26 bills and have them together, minus the budget because it hasn’t come on over so they can get back on some sort of normal timeline. And the present budget should have been submitted on the 3rd of February. But as with all new administrations, they, tend to be late.

We’re hearing the skinny budget could come over, most likely the end of the month. [00:07:00] And then they’re, we’re hearing a full budget the end of May with justification books to follow, possibly in June. So, this puts Congress in a bind because they gotta hold hearings, they gotta have staffer days where the professional staff meet with the subject matter experts to get briefed on all the programs.

Then they need to put the bill together in the committee and hold a meeting with all the members so that we can make changes to the bill and then send it to the floor in the house and the Senate. And this is all supposed to happen before the August recess, which we’ll see. I think the NDAAs will get done hopefully but, uh, I’m not sure about, the appropiations bills. And then when you add in there all the meetings with industry, nonprofits, business interest groups, constituents, they’ve all been up since the beginning of the year through now, and they will be through May. And it, just makes a really crazy time on the hill, but they are moving forward.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah just a couple things to add. I think, first of all, I know Charles hit on this, that the impact of a CR is pretty bad. But the, the good thing about FY 25 [00:08:00] full year CR is it’s behind us now. It’s over. And we can at least look with a little bit more clarity into the future. It’s not a traditional CR in legal terms.

I mean, there was money added above the FY 24 enacted level. It wasn’t quite what the 25 budget request was, and it didn’t keep up for inflation. So, it is a real cut in terms of purchasing power for DOD. There were also authorities that allowed new starts, pretty broad reprogramming authorities that went into that. But I guess the end of all that really is OMB now looks at that full year CR as more of an appropriations bill.

And if you remember when General Spain was over on the hill for his, testimony recently, he talked about a $15 billion cut to the Air Force. That would’ve been if the CR sequester under the Fiscal Responsibility Act last year had come into effect, but the ruling by OMB takes those off the table and now it’s time to move forward with 26.

[00:09:00] And I agree with the timeline that Lazer’s laid out there. The only thing, I’m not optimistic, we’re gonna have a budget resolution done by the end of April because of the two week recess in there and the bickering that’s going on back and forth between the Senate Republicans and now more recently the House Republicans. Particularly the fiscal hawks that say, the Senate said the House big, beautiful bill was dead on arrival in the Senate.

The fiscal hawks in the House are now saying that, Hey Senate, you need to go back to the drawing board. So, I think there’s still a lot of work to be done as we move forward on that. We will get there, there will be a reconciliation package. And I think to Charles’ earlier point about General Saltzmans’, talk there, this may be the way that the Space Force gets that $10 billion that they need because I think he very clearly articulated that there’s a requirement that they have the ability to spend the money. And if they were actually paying attention, I think the folks that are working on the reconciliation package will add that money in. So there is, there is hope there. [00:10:00]

Charles Galbreath: That’s great to hear.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, gentlemen, can you speak a little bit more about the DOD specifics regarding the CR? I mean, my understanding is basically it’s a CR, right? So, no new starts, same funding levels, et cetera, except for some exceptions for specific programs that are either identified within the House appropiations or the Senate appropiations, which is followed by 45 day plan from DOD regarding how they wanna spend that. Do I understand that correctly?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. That’s essentially correct. So the CR, which is the law, basically said, Hey, DOD, here’s a full year CR with a couple of, policy, anomalies. Come back to us with your spend plan in 45 days. And part of that spend plan, if you want to deviate from, you know, existing programs, it had what, whatever deviation or whatever programs you want to do, had to appear in either the Senate or the House appropriations mark.

So that’s what the law says. Now, there was a letter that went over to DoD from Congress. It was signed by Senator McConnell and signed by [00:11:00] Congressman Calvert that basically said, here’s a list of the programs that you need to, if you’re gonna move money or you’re gonna do other things, out of the CR these are the programs.

So, DOD has to balance, are they gonna take a letter that came over from Republican members of the Congress as a intent of the Congress? Or any anomalies or any new programs, or are they gonna go back to the source documents? I hear that’s being answered differently in each of the services. But I don’t really have firsthand knowledge of any of the specifics. Lazer, anything to add to that?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Just a little bit on, I mean, there was, they minus being a full bill, they did as best they could short of having a full bill to include a lot of anomalies and exceptions for DOD. Like number one is flexibility. I mean, everybody wanted every, all the leaders wanted an additional flexibility in the CR if they were gonna have to go on a CR. And it was the first time DOD has ever been on a CR. So, they included flexibility for new acquisition starts to procure new [00:12:00] weapon systems. They increased transfer authority amounts from six to $8 billion.

So, I think Congress did as much they could short of getting a bill passed with everything that you said and Sledge said. But again, this is still a cut. I mean, it’s still bad for DOD. I think it’s worse for the Space Force, but hopefully through reconciliation we will get some additional funding for Space Force.

Doug Birkey: And I, if I could jump in on this, I think one of the biggest frustrations I’ve got is it’s robbing us of time. Right now, the services, all of them need to ramp to new capabilities and new capacity. And the industrial base also needs to ramp. And this is robbing us of one more year where we’re on this kind of austere, steady state diet with frankly some hits because like we said, it’s actually a cut. And when we look at what we experienced with Ukraine trying to scale the munitions build, or if we’re looking at trying to scale aircraft builds, or Heather just did the report on the pilot crisis.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Or even starting NGAD right?

Doug Birkey: Yeah. It’s, [00:13:00] we need to ramp these elements and it is adding tremendous instability how do you plan for that and how do you manage risk and all?

We’re not gonna get this year back, and in all accounts, we gotta grow. And that is very, very difficult. You really can’t make up for it. It takes you x amount of months to produce a pilot or to get raw materials and to increase your line.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. I’m just gonna pile on that to what Doug said. When this CR is over at the end of September, the existence of the Space Force will have spent roughly 45% of its time in CR. And so when you have a new service that’s predicated on the need to grow, and you can’t do that during a CR, when your budget spending power is actually decreasing, year in and year out because of inflation, it’s just no way to create a new service. Especially one as critical as we’ve talked about as the Space Force.

Hopefully Reconciliation, will come through and plus up their bottom line and show a steady increase over the coming years. Hopefully, maybe, the Department of [00:14:00] Defense prioritization activities might give a little more resources to the Space Force through their spending. But what we absolutely need is consistent passing of defense authorizations so that we can grow the Space Force the way we need to and get out of this habit of relying on Continuing Resolutions. And, I don’t wanna disagree with our experts here, but to say that the CR is over because it’s been passed, we’ve still got six more months to live with it here in fiscal year 25. And, and, gotta do the best we can hold our breath and keep plowing forward.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, at least one way that, Congress is moving forward is within the hearings that Sledge you and Lazer spoke about, for example, the Secretary of the Air Force nominee, Troy Meink testified last week in his confirmation hearing yesterday, we heard from the nominee for the Chairman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine.

What are your top takeaways there? So, Charles, first we’re, we’ll start with you and then we’ll go to Slider, but I wanna hear from everyone around the table.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. So, Dr. Meink, during his confirmation hearing, he talked about the need to [00:15:00] change to grow Space Force. I’m gonna talk from a space perspective. I know Slider can talk from the air perspective, but you know, the need to grow the Space Force, the need to change and and transform. He talked about streamlining the acquisition process to deliver capabilities, more quickly. He resonated with the need for space superiority, which of course has been the Space Force’s and General Saltzman’s main line for quite a while now.

And he did voice support for the Sentinel program, which as we heard from General Chilton’s recent paper rollouts, that the keys to deterrence are maintaining the nuclear triad. And I love the way he described legs of the stool being the airborne, the submarine, and the ICM fleet. But then it’s the seat brought together by space capabilities for missile warning and command and control that is absolutely essential.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And by the way, for our audience, we’ll include a link to that rollout with General Chilton in our show notes.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: All right. Fantastic. I really liked a lot of stuff he said. He was threat focused. He talked about being committed to staying ahead of our adversaries, technology [00:16:00] acquisitions. He brings a wealth of knowledge on the acquisitions process and mention the importance of, making the process more productive and more productive for the war fighter. Some things that caught my attention. He was very supportive of about every program that every congressman wanted to bring up.

So, it’ll be interesting to see as he gets into the job, what does he actually prioritize? There was certainly some concerns about the Air National Guard. What’s the future of the guard? They mentioned that there were 15 squadrons that didn’t have any recap plans. So that’s gonna be certainly put on his plate when he gets in the seat.

And then finally, when it comes to the readiness of the force, he made a comment about the KC 135 and how it was zero time, then practically a brand new aircraft essentially. And we’ll see how that goes moving forward. We all know we’ve done maintenance on very old aircraft. They’re never actually really brand new aircraft until you get a no kidding brand new aircraft off the assembly line.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, no, there are structural elements that even if you do a service life extension program, [00:17:00] that you really just don’t have the ability to address.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. If I could jump in there on Slider’s point, I think the real question, for the new secretary will be is, is he going to take on the traditional budget allocation battle within the Pentagon?

The Air Force needs more than one third of the budget to provide the services and capabilities that they do.

Doug Birkey: I think it’s really interesting too. If you look at the questions that were asked, what people are, the members are constantly focusing on a lot on the capacity issues. Slider mentioned the issue about Guard fighter pieces, tankers, and all that. Largely through the composition of who is there with members who didn’t hear a lot about bomber, but clearly it’s an issue.

I think also we heard people talk very much, Sledge, about that budget point. Now, in many ways, the point of the confirmation hearing is just to get through it. So, in many ways the, the psych half nominee didn’t show a lot of carts and they’re very generalized answers, not controversial to an extreme. At times there were some softballs that he just let go. I mean, Senator Cotton asked him [00:18:00] point blank about pass through and the need to get that out and he made a very generalized response really in a different direction. And he does come from the intel world, so it’s hard to know where his cards lay on that.

But in our opinion, clearly they gotta fix stuff like that if we’re gonna see the budgets, align how they need to based on the threat and requirements and where we are in a recap phase and personnel. But I think there’s a lot unknown. I mean, these are very generalized responses. I mean, in the written responses I went through, I mean, he did say some good things. He did say that the department’s advantage is shrinking. Overmatch is a concern. He did affirm oldest and smallest on the Air Force fleet. He did talk about the need to really consider space as a contested domain and that we had to be very aggressive on space superiority.

It was interesting too, in those written questions, it was always space first, then air. It’s probably the first time we’ve ever seen that. And maybe that’s not a bad thing, but it’s just very interesting. It shows its background and how he approaches it.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: I’ll throw [00:19:00] in, those are written back in the building, obviously, they’re his responses.

But there’s a lot of input into those. And I, and what you said before is right. The hearings are always a circus. It’s in front of cameras and the best meetings that I know Sledge have had, and I’ve had, with our bosses, is behind closed doors. That’s when the real questions get asked, and that’s where the real answers come.

So, each one of those members, not everyone, but most of them had a meeting with him beforehand, before they ever got into the hearing.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, then gentlemen, what do you think the members are actually looking for from the SECAF nominee when it comes to executing in today’s environment? I mean, did we see that in the hearing itself, those closed door meetings? I mean, what’s your sense of, where they’re at?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: First of all, I would say for the hearings. And again, I, I agree with Lazer, they are primarily theatrical in nature there. And very parochial for the most part. I mean, you would expect a senator from Missouri to ask what’s gonna happen at Whiteman. Those, I mean, that’s just the way it is and that’s the nature of a [00:20:00] representative government. The closed door meetings are where the rubber’s really gonna hit the road. But I think, you could break the expectations down and I think in partisan issues. It’s for the Republicans, it’s gonna be, are you gonna support the commander in chief? And for the Democrats, it’s largely gonna be, are you gonna be an impendent advisor to the president on matters of air and space? And that probably would be as about as general as you could get.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Did anyone watch, the chairman.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Yes.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Hearings yesterday? Do you wanna say something of that?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. And I think that not only for the Secretary nominee, but for General Caine to be the chairman. Again, very parochial line of questioning. I think the Democratic senators made it very clear they do not want the chairman communicating on Signal. Um, that, that was.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Surprise, surprise.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Um, and there’s a balance there too. When you’re the principal military advisor to the President, there’s a balance between what do you share with the commander in chief in private and confidence and then what you share with our elected officials. The [00:21:00] take, takeaway I had from both the secretary’s hearing and yesterday’s hearing with General Caine was I thought both of them were extremely well prepared and competence shows.

I thought, unlike some of the other nominees that have more of a business background. Subject matter expertise in national security matters. Really, really came through during their confirmation hearings. And I think both are gonna do a spectacular job.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Yeah. Just following on. I mean, and a comment was made is just to get through the hearing and I agree with Sledge. I thought they did an outstanding job. I didn’t see any slip ups, and I thought they came off very knowledgeable and very competent. And you didn’t get a lot of the “oh, well, when,” I mean, there was always a standard, “well, if confirmed…” but I thought both hearings were great. And I also, looking, and again, if you look at the defense committees, while there’s Republican, Democrats, and there’s disagreements, they tend to be more bipartisan in than any of the other committees. And we’re focused on one [00:22:00] thing, which is national security. And I think that came through despite, you know, there’s always gonna be disagreements, you know, who’s gonna ask particular questions, but overall, I thought they were great hearings.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you for that. If there’s any point in time that the Department of the Air Force really needs this kind of competent leadership, it’s gonna be now.

Alright folks, so moving down Pennsylvania Avenue, we had a huge announcement in the Oval Office, the F 47. And I’m just gonna throw down right now. I think it’s gonna be called the Golden Eagle. Like that?

Anyhow, we referred to it for a long time as NGAD the next generation air dominance, and it was an open question whether the Air Force was gonna actually pursue this question in the last administration. So, what are your all’s thoughts on the decision and the events leading up to it? Doug, we’re gonna start with you and then Slider.

Doug Birkey: This fundamentally comes down to how do we wanna fight as a nation? And if you want to have penetrating airpower, you have to have this aircraft (F-47). It is all about allowing power projection with manned and unmanned aircraft to go after deep strike targets.[00:23:00]

And those are the targets you have to go after if you really want to fight and win. Because those are strategic targets past that, you are fighting a whack-a-mole campaign and an interdiction campaign and how do we like that with how Ukraine is performing? Because that’s exactly what we’d set ourselves up to do.

President Trump emphasized that it does team with the unmanned assets, so CCA, things like that, which is fantastic. I’d expect it to team a lot with B 21 and other assets in theater, F 35, you name it. And so it’s a crucial, crucial decision. I think that the study that was executed, it certainly drove the calendar further to the right. It drove cost. One benefit of it though is that when we’ve had these very serious questions asked by Elon Musk and others about should we go to a largely unmanned force structure or what’s the right ratio? They had their test questions and their responses straight on that. And so I think that was one benefit of it.

And for people that really [00:24:00] ask about the cost, I would ask, what’s the cost of not having it? And again, it just goes to how do we want to fight and win? And do you want Ukraine or do you want to have a strategic campaign? It’s also really important for key pieces of technology. I mean, if feel, look good propulsion, if you looked at, future information architectures and the backbone of that sensor capabilities, this is gonna carry a lot.

Who knows whether it’s gonna be more like B 21 pulling from existing things, or if it’s gonna really push state of the art. It’s classified. So we’ll see as it plays out. But I think from a seismic decision, this is very important.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. Just to pile on to what Doug just said, I think it’s great seeing the Administration’s commitment to air dominance. There were a lot of question marks out there. What’s the new administration gonna look at? So that’s fantastic and then it’s also a nod that drones are not gonna be the answer to everything in the next chapter. So, certainly they’re gonna be a piece of how we go to war in, in the future, but we’re gonna have to have war fighters that are forward and that can [00:25:00] survive in that advanced battlefield.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, having the human within the battle space is gonna be crucial. And it’s not just gonna be in the B 21, it’s gonna be in the F 47 as well, and doing that kind of teaming and being able to penetrate, to deny sanctuary to our adversaries and provide the administration fundamental options. So Lazer and Sledge, you’re both fighter pilots, so what are your main takeaways from this decision and how is the Hill receiving the news?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. You know, obviously the people that support Boeing are doing back flips on this and there’s gonna be some, I think, soul searching on the parts of the other companies there and their supporters. But I think it was generally well received. I think at this point, it’s probably more important to keep an eye on what the professional staff on the committees are saying and doing. And it’s really gonna come down to Boeing executing on cost, performance, and schedule. I mean, that’s really what Congress is gonna be worried about. Now the decision has been made, there’s gonna be some bickering on the edges. It brings the next generation aerospace propulsion [00:26:00] into the argument.

What are the capabilities gonna look like? What’s the force structure? Those are the details that Congress is gonna start caring about a little bit more now that the big, flashy item has been decided. And how do we go forward and how do we deliver combat options to the commander in chief?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Mm-hmm.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Following up on Sledge, I mean, I worked the Long Range Precision Bomber when you know before it was a B 21. And that’s exactly what we were looking at. We were looking at how are we going to execute and then it’s the funding. And this is the issue is that as we’re trying to do everything else, what happens with the funding to NGAD and go back to F 35, how many F 35s are we gonna build?

How many NGAD, how many F 47s are we gonna build? And do we have the budget. And then what happens after the four years and we have a different administration. What happens to the program? And that’s always been the concern. I always used to joke that no program lasts two more than two chiefs of staff.

The first one likes [00:27:00] it. Second one puts up with that, the third one tries to kill it.. We don’t want to do that with the F 47, of course, even with the F 35. Are we gonna build the amount that we need? Are we gonna build enough B 21s? And it really, and Sledge has probably hit this home more than anybody. It comes down to budget. And how, what are we gonna prioritize?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, Lazer you bring up a really good point regarding how this impacts other combat Air Force programs. Especially since the Air Force is in a period where it’s having to recapitalize darn, nearly its entire force structure. I mean, this is gonna impact F 35, F 15 EX, B 21, CCA. How do you all see this coming to fruition?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah, I’ll say. Boeing’s got their work cut out for ’em.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, they gotta deliver.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Uh, you know, Sledge mentioned just the ability to make the airplane do what they say it’s gonna do, but then to also integrate it into all the systems that are also coming online. That integration’s gonna be challenging at levels that we’ve never seen before. And then, I just gotta throw in a plug for the tankers, because that plane just looking at the [00:28:00] size of it, ain’t gonna have the range we need. So, it’s gonna have another bill on the tanker fleet, which is a huge challenge moving forward.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Which, but that’s also a reason why we have to remain committed to the next generation propulsion program, right? Because the efficiencies and the performance that engine will bring to the future fleet. We’ll be able to make up for some of the range and for the, fuel consumption.

Doug Birkey: I’d just say when we talk about the F 47 coming out, one thing that is obviously disturbing and like everybody said, it comes down to budget or what’s your offset? So, everybody talks about, “well, we’re gonna curtail F 35 or F 15 EX.” Or “what’s gonna happen to the B 21 number or CCA?” The answer really is you have to have all of them. We’ve taken such a procurement holiday, and reduced the build rates so dramatically across the board that we have to get healthy now. Our mission areas are really, really get too thin. We’re already there. It’s gonna get worse, and you just look at the numbers. They say it all. I mean, [00:29:00] this last year, the last budget that went across from, from President Biden, I mean the Air Force was looking to retire 250 aircraft only by 91. You look across the, FYDP, the five year plan, they’re looking at retiring over a thousand aircraft and they’re only gonna buy a couple hundred.

This is not sustainable. That’s a death spiral. You look at where we are in modernization, only 28% of the fighters are fifth gen stealthy aircraft, 14% of bombers. We’ve gotta turn that curve. And CCA is absolutely essential. You know, we are bestowing the virtues of of F 47 and that’s great. But CCA is gonna be absolutely crucial for bringing a capacity in certain mission performance attributes, in ways in which manned aircraft can’t do it.

And you’ve gotta get those in volume. And we’ve asked a lot out of industry, leading in with IRAD and other things and bringing in new entrants like Anduril. The worst possible thing you could do is pull back [00:30:00] those numbers and that commitment, ’cause it would have a generational chilling effect on industry’s willingness to commit. And so this is something where we have to keep advocating for the necessary funding and we’ve taken a break for too long. It is time to catch up. And you look at something like the F 35, we are gonna be replacing F-16s for at least two decades out into the future.

You have to replace them with something. I don’t think there’s ever gonna be anything with as much performance and as low of a relative cost point as the F 35 for a heck of a long time. You don’t want to curtail that option too early.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. I, Doug, if I could actually hit on something you said there for the offset.

So this, and this gets back to my comment, about the secretary’s confirmation hearing. The offset shouldn’t come from the Air Force top line.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Mm-hmm.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: It needs, we need to look across the enterprise, either get additional resources through reconciliation or wherever, but look across the DOD enterprise.

Does the Army need to build a LEO proliferated constellation? [00:31:00] No. They need.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: We have Space force for that.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Do they? Yeah! Do they need long range precision strike? That’s the role of the United States Air Force. So, I think a little bit of discipline into the roles and missions of the services will solve some of those vexing problems about how do we make sure that we have the right capacity and the capability to fight the joint fight?

Doug Birkey: Absolutely.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: To pile onto what both of you have said, I mean, we are building our future systems to be integrated, interoperable, and dependent upon each other. And if you don’t buy the entire family of systems, you weaken every single member of that system. So, if you send a B 21 into bad guy land without the appropriate space satellite constellations, without the appropriate CCA, without F 47, you are decreasing its mission effectiveness because you aren’t fielding the entire family of systems and the way that we designed, required, and envisioned those operational concepts.

So, you have to be able to buy the entire family systems, because as important as information is, if you don’t have the [00:32:00] physical platform in the battle space to affect, whether that’s kinetic or non-kinetic, you really aren’t gonna be delivering hurt to the adversary.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Lucky just one other thing. I mean, when we, I see combat aircraft, we’ve said, okay, we need tankers, we need transport. How are we doing on the T seven?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Oh.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: All right? And it gets into what Sledge and others have said, we’ve gotta perform, Boeing’s gotta perform on NGAD the F 47. We have to be able to procure and build and field aircraft on time and on budget.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Which also actually brings up an important point of not being overly technologically optimistic. So, a huge element of the schedule for T 7 was predicated on digital engineering, which is absolutely the direction that we have to be able to go in. The model-based systems engineering. But we cannot jump all the way into the deep end without having the appropriate processes in place to back that up and mature the technology at the right rate with the effectiveness [00:33:00] and, to be able to do that. Regarding the maturity of the system?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, I think so. And I think there’s actually an easy solution to that. When you look at the cost, performance and schedule Venn diagram, you need to put more emphasis on schedule than you do on performance. And that will get you away from, you say, okay, this is the date I’ve got it. I’m gonna snap the chalk line. This is the date it’s gotta go. So give me something that I can field on this date.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Which, and when you look at modernization programs, that means you focus more on the hardware, you focus more on the aircraft and the propulsion while building in the SWaPC capabilities to be able to, upgrade the sensors, the avionics and the weapon systems at the time that they mature organically.

I mean, that’s, how it has to be done to maintain that schedule, but create the options for future growth for performance.

Doug Birkey: I just say the other thing we really need to pay attention to, if we’re worried about stretching our dollar, being efficient and all that, one of the most expensive things you can do is sink billions and billions in innovating technology, [00:34:00] but never actually manifests the full buy. It’s tremendous cost imposition for low rate or return. I mean, would you build a house, live in it for two weeks and then just walk away from it, build another. It’s nuts! But that’s what we did on B 2, F 22. It’s what we could do in F 35 if we don’t do the full build.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: It’s a great, great story if you ever, a short story by Albert C. Clark called, Superiority. And it’s about the, argument of quantity over quality. And at some point, you can have the greatest widget, but if it takes you forever to develop it, the enemy can overwhelm you with mass and defeat you.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And when you look at time as the new offset, as well as the scale and the scope of the geography that we will have to face within the Pacific, while also taking care of all the motherhood and our other security commitments around the rest of the globe, we have to have that capacity.

So we’ve seen a lot of DI diplomatic turbulence regarding US Arms exports given the recent decisions and discourse from the Trump administration, how, what are your thoughts from the team?

Doug Birkey: Well, I just say to kick this off, it’s [00:35:00] really important that everybody focus on the long-term game here. There are countries with which we have fundamental aligned interests and values, and I think those are gonna outweigh any particular position of a given administration.

And so it is crucial that we look at trying to sustain a certain norms and relationships to ensure that we have the ability to fight and win as a team, ’cause right now, our capacity and capabilities as a military are such that we have to have those players. It was kind of optional whether we did that at the end of the Cold War. If you look at how we fought Desert Storm. If you want to go in today, you have got to have that team with you. And we need to be very, very careful that we don’t blow it up.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. And on the space side, we’ve heard senior leaders time and time again, talk about the need for a strong coalition. How that’s one of our greatest, tools in the toolkit is that we go to war as a coalition. The term allied by design, has [00:36:00] come across multiple times. And so building capabilities in a cooperative way, sharing technologies a absolutely. And Doug, just to reemphasize on, on your opening point, we’ve gotta think about the bigger picture.

What are our interests? I hope that our adversaries, right? China, Russia, I’m talking to you. Don’t look at the disagreements on the margins as a weakness in the overall coalition, because when push comes to shove, we will circle our wagons and we’ll kick the crap outta you.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: After spending a couple years as a commander in NATO, I just wanna throw a NATO lens on this. The United States has played a very important leadership role when it comes to the organizing training and equipping of the NATO countries. I wanna hit on what Sledge said earlier about there are very parochial interests and there are very local interests when it comes to here in the United States. You hear each state is pushing for their base to grow, their capability to grow. Well, that’s what you have in NATO. If you remove the United States [00:37:00] leadership, you have 32 individual countries that are fighting for their own individual equities with no one guiding the entire unit. And so the United States has played a critical role in that. If we walk away from that, there’s gonna be a lot of instability across NATO.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and there.

Doug Birkey: And I just wanna add one other point too. These alliances and the organizations, this are a product to World War II and us winning the Cold War. We need to be very, very careful before we give some of that up ’cause you will never get it back again. We do not exist in that world and things are very different and we probably could not, we don’t have the sway to reconstruct it again. They were fundamentally built in our interest and we need to be very, very careful.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: We’ve also seen, because of some of the turbulence that’s gone on, some wavering commitment to continuing to procure us, systems, right? Like F 35 is probably the headline one that a [00:38:00] lot of folks are hand wringing about .Sledge and Lazer how’s the hill responding to this? Because I can’t imagine that members are really thrilled with the thought of contracts being on the line or losing some of these purchases through FMS or other commercial sales.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: I think there’s a couple things at play here. First is the, national security policy and the implications. In that regard, I know that the president’s about to issue an executive order that will probably open the aperture for increased, foreign military sales.

There’s talk about increasing the congressional notification levels, which would make it easier to get cases through and quicker. So it’s about expediting that. I think at the end of the day, the administration wants to build everything in America and we will tailor the national security interests with the economic interest that comes with having robust manufacturing and arms exporting.

So, I think that’s the direction that the administration will go. Congress will generally [00:39:00] support that. There are gonna be some people that put roadblocks up for specific countries and for specific reasons. But, that’s part of the deal. Congress can also always pass a joint resolution of disapproval to stop a FMS case.

I don’t think in history there’s ever been a successful one. Even in recent history, with what’s going on in the Middle East? So, I think that’s kind of the direction for arms exports. I think tariffs are a bigger issue that probably need to be considered a little bit more.

And that will have, I think at least right now, you’re hearing some rumblings out of Europe. We’ll have a more chilling effect on willingness. And this may be a tit for tat once we normalize tariffs. You know, a lot of these arguments will go away, but my opinion on the way the administration’s doing this is we are $37 trillion in debt. If we don’t do something about cutting the size of the government and in the cases where we have a trade deficit, we do something to address that through fair trade, [00:40:00] not free trade. Then the long term viability of the United States is a question, and I’ve said it on this podcast, you know, a hundred times. Military power is based on economic power. And that’s really what the President’s trying to do here, and I think Congress will support that.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And onshoring manufacturing capability is absolutely essential because I do not believe that you can be a superpower if you are fundamentally a service-based economy.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Just, jumping on the, first on the armed sales. During the first, Trump administration, I would say he was frustrated most of the time, from by Congress because they kept delaying or denying foreign, foreign arm sales for a variety of reasons. It wasn’t always consistent, but so everything he tried to do, he was always getting slowed down. So that’s why as Sledge said, you’re gonna see an executive order that maybe by the time this podcast comes out, that’ll ease the rules for exporting military equipment and different sales.

And then have, obviously, getting to what you said was it’s gonna help our [00:41:00] defense contractors and, making sure that we produce more here in the United States. And National Security Advisor Waltz, when he was a congressman, he was the one that initially tried to do this over in the House with legislation that Sledge was talking about, increasing the dollar amounts that would trigger a notification to Congress.

On the for the congressional side, there really hasn’t been a uniform challenge to any of the policy changes that have been out there, but the voices are starting to get a little louder. Some of them are coalescing, especially on the NATO front that we were talking about at the beginning, but really time’s gonna tell, and time will also tell, I think, on the tariffs.

And, and I think Sledge has it right. There’s gonna be some tit for tat, but it’s ultimately going to level out at a place where, again, President Trump is trying to get us in a better place than we are right now. Where that is, I don’t know what it is, but I do believe it’ll level out and then that will play into the arm sales.

Going back to what we, you know, are usually used to, but there are other, it is [00:42:00] forcing, our allies and our partners to re-look at their own national security capabilities and what the future engagement with the US should be or will be like.

Doug Birkey: I would just issue one caution for the allied leaders that are pretty sure right now in their protests and threatened to pull contracts.

They delayed procurement for so long that their inventories are so fragile that if they give up those line production slots, think F 35 or something like that, everybody else is surging orders too. And they could be surrendering years. And so they need to be very careful how far they push those threats.

We had an Air Chief in recently, I’ll leave unnamed, but their force is so fragile. It’s terrifying. And years really matter on that. One or two years would be very, very bad.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Could break their force.

Doug Birkey: Yeah. And so they need to be careful that they don’t allow the political churn in that froth and what they’re saying to their domestic audience to, to [00:43:00] save face in many ways. They don’t wanna undermine what they really need to maintain viable power.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, in addition to the CR and you know, everything else that’s going on the hill with the nomination hearings, we’re also hearing from, you know, the, the Vice CSO General Guetlein, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Lieutenant General Spain, talking about readiness for their forces. So, what were your takeaways when you listened to these leaders?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah, I was really interested in hearing what Elmo had to say about readiness. There are a few officers I respect more than him. We actually flew T 41s together.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No way!

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Like a hondo as cadets. So I followed, Elmo around for many years. But he started off his testimony, using words from the Mitchell Institute. We are the oldest, smallest, and then he seriously deviated. He said, we are not the least ready. And so that really caught my attention. I wanted to listen to what he had to say to back up “we are not the least ready.” [00:44:00] I had some concerns because, well on the good side, he said in terms of recruitment, Air Force is doing very well. And so that was great news to hear.

But in terms of aircraft readiness, uh, there were some concerning lines that, that I heard. Number one, 340 additional aircraft are on the ramp due to lack of spare parts. He said for the last several years, our flying hour program has been set to executable levels instead of the actual requirement that’s needed to keep the force mission ready. And he also said we continue to set the bar lower and lower every year. And so those facts still cause me great concern about the readiness levels of our Air Force.

Doug Birkey: Lemme jump on that too. If you look at this trend line that we’ve been following for years, when the budget’s getting tighter and the demands are surging. There’s a past chief in, in the 2010s who said, you know, it’s gonna be okay to get smaller ’cause we’re going to be better [00:45:00] capabilities, we’re gonna be more ready. We’ve lost every single way around. We are smaller, we’re older and we’re less ready. I mean, this is not good. You can cheat one or two of those. You cannot cheat them all at the same time.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, I think, from an adversary perspective, it’s important to acknowledge that we still have the competencies and the capabilities within the service, that we could surge that readiness if we needed to, because we still have the experienced aviators. We still have, robust maintenance, but we’re on a precipice. And I think that’s what we’re really cautious about at the Mitchell Institute. Is saying, Hey, look, we need to make sure that we husband this capability so that we don’t become a hollow force.

Charles Galbreath: Or on the side of the Space Force never grow out of being a hollow force.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Right! Yeah I was gonna ask Charles, like, so in space, how do we measure readiness from both a, a weapon system capability and an operator capability?

Charles Galbreath: Well, so it’s, there’s multiple levels. And I’ll say that the delivery of the needed [00:46:00] services and effects that the joint community has relied on for decades, that’s continuing. The thing is, without the ability to gain and maintain space superiority, all of that comes into question. And so we know that there are threats out there. We’ve gotta be able to, address those threats and defend. But it’s not just about defense, it’s also about offense, because we don’t want the adversary to have those same advantages.

And so, as General Guetlein talked about, we need to accelerate in order to transform the Space Force into the war fighting service that it needs to be. The mission requirements are outpacing the funding. And so it’s, it’s a very similar but sort of other side of the coin problem to the readiness issue facing the Air Force. We absolutely need the budget. We need steady growth in order to build the capabilities that we absolutely need.

Doug Birkey: And Charles, you’re the expert. I mean, one area that when you’re talking, I think about is the virtual training ranges on the air side. I mean, we pride ourselves about Red Flag and this is great and all, and go fly your, your mock missions to increase your odds of [00:47:00] survival.

Right now, Guardians, we don’t, we had don’t have the money to build those out yet, or they’re undersized to where they should be. And so these things are gonna happen. Space is contested, it is every day. And we’ve gotta empower these Guardians for success if we don’t have the cash to back them for that, that build and get them that training. This is nuts.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, what blew my mind was learning that for most Guardians. Their warfighting skillset are on the job training because you don’t have those virtual training ranges.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. Absolutely. We need the virtual training ranges to develop the skills because there are some things, some threats that we don’t actually want to do.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, no, exactly. It’s, it’s a lot like a lot of our war reserve modes or other classified capabilities.

Charles Galbreath: Exactly.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: We don’t wanna use an open air, we don’t wanna demonstrate it where it can be observed.

Charles Galbreath: Right. So we need the virtual training grounds and also helps us with the reps and sets because real world exercises are expensive. You can get multiple iterations through virtual training. So that’s absolutely critical.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And also the maneuvering piece, right? Because if you [00:48:00] maneuver, you use up fuel and you don’t, I mean, you can’t do that just for giggles.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. And we can go on and on and on about the need to maneuver.

Doug Birkey: You proud of us, Charles? We actually listen to you!

Charles Galbreath: No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I just want Congress to make sure that they listen too, because we need more money for the Space Force and then, you know, we can go on and on.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah so let’s talk about space superiority and the offensive capabilities ’cause we saw headlines the other week about Chinese space assets, dog fighting. I use that in air quotes, right?

Charles Galbreath: Um, in air quotes?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah okay. Space quotes. Does that make you feel better?

Charles Galbreath: It does. Thank you.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Alright, can you actually describe what they mean by space dog fighting? And what that significance is because it probably, well, we know it plays into the imperative that we heard from General Saltzman regarding space superiority.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. So the. I’ve got a couple different things I wanna talk about when it comes to space dog fighting. First is what General Guetlein originally described was five Chinese satellites simultaneously doing maneuvers around one another and exercising tactics to gain a superiority edge dog fighting and [00:49:00] space. Five satellites in the same vicinity, operating at roughly the same time.

That’s a huge step forward. Typically, when we think about rendezvous and proximity operations, right? Getting two objects close together and then maneuvering around each other, it’s typically two, right? China is now demonstrating five, and so whether that’s four on one or three on two or two on two with an observer, I don’t know.

But it’s a huge step forward and it’s an indication of where China is really leaning forward in their aggressive behavior and in their ability to contest the space domain. Now, is dog fighting the right term? I heard from a lot of my Astrodynamics friends saying, “Hey, we need to make sure that people don’t get the wrong idea.”

This isn’t Star Wars or Star Trek with, you know, right? And that’s absolutely right. But it is a useful analogy because it helps people get their minds around the subject of contesting the space domain. And just to throw this out there, General Saltzman talked about it when he was with us here at Mitchell [00:50:00] Institute, and he talked about two circle.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I was so proud of him!

Charles Galbreath: That was great. That was great. But so for space dog fighting, doing a circle takes you 24 hours at GEO, right?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Wow.

Charles Galbreath: So this is, this is not lightning fast activities like you associate with science fiction or what you see in the air domain. It might be closer to undersea warfare. I don’t think they call it dog fighting when submarines go after each other, it’s just undersea warfare. So space warfare, that’s what China is practicing.

Doug Birkey: It was pretty cool in Hunt for October around the caverns.

Charles Galbreath: Well, it sure was. It sure was. So, it’s not a perfect analogy, but I think it’s a good one. And, and General Saltzman relayed his support for it as well. And I think it’s important for our audience to understand the objective here of using terms like dog binding is to help normalize the understanding of what’s going on in space. This is aggressive behavior. It’s similar to what we’ve seen in other domains. It’s not a perfect analogy, no analogy ever is. Otherwise it’d be a, it’d be the same thing, right? So it, it is useful in helping to articulate what is going on even though there are some considerable [00:51:00] differences, particularly in the timeframe.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, that wasn’t the only development that we had in space recently. So, we saw it a lot of activity in commercial space, including another successful lunar landing and even another private crewed space flight. But this one in polar orbit. So, are these just stunts or do they mean something that’s much more significant?

Charles Galbreath: So, I think it’s a clear indication of the speed and the breadth of the commercial space sector. Both of these activities, the lunar lander, blue Ghost, so a commercial entity landing on the moon successfully with scientific payloads. That’s a phenomenal achievement. This is the second launch, but Fram two, second launch of a private or commercial astronauts, that’s a milestone in and of itself.

The fact that they are going into polar orbit, which is the first time humans have gone into polar orbit, period. And it’s a commercial or private sector. So they’re really advancing, the state of the art really for what can be done in space. And so I think this is just an indication of how the [00:52:00] Space Force and United States Space Command can leverage some of the great work that is rapidly, developing out of the commercial sector.

These are just great examples.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: It’s exciting to see that kind of innovation happening in the commercial space and also then on the space launch front. We had ULAs Vulcan certified plus Rocket Lab and Stoke Space also received good news for the government. Bring us up to speed on launch developments.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, so for the longest time, SpaceX Falcon 9 was the National Security Space launch. option for the Space Force. ULAs Vulcan Rocket got certified after its second successful launch, back in October. So, it took about five months to get certified, but now we have two launch providers, which is, which is great. It reminds me back in the day when we had, ULA that had, Atlas and the Delta Rockets. So two different providers. We also have Blue Origin with New Glenn that has done one launch. They need to do another and then go through the certification process. Rocket Labs Neutron and Stoke Spaces, Nova Rockets, both of them are medium class rockets that are both reusable, [00:53:00] aiming to reduce the cost of launch overall.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, Charles medium class, what does that mean regarding payload and orbit?

Charles Galbreath: So, stoke is roughly 3000 kilograms to lower Earth orbit and Rocket Labs Neutron is gonna be about 13,000 kilograms to lower earth orbit. So they could launch a suite of starlink satellites the same way that the Falcon has.

So it’s another opportunity. And so you might be thinking, man, you just described five different launch providers, in the medium class area. Is that too many? Don’t forget, launch is hard. We saw recently, a failure out, out of Norwegian launch. So it’s, it’s great that our European allies are looking to launch from, Europe, but that was a launch, failure. Launch is hard.

And for those that can remember SpaceX, when it was starting out, it had a series of launch failures. So having multiple vendors out there that can launch from multiple sites, including Wallops and Kodiak and, and others, is a phenomenal boon to the United States launch market because, uh, you know, as I [00:54:00] wrote about last year, launch is the absolutely critical first element of space superiority.

If you can’t get there, you can’t control it.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And if we get into a hot space fight, we would need to be able to launch to reconstitute some constellations.

Charles Galbreath: Reconstitution is a potential use for more rapid launch. There are others that think that, you know, we don’t want to have satellites waiting in the barn. Augmentation, is gonna be critical in, in terms of surging capability as part of a buildup potentially before a crisis as a show of force. So yeah. But absolutely having a robust launch infrastructure is just absolutely critical to national security.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So then this begs our final question for today, ’cause it’s, it’s been a great session. We heard that there was turbulence in the space development agency contracts. what’s your take on that?

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, so this came up during, Dr. Meink’s testimony. Congress asked him, “Hey, what do you think of the Air Force’s plan to cancel some space development agency traunch two and tranche three transport layer satellites? And he said, you know, first of all, no decision has been made. [00:55:00] He’s gonna look into it. But what I really liked about his answer was he advocated for the need for competition and for a broader industrial base. We talk about a lot about tech billionaires these days, and some people draw the analogy to the industrial revolution and the robber barons that were created there.

Let’s not forget that some of those robber barons, got their money and kept their money through monopolistic approaches. And having a robust competition base where there’s more than one provider is absolutely critical to capitalism. How about that? Right? And so we need to be embracing that across the board.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and let’s just also say that those kinds of choices not only create the competition to lower our costs, but it gives us more resilience across our entire architecture, operational agility, and so forth. So there’s goodness to having those choices.

Charles Galbreath: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Everyone, thank you so much for being here today.

It’s been a great session and we’ll talk to you the next time on The Rendezvous.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Always good to be here.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Everybody have a great April and we’ll see you next podcast.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Thanks Lucky.

Charles Galbreath: Thanks, heather. Great to be with you.

Doug Birkey: [00:56:00] Hey, appreciate it.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: With that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guests for joining in today’s discussion.

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 and 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 you would like us to explore further.

As always, you can join in on the conversation by following the Michelin Institute on Twitter, 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.