Doug Birkey: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m Doug Birkey, executive Director at the Mitchell Institute. 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. It’s one of the top defense news items: America is running short on munitions. With so many conflicts currently underway, everything from the fight in Ukraine to what we’re seeing, against Iran, America and our allies are consuming missiles and bombs at a voracious rate.

This is a big problem because we took too much risk driving efficiency into the industrial base in the years after the Cold War. I mean, we’ve priced out the ability to surge production. It wasn’t smart. And as we all know, leaders in Washington often fail to take the long view on things. The current conflicts are outpacing what we can build.

And our allies, they made similar cutbacks to their production capabilities, if not worse. And so now [00:01:00] everyone is digging into their stockpiles to sustain current operations. And to be clear, if you’re in a fight, you can’t stop. Fundamental interests are on the line and you need to fight to win. So that’s what we’re here to discuss today, the munitions gap.

Most importantly, what are folks doing to try to fix it? And we’re gonna do this through a case study approach. General Atomics EMS recently partnered with Rafale to build their bullseye missile here in the United States. This is a big deal because it’s rapidly addressing more domestic munitions production capacity, while also on-ramping some new capabilities that are important for the modern combat environment.

With that, I’d like to introduce Nick Bucci, vice President of Defense Systems and Technologies. Nick, welcome.

Nick Bucci: Thanks, Doug. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being able to talk about this really important topic with you today. It’s a tremendous opportunity for an important topic facing the industry in our country, frankly, and in many ways the world.

There’s a lot of facets to this problem, so I look forward to [00:02:00] talking through it with you.

Doug Birkey: No, and you said it really well there, and we appreciate you making the time. This is so dominant in everybody’s mind. I mean, when I’m on the Hill or in the Pentagon and all of that. People are talking about this nonstop and we just appreciate you bringing your first person expertise.

So, you know, I tried to summarize the problem statement upfront here in the intro that the US and our allies are facing when it comes to munitions these days but you’re the expert. How do you see it?

Nick Bucci: There’s a lot of aspects to the problem. The defense industry consolidation that happened after the Cold War ended, the reduction in the market size because of that same problem.

You know, we didn’t have a threat to coalesce around the reduction in stockpiles and munitions because no one really thought that there was a need to keep a large amount of precision munitions. Whether they’re shells for a cannon or even missiles because most people didn’t see a need for having those to deal with a conflict.

[00:03:00] Certainly the world has changed a lot since then. We’ve had to figure out ways to tackle this as several conflicts have developed over the last three or four years. And what we realized is no one company, no one country can deal with it on their own. We have to figure out how to come together as partners, whether that’s industry to industry in the US or industry to industry internationally, to figure out how to tackle this problem to really expand the industrial base and be able to rebuild as we go forward to tackle these threats.

Doug Birkey: No, I appreciate that. And at the end of the day, this has to get back to a business case and especially when it comes to maintaining surge capacity. We can’t just do that without the funding to make that happen. And everybody, they nash their teeth, they get upset when we can’t flip a switch and just instantly have mass volume for these munitions.

And ironically, the people that are most upset are oftentimes the ones that drove super tight budgets, which drove [00:04:00] industry to cut overhead, they could do surge. How does this ecosystem play out right now in the real world when you live with this day in, day out?

Nick Bucci: Yeah, the important thing is how do we surge, right?

I mean, when conflict develops, we have to figure out how are we going to surge capacity? How are we gonna be able to build more of what’s needed at the particular time that it’s needed? And so I think it comes down to a couple of things. One is how do we balance the fact that there are commercial technologies that support what we do?

Can we figure out how to get those technologies integrated in here? How do we balance the domestic demand for defense products with the international demand and maintain some level of capacity consistently so that as the needs arrive for surging, we’re able to do that. So I think it really kind of drives a lot of things in terms of how do we maintain that ability [00:05:00] to surge?

One thing that worked back in the World War II was the commercial surge capabilities. And I think being able to instantaneously turn from making, pickup trucks and cars to liberty ships and things like that, or turning a healthcare company out of a ship company from World War II, and being able to turn that back into and figure out how to do that as we go forward, I think that really is gonna be important too.

And figuring out how to have agreements between companies. I think that’s important. Kind of what we’re doing with Bullseye is important because we’re partnering with an international company to essentially increase the capacity for a particular product. But we look at it from the domestic side too.

We can partner individual defense companies as well as probably more importantly, defense companies with commercial companies. You know, as we try to infuse commercial technologies into our products, it’s important that we have a really good relationship with those companies so that we can [00:06:00] become a strategic partner with them.

It’s the days of your, where, you know, defense demanded the best products and the best R&D and things like that. Kind of went by the wayside in the nineties and we started infusing COTS technologies, commercial off the shelf technologies, into our products. And so now we have to make sure we can continue that relationship as the commercial companies are dealing with their commercial customers.

We have to ask them to help us continue to deal with our customers as well and provide those products.

Doug Birkey: No, that evolution you described, it’s fascinating how that occurred and it’s something where people oftentimes have this notion of what they think the defense industrial base is, but then when you look at it in reality, what it’s today, and there are a lot of different angles to it, so appreciate you breaking it down.

One of the key points that I think about and a lot others do too, is this notion of choke points that come into play when we try to surge munitions and production and things like chips, [00:07:00] energetics, and key materials. And are the manufacturers generally relying on a similar set of suppliers for these things which could drive points of friction and kind of a lockdown when we’re all trying to grow capacity?

Or how do you see that?

Nick Bucci: Oh, absolutely, especially today. Again, kind of going back to the consolidation of the industry, there’s only so many companies that do certain types of technologies, and so finding those choke points is important. I think we’re finding them in certain critical areas of technology as we’re looking to transition those to the war fighter.

So what we’ve gotta figure out is, are there alternates? From a product perspective at the component level where maybe there’s an alternate vendor, maybe a company like General Atomics EMS, can we develop that in-house? Or can we bring in a company that does it for the commercial market to figure out how to augment their base to be able to build it for the [00:08:00] defense, defense industry as well.

So there’s a number of ways you can tackle the problem. It’s not easy because like you said, there are certain technologies where there is a very limited number, thank goodness there’s not just one in a lot of cases that there are multiple.

We have to figure out how to expand that base in those critical areas where the industrial base is limited.

Doug Birkey: So big picture, what’s the time horizon in play for producing munitions these days? I mean, from the time a company’s put on contract to when folks in the uniform might see actual product, you know, capabilities, hitting warehouses and frontline operations?

Nick Bucci: I almost hate to say it, but of course there’s a number of factors that drive it, right? One of them is when you have certain components in a particular munition that have a very long lead time. Or in the case of say, a new development, they have developmental milestones that they still need to meet before they can go to market.

Those are kind of [00:09:00] important in terms of driving it. In another case, it could be something as rudimentary as, do I have the right machines to be able to machine the parts that I need to build this munition? Do I have the right robots that enable those machines to be able to automate sufficiently so that I can make them fast enough and efficient enough to keep the cost structure down?

And in a lot of cases it’s something as simple as do I have the right certified technicians? Do I have the right people who have the right certifications for the quality assurance standards to be able to use the right equipment to do the critical measurements on some of the parts and things like that.

So it really is driven by a lot of simple factors. But I’ll be honest with you, the biggest factor is a solid demand signal. You know, being able to plan all of those things that I just talked about is what’s really important. If I don’t know what the market looks like. Then I can’t even kind of [00:10:00] predict ahead to say, well, I’m gonna need these machines, I’m gonna need this number of technicians with this certification, I’m gonna need this many welders with these certifications, et cetera. So that solid demand signal is probably the most important thing for us.

Doug Birkey: No, I’m glad you highlight that because that’s something in many ways we should be able to control. Have an honest conversation in DC and beyond, and really go realistically, where do we see this going? Not just what the budget’s gonna dictate, but what’s real world gonna dictate because-

Nick Bucci: Right.

Doug Birkey: You know, conflict and all that, it doesn’t correspond to an Excel spreadsheet. And we gotta get real, especially about the security environment where it stands today.

Because it is what it is, regardless of what we might want it to be. And that brings up another point. This notion that in a perfect world, we would like to fight things, you know, conflicts are all in a sequential fashion and one then the next and all. Yet, if we look at the demand signal, right now you’ve got Ukraine surging at the same time that operations in the Middle East are occurring [00:11:00] at high op-tempo, and you’ve got things in the Pacific occurring.

So this concurrent demand is a huge factor where I could see supply vastly out or the demand far outstripping supply for munitions and the ability to backfill. Thoughts on that?

Nick Bucci: Yeah it’s really hard. Especially when things kind of happen abruptly. If I plan for contingencies that’s one thing.

I can have a lot of different plans with contingencies and Plan B’s and C’s and Ds, but those are all hinged on assumptions. And if those assumptions don’t come true, then that plan goes away and I immediately move to the next one and the next one. It’s been said a lot of different ways, you know?

One way was no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Mike Tyson said it a little bit differently, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” We can lay out plans, but generally our plans are likely to be wrong. And so we need to have [00:12:00] multiple plans to be able to deal with contingencies.

We have to have a lot of if- then statements. If this happens, then I need to do this. Then if this happens, I need to do this. And so we have to figure out how to get not only the plan A’s and the plan B’s, but also the C’s and D’s and what are the triggers that start those other plans in terms of getting them in motion to be able to bring the kind of capabilities to fruition for a particular conflict as it emerges.

Doug Birkey: So when you’re working those plans in those contingencies, how much does what you just read in the news play into this? I mean, we obviously all saw Russian invade Ukraine. We’ve been tracking the tensions in the Middle East. Obviously the Pacific is what it is. Is that something that when you guys sit down and work strategy and all of that, it impacts how you’re working your corporate decision making process or is it really just waiting on what is the government literally saying they need at this point in time and that’s the actual [00:13:00] driver?

Nick Bucci: It has to be a bit of both, right? We can’t wait for what the US government or any other government for that matter says they need, because a lot of times it’s late to the party in terms of the strategy.

And so, we have to, as an industry and as a company, we have to have our approach to how we’re gonna deal with things. And some of that means we work with the various services to understand what the threats are, what the possible conflicts are, so that we can put our investments in the right place and have the right contingencies to be able to tackle the problems.

When they do come to fruition, we’re ahead of the game, right? We’re ready to provide the kind of solutions that they need. That’s not always easy, right? Again, I kind of go back to that demand signal. If the US services aren’t providing that kind of demand signal for us. It’s hard for us to be able to be able to plan the investments well.

And so it really is [00:14:00] a lot of discussions between industry and the services to understand their needs and then figure out, okay, how, what’s the best way to do it? And in terms of the news. You know, I’m kind of a, a voracious news reader when it comes to things like what’s happening in the world.

Everyday, you see something different has happened in a particular conflict around the world, and you figure out, okay, how was that plan laid out 18 months, two years ago? And okay, what are we doing to have a plan that in two or three or four years we’ll be able to essentially provide a new capability.

Like that was, of course, it’s completely different, but essentially to be able to tackle a problem a different way than I think anybody is thinking about it today.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, I really appreciate that. So scene setting’s great, but I want to dig into Bullseye. So first and foremost, what is it?

Nick Bucci: Simply stated, bullseye is a long range precision [00:15:00] missile.

It provides that precision strike capability for air, land, and sea. It can be carried on airplanes, both externally and internally. It can be on manned and unmanned aircraft. We can launch it from the surface, whether that’s on a ship or from the ground. It’s basically our product here in the US produced in our Mississippi manufacturing facilities in Tupelo.

And it provides additional capacity from our partner, Rafale Advanced Defense Systems. It’s a mature system. It leverages a long history of their development and their testing, and frankly, their use. Our goal is to provide that high TRL level capability. We assess it as a TRL level eight.

That’s basically as mature as you can get without being delivered and used in an environment. But 80% of the components of this missile are [00:16:00] combat proven, so they’re TRL level nine. So we believe this thing is ready to be produced and be provided to the US services and foreign military sales and farm military funding customers to introduce that capability.

Doug Birkey: How does it fit within the rest of the general Atomics munitions portfolio?

Nick Bucci: In some ways, it’s very unique and in other ways it fits perfectly. The unique part is it leverages a lot of the component level things that we’ve been doing that make it stand out as a different type of product from some of our other ones.

And the ways it’s just another weapon in our weapons portfolio is that, you know, we’ve been producing the hypersonic common hypersonic glide body for the conventional prompt strike. We produce about 50% of that common hypersonic glide body. We produce a long range maneuvering projectile that essentially provides extended range compared to [00:17:00] even those munitions that are being developed today. So in some ways it’s common and in some ways it’s very unique.

Doug Birkey: No, appreciate that. Can you give us an example of that work and how it fits into your bullseye decision making?

Nick Bucci: Well in some ways let’s say from a manufacturing perspective, we are setting up a line today on how we’re going to manufacture in a high capacity kind of perspective, our long range maneuvering projectile.

We envision it will be different because some of the capabilities and components and subsystems are different for a missile versus a projectile, but the process will be similar. And so, the manufacturing team is figuring out exactly what can be transferrable from what we’re doing for the long range maneuvering projectile to bullseye so that we can get to all up round production as quickly as possible to help serve the need for these missiles.[00:18:00]

Doug Birkey: No, when you begin a journey like this, it all comes down to collaboration. And how did you even approach Rafale on this? Was this something where you guys were just talking, they came to you, you came to them? It’s gotta be a fascinating process.

Nick Bucci: It truly was a fascinating process. Believe it or not, it started over two years ago and it started with a conversation between one of our folks in DC and one of the Rafale folks in DC where it was, Hey, you guys are having this new product and, you know, are you looking for partners and that kind of thing. And, things kind of went silent for a while.

And then about a year ago, the partnership really came together. We had meetings here in San Diego. Basically we discussed with them all of what we do. They told us what they’re doing and what they want to do with this product. And what we kind of found was, this developed rather quickly. We signed [00:19:00] non-disclosure agreements. We got to a memorandum of understanding this past February and what we found in those initial meetings was that we’re kind of like-minded companies in some ways. And so that makes the partnership a lot easier to come to fruition.

Doug Birkey: Yeah. When you were deciding to take this journey, were you looking mainly at US demand, allied demand, both? How do you even calculate that?

Nick Bucci: Yeah, it was interesting. There again is another interesting process. The focus of it for us is to build in America a missile for the US services. But it also is for foreign military sales and foreign military funding opportunities as well.

So, partners, allies, if they have a need for this product, absolutely can go and get it through an FMS case with the US government. As things have matured, there are going to be opportunities where if we come to agreement, we are going to say, you know what? We’re going to pursue [00:20:00] this as the GAEMS product bullseye.

And that we can sell it to a third country, an international partner, that’s not an FMS case. And again, it comes down to having a good relationship between the companies being able to trust one another and kind of what bring what’s best for the end customer at that point.

Doug Birkey: So, one thing about General Atomics, you guys move really fast. And so you mentioned speed, being able to bring into, to play a very mature design and all that. But you know, I just think about something like long range moving projectile and you guys are good at moving out. So where was that decision point that we’re going to do this with the partnership versus just organically?

Nick Bucci: Well, thanks for the compliment first. I appreciate that. I mean, we do like to be able to move fast. We do like to be innovative and provide things quickly. It helps having the kind of corporate [00:21:00] structure and ownership structure that we have to be able to do that.

In this case, because this was a mature product the partnership made a lot of sense. Rather than start from scratch and spend, not just GA’s equities, but also US government equities on developing this product, believing in the product, understanding its capabilities, and saying, you know what? We believe there’s a market for it. Like I was just talking about that helped us kind of say, you know what?

Let’s get ahead of the game. Let’s partner with again, as I said, a like-minded company like Rafale and figure out how we can bring this faster than even we could do it if we were doing it on our own. And that’s really what it’s about is, you know, kind of getting through. We’re already, 90% through the process of development of this missile.

And now it’s a matter of getting to the, okay, what’s the manufacturing process? What’s the supply chain as we bring it here to the [00:22:00] US and figure out how to produce these missiles in Mississippi.

Doug Birkey: No, that makes sense. And like we’ve been talking about the demand signals right now, instead of talking about something you might have in a couple years versus: Hey, we can quick turn this, I get it. Now, the services, they’re always talking about wanting more capability for less cost. How does bullseye tackle that seemingly opposed set of objectives?

Nick Bucci: Yeah, so our goal is to kind of provide this high level capability and kind of do it at a reasonable price. I like to use an analogy of automobiles.

Let’s say you’re in the market for buying a family, SUV, you could buy a Cadillac Escalade, that’s gonna run you 90 to 150 K. Or you could buy a Chevy Tahoe’s gonna cost you about 60% and you’re gonna get, 80, 90% of what you’re gonna get in that Escalade. Then you could look at a Kia Soul, right?

That’s a much smaller, doesn’t carry as much cargo. Probably doesn’t bring enough to [00:23:00] the table to say I can pack all my kids and their friends in the car, I can put all their soccer equipment in the back and we can go to soccer practice. So it becomes a trade of, we wanna provide the high-end capability but at a reason, more reasonable cost.

And we’re doing that by this partnership and being able to provide those advanced capabilities that have been combat proven. And it really helps in terms of the trade of these extremely low cost capabilities, which have their place. Is it the right place for where I want to employ this bullseye missile?

And we believe that there is a definite demand for that higher end capability at a more reasonable cost than some of the higher end missile capabilities.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, it makes total sense. What was it like to work with the US government on this? I mean, I have to imagine you’re dealing with Department of State, department of Defense, other actors. I mean, did this keep you awake at night or [00:24:00] was it something that actually worked pretty smoothly?

Nick Bucci: So far it’s been smoothly, but to be honest, of course there are stumbling blocks everywhere. And in this case for Bullseye, it’s not just working with the US government. The US government has been great from our perspective in this effort.

But we have to have government to government cooperation, right? Because this is also an Israeli product that has to be government to government conversation. Now that eventually we’ll bring long-term benefits, because when the two governments are talking, that makes the job of the two industry companies a lot easier.

And so our job has been to date, to contact the right people in the US government to get in touch with the right people on the Israeli side and figure out how to get this, these discussions going so that it makes our road much smoother down the line as we get to building these things. So it is definitely an interesting process [00:25:00] for sure and even made even more interesting because you’ve got two different governments that are part of the solution here.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, totally get it. So in standing up a new munitions production line, I mean, people don’t do this every day. It’s a pretty complex undertaking I would think.

What’s it like to do that? I mean, even if you’re starting with a proven design, you’ve gotta get the tooling set up and train a workforce and all of that. Talk to us about the journey.

Nick Bucci: It’s one of the more unique capabilities I think that we have at GAEMS and that’s our manufacturing facility in Tupelo, Mississippi has a very large mix of products.

It’s not just one product going through and making thousands or millions of them. It’s several different products. It’s, hundreds of products, frankly, that are going through. Some are in high quantities and some are in low quantities, and being able to reconfigure them. In some cases very [00:26:00] quickly to develop a new product and then to expand that capability to, to go even further.

It was interesting, we’ve had some folks there that, they toured the factory and we were in one of our larger assembly buildings and their point to us was, you could fit almost our entire company’s manufacturing in this one building. And that was one of 12 buildings that we have in Tupelo.

And they said, you know, it’s amazing what you can do here. And I told them about the high mix and the ability to be able to change, right? Having the ability to look forward to what you need to have and being able to adapt what you already have in place to be able to do new things, whether it’s buying additional machines, whether it’s buying new robots, figuring out what you’re gonna need as you go down the road.

Our flagship product, the electromagnetic aircraft launch system in advanced arresting gear, we didn’t build that much of it 15, 20 [00:27:00] years ago. Now we build almost 85, 90% of that particular product in Tupelo because we’re able to, one. We can do it cost effectively and we can kind of control the process.

As we took that forward to when we took on the hypersonic weapons capabilities we had a lot of the capabilities that we had developed on EMALS and AEG in terms of the machining process and the measurement processes or quality assurance and cabling and things like that that fit right into that. And so now we’re building 50% of those components for the common hypersonic glide body, and the next step is LRMP, and then the next step after that is where we’re going with bullseye. So it’s not trivial to stand up as you said, but it is also something that, our team there in Tupelo they’re fantastic at being able to adapt. We throw a new problem at them. We say, you know what? This vendor’s not performing. Can we bring this in-house? Can you produce it faster and cheaper? [00:28:00] And generally they find a way. And so that, that helps a lot in that there’s almost a challenge that they’re not willing to accept.

Doug Birkey: Now, and what’s exciting about what you’re describing is it’s really the innovation piece. It’s not just, making-

Nick Bucci: Right.

Doug Birkey: whatever number more that we’ve been making for 30 years. It’s a really cutting edge and you’re always on that step. It’s fascinating. How does digital design play into that when we talk about kind of that bleeding edge of innovation?

Nick Bucci: That kind of makes it easier, right? I mean, our entire manufacturing floor is digital now. Everything is done. There’s, I shouldn’t say no paper, but there’s very little paper on the floor in Tupelo. That helps in that designs can be more ably turned into manufacturing instructions and things like that. You know, model based systems, engineering weapon, open systems, architectures all play in the ability to be able to adapt, essentially accept new components from [00:29:00] other types of missiles that, kind of going back, half hour in our conversation about supply chain, well, if I can’t find a particular solution for something in this missile. The bullseye is a modular design. It follows open system architecture standards. Our goal is to ensure that they are the right standards for the US government. That’s part of the Americanization that we’re doing to the missile.

You know, it has what they call a monocoque or canoe design so that everything fits in its place. If I have a supply chain problem with something, can I go out and find a new, guidance unit? Can I go find a new antenna? Can I go find a new warhead? Can I go find a new engine to help, one, expand that supply chain, but also, if I have a problem with one of those technologies, I can replace it and move forward.

So getting that upfront design information will be very helpful and be able to kind of do the adaptation as I need to [00:30:00] make changes going forward.

Doug Birkey: You know, we’ve talked about Bullseye. It’s a mature design already exists. Does that make it easier working through certifications and validation with US customers or allied customers? What’s that process like?

Nick Bucci: It does make it easier. the plane has already been fit checked with a number of US inventory airplanes. We will do it again because the US customer will want to see that, but it will be easier because, you know I hate to say it, but most of the paperwork, or in this case, most of the computer files exist for what was done already, and so we can just adapt those to you know what we’re gonna do here. That helps a lot because it has already laid out, what needs to be done, what has already been done. And then it’s just a matter of, oh, well here’s a different aircraft so we’re gonna have to do that. Or here’s an aircraft where we’re gonna carry it on the wing instead of internal carriage so we have to do that certification.

It’s [00:31:00] important to have that background knowledge, to be able to figure out how we’re gonna do it going forward. The certification processes are, they can be long and difficult, but I think having what we have under our belts already will be able to help us get there faster.

Doug Birkey: So are you relying on the same set of suppliers as Rafale or do you source your own domestically?

Nick Bucci: It’s not 100%. There are certain components where we will. Most likely use the existing supply chain, but there will be some where we’re not able to. Whether it’s because we have to do something as part of the Americanization process, or we have to use a different communications protocol, or we have to use a different signaling capability or a different seeker or something like that, or different algorithms. Who knows what the answer will be as we kind of go through this process. There will be certain things that we’re going to have to change. [00:32:00] We want to leverage as much as we can, but there will likely be some things that we’re not able to. We also wanna establish some level of supply chain robustness by opening alternatives and second sources. Which we’ll work together with Rafale to be able to do that. Because we don’t want to change something that violates all the certifications certainly. And so, it’s going to be a good process because what it will do is it will expand the industrial base, not just for the all at Brown, but also for some of the components. Because to your earlier point, 30 or so minutes ago, there can be choke points and asking someone to double their production because, Rafale has an order and we now have an order, and so now it’s twice as many units per unit of time. That’s not easy for anybody to do, and so we’re gonna have to figure out where we can augment the supply chain as much as possible.

Doug Birkey: What’s your reaction been like to this effort when you’re in the [00:33:00] Pentagon or are there parts of DOD? Are people happy? Do they see this as bringing a solution to the table?

Nick Bucci: It’s always great when you kind of bring something new to the table to the services because as war fighters, they get their creative juices flowing. It’s like, well, what can I do with this thing? How, how can I take advantage of this capability or that capability? Or geez, what new mission can I take on because of something like this, right?

That’s the fun part. The difficult part is when they say, well, you know, we’ve got this solution and we’ve got this solution. How does it fit? And in some cases the fit is great and in other cases the fit is it doesn’t fit either one of those, but we think it fits closer to this one and are you willing to pay a little bit less to get only 90% of the capability?

And so that’s some of the discussion. And so that part’s fun too because it really allows you to get their creative juices flowing, your creative juices flowing on how you would use this thing [00:34:00] in different missions than frankly it’s been envisioned to date. And we’ve had a number of opportunities to do that, and we’re going to have even more as we go forward in the next few months to introduce it.

What can it do? How can we help in kind of tackling your problems that you have? It, those kind of con conversations are a lot of fun. It’s kind of nice too because we have both the, you know, our partners views and our views in being able to look at this and say, what lessons learned have they had in working with their customers that they have existing today? And how can some of that help in terms of bringing that forward to the US customers and you know, our friends and our allies as well.

Doug Birkey: You know, pulling the thread further and lessons learned once this is used operationally, how do you work that feedback loop for product improvement and things like that? And how do you work that collaboratively with Rafale? Because they’re gonna have experiences from their customers, you’re gonna have different inputs as well. How does that yield kinda [00:35:00] a better hole for everybody?

Nick Bucci: What’s interesting is that it’s already started. Like I said, 80% of the components of the missile are combat proven. So they’ve already got lessons learned from the field and have already tried to figure out how to make those lessons learned a reality as we finish up dismissal, development, and implementation here in the us. So we’ll le leverage those lessons.

But kind of going back to that digital design question that you had, right? Having that digital design under our belts, what can we do to implement those lessons and that feedback, and then roll that through the design process, then roll that into the manufacturing and production process. So, all of the tools that we’ve talked about so far play in the, getting that feedback from the experience and those lessons learned and figuring out how to make the missile even more capable and better.

Doug Birkey: So in looking at this [00:36:00] journey and kind of considering lessons learned, what advice do you have for others that are seeking a similar path? Just trying to expand the options our country has because we need more options. That’s non-negotiable.

Nick Bucci: Yeah.

Doug Birkey: And you guys have been a pathfinder in this.

Nick Bucci: Yeah, we’ve learned a lot about cooperation and burden sharing. When it comes to production of munitions, everybody needs to know that there’s going to be cooperation. You know, the old expression, BATNA, best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Everybody leaves the room with, boy, I wish I had gotten something else out of this.

Sharing that burden across a team helps a lot. Both Bullseye and LRMP have kind of given us a lot of great experience in dealing with not just different customer sets, but also industry partners and kind of what they want outta things and how we can share that going forward from [00:37:00] a production perspective as well as, a share of the customers and the production capabilities. So it’s really been an interesting process and frankly, a very, enlightening one in dealing with it. And dealing with different companies from different parts of the world is also very interesting because every one of them has their culture from a business culture, but also from a country culture.

And that, how do we roll that into our discussions? How do we roll that into how we approach business? Has also been very, very enlightening and in many ways enriches the experience for us, and I hope for them as well because it brings an added benefit, I think, to the partnership when you can make, I’ll say two different views of a problem, produce a singular view that’s better than either one of those views. So

Doug Birkey: Yeah no, I totally get it. And that’s awesome. [00:38:00] Looking inward here a little bit, how can we help get after this problem in a concerted fashion when it comes to Congress, DOD, and the other stakeholders to help solve this capacity and the surge challenge? If you’re gonna sit down with a member of Congress or another senior leader, what would be some of the top thoughts you’d offer to them so that we can really make some real progress here?

Nick Bucci: If there is one thing I could tell them that is the most important thing is a consistent demand signal. Let’s not whipsaw our way through. Well, we want to produce a thousand a month or 10,000 a month, or a million a year. Pick a number. Let us figure out how to do it. Let us figure out how to fund it.

And by the way, continuing resolution is not a way to figure out how to fund something when you want to have a consistent demand signal, because no one can plan for that. No one understands when their funding is gonna get there and [00:39:00] how can they then distribute that funding? So, consistent demand signal is probably the most important thing from our perspective, so that we can be consistent in how we do our investments, how we train people, how we acquire facilities and machines and certifications and that kind of thing.

So it allows us to do planning much better. So to me, it really is that demand signal. That’s the most important thing.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, we’re absolutely lockstep with you on that and we’ve been echoing that a lot in the Pentagon and on the hill. So-

Nick Bucci: And I think, you know, one way to get to that consistent demand signal is the way the government has done it in the past is getting to some of these multi-year procurement capabilities.

Doug Birkey: Absolutely.

Nick Bucci: So that things like continuing resolution don’t completely derail the process and we can get at least some level of semblance in terms of a consistent demand signal.

Doug Birkey: No, and we own these levers. We can do this. So

Nick Bucci: Yeah right..

Doug Birkey: Now we need to get after it. Now. Nick, it’s been awesome having you here.

We [00:40:00] always love having you on the podcast and just thank you for making the time. This is really an important one.

Nick Bucci: Yeah, thanks, Doug, I appreciate sharing the discussion with you today. I mean, this it’s an exciting time for GAEMS. I mean, we’re looking forward to being able to produce this missile as soon as we can in Tupelo, and we’re very excited about bringing this kind of new capability. It fits a very, really nice niche in terms of the mission needs for a lot of different, US customers and international partners. So we’re very much looking forward to it and hope to be delivering these things very soon.

Doug Birkey: No, it’s awesome. No, I really appreciate it.

Nick Bucci: Alright, thanks Doug. Appreciate it.

Doug Birkey: 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 for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard, don’t forget to hit the like button and follow or subscribe to the Airspace Advantage.

You can also leave a comment to let us [00:41:00] know what you think about our show or areas that you’d like to see further exploration. And as always, you can join in the conversation by following Mitchell Institute on X, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and you can always find us at mitchellaerospacepower.org.

Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next time.