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. And we’ve got a lot to cover this week. We’re recording on Wednesday the third. So if world events developed since then, we’ll catch that on the next episode.

So with that, everyone is back from summer break. School is started, and it’s time to get back in gear. And we’ve got a big group today because as I mentioned, a lot of topics. So I’d like to welcome “Sledge” Harmer. Sledge?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Great to be back.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And “Lazer” Lazarski.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Also great to be back. Hopefully everybody had a great August.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So as Sledge and, Laser are our Washington Insiders, but we also have our Dean, Lieutenant General Dave Deptula. Sir?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Good morning.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:01:00] Charles Galbreath.

Charles Galbreath: Good morning. Great to be here.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: JV Venable.

John “JV” Venable: It’s a great day in September, isn’t it?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: It is. And Brigadier General Houston “Slider” Cantwell of our Mitchell team.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Morning Lucky.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yes! Welcome to Back to School everyone. So, Laser and Sledge, we’ve got a lot to cover. Let’s get started and let’s begin with the Congressional update. Where do the defense bills stand and what should we be tracking?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Let’s start with the good news. I’ll start with the FY 26 National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA.

So as we’re recording this, the Senate this morning, will vote and is expected to pass the motion to proceed to get on the bill and begin debate over on the Senate side on the authorization bill. And then the Senate Armed Services Committee over the August recess, they completed a manager’s package of amendments that were filed before they left.

And right now there’s about 50 cleared amendments that are in there. And what will happen is, Senator Wicker and Senator Reed will file a substitute amendment that has all [00:02:00] those clear, managers package amendments in there. So the Senate hopes that it will get unanimous consent to actually debate on the floor.

And as Sledge knows, we used to do that a lot, but for the last couple years we haven’t been able to do that because it just takes one member to say that they don’t like what amendments have been agreed to, to debate on the floor, and it stops the whole process. So right now, I’m not sure what will happen.

I know the substitute amendment will get filed and then once that is filed, if they can’t get debate on the floor, if they can’t finish it on the floor, the Senate will, like they’ve done in the past, will take that substitute amendment and then conference that with the House. And if you look over on the House side, they’re gonna begin floor debate on their defense bill next week, next Tuesday.

And then they are expected to finish it by the end of next week. There’s over a thousand amendments that have been filed, but they’ll get it through very quickly. And then what ultimately happens, the HASC and the [00:03:00] SASC will begin resolving the differences between the two bills starting the end of September, early October.

And the final agreed bill will not get brought to the House and Senate floors until December because we expect that is, as it typically is, be a bit of a Christmas tree. And they’ll include, the Coast Guard reauthorization, intel authorization, other bills as well. And on the appropriations front, not as good news.

The House has only got 14 in session days. Senate is 16 in session days till the end of the fiscal year. Obviously, nobody seems to care about the fiscal year anymore, but neither the House or the Senate, have passed their 12 appropriations bills. And there is no agreement on the overall spending level.

So what that means is we have to pass another short term continuing resolution so we can fund the government and then hopefully pass those FY 26 appropriations bills by the end of the year. This first CR and Sledge, I’m sure is gonna have some comments on this. [00:04:00] Right now their bipartisanship is a little lacking, especially in the Senate.

And that’s where we’re gonna need the 60 votes to try to go forward. I am hopeful that, this first short term CR, which we think will go to late November, early December will get past. But Senator Schumer is unlikely just to let it go without getting some concessions, as they try to move forward, given the heat that he took from the year long CR that they agreed to and passed.

But again, I’m gonna stay hopeful. I’ll turn it over to Sledge that, we will be able to, by the end of the year, come to some agreement between the House and Senate, appropriators and leadership. Agree to a top line. We’ve got more money in the defense bill over on the Senate side than we do in the House.

And I think if you look at the Senate appropriations bills, those were passed, the ones that have been passed outta committee, those are bipartisan. So, hopefully they’ll complete the bills by December [00:05:00] and avoid another year long CR. And Lucky as you and I have talked about, there are certain people that may like a year long CR so I’ll turn it over to Sledge.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: I think that’s a great recap Laser. Just a couple things and more in the background to be tracking or just for situational awareness that will affect the timeline that Laser laid out so well. I think the obviously the top line difference, there’s about $22 billion more in the Senate bills than there is in the House.

So how they resolve that the bipartisanship or the lack thereof that Laser mentioned is really gonna be I think, that’ll either be resolved or that’ll be, they’ll, people will dig in more if there’s another rescissions package that goes over to the Hill that, especially the Senate Democrats, they will not capitulate if it looks like there’s gonna be more cuts to prior appropriated funding. And then you’re gonna start hearing a little bit more about reconciliation and other package there, primarily tax legislation, but, that could [00:06:00] include extra spending as well. And I think all of those things will kind of really temper the climate on Capitol Hill.

The one thing Laser didn’t mention though, that I’d like to bring up, is we need to start looking at the possibility of a government shutdown on the 1st of October. I haven’t checked the poly market line recently but I, I think there’s about right now about a 40% chance handicapped that there will be a government shutdown.

And a lot of that’s gonna be can they get 60 votes in the Senate? Will the Republicans concede a few points to the Democrats to get those votes? And you’ve already seen a couple of shots across the bow yesterday. Speaker Johnson basically said, ‘Hey, look, this is on the Democrats, they’re gonna own a shutdown.’ So there’s gonna be a calculus there. What’s the risk and reward calculation between a government shutdown and who owns that politically.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Goodness. So, just for our listeners, Laser, since you mentioned it, the CR, what does a CR prohibit any of the services from doing?

It’s no new starts. No. [00:07:00] There’s no increases in programs. It’s what are the other, things that

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, I mean, those are really the big things.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Under a continued resolution your funding level is the previous fiscal year enacted. The other big impact is no new starts and no program increases.

So if you’re gonna ramp up production of a weapons program-

Heather “Lucky” Penney: You don’t get to do that.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. Now I would, I will say that though, I’ll caveat, even though we had a full year CR in 25, it was a pseudo appropriations bill because there were a lot of additional authorities including reprogramming extra money, and a lot of anomalies that were approved.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: But that’s because they did an additional bill, right?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: That’s correct, yeah.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. So it wasn’t just the straight up CR so what we might potentially be seeing is an another CR but then maybe an additional either reconciliation or, additional legislation that allows specific waivers and exemptions to the restrictions of the CR proposes.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Right. And that’s, that’s gonna take some negotiations and cooperation at the end of the day.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: And, just to [00:08:00] throw in there, but that talk and Sledge has talked, and I have talked to especially the appropriators on the hill. That means that they didn’t do their job.

That means that they couldn’t do the one thing that Congress is supposed to do is appropriate money. And I don’t know any appropriator right now that wants to do that again and basically give all the authority to the executive branch to go ahead and execute the way they wanna execute.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, switching topics, General Deptula, General Allvin, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force announces retirement for November and it’s earlier than customary. What are your thoughts on this?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Well, Heather, first I’d give General Allvin tremendous credit for his, leadership particularly for coining the phrase quote, “we need more air force” unquote. He’s done an excellent job of helping explain to the American people and the policy makers that the service is simply too small for what the nation requires.

He’s also made real progress in getting the F 47 moving forward in laying the [00:09:00] foundation for the kind of air force that will be necessary to meet the challenges of the future. Now, looking ahead, there’s gonna be a fundamental decision for the next chief of staff of the Air Force because as all of our listeners know the Air Force today faces a very difficult set of challenges preparing to fight tonight as well as over the next few years, while also building the capabilities required for the long term.

The hard truth is that there’s simply not enough money allocated to the Air Force to do both as required. To meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy. That’s why the choice of the next chief of staff of the Air Force is so critical because the service needs someone who can clearly articulate those needs strongly advocate for the resources necessary and keep [00:10:00] hammering the table on that and keep the Air Force on track to recover from its current crisis of capacity and readiness decline.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I don’t think you’ll find any of us here at Mitchell that disagree with that. Speaking of capabilities, Slider General Atomics YFQ 42 just executed its first flight.

So this is the first flight of a vehicle in the Collaborative Combat Aircraft Program, and that’s a huge development. Anduril’s YFQ 44 is expected to follow shortly. What are your thoughts on what this means for the Air Force and combat power at large, especially as we look towards the future and many of the issues that General Deptula just spoke about?

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Hey, huge congrats to General Atomics. Really important milestone here. Having flown unmanned aircraft for several years, they make it look easy, but these are complex aircraft. Anyone that’s flown a single engine aircraft knows the margins for error are very low. And so a huge congrats to General Atomics, but I wanna point out, there’s a couple challenges laying ahead. Some of [00:11:00] the challenges pertain to both contractors, General Atomics and Anduril.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): This phase of flight does not implement the special sauce, the mission-

Heather “Lucky” Penney: The autonomy.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Automation. Exactly. So the mission automation is not part of this testing phase, and so they’re proving the airworthiness, they’re proving the ability to fly or remotely piloted aircraft.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. This is just about the aircraft, it’s about the air vehicle. It’s not about, as you mentioned, the special sauce.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Exactly. The air vehicle’s very complex, but we’ve gotta continue to watch this evolving process. And so there’s a separate ongoing competition. That’s gonna develop the mission automation software. And they’ve got several companies vying for this, and this is going on we’ll say in the background. But we’ve gotta keep a close eye on this and watch as they integrate this new software into the airframes as we move forward.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. We’ve heard a lot of people describe, this autonomy similar to an iPhone, right? So there’s two main competitions that a number, as you mentioned, a number of different, companies are vying for and participating in.

One is developing the OFP, so that’s sort of like the iOS for your iPhone, right? That’s [00:12:00] the basic operating system. And then the other are the apps. And the apps you can think of as that’s what’s providing you the mission capability, the mission autonomy to be able to go and do the JOB. And so how those all integrate will be really crucially important.

But hey, the first thing, first you get the air vehicle airborne to make sure that it can go fly and do what you think it’s gonna do.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Exactly.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So what are the thoughts from the rest of the group on CCA and where they’re at?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: I’ll jump in for, I’m, again, both exciting and frustrating. Oh yeah. Call it Deja do, right?

Well, and I, and listen, what we need to push go faster. And I agree with everything said, but let’s ask ourselves, so what? Where does this go? Are we serious about the effort this time or is it just another exercise in research and development? How much are they gonna cost? And how many are we gonna buy? I mean, actually buy just like, oh, Roper said we were gonna buy a thousand LCAT s never bought anything.

We’re supposed to buy how many F 35s or how many B-21s. And have we programmed the funding and when will we actually field and integrate the [00:13:00] CCAs into the inventory? Because, flying ’em around does nothing. I need to get ’em in the hands of the war fighter. And if we look back.

Everybody remembers Sky Borg and I just talked about LCAT, loyal wingman. Now we have CCA. Great. So when do the war fighters get them in the weapons inventory? And I was saying back in 2000, Secretary Roper was Secretary of Air Force, for acquisition technology logistics. He testified to Congress on these efforts and I remember him saying, oh, we’re gonna buy a thousand of these things.

And then the Mitchell Institute wrote a paper called Understanding the Promise of Sky Borg and LCAT. And that was in November of 2020, which stated the Air Force should procure LCAT and a significant number to increase its combat capability and so forth. And then in 2023, we had our symposium, where we talked about CCA and it being the next part of NGAD.

And now we’re in 2025. Our adversaries have been watching, they’ve been developing their unmanned systems for [00:14:00] five years, and we’re still testing.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And we’re just testing the easy stuff. I mean, congratulations on flying the vehicle, but we know how to build airplanes. I think it’s the thing that we don’t fully understand is the total burden of building the autonomy.

And we have to manage people’s expectations so that we can support industry appropriately in developing not just the flight autonomy, but the mission autonomy as well.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah. And

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I, don’t think we fully understand.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah no, I agree with you there Lucky. And the thing I would add the third leg to that stool, you’ve talked about the vehicle, you’ve talked about autonomy, but it’s, and use the iPhone analogy again, there’s the network. So how does connect, how does it communicate? And, and those, all three need to go together.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, and not just connected communicate, but what are the user interfaces, right? What’s the Gooey? For either the fighter pilots, the war fighters, the quarterbacks that are actually in the air interacting with these, or how else we can imagine using these aircraft. So, it’s all of these things and we need to ensure that as we move forward that operational concept and the technology that follows and that operational [00:15:00] architecture supports and solves the problems that we want CCA to solve. And here’s where I would say that the minimum viable product, I think is something that would is really important. We have talked with our industry partners who are working on the mission autonomy, and they are really developing it in that simulation environment. But simulation needs to move to the real physical world and it needs to inhabit the real physical vehicle.

And so that’s where getting that minimum viable product of bringing those pieces together so that we can do exactly what you’re saying sir, is let the war fighters play with it, figure out what it’s useful for and move forward. We know that CCA were developed to solve the harder problem, which is weapons density, right?

We need to be able to get more missiles within the battle space because we’re not buying airplanes at the rate that we need, and we’re not producing and absorbing pilots at the rate that we need either. But that’s actually a much more difficult problem set. So let’s, manage expectations and get these vehicles into a place where they can provide value to the war fighter without necessarily pushing them beyond where their maturity actually is.[00:16:00]

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: And I’d also lock, I mean just like you know, and General Deptula, you remember this F 22, and we kept adding more stuff. So finally we locked in F 22 A. Let’s, like you just said, Lucky, let’s feel that I don’t need to continue to add everything on. I can improve it over time, but if you don’t get. It out there to be tested with actual aircraft and see how it does in the actual missions, we’re not gonna know just by simulating it.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And, and the price point has to be, appropriate as well. Exactly. So JV, we just talked about the aircraft shortfall, the pilot shortfall, the readiness shortfall and General Spain just took command of Air Combat Command, and his remarks at the ceremony left no ambiguity as to his primary focus readiness. And you recently just completed a paper about this. So we’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.

John “JV” Venable: Thanks, Heather. The, Fact that he actually came out and said something about readiness was wonderful. We’ve heard General Allvin say readiness is a focus, but what I want is specifics. I wanna know what they’re going to do and how they’re going to move the ball forward.

The conversation [00:17:00] about, how you measure readiness is not one for me that’s up for debate. It comes down to flying hours and sortie rates for our air crews. That drives everything else. Maintenance, manning, you need it. You’ve gotta have it in order to propel those sorties forward. WSS gotta be there and it’s gotta be there in quantity, flying our dollars.

It’s gotta be there. Ultimately we need sorties for our aircrew. We heard last night in a conversation with a senior leader that aircrews are getting nine hours a month in frontline fighters at certain locations. Nine hours is 118 hours a year. That’s half of what we felt was qualified to go out and fight the fight during the Cold War.

The man who drove all of that for me was General Bill Creech back in the seventies. And he did a revitalization of the United States Air Force that we got to enjoy for almost 30 years after he left, [00:18:00] his office as the TAC Air Commander, the TAC commander. And what he did was actually mandate, go through and tell people what they needed to do.

He did a study, on how to generate sorties, how to better organized maintenance, but he took charge of the readiness ball. He was the guy for the Air Force that drove everything else. My question today is who’s in charge of readiness. And Elmo Spain needs to be that guy. He needs to be driving this forward and the goal for him ought to be getting our fighter crews flying three to four times a week and getting our bomber crews flying at least once a week in long range tactical sorties. And if we can bring that to bear like General Creech did, then General Spain’s name will live just like General Creech’s did for many years to come.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: What other folks’ thoughts on this?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Sledge has said this over and over again. We live in a resource constrained environment, right? So how does he balance readiness, development, [00:19:00] modernization in that resource constrained environment? How does he manage the oldest and smallest combat Air Force and turn that into a newer, more modern future?

And what are the trade-offs? Because I, and I agree every, everything that was said, but then we always go back to the trade-offs. What can I afford and what can I keep and what do I need to do because I need to continue operations now. But I agree. I think General Spain and like General Wilsbach before him, they understand the readiness challenges and the modernization needs.

Now we have to make sure they get the resources as General Deptula said, so they can execute the mission.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. Well here’s where, I’ll just jump in here and you, it can’t be, and this is where the new chief’s gonna have to make a decision. This can’t be business as usual.

I heard it the other day from somebody that said, well there are always more efficiencies.

No, they’re not. We’re done with efficiencies. There is no more efficiency left to squeeze out of the people who [00:20:00] are populating the Air Force anymore. You either need, you need to give us more resources, or you’re gonna lose in the next major regional conflict, period dot, so you wanna lose then keep doing business as usual if you wanna win.

Did you just watch the frapping PRC military parade?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: It’s a show, but it was an eye water act show.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): I got it. But

Heather “Lucky” Penney: it is a demonstration. The

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Army, 250th birthday was a show too, and I’m sorry, but I watched the personnel. Of the PRC March in red square. And then just take a clip of our United States Army marching down Constitution Avenue and compare the two. I’ll just leave it at that.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, you know what I would say.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): You get what you pay for.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. I would say that we’re at a point now where we have to hedge against risk, and that means focusing on the readiness.

Research and development, there are important pieces like the F 47, [00:21:00] B 21, and so forth where you have to continue to maintain those investments because those we’re gonna deliver relatively near to midterm capabilities that will be essential to our combat capability and capacity. But honestly, we’ve gotta focus on the readiness.

If we’re investing in capabilities that aren’t gonna show for the war fighter field and reasonably pragmatic numbers in 2035, 2040, well let’s focus on the near term and that really means readiness.

John “JV” Venable: Yeah, I Lucky, I couldn’t agree more. Where is the money gonna come from is Laser’s, question and, with the CR discussion that he had, I think it’s a really good question.

It’s going to right now it’s gonna rely on the Air Force to reprogram that RDT&E money. For the Department of the Air Force, never in its history through 2017 did RDT&E exceed procurement. And it exceeds it by 70% for the department now. 70%. And so you can take 5 billion, you can take $7 billion out of that and move it over and start actually buying more aircraft, increasing [00:22:00] WSS, increasing the flying hour program, and start increasing our readiness now without any actions, at least for additional funding from Congress.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And another reason why I think what you said JV is so crucially important is that we, demonstrated a real abject failure to be able to transition a lot of those R&D technologies into procurement and to actually buy them in the numbers that matter. So that valley of death that a lot of companies moan about.

It’s real. It’s true. So if we’re imbalanced in the way that we are currently with the 70 percent. Then we’re in I would argue, potentially making poor investment choices because we have demonstrated a lack of will and willingness to be able to procure them and turn those into real programs of record in numbers that matter.

John “JV” Venable: Yeah. What Laser said earlier about the promissory note, we’re gonna buy a 1763, F35s. Where does that promise go? It, that’s a promise to the Air Force and it’s a promise to industry. We’ve got to get back on being trustworthy and being trustable in our word as the Air [00:23:00] Force.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So Charles, let’s dig into Space Power.

’cause Space Force just launched a satellite known as NTS3, and they did so using United Launch Alliance’s, Vulcan Rocket. Both are significant. So can you talk to our audience about what this means and why they’re important?

Charles Galbreath: Let’s talk about Vulcan first. Okay. Vulcan, this was the third launch.

Vulcan, and it was the first national security space payload. So the first basically operational use of the Vulcan vehicle. So this is a great milestone for the United Launch Alliance making sure that system, worked very well and, is in the inventory and ready to support our national security space architecture as we deploy that to space.

Now, NTS3 is navigation technology, satellite three, and you might be asking, okay, well, where was two? Well, it was back in the seventies, so it’s been decades since we’ve done some demonstration of new positioning, navigation and timing capability. The NTS2, led to advancements in what we have as [00:24:00] GPS today.

So what will NTS3 do? One, it’s a reprogrammable array, so it can work with new systems as well as old systems. It’s demonstrating some new technologies for positioning and navigation and timing, and it’s doing it at geocentric orbit as opposed to Medium Earth Orbit, which is where GPS operates.

So there’s a lot of great technologies involved in this system, and it’ll be interesting to see, how those manifest into future operational architectures.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And let’s hope that this actually does, again, transition into a program of record and the, and the geo orbit that’s more, a more secure, now we know, no Orbit is truly secure, but geo is gonna be more secure, and so it’s a better place for this to be.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, I mean, the difference between security between MEO and GEO pretty close. But the resilience that they’re able to put into the signal, that is coming out of the NTS3 system as opposed to the GPS. You, we’ve talked about GPS resilience, and jam resistance.

This is really gonna help, improve some of those capabilities.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Most excellent. ’cause we know that navigation, timing, that sort of [00:25:00] precision is gonna be crucially important to any kind of war fighting capability trusts, really. So, continuing with the Space Power, the Space Force also launched an X 37 B on its eighth mission.

Why is this, that’s a big deal.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah. Well, so one, it’s, it’s great to have the, X 37 B back in orbit doing a variety of tests. And they have the Space Force has actually talked about some of the testing that it’s gonna be doing during this mission set. There’s a whole handful of stuff that’s classified that’s traditionally what the X 37 is.

But this time they’re actually talking about laser communications that are gonna be demonstrated with the X 37, which is, gonna be tremendously important. Laser comms for, optical communications using, Lasers to send signals as opposed to just RF. So, lower probability of intercept, lower probability of detection, lower probability of jamming, and intrusion.

Basically secure comms in space as well as space to air, space to ground, et cetera. So that’s gonna be huge. it’s also demonstrating, some quantum, I wanna make sure I get this right. [00:26:00] Quantum inertial sensing. so what is that? It’s, it’s using. Quantum measurements to, determine the acceleration and the spin of atoms as an inertial reference so that you can understand where your position is in space.

So again, a sort of a PNP capability that could operate in a GPS denied or degraded environment. So those are the two missions that there are experiments that they’re talking about, with this X 37. but like I said, it’s just great to have that highly maneuverable system, up on orbit once again.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And I’m laughing because with the quantum piece, about two years ago I did a quantum series on quantum technologies. So if folks are really interested in geeking out on what that means for the quantum inertial system, they can go to the Mitchell website and look up quantum.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): So yeah, Heather’s the only one that understands quantum.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So it’s been a busy month for launch ’cause SpaceX just executed a successful launch for the Starship rocket. And why was this significant?

Charles Galbreath: I think you nailed it because it was successful. they had a lot of launch failures with the, [00:27:00] Starship system. SpaceX, Starship.

Yeah. So this is a super heavy, launch vehicle as opposed to the medium or heavy, which is the SpaceXs Falcon or Falcon Heavy. So a super heavy launch coming out of Texas. successful reentry of the booster as well as the upper stage. and this really is paving the way for future testing.

They’ve, they basically said, alright, this configuration, this set of operations, this works. And now we can start to get into some sort of cadence, SpaceX plans to do a super heavy launch like this every two months. So the end of October timeframe, they’re looking to do another one.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: yeah.

Lucky if I can just jump in here. I, I think too, the really, the important things here are the cost per mass to orbit. So whatever metric you use there is gonna drop precipitously. So that’s, that’s just gonna make all the innovation in space, especially at low earth orbit. Just explode, no pun intended there.

Um, so I, I think that’s important, but there are also significant implications for nasa. ’cause this puts the Artemis program back on track [00:28:00] for moon landing.

And, the 27 timeframe.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And that’s hugely important for our national standing when it comes to space, especially in the competition with China.

I mean, this really is another space race. It’s another moon race similar to Apollo during the Soviet Union and the Cold War. So we have got to get this back on track. So, Final space comment is that the president just announced that Space Command is moving to Huntsville, Alabama. Charles, love to get your thoughts on this one.

Charles Galbreath: So this has been an ongoing debate, well since Space Command stood up of where it’s gonna be headquartered. And, the Biden administration said it’s gonna be in Colorado. candidate Trump, said, Hey, when I become president again, we’re gonna move it to Alabama. And so he’s coming through on that campaign pledge.

Now, Colorado and particularly Colorado Springs has this great nexus of space professionals and space capabilities. So there’s gonna be some transition that’s gonna result in some brain drain, I think as you, as you head out to Alabama. Now, [00:29:00] Alabama also has, of course, a great space, community, NASA’s out there as well as the missile defense agency.

So I, I think there is some benefits of looking at how those systems, how those organizations will work together in the future. But as all of us know, when we move, there’s some period of transition where you’re losing some level of capability and it’s also costly. And, at a time when we’re supposed to be looking at every penny that we spend for our national defense, is this the right time to, to do such a move?

The old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But apparently we’re gonna be fixing it and moving it to Alabama.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, the decision’s been made,

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): I mean, is are there gonna be sufficient qualified personnel in Alabama? I know that’s a huge kind of behind the scenes discussion topic is there are a lot of people working at Space Command, space Force in Colorado Springs area who aren’t gonna move.

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve seen this story before when [00:30:00] Space Command shut down the first time and the space mission moved to strategic command. there were people in Colorado Springs that just refused to move to Omaha. So there was some of that, that drain that other people did get hired and brought on in the, they were able to do it.

And we shouldn’t, for a second doubt the capability of the men and women of Space Command to get the job done. They’re gonna get it done regardless of where it’s but there will be some transition costs and there will be some, some personnel transitions that won’t occur. They won’t move to Alabama.

But there are some great space experts there in Alabama too.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Yeah, I just, I, and I’m not, I’m not picking one side or another, I’m just looking at the process. I mean, we had acing. Process. we go through, we do the study, we’ve all seen the stoplight charts. I have to hope and still believe that we are objective as we go through those.

And when I look at those stop line charts, it’s not politically motivated. It basically shows me, Hey, here’s where the most [00:31:00] cost effective, long term, not short term, location and mission. I mean, they factor it all in. And from what I saw, again, I’m it all said Alabama. There were three of them done.

I just hope that process is still as pristine as it had been when we all served.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, switching gears, Slider and jv, I’d like to bring you back into the conversation to talk about our allies and partners because our allies appear to really be getting into gear when it comes to increasing their defense investments.

Would you mind running through some of the trends that you’ve been watching? What’s driving this? Because us has been asking for this for years, but we’re finally see our allies and partners coming through with increasing note events, budgets.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, look, you’re absolutely right. Just this week NATO announced for the first time, all 32 countries are gonna meet the minimum two, 2% of their GDP.

And so that’s, that’s tremendous news. and then earlier this summer at the, at the June NATO summit, they actually agreed to a [00:32:00] 5% GDP goal, with 3.5% going to core defense programs. That’d be like weapons and personnel. And then additional 1.5% going to resilience and readiness, things like infrastructure, protecting the defense industrial base.

And so we’re seeing a lot of progress in fact. So I, prior to this, I lived in Sicily before I moved to Sicily, I always wondered, well, how do you get to mainland Italy? Like is there a bridge? Of course there’s not a bridge, but Italy is actually proposed building a two and a half mile bridge that would connect Sicily to mainland Italy.

They wanna put that under the 1.5% of the GDP for, NATO Defense. So we’ll see how that all pans out.

John “JV” Venable: It’s a interesting little, shell game there with the money.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, exactly.

John “JV” Venable: We talk a lot about, killing the archer as opposed to the arrows, right? Yeah. Well, at one point you actually have to, as an offensive force, have.

Or a defensive force, you actually have to have arrows with which to shoot. several years ago I had the opportunity to talk to [00:33:00] three former, Japanese Defense Force officials, and I asked them, Hey, you’re buying the F 35 a number, which is impressive. You’re buying patriots.

You’re buying these systems. Could you talk to me about your magazine depth? How much do you have and how long of a war could you fight? And they kind of looked at each other for a while and, sucked a little wind through their teeth. And they said, we think we’ve got enough, munitions for three sorties in the F 35.

That’s one day’s worth of fighting. They wouldn’t actually get through if, if they had done that. And that’s across the board. It’s throughout nato. It’s, it’s all of our allies and partners. And so we’ve gotta make, and they’ve gotta make investments in bringing up their stockpiles. If you look at the Patriot production globally right now, it’s less than a thousand missiles a year. And in a full up fight, like we’ve watched with the Golden Dome out of, out the Iron Dome out of Israel, you’re talking about shooting 1200 missiles in a week, [00:34:00] maybe in a couple of days. And so we’ve gotta bring that production up and then we’ve gotta start buying those missiles AMRAAMs in quantity.

And we’ve gotta watch our. Our partners and allies make those investments not just in bridges to, connect, an island to a mainland.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, the magazine depth is, is absolutely essential because it doesn’t matter how many aircraft you have if they don’t have weapons to employ. So you need to have both.

And being able to fly those sororities over and over and over with, a full loadout, that’s what ultimately makes the difference. And we haven’t been buying them, we haven’t been storing them. And so we’re at a point now where our defense industrial base, I think, you folks have said, we have been a terrible partner to the defense industrial base.

You’ve got to procure. So if we don’t have the domestic production capacity, are there opportunities to license that production weapons production with our trusted allies and partners. Now, JV, you had brought up the F 35 and General Deptula I’m gonna spin over to you because we saw Spain drop [00:35:00] out of the F 35 program and Switzerland also appears to pretty weak on the, on F 35.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, well, it’s certainly positive to see, some of our allies stepping up defense investments, there are also some troubling signals. As you mentioned, Spain dropped out of their planned F 35 b buy, but this is kind of curious because they still have a carrier aviation requirement and The F35B is the only aircraft that can incredibly meet that need.

So unless they’re willing to go helicopter, only this decision looks more like politics than strategy. It could be related to broader US, Spanish tensions, whether over tariffs, trade or other policy issues. But from a defense perspective, it’s hard to see this as anything other than cutting off one’s nose spite the face.

Then there’s Switzerland. They’re voicing concern that the F 35 costs more today [00:36:00] than what they agreed to a few years ago. Duh. Let’s be realistic. Name a single item at a grocery store that cost the same as it did back then. Inflation has affected everything. Defense programs included, and it’s important to note this isn’t unique to Switzerland.

It impacts every customer in the program. So at the end of the day, it comes down to the level of combat, air power these nations want a field. No aircraft comes close to delivering the survivability, sensing and strike capability of the F 35 at least aircraft in production, especially for its price point.

In fact, there are fourth generation alternatives out there that often end up more expensive ’cause they’re built in much smaller quantities with higher overhead. And given the F 35 stellar performance in operations like Israel’s recent campaign against Iran, one has to [00:37:00] ask. What exactly don’t they like about a system that’s dramatically proven its worth in combat?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I think that we would all agree with your comments and sentiments.

John “JV” Venable: Yeah. Lucky if I could jump in there. Yeah. One, one of the things that we’ve watched Canada do, European nations do is study, what the costs are and which of these fighter assets that are most likely to provide their forces, what they need at a cost that is, is reasonable.

Switzerland did one of the most in-depth studies and it was like. Two thirds above all of the other fighters in the competition Switzerland found that the F 35 was by far the most cost effective and the most, lethal asset that they could buy for them to sit back and quibble on the fact that the F 35 is going up by a million or $2 million, a copy is.

It may be a good business, it may be a good negotiation strategy, but it [00:38:00] would be foolhardy for them to back out of it.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I agree. And I think one of the things that we’ve seen though is, is Lockheed Martin said, Hey, we can’t build more than 156 because they’re trying to provide smoothness and production lot reliability across year to year lots, and that gives them not only stability within their workforce, but also stability within their raw materials orders and stability within cost as much as they possibly can do.

I think we’re at the point now within the global security environment that we need to hear what are the conditions. Required that would empower Lockheed to make the investments they need to increase the production rate beyond 156, because there’s no way that they’re gonna be able to meet the needs of our allies and partners, as well as domestic production at the rate that we firmly believe they need to.

John “JV” Venable: And you, me, you mentioned earlier about, bringing in our allies and partners, Rhinemetall is now going to build part of the fuselage for the, F 35. We are actually expanding that and with their addition, which I think comes online next year in 2027, 2026, [00:39:00] 2027 timeframe. With that addition, Lockheed Martin can ramp up into the 160s, 170 ballpark without increasing their production line.

That is something they can do as what I’ve been told by people inside of the Lockheed Martin. As long as they have customers that are willing to commit to long-term contracts. And the United States is the worst of that. The United States Air Force, what are we down under 30 this year? And in order to get those numbers up and to get their confidence to increase their production capacity, we’ve gotta give it to ’em.

And we’ve gotta increase our buys.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. It’s multi-year procurements. We have to be willing to make the commitment to multi-year procurements in high enough rates that’s gonna bring down the cost because of the economic order of quantity. And we know because of, Senator McCain that a multi-year procurement has to be certified to deliver at least 10% savings.

So that’s good money as far as I’m concerned, because we’re strengthening our industrial base and we’re also then [00:40:00] delivering the capacity that our war fighters need and the capabilities that they need.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): That’s all great stuff. But here’s what the Air Force programmer’s gonna tell you. Wonderful stuff.

Wonderful. I don’t have the money. It’s not in the budget. Let’s move on. And so then we get to, all right, what are we gonna cut this year? So that’s why I go back to my remarks early on saying, look, the next leadership of the set of leadership of the Air Force, both the secretary and the chief, you may need to make it explicitly clear what needs to be done. So much so that they’re willing to be irritants to this system. We cannot continue to do business as usual, or we’re gonna lose.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And we’ve heard Admiral Paparro say, when it comes to his area of responsibility in INDOPACOM, that the Air Force is the only service that can provide fires where he wants them, when he wants them.

And so we need to be able to [00:41:00] follow up the needs of the combatant commander with the resources. And that means providing those resources, providing that budget, that TOA to the Air Force.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. That’s right. I just wish he’d stop using, anachronistic terminology like fires. And replace that with effects.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. So, again, pivoting a little bit, something we’ve talked about routinely on the rendezvous is Ukraine. Sir, it’s been a few weeks since the Alaska Summit when, president Trump met with Putin. I’d really like to hear your thoughts on how that went and what the status is today.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): Sure. Well, when it comes to Ukraine, the Russian approach I think is pretty clear. Explicitly clear. I don’t know how much more proof the people need. And their approach is talk and take. They sit down for discussions, but at the same time. Continue their attempts to grab territory, [00:42:00] press their advantage while intentionally targeting hospitals, schools, residential areas, and other civilian locations.

This isn’t an issue of collateral damage. It’s intentionally killing civilians. And we, as the world’s strongest remaining superpower, need to be very careful not to play into or perpetuate that dynamic because US credibility is absolutely on the line here. This isn’t just about Ukraine. China’s watching closely to see whether or not the United States has the resolve to stand by our values, our commitments, and our partners.

If we falter, that sends a dangerous signal to Beijing. Others who are looking for opportunities to weigh aggression. Another key point is that we cannot repeat the [00:43:00] mistake of artificially limiting Ukraine’s ability to project power. That was a major misstep of the Biden administration holding back systems that could have put Russia on the defensive much earlier.

The reality is simple. Russia will only negotiate seriously when it’s under real pressure, and that’s why it’s so important we give Ukraine what it needs, not just to survive, but to push the Russian War criminals back onto the defensive. I saw a piece today written by Greg Slaton former senior diplomat and author of Portraits of Ukraine, a Nation at War, in which he recently stated quote, all people of good heart want a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.

Putin is not such a person. It is impossible to end a war when the aggressors determined to continue the killing on a massive scale, and that’s exactly what Putin’s doing, unquote. One other point. It’s very important to note that the [00:44:00] reality is from a strategic perspective, the Russians are actually losing.

They’ve made very little territorial gains and those that they have made have been at an extraordinary loss rate. And they’ve lost in the eyes of the international community. But look, Putin doesn’t care about losses, plain and simple, or the vast majority of the international community, he only cares about power.

That’s how to get him to the bargaining table, demonstrate the power that the United States is capable of imposing on him both economically and from increased support to Ukraine, in addition to removing all the restrictions on the use of weapons that we’ve provided them.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So speaking of, keeping, pressure on Russia and keep them on the defensive and removing those restrictions, Sledge and Laser, the Senates, got language teed up regarding the sanctions on Russia to continue to increase, the pressure on Russia.

Where does all of this stand right now?

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: [00:45:00] That’s a great question. The docket for the rest of the fiscal year, through the end of September is pretty booked. But there’s actually two bills here. Senator Graham has introduced the Russia sanctions bill in the Senate, and that’s the one you’re referring to, lucky.

But there’s a companion bill. It’s actually identical text, that represented Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania has introduced in the House. Now Graham’s bill has 84 co-sponsors, which is 85% of the Senate. And, the Fitzpatrick bill has 89 co-sponsors in the House. So there is broad bipartisan support, sanctions bill against Russia.

and the fact that these are identical bills is important because that means that the, once the bills are passed in each chamber, they can be quickly reconciled. They can go to the president’s desk. But there’s a couple of things. First of all, the what’s the intent of the bill?

And it’s really to influence the calculus that Putin is going through right now by putting pressure on Russian financial institutions and the other people that have power within Russia [00:46:00] to get him to stop the killing in Ukraine. There’s some visa restrictions increased duties tariffs of up to 500% on defense goods and services energy sector, value items there.

So it’s really about changing the calculus in Russia where this all plays out. It’s hard to say, but I think what you’re seeing right now is a tension between congressional hatred for Putin. And the other side of that rope is not wanting to overly burden the presidential prerogative to deal with, Putin himself.

So I’ll let Laser opine on what, where he thinks or timeline on this is, but that’s the way I see this. I there, it’s in the queue. It’s ready to go. And then, you know what? When is Congress gonna act and how much are they gonna tie the president’s hand?

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Yeah. Sledge shacked the target.

So, I agree with everything right now. Congress is watching th you know majority of [00:47:00] leader Thune is watching, and they were ready to go. They had it back in July, and it, they are they’re teed up. There’s bipartisan support. I think they can get ’em. Passed very quickly, but they’re watching to see what the Trump administration is doing.

And he’s made taken some actions, but my feeling is that if they come to a point where Congress feels that they need to step in to help the president or take additional action, they will act very quickly, even with everything else on the docket. because it, it’s ready to go. It’s got bipartisan support.

But what they’re doing right now is watching all the actions that the executive branch, and the agencies are taking to do exactly what we talked about earlier, which is cutting Russia off.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. We heard President Trump use very strong language, and I think these bills are a response to that.

But now it seems like they’re waiting for another signal.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah, I have one, one re-attack there too. Lucky. You know the other thing too, is there, [00:48:00] they’re not called secondary sanctions, but that’s really what this bill imposes. And so, there’s up to a 500% tariff on countries that import or continue to import energy from Russia.

So and this would really be Newton’s third law applied to politics here. If you pass this, you impose sanctions on countries like China and India. What does that do to the international order and any pushback and, we’re just coming off I guess. A fairly successful Russia China summit where it looks like –

Heather “Lucky” Penney: India was there too.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Yeah.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And, and as it promoted,

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: yeah. Prime Minister Modi was there as well. So those are things I think that are going through, at least the administration’s mind. I don’t know if Congress cares that much about that. They just, they do not like Vladimir Putin and they want to turn the screws up on him.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yes.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: And just, and the ultimate goal is to have put Frank, Putin to the peace table. Right?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. Yeah. Alright, so we’ve got some other news topics that we need to wrap up before the end of, this [00:49:00] rendezvous. Charles, you’re a former Missilier, and we recently hosted Lieutenant General Gabbara and he made news about the Sentinel Program.

What’s up?

Charles Galbreath: Yeah, the Sentinel Program, not just the replacement missile, but the infrastructure, back to JVs analogy of the archer with the bow and the arrow. Well, if you run outta arrows, that’s bad, but if you don’t have a bow in the first place, that’s also bad. So.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, the Sentinel Program is huge.

Charles Galbreath: The Sentinel, the new missile, is on track that’s moving out well.

But what we ran into was problems with the existing launch facilities, that it is actually gonna be cheaper and faster to build new than to try to renovate the old. And just to, as a reminder, these launch facilities were built in the early sixties, late fifties, even in some cases. So imagine trying to take a mid-century modern House, and completely renovate it to something that’s in the 21st century.

You’re gonna run into problems. And the same thing is true with these launch facilities. And so it’s just gonna be actually cheaper and faster to build new launch [00:50:00] facilities, adjacent to the old ones and, install new hardened underground cables to, for the connectivity of all of these sites as well.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. I mean, as you mentioned, it turns out to be a better cost proposition. Yeah. As well as frankly, a better mission proposition. And folks need to understand the Sentinel program is enormous. It’s more than just the missile. It’s more than just the silos. It’s everything put together. So Houston and jv as we continue on here, Lieutenant General Gabbara also commented on the B 21 production line and B 52 modernization efforts.

What did he say? And what are your takes? So, JV, we’re gonna start with you for B 21 and Houston, you talk about the buff.

John “JV” Venable: Well, he was very forthcoming on how well the B 21 is doing. I the second, airframe is about to roll out, hopefully fly in the near term, which is all great news. He talked about acquiring a hundred, B21s.

I’ll go back to what, Zatar said earlier about being bold. Our leaders need to be bold. The Mitchell [00:51:00] Institute has done a study. The Heritage Foundation has done a study. Both of them concluded we need well over 200 B21s. And that’s what I want to hear General Gabbara say. I want to hear him to say, this is a great program.

It’s coming in at cost. This is what we need to do moving forward. We need to accelerate the building and the production of these to 20 a year. And we need to do that for 10 solid years plus in order to get us over the 200 threshold, that’s what I want.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And we would need to make some of those investments now so that we can facilities to be able to produce that rate of B 21.

So we need to be bold and get that I love that word. and make those investments now so we can follow through and get them at the rate and in a timely fashion to our war fighters Slider.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. On the B 52, he was very clear. The buff remains the mainstay to our long range global strike, even though this aircraft’s been in our inventory for over 70 years.

I mean, hard, hard to believe, but because it’s been in the inventory Yeah. For [00:52:00] so long, it requires some upgrades. And so there’s two main upgrade programs going on right now, the engines as well as the radars, and he addressed the radars during his discussion. And the radars, as you mentioned is undergoing a major cost overrun.

So it was a Nunn – McCurdy breach, where originally the program’s supposed to be about 2 billion. Now they’re estimating about 2.4 billion, but again, he’s absolutely clear. We need this upgrade in order for this aircraft to maintain its viability relevance moving into the 21st century. And so, remains important.

It’s an F 18 radar, so it’s got tremendous capability. They’ve looked at the program very carefully and they’ve down scoped the requirements as much as possible to allow for upgrades in the future, but they want to get the min viable product out there so that the aircraft can again, be as viable as possible.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah,

John “JV” Venable: I love this idea of extending the life of the B 52 for another 30 years. B 52 J will actually take [00:53:00] the 1962 airframe to the year 125 years of aviation excellence for the B 52. What I want is for us to buy as many B21s as we can before we get to another letter in the designation of the B 52.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: I, I just wanna call, I mean, working for Senator Inhofe and being at Tinker Air Force Base, I’ve watched him take B 52s down to the skeleton and build them back up. I’m not advocating for doing that, keeping them any longer. But I’ll just tell you, it’s amazing what our men and women in the Air Force have done to keep that plane flying.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Flying antique aircraft. I understand exactly what you’re saying, Laser, but it also is costly. And you also sometimes when you’re thinking about what are the things I need to do to restore this airframe, you might discover some things you were not necessarily anticipating, which provides additional cost.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: We and they did.

I mean they had actually cut a, a main gear off and they had to develop a tool to do it. and I’m not advocating for that, but I will [00:54:00] tell you, it is amazing if you, and I know General Deptula and others have probably been to Tinker, but it is amazing what they’re doing with our aircraft.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Alright folks, well thank you so much for your time.

That’s all we’ve got for right now. I know there’s gonna be so much more for us to talk about when we get to October’s r Rendezvous, ’cause September is going to be a whirlwind. But thank you again for making the time and thank you for your insights.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.): You bet, Heather. Always. good discussions.

Charles Galbreath: Thanks Heather.

Anthony “Lazer” Lazarski: Have a great September.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thanks, Lazer.

Todd “Sledge” Harmer: Always a pleasure to see you next time.

Brig. Gen. Houston “Slider” Cantwell, USAF (Ret.): Thanks, Lucky.

John “JV” Venable: A pleasure. Thanks, Lucky.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And with that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guests for joining in today’s conversation. I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued support and for tuning into today’s show.

If you like what you heard today, don’t forget to hit that like button or follow or subscribe to the Aerospace Advantage. You can also leave a comment to let us know what you think about our show or areas that you would like us to explore further. As always, you can join in on the conversation by following the Mitchell Institute on X, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and you can always [00:55:00] find us at mitchellaerospacepower.org.

Thanks again for joining us and have a great aerospace power kind of day. See you next time.