Q Are there any risks or concerns with relying on the commercial sector for supplying capabilities? A. Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s a question that other Commands and other domains have to wrestle with. For example, I know you’re aware that U.S. Transportation Command through a process called CRAFT, the Civil Re- serve Air Fleet, relies on commercial air carriers to help support some of the bulk movement of personnel and equipment to various theaters of operation. And there’s something similar with Sealift as well. So, we can apply some of those lessons learned into this domain, and in fact, the Office of the Secretary of Defense this past year put forward a commercial integration strategy that talks about this balance—that, yes, for some requirements, commer- cial works fantastic. But there certainly are missions where we want be- spoke-built capabilities that the government controls be- cause those missions are of such importance to us. Missile warning systems that support the president for nuclear command and control, for example—those flow over the satellite constellations that we’ve paid commercial in- dustry to build for us, that we own, that we control. And we have built them perhaps to higher specifications than would be built just for commercial applications. So, it’s a balance. And we’ve got to look at all of those requirements and then pick the best capability for each mission area.
Q SPACECOM’s Strategic Vision speaks of the impor- tance of leading as a model of responsible behavior in space. And you’ve also spoken about the importance of keeping space safe for humanity and the sciences. What does responsible behavior in space look like now and in the future? A. Ben, thanks for that question. There is some interna- tional law on this that highlights what professional, re- sponsible safe behavior would be and that most of the international community has signed up to. For example, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says that countries will not place weapons of mass destruction or nuclear weapons on orbit. Of course, the United States is a signatory to that, Russia is a signatory to that, China, and other spacefaring nations. And yet, now we see reports that Russia might be con- sidering placing a nuclear armed anti-satellite weapon in orbit. Of course, that would be incredibly irresponsible be- havior with indiscriminate effects that would affect every country’s satellites and affect our way of life here on planet Earth. So, it’s important that the Russians understand that we expect them to abide by the treaty obligations that they have, which have been around now for 57 years. Here in the United States, the Secretary of Defense a few years ago signed out a memo which lays out the tenets of responsible behavior. And that sounds maybe soft, that these are tenets, but they’re a direction to me and to all
Russell Vela, chief of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s Multi-Domain Technologies Division briefs Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Com- mand, on the USASMDC SPECTRE transportable distributed aperture research system. Whiting visited USASMDC on Feb. 12, 2025 to meet team members and learn how their missions support Space Command. Source: U.S. Army photo by Jason B. Cutshaw
12 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | March-April 2025
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