DoD organizations. We must follow these. Number one of these tenets of responsible behavior is to operate in, from, and through space with due regard to others and in a responsible manner. Number two, limit the generation of long-lived debris. Number three, avoid the creation of harmful interference. Number four, maintain safe separation and safe trajectory when you are maneu- vering satellites near each other. And then, five, communi- cate and make notifications to enhance safety and stability of the domain. And to Emily’s previous question, we send out these safety notifications because we want to com- municate and make notifications to enhance safety. That’s why we do that, for the international community. Looking to the future, operations around the moon are coming back, you know. In the next couple of years, NASA, through the Artemis program, is going to put Americans back on the lunar surface. And there may be a need for military operations in cislunar orbit or ex-geo orbit, as we call that. And I think there’s going to be a discussion at that point. What do you do with satellites that will go defunct in lunar orbit? Today if we have a satellite that is going to be defunct in low-Earth orbit, we tend to burn it back into the atmosphere, so we don’t leave it in space. If it’s in geosynchronous orbit, we put it in a parking lot orbit which is above geosynchronous and a safe place to get it out of geosynchronous orbit. We call it the graveyard belt. But what do you do with objects in cislunar? Maybe we all can agree to put objects in a safe location away from the orbits that active satellites need to be in. Or maybe we’ll get to an ethos that every bit of kit that you take you have to bring back out with you. You know, we live here in Colorado and when you go into these pristine mountains, that’s an ethos that a lot of hikers have: Whatever you pack in, you have to pack out. I think that’s a discussion that we’re going to have in the future: What do you do with debris in some of these nontraditional orbits? Q You spoke at a space symposium earlier this year on the importance of alliances and including academic alliances. As you probably know, DAU offers space acqui- sition courses and has a SPACECOM liaison. What do you feel that the acquisition and training community needs to focus on and prioritize? A. Emily, this is another question I’ll approach with a great deal of humility because I am not an acquisition expert. And so, I wade carefully into telling the acquisition com- munity what to do. But I’ll tell you what I need . And I think this is what the acquisition community can help with. Again, we need to really keep working to crack the code on rapid delivery of capability. Doing things in space is rocket science. It’s hard, and you know, one of our taglines is space is hard. And it’s not just delivering the thing . It’s delivering the full DOTmLPF [doctrine, organization, train- ing, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and fa- cilities] of capability. It’s training systems. It’s personnel. It’s bringing together the civil engineers who have to build
[W]e need to really keep working to crack the code on rapid delivery of capability. Doing things in space is rocket science. It’s hard, and you know, one of our taglines is space is hard. And it’s not just delivering the thing . It’s delivering the full DOTmLPF [doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities] of capability.
the facilities that these systems have to be operated from. It’s bringing all that together rapidly, so we get capability. And then on the training side, I would highlight the need for the acquisition community to understand space. I’m thrilled to hear that you’re bringing on space acquisition courses, but it’s also that the space community under- stands acquisition . At U.S. Space Command, we don’t have any unique ac- quisition authorities, and I don’t think I need those. But I think I can perform a unique integration role across the seven organizations that I mentioned earlier that deliver capability to us. We can look across all those to say, “Are all the various capabilities coming together in a way that allows us to close our kill chains and interdict potential adversaries’ kill chains?” Q Yeah, definitely. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you wanted to add? A. Just my thanks for what you and DAU do to help prepare the acquisition workforce that we need. This is a tough business, and we don’t have all the resources we need to get after every mission. So, we’ve got to find ways to be not only effective, but to be efficient and to make sure that we’re delivering the capability that the Warfighters need, [not only] here at U.S. Space Command, but across all the Combatant Commands as well as doing right by the tax- payer. So, I appreciate all the DAU does to help us do that.
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March-April 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 13
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