Dr. Mark Lewis, the Defense Department’s director of defense research and engineering for modernization, discusses the Pentagon’s priorities with Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute in Washington, June 30, 2020.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to this virtual event. That’s the institute. My name is Rebecca. Higher if some senior fellow at Hudson and I am joined today by Doctor Marc J. Lewis, who is the director of defense research and engineering for modernization in Houston. For being here with us. We are going to talk about your 11 priorities in your portfolio. We are going to focus on the top three, I believe, and you can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong there. Uh, I like to start off by talking about microelectronics, and then we will move into five G and the night My my intense, is to camp out a longer on the subject of hypersonic weapons of both offense and defense. So on microelectronics, you have said that we need to operate and develop trusted components in zero trust environments. Can you explain for us what that means? Sure. So? So, to be specific, we’re not really looking at making the components themselves trusted. All right, What we’re looking at doing is establishing the infrastructure and standards so that we can trust what comes out of whatever microelectronic components were using. So by way of explanation, Let me Let me kind of explain where we are now and then where we want to go. So today, um, we buy trusted electronic components from from what we think are of as trusted sources the trusted foundries and a trusted foundry. A foundry is a facility that manufacturers microelectronics. Um, they’re very expensive facilities to build, take significant capital investment. Uh, not not only to build them, but to maintain them and to keep them state of the art. Microelectronics is an industry is always advancing. They’re always looking at at ways to upgrade and update the products that they produce. In the trusted foundry model, you essentially establish one or several foundries where you have total control of the manufacturing process. That is, you control everything going in, everything going out, you control everything. Everyone who touches the microelectronics, you do background checks on everyone. You have fences and guards and gates surrounding your foundry. Um, it’s a model that the United States Department defense embraced, uh, in the nineties and in large measure, Um, I think we can say it hasn’t worked out very well, and I’ll explain why so First, um, the department offense is a relatively small purchaser of electron ICS compared to the global market. Unlike aircraft carriers were the only buyers, Um, and you know much, many other technologies directed energy and ah, and parts of space. The department defense is just a couple of percentage of the total microelectronics by, and the result is that it’s it’s really hard for industry to build a business case solely based on the needs of the department defense. So what we’ve tended to see happen is the companies that have have have gone down the path of establishing these trusted foundries. I found it. It’s very difficult to make the case toe, continue to update and upgrade and make sure that they’re at the state of the art. So the result has been that at the department, defense is not buying parts, not buying components that are state of the art. Some cases they’re a generation or two behind, so that’s a problem right there. The other problem is that it creates a vulnerability in the supply chain because if you’ve only got one or two trusted sources, then suddenly if those sources disappears, thought manufacturing for whatever reason, well, obviously it into interferes with the supply of those components into the department offense. But there’s 1/3 part of this that that we’re very concerned about as well. And that is it. The whole philosophy trusted foundries can lead to a false sense of security. I think we’ve seen, um, unfortunately had several examples where we realize that our greatest intelligence vulnerabilities sometimes coming from the insider threat, you know, think about the Snowden is of the world who are inside. We think they’re trusted. We’ve done the background checks, we’ve done the background searches. Then we found out No, actually, they represented vulnerability. And so when you go down the path of a of a fully trusted facility, you run the risk of frankly fooling yourself into thinking you’ve got You’ve got secure capabilities when in fact you don’t. You could often, you know, miss the biggest vulnerability. So the approach that we are pursuing, the one that we’re interested in in our office is what we call the zero trust approach, where you no longer depend on guards and fences and gates and guns and background checks. Instead, you first by commercial components that you’re always at state of the art so that you’re leveraging the investments that are being made in the commercial side and then use various techniques again, standards the protocols that you build in the way you handle the data to ensure yourself that the parts that you’re buying that you’re putting into your into your your systems, they’re doing what you think they’re doing and you’re protecting the data and protecting the information in many ways. Old Ron analogy to To the cyber defense world You know, early cyber efforts were focused in large measure toe kind of building cyber fences, you know, establishing a if you will, ah, cyber firewall and then convincing yourself that everything inside the fence was safe and secure and everything outside the fence was was questionable. We’ve realized that doesn’t work very well, And and so just as the cybersecurity world has moved on, we think that the microelectronics world has to move on as well. That’s great. Thank you for that. Um, let’s let’s talk a little bit about five G again if we could If you could explain on five G uh, why this is so important. I think sometimes we can assume your audience knows that we’re talking about here. Why is so important as we look at the national defense strategy for back to major power competition? We’re really concerned about the Chinese and five G networks in particular, and why it’s so important to the United States to have that right. So So you’re right. We consider five you to be absolutely critical. And, you know, for your viewers who are maybe not as familiar with five g I’m the way I like to think about it is it’s much more than just a slightly faster Internet, all right, it’s It’s much more data. It’s much smaller. Layton, see, So it allows you to do so many more things than we can currently do with is the way we handle our data. Um, the way we interact, interconnect our systems the way we reconnect our various fighters, For example, um, are people in the field the sorts of capabilities that we can bring for training? Um, the whole Internet of things where we have various components are linked, Ah, through information sharing that all starts become possible as we pursue these five G capabilities, and probably at this point, give me to point out we don’t see five g is being a single goal post so we don’t think you get some point. You declare victory. We’ve got five g. We won the race. Let’s let’s stop here We see a continue evolution. We talk about five g two next G because we see a continual development of increased data handling reduced late and see more kick bowling assistant. Alright, So why is this important? Well, we dont want to be able to operate in any environment. We want to be able to do information exchange in either a friendly or hostile information environment and five G is gonna be critical to that. Um, we need to have robust systems. We need to have systems that are in some cases, self healing that are interconnected because we see that information exchange is really at the heart of the battle of the future. It’s that full conductivity, making sure our various weapons systems are connected. Make sure our services air connected, um, make best use of you know, our the sense is that we have available on the options that we have available to bring bring to the fight as we see five years being one of those enabling capabilities that factors into a lot of the work that we’re talking about doing in fully network command control Communications is as one of our future modernization goals. Um, we think the United States has to lead, and by lead the United States needs to set the international standards. And we’re taking the lesson from the previous generation for G. So the United States that an amazing job of leading the international’s efforts in establishing the standards for four G and that put us and by us I mean none of the government but industry and a key in a key place for deciding the future of that technology will. Now we’re seeing the same thing with five, and and frankly, we’re seeing some of our pure competitors trying to step up. You mentioned China. So China, obviously is, is making a big play on the hardware side, but also in trying to set those international standards. And he who set so standards basically gets to decide what this all looks like. So we have ah, very robust program in five G. We’re doing, for example, Siris of experiments at various military installations. I’ve got a technical director for five g. My Name of Joe Evans. Joe joined us from DARPA, and he’s overseeing these experiments and one of the things about department defenses. It’s It’s easy first, to do these sort of laboratory type experiments. No military facilities are in some cases, the perfect Petri dish for doing these sorts of tests and experiments were doing. We’re doing experiments it’ll look at using resemble virtual reality for training enabled by five G. We’re looking at spectrum sharing. That’s one of our other key issues. Ah, as we go forward in five and we hope that the department fence can therefore essentially lead in these national efforts and help enable industry to not only meet the needs of department events, but but but the country as a whole. Great. I could I could to ask about three more follow ups on five G, but in the insert interest of time. Because I am so interested in talking a little bit hypersonic, both offensive and defensive plans for that, Then I’m gonna go ahead and just leave that there and turned now to hyper sonics. Um, you, I think, have been, um, very eloquent on explaining that what we want right now. If you want battlefield dominance when we’re talking about major power competition and we’ve we lost that and some, uh, some domains in some areas on others, it’s it’s closed or it’s too close for comfort, right? Can you Can you talk about hypersonic? Why? Why do we care so much about these particular weapons systems? And why the Russians and the Chinese again going back the natural defense strategy? What? Why? Why is it so concerning that those that those two countries have invested so heavily in this particular kind of weapons system and why it matters that the United States hasn’t and why it matters, that we needed me to move pretty quickly out on this particular capabilities? Absolutely. So So, our interest in hyper Sonics really comes about because we’re interested in penetrating for long range is with with tremendous resiliency, right way want to be able to reach out and touch, um, potential adversaries. Um, um, be able to survive, uh, in doing that. And so So we think hypersonic gives us gives us that capability, you know, is that sometimes we joke in my office if we thought jellyfish would allow us to travel, you know, 1000 nautical miles Ah, and and and and and be be unstoppable. We’d be pursuing jellyfish, but we don’t We think it’s hyper sonics. And what is it about hypersonic settle? Let’s let’s just do that. Well, hyper Sonics actually is often, ah, thought of only as speed. But it’s actually combination of several things its speed, its maneuverability. And then it’s the altitude. So trajectories with which these systems operate, so speed is important. Speed gives you Ah, pity of action gives you a quick response. It also challenges your adversary. It allows you to get inside the adversaries. You dilute the observe, Orient, decide and act loop that we talked about frequently in the Pentagon. Right. As we’re flying at Mach five, you’re traveling at hypersonic speeds Mach five. You’re covering about a mile of second, so that doesn’t give your potential adversary a lot of time to figure out what you are beside. That you’re coming and then take some action, decide what you’re planning on doing and take some corrective action. So speed is essential. Maneuverability is also really important. So we build hypersonic systems today, every I C B m that’s reentering for space is traveling at hypersonic speeds. Every spacecraft, you know, the space shuttle came in hypersonic speeds, but we talk about hyper sciences. It’s really a shorthand for hypersonic inside the atmosphere. So systems that would use aerodynamics for maneuvering so that the trajectory becomes less predictable. All right, So it again, harder to stop. And then finally, the trajectory. So hypersonic systems, because during the atmosphere they wind up being in a sweet spot at their relatively hard to detect from the ground. But they can also be difficult detect from higher altitude from space. Not impossible, by the way, but more difficult. So those attributes coming together, we believe, produced a category a class of weapons system that, um is, uh, frankly, um, heart hard to counter. And that’s why we’re interested in also, that’s why our potential adversaries AARP, your competitors are interested in as well. So why is this so important? Um, I’ll argue that ah, hypersonic tactical system suddenly has strategic implications. So if someone could build a tactical hypersonic weapon that could say, hold one of our carrier test forces at risk, then suddenly, suddenly they’ve got a tactical system which will, which can match our first class Navy without there having a first class. Think if they can hold our airfields at risk. If they can take out our aircraft before they ever take to the air, then they can with this tactical system applies strategic level capabilities against our first rate air force. So we we really do think it’s a game changer. Um, there’s another element of this, and that is for obviously for many decades, the United States has invested in stealth technology as being are leading edge defining technology. And there’s no question that the stealth revolution was absolutely phenomenal. Book of the impact that self had and some of the conflict that we were involved in starting in the in the nineties with the first Gulf War, Um, Stealth lived up to all of its promises and then some. Well, entire world has now had three decades to see how we use stealth. They’ve been able develop their own stealth capabilities. They’ve been ableto think through how they would counter are our stealth capabilities, and so we no longer have that avenge that we once had. Um, so what’s next? Well, on a very simple level stealth means they can’t see me. Um, if they conceive me anyway that I think the next step is the hypersonic step, which means they may be conceived me. But they’ll see me a little bit too late to do anything. And if they try to do something, it will be extremely, extremely difficult. Something sometimes been accused of saying Speed is a new stealth Like, uh um, it’s bit of a bit of a bit of a glib catchphrase, but I think there’s a truth, the truth to that and that its next trend, I believe in in in weapons technology, Um, in terms of kind of a troubling aspect of this. So, you know, as as as your question alludes to, we’ve seen our competitors invest very, very heavily in hypersonic. It’s, um, I I’ve been quoted on occasions saying we did their homework for them. I mean, this is a field that we invented. Um, we did the fundamental work. I’m at the 19 fifties. We did the fundamental research. We developed concepts. We did the experiments, we did the ground test. We did the first significant flight test, and then we kind of took our foot off the gas. We weren’t moving at a sufficient pace, and and we did even worse because we produced a number of policy documents that that describe the attributes of hyper sonics and why I was so valuable to the future fight. And then we didn’t listen to our own advice. And it gave our potential competitors a significant opportunity with with big investments to play, catch up and build build on our work. And so now we’re in this situation where we are truly in a three way race and we feel that sense of like alacrity, right? And on that point to, you know, it’s not. Not because the United States has done something that has incited these other pure competitors toe, then go ahead, invest in these technologies. They’re investing in these technologies because they see it in their national interests, and we’re the ones that are behind. I thought this was interesting, too. You’ve been working on these issues and focusing on them. You’re very familiar with the history of them. Um, what is different? You have mentioned in the past that we have failed way we’ve invested in or we look that examine and done a lot of work on these technologies in the past, But then we failed to transition from research and development or from snt over two applications, weapons systems to actually get them. Field it. And then you said that really, that’s changed today is different, and we really are serious this time about getting these things to the warfighter and to do it quickly. What has changed and how, practically speaking, is this going to be different? So I think there’s several things have changed the versus the personalities involved. Um uh, we have leadership now that understands the value and the impact of this technology. And although we had in the past some leaders who did recognise this, I think the consensus now the strong consensus is overwhelmingly supportive and understanding why this is an important technology. So that has changed. I think the other thing that has changed is our recognition that we are in a race. I, you know, report that reporting that came out of the intelligence community starting really in the early 20 tens, but peaking in the mid 2010. Um, let us all to realize that we were, in some cases, resting on our laurels while other people were not, um, there was an element of humors to it that we thought we were so far ahead. And we were We were the ones developing this technology that no one could possibly hope to catch up to us. And I think, um, when when this story started getting getting out, we start understanding the level of investments overseas, especially in China. They haven’t. They haven’t been shy about it. You can go online. You can see YouTube videos out of China where they will show up the facilities that they’ve been building. You know, they did their their military parade where they’re showing off their capabilities. So so that, I think, has been eye opening. And it has really changed the conversation. Yeah, um and, um and I would say to their, you know, there’s a I think there’s been a sea change politically. And how would you, the China, our relationship with the Chinese, how it’s it’s really been a policy of engagement now were understanding that, um, it is more perhaps adversarial than would be? It wanted it to be over the many, many years, and so these these weapons systems are very problematic. I do want such I’m just a another, a different, more technical. He’s, I think, would be useful for our viewers. The benefit for the United because we’re still looking at what kinds of systems we’re going t to develop and invest in. Um might have plenty of prototypes that don’t never grow into more mature systems than that. We’re trying to figure out what works best. Which ones fulfill different requirements that we that we still have. What is the difference between for the United States purposes? What’s the benefit of a hypersonic cruise missile versus a hypersonic boost? Glide system, Right, So So you’re exactly right that right now we’ve got a number of prototype programs and and I’d be surprised if each and every one of those prototype programs manifested itself finally, in a program, a record. Um, but I do generally categorised hyper sonics in those two systems. There the boost glide systems where you have a rocket based system that accelerates up to speed, and then what we call the air breathing systems where there is ah, essentially a jet engine, um, and and the way to think about is the following. All right, So, um, a a rocket is a divisive carries both its fuel and it’s oxidizer on board, right? So in order to make a rocket work, you combined fuel and oxidizer. They combust, they burn, they release energy. That energy goes into the exhaust products. That gives you an exhaust. Yet that gives you thrust that makes you go forward. A jet engine only has fuel on board. And then for the oxidizer it swallows air uses oxygen in the air to burn with fuel. So if I can swallow air, if I have an inlet hole in the front where I bring Aaron, that means I’m not carrying the oxygen with me. So I don’t need the way to the few of the oxidizer. I don’t need the way to the tanks to carry the oxidizer. That leads to a much more efficient propulsion system. It’s just one example, you know. Ah, conventional airliners are obviously powered by jet engines. Jet engines have big inlets, air comes in, and the option of that air burns with the jet fuel inside the combust er as opposed to a rocket like on the space shuttle or ah, an Atlas five. We’re all both the fuel and the oxidizer is stored in tanks. All right, so I think about the differences between those two systems. Rockets produce lots of thrust compared to the weight of the engine itself. Jet engines? Not so much. But jet engines produced lots of thrust compared to the amount of weight of fuel they’re consuming because they’re not carrying that option with him. And that means you have no less. You’re not carrying the way to the oxygen. You’re not caring. Wayto thanks so it can lead to a more efficient design. If you want to travel a long distance in the atmosphere, you’re obviously much better off with a jet engine. You’re better off not trying to carry that option with you. You want to swallow it through an inlet. If you want to go into space, you obviously want a rocket because there’s no oxygen in space, Right? So those of the trades in the hypersonic realm we wind up kind of being on the boundary between air and space, and that’s why we look at both systems. In the case of the rocket boost glide, we’re investing all the energy in front. So we’ve got a rocket that burns fuel and oxidizer gets the system up to really fast speeds very quickly. And then a glide body weapon or some other systems separates and glides at hypersonic speed to the target, usually without any additional propulsion system. On a cruise missile side, we often get up to speed with a smaller rocket. But once it gets up the hypersonic speed the jet engine takes over and so it’s continuing to provide thrust. Continue to power all through the atmosphere. Alright, what? The difference is that in those technologies, well on the rocket boost glide, the biggest challenges I have toe overspeed the system, because I have to get up to a much higher speed, is I’m then bleeding off energy because I’m gliding the rest away. Down Haier speed means more heating. It means more stress for the materials on the air breathing site. For the jet engine side, the challenges are well, I need to build an engine. I need to build an engine which can swallow air through an inlet. I need to be able to inject fuel into that airstream, mixed it efficiently, burning quickly and produce thrust out the back, and that’s that’s also very difficult to dio. But the air breathing system applies that energy, if you will. It’s constantly releasing that, and it’s a more gradual release the energy. So if you look at the way those systems package, what you generally find is the air breathing systems, the everything cruise missiles package smaller. Are there more compact cause they’re not carrying the option with that produces a smaller missile, so I get more of them on board, right? They maybe don’t go as far, but they’ve got these packaging advantages. The rocket boost glide systems. They go further, but they stress materials. They tend to stress the limits of our knowledge of how toe to construct these designs. Um, everything systems a little bit less maneuverable because I’m worrying about the way the errors behaving as it goes in the front of the engine that the rocket boost system. Once it starts gliding, I can bank and dive and glide. I don’t care about the state of the air coming in front. So as I like to emphasize, these systems really don’t compete there, actually complimentary. We want both of these. We want the everything cruise missiles. But you also want the boost glide systems because they each have their own benefits, their own drawbacks and used in combination. I think of them really is a high low mix, very much like we have the high low mix and fighters. He had 15 in the F 16. So I think we need the high, low mix and hypersonic between the boost gliders and the air breathers. That’s great. Um, I you you talked to you about the need. This has been a theme from the Pentagon as we moved forward Spectra Esper has made these made this point over and over and over again that they need to go fast. And, um and you just said that we need to embrace, uh, paraphrasing a higher degree of risk that there certainly rest. Forget it. We’re not going to get it right right away, and we’re going to have some kind of failures. But there’s a difference. Doing good, there’s good failures, and there’s bad failures. And you didn’t need to embrace this idea of having some good failures because we learn from them. Um, I want you to touch on that, and I also though it would be great then if you could think about going to that how How industry should be thinking about this Because you’ve talked about we need to go to scale. We need be producing these things that scale. But right now, we still don’t really know exactly where we’re gonna You know what? Which some of these systems we’re gonna go with that becomes very difficult, Especially as you think about supply chains and making sure that we have supply chains prepared to be ableto ramp up and produce that feel. So, uh, so testing and embracing failure. And then how can we be preparing for this and how you’re thinking about supply chains, right? So you’re exactly right that we need to be less risk averse, and that doesn’t mean way seek to maximise risk. But it also means we’re not afraid to take risks. We’re not afraid to fail as long as they’re what I term noble failures. Right? There are dumb failures and noble failures. Noble failures are when something didn’t work. But but you learned a lot, and it was an unknown that you’ve now. You’ve now, uh, added information. You’ve got data that allows you to understand what went wrong. Thumb failures are when something fails, it really have no business failing. So let me let me give you an example of one of the best explanation. Second half, um, in the 20 tens, the United States Air Force had a program which which I think has been one of our most successful hypersonic programs was called X 51 and X 51 did four flights. The first flight was mostly successful. Towards the end of the flight, there was a little bit of a burn through in the nozzle. Second flight failed, third flight failed. Four flight was fully successful. Now let’s talk about that program, not tell you what we did right, but also tell you what we did wrong, all right, after that first flight or where mostly worked, the engine worked. We power the vehicle for most of its trajectory, but we had that failure in the end, to burn through, um, people front, frankly, in a panic because we had set that program up with on Lee four plates. So we at first we just used the first flight up. All right. We had three left and there was a sense of Oh, my gosh, we need to know everything that went wrong because that second flight can’t fail because then we’ll only have two left. So we spent a really long time trying to figure out what went wrong. And Flight One side note, we kind of knew what went wrong and Flight one on the first day. I mean, you could look at the data. You could see exactly what would happen, what happened. But because we had so few flights in the program, we spent a lot of time figuring that we went to flight to Flight two. We took so long figuring out what went wrong and fight one. By the time we got the flight to the pilot, who’d flown the carrier aircraft that dropped the first x 51 had retired out of the Air Force, the co pilot, how to be recalled from another duty station owner to fly the B 52 mother craft that carried airplane so we had allows loss of expertise. Um, about 70% of the ground crew that worked on the first flight of its 51 was no longer there for the second flight. So now the second fight. We had a failure, and it was frankly, was a noble failure. Something went wrong with publishing system that we we it’s time. Didn’t understand what we click Me quickly learned what went, what went wrong. We geared up for Flight three. Took us a lot of time, though, to study that we get to fight three. Flight three is a an embarrassing failure. Ah, Finn fell off the vehicle. That happens a lot in hypersonic testing. All right now, we had one flight left, and by gosh, we had people in the program saying What? We can’t fly that vehicle because what if it fails? I’ve never had needs to realize the conversations like, Well, if we don’t, we pay for it. It’s sitting in the hangar. Why wouldn’t we fly it? Well, but if we fly it, if it doesn’t work, then we’re done. Um, we did finally fly it, but there was so much hand wringing there was so much worry about this about what would happen if and that kind of all illustrates the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into. No. Let me give the contrast. The 19 sixties NASA in the Air Force and the Navy had a program called X 15. The X 15 resulted in three vehicles being built to are still around. One. Is the National Airspace Museum down in the mall? Ah, the other is of the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. That’s 15 program flew 199 flights, roughly once every two weeks. When things went wrong, they figured out immediately what went wrong, and they got those vehicles back in the air. They had one case where a vehicle landed hard, broken, half. That’s a great who wanted to make one little bit longer anyway, all right, they weren’t afraid of failure. They even had a tragedy tragedy in the program. They lost one of the vehicles. They lost the pilot. It didn’t end the program, right? So that’s kind of the mindset that we’re trying to get into, all right. And part of that comes down to doing things, often flying often building programs so that when we’re testing, we’re not testing onesies. Twosies. We’ve got a robust test program, so we learn as we’re doing, we’re not. We’re not constantly re learning how to do what we used to know how to Dio, and that that, I think is is the secret, I think, is the path we’re trying to get ourselves on. I would just have to somebody I used to work in the Congress for a congressman on the House Armed Services Committee, and then the political environment has to be conducive for that kind of testing to we can’t The Congress needs to kind of settle in and be patient and understand that there’s testing. And there are some, uh, testing failures. They might be noble failures, and it doesn’t mean that it’s time to end the program or switch the program, or no longer where the idea that there’s going to be, we’re gonna have to have a higher tolerance, my bipartisan perspective, congressional perspective, because there has to be a national commitment to making sure that this technology, um, is successful and then, you know, winds up in the hands of those out in the field, right? You talk about the supply chain issued to and how we can be, how we can be preparing and thinking about this. I know it’s It’s a little bit of a dilemma right now because some of this stuff is still classified. We don’t wanna give timelines because we don’t want the adversary to Notre ones are What? Do you know what we’re favoring at this point? But at the same time, we can get costs down, too, if we have a long enough, the times a plan, especially as he wants to ramp up and produced that scale as well. We have to have a robust industrial. I’m capability to be able to do that, right? So So I really appreciate your talking about industrial base and also about costs, cause I think you’ve hit about one of one of the key issues also in this technology area. Um, you know, when When people ask me, why do we want hypersonic systems? I tend to counter with the question Why wouldn’t we want hypersonic systems? And I’ll start with the thought experiment if I could take an existing cruise missile. And if I could replace that cruise missile with a hypersonic system, so does everything the existence system does. But does it seven times faster. Well, why wouldn’t I want that? The answer is I might no want it if it doesn’t completely replicate all the capabilities. For example, if I don’t get the same range or there’s some vulnerabilities, but I also might not want it if it’s extremely expensive so that I can afford the weapon. So cost is a very important aspect of this. And I’m happy to say that a couple of our prototype efforts have a really strong focus on what the systems costs will be. Especially the DARPA programs right now have have costs as one of their metrics, right? So So we have to pay attention that I personally is inside. By the way, I think it is a miss number. That hyper son existence immediately translate into expensive systems. Take the example of a scramjet powered, air breathing hypersonic cruise missile. Well, is pushing state of the art in development. But ah, hypersonic jet engine. What we call a scramjet engine supersonic combusting ramjet is in principle a very simple engine. It doesn’t have very many moving parts. It doesn’t have turbines, it doesn’t have compressors. So the actual manufacturing shouldn’t be that much more expensive. That could be less expensive than a lower speed alternative. So, yeah, you’re investing a front in the development. But the per unit cost should not be astronomical, as as some folks I think mistakenly believes would be necessary. Be true for hypersonic systems. All right, so with that focus on cost exactly right, we need to be focusing on supply chain. There’s several elements of that. One is. Make sure we’ve got the supply chain that can produce at scale and at at at reasonable cost, but also to make sure that we don’t have vulnerabilities in that supply chain that we don’t have. Pure competitors who are looking at key aspects of that supply chain trying to get into that supply chain may be tapping into, ah, advanced materials, high temperature materials that are essential to the creation of hypersonic systems. One of the things that we’re trying to do in our office is the single to industry that that, uh, that we need them to step up to the plate that this Israel that is coming from the secretary on down, the secretary that deputy the chairman really the deal. The leadership is saying this is a technology that we understand is essential to the modern battlefield, and we’re communicating that in basically various ways. But my my boss Mike Griffin has been, has been pretty public and telling industry, We need you to understand that this Israel we need you to to to plan your investments accordingly. And it’s not just the primes, but it’s looking further down in the supply chain, and I’m actually happy to report that we’ve seen the primes really step up to that. Several of the major aerospace defence companies have have been looking down their supply chain looking at how they make the supply chain more robust. Have been working with their various suppliers to make sure that when when we give that call that that that we’ll have the supply chain available in our remaining time, I want to talk about hypersonic defense. Um, if you if you could answer the question of how we’re prioritizing offense versus defense and for me, for my perspective, I’ve been making the argument for a long time now that we have to have defense. That offense is not defense audiences often defense’s defense, and it’s important that we do have active defences against what are your competitors have in these highly contested height, height areas. I like contested areas and in what we’re doing as a department to to invest in things like H BTS says the hypersonic and ballistic track ings stay sense sensor program. Why we have to have that. And you touched on that. You talked about how there these things are hard to see, um, in their hard to see and in the heart of track. And if you can’t see him in track and you can’t hit him, there’s also value in being able to Steve them attractive, even if you can’t get them. But you are able to see them and track them, at least initially. So talk to us about the importance of having a defense of capability, why it is so, so important and what we’re doing to invest in the kinds of of invest of technologies that we need to be able to have some kind of active defense. Yes, that we don’t need to have a 100% defense. We’re not trying to be able to intercept every single hypersonic weapons system that exists, but we do need to have have some incredible defense against these things for our most critical, uh, bases and strategic interests in these regions, right or so Rebecca, Your your question actually said it better than I think I could in any answer that I give you. Um, so So, um, you know, hypersonic. I said hyper. Sonics is very difficult to stop. It’s not impossible stuff. We know there are various technologies, various options that are available Teoh interfere with the operation of a hypersonic system. Um, and we’ve got efforts underway examining that. But as you correctly point out, the first step in stopping it is detecting it. And you mentioned the efforts underway with Space Development Agency Missile Defense Agency were convinced that the best way to do that is from is from space, and it requires a proliferated constellation system that allows to detect these things. Um, you know, defense will be 100%. Um, we do believe that eventually the best defense will be, ah, layer defense with with multiple aspects and hypersonic says many things. It’s it’s it’s long range systems, its intermediate range systems, its rocket boost, fly systems, its air breathing systems. Each of those would require ah, particular pick particular response. But But in the end, you know, I draw an analogy to the kamikaze waves that we faced in World War Two, the way we eventually defeated them, I was with with a layer defense. And what started out is as an unstoppable problem became a tragical problem. When once we understood that, um, if you look at the portfolio right now, the balance is clearly tip towards offensive investments right now. And we’re pushing very, very hard in our office to emphasize the importance of of defense. I do think offense and defense go hand in hand and that in order to in order to understand how to defend against these systems, you have to understand what goes into designing them if you need to understand the offensive technology in order to get a handle on the ways that you would stop them and defend against them, I also think that there is a deterrent element to it. You know, you may not be able to stop it, but if you know where it came from and if you can respond on the time scales that they’re using to attack you, then it gives you, ah, a turn capability. They may get the first shot in, but if you can make sure they don’t get the 2nd 3rd or fourth shot in then then that that could be a powerful defensive capability in and of itself. Um, you know, I I think I can tell you that we’re seeing a significant ramp up right now in our in our efforts on the defensive side that the folks who are working on defense are working hand and glove with. The people were developing the offensive capabilities. And, um and it’s an area, though, that we’re continuing to focus on and investing. How are our shooters? How are our current interceptors that we are current systems that we have today? Um, how are they as being able to interest at some of these more sophisticated threats that are no longer just predictably ballistic and their trajectories? Because there’s done, we’re some people try to make the case that you have. Some of these regional systems were have it. If they if they simply had their network better, and if they were able to cooperate better that they would actually have some kind of defense against hypersonic threat. What was your sense of that? So so some of our existing systems have have some some capabilities that could bring that you could bring to bear, but it really depends on what you’re going against, right? So as just one measure, here’s a good technical rule of thumb. If you’re trying to stop an incoming weapons, then you’re maneuverability has to have roughly three times the acceleration capability as the thing you’re trying to stop. So if the incoming weapon can maneuver with 15 G’s, then you have to be able to maneuver at 45 G’s. That’s really tough. It’s not impossible, but it’s tough. So that’s one of the challenges that we’ve that we have in addressing this threat. There are other systems that you might bring about. Directed energy, for example, is a technology that could have important applications in defending against hypersonic. Um, still capability is being developed. We’ve seen tremendous advances in recent years. Um, um, we’re looking at systems that, if not existing today will be will be in place very soon. That may have some capabilities against these threats, but, you know, I I guess I put it in the category, work in progress and and and and and limited in details that I can offer limited and exactly what I can say no. I think that’s great. I think it’s important. Just a foot stomp the point that you just made previously, though, that even having the ability to have birth to death tracking, which is what HB TSS would give us in the context of the hypersonic threat and that in and of itself would be a dramatic advantage for the United States and would bolster our deterrent effect. Because all of this is meant not toe hopefully fight a war with China, but to deter one. And so we’re trying to have trying to present multiple dilemmas for the adversary. Impose costs on them is that they’re busy trying to figure out better ways to, um to gain the dominant position over the United States in the Indo Pacific in particular. Well, if I could just, I want it just end with the last point of Giger thoughts on You know, Advil Davidson, I think, has been incredibly articulate and staying back to your theme about the importance of testing, and you gave that that the example of the testing program where there’s hundreds of tests that also has deterrent effect because it communicates to our adversaries. The political will we have to get this right. And so sometimes, you know, we’ve been, you know, kind of secretive and afraid that if we test and there is a failure, that that will make us look bad or it will show the enemy that we don’t have this capability. But in fact, if we’re going fast and demonstrating that we do have the will to get this done, you can actually have a positive effect in bolstering the credibility of your deterrence. They were going to get this right. And if you could comment on that and then just give us some sort of timeline. Where do you expect the United States to pull ahead? Um, against are your competitors in this? So So you know, our competitors should have no doubt that, um, we are moving out on a very big way in this technology area. Um, and they should not be mistaken to think that they’ve got a technological advantage, that we we we will be unable to counter eso. So I appreciate your making those points. Um, were so so We do have a very, very aggressive program, and it’s it cuts across the services. So you’ve got Army. You’ve got Navy. You’ve got Air Force. Um, all moving ever aggressively working very hand in glove with Darboe. We’ve got multiple programs at DARPA that are feeding directly into those programs in ways that that, frankly, it’s it’s it’s It’s amazing how well, all those those those programs were integrated, that’s across the rocket boost glide across the air breeding. Um, our goal is to deliver what we say deliver its scale by the mid 2020. And, um, you know, obviously we’re a little bit bigger on our dates Are competitors could do math. They can add up numbers. Um, but we were looking at moving beyond beyond the prototype stage. Certainly by the second half of this decade, Um, they’re a couple elements that what is well, we’ll see a vastly increased rate of testing, and that’s just not just we’ve been testing a lot of the ground. You’re gonna see a big increase in the rate of flight testing, getting back to the earlier point that we need to fly early. We need to fly often. We need to to become proficient at that part of the technology. And so we’re looking in the next four years. We’re looking up the 40 different flight tests of various systems to help bring them to maturity. Um, same time were, you know, reinvesting in ground test facilities. You see, significant testing, evaluation facility, uh, capabilities are ramping up in the United States. You know, it’s it’s it’s really across the board across the department. Um, are are ever his adversaries and potential competitors should be under No, no mistake. That that were We’re we’re meeting the challenge in this area, and I think that that also just, you know, makes the point very, very powerfully that that we need to maintain a bipartisan consensus from policymakers. This is gonna go. This is gonna be, you know, several years into the future. And we need t carry on this momentum that we have a country. So to make sure that we’re back and competing with major power competition, that’s that’s the challenge of our day. Thank you so much. Talk to Lewis for your your expertise. Your service weapon. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks.