Space Resiliency
This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of Schneider Electric
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy, Jr.:
Well, good afternoon, class. We're going to talk about space resiliency on this particular panel, and so I'd
like to welcome everyone here. I am Major General Steve Purdy. I'm the military deputy to the Assistant
Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisitions and Integration, which means I'm a deputy and my boss
owns all the space acquisitions. So let's talk resiliency. So resiliency is an interesting term. No one really
knows how to define it. We all know we want it, and it's hard to tell if you have enough of it. So we're
going to tease out resiliency in a couple of different big pieces, but I also want to look at it through a
couple of different lenses. So chief of space operations has unveiled last year his competitive endurance
theory of success. So the main thrust there, he talked about it yesterday and I think today, avoid
operational surprise, deny first mover advantage and conduct responsible counterspace campaigning.
But also my boss, Honorable Calvelli, talks about his acquisition tenants. Some of the key tenants involve
minimize non-recurring engineering, small ground systems, repeatable buses, fixed-price contracting,
rapid production times. So we're going to talk on resiliency in light of these few areas. But on this note,
let's introduce our panel here, who's actually going to do all the talking. So first I want to welcome Colin
G. Mitchell. Colin is the vice president and general manager of RS Systems Division at L3Harris
Technologies where he provides strategic direction for programs in position navigation and timing,
space antennas, space protection and control and ISR. So thank you for joining us.
Next is Kyle Rice. Kyle is the federal chief technology officer of Virtualitics, an AI startup focused on
applying commercial AI capabilities and defense challenges. Then finally, Matt Brown. Matt is a principal
engineering fellow and the technical director for Air & Space Defense Systems at Raytheon where he is
recognized for his work on space protection, service oriented architectures, satellite C2 mission
management and small satellite technologies. So thank you very much, panel. Okay, we're going to start
with some rapid fire questions. So I want you all to answer yes or no. You can start here closest to me
and go to the end, and no waffling here. So number one, should the U.S. government use open source
software? Yes or no?
Colin Mitchell:
Yes, absolutely.
Matt Brown:
And we can't afford not to.
Kyle Rice:
Yes.
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy, Jr.:
Would you consider the current state of open source software to be resilient?
Colin Mitchell:
No. Just because that's a big bucket that you outlined there, but the path to software resiliency is
through an active code base that gets managed, used, rehearsed and maintained.
