Col. Corey J. Klopstein & Col. Craig J. Hackbarth | Schriever Spacepower Series

Hello, and welcome to the Shrieber Space Power series. I'm Charles Godreff, Director and Senior Resident Fellow for Space Studies at the Mitchell Institute Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence. Readiness is critical to the success of any military force. Failure to prepare for a range of contested environments and scenarios could lead to operational failure. This demands a robust training and testing infrastructure. This is especially true for our newest military branch, the Space Force. And the space domain where concepts and understanding about work fair are still maturing. At the center of this effort is the operational test and training infrastructure, our OTTI. The task of establishing the Space Force's OTTI is complex, involving live and virtual training environments, and the integration of Space Force, commercial, partner, and threat capabilities. To discuss the ongoing efforts of setting up the Space Force's OTTI, it's my pleasure to welcome our guests, Colonel Cory Copsdine, the portfolio acquisition executive for infrastructure, and the commander of system Delta, 81, at Space Systems Command, and Colonel Craig Hackbarth, System Program Director for Operational Test and Training Infrastructure. If you have questions for Colonel Fopsdine and Colonel Hackbarth, please type them into the Q&A box or raise your hand and we'll get to audience questions towards the end of this session. With that, gentlemen, welcome to the Mitchell Institute and the Shrieber Space Power series. Before we dive into my questions, let me turn it over to you for any opening comments. Yes, sir, thank you. Really appreciate it. Appreciate you guys inviting us, hosting us. Thank you to the Mitchell Institute and the AFA. I think this has been two years in the making somewhere around in the middle of the week. We've been trying to get you for a while. We've been working with you guys, not any fault of you guys. It's more on my side and the dynamic schedule of a PEO and now PAE. We're on the heels of Space Imposing, which occurred last week. And a lot of the senior leaders talked about the importance of test and training and how test and training impacts field and combat ready forces. I actually was not at Space Imposing. I was at another conference last week. I was fortunate enough. When you're a part of the M&S community, you get invited to some of these other conferences. And I was at an international training and education conference in London. And it's interesting to go to the conferences that are not space conferences. You can tell the difference pretty quickly when you go out on the exhibition floor and you're talking to the contractors and you're having a meeting and all of a sudden you're here and simulated gunfire in the background and borders going off and things like that. It's a different environment. But what is interesting about that is it reminds me of a couple of things. One, the importance of space power to the joint force. And the fact that we are bringing capability used to support the joint war fighter. When that Navy captain gets in the ship and embarks and goes into enemy territory, when that airmen is flying that plane, that pilot is going into a potential contest area. When the soldier or Marine are going in there, they use space assets to prepare for that, the use space assets to get to that contested area. And they're going to use space assets to actually conduct their operations. And so it is vital. Space is vital to the success of the joint force. The VCSO was talking on the hill recently. And I like the quote that he gave. If the joint force is there, the space force is there. And I don't think he could have said it better. And then the second thing that comes to mind as we're around the joint force is that our motto is "Semper Supra." Always above. And that always word of always above is being threatened. There are a lot of adversaries that are doing either building capabilities or pressuring the norms that we've established on orbit to deny, disrupt, and degrade our space capabilities. And so we have to be ready. We've got to be ready for an evolving space environment, evolving threat environment. And that's where OTTI comes in, like you were talking about in the introduction. Building these test and training capabilities ensures the readiness of our guardians and insurance, ensures the readiness of the systems that we need to employ so that we are always above. The CSO talked last week at the Space Emposium about Guardian Supporting Scentcom. I was lucky enough actually to go to UCOM and see some guardians that are supporting UCOM. And one of the things I asked them was, what would you like to have so that you can train better, knowing that you're in theater right now on your conducting operations and supporting the joint fight. And they said, we just want what we have here back in our units. We want at our units to be able to train the same types of systems and scenarios that we see when we're supporting the joint force out there in theater. And so that's why OTTI has been so important for the Space Force. We are building that arena so that guardians can achieve space dominance, gain and maintain space superiority. I feel like we're at the nexus of the three L.O.E.s for the Space Force. Feeling combat ready forces, amplifying the guardian spirit and partnering to win. And so I'm excited to be here really looking forward to the questions and talking about what I think is the coolest missionary in the Space Force. Thank you. No hack bar? Hey, good morning, happy to be here. I'll start with a perspective from the CSO. So the Chief of Space Operations has been clear. We have to be ready to fight and to win in space. If need be. Our teams focused on how we can deliver capabilities at speed so that we can enhance the Space Force's readiness to be able to do that. Whether that's training guardians, whether that's validating the newest systems that are on orbit, it drives everything that we do within OTTI to do that. So we're closely integrated with our operator counterparts, with mission system, constructor counterparts, and working with them to ensure that we deliver not just with speed but with the right relevance. At the O5 level, we've got really good daily interaction between our program managers in OTTI as well as the squadron commanders that are out there in the operational units, as well as the StarCon units. So together, that team shares the responsibility of figuring out what they need to do to ensure that that unit is ready as need be. So it's great to be here today. I agree, best part of the Space Force. I know I'm biased. But it's definitely an incredible team and I'm happy to be working with them. I'm biased. Well, I hope every guardian thinks that they have the best job in the Space Force, right? The importance of the OTTI and the training infrastructure. You hammered that in your opening comments and I think very well. Can you describe a little bit about what is the OTTI? What are the elements that make up operational assessment training infrastructure? Sure. It is a complex infrastructure and architecture, but we kind of distill it down into three key areas. A digital environment, a physical and live environment and the infrastructure to tie those two things together and then the readiness underpins all of that. So on the digital environment, this is replications of assets within a virtual domain. So building out blue assets from a digital standpoint, replicating red assets as well, making sure that we have this synthetic environment, the simulation environment where those things can interact. And then we're replicating this space domain and visualizing this space domain for guardians. On the physical, live environment, this is your more traditional type of range assets that you would expect. So building onward assets, whether that's, we have surrogates for our blue assets. We're trying to replicate red assets. We're putting sensors onward to be able to characterize test and training events on orbit. In addition, we've got the same ground assets. So we've got ground sensors that we're building out. Ground sensors to be able to observe test and training events and do the same type of data gathering that we may have to do onward. We've got a range control system. We're also building out a cyber range, which we've leveraged a lot of the Air Force work that had been done with a 318th and then converted that for a space force and are building out different replications of our ground system within that cyber range so that our cyber operators can use Manacore and train on that. And then we also have Harbor and the Loop Facilities. So if you have something specific, whether that's anechoic chamber to test out a very specific part of a space asset, we're building those out to you in partnerships with a lot of labs. But as you have the digital environment where you're replicating as many things that you can at the highest fidelity possible, along with the live environment, the physical environment where you're doing some real-world testing, you've got to have the infrastructure to tie those things together if you want to have the LBC capability that we've envisioned for the space force. You want to be able to pass data back and forth between those environments. You want to understand what are the limitations within the digital environment as you run your modeling and Sim, runs and understand what the limits are of the information that you know you have that's replicated in that synthetic environment. Understand those edge cases and then go back to the live environment so that you can test and bring that data back into the digital environment. And so having the infrastructure in place, whether that's data management, data tagging, cross-domain solutions, we also are building out enterprise solutions from an MBSC standpoint. So having all three of those pieces to be able to interact together is going to be vitally important for the space force. And then underpinning all that is our readiness team, our readiness branch, which is doing the maintenance and sustainment and upgrades. And then this is the readiness of the range itself, right? That's correct. That's correct. And then the technical and gestive is also working really closely with combat forces command to understand near-term training gaps and find some solutions to be able to fill those near-term training gaps as we're building out a longer-term solution for the digital environment. Okay, great. LBC, live virtual constructive. Yes. We also threw out Manticore, but just within the cyber domain, this is the tool that is used to defend the cyber terrain. It's a defensive cyber operations capability that we have. And the cyber operators are using that in our cyber range to be able to practice the way that they can defend the system. Okay, great. And you said that the cyber range is now standing up. So where are we in the establishment of the OTI? Is it almost there? Is it ever always going to be there? I mean, is there an insight or is it perpetually growing? So as we bring on more systems into the Space Force, whether that's, you know, new systems or we understand that the threat, what the threat is, the threat evolves. The range is going to have to evolve as those requirements change. I think that there will be a point where we get to more of an upgrade and sustainment type of situation with OTTI, but there is going to be a new demands on the range and we want to make sure that that range is as live and realistic as possible. And so I see the requirements evolving as the space force evolves and more systems come online. So when you talk about virtual representations of blue systems as well as threat systems, the far end of that is a digital twin, but you don't need necessarily that level of fidelity on the OTTI or do you? So it depends on the situation that you're talking about. If we look at distributed training and some of the things that we would need to do for training scenarios, you may not need the highest fidelity replication of a red or blue asset that you would need to validate TTPs or to validate system performance. But we're having to build that replication across the spectrum. We want to be able to deliver that distributed training capability faster. That is a priority for us and a priority for the space force. And so we have focused on that development up front, but we are going to continue to do the development of digital replications at the higher end as well. And we're partnering with the JSE program office to use that baseline as the start for JSE for space and then replicating more on the exquisite type of systems within JSE for space so that we can do that system validation and TTP validation that is needed in the digital environment. Excellent. So a lot of parts and components for OTTI. How do you go about prioritizing, you brought up prioritization, what's the process that you go through to prioritize what aspects you bring on or upgrade next? Well, you talked about the fact that it's crucial and there are a lot of elements there. I think prioritization is probably one of the most challenging things that we have. If you go back to when we stood up, this was October 1st of 2023, there were five government personnel, military and civilian. We started with a pretty small lane, but certainly mean team. And we've grown steadily since then. But when you have limited people, limited resources and in a resource constrained environment prioritization is key. For us, we're trying to strike the right balance between test and training. There are two T's and OTTI and we've got to make sure that we're accounting for both of those aspects of the system validation and training the guardians and making sure the guardians are ready. And so balancing between those two as well as balancing speed and integration. There is a push for speed and speed is going to be the determining factor when it comes to acquisitions and being successful. But we are building a long-term architecture. We're building one that hopefully outlasts myself and Colonel Hackbarth and the times that we're in this position. And we've got to try to make sure that we're balancing those things and what we do is we're building two for one capabilities. We're building something that either is delivering a capability or it's making sure that we're burning down some type of risk or understanding something for the longer term architecture as we're building things out for the long term. So with all that, how do we do it? We have a board of directors. OTTI has a board of directors that has key representatives from all of our stakeholder groups. So all the field comms, Starcom, Combat Forces Command, Space Systems Command. We also have SQ, Space Force TE. We have Air Force TE representation as well in participation. From our key headquarters staff elements, so the 347, the 58 and the 6, they are all there as well. And that's the form where we bring issues together, bring that in front of the stakeholders. And what they help us with is prioritization requirements definition. So as the field comms are bringing in the requirements from an enterprise capability standpoint, which can be challenging to understand what those priorities are. That's where it's decided and discussed in our board of directors. And then they provide us that list of priorities. And as the PAE, I take those priorities and I execute the funds and all the programs against the priorities that are defined from the board of directors. It's also a really good forum for us to create alignment. It is an enterprise capability. There are three field comms. Those three field comms have different missions. Otherwise we would only have one. And because of those different missions, there are subsequent different priorities. And so we are trying to make sure that we get alignment across the field comms. But at least an understanding as to why we may have made a decision to prioritize one thing over another. And then how we're going to address some other priorities that we may not be doing in the near term. Okay, great. So what are your priorities? So I would add quickly, I think having those processes in the forums is really critical so that we can prioritize. He talked about the four different lines of effort within OTTI, physical, digital, infrastructure and the readiness. And within each of those, there's a dozen plus different projects. So we're very busy at the program office. You know, 50 plus different projects within the program office that we're working on. So to have that constant connectivity with StarCom and with CFC to ensure that we're all on the same page is really critical. Okay, excellent. Thanks for that. So the priority question then shifts to what are the priorities. Space Force has a lot of mission sets from global mission integration and supporting other joint war fighters, but also achieving space superiority launch. There's a lot of aspects to what is encompassed within OTTI. What is the priority that you have? So we focus on establishing the foundational capabilities and then concentrating on the mission sets that are at the heart of the space fight. So our investments are aligned to provide that training scenario for those most critical domains of the fly goes up. So our priorities are informed by the CSOs direction, the SRD, the foundational requirements for OTTI, as well as the CFC commander priorities informed by the BOD in those other processes that we just talked through. So it calls for specific capabilities in space control. So on the orbital side, as well as on the electronic warfare side, space domain awareness, training what's happening in space with our own assets and potential adversary assets, and then defensive cyber operations, ensuring that we can defend the digital footprint of our mission systems. So for example, we're accelerating the delivery of mission-specific cyber defense environments. We call them ciders so that guardians understand that digital terrain of their system and they know how they can defend it if there's an intruder. We're also developing digital backyard ranges that are focused on satellite control network and space domain awareness missions at Vanneberg and Trierver to ensure that we can maintain that command and control that we have persistent domain awareness in a contested environment. We also have several high priorities that focus on distributed training and making sure that we can feel that for the space force. So we partner our internal team, readiness team with CFC and worked with those operationally units to find out where are the best bang for the buck near-term investments that we can make that will really help out with readiness. So we've gotten a detailed, prioritized list from CFC and we're grinding away on that list and working through it. We're also developing the simulation environment and back end for distributed training so that we can support those trainers that are delivered, both from the near-term solutions as well as from the mission system programs that are delivered. Ultimately, the vision within the space force is that the mission system program offices or the main spows are building the trainers and they replicate an opt string. They co-locate that with the operational unit and it's a copy of the real thing. So OTTI provides that simulation environment that then comes into the back end, engages with that trainer and provides the information that the operators need to execute their training. So we bring the space fight to that backyard range and then the program offices build a training string that's replication of the opt string so that when the guardian sits down, it is the interface of the expect and is the software they expect that's behind interactions they're having. But they are having the interactions with the simulation environment that we're building out so that we can get some of that, the efficiencies we're building on blue models and red models. And you can consistency from the unit all the way up to a flag level exercise. So they've got it when they start IQT, through MQTCT and then all the way up to the space flags that work in ducting through Delta 11. I'm glad you brought up the fact that the program offices are responsible for developing and delivering the training capability as well. I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that when space systems command acquire something, it's a fully burdened capability that includes training materials and capabilities. But all of that then rests within the OTTI. You give them the place for them to reside and execute that training. Correct. Excellent. So from PopStyne you mentioned that you've been around with this program office since 2023. Between the two of you, can you elaborate on a couple of the major milestones that you'd like to highlight as part of the journey over the past three years? Sure. Mind if I start? Okay, go ahead. So I think there's been a significant overarching kind of team milestone that we've achieved over the last year or so. And that is shifting from a collection of relatively stovepipe efforts that are tactically sound each as you look at them. But they didn't pull up to an overall strategy when we started this program several years ago. and we've been able to turn that around with Colonel Clark. Palestine's leadership into a more integrated enterprise that's focused on speed that we busted down the seams and we busted down the data silos so that we can deliver something that's truly integrated. We also, I think, one of the major milestones is just the partnership that we've built with operational users. It's led to our ability last year to overhaul the digital training strategy in just a couple months, really quickly, and leverage that in space flag, large scale exercises, and take and sword and enable it to serve as the digital training backbone. That sword, is that an acronym? Yeah, Space War fighting operational readiness domain. Okay. Thank you. So that's the main bin for our low to medium fidelity training environment. So that has become the backbone, and also on the cyber range, you asked about, you know, is that up and running? So we are establishing that foundationally. Back in 2024, there were seven exercises that we executed on the cyber range in 2025 that was 7D exercises. So order of magnitude growth there. And a lot of demand on that cyber range, a lot of units that are wanting to come. So much so that, you know, we've had to make sure that we're monitoring the hardware on site so that we're not overloading it because we've got a lot of demand there. And one last add on the contracting side, we've executed multiple commercial solutions openings or CSOs. Okay. And over the course of the last six to nine months, we've executed $50 million in contracts for digital enhancements and for a prototype for the range control system. So that's a new endeavor for OTTI, and we see it paying off already. Awesome. I'll just add a couple more things, just organizationally. You know, HAC talked about some changes that we made, you know, whether that's acquisition strategy or contractually, under my leadership. Luckily, we've been able to bring in more leadership, you know, at least these past couple of years, Colonel Hacbarth is there. We got a deputy PAE, F-Schnell. We got a deputy commander in Cromwell, we've got the right people from a PAE standpoint, our PAE staff, and we're also standing by F staff. We've grown from the five people that I talked about in 23 to around 50 to 60 depending on how many civilians we've hired, and we're aggressively hiring more civilians. As General Grant talked about it at Space and Posing on this week, we are getting more bullets there in Colorado Springs, and we want to continue to grow that team. And so the growth of the team has been steady, very, very positive, and it has enhanced our ability to actually deliver capabilities to the war fighter, which has been, you know, incredibly positive just across the board. And then structurally, there's a lot of things that, you know, you assume will be there when an organization is there that are not flashy, and sometimes not interesting, but they are vital to the success of an organization. I'm just talking about things like engineering products, you know, government reference architecture. The right process is a CCB. The right process is to get the right personnel and understand where are our gaps. How do we fill them? Where are they going? What's the priority? Those are things that are inherent most of the mature organizations. We did not have those when we stood up, but we've got those in place now, and we are executing. And so those two things have been vital to ensure that, you know, we're focused, we're focused on the mission. If you don't have those things, it takes your eye away from actually delivering capability, and now that we have them in place, that has been a really amazing addition. And then I'll just add, you know, you talked about ops integration and our partnerships with Delta 11, Delta 12 and Combat Forces Command. That has just been, from day one, really, that's been huge. At the '05 and '06 level, our counterparts and our program manager counterparts have been shoulder to shoulder with us. And, you know, one of the things that he talked about was sword. Well, that was a 3.92 capability that we looked at and said, "Well, this is a synthetic environment that can be the simulation environment for distributed training." So why don't we take that, something that's already been built in the operations facility and expand that and actually scale it to the rest of the space force. If we hadn't had that partnership with the 3.92, we probably would have been two years behind in delivering something. And now it accelerated us significantly. And so that partnership, that shoulder to shoulder collaboration, I think, has been one of the biggest successes of the program. And then the last thing I'll say is since Hacks been in the seat, he talked about breaking down the seams between our L.O.E.'s. We're working on establishing incremental capabilities. And so, you know, sweets of capabilities that we know are going to deliver on a time-phase approach twice a year, handing those over to Starcombe, and then they upset those capabilities. And so we know what's packaged. We know how to do an assessment to see if those things are integrated together and working together effectively across our L.O.E.'s, digital physical and, you know, using the infrastructure. And so that is another, you know, big thing that we've got in place for OTTI. Yeah. I really appreciate the conversation here because you highlight the fact that you're building not just the OTTI, but you're building the program office that manages the OTTI as you're doing it. So, that's an incredible undertaking. So there's a tortured acronym here that I'm going to probably butcher. But last week you closed a request proposal on the National Space Test and Training Complex. That's the N-S-T-C. It's an acronym with an acronym. Yeah. Innovative technology, engineering, space, test range. So it comes out to Nightstar, which is very nice. But again, a tortured acronym. Can you describe what this effort is? How it relate? How the N-S-T-T-C relates to the OTTI and what this Nightstar effort is really all about? Yeah. So I'll start and I'll ask Hack to give a little bit more details. He's really, you know, working with the team on the at the ground level. But, you know, at a strategic level and at the, you know, PAE level, what we're trying to do for each of our LOEs is to get anchor point contracts in place. You know, and we stood up and we had such a small program office and, you know, we had funding and we had priorities. We had requirements in place. We had specific demands from the user. We had to go out and partner with a lot of organizations to leverage either existing contracts or some of things that, you know, were already happening and add money to those capabilities so we could deliver as fast as possible. What we want to do now, we're working on, you know, and we've done some things in 25, we're going to do more in 26, is getting anchor point contracts for each of those LOEs, so that we control the execution and we actually have a hand in the capability is that are being delivered. And so Nightstar is the anchor point contract for our physical live team. We have something in place called the Send 2 for our infrastructure team and then our digital team is going to do something on OTA by the end of this calendar year. So we're putting those things in place so we can actually execute quicker and starting to bring some of the disparate efforts that HAC talked about, you know, under those bigger umbrellas. And so that we're ready for 27, assuming we get, you know, increased budget from Congress so we're ready to execute once 27 hits. But HAC has some more, you know, specific details on Nightstar. Okay. Nightstar, that's right, the goal is to establish a pool of qualified industry partners who can compete for work across the portfolio with a focus on physical live. It gives us the competition and the agility that we need to really rapidly deliver having that pool. So the RFP itself was multiple award, IDIQ contract for up to 10 years, up to $981 million ceiling. And the chosen vendors will be eligible for task orders across the gamut of the scope in that contract. So designing, developing, integrating, testing, sustaining, space, and ground hardware. And the systems associated with that. So think hardware development, infrastructure, software, and the modern SIM tools so that can come together as a complete package. It could be new on orbit assets, it could be ground-based sensors, upgrades to the M. S.O. electromagnetic range. And that pre-vetted vendor pool is really going to be a help to us to know that we can approach some of these systems with industry partners that we've assessed the risk. We know what they're capable of doing and we can get them on a task order quickly. Instead of us having to go to a partner organization, which they have been fantastic, you know, do not, don't get me wrong, we've had a lot of partners that have been willing to help us out and we appreciate their cooperation. But instead of having to go to those partner organizations, we have that in-house. And we'll be ready to actually deliver at speed and support Delta 11, Delta 12, and combat forces command in the way that we anticipate we should. >> Excellent. So you talked earlier about the fact that OTTI is both a virtual and a live. Can you explain to our audience why that's so important for the space force and why we can't just go with a live range and do everything that way? >> So I think to answer the last part of your question first and then the first part. So the last part of your question really comes down to our ability to do things in a digital environment is really driven by, you know, op-sec potential cost impacts and then, you know, potential policy limitations. And so there are things that we would love to be able to do on orbit that we know that we're unable to do right now. It's not like us going out to the nitter and having this large open space to be able to conduct whatever types of operations or training or test activities that we'd like to do. And so replicating our assets in that digital environment is going to be crucial for us to test the bounds of both our systems and our ability to train and our TTPs for our guardians. And so, you know, making sure that we build out that digital environment is going to be crucial for the space force. Now, you know, a guardian goes to a computer council and sits down for their training. right? They're not going into a cockpit, they're not going into a tank, they're not going into a simulation that needs to be surrounding them. They sit down in a computer and they're interacting with that. And so, you know, the counter question would be, why not just build out a virtual environment, the best virtual environment that you could have. Well, that is our intention to do that, but you have to have those complimentary aspects of the infrastructure. If you don't have the live assets to be able to gather real data based on real events, then you cannot update the accuracy and the fidelity of what you have in that digital environment. And that's why you've got to build both and they have to be complimentary. If we build out those and have the infrastructure in place, then like I said earlier, you can pass the data back and forth that you need and you can make sure that you're updating both as needed. Excellent. So, talking about the live portion of this, in space because of orbital mechanics, you could have an event flying or a space where I'm flying through one of your test scenarios and that's just the nature of orbital mechanics. It's not like you can say, this airspace is quarantined from commercial traffic. So, how do you work with civil and IC and commercial partners in the execution of test activities on the real range? Well, so, that's not our role as ODI or System Delta 81 that is really Starcombs role. But I can tell you just based on the discussions that we've had with them, you know, what our perspective is. We are here to provide the capabilities that will enable them to do all those, that deconfliction that you're talking about, whether they need ground assets and sensors to be able to see what's happening on orbit or on orbit sensors to ensure that they can create a safe range volume instead of an airspace. Right. A range volume is what they've called it. That's similar to a dedicated airspace and they can observe what's happening around that, whether that's, you know, our assets or other assets that are in the region of HackJid. Yeah, and I think we approach it along with Starcombs thinking of the safety, deconfliction, and just robust coordination across the agencies that you mentioned. From an OTTI perspective, we're trying to deliver the tool to Starcombs to be able to operate the range and do it that way through the range control system. That'll be the central point for managing the challenge. RCS ingest data from a variety of sources. It could be from OTTI dedicated range sensors. It could be from mission partner sensors, commercial data that's being pulled in. Then Starcombs, in addition to that Starcombs and operational test units, as they're planning out the test and looking at the schedule, looking at how things are moving in space. They maintain their connections across civil, commercial, and intelligence communities to ensure that, you know, the time and place that they choose to test is going to be safe and responsible. Yeah, excellent. So I'm going to shift gears a little bit and talk about industry and what it is that they can bring to, or what they've already brought to OTTI. So as you're looking at the infrastructure role and establishing that, how are your commercial partners playing into OTTI? It'll have to do on it. Yeah, we absolutely need industries, innovation. We rely on our expertise to help us deliver all the capabilities that we do. We look at it, industry can take a couple different roles. It can be direct, supporting, or complimentary. For direct support, they can, you know, they're developing the systems that make up the core pieces of the architecture. By supporting, they can develop systems that then plug into that architecture. So if, if Sword is the basket for distributed training, we have commercial companies that are building tools and services and capabilities that drop into Sword and execute from Sword. Or they can develop and deliver complimentary capabilities that are going to be leveraged by the OTTI architecture and NSTTC architecture, but not formally accepted as part of that. So it ranges of service, some hardware in the loop facilities, or even systems under test that are going to be leveraged by architecture, but not formally accepted. So the reason why you know, Hack brought up those categories is if you look at the OTTI architecture, you see the OV-1 picture that we've brought up in multiple forums, we are not responsible for building everything that we see on there. You know, he talked about a system under test, or ranges of service, type of capability, whether that's on or on the ground. We are going to have to bring those things to bear for OTTI to be successful. We are not going to be the sole providers of everything that we use within the infrastructure. And we're going to have to bring some things in that will bring them in for certain amount of time and then we don't need to use them anymore. And so there are a lot of different roles industry can play. And so going back to us putting together those anchor point contracts, that's why we need to have those things in place. So we have the flexibility to bring our commercial partners in, in any of those roles and do that with speed and support of whatever test or training event that may occur, whether that's a planned event or something that we know has to pop up because of a real-world scenario and we've got to figure something out quickly. So you brought up ranges of service. So this is where a company has a capability that you're testing on the range or you're utilizing that capability as the range itself. Can you describe that a little bit more? Yes, so ranges of service. Instead of the government buying, owning and maintaining every piece of hardware that is part of the range, we buy a complete operational outcome from a commercial partner. So it reduces life cycle cost. It gives us access to new capabilities. In many cases, faster than we could through other acquisition means. And on the orbital range, so you could think that's, it's a good example. Instead of a multi-year design, development, integration, launch, fielding, logistics tail, right, we can go out to a commercial partner that can provide us access to their already on-arbit satellite. And we can pull data from that. We can request them to perform a maneuver. And it extends down to the ground as well to be able to to purchase ground sensor data as a service and then pull that into our architecture for select test and training events. Okay. We recently worked with a commercial partner in Delta 2 and Delta 11 to do an on-arbit maneuver with a commercial asset that was observed by, you know, our SDA system so that they could use that maneuver to do specific training events that they needed to validate some of their meds. And so that is just an example of, you know, bringing in ranges of service. Okay. They have a capability that's on-arbit. They potentially have fuel or some delta V left that they can they can bring to us. We pay for that service. And then they conduct the operation and we're able to leverage it for test or training types of events. Excellent. Shifting gears on you again. Keep your under toes. He's nimble. We've talked about cyber. Certainly we've talked about the the virtual aspect of this OTTI. How do new technologies like artificial intelligence play into the OTTI? Do you leverage that as a threat surrogate or how do you might how would you use that? So there's there's a couple different applications for OTTI. So not only are we building out, you know, specific tools or acquiring specific tools for test and training. We're also doing that for the digital engineering environment writ large from an MBSE standpoint for the Space Force. So SSE actually just released an AI strategy and there's there's three aspects of that strategy to increase decision speed. That's why we want to bring in the AI tools so that, you know, our guardians can have faster decision speed and then potentially move on to other tasks that are needed. So from SSE standpoint, they look at three different things. Enterprise tools. So that's something like, if you log into your computer, it's something that exists and it's resonant on your computer that is helping you every day. So, you know, think of Outlook or PowerPoint. You've got some sort of AI tool that is, you know, an enterprise type of tool that you use on a day-to-day basis. The second one is functional. So that's tool specific to a type of job. We're a choirers. And so if you think about that from an acquisition standpoint, say you're developing a contract, you're trying to understand what are the regulations that are out there, what are the statutes that are out there that could impact the contract or the acquisition that I'm bringing to bear. Well, we could use an AI tool to help us out and bring some of those specific ones instead of having to go through all the statute and all the FAR and things like that. You know, the team joke, they were going to take my weekly activity reports that we've done in the last couple of years and plug them into an AI tool so they could have a clopsign type of output. I'm not sure that's the best approach, but that is an example. We experimented with that. Of a functional type of capability. And then the last is what you were talking about Charles, which is something that's more mission specific. So, you know, a custom built tool to solve a very specific problem. We have an example of that recently we're working with the 57th in Delta 11 to build out AI augmentation tools for their exercises. And we delivered something working with a contractor to the 57th that they use in space flag, the most recent space flag. And it really was, you know, kind of a benefit for an aggressor. It basically made one aggressor into three. And so, you know, bringing those working with Delta 11 and working with the operators to bring in AI tools that are mission specific and testing those out in OTTI is a good way for us to figure out, okay, is that applicable for an operational standpoint? And it's also a really good way to get the benefit for what may be a smaller force and potentially, you know, you got that force multiplier by having the AI tool in there to help you out. So, let's pull on the aggressor threat a little bit because The range is great and it's a wonderful way to test out your blue assets, but unless you're interacting with some sort of red threat, you're not a complete range. So how do you replicate red threats? Because if there's cyber, there's direct descent, there's coorbital, there's RF. Do you do that in both the real range and the virtual range? >> So the answer is yes. We are, as we're building on a TTI, the behavior of the adversary will change and we're going to observe things that the adversary does. And we're going to have to react to that, respond to that, and make sure we replicate that for the range and for our guardians. And so there's kind of three entities that I think we should go to and I don't know if HAC has anything to add to this, but first and foremost, the Intel community. They're constantly gathering information and understanding what's happening. And so making sure that we're closely tied with them is going to be important. The second thing is Nasick. That's a team out in Ohio that is building out, you know, our red threat models. >> Sure. >> They're building some more exquisite type of models. So there's kind of two categories that we're going to leverage. There's one that will be threat or Intel validated, excuse me. And then the other is Intel informed, so that we can get some things out faster, because those Intel validated models may take a little bit longer to build out. And we know that we need things in the distributed training environment quickly. And so we may just need to build Intel informed models for now. And then Intel validated in the future. And then I talked about working with Delta 11 and the 57th. They will help us build out the requirements. And, you know, they're the thinking adversary on the other side. >> Okay. >> They're trying to understand what's being brought in from the Intel community and how does that affect an aggressor? And how should that aggressor behave in a certain scenario, in an exercise or an training event? And so they're helping us build out, you know, those AI tools that I talked about. >> Great. >> I would add, you know, to go back to the previous question as well. Tied in with this, as we were talking about AI, the fact that leveraging AI for some of the more simple aggressor behaviors, starting at that point, and in turning what took three aggressors down to one, you free those two up to work, you know, the next hardest aggressor problem. And then you can integrate that into AI. So you're not putting them out of a job. You're putting them onto a higher priority job to continue that development and grow the adversary threat in the simulated environment. >> Yeah. There's plenty of work to be done. >> Definitely job. Absolutely. >> So you brought up the iteration of OTTI and how it's going to continuously evolve. So how do you adapt the OTTI to new programs as they come on board and new threats as they evolve? >> Colonel Hackbrath, you want to-- >> Sure. So of course we will have lead integrators. They will manage the software. They will execute system updates as that's needed. But also this is managed from a policy perspective. And we talked about it a little bit earlier, where we discussed that the program offices deliver the instances of their ops systems as a training system. And this helps immensely with that effort. So we established that interface, the standardized interface, and the weapon system or the platforms as they evolve. It's physical and it's digital twin in the training environment evolves along with it. >> Okay. And then I would just add that, you know, we've worked really close with a 390 second to understand the scenarios that they want to build out for flags. I think that is one, you know, direct impact in us, making sure that we're updating the models to be able to support a flag exercise and probably as we go forward, and we achieve the vision that Hack talked about, the digital training vision to actually get sword onto the ops floors within those training strings. They will-- this Comet Forces Command will help us build out scenarios. And they're going to be another input to ensure that we're updating those blue models and red models on a regular basis. And of course, I already mentioned a telecommunity. >> Awesome. Before we transition over to some audience Q&A, I've got one last question for you, and that is about resources. I mean, you've got a lot on your plate with OTTI. What additional resources do you need to help you with the program off to succeed and for OTTI to be a success? >> Yeah, I think, you know, from acquisition standpoint, that the standard answer is always people and money, but I think specifically for OTTI, you know, we've-- we have steadily grown over the last couple of years, and it has been because of, you know, a dedicated effort from SSC leadership. General Grant, Miss White, previously, Miss Everhart, now Miss Riedel, Colonel Menter, General Eidl, they have all helped us out and ensure that OTTI has been a priority as we've brought in people into SSC. And so they have worked very closely with us to bring in the right people, the right talent at the right time. In fact, you know, even being very flexible and redirecting some personnel early on. And so that has been significantly helpful. But, you know, we've got to continue to fill our civilian billets. And then as we fill those, we will continue to go back to SSC leadership and ask for more resources. And so we've got to keep building out that program office in Colorado Springs and have the right people for hack to execute. And then on the funding side, we've also increased the last couple of years steadily, as I talked about. There are some initiatives in FY27. As you heard, you know, leadership talk last week, there's going to be, you know, there was a submission for a plus up in 27 that obviously needs approval by Congress first. But as more systems come online across the space force, it's going to drive the need for test and training infrastructure. And so we're going to be right alongside our program offices to understand what those requirements are and continue to build out the foundations that are needed to ensure readiness across the force. Awesome. Well, I've got more questions, but I'm sure the audience has questions as well. So thanks for that great discussion. So you know the drill. Please put your questions in the Q&A function or raise your hand. Josh will call on you. Please unmute your mic, state your name and affiliation before asking your questions. So with that, Josh, should we have it first? Thanks, Charles. We have a couple of questions in the chat regarding small businesses and how those small businesses can work with the space force on its OTT infrastructure and points of contact for how do they can engage with the space force? Yeah. So it's not just the primes that you're dealing with, but there's small businesses that can also contribute. So how do they contribute? So I think there's a couple avenues. I would say, you know, the first is our commercial solutions opening. The OTTI commercial solutions opening that we have. We've released multiple areas of interest over this past year. And that is a great way for small businesses to keep an eye out for that on SAM.COV. And provide, you know, proposals and submissions through that CSO. I would say that the second thing is, as we stand up these IDIQs, understand what the primes have, what the primes can offer under these IDIQs and see what types of partnerships there may be out there from the small business standpoint. And, you know, bringing them in, we've got several small businesses actually that we're working on the HRIT portfolio. And so, you know, we do have a lot of small business participation. You have anything to add to that? Yeah, I would just add, we are, we're looking to have industry engagement events quarterly, focused on each of the lines of effort within the program office. So I would say, keep an eye out for that as well, where we can have open discussions about what industry is capable of bringing to us and the best way for us to get that on contract. And we've been pretty consistent about those industry engagements since September. And our intent is to continue those quarterly engagements. So please keep an eye out for announcements on those. And I think those are, other than that, the front door, the SSE front door, is always a place for you to submit questions and see, you know, as you submit, say specifically, I'm looking to engage with OTTI and they will direct you as appropriate to the right people within the program office. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Josh, who's up next? We have another question in the chat from Christopher Balters. He asks, are you emphasizing reference architectures for new efforts? Are they standardized just within your portfolio or across the SSE? So I'll, I'll take a cut and then, then hack and, can back me up the right way. So what I have tried to emphasize with industry is, look at our government reference architecture. And when you engage with us, tell us where your capability fits within our government reference architecture, right? I said this at, at SSE Industry Days. Please do not assume brilliance on our side, on the government side, and us being able to understand exactly the capability that we're bringing to bear, and where it would exactly fit within our architecture. We want you to help us out. We want you to describe where you think that you can help us fill a gap. And so use that government reference architecture as a way to communicate to us, how you think any capability you're delivering could potentially help us out in fill gaps quickly and with speed. Yeah, I think Colonel Kloppstein covered that well, since the stand-up of the PEO and LPAE. He's led the team to work through all that foundational documentations that's required, so that we have a full understanding of the enterprise. We can roll that up into architecture documentation that we can provide to industry. And then you can point out where you fit, and you can look into that documentation to see what those interfaces and standards look like. And those government reference architecture documents have been posted multiple times to SAM.gov. I will work with our contracting team to ensure that, you know, if we need to put it as a link to this discussion, we can add that in there to ensure that they can have access. Excellent, thank you. Josh, who's up next? We have another question in the chat from Dave Morrill, he asks, "Is there a plan/requirement for any new weapon systems to deliver the Simulators, Digital Twins, or Hardware in the loop components that will plug into OTTI?" The short answer to that is yes, but there's a couple things that are really important to that. The first on the Digital Twins aspect of the question, HAC talked about SOAR to earlier. We just got the standards approved by SSIO for SOARD so that we can get those out to industry. It is not something that's going to be unique necessarily to the capabilities we're building out. It really is industry standards across the board, but that is something that we've established and our intent was that industry can build blue or red models that will integrate into SOARD and we can ingest those. Longer term as far as the training string integration to SOARD, we are partnering with a couple of programs at Space Systems Command to help us build out that standard as well. The SOARD 2, a training string standard, and so we're in the process of that. The third thing I'll say is for JSE for space, we are also partnering with a couple of program offices to make sure that we define that effectively. Anything else? All right. I actually got that right. Josh, who's up next? We have another question from Miranda Clemens. She asks, "Will you please elaborate on the requirement for program offices to provide instances of their operational systems for simulation?" So this goes back to this program office, GPS or AEHF or whatever system they're the ones delivering the capabilities. So how does that actually work? Yes, I'm going to take that first. Sure, so this is something that we've recently discussed in our Board of Directors meetings with other Space Force leadership on. This is division. If you look at programs that are in development right now, especially early in their maturity, they have that accounted for. As they move through the development process, there's oftentimes where you have to make a trade one way or another on schedule or risk or number of operational units you can deliver. And in some cases, the training instance is the part that takes that hit. So I think we're looking at ways where we can explore ensuring that when that decision is made, that all the right stakeholders are in the room and we understand the impact to the training side, potentially tracking the funding for those training instances separately so that we have an understanding and control across the Space Force for when those program managers are making those decisions. So I just had a little bit of context. The history behind that is we had in the Space Force one program office that was dedicated to building the mission system trainers for all ground systems for the Space Force. And when you bring a third party in and that third party is trying to replicate a ground system that they didn't develop, it likely is not going to be as accurate as the system developer that they could actually build out that training string that is a replication of the ground system. And so we were shifting from what that approach was to now the developer is going to build that training string. And we as OTTI are going to build a simulation environment to go on top of that so that that development contractor does not have to build a simulation environment and then another one for another ground system and another one for another ground system. So the requirement on the side of the program office for future programs like HACC, we just did a call for information across SSE. And based on the information we have we think that requirement exists for future systems. For existing systems there's going to be some work that we got to do to be able to integrate SOR into those training strings. >> Great. Josh? >> I get every aspect of that question. I'm not sure that we did but I just want to make sure. >> I think we did. >> Josh, who's up next? >> We have a couple questions about Space Force OTTI and their integration with Air Force OTTI programs and to what extent those Space Force and Air Force programs are integrating together and with larger joint force capabilities in events like Re4PAC, Bamboo Eagle or Black Flag. >> So I'll start at the top and then try to come down. So first and foremost our priority now is to ensure that we got the Space Force assets in place for test and training. And that is the thing that we're focused on. But as we're building that out we are working with Joint Staff J7 because the Joint Staff wants to bring space effects and their exercises. They want to move away from a white carding. They want to move away from saying that capability is or is not there and then assume and then move on. And so they have actually supported our government purchase licensing with SORD. And so we want to be able to bring in SORD for the larger joint fight and working with J7 to be able to do that. So that doesn't just include the Air Force, it includes the Joint Force. And then the second piece is that one of the benefits of us leveraging JSE is that integration with both the Air Force and the Navy in those high-end training scenarios. And so that is why we're building out JSE for space. We're using the JSE baseline to be able to modify that and include space effects. And then it will be more integratable into JSE as we move forward. And so those are kind of the two areas we're partnering with either the Joint Force or the larger staff. So I do have a follow-up question on something that Colonel Hackbarth mentioned earlier. You used to be the PEO, now you're the PAE. How has that new role or set of authorities impacted your ability to lead OTTI? So as the PAE for infrastructure, the portfolio will grow slightly. It will include all the things that are OTTI. But as we as a Space Force looked at setting up the portfolios for the PAE's, there were a few capabilities that when you think about enterprise capabilities, there's bound to be some redundancy. And what we wanted to make sure as a Space Force is where we were redundant, we were doing it on purpose. And where we were redundant, where we could gain some efficiencies, let's set the portfolios up effectively so that we could make sure that we're gaining the right efficiencies and getting the right return on investment. And so there is a couple of things that are already in our portfolio. I mentioned the HIT, human resources, IT program. We've got the continuous fitness assessment program. But there are a few other programs that we are working with other PAE's to determine if those should move over into infrastructure and we're building that transition plan. That's something that will have to be a preview at the SAE level. And so it's pre-decisitional. But we're in the process of trying to understand that as we set up all the PAE portfolios across the Space Force. >> Excellent, thank you. Josh, I think we have time for maybe one more question. >> Yep, our final question is from the chat again from Elm Parker Bell. She asks, are there Space Force teams introduced to these new programs while in development and are both civilian and non-savillion teams updated as new technologies roll out? If yes, is training specified to specific programs, regulations, or is there open access for teams to access the information and implement accordingly? >> There's a lot there. >> Yes, that was a lot. I think the gist of the question was about external commercial entities or agencies being able to access the information that we're building out for OTTI. Is that that I capture that correctly? >> I understand it. >> Okay, so I would just emphasize again, working with us to understand when we're doing the industry days as we're getting information out via industry days in SAM.gov. I would use those resources as a way to make sure that you're staying plugged into OTTI. And then of course, go into the larger conferences. SSE Industry Days is a great place to go. We just had the recent space symposium. We've got the Space Power Conference, and so those are all great places to be able to get updated information on OTTI and across all the mission areas for the Space Force. >> And the Mitchell Institute Space Power? >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> Thank you, Charles. >> Can't miss an opportunity. >> I'm going to plug our own events. Well, thank you both, gentlemen, for an incredible discussion. Really appreciate the insight in your time. Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of this Shriver Space Power series. Thank you to again to our guests, and thank you to our audience for joining us in submitting your questions. From all of us at the Mitchell Institute, have a great Space Power kind of day. >> Thanks a lot. >> Thank you, appreciate you. >> Great job.