What Were The Golden Nuggets At SMD 26?

Welcome to Check 6. As promised on an earlier episode, we're going to debrief you on what unfolded at this year's iteration of the annual Space and Missile Defense Conference. At the Van Affand Brown Centre, it huntsville Alabama. It's a event that's particularly close to my heart. I used to go there regularly, I haven't now in a while, but very luckily we had aviation, we had Brian Everstein, our Pentagon editor there, and Steve Trimble was there too, our senior defense editor. And I think going in is probably fairly safe to say that big themes were going to be pretty clear. It was going to be Golden Dome, because what isn't these days? And then a lot of conversations similarly on Missile Inventory and what's going on in terms of the After Effects, or not After Effects, it's not over yet, but the ripple effects of Ukraine and what's going on in the Middle East, especially on the Air and Missile Defense side. So I think Brian, why don't you give us a bit of a starter here? What would you say in terms of the presentation from the Golden Dome boss, General Gertlein was there? We kind of knew that would be probably not just a keystone event, not just a keynote, but really kind of centerpiece of the gathering. Was it? And what did he say? No, it absolutely was. And I think to add a little bit more context to this setting, SMD, symposium is always the biggest air defense event of the year. And going back to last year, we went in expecting a big Golden Dome update. Golden Dome had been a thing for several months now, and we were really kind of key for some insight, but it turned out to be the meeting where you can't say the word's Golden Dome. So a lot has happened in a year. And I think the biggest thing that has happened in the intermeeting year is the budget. Golden Dome was able to get Kickstarter through a lot of funding through the reconciliation process if you recall the one big beautiful bill. And that gave it tens of billions to get going to start crafting this architecture. And the scene this year was a little bit of a warning I would say from the Golden Dome director, because the Pentagon is doing it again. They're going after the partisan reconciliation process to fund all of Golden Dome, 17.5 billion, is all in this reconciliation process, which has a very uncertain future. I would say uncertain news even though, well, overly positive way of looking at it. I've had lawmakers say flat out, reconciliation will not happen. So general Gouline and his. Brian, just to be clear, just kind of for some of our overseas audience, just kind of make clear why I mean, it's not in the core defense budget that people know goes over every year to the Congress gets adjusted and eventually tends to somehow come out. That's very still a very new way of asking for extra money effectively. Yeah. So this year, the Pentagon's going for about 1.15 billion, or 1.15 trillion, excuse me, in their regular budget, the one that goes to the bipartisan process. But on top of that, they're going with 350 billion, what is known as reconciliation, something that only needs a Republican step as. And it is emerged to be even more controversial, especially as a war. And Iran has gone on just and we're staring down an election. So there's a lot of uncertainty on it. If this reconciliation will happen. And that is not good news for general Gouline, because if he doesn't have that, he doesn't have a budget. And he flat out said, if we do not pass reconciliation, there will be no Golden Dome. And he said, we have to figure out as a nation a different way of funding this program. It can't be uncertain this year, because it won't be able to make any progress. If reconciliation doesn't pass, everything that has started will be it. And that's what Golden Dome is. The Pentagon will have to figure out how to address its priorities through other means, trying to add funding through the services budget to accomplish some of the tasks, which is possible. Some that will happen. I mean, if you know, a lot of these parts of the MDA are of the Golden Dome architecture are in the missile defense agencies programs. It's in the space forces programs and what the space development agency is doing. So there are components across the architecture, but it doesn't have the big cohesive focus of a Golden Dome. It doesn't have the gigantic increases in funding and procurement and development of interceptors. That sort of thing. So there's a lot of uncertainty. And you could, you could tell the general who line, really want to get that point across. He was kind enough to do a sit down with reporters, which a lot of us were pretty surprised of very quickly. We were all able to lava questions at him and try to get his message across. Yeah, very interesting. I mean, it really, I mean, the program is on an extremely tight timeline, because they supposed to basically effectively field something before the end of this administration, right? So this is, I mean, this, what's a, to say, a spanner in the works is perhaps an understatement. Yeah, I mean, to have a meaningful capability within the next couple of years is moving extremely quick. Now, again, with the caveat that a lot of that architecture is stuff that's already in work, what the space development agency is putting up right now. A lot of the interceptors which are already in extremely high demand will also be part of Golden Dome. Yeah. Yeah. What's your, what's your sense, just generally, was there, was that kind of the main message where there are other things? I mean, you know, there's still bits and pieces. You don't really know about Golden Dome. We've been curious about. I wasn't sure to want any, you know, he's been somewhat careful in his, what he wants to put out there. He's been pretty clear about that. He doesn't want necessarily all the details out there to not give the adversary too much information. So I'm just kind of curious if there were any programmatic tidbits or did he really stick to kind of his big message and keep otherwise his cards pretty close to his chest? I definitely think of the big message. There are bits and pieces. I think one of the most interesting points that we've been focusing a lot on is the use of space-based interceptors. That's a big part of the Golden Dome architecture that is also seems like the artist to get and likely the most expensive to get. So while there was a lot of early excitement, I've sensed that General Buu Line has kind of, kind of, put the brakes, try to put some kind of manage expectations on it. So as of right now, space systems command is doing kind of a four-stage prize-based competition is what General Buu Line had just laid out. And the first stage had already passed where the company's task was doing initial design, a component level testing, what could be SBIs? And there's three more stages to go. From building a capability that can launch, proving that it can work in space and then proving that it could be part of a Golden Dome architecture. Those are three more stages that these need to meet to be part of the Golden Dome architecture. And he would repeat that they need to be shown to be at scalable and affordable. Affordable is a big point on space-based interceptors. It's was driven a lot of these estimates that we've seen from ThinkTanks and stuff in DC that put the price tag in Golden Dome far, far higher than General Buu Line would want to point out. Far higher than the 185 billion over five years that we had saw from the early onset. Yeah. And as Steve went on an early episode of Chex's I think has made the point. He even before this SMD event had kind of signaled that if it's not affordable, it's just not going to be part of the program. Yeah. And the way the program is set up with General Buu Line, we also have with the Director Pointing Program Manager for the Air Force with all of their programs. The Pentagon has set up this structure to try to move as quickly as it can. And he had raised a new example that I hadn't heard of that. Apparently a few weeks ago, President Trump signed a new National Security Directive. It gives Guu Line access to basically any government data he wants from across the I.C.s, from across the military to figure out how to work that into his architecture. So it says that will allow him to call it a lot faster. I think there are some other folks in the government would like that. That's what our authority. That's probably true. I mean, one of the interesting things for about that event is of course it's not just about, you know, what you might call national defense, you know, to use the old term. I mean, it is also about kind of the bread and butter of air defense from, you know, man pads to, you know, short-read systems of various types. So, you know, again, then going up the scale and given everything that's going on, let's maybe first talk about the big inventory, the inventory depths of the topic that we've all been obsessing about. How much of that was that a feature of the conversation, just the expenditure of the munitions, how MTR, you know, is the stockpile really, or were they, did they largely try to steer clear of that? They definitely wanted to flip-stomp the urgency of it that we need these munitions refilled from Patriot, from Thad, even down to man pads in offensive fires. I mean, that was definitely foot stomping every conversation, but there was absolutely zero specifics and that's not surprising. Nobody's going to give up any sort of that classified data. But every speaker talked about the need for magnitude and depth increase from the head of space missile defense command from the head of the Army's PAE fires across the board. That was something that was repeatedly raised and raised in trying to different ways to get after the problem. And so not just increasing production, but looking at new energetics and new propulsion techniques that can bring down the cost, speed up production, that sort of thing. Any other observations you would say in terms of just kind of that conversation around air defense that struck you while you were down there in particular? I think the biggest thing that struck out and I was able to talk a little bit with the head of space and missile defense command on that is if you look at the recent conflicts with Iran what's been going on in the Middle East is their personnel are taking the of the casualties, taking extremely high operations tempo. And that was a common theme, I think, through some of the discussions that there needs to be a better way to protect the defenders. Former SMD commanders say, laid out that we can never deploy a Patriot battery again without its own counter UAS system, which is something that is happening, which is, I mean, it's kind of, it's not enough to deploy something to protect an air defense, to protect a base. You need to deploy things to protect those protectors, looking at a new counter UAS, kind of smaller air missile defense systems, that sort of thing. So it's not just Patriot, it needs to be the breadth of the air defense system and ecosystem, and I think a little bit different about that. Which I hadn't heard much before, which we hadn't really seen in conflicts like this recently. - Yeah, I think that's really, really interesting actually. I totally agree. It shows really how the adversary is starting to think about the problem in a clever way that's giving, that's giving the Pentagon pause and needs to rethink how it's doing some of its deployments. I find it interesting too, 'cause we're talking here mainly about the missile defense side, but of course that also is a bit of the, one of the lessons on the space side, the space infrastructure upwind sites are also a convulverable. I mean, in the Iranian struck a satellite facility in Israel, I think there were also targeted in other parts of the Middle East. So it does feel like that community, that gets together at SMD has two challenges on its hand. On the one hand, the one you allude to defending the high end air defense assets, and then the other being also some of the uplink and downlink. Nodes that are so critical to kind of just keeping the tubes connected. Yeah, and then to go back to Patriot to the air defense, is there was an interesting discussion when I had commanders from all of the different Army Air and missile defense commanders in the 10th, which is over in Europe, is in a very interesting position right now, 'cause they have one component that is, that does M-Shorah that is deployed to the Middle East and working with air defense there, but in some of the component that's still on the continent in Europe is working directly with Ukraine to take on their lessons learned from operating some of the systems. Well, which have obviously been under intensive attack for the past couple of years. And there are like some little tangible examples that emerge out of that that you talked about, like extending the wiring between different fire control systems in the Patriots so they can be better dispersed. I mean, it's very simple, but it's been effective. The engagement control station for the Patriot has been palatized, so it's more mobile and they can even just bury it more in the ground for more protection. So there's some real world lessons that I was in a part of the discussion really before recent conflicts. Yeah, that's really interesting. Anything that industry showed that struck you in particular, that there's always tidbits here there, someone wants to get into a program like that or Patriot or as a new vendor or throws, I mean, given all the appetite for new low-cost interceptors, I was just curious if anyone used the event to put it for sales pitch. The biggest one that stood out to me was Boeing unveiled their new design for the Army's indirect fire protection capability increment two-second launcher. So they're one of three competitors. They have teamed up with Andorl, the going up against Raphael and against Lockheed Martin for this competition. So they have a full new design for this competition, which we're expecting it down select relatively soon within the few weeks. Where Boeing has its whole new design with Andorl, and the Army's goal is to bring on a much more capable interceptor for if pick at a smaller size and a smaller price point. They had targeted an AMRAM capability with a sidewinder size, for example. So Boeing unveiled its design for the first time. Lockheed Martin is keeping theirs close hold, but we should have an announcement on that pretty soon. One other thing that stood out on the offensive fires that Steve noticed and wrote about was a little part of the little screen at the Army's Devcom booth. There is something called a affordable high-speed strike theater fires, which is a new competition for a lower-cost type offensive hypersonic missile. It used to be called Prismic Commit 5. It was my understanding. Think about maybe a ground launch hack 'em type design. So that was something that was new that we hadn't seen before, that did just sowing more competitions out into the full. And the final update, PAE fires, gave an overview of their four upcoming competitions or just some things to look out for. There's a low-cost interceptor, but we've talked a lot about. The Army is looking to bring on a new interceptor separate than all the other ones we've already talked about. With about $100,000 price point, there was an industry day with hundreds of responses. The Army Secretary led it to show their importance that they're putting on it. There's another future interceptor looking longer-range beyond Patriot, which I was hoping to hear a lot more about, but really didn't hear that much more about. So maybe next year. And then a couple, there's a new joint forceful entry radar that they're starting to get off the ground and a new M-shore ad view. - Wow. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, frankly. I keep telling myself, I need to sit down one of these days and just make a list of all the new missiles, both from the air defense perspective and all. And then the long-range strike stuff, because it seems like every week, there's a new RFP out for some new weapon system. It's kind of bonkers. - You can tell that there's a big push to increase their magazine depth, increase their options. But I've had this conversation separately outside of SMD, but on another, a similar area where there's a lot of new competitions or missiles, it's like, you gotta pick some. 'Cause how are you gonna get the magazine depth if we're gonna be doing these competitions without ordering really at pace and at big numbers? So I don't know if the army's gonna make that shift soon, but I think that there's kind of a hope for that. - And one point, a friend of the pod, oh, who likes to make when I had the conversation with him, is this is hugely inflationary. You're trying to develop low-cost missiles yet, but if you're gonna have that many out there, the supply chain isn't growing, you can't grow the supply chain as fast as we're growing, throwing out new programs. So the tier two, tier three folks are all getting these requests and for them. I mean, of course the prices are gonna go up. It's almost like they're working against themselves somewhat. - Yeah, there's only so many solid rocket motor providers. There's so many seeker providers, so many castings and fortunes. And the bearings, things that need to go into this, they're all getting squeezed. - Yeah, it's, well, I guess it's a good time if you wanna get into this business, and you can figure out how to do it rapidly. But, well, great, anything else, or are you kind of now focusing on your next target? - I think the last thing to stood out at this event, so it's a few days, I mean, it's growing bigger and bigger with a lot of speakers. So a couple of them pulled out right before, I think that was kind of, because of the worries about talking about magazine depth and operational realities, I think that was unavoidable first, a lot of folks, so some people would have backed out or didn't wanna make any news. And the last thing that kind of stood out is the MDA director has a closing keynote at this event every year to kind of push for what MDA wants to do. They're a big picture thinking. And this time it really had them in a supportive role, which I thought was interesting. Because everything that they're doing is going into Golden Dome. And I think that reality set in that MDA is really a supporter at this point for Golden Dome. They've been tasked for leading the integration and leading testing and leading the, in giving the architecture big thinking over General Gould line, which I thought was a different approach than I'd heard from MDA in recent years, but pre-Golden Dome. - Yeah, I find that pretty stunning actually, because I mean, this event was the, whatever you wanna call it, the SDIO, BMDO, MDA event, kind of keystone event, so to have them basically as playing second fiddle, that is certainly interesting. Show us how much power General Gould line really has there with his Golden Dome. Not all he needs is, I guess, some money. - And one last thing that I thought was interesting, and this has come up with a lot of industry sources, is as it was leaving, I was heading to the airport, I wrote a story about yet another seven-year framework deal. On the munitions, this time was RTX and Boeing on SM3. There's been so many of these framework deals, and it's exciting, and it gets industry going to a certain extent, but there's no contracts, there's no money. - Well, the first contracts are starting to flow, right? - There was a one big patriot with Lockheed, and now that came out just a few weeks ago, after probably five or six of these framework deals, but it's all reliant on budget, all reliant on funding. So we'll see if even more of these frameworks become reality. - Yeah, well, it's great. Well, that doesn't, thanks for going down there, and all the writing that you and Steve did for our audience. You can find almost everything they've written on aviationweek.com. There'll be more in the next issue of aviation week and space technology magazine. So, look for that. And on many of the other developments, on some of these missile programs and new ones that are no doubt will Well, spring up here before too long. I would say check back with Chek6 and thanks to Brian for joining me here. Thanks Andrea for being our producer. And as always, thanks to our audience for checking out this episode of Chek6 and please check back for more soon.