Dave McDonald’s Post

In the coming years, one of the "main things" in DoD telecommunications and C2 resilience will be the capacity to manage extreme abundance. A decade ago many of us in the DoD C2 capabilities business (on both acquisition and operations sides) would gather on occasion to admire the problem of lack of MILSATCOM capacity, volume, scale, assured defensibility and margin for rapid reconstitution in an inherently contested C2 environment. In context a few of us would emphasize the reality that our DoD base/station and mid-haul/long-haul telecom infrastructures are also aging, fragile, vulnerable and exorbitantly expensive to operate and maintain. Through those years, it was often my frustration that we would culturally default to "thin line" in any near-peer or peer scenario - and, in a form, prematurely wave the surrender flag on "contested C2." Some still do this, appearing oblivious to the parallel renaissances happening in commercial space and global telecom. Wish I had a nickel every time an otherwise aspirationally serious wargame simply white carded devastating degradations in communications connectivity and capacity, as though we don't have a fighting chance, and we don't get any vote in what an adversary can get away with at the outset of a fight. Instead, DoD needs to aggressively embrace the idea of abundance, variety, diversity, depth, operating agility and robust marginal reconstitution and surge capacity for any scenario we can imagine. Then bring the funding and the acquisition chops to the challenge, and boldly execute. If we do that, the "wicked challenge" then becomes management and orchestration of abundance, as well as surge capacity added to the ecosystem through a fight. DoD has nicely documented concepts for this, published in recent years. I've posted on that subject before; DoD CIO's SATCOM ESC-MC Strategy and various reference architecture documents. Good start; despite the objections from some, JCIDS and disciplined requirements framing and resource investments still count. Times have changed dramatically on this front in the last decade. Terrestrial and non-terrestrial telecom/networks industry communities are converging on data standards, API and ecosystem integration standards and designs - even without specific buying power incentives that DoD potentially offers. Industry is motivated to do this for a wide range of other reasons. It is of critical importance that the DoD steps up quickly to leverage that. Memo to USSF/SSC (and SDA, DIU and DISA by tangential extension): Management (defined with nuance - you're not going to own everything), elegant run-time orchestration and tailorable situational awareness (think user-defined hybrid SATCOM operational picture) of extreme abundance, of both terrestrial and non-terrestrial telecom/networks and ecosystems. This is worthy of its own dedicated JPMO structure. Rally the CCMDs/Agencies, get Congress on your side, program the investment, and let's get on with it.

Through the next year or so, you might see a few more posts on this subject from me. Scroll by if boring or not applicable to things you care about in this phase of your life. Or drop a comment and add to the dialogue - especially if you're in this phase of your life, or maybe you're on the same rough timeline as I am, and preparing for it. Or maybe, like me, you find the entire idea somewhat mind-bending. I've been continuously employed since I was 11 years old - lied about my age and caddied at a local country club as a little kid. What does that even mean to not have a job? You can't NOT HAVE A JOB!! It's a fascinating subject. How do you shape that last chapter of life? How do you get your head in the right headspace for it? Time has always been precious, but it's increasingly so, since you have much less of it left. So you don't have a lot of margin to horse around and get things wrong. There is some built in psychological pressure to not waste time, to "get after it" - whatever "it" is. The innate Marcus Aurelius-reading stoic in me informs something akin to this: Suck it up buttercup, no bitching, no waffling, it's not rocket science, count your blessings, any "problems" you think you might have are first world problems, and plenty of folks would welcome the various overblown "challenges" of transition to retirement. Said differently, what the hell is wrong with you, worrying about simple things. Smile, stay busy, set some goals, execute them, eat your wheaties, carry on, make a difference in some new form or fashion. Your identity and "worth" in the world is not inextricably tied to your career. Get over yourself. Just shut up and do the next things. You're among the lucky in the world. Could be all of that is deeply true. Get over yourself, indeed. Some other literature talks about this retirement "thing" as a joyous and open-ended opportunity for "sacred drift." As a starting point, I think I like that formulation, and will have to explore it intellectually a bit more, as the transition approaches. Had not previously heard the term. Thanks, Google.   Sacred drift. Maybe good, but maybe not too much. One can "drift" into worthless oblivion. One can also "drift" and "kedge" into some quite valuable contributions to the world. Choose carefully, and manage your drift. Drop a comment about "retirement" - as you have a moment, and the inspiration. What does it even mean? A good friend some years ago pushed a book on me: Younger Next Year. I'll have to re-read it. It's an important book for this phase of life. What say you? Retiring minds want to know!

A salute to SpaceX. This is what telecommunications resilience looks like. Saw some similar work this week by AT&T -- surging IT capabilities into most impacted regions, to enable emergency response and relief efforts through agile distributed communications. I'm quite certain other amazing U.S. companies are stepping up quickly here. If you are aware of some impressive responses-- post a comment. Last year, we worked with industry on some roughly similar types of efforts responding to Typhoon Mawar over on Guam. Americans should count themselves as fortunate that our telecommunications and IT industry partners are poised to respond so quickly in every case. Agile C2 is critical to every other thing that must happen quickly when disaster strikes.

That time of year again in Hawaii! AFCEA TechNet is a bit earlier than usual-- in case you've not been tracking. GREAT time to register and book your travel! 22-24 Oct - and at a new venue - the Hawaii Convention Center! I'll be down at the event for most of the week, and I look forward, as aIways, to catching up with esteemed colleagues and friends. The program looks OUTSTANDING this year! If you've reached out to me-- thank you. I haven't yet gotten my time management "stuff" together for that week, but working on it. Will be making rounds as able on the exhibit floor, to catch up with what industry is doing, and interspersing with some the great panels and keynotes. Shameless plug: I was pleased and honored to be asked to participate in a 5G-FutureG "rapid fielding" panel on Tuesday at 1400. Look forward to seeing you there! You'll get to see my imposter syndrome on full display! Drop me a line if you're planning to be there-- and especially if you'll have a booth/presence out on the exhibit floor. I'll be sure to stop by and say hello.

We're still many epiphanies away, and maybe a few failed telecom infrastructure disasters away, from getting on with massive wireless modernization of DoD base comms transport capabilities at scale. We seem first to want the entire valley-of-death movie to play out vis-a-vis the roughly $600M in DoD RDT&E investment in 5G/FutureG experimentation accomplished over the last five years. That movie is playing right before our eyes. The audience is figuring out the ending is not happy. Meanwhile, these types of articles keep popping up in the fed press. Saw another one, featuring the current OSD R&E 5G Czar opining broadly about how the "DoD is getting ready for 6G." Found myself wondering, exactly what does it mean to "get ready" for a transformative technology? You are either substantively positioning to invest in it, adopt it, scale it, sustain it and employ it for greatest effect for your operations, or you're not. Per Yoda, "Do, or do not. There is no try." Well, there is no "getting ready" either. Do, or do not. Latitude and apologies to the USAF on this front. Been following their CIO's vision for a handful of years now - in particular their planned substantial investments over the FYDP and beyond for "Base Infrastructure Modernization" (BIM). They have a PEO (AFLCMC up in Hanscom), a clear roadmap you can find on the USAF's CIO home page, and they are underway with a contracting and acquisition approach. What remains to be seen is what they build, how they backward integrate it with essential or sustainable legacy downstack telecom infrastructure, and if/how they might be inclined to work laterally with DISA and the MILDEPs to infuse jointness into their robust and ambitious plan. Speaking of DISA, they appear on various fronts to be turning their back on base/station (inside the fenceline) telecom modernization investments, despite past promises made, and the ease and convenience with which they have the structural blocking and tackling to be the "glue" that holds joint/unified telecom infrastructure together. It's not a good look; maybe new leadership at the top will change the trend. Hint #1: Start at the joint bases and regions; that's what that entire concept was supposed to be all about. Hint #2: This is what Defense Working Capital Funds (DWCFs) are for – and DISA is enabled to do upwards of 80% of their critical business with the warfighters via elegant DWCFs. There is also new leadership at DoD CIO. Could have positive impact on DISA and MILDEPs to start pulling this entire base/station telecom modernization and concomitant TDM divestiture/elimination "thing" together in an efficient, joint, ambitious and sustained manner. Having observed many years (a decade-plus) now of "admiring the problem" across the DoD, I've drawn the conclusion that only forceful, compelling and continuously engaged leadership from the top will make real progress. With the minor exception of the USAF, the rest of the DoD is flailing.

Timely and on-point piece from LTC Christopher Lee at the Modern War Institute. This week HQs INDOPACOM Commander, Admiral Paparo, and his staff, conducted a 3-day Defense Chiefs Conference here in Hawaii (see the bonus link). To the focus of LTC Lee's excellent article, the "always-on" detailed sausage-making of multilateral defense coalition building, capacity generation, information sharing and combined/multiplied deterrence development, is happening in earnest. More substantive and more often, is the wise path. Admiral Paparo gathered defense chiefs and national security representatives from 28 INDOPACOM, South American and NATO/Europe nations, to go deep on the questions of how to adapt to the rapidly changing security environment on this side of the world. And, to be sure, how to comprehensively deter China from its lawless, reckless and dangerous behaviors, and to prevent all concerned from stumbling into WWIII. This kind of work demonstrates that "adults in the room" are still laser focused on deterring a runaway escalation of PRC-instigated provocation and miscalculation in and through the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait - various scenarios that could spiral out of control and trigger a rapid road to major war. While defense cooperation on the deckplates, collaboration, formal treaties, defense agreements, capacity sharing, training, exercises and intelligence sharing types of outcomes can emerge from these types of leadership-level meetings, make no mistake, the strategic messaging and other-than-military partnerships and tangible outcomes across economic, diplomatic, infrastructure, information and science and technology domains, all serve collectively as a major deterrent to a rogue and lawless PRC. Updated treaties and defense agreements, more robust foreign military sales constructs, more frequent high-level meetings, increased trust, expanded S&T/information technology integration, tangible/measurable operational improvements demonstrated in wargames and exercises, all things to aspire to and steadily work on across these types of partnerships. Many take a more alarmist and deterministic view; postulating that PRC and Xi Jinpeng already have an inevitable timeline for launching a military annexation of Taiwan - and there is little we can do to drive alternative futures. I take a more nuanced view. This is not, and must not be, inevitable. Deterrence remains a multi-faceted, complex and continuous dimension of this entire strategic equation, and we need to remain hopeful, realistic and dedicated to it as a strategic imperative. An uncontrollably escalating peer war with China is to be avoided at not all, but at significant cost. Across all obvious and potential instruments of power, deterrence is to be pursued relentlessly as the top priority. The de-escalatory benefits of robust all-dimensions deterrence are front-and-center here. And broad and deep multilateral partnerships are the best way to shape this, bar none.

The notion that adversaries might only use global supply chains as a "...non-standard tool to engage in competition below the level of armed conflict," has all changed this week, has it not? If DoD SCRM doctrine, tools, processes, governance, resourcing, inspection, measurement and continuous training and process improvement were not all fully on your radar, or considered as "Commander's business" for you, I think now you might be inclined to dig in a bit deeper and ask harder questions, within your own teams, and across your systems commands, logistics providers, vendors/suppliers and acquisition/procurement organizations. Nothing like seeing a few thousand end-users getting their nuggets and noggins blown off simultaneously to accentuate the point. Plenty of us, even if we have perhaps zeroed in on SCRM, have framed it largely as a "cyber" thing. I.e., the consequences of getting it wrong on occasion would suck and be costly, but would be largely non-kinetic, and probably manageable through some type of resilient/adaptive procurement-in-depth capacity that permits a quick recovery. Not anymore. You buy and field the wrong thing, through the wrong path, at any kind of scale, and you've got the potential for a lot of death and destruction on your hands. The only limiting factor here is the creativity, imagination and nerve of the attacker. This will come across as obvious to many. I'll confess it was not obvious to me-- and I do think about these things perhaps more than the average bear. This week was a real epiphany. The IDF, working on the offensive side of the equation, clearly did not suffer a failure of imagination. Do we, working on the defensive side of SCRM, have vast failures of imagination?

Plenty to like in this analysis. Key theme: Space should be foundationally joint, if we do it right. We ain't there yet, but good signs of progress. Throughout the time the U.S. Space Force and Space Systems Command were standing up, I posted regarding the imperative that DoD MILDEPs preserve essential equities and HQs-level capacities, expertise and engagements across the range of space warfighting capabilities, both offensive and defensive. From my perch as a naval professional, I employed a few ideas: 1. Don't give up the ship. The Naval force has longstanding and abiding critical equities in space. Depending how you read history, the Navy damned near invented the employment of space for expeditionary warfighting and maneuver. The notion that we would blindly outsource space capabilities to USSF/SSC, was (and is), in my way of thinking, a bridge too far - and not necessary. 2. We have space capabilities because we have a naval force (and air, ground and special operations forces, by extension); it'll be important in the future that we remember "supported/supporting" doctrine and concepts, as USSF/SSC competes for a larger piece of DoD budget. Memo to USSF/SSC: In almost every important context, you are supporting. Your priorities, and the details of what you build, and how you operate it (jointly) must acknowledge that. From these two ideas, other important drivers of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel/Systems, Leadership, Personnel and Facilities derive for each MILDEP to consider. To be fair, even after five years, it's too early to chastise the Army, or any of the MILDEPs, for hedging bets and positioning for reasonable control over their own destinies in space. USSF/SSC still have a fair amount of proving and demonstrating to do, before the most seamless, robust and reliable fully-integrated joint-model-of-everything in space can be counted on. As I read the linked article, I don't so much think Army needs to rein in its own aspirations and aggressive pursuit of world class space capabilities. Likewise, the other MILDEPs need to keep their thinking caps on, and consider their own man/train/equip and concomitant resource investment strategies over years, even as all MILDEPs work collaboratively and thoughtfully with USSF/SSC to advance the worthy cause of jointness. The idea of the wickedly ruthless, persistent, engaged and demanding customer comes to mind. Another key message hiding between the lines in the article, is that USSF/SSC need to step it up at least a few notches and pick up the pace. As I've posted in other contexts, commercial space is racing ahead, in some capability areas largely without us, and the reasons we used to invoke for going slow, and taking 10 to 15 years to field "perfect" capabilities in space, no longer apply. You want jointness and "supported/supporting" to work for the entire joint force, all warfighting domains, and for the nation, you need to be world class in all that you do.

The right move by Space Systems Command's Commercial Satellite Communications Office. If this portends near term and continuing efforts to unify, resource and field an evolving Enterprise Management and Control (EM&C) ecosystem that brings MILSATCOM and COMSATCOM capabilities together in a scalable and manageable orchestration system, then we're on the right track. Aim high. Be ambitious. DoD sometimes casts wide nets with RFIs like this- a sort of clever way to get a "free education" on the state of play in industry. I've seen a parallel form of "valley of death" with RFIs and other sorts of half-step engagements with industry. Let's hope this is not that. Now is not the time to coax freebies from the commercial space industry. The commercial space DIB is burgeoning and loaded with amazing potential to leapfrog us into the future with the most resilient, agile, adaptive, scalable and easily orchestrated system-of-systems type of global communications transport architecture. This is an aspiration the DoD has had since I started my service as a young sailor in 1982 – just prior to the dawn of "net centric warfare," ushered in by legends like Admiral Cebrowski and Admiral Owens. And now here we are in 2024, still pumping out RFIs, and still largely "admiring the problem." Industry is primed to deliver, and keep delivering. RFIs, Prize Challenges, Prototypes, Industry Days, Technical/Academic Forums, AFCEA and NDIA conferences – all good. Keep doing that, and communicating vision and requirements with fidelity. But, quite soon, we must accomplish the foundational "blocking and tackling" of PEOs, decisive but light governance, unity of effort, alignment across joint boundaries and robust sustained funding-- to get on with execution, fielding and sustainment. Smart folks can argue the nuances of "as-a-service" versus "hybrid" versus "government-owned/operated" -- but we must not get bogged down on that. Let's build/field -- and figure out operating and sustainment models as we go. For my Navy colleagues... Don't go it alone on this; get in the saddle with USSF/SSC/CSCO/COMSO – and let's fully treat this is the major joint DoD investment that it is. That, and keep in mind that the distinctions between terrestrial and non-terrestrial communications transport are being rapidly blurred, and the most innovative players in industry are designing seamless and entirely orchestratable, secure and maneuverable networks in and through ground and space architectures. 5G-FutureG-- and related SDN/NFV/EM&C ecosystems are innately a part of these concepts. Navy has a "Transport Summit" coming up; keep your thinking caps on. Inherent resilience and warfighting continuity of operations can be found in scale, volume, capacity, adaptability and reconstitution. Accelerate over the top of the valley of death, and move resolutely from RFIs to RFPs to execution, fielding and sustainment. Ready, set, go.

Short and sweet from Philip Harlow at Telesat. He's right on the money with this analysis. Timely topic as well. Hope a lot of our DoD senior policy and acquisition leaders are reading. Not said: 1. Still a cultural change journey ahead - for DoD CIO, ASD A&S, USSF/SSC, DARPA, DIU, DISA, and the MILDEPs. Some pockets of excellence and boldness in a few areas - but not a universal acknowledgement of the opportunities on this front. 2. Hard to generalize, but I think the MILDEPs in small and urgent use-case areas with the greatest and most immediate and precise needs are leading aggressively and accepting/managing the risks on this "SATCOM-as-a-service" model. Thanks to structures like SSC's Commercial Space Capabilities Office (CSCO), users and their respective acquisition partners have something of an easy button to get on with it. 3. Unfortunately, even from my low perch, I see a penchant for wanting to continue an "analysis by paralysis" habit, as though more and more exquisite SATCOM option studies and DoDAF/MBSE "as-is->to-be" comparative analyses will put more capability in the hands of warfighters. We could go down that rabbit hole for a decade or more, while technology and commercial capacities (not to mention our adversaries) move on without us. 4. From the perspective of resilience and the capacity for ready-and-tested rapid wartime reconstitution, the thing here is to just get on with significant scaled procurements and service provisioning. You train like you fight; exercising, testing and training large hybrid/scaled MILSATCOM/COMSATCOM architectures is an immediate imperative. If you think you're going to just "figure it out" in-situ in a full-out peer war, willy-nilly provisioning new commercial capabilities through a fight, you might think again. 5. I'll go out on a limb here. There is virtue in quickly getting the phase 1 EM&C ecosystem built. Industry knows how to do this much better than we do (our dismal DoD track record speaks for itself). Point here is, the ability to smoothly manage, maneuver, defend and adapt larger scale hybrid MILSATCOM/COMSATCOM options, will create a vastly more permissive and high-ROI environment into which more COMSATCOM "as-a-service" options can be seamlessly introduced. The way that "more is better" actually aligns successfully to our resilience model only comes to fruition if you can relatively easily integrate and manage adaptable/scalable global enterprise ecosystems. The good news is this is an immensely vibrant and competitive capability area in industry. DoD should get on with it; all of the necessary studies have been done. Throughout my career, I don't think I've seen an entire defense industry community (commercial space) so positioned and enthusiastic to get this right with/for DoD. If we fail to take full advantage of that, and fail to make it worthwhile - in terms of fully fostering the DIB on this front, that'll be bad for the warfighter, and bad for the nation.