Ryan Castonia

https://lnkd.in/eZqVrXjJ Ok, so DUI is looking at (and funding) sea based space launching of rockets to give more flexibility and options for launching. I like the idea but how do the rockets get there? Is it a “load on” at port idea and then emplace for launch or will there be a ferry of sorts? I wonder what the sea state limitations would be on rocket delivery. I have some port infrastructure ideas that could make this a reality but this concept begs a lot of logistics questions… Honestly, I am more interested in the other end of this, the recovery/reception of logistics packages on the other side of the globe. Let’s go Army Watercraft! You need to get into the future fight and provide better options for Commanders.

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DoD DIGITAL ENGINEERING I love it when DoD leadership steps out in front of the media and so clearly articulates the INTENT and VALUE of Digital Engineering approaches. Col Matt Strohmeyer nailed it. CUSTOM COMMON OPERATING PICTURE (COP) VIEWS FOR EVERY MISSION/LEADER "Instead of a single, standardized, god’s-eye-view, Col. Matthew Strohmeyer said Monday, the goal of GIDE is a constantly evolving ecoystem of different applications, analytics, and interfaces, customized to different users at every level, from four-star theater commanders to mid-grade staffer officers to junior leaders on the battlefield, that will all draw — in different ways — on the same vast pool of data, shared across the different armed services worldwide." POWER OF CLOUD COMPUTE CUSTOM COP SERVICES “the goal is not necessarily to create that one COP that can see essentially everything we have … one Common Operating Picture to rule them all,” the colonel continued. “We need to have a heterogeneous mix of mission applications to get after all the things that we are doing.” Digital Engineering Ecosystems should be typified by numerous vendors being present in an environment that is both collaborative and competitive. Each brings their People, Process, Technology mojo so the government can have access to the right tool for the right purpose. One size does not fit all and there is more than enough work for all of us to do. We're better together. OPEN-SPEC APIs TO LINK DATA & COP CAPABILITIES "Instead of a single super-standard for all data, Strohmeyer suggested, a more practical solution might be mandating Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that automatically translate between otherwise incompatible systems. In fact, before an organization is allowed to “play” in the GIDE experiments, he said, they must provide “open and common access to data,” whether through an API or another automatic translation tool." See my post 2 days ago on this topic: https://lnkd.in/gahF6KQj AGILE APPROACHES "Adaptability requires rapid feedback from a wide range of users, so Strohmeyer’s team has accelerated their already blistering pace, adding smaller weekly workshops to their ambitious quarterly experiments" "In fact, part of the GIDE philosophy — inspired more by Silicon Valley startups than Washington bureaucracy — is an eagerness to “fail fast.” Sometimes known as “agile” development or DevSecOps, the basic strategy is to put nascent tech in the hands of real users, let them test it until something breaks, fix it quickly, and then let the users test the updated iteration until that breaks too." https://lnkd.in/g2HTRWuu

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Matt and Pete nail the analysis of Congress-DoD budgeting activity again. But they might have under-examined one key trend... This budget markup shows serious concern about #ContestedLogistics. Although the Navy took serious cuts to many programs, budget lines for logistics platforms tell a different story. Logistics platforms that received plus ups: - CH-53 (Heavy Lift Helo) - KC-130J (Tanker) - V-22 Osprey (Troop Transport) - Fleet Oiler - Towing, Salvage, and Rescue Ship - Ship to Shore Connector Non-Logistics platforms that received plus ups: - F-35 Missiles and surface combat capabilities received severe cuts. To me, the essence of how we do logistics is very important. Our proficiency, culture, and experience will serve us well. But there is no substitute for sheer mass. The House Appropriations Committee clearly recognizes that we need more ships. #Logistics #Congress #DoD #Budget #Defense #DefenseTech #DefenseTechnology #Acquisitions #Shipbuilding #Ships

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In an op-ed for Breaking Defense, Under Secretary of the Navy Erik Raven implores Congress to support the Navy's FY 2025 budget request. "We must defend the rules-based international order which seeks to maintain peace and prosperity across the globe, and the best way to do that is to ensure the US Navy remains the world's greatest." In order to do so, the U.S. must in its shipbuilding and submarine industrial capacity, including "more than $6 billion to invest in the workers, suppliers, shipyards and next-generation technologies to revolutionize and re-invigorate the industrial capacity to build these incredible vessels... greater than five times the funding called for in the FY24 base budget plan." #defenseindustry #usnavy #freedomsforge https://lnkd.in/e7GxXFnA  

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Future advanced 'starliners' will look more like these (https://bit.ly/49aB40a) We also foresee NOT only our development costs being lower, ultimately Price-per-Seat will be lower as well and provided on much safer form of spacecraft. #futurespace #newspace #newspaceeconomy #newtravel #spaceliner #CTPSpace

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Controversial opinion... The Department of Defense should generally not consider a vendor's manufacturing capacity during vendor selection. If you never buy from a vendor because you worry they won't be able to scale production to your needs, new vendors will (giant surprise inbound) not be able to scale production to your needs. It's such a direct effect, I don't even know if it's worth calling it a self fulfilling prophesy. "I can't believe we are going to have to go with [INSERT traditional contractor here] for the [INSERT program name here]. If only we had other contractors of their scale that we could work with" 🤦‍♂️ This is another flavor of the oft repeated advice to the Department to focus on being a better customer. If the DoD end user and the DoD buyer like what a vendor is offering but are concerned that the vendor might not be able to meet today's demand, this is a capital problem. There needs to be a mechanism to cut the contract to the vendor in concert with the vendor securing substantial investment. In effect, VC firms or PE firms, or aligned capital providers can under-write capacity with capital. It seems like such an obvious solution but when I bring it up you can see all the lawyers in the room start to sweat. Funny stories abound here. I will share one later this week.

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Last week I promised a good related story.... Several years ago one of my partners and I met with a Service Acquisition Executive. An SAE is the senior appointee within a service in charge of acquisitions. The SAE graced us with a 3 hour meeting, which was an incredible opportunity to dig deeply into their challenges and the ways in which private industry can support the public mission. After we briefed them on Army Venture Capital and what didn't work, the conversation opened up. They suggested one of their challenges is that when they run a bake-off around a capability they have often down-selected to a traditional prime who is the 3rd or 4th best option. They need X thousand units in Y months and while there are superior capabilities being built by startups, it wasn't clear to the SAE's team that startups could deliver product on time and at scale. I'm an investor and as the old saying goes, "when you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". For me, every problem looks like a capital problem. My first suggestion was for them to tell us how they racked and stacked the companies in the bake off. Then, as I suggested in the earlier post, let us invest in the best and use those investment dollars to ensure the startup can deliver on the contract. The lawyers in the room all reacted violently to the suggestion. Some burst into flames, some began sobbing, and others began speaking in tongues (I believe it was sections of the FAR). Clearly our suggestion wouldn't go anywhere. If I take my VC hat-off, I still think this particular problem IS a capital problem but it's a capital problem more broadly defined. In other words, if you present me with the best capability and need it to scale, I can almost guarantee scaling if I can provide sufficient capital including financial resources, capital equipment, AND human capital. This isn't as simple as opening the money spigot but it is eminently solvable if we have willing partners on both sides. Ok, I promised the story would be funny. The funny part was the SAE's suggestion. They asked if I and investors like me would be willing to fund a blind pool investment vehicle whose investment decisions were independently guided by the SAE's team. Needless to say, I declined but I do think it was pretty funny that I went in and was pitched on being an LP to a DoD run investment vehicle. I've seen the DoD's ROI over the last 30 years... I don't think they'll be getting that fund off the ground anytime soon. * Another suggestion for solving this particular problem is awarding the contract to the startup capability developer *if* they can subcontract one of the traditional primes to help with scaling. Flip the script. We need to get to a place where all parts of the ecosystem are working hand in hand. Primes, startups, and capital providers. If we want a "whole of nation effort", we probably need to start with a "whole of defense industrial base effort" first. 

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Learn how digital technologies are transforming operations at the scale and speed the battlefields of today demand in the latest episode of Building the Base Podcast

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"In a way similar to modern workers collaboratively managing projects and files over Microsoft Teams or Google Docs, today’s large-scale, complex acquisition projects require the kind of collaboration that is only possible when all of a program’s stakeholders have access to the same authoritative documentation, models, and other program information. High bandwidth networks and advances in processing, cloud computing, and big data are facilitating a revolution that is changing long-entrenched engineering practices and bureaucratic processes into a combined practice known as digital engineering." https://lnkd.in/gCfZziDX

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Autonomous weapons could dramatically alter the strategy, doctrine, and tactics of warfare. An interesting and startling view by War on the Rocks into waging war without humans. "The deployment of autonomous weapons has the potential to make warfare more efficient, but it also has the potential to make it more gruesome and terrible." #defensetech #defenseindustry https://lnkd.in/ebzjFkqG

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VC investors are more interested than ever in the defense industry and defense technology. It could mark a proper sea change moment for investing in global security. Jason Rathje from Office of Strategic Capital leads the DoD's focus "on strategic capital needs where public support is required to attract private investment..." and "we hope to license our first funds ... where we provide loans to investors to increase early-stage investment in these very difficult technology areas." Katherine Boyle general partner at Andreessen Horowitz has said, "I don't think I've ever seen such excitement, enthusiasm for investing in defense tech across a wide variety of investment firms. I think it's something that pretty much every serious … traditional Silicon Valley investment firm has at least one partner who's focused on aerospace or defense." Not that there aren't challenges. Nick Beim , partner at Venrock: "You'll have to deal with an existing set of economic players who kind of don't want a lot of competition and may be more interested in doing something themselves and partnering with a company that's got a ready solution. So, there are a lot of risks." #defensindustry #defensetech Tholus Capital Ajax Defense https://lnkd.in/eqN68VKV 

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The distance between the Pentagon to the Silicon Valley is getting smaller and smaller 💥 💫 The Big Picture: #Defensetech is on the rise as the world 🌍 becomes more turbulent and tensions are high. 💫 Why it matters: To step up and gain advantage in a crowded field, #VCs are looking for unique strategies, one of them is to hire veterans and ex-DOD officials. 💫 What’s in it for the VCs: Former defense professionals help understanding and analyzing the battlefield problems faster and evaluating the solutions better. 💫 What’s in it for #startups: The time to investment will become shorter and the competition on the good startup will be greater. Anyhow it will help the startups crossing the valley of death and get faster with products. 💫 Challenge to focus: Squeezing the timeline to get a contract from the government. In Israel 🇮🇱 the DDR&D (MAFAT) - Directorate of Defense Research & Development in the Israeli Ministry of Defense is taking measures to improve the process by opening “Green Lane” (David Shaul Attias) for startups and community- Mafat for startups (Dekel Yakobovich🇮🇱) In the US 🇺🇸 the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is in charge for accelerating the process and adopt startups. NATO launched NATO DIANA and the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) Defence and Security Accelerator in the UK 🇬🇧 And so on… 💫 By the numbers: $35bln 💰 were invested in DefenseTech startups in 2023, and over $9bln this year so far. 💫 Dive deeper: TechCrunch, Margaux MacColl, https://lnkd.in/dd-5sxa4 #technology #innovation #dualuse #deeptech

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I could not agree more with Palantir Technologies CTO Shyam Sankar's ground-breaking vision of a defense industry that is empowered to thrive in order to deliver enhanced value & innovation to the American warfighter. This is a must-read takedown of anti-capitalist regulation & cost-plus contracting and should be required reading for anyone working to reform defense procurement. "Giving defense primes the opportunity to earn their higher profits will catalyze the flow of private capital to defense research and development (shifting the burden of risk away from the average taxpayer), promote greater innovation, and subsequently drive down the costs of government spending." "For example, under the current model, the government would prefer a $1 billion solution with 10 percent profit than a $500 million solution with 50 percent profit ..." "The end result is that not only is the profitability (and value) of primes artificially capped, but the primes also face increasing market incentives to avoid high-impact, large-scale investments in commercial research and development." There is a better way, which is fundamental to American enterprise. "Improving the value of America’s primes is good for investors, good for the Department of Defense, and good for defense tech new entrants [AND good for American taxpayers]." War on the Rocks #defenseindustry #defensetech #defenseinnovation #freedomsforge https://lnkd.in/d77w6Gmi 

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An insightful report on the 2025 Space Force Budget. "This year’s budget cycle has been unusual, with significant consequences for the young U.S. Space Force. The fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget submission reflects DOD’s continued emphasis on the department’s transition to a new model for defense space operations. In coming years, the Space Force will likely take additional steps toward a more distributed and proliferated approach for defense space capabilities. This year’s request includes funding for new proliferated networks of communications satellites and increasing attention on commercial satellite communications. With more limited growth, the presidential budget request reflects trade-offs and priorities for DOD’s space activity."

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Nicholas Nelson, Senior Fellow for Emerging Tech & Policy at CEPA and is a Partner at MD One Ventures. Andrew Stiles, advisor on emerging technologies as a management consultant for nearly a decade. Kyra Terenzio, Management consultant specialising in emerging technology at a leading professional services firm. "Domain awareness is an ongoing challenge in countries with large Arctic land masses such as Alaska, where strained connectivity, power access, and extreme weather all hinder unmanned systems. NASA’s drone, Vanilla, flew for six hours in the Arctic totaling over 130 miles. Unique technology such as its internal heating system and anti-icing coating, if adapted to other robotic systems, could help make them more resilient, durable, and interoperable within the Arctic. Additionally, space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (SB-ISR) sensors are critical. However, satellites historically struggle with connectivity, signal fidelity, and resolution quality due to snowfall, cloud coverage, wind, and precipitation. To tackle these, Canada funded the Enhanced Satellite Communication Project – Polar (ESCP-P), which will enable narrowband and wideband satellite communications including beyond line of sight. Polar-orbiting satellites, and the infrastructure to launch them, are also increasingly vital. Russia launched its Arktika-M satellite in December, the second of nine it plans to send into orbit by 2026. The seven NATO countries in the High North will need to expand their own space-based and ground-based communications, such as durable and portable 5G systems and polar-orbit satellites, to provide ubiquitous, rapid data transmission for NATO activity in the High North."

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As I think about the Iranian attack on Israel this weekend, I’m struck by the role UAVs played in Iran’s escalation calculus. The seemingly deliberate choice to telegraph the attack through the launch of slow flying, easily targetable drones opens a niche in performative offensive signaling that we have not really seen at this scale before. This is not to say Iran’s estimate was accurate—time will tell whether the regime miscalculated and drones used in this way create more moral hazard than escalation management. But the very capability to provoke without serious risk of success against layered air defenses—drones as theater, in essence—is notable and seemingly new. Marine Corps University professor Benjamin Jensen gestured at a similar use case in a February War on the Rocks article writing on potential employment for Replicator UxS: “At the operational level, the focus of sequencing tactical actions is on friendly forces and using trip wires and risk-worthy platforms to create a strategic space for diplomacy and crisis communication.” We probably have more work to do to understand how the US may use UxS to signal and buy time in a Pacific scenario, and whether we believe the underlying deterrence logic holds in this paradigm.

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CENTCOM DIGITAL WARFIGHTING SERIES: EPISODE 2: Digital Air Combat Operations, with Col. Garrett "Nails" Hogan ...co-hosted by wonderful Lauren Bedula and James Geurts on Building the Base Podcast U. S. Central Command (USCENTCOM)’s air component (AFCENT) plays a crucial role for the Command: from providing the air surveillance coverage, to detecting when threats enter our airspace, to defeating those threats in the air, AFCENT is the tip of the spear. As if they aren't busy enough, they're also a driving force in our digital experimentation series - while we run our CENTCOM-wide exercises quarterly, AFCENT has kept up a persistent drumbeat of their own monthly exercises. Their hard work has yielded exceptional capability, and the entire Command is benefiting from it as air operations have shifted into high gear in recent months. In this week's episode, Nails talks about: - DISTRIBUTED OPERATIONS REQUIRING DIGITAL TOOLS. We are a geographically dispersed force, but have to fight on tight timelines in complex circumstances as one team...we need solutions that give us shared access to real/near-real time data, or risk falling behind the curve real-world events. - COMPLEX PROBLEMS REQUIRING INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS. Like Molly Solsbury, Nails highlights the importance of having technologies that play well together...no one solution will ever "do it all", but an integrated collection of them will give us the capability we need. - PEOPLE-CENTRIC TECHNOLOGY EXPERIMENTATION. Nails highlights the importance of getting user feedback on whether tools are intuitive, giving them the chance to "play" and learn on the tools, and most importantly, taking care of those people who are working 24/7 to train, fight, and drive capability overseas. Nails and his team are ultimate proof that we do not have to choose between the operations of today and the innovations of tomorrow: if anything, both are better executed in combination. He and his team are exceptional, and we are incredibly fortunate to have them in the fight for CENTCOM. Hope you enjoy this episode - next week, we'll have BG John Cogbill on the series talking about headquarters operations and coordination. EPISODE LINK: https://lnkd.in/gb_ESMDX #centcom #technology #innovation #buildingthebase

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Did you know Women represent less than 28%* of Space, Aerospace, and Defense in California?   Within some companies, it falls to 8% 📉   In Senior Leadership it drops below 20%.   Just wanted to share some data I found eye-opening this week 📊   Progress is strong though, for example via #WomenInSTEM programs, and a better understanding of removing biases from hiring processes.   Is it perfect? No, but progress is progress 📈   Companies will only improve as they get closer to gender parity, so let’s support these efforts!   #WomenInSTEM #Diversity #Space #Aerospace #Jobs    *Whole industry figures. Engineering & Tech positions are ~12.5-15%    

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