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February 12, 2020.

A series of announcements over the past several months have shown that the launch of the sixth branch of the nation’s armed services, the United States Space Force (USSF), is fully underway. The National Defense Authorization Act, which passed in December with bipartisan support from Congress and was signed into law by the President, has enabled this transformation of the nation’s approach to national security in orbit and beyond.  More implementation details are to be determined, but these events are “among the most significant reorganizations of the military since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of the Reagan years, and the first addition of a new branch since the Air Force was broken out of the Army’s Air Corps in 1947,” according to Wired.com

These efforts will mandate dramatic change in the existing Air Force Space Command (including space technology programs like Global Positioning System, Defense Meteorological Satellites, the Space-Based Infrared System and launch vehicles like Delta II, Delta IV and Atlas) as it is re-designated as the USSF – and present significant challenges ahead. This combined with the August re-establishment of U.S. Space Command as a combatant command focused on space makes for an exciting time in the space community.

For those within the broader defense and intelligence communities, there are many things to consider in terms of developing and supporting this new mandate:

• How can U.S. Space Command focus on its role as a “combatant command” while still being able to integrate with other all the armed forces? 
• How will the new USSF transform itself from organizing, training and equipping services for the Department of Defense to a high-tech source of space fighters? 

“This new approach to national security with the U.S. Space Force focuses on missions in the space arena, and will change the way we plan battle strategy,” says Michael Lencioni, CEO of Stellar Solutions. As a global aerospace engineering services leader with specialties in defense, cyber-security and intelligence, Stellar Solutions and companies like us have an important role to play in this new landscape.

There are many other broad questions swirling around what the USSF will become and how it will operate. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein essentially wondered this very thing, asking whether the USSF in practice will constitute “a marriage or a divorce” between the two armed services. Beyond the USSF leadership and initial staffing levels which are being finalized along with the “Comprehensive Plan for the Organizational Structure of the U.S. Space Force” report released last week, we have identified a few recommendations or issues for consideration based on our expertise with Air Force programs:

• Develop a unique “warrior culture.”  As an independent service, the USSF must rapidly focus on building its culture.  As it will join warfighting efforts with the other services in the Joint domains, the USSF will need to prioritize its doctrine, education, and training, while effectively establishing its own differentiators from its sister forces.

• Become more agile in acquisitions and implementation.  Because the USSF will be “exotically smaller” than other forces with approximately 16,000 people to start out with, it will require greater focus and agility.  Resources will come from commercial innovators (i.e. SpaceX) to quickly provide state-of-the-art hardware, software and data applications. Developing innovative ways to purchase these capabilities and refines development using commercial capabilities will be key.

• Integrate strategically with forces on the ground and in the air.  Dispelling the science-fiction idea of “Star Wars” battles, real-life conflict in space would arise from Earthly disputes and likewise result in terrestrial damage.  Not only will the USSF be required to work seamlessly with the other armed services and Combatant Commands, it must bring together acquisition through the SMC (Space and Missile Systems Center), SDA (Space Development Agency) and Space Rapid Capabilities Office as well as partnerships within the U.S. and with our allies.  Each of these organizations must focus on the integration beyond space.

These early thoughts are informed by our significant expertise in space-based technology and leadership in the civil and defense arenas, and our Malcolm Baldrige Award-winning performance results based on innovative business practices. At Stellar Solutions, our focus on culture has direct ties to performance excellence, we “cross boundaries” to achieve strategic and innovative solutions, and we are embracing agility across all levels of our organization. 

Next steps toward further defining USSF are due to happen quickly. The February 2020 Air Force Association Newsletter released last week opened with a preview of the President’s FY 2021 Budget Request, which is expected to be released next week and address the USSF with a focus on four themes:

• Inter-service connectivity for “the joint fight”
• Space operational capability
• Stand-in and standoff capabilities
• Logistics for a more expeditionary Air Force

As a committed member of the defense community with significant experience advising companies on building the relationships and creating the organization to manage complex integrations, we are looking forward to the game-changing developments, opportunities and results that are possible with the new USSF.  Stellar Solutions is leading robust technology, management, and expert solutions for Department of Defense customers related to space and missile systems for national protection and security.

About the Authors:
Betsy J. Pimentel, Vice President, Defense Programs
Punch Moulton, Vice President, Cyber and Defense Support

February 12, 2020.

Launched at 11:03 pm on Sunday February 9, the European-built Solar Orbiter spacecraft is officially on its way to study the sun’s polar regions, thanks in large part to the dedicated oversight of Stellar Solutions’ John Satrom. John served as Launch Vehicle Integration Manager for the joint NASA-European Space Agency program that will measure the inner part of the extended solar-system environment, or heliosphere, as well as the flow of charged particles from the sun called the solar wind.

John has been working on this project for nearly seven years, traveling between work sites in Europe and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Despite many delays on the project throughout the development life cycle, the evening launch of the Atlas V was spectacular and cheered by many on both sides of the Atlantic.

At nearly one-quarter of Earth’s distance from the sun, Solar Orbiter will be exposed to sunlight 13 times more intense than what we feel on Earth. The spacecraft must also endure powerful bursts of atomic particles from explosions in the solar atmosphere. Solar Orbiter will help scientists better understand the sun’s magnetic field, and the solar cycle of variations in sunspots, radiation levels and the solar wind, which can negatively affect our communications systems and other technology.

Congratulations to John and the Solar Orbiter Team!

February 8, 2020.

NASA Astronaut Christina Koch returned to Earth on Thursday after spending 328 days on the International Space Station, having set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. The story of women in exploration is one that inspires me tremendously and holds lessons for all of us who strive to defy convention and succeed against all odds. This has a lot to do with the fact that I have lived this very experience – much like the famous photograph of the only woman engineer in the firing room during Apollo 11, JoAnn Morgan.

Unfortunately, this century-old saga has had many fits and starts due to numerous external influences. Through tremendous advancements in technology, two world wars, national policies on civil rights and employment, the Cold War and various space races, and gradual changes in our society, women have come a long way but not far enough. This is very much the case across the board, literally – from corporate boards and C-suites to science and engineering careers.

As reported by the Washington Post in November:
In the aerospace industry, only 24 percent of employees are women, and there has been little change in years, according to a study done by Aviation Week. For many, another example of how far the agency has to go came just a few weeks ago when NASA announced its “honor awards,” what it calls its “highest form of recognition” to employees and contractors. In total, 42 people were honored. All but two were men. “We haven’t moved very much in the last 30 years in overall diversity,” said Mary Lynne Dittmar, the president and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, an industry group. “Aerospace is still heavily male and white, and we’re not moving very quickly.”

JoAnn Morgan later accomplished many “firsts” for women at NASA: winning a Sloan Fellowship, becoming a division chief, senior executive and agency director of Safety and Mission Assurance. So many others, both well-known and “hidden”, have also helped pave the way. And now, Christina Koch has broken Peggy Whitson’s 2017 record of 288 single mission days, and she was only 12 days short of the American record set by Scott Kelly in 2016. A woman still has the overall career duration record for any astronaut, at 665 days in space—Dr. Peggy Whitson. This is yet another vivid example of a concept very dear to me: when women of equal capability are given equal opportunity, the sky is the limit.

It was thrilling to see Christina in the first all-female spacewalk last October, where she and Jessica Meir made history in low-Earth orbit while guided on the ground by capsule communicator (CAPCOM) astronaut Stephanie Wilson. These three women are part of a small cadre of current female astronauts, one of whom is destined to become the first woman to set foot on the surface of the Moon, addressing another significant achievement gap that is perhaps one of the greatest in human history.

No less than 55 years will have passed before a woman will be able to make this unforgettable journey that changed the world, a stunning example of the steps forward and back we continue to face. The fact is, the larger and more bureaucratic the technology program, the longer it takes for women to have a primary seat at the table. In some ways I have done my part, launching Stellar Solutions as a woman-owned technical company after already blazing new trails in my own engineering career and helping open doors for other women who followed. But this work is never done–it is up to all of us, as a community, as a company and as individuals – to usher in a future of boundless possibility for all.

The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back. – Malala Yousafzai

About the author: Celeste Ford is the Founder and Board Chair of Stellar Solutions. Read her bio here.

January 24, 2020.

The website of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) describes collaboration as an approach used by the Intelligence Community (IC) to establish “intelligence and information sharing relationships with international, military, domestic, and private sector partners to promote intelligence-related communications, standardize processes for collaboration, lead coordination of IC information sharing and foreign liaison issues, identify emerging issues, forge solutions in support of military operations, and maximize the use of private sector information and expertise to support intelligence missions while protecting privacy and civil liberties.”

The following scenario involves a critical situation at an unnamed embassy, demonstrating the urgent collaboration challenges that many of us face in the dynamic world of intelligence/incident operations.

An Embassy Engulfed in Questions

A strategically important embassy unexpectedly found itself in a turbulent shutdown mode one evening, with staff conducting evacuation preparations at a fever pitch. Hours ago, the Ambassador to the United States decided that a recent threat to the embassy was credible. Therefore, this location was no longer safe for personnel due to this possible imminent attack. The Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force, which had been alerted earlier, was on the scene and working quickly through their emergency checklists.

But then, everyone received word that the execution plan had just been accelerated, and that the embassy must evacuate immediately. The speed and manner of this caught many by surprise, with a number of questions that remained:  What changed? What could happen next? Are we still prepared?

The 24×7 operations center, responsible for maintaining situational awareness (SA), providing threat warning, coordinating resources, deploying assets and updating leadership, is charged with keeping pace during these situations and evaluating the information throughout its communication channels. Their computers were suddenly inundated with a vast and fast tsunami of documentation and discourse. Tempers flared as the speed and volume of communication overwhelmed the staff. One frustrated senior leader privately remarked, “We didn’t need more data, we needed a way to efficiently share and discuss the information we had, and quickly make sense of it all. So that we could understand what does all of this mean, why was it important, and what could happen next?”

The collaboration process had become fractured or piecemeal at best, with stove-piped information sharing. Many staffers were making numerous desperate phone calls and/or unleashing a flood of emails, none of which included everyone who needed to see the details or had the ability to provide the answers. Several people were observed with a phone on each ear simultaneously. Things were moving too quickly and they just couldn’t keep up, with fleeting opportunities that were being missed. Even more questions were being asked. Did leadership have a clear picture of the situation and an understanding of what was expected moving forward? What was being missed? More importantly, many were asking, “How and who can we engage to identify our gaps and unknowns?”

This story of an embassy and its supporting organizations struggling to answer numerous questions of a crucial or even life-and-death nature has been fictionalized for instructional purposes, and it provides a number of lessons learned that we can examine.  Stellar Solutions is at the forefront of creating collaborative solutions for situations just like this one and providing hands-on training to address these human-centric needs.

Our experience and analysis suggest that the operations center in this story could have benefited tremendously from a lightweight, bottom-up solution like the Human Net. This resource provides a venue for informal interaction via a continuous chat environment that is facilitated by skilled collaboration operators. Just imagine the difference in the above scenario, if the center had access to an online chat space for sensor operators, planners, individual brokers for down-range elements, analysts, logistics personnel, supporting elements, etc.

Stellar maintains a time-tested and recognized role in innovating, educating and operating in the world of online collaboration and information sharing within the IC and Department of Defense (DOD).

Notable collaboration achievements by Stellar’s highly trained staff in the classified environment include:

• Establishment of an agency-endorsed, national level certification program.
• Serving as a go-to resource in support of high-interest, crisis events impacting the national interests of the United States.
• Recognition from the DNI though a 2018 National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation for efforts supporting a Strike Support team.

Celebrating our 25^th Anniversary this year, Stellar continues to develop and implement novel capabilities in response to the evolving and critical needs of our customer community. Our ongoing development of innovative collaboration concepts for U.S.-based and international IC and DOD locations is a good example of this commitment. Additionally, our experts are training and certifying watch officers, program managers, collaboration operators and facilitators in the art and science of using the Human Net to address some of the most challenging and complex events that can unfold in the blink of an eye.

About the Author:
Lisa Parker is currently serving as one of four National-level Collaboration Facilitators supporting IC and DOD activities.

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Stellar Solutions is a trusted partner to the Intelligence Community, with expertise in national geospatial, intelligence, and reconnaissance programs.

January 16, 2020.

A recent story about QuakeFinder in the LA Times conveyed the many obstacles that Stellar Solutions has faced over the past two decades in our quest to definitively prove electromagnetic precursors to earthquakes. And in spite of these numerous and significant scientific, technical, political and financial hurdles, we have made tremendous headway toward this noble, long-term goal that could benefit countless lives.

It is important to remember that science is a journey. The article compares our experience to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the hunt for the meaning of earthquake lights, and we’ll add that this endeavor is very much like many of the grandest challenges in human history – achieving heavier than air powered flight, the race to space, mapping the human genome, and effective treatments for devastating diseases from polio and cholera to smallpox, HIV and cancer. It’s the nature of innovation: we have achieved a great deal in many areas but in others we still have a ways to go.

While the financial obligation and constraints inherent in this important work have not been overstated, we must elaborate on QuakeFinder’s recent and compelling technical achievements as well as a path forward with partners that can only serve to continue and leverage the significant progress made.

Yes, Stellar Solutions spent big to see if there are electromagnetic precursors to large earthquakes. And yes, they do exist! Our research attempted to prove that electromagnetic signals (in this case magnetic pulses) exist in the days prior to earthquakes larger than M4.0.

The research efforts involved developing algorithms that could find these small signals from 70 Terabytes of data collected from our national network of sensors from 2005 to 2018. The results published late last year in a peer-reviewed journal (Computers and Geosciences) found that for earthquakes larger than M4.0 and within about 40 km of a magnetometer instrument, a measurable increase in magnetic fluctuations occurred in the window 4-12 days prior to the earthquakes. Rigorous statistical methods were used and, in one case, QuakeFinder achieved a 2.86 sigma confidence threshold on these results—or saying it another way—the odds of getting our results if there really is no correlation were only 1 in 475 (0.2%). This suggests that the increased electromagnetic activity does precede earthquakes and is not just experimental happenstance or unrelated to the earthquake process. We are not aware of any other similar research study of this size and scope, nor one that has been formally published or achieved this level of certainty.

Now the challenge is to refine the algorithms to discriminate the unusual activity from the large amount of background noise (e.g. BART trains, lightning, solar storms, and other man-made magnetic noise). To do this, we need funding and partners.

While our research did not specifically focus on earthquake lights, we developed a hypothesis that if there are deep underground electrical activity (e.g. large currents released prior to earthquakes), perhaps very sensitive induction magnetometers might be able to detect these current surges. Today, after 20 years of building a network of very sensitive induction magnetometers, which are spaced about every 20 miles along the faults, QuakeFinder finally had enough data and earthquake events to test the hypothesis.

And QuakeFinder is no longer alone in this effort. Researchers in Japan (Han and Hattori) did a similar analysis over a decade in a relatively quiet area, removed from electric trains and during the night when the trains were not operating. They too found statistical evidence of both magnetic pulses and longer disturbances in the 2 weeks prior to earthquakes.

The quest for accurate earthquake forecasting is an extraordinarily difficult and unprecedented task–far larger than what a single, small aerospace company can afford. It is true that Stellar Solutions is “hitting the pause button” and reducing staff to a minimum level, after having spent approximately $30M over 20 years building the network of sensors and developing these initial algorithms. But, all of this is far from our last contribution to this cause or the end of the QuakeFinder story.

We are hopeful that the initial published QuakeFinder research results, as well as corroborating results in Japan (and soon possibly, China) will attract other funding from either private or government sources, to continue and advance the effort. Better results may occur with the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques. We expect at least one such data mining company to publish their initial results using the QuakeFinder magnetometer data sometime this spring.  And our work and methods have application to other areas of societal benefit as shown by our recent selection as a final winner in a federal competition for the World Magnetic Model. The never-ending struggle and adventure of science can be fraught with risk and uncertainty. However, its discoveries, breakthroughs and possibilities have the potential to change everything that we know and care about for the better. We look forward to this continuing journey!