When Deanna Ryals joined what was then the U.S. Air Force\u2019s Space and Missile Systems Center in 2012, her focus was on building partnerships with international allies \u2014 specifically around satellite communications. She is now director of the International Affairs Directorate at what is now Space Systems Command. Her office\u2019s mission spans the service\u2019s entire portfolio, including SATCOM, weather, and missile warning and tracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ryals says the directorate aims to serve as a \u201cfront door\u201d for SSC\u2019s work with international partners and to ensure that as the command develops and acquires new systems and architectures, it does so with allies in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She recently spoke with Defense News sister publication C4ISRNET about the evolution of the office, opportunities to partner with allies on new missions and how international cooperation can improve resiliency. This interview was edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We built the focus on SATCOM international partnerships, starting with the Advanced Extremely High Frequency program. We built those international partnerships with Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands, and then later we added Australia. Wideband Global<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SATCOM was the other big international program that I worked on way back in the day. I worked on the partnership between the U.S. and Australia, and also the big multilateral partnership that included Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and then later the Czech Republic and Norway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those were some of the early focal areas for international cooperation here, but the realization was those partnerships were really valuable in looking at how to make sure we have an integrated space capability that the<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. Defense Department and our allies can use. And then bringing partners into acquisition planning and discussions early really allows us to think about how we can do more together with our partners. If we all think about the problems together, we can then build on bringing systems to bear that meet all of our national needs and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next big thing we did was a partnership with Norway to look at hosting a SATCOM payload on a Space Norway bus. That was sort of the next evolution beyond pure SATCOM and having the partners buy into the system \u2014 could we leverage a partner\u2019s national space capability and add something to it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In that instance, we added a payload, and it saved us from free flying the satellite and paying for the launch ourselves. So now we had partnered with another, where we could share those costs and we didn\u2019t have to build a lot of the capability ourselves. We could rely on somebody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From there, there was a broader understanding that the work that we were doing in SATCOM really could be applied to just about every mission area that we have here at Space Systems Command. Why can\u2019t we partner in space domain awareness or missile warning\/missile tracking, or weather, or electro-optical sensing \u2014 any of those things \u2014 in the same way that we did SATCOM? So that\u2019s when we first started talking about broadening the scope of international relationships with partners into all the different mission areas. Then it\u2019s finally culminated with the standup of SSC International Affairs, focused solely on building those international partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prior to the stand up of SSC, I was a part of the portfolio architect. The portfolio architect\u2019s office at the time had that portfolio architecture work and also had innovation and partnerships as a part of that broader team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the standup of SSC, [Commander] Gen. Guetlein really wanted to elevate the international affairs element of what we do here at the command. So now I\u2019m a direct report to the commander as opposed to being in with one of the other program offices. I\u2019ve got a voice directly to the commander on the opportunities that are coming from an international partnership perspective, and we are sitting at a level where we can inform all of the other organizations \u2014 the program executive officers, the Space Systems Integration Office and everyone \u2014 on those opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest challenge is culture. There is a cultural shift that needs to happen, and we\u2019re seeing it slowly happen. But very much on the U.S. side, in particular, there\u2019s a cultural predisposition that if it\u2019s not built by the United States, not built by the United States industry, then it\u2019s not a trusted asset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re in the process of doing a lot of work to change the mindset and the culture. What\u2019s really hindered us from doing more with allies and partners is culture. Much of our documentation is marked as not releasable to our international partners and allies. We\u2019ve built programs from the beginning assuming that we wouldn\u2019t export it or we wouldn\u2019t share it with anybody, so when it comes time to share capabilities, we\u2019re really in a situation where it\u2019s either too hard to change to share, it\u2019s too expensive to change to share, or just culturally, there\u2019s not a desire to want to share with our partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s changing with the senior leadership perspectives \u2014 acknowledging the fact that we can\u2019t go it alone and we don\u2019t want to go it alone. We have to move into an allied mindset, really pushing on those boundaries. But the impediment of culture is still going to be there for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have to make sure our users get comfortable with the fact that they may be operating on a U.S. communications satellite today. In a conflict, that asset may go away. We want to be able to shift quickly to the next closest asset, which might be a U.K. communications satellite or a French communications satellite or somebody else\u2019s satellite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we want to make sure we\u2019ve built in the infrastructure to be able to make that shift, but also built in that cultural understanding that we are going to rely on our allies and partners for some of these capabilities going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s really ensuring that as we look to build that next capability, we build it knowing we are going to share it with international partners or we\u2019re going to plug it into their systems or pieces of the architecture of which they\u2019re going to be a part. We have to build those capabilities from the ground up, from the requirements all the way through system development with an assured mind that we are going to share this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re going to plug it into somebody else\u2019s system, so we want to make sure that we\u2019re doing our system design in a way that allows for that. If we have to protect certain elements or certain capabilities within the system, then let\u2019s build that in from the beginning. It really forces us to think about what those interfaces and standards look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A big area we\u2019re working on with our allies is looking at data standards. How do we make sure that as we\u2019re all collecting information and data that we\u2019re collecting it in the same ways so that we can share the information?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Data standards is a big thing that we\u2019re working on. Just within the United States, the DoD is coming up with common data standards so we can all ingest data together and then share those data standards with our international partners, and so that we can ingest data from them as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t mean every partner has to have the same data standard or the same data format. But we\u2019ve got to have some way to get to a common translation of that information so that we can all share it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SSC is a co-chair with Germany on something called the Capability Architecture Working Group, which is a part of the Combined Space Operations initiative. Under CSpO, there\u2019s a Capability Architecture Working Group primarily focused on space domain awareness as well as space command and control, and how the seven nations that comprise the CSpO initiative get to common interfaces and standards. How do we get to data sharing, data transport, data utilization that can provide really solid and very trusted information that can go into all of our national operations centers, that can give our operational warfighters the data that they need to make decisions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From a strategic deterrence perspective, the more partners you have together … that\u2019s a level of deterrence that we build. [We\u2019re] messaging to the world that we absolutely intend to build capabilities together, we intend to build resilient, interoperable systems with our key allies and partners, and that we\u2019re doing that with a purposeful mind so that we do have resilience in the architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you take an asset out over here, we\u2019re going to quickly move to one of our allies\u2019 assets. And if that one\u2019s not available, we\u2019re going to the next one. We build that deterrence and that resiliency into the architecture from the very beginning. And not just the United States, but our international partners are developing their national capabilities with that same mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have to be focused on the threat. If we look around the world and see what\u2019s happening right now, there\u2019s a common sense across our international partners that the threats are real and that we are better if we\u2019re working together to get after those threats. We can go a lot farther together than we can individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So a focus on threat, a sense of urgency to deliver capabilities as fast as possible, is a common thread throughout all of our international partners. We\u2019re working really closely together to make sure we\u2019re staying focused on the threat. We\u2019re looking at everything we can to make sure our space architecture is allied by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our biggest element of support to the JADC2 structure is in data. It is making sure we can share data and information with our allies and partners. It\u2019s making sure that we have transport layers that are available to all of us to move information and share information. It\u2019s making sure that we have, again, data formats and data standards and things that allow us to share the information. That is one of the biggest things from a JADC2 perspective that we can do \u2014 just be able to share information. And that\u2019s one area that we\u2019re hyper-focused on right now to get that right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the other things we\u2019re working on is software and how we make sure we\u2019re deploying the same software tools in each of our national space operations centers, so that information that comes out can be shared more easily and can be assessed, and the decision-makers all have the same tools to make those decisions when it comes time to do that. That\u2019s another element of JADC2 that we\u2019re going to be able to bring to the fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Director of the Space Force\u2019s International Affairs Directorate Deanna Ryals says the organization aims to serve as a \u201cfront door\u201d for Space Systems Command’s work with international partners and to ensure that as the command develops and acquires new systems and architectures, it does so with allies in mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":39556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":23,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,33,13,163,36,23],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3468],"class_list":["post-19333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-interviews","category-military-space-report","category-newsletters","category-space"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"UZX5W5OIXRGE3EUBGPUJVDFOXA","arc_canonical_url":"\/battlefield-tech\/space\/2022\/05\/02\/how-the-space-force-is-working-with-us-allies\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n