Some Thoughts on the Space Force's Digital Vision
I finally took some time today to digest the U.S. Space Force's recently released "Vision for a Digital Service" [1]. It's ambitious, and quite frankly, common sense. If you haven't figured it out by now, Space Force is a de-facto Software Force: there really is no other way to slice it. As such this force need a vision that treats data, digital infrastructure, software engineering and cybersecurity as first-class citizens. Think about how different Tech Startups look, feel, and operate compared with nearly any other workforce. The Space Force is going to be the Tech Force of the military world, and it's going to look, feel, and operate differently than what has come before.
Now, it'll be up to Gen. Raymond and the entire team to actually deliver this vision, but starting out with the right message is extremely important. What follows are a few of my own personal notes and thoughts on the report.
On Academic Interconnectivity
"...working with academic institutions will provide us opportunities for degrees and certifications meant to feed and develop a highly trained and specialized workforce"
- From: Tenet 1: Interconnected
I'm optimistic that the Space Force's need for a new pool of talent is met by Academia in the form of new, holistic engineering degrees specifically aimed at the new challenges in space. Some schools are slightly ahead of the curve: the University of Southern California (USC) has a dedicated Astronautics department, and offers a fully-remote M.S. in Astronautical Engineering [2]. That's one kind of degree program that we need to support a digital, distributed, and multidisciplinary space workforce. But, even this USC program could integrate more software engineering, cyber-literacy, and digital systems instruction.
There are other types of specialized degrees that don't really exist yet, but could augment capabilities of an existing workforce, and help push the boundaries of competency both within the Space Force and our industry at large. I'd love to see degrees/certificate in: AI For Space Systems, or LEO Constellation Autonomy, or Autonomous Proximity Operations, or Space Warfare. Beyond the engineering disciplines, we also need to ramp-up our education on Space Policy, Space Law, Space Economy and Business and Space Resources. The Colorado School of Mines offers probably the closest thing to that sort of holistic program in their Space Resources Department [3].
Pushing Academia toward holistic and multidisciplinary degrees focused exclusively on space challenges will help push our capabilities forward.
On Reducing Rote Tasks for Guardians
"...we will exploit machine learning and augmentation where appropriate, allocating monotonous staffing activities to artificial intelligence (AI) routines or robotic process automation and thus freeing up Guardians to train, educate, and wargame as part of their drive to become a world-class fighting force. "
- From: Digital Headquarters
This is something that Gen. Whiting personally mentioned to me well over a year ago; the role of AI or ML is not to eliminate jobs, it's to eliminate the monotonous button pushing that is a complete waste of human time and education. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per Guardian to train, and equip them as world class warfighters, if they are just going to sit in front of a computer screen waiting for a specific telemetry pulse to exceed an arbitrary threshold? Let's put the machines in charge of the boring tasks, and escalate to human brainpower what is absolutely needed. In the meantime, our Guardians can do what humans do best: solve hard, complex, systems-level problems. That's the proper application of AI/ML.
On Alternative Assessment and Promotion
"Finally, new career families, promotion frameworks, and alternate assessment approaches will also be instituted..."
- From: Digital Workforce
I'm really curious how this will actually be implemented, but at face value this is not only common sense, it's absolutely required. Those of us who have spent more than a week in software engineering understand the value of someone with a PhD in Data Science; but we also understand that a huge amount of the value -- potentially far exceeding that of the PhD's -- comes from self-taught, non-degreed professionals who simply have acute skills that no academic institution can claim training for. There is a reason why Google now offers alternative training to degrees, and no longer requires college education as a pre-requisite to applying to most jobs [4]. If the Space Force hopes to compete with high-tech companies, matching this sort of 'alternative career growth' is absolutely table stakes.
Of course, alternative assessment, promotion, and career pathing does not obviate the necessity for formal education: the specialized degree programs I'm advocating for above must also exist, but they can't exist as the sole avenues for Guardian advancement.
A Parting Shot at: Buzzwords
I want to personally thank whoever threw this pop-out quote on Artificial Intelligence on page 10:
Too often (or perhaps: all the time), our industry throws around AI/ML as buzzwords, which are typically interchangeable for more basic concepts like "digital transformation" or quite simply "any type of software". Seriously, next time you are on a sales call with a consultant selling you "ML" - just stop and ask them what exactly they mean. What I appreciate so much about this little pop-out is that the Space Force removes all ambiguity around AI by directly defining it. This is not the same definition for AI that I would use in other context, but that doesn't matter: in this report, in this context, I know what Gen. Raymond means when he refers to AI. The rest of us could learn to incorporate this simple trick into our own literature.
Finally: shout out to Gen. Crider who no doubt has been instrumental to the production of this report, the vision behind it, and has personally been an advocate for us at Hypergiant. Thank you Gen. Crider!
This looks like a good vision USSF. Now go execute.
-Q
[1] https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article/2597623/space-force-unveils-its-vision-for-a-digital-service/ (See the "Related Documents" tab for the associated .pdf report)
[2]: https://astronautics.usc.edu/academics/master-science-program/
[4]: https://grow.google/certificates/