特別節目·中文精讀

基奧基·傑克遜:洛克希德·馬丁

Keoki Jackson: Lockheed Martin

洛克希德·馬丁技術負責人談航天與國防專案中的工程管理、供應鏈與技術創新。

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中文精讀由 AI 基於原始訪談改寫,非官方翻譯,可能存在偏差或錯誤;表述以原音訊與官方文稿為準。說明

2019年7月,基奧基·傑克遜(Keoki Jackson)坐在麥克風前,說了一句很輕的話:“我到現在還沒放棄自己上太空的機會。”他是洛克希德·馬丁(Lockheed Martin)的技術長。這家公司造過SR-71黑鳥偵察機,造過F-35隱身戰鬥機,造過把人類送上月球的飛船部件。一個掌管這些工程奇蹟的人,個人夢想是親自飛上去。

採訪他的人叫Lex Fridman,開場就丟擲一個很硬的問題:你們造的東西能飛到音速四五倍,能讓幾十噸的金屬在雷達上看起來像一顆滾珠軸承,人類是怎麼做到的?傑克遜的回答不急不慢,但從頭到尾藏著一根主線:所有讓人驚歎的工程,背後都是一套關於“如何不犯錯”的文化。這條線從隱身塗料一直延伸到人工智慧的倫理邊界。

童年偶像不是球星,是海盜號著陸器

傑克遜自稱“太空迷”(space junkie),這個說法在他這裡沒有半點客套成分。他記得1976年7月20日,海盜號(Viking)著陸器降落在火星表面的那一天。後來他成為洛克希德的一名年輕工程師,公司裡還坐著當年親手設計那套著陸系統的老工程師。他跑去跟他們聊天,聽他們講怎麼把一個機器人送到另一個星球、再讓它活著傳回資料。

再往後,他和阿波羅宇航員查理·杜克(Charlie Duke)吃過一頓飯。他問杜克最喜歡哪架飛機,杜克說的是F-104星戰士,洛克希德出的第一款兩倍音速噴氣戰鬥機,綽號“裝了一個人的導彈”。這些故事堆起來,構成了他對“工程能做到什麼程度”的最初想象。

所以當他聊起獵戶座飛船(Orion)的時候,語氣裡有一種很實在的興奮。這是人類造過的最複雜的載人航天器,飛船的目標直接越過近地軌道,指向月球,然後是火星。洛克希德內部還有一個更遠的設計叫“火星大本營”(Mars Base Camp):一艘停在火星軌道上的母船,把宇航員送到地表工作幾周,再安全接回來。

“這是我在洛克希德任職期間想親眼看到發生的事。”(基奧基·傑克遜)

登月這件事,去一趟不難,難在留下來

1960年代美國證明了一件事:可以把人送上去待兩天,再活著接回來。傑克遜說,現在要做的是完全不同的量級。所謂“留在月球”,意味著永久居住、飛行器定期複用、燃料和空氣和備件的持續補給,以及支撐這一切的基礎設施。

他提到一個時間點:這屆政府提出的目標是2024到2025年重返月球。聽起來很近,實際上工程挑戰密密麻麻。傑克遜說得很坦白,除了技術,還有預算問題,這些都得一點點啃。

不過他把話題分了一半給機器人。他特意補了一句:過去四十年,機器人探測的能力變化同樣巨大。火星表面有漫遊車在跑,火星軌道上有衛星在持續測繪地形和氣象,這些在今天聽起來像舊聞,可它們意味著人類可以擁有一種“虛擬的在現場”,這是以前從來沒有過的能力。再加上算力、認知系統和決策系統的進步,整個太陽系向人類開啟的方式變了。

他舉的例子是小行星取樣任務OSIRIS-REx,目標是近地小行星貝努(Bennu)。飛船已經在那邊飛了一年,全自主駕駛,把整顆小行星的表面高精度掃描了一遍。接下來它要伸出一個像吸塵器加桶的組合裝置,在接觸表面的四秒鐘內把碎石和塵土吹進收集倉,然後帶回地球。

這個設計的來源很有意思。一位工程師某天擺弄吸塵器零件,想著“也許可以這麼幹”,最後變成了所謂的“彈簧棒式取樣”。傑克遜講這個故事的時候,強調的是人的靈光一現,而不是演算法的功勞。

人類在太空裡到底還有什麼用

機器人這麼能幹,為什麼還要送人上去?傑克遜的回答很具體,沒有停在“人類有創造力”這種空話上。

他說,今天我們還不知道怎麼替代的一種能力,是根據新資訊當場改變計劃。阿波羅13號是個經典案例:地面和飛船裡的人臨時拼湊出一個方案,讓二氧化碳過濾器能用。這裡沒有流程可循,方案是當場現編的。

他的第二個論點是時間尺度。火星和地球之間的通訊延遲是幾十分鐘。如果探測器看到某個有意思的東西,等指令傳回來,機會可能已經過去了。人能當場決定:換個方向,採另一個樣本,去另一片區域看看。這種“邊看邊改”的能力,機器目前還差得遠。

“這些是人類在場才能帶來的東西,在機器那邊我們還有很長的路要走。”(基奧基·傑克遜)

太空版Alexa,和一個叫Mia的助手

洛克希德在做一個系統叫Mia,傑克遜的描述是“太空裡的Alexa”。宇航員在火星附近的時候,可以呼叫整艘飛船的數字檔案:設計資料、測試資料、以往任務的飛行資料。系統盯著成千上萬個引數,一旦出現異常苗頭,就在事情變糟之前提醒人,或者幫人一步步排查。

它還負責另一件事:主動提出探索機會。人還沒開口問“我們還能幹什麼”,它已經指出“那邊有個值得看的東西”。

這個系統的底層是一套“數字孿生”(digital twin)。洛克希德五十多年積累下來的空間環境知識、材料行為模型、動力學和控制模型、輻射環境資料,全都變成了可以跑的模擬。在地面上把太空跑一遍,是這套開發方式的核心。傑克遜自己職業生涯早期就在幹這個,模擬通訊衛星、導彈預警衛星在各種場景下的表現。

問題在於,現在被放進這個迴路裡的東西,可能是非確定性的。它會邊跑邊學。這就把驗證與確認(verification and validation)的難題推到了一個新高度:你怎麼證明一個會自己變化的系統,在超出原始設計邊界的場景裡,仍然會做正確的事?

洛克希德在資助高校研究這個問題,包括MIT,也跟創業公司合作,內部還有自己的研發。傑克遜的判斷很明確:自主性和AI會進入洛克希德開發的每一個系統,既會改裝到現有裝備上,也會寫進未來所有系統的設計裡。

自主性有五個檔位,不是一個開關

傑克遜給了一個很清晰的分級定義。自主系統指的是“能夠組合、選擇並執行決策,同時接受不同程度人類干預”的系統。

  • 零自主:人幹所有事。
  • 部分自主:人在迴路裡,每一個決定都由人拍板,不管是在駕駛艙、遠端還是別的什麼地方。
  • 監督式自主:系統幹大部分活,人可以叫停或者改方向。
  • 完全自主:人完全退出迴路。

不同任務需要不同檔位。這個框架聽起來簡單,但在安全攸關的領域,每一檔往上走都要付出巨大的驗證成本。

洛克希德做的東西很多是“人命關天”級別的。飛機是典型例子。客戶要求的是極高的置信度:系統必須按設計的方式執行,而且這種方式必須能被操作者理解、被解釋清楚。傑克遜說,這是“極其困難的挑戰”,他沒有粉飾。

737 Max和兩種工程文化的碰撞

採訪在這裡轉了一個很尖銳的彎。Lex直接提了波音737 Max的兩起墜機,飛控軟體出了問題。

傑克遜沒有迴避,也沒有替波音辯護。他把話題拉到一個更根本的地方:文化。

他說,軟體工程師不一定有航空業那種安全文化。這跟對錯沒關係,取決於你手上做的是什麼。如果你在做廣告投放系統,安全文化確實不是核心。但航空業幾十年下來,形成了以生命安全、執行安全、任務成功為中心的一套東西。

問題在於,現代系統的複雜度已經讓“窮舉式驗證”變得幾乎不可能。狀態空間太大了,你沒法把一架飛機可能被飛的所有方式、所有可能發生的情況、所有可能的失效組合都系統性地跑一遍。

傑克遜提到一個未來的可能性:等量子計算機真正可用,也許能在近乎無限的狀態空間裡做模擬。但今天不行。今天能做的是給系統劃邊界、確保它在可預測的方式下執行,然後靠一種“持續追問和懷疑”的文化去問:我們真的考慮到了正確的可能性範圍嗎?測試覆蓋夠嗎?我們對人機互動、對人的決策過程,真的理解嗎?

他把這套東西叫“任務成功的文化”(culture of mission success),說這種東西靠上課學不會,得人泡在裡面泡出來,而且必須從公司最高層往下推。

“人類是會犯錯的。我們造的系統,無論多想做到完美,永遠可以做得更好。”(基奧基·傑克遜)

他順手給了一個資料:商業航空業這些年致命事故率呈現出一條很漂亮的衰減指數曲線。曲線背後是監管機構、機體製造商一起做根因分析,把問題一個個挖掉。

洛克希德到底在造什麼

傑克遜給公司的定義是“解決困難任務問題的公司”。“造飛機的”或者“造火箭的”這類說法,在他看來都只描述了輸出物。飛機、飛船、直升機、雷達,都是輸出物。真正驅動一切的是客戶要完成什麼任務。

SR-71就是這套邏輯的產物。任務需求是:去一個有嚴密防空系統的地方拍照,那裡的防空系統能對付當時所有的飛機。答案是造一架飛得比任何防空系統都快的偵察機。傑克遜半開玩笑地說:“所以我們造了一臺會飛的漂亮相機,然後確保它能出去,也能回來。”

今天的洛克希德,業務面鋪得很開:

  • 戰術飛機:F-35,已經交付幾百架,年產量接近一百架,下一代在研。
  • 太空:GPS導航與授時衛星、通訊衛星、導彈預警衛星、商業遙感衛星、民用通訊衛星,從載人探索到外行星機器人探測。
  • 防禦系統:宙斯盾作戰系統(Aegis),為美國及盟國艦隊提供一體化防空反導,保護航母打擊群免受彈道導彈、飛機、巡航導彈威脅。還有陸基版本宙斯盾,部署在幾個地方。
  • THAAD:末段高空區域防禦系統,保護相對廣大的區域免受複雜彈道導彈威脅,現在有國際客戶在買。

他強調,這些系統保護的不只是軍事能力,還有人口密集區。第一次公開使用可以追溯到海灣戰爭時的愛國者系統。而支撐這一切的,是雷達、感測、指揮控制,以及讓人在極端環境下還能操作成功的人機介面。

臭鼬工廠:14條原則和一顆滾珠軸承

聊到創新史,傑克遜說臭鼬工廠(Skunk Works)“既是一個地方,也是一種理念”。它由凱利·約翰遜(Kelly Johnson)的14條原則驅動。他沒一條條列,但抓住了核心:一小群非常有能力、想解決真正困難問題的人,如果被隔離開官僚干擾,如果跟客戶建立起非常緊密的共同願景,幾乎可以做成任何事。

他講了一個細節。本·裡奇(Ben Rich)曾經拿著一顆滾珠軸承在桌上滾給一位將軍看,問:“你想要一架雷達反射截面積跟這顆軸承一樣的飛機嗎?”傑克遜說,這大概是工業史上最便宜也最有效的營銷案例之一。

隱身的技術原理他沒細說,只提了兩點:雷達波反射的幾何形狀,以及反射或吸收雷達波的材料。然後他說了一句很實在的話:這是一場貓鼠遊戲。雷達在變強,隱身也在變強,是持續改進和創新的遊戲。他就停在這裡,不多說。

高超音速:問題早就不是能不能

從馬赫1到馬赫5是超音速,超過馬赫5是高超音速。傑克遜說,洛克希德和其他公司從1960年代末就在做高超音速相關開發,X-15和太空梭都是例子。

今天的不同在於威脅環境。俄羅斯和中國公開表示擁有高超音速武器能力,而且聲稱能繞過現有的防禦系統。傑克遜提到國防部負責研究與工程的副部長邁克·格里芬(Mike Griffin)博士等人反覆強調這件事的緊迫性。這既是均勢問題,也是防禦問題。

他說洛克希德在這個領域投了很多年研發經費,現在跟多個美國政府客戶有專案在跑,未來會有更多訊息從客戶那邊出來。具體內容他說不了。

用子彈打子彈,然後是更快的東西

防禦端的問題在傑克遜看來更迷人:怎麼發現那些極難發現的東西。

他把時間拉回1980年代的星球大戰計劃(SDI)。那個時期,洛克希德證明了一件事:你可以用一顆子彈打中另一顆子彈,攔截來襲彈道導彈,這在之前從未有人做到過。這條路一直延伸到今天的“命中即毀”(hit to kill)能力,比如PAC-3(愛國者先進能力三型)和THAAD。

而高超音速目標跟彈道導彈不一樣,飛行軌跡、速度、機動性都變了。所以防禦能力必須再上一個臺階。他說到這裡就停了,剩下的不能講。

Lex在這裡插了一段感慨:作為一個工程師,知道那麼多精彩的東西被鎖在保密櫃裡,是件讓人難過的事。傑克遜的回應很平靜。他說公眾能看到的部分已經足夠讓今天的中學生、大學生理解這些問題的難度。F-35的具體效能引數是敏感的,但這架飛機是什麼、能做什麼,是可以講的:超音速巡航、隱身、資料融合和感測器融合,一架“飛在天空中的資訊節點”。

然後他講了一個故事,用來解釋“使命感”這三個字對工程師意味著什麼。他曾經負責洛克希德的GPS相關專案。有一次一位空軍少校來給他做簡報,綽號叫Gimp,開口就說“GPS是我的熱情所在”。這位少校在伊拉克做過作戰測試,有一次坐黑鷹直升機接一批士兵回來。

“我問那個中士,你覺得GPS怎麼樣。他本來半睡半醒,眼睛一下亮了,說:GPS啊,它每天把我和我的弟兄們帶回家。”(基奧基·傑克遜轉述)

傑克遜說,這就是那種讓你覺得“我確實在做點有用的事”的時刻。

飛行員昏過去之後,飛機自己救人

聊到自主性落地,傑克遜給了幾個非常具體的例子。

第一個是Auto GCAS,自動地面防撞系統(Autonomous Ground Collision Avoidance System),裝進了F-16。它已經救了7架飛機、8名飛行員。原因很直接:高效能戰鬥機做機動時,飛行員承受9個G,抗荷服也擋不住血液離開大腦,會出現G-LOC(過載導致意識喪失)。如果這時候飛機正貼著地形飛,後果不用想。

這套系統的邏輯是“最後一道防線”:飛機判定自己正在撞向地形,就把自己拉出來。它的判斷依據裡沒有人是否清醒這一項,它盯的是“再不動就完了”。Air Force覺得太有用,馬上要求裝到F-35上,現在已經在測試。空對空方面的自動防撞系統也整合進去了。

第二個是西科斯基創新中心(Sikorsky Innovations)開發的MATRIX。傑克遜特意糾正了一個詞:這叫“最優駕駛”(optimal piloting)。“可選駕駛”(optional piloting)和“無人駕駛”(unpiloted)這兩個說法都不準確。這是一套透過FAA認證的系統,確定性很高,可以在兩人、一人、零人的模式下飛同一個任務。你可以把它想象成一個自主性旋鈕,系統一直在後臺跑,隨時接手。

它能幹什麼?比如在北海的惡劣天氣裡,零能見度條件下降落石油鑽井平臺。商業上的賬很好算:飛機飛過去落不下去,就得把所有人帶回來,重新排班,付機組加班費,付平臺上那批人的加班費。這是實打實的錢。軍事上的用途也很明顯:白天執行完任務,晚上切成無人模式送補給。

把OODA環壓進對手的反應時間裡

傑克遜用一個時間尺度的對比,解釋了AI在戰場上的根本價值。

人的反應:光子打到眼睛,到做出動作,大概是零點幾秒的加工時間。計算機在納秒尺度上執行。一納秒對一秒,差不多是一秒對三十二年。

他引了OODA環(觀察、判斷、決策、行動)的概念。如果AI能幫人把這個環壓縮到對手的環裡面去,這在戰場上是一種極其強大的力量。

但時間尺度是雙向的。人的有效工作區間大概是一秒到八小時。超過八小時,人會累,要休息,要上廁所。而監視、警戒、物資運輸、後勤保障這些“枯燥、骯髒、危險”(dull, dirty and dangerous)的任務,需要的是遠超人類耐力極限的持續活動。這正好是AI和自主系統擅長的區間。

3000.09號指令:規則是有的

Lex在這裡提了他真正擔心的問題:AI軍備競賽會不會讓人類失去對系統的控制?

傑克遜的回答分兩層。第一層是現實判斷:他不認為今天已經在發生這種事。第二層是政策:美國國防部有一份指令,編號3000.09,專門管半自主和自主武器系統。

他建議大家都去讀一讀,只有幾頁紙,但幾個要點很關鍵:

  • 確保人類對半自主和自主武器系統的使用擁有代理權和控制權;
  • 確保這些系統在逼真的、接近真實世界的場景中被測試、驗證和評估;
  • 確保操作人員受過使用訓練;
  • 確保系統的人機介面能顯示它處於什麼狀態、在做什麼決策;
  • 確保為這些系統的使用建立了條令、戰術、技術和程式。

傑克遜說,這件事的框架跟化學武器、生物武器的規則邏輯是一樣的:規則是有的,而且要當真。洛克希德百分之百遵守客戶的政策和法規。

公司內部,AI的用途更多是提效:改善生產效率、輔助工程師做生成式設計、最佳化後勤、降低能耗。但倫理問題同樣被擺上桌面:隱私怎麼保護,偏見怎麼消除,人類怎麼保持在決策迴路裡,怎麼做到“不把問責權交給演算法”。

他把這些又拉回公司的三條核心價值觀:做正確的事、尊重他人、追求卓越。洛克希德的倫理專案拿過獎,倫理團隊和工程團隊在合作把AI倫理原則落地。

核威懾、多極世界和一種新的戰略威脅

Lex提到自己出生在蘇聯,家族記憶裡有二戰和冷戰。他問:人類文明為什麼沒有在核戰爭裡毀掉?核威懾在未來還有用嗎?

傑克遜說,這個可能性是真實存在的。但他同時認為,戰略威懾在某種程度上阻止了20世紀上半葉那種毀滅性世界大戰的重演。

問題在於世界變複雜了。冷戰時期擁有彈道導彈能力的國家屈指可數。他引用了幾年前的一個數字:今天有超過70個國家擁有類似的能力,太空能力也差不多是這個數量級。威脅擴散的速度超出預期。

美國現在處於戰略威懾體系的重建期(recapitalization)。傑克遜認為這是國家能做的最重要的事情之一。

威懾的邏輯他講得很直白:核心是阻止任何人使用這些武器。阻止的機制是,即使對手先動手,你也有能力打回去,造成對方無法承受的損失,因此對方不會動手。這要求系統在任何需要的時候都能工作,要能適應各種場景,所以幾十年前造的東西必須更新,既要照顧今天,也要照顧未來幾十年。

他還提了一個很多人不太放進“戰略威懾”框架裡的東西:網路。大規模殺傷性武器過去指核、化學、生物。今天還要加上網路武器。攻擊關鍵基礎設施,電網、供水系統,對一個國家的生存同樣是戰略級別的威脅。他希望技術手段,也許藉助自主性,能幫助遏制和反擊這些在最初設計威懾體系時根本沒被想到的威脅。

艾森豪威爾的警告,和一門特殊的生意

Lex丟擲了那個不好回答的問題:艾森豪威爾1961年在告別演說裡警告“軍事工業複合體”不要膨脹到超出需要的程度。你怎麼看?

傑克遜的回應有三層。

第一層,洛克希德不只有軍工。能源、太空、商用飛機,這些業務同樣重要,不能忽略。

第二層,比例。他說自己還是MIT研究生的時候,大家在討論冷戰結束後的“和平紅利”。如果看軍費佔GDP的比重,現在遠低於歷史峰值。而全球威脅正在以需要相關防禦投入的方式變化。

第三層,市場結構。軍工這門生意算不上自由市場,東西沒法對著街上的人賣。這種特殊性要求客戶和設計、建造、維護方之間保持非常緊密的合作關係,因為需求極其特殊,對安全的要求極高,對“每次都要按設計執行”的要求極高。傑克遜把這看作洛克希德的核心優勢:跟客戶一起積累多年的專業能力。

“造這些系統非常貴,幾乎沒有犯錯的空間。”(基奧基·傑克遜)

Lex接了一句:讀本·裡奇那本書,如果你是工程師,它讀起來像驚悚小說。

怎麼看SpaceX和馬斯克

傑克遜的回答很乾脆:SpaceX確實是太空產業的競爭力量,我們喜歡競爭,而且我們是很強的競爭者。競爭是美國的底色,不斷想出更好的辦法。

他補了一個條件:要有一個公平的競技場,不能給不同的玩家不同的要求。

然後他說了一句可能是整場採訪裡最有感染力的話:

“現在是我這輩子做太空生意最激動人心的時刻。”(基奧基·傑克遜)

理由是算力暴漲、通訊能力暴漲、先進製造和增材製造把進入門檻壓了下來,創新在創業公司裡發生,也在洛克希德裡發生。很多人不知道,洛克希德跟斯坦福合作造過美國發射的第一顆立方星(CubeSat),叫QuakeSat,大概是2000年之後不久的事,合作方是Stellar Solutions。所以這條線他們從很早就參與了。

現在他們在做“智慧衛星”(smart satellites)和軟體定義衛星,可以讓衛星在軌重構、重對映自己的任務,在整個壽命週期裡提供近乎無限的靈活性。

下一個一百年,邊界在哪裡

萊特兄弟第一次飛行是116年前。現在有超音速隱身飛機,有前面聊到的這一切。Lex問:如果同樣跨一百年,技術的邊界在哪裡?

傑克遜說:“我不知道有沒有邊界。”洛克希德兄弟和格倫·馬丁(Glenn L. Martin)當年在教堂地下室和舊加油站裡創辦公司,今天的洛克希德是完全不同的公司,因為這麼多年一直在自我重塑。

他對未來的判斷有四條:更快、更連線、更自主、更復雜。作為CTO,他要想的是投哪些技術:AI和自主性,量子計算(洛克希德已經在投),以及應對那些今天還沒人想到的軍事威脅。

他把視野拉得很開:人類會進入太陽系,會對自己的星球有遠超今天的認知,從海洋深處一直到大氣的上層,到太陽,到太陽系的邊緣。

“我不覺得有比這更好的地方(可以待著)。”(基奧基·傑克遜)

如果這些內容對你有用,可以這樣往下走

  • 去讀美國國防部3000.09號指令。只有幾頁紙,是理解“自主武器受什麼約束”的第一手材料,比任何二手評論都靠譜。
  • 讀本·裡奇的《臭鼬工廠》(Skunk Works)。它算不上一本技術手冊,更像一份關於小團隊、強願景和如何在官僚體系裡保護創新的現場記錄,工程師讀起來確實像驚悚小說。
  • 如果你在做安全攸關的系統,把“驗證與確認”當成一等公民,而不是上線前的最後一道關卡。傑克遜反覆強調的東西落在技術之外,是那種持續追問“我們真的考慮全了嗎”的文化。
  • 如果你的團隊裡軟體背景和硬體背景的人混在一起,注意兩種安全文化的差異。737 Max的教訓很難歸到某一行程式碼上,問題出在兩種文化沒有對齊。
  • 關注Auto GCAS和MATRIX這類“最後一道防線”型自主系統。這類系統的定位很窄:人還在,它退到後臺;人失效的那幾秒,它接過來。這是當前技術條件下最容易落地、也最容易救命的一類自主性。
  • 把OODA環當成思考工具,不只是軍事概念。任何競爭性場景裡,“把自己的決策迴圈壓進對手的迴圈裡”都是一個可操作的判斷標準。
文稿由本站用語音識別模型(基於官方釋出音訊)機器轉寫,可能有識別錯誤,人名與數字請以音訊為準。
[00:00:00] The following is a conversation with Kayoko Jackson, he's the CEO of Lockheed Martin, a company that there is a long history has created some of the most incredible engineering marvels human beings have ever built, including planes that fly fast and undetected, defense systems that intersect nuclear threats that can take the lives of millions and systems that venture out into space, the moon, Mars and beyond. And these days, more and more artificial intelligence has an assistive role to play in these systems. [00:00:34] I've read several books. Preparation for this conversation is a difficult one because in part, Lockheed Martin builds military systems that operate in the complicated world that often does not have easy solutions in the gray area between good and evil. I hope one day this world will rid itself of war in all its forms. But the path to achieving that in a world that does have evil is not obvious. What is obvious is good engineering and artificial intelligence research has a role to play on the side of good. [00:01:11] Lockheed Martin and the rest of our community are hard at work at exactly this task. We talk about these and other important topics in this conversation. Also, most certainly both Kayoko and I have a passion for space as humans venturing out toward the stars. We talk about this exciting future as well. This is the artificial intelligence podcast, if you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on iTunes, supported on Patrón or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lux, Friedman spelled F.R. Idi Amin. [00:01:50] And now here's my conversation with Chaouki Jackson. I read several books on Lockheed Martin recently, my favorite in particular is by Ben Rich called Skunkworks Personal Memoir, and gets a little edgy at times. But from that I was reminded that the engineers of Lockheed Martin have created some of the most incredible engineering marvels human beings have ever built throughout the century, throughout the 20th century and the 21st. [00:02:36] Do you remember a particular project or system at Lockheed or before that, the space shuttle Columbia that you were just in awe at the fact that us humans could create something like this? You know, that's a that's a great question. [00:02:51] There's a lot of things that I could draw on there. When you look at the Skunkworks and Ben Richards book in particular, of course, it starts off with basically the start of the jet age and the patty. [00:03:03] I had the opportunity to sit next to one of the Apollo astronauts, Charlie Duke, recently at dinner, and I said, hey, what's your favorite aircraft? And he said, well, was by far the F on a four star fighter, which was another aircraft that came out of Lockheed there. Well, it was the first mock to a jet fighter aircraft. They called it the missile with a man in it. [00:03:28] And so those are the kinds of things that I grew up hearing stories about. You know, of course, the S.R. 71 is incomparable, as you know, kind of the epitome of speed, altitude and just the coolest looking aircraft ever. [00:03:44] So. So there's a that's a plane that's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that was designed to be able to outrun or basically go faster than any air defense system. But, you know, I'll tell you, I'm a space junk junkie. That's why I came down. Mittie, that's really what took me ultimately to Lockheed Martin. And I grew up. And so Lockheed Martin, for example, has been essentially at the heart of every planetary mission, like all the Mars missions we've had a part in. [00:04:16] And we've talked a lot about the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo here in the last couple of weeks. Right. [00:04:22] But I remember 1976, July 20th, again, National Space Day, the landing of the Viking, the Viking lander on on the surface of Mars, just a huge accomplishment. And when I was a young engineer at Lockheed Martin, I got to meet engineers who had designed, you know, various pieces of that mission as well. So that's what I grew up on as these planetary missions, the start of the space shuttle era, and ultimately had the opportunity to see Lockheed Martin's part. [00:04:56] And we can maybe talk about some of these here. But Lockheed Martin Smart and all of these space journeys over the years. Do you dream and I apologize for getting philosophical at times or sentimental? I do romanticize the notion of space exploration. Do you dream of the day when us humans colonize another planet like Mars or a man or a woman, a human being steps on Mars? [00:05:20] Absolutely. And that's a personal dream of mine. I haven't given up yet on my own opportunity to fly into space. [00:05:27] But but as you know, from the Lockheed Martin perspective, this is something that we're working towards every day. And, of course, you know, we're we're building the Orion spacecraft, which is the most sophisticated human rated spacecraft ever built. And it's really designed for these deep space journeys, you know, starting with the moon, but ultimately going to Mars and being the platform, you know, from a design perspective, we call the Mars base camp to be able to take humans to the surface and then after a mission of a couple of weeks, bring them back up safely. [00:05:59] And so that is something I want to see happen during my time at Lockheed Martin. So I'm I'm pretty excited about that. And I think, you know, once we prove that it's possible, you know, colonization might be a little bit further out, but it's something that I'd hope to see. [00:06:17] So maybe you can give a little bit an overview of. So Lockheed Martin has partnered with a few years ago with Boeing to work with the DOD, NASA to build launch systems, the rockets, but the Ulay, what's beyond that? [00:06:32] What's Lockheed's mission timeline, long term dream in terms of space? You mentioned the moon. I've heard you talk about asteroids as Mars. What's the timeline? What's the engineering challenges and what's the dream long term? [00:06:48] Yeah, I think the dream long term is to have a permanent presence in space beyond low earth orbit, ultimately with a long term presence on the moon and then to the planets, to Mars. And sorry to interrupt. [00:07:02] And that's a long term presence means sustained and sustainable presence in an economy, a space economy that really goes alongside with human beings being and being able to launch perhaps from those. [00:07:16] So like hop, you know, it is that there's a lot of energy that goes in those hops. [00:07:23] Right. So I think the first step is being able to get there and to be able to establish sustain base is right and and build from there. [00:07:32] And a lot of that means getting, as you know, things like the cost of launch down. And you mentioned United Launch Alliance. [00:07:40] And so I don't want to speak for you, L.A., but obviously they're they're working really hard to get on their next generation of space of launch vehicles to, you know, maintain that incredible mission success record that Ulay has, but ultimately continue to drive down the cost and make the flexibility, the speed and the access ever greater. [00:08:04] So what's the missions that are in the horizon that you could talk to? So I hope to get to the moon? [00:08:10] Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know this or you may know this, you know, there's a lot of ways to accomplish some of these goals. And so that's a lot of what's in discussion today. But ultimately, the goal is to be able to establish a base essentially in cislunar space that would allow for ready. [00:08:31] Transfer now from orbit to the lunar surface and back again, and so that's sort of that near term, I say near term in the next decade or so vision. [00:08:43] Starting off with, you know, a stated objective by this administration to get back to the moon in the 90s or the 2024, 2025 timeframe, which is is right around the corner here. So how big of an engineering challenges that? [00:08:58] I think the big challenge is not so much to go, but to stay. Right. And so we demonstrated in the 60s that you could send somebody up to a couple of days of mission and bring them home again successfully. Now we're talking about doing that. I'd say more to say an industrial scale, but a sustained scale. Right. So permanent habitation, you know, regular reuse of vehicles, the infrastructure to get things like fuel, air consumables, replacement parts, all the things that you need to sustain that kind of infrastructure. [00:09:38] So those are certainly engineering challenges. [00:09:40] There are budgetary challenges and those are all things that we're going to have to work through. [00:09:47] You know, the other thing and I shouldn't I don't want to minimize this. I mean, I'm excited about human exploration, but the reality is our technology and where we've come over the last 40 years essentially has changed what we can do with robotic exploration as well. And, you know, to me, it's incredibly thrilling. [00:10:09] This seems like old news now, but the fact that we have rovers driving around the surface of Mars and sending back data is just incredible. The fact that we have satellites in orbit around Mars that are collecting, whether, you know, they're looking at the terrain, they're mapping all of these kinds of things on a continuous basis. That's incredible. And the fact that, you know, it's you got the time lag, of course, going to be going to the planets, but you can effectively have virtual human presence there in a way that we have never been able to do before. [00:10:43] And now with the advent of even greater processing power, better A.I. systems, better cognitive systems and decision systems, you know, you put that together with the human piece and we really opened up the solar system in a whole different way. [00:10:59] And I'll give you an example. We've got a Syrus Rex, which is a mission to the asteroid Bennu. [00:11:05] So the spacecraft is out there right now and basically a year mapping activity to map the entire surface of that asteroid in great detail, you know, all autonomously piloted. [00:11:19] Right. But the idea then that this is not too far away, it's going to go in. It's got a sort of fancy vacuum cleaner with a bucket. [00:11:26] It's going to collect the sample off the asteroid and then send it back here to Earth. And so, you know, we have gone from sort of those tentative steps in the 70s, you know, early landings, video of the solar system to now we've sent spacecraft to Pluto. We have gone to comets and brought and intercepted comets. We've brought stardust, you know, material back. [00:11:54] So that's we've gone far and there's incredible opportunity to go even farther. [00:12:00] So it seems quite crazy that this is even possible that. [00:12:06] Can you talk a little bit about. What it means to orbit an asteroid and with a bucket to try to pick up some soil samples. [00:12:15] Yeah, and so part of it is just kind of the you know, these are the same kinds of techniques we use here on Earth for high speed, high speed, high accuracy imagery, stitching these scenes together and creating essentially high accuracy world maps. Right. And so that's what we're doing, obviously, on a much smaller scale with an asteroid. [00:12:40] But the other thing that's really interesting, you put together sort of that neat control and, you know, data and imagery problem. [00:12:50] But the stories around how we design the collection, I mean, as essentially, you know, this is the sort of the human ingenuity element, right. [00:12:58] That, you know, essentially you had an engineer who had a one day cycle starts messing around with parts vacuum cleaner bucket. [00:13:08] You know, maybe we could do something like this. And that was what led to what we call the pogo stick collection. [00:13:14] Right. Where basically I think comes down, it's only there four seconds. [00:13:18] Does that collection grabs the essentially blows them the regolith material into the collection hopper and off it goes. [00:13:27] It doesn't really land on Mars. It's a very short landing. Wow, that's incredible. [00:13:32] So what is in those we talk a little bit more about space. What's the role of the human in all of this? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities for humans as they pilot these these vehicles in space and for humans that may step foot on on either the moon or Mars? Yeah, it's a great question because, you know, I just I've been extolling the virtues of robotic and the, you know, rovers, autonomous systems and those absolutely have a role. [00:14:11] I think the thing that we don't know how to replace today is the ability to adapt on the fly to new information. [00:14:20] And I believe that will come. [00:14:23] But we're not there yet. There's a ways to go. And so, you know, you think back to Apollo 13 and the ingenuity of the folks on the ground and on the spacecraft to essentially cobble together a way to get the carbon dioxide scrubbers to work. [00:14:41] Those are the kinds of things that ultimately, you know, and I say not just from dealing with anomalies, but, you know, dealing with new information, you know, you see something. And rather than waiting 20 minutes or half an hour or an hour to try to get information back and forth, but be able to essentially re vector on the fly, collect, you know, different samples, take a different approach, choose different areas to explore. [00:15:09] Those are the kinds of things that that human presence enables that is still a ways ahead of us on the east side. Yeah, there's some interesting stuff we'll talk about on the teaming side here on Earth. That's that's pretty cool to explore. [00:15:23] And in space, let's not leave the space piece. [00:15:26] So what is teaming? What is A.I. and humans working together in space look like? [00:15:31] Yeah, one of the things we're working on is a system called Miah, which is think of it. And so it's an assistant and space in space. Exactly. And you think of it as the Aleksa in space. Right. [00:15:45] But this goes hand in hand with a lot of other developments. And so today's world, everything is essentially model based, model based systems engineering to the actual digital tapestry that goes through the design, the build, the manufacture, the testing and ultimately the sustainment of the system. And so our vision is really that, you know, when our astronauts are there around Mars, you're going to have that entire digital library. Of the spacecraft of its operations, all the test data, all the test data and flight data from previous missions to be able to look and see if there are anomalous conditions until the humans and potentially deal with that before it becomes a bad situation and help the astronauts work through those kinds of things. [00:16:40] And it's not just, you know, dealing with problems as they come up, but also offering up opportunities for additional exploration capability, for example. So so that's the vision is that, you know, these are going to take the best of the human to respond to the changing circumstances and rely on the best A.I. capabilities to monitor these, you know, this almost infinite number of data points and correlations, data points that humans, frankly, aren't that good at. [00:17:11] So how do you develop systems in space like this, whether it's a. Alexa, in space or in general, any kind of control systems, any kind of intelligence systems when you can't really test stuff too much out in space, it's very expensive to test stuff. [00:17:28] So how do you develop such systems? Yeah, that's that's the beauty of this digital twin, if you will. And of course, with Lockheed Martin, we've over the past, you know, five plus decades been refining our knowledge of the space environment, of how materials behave, dynamics that controls the, you know, radiation environments, all of these kinds of things. So we're able to create very sophisticated models are not perfect, but they're they're very good. [00:18:00] And so you can actually do a lot. I spent part of my career, you know, simulating communication spacecraft, you know, missile warning, spacecraft, spacecraft in all kinds of scenarios and all kinds of environment. So this is really just taking that to the next level. The interesting thing is that now you're bringing into that loop a system depending on how it's developed, that may be non-deterministic. It may be learning as it goes. And in fact, we anticipate that it will be learning as it goes. [00:18:33] And so that brings a whole new level of interest, I guess, into how do you do verification and validation of these non-deterministic learning systems in scenarios that may go out of the bounds or the envelope that you have initially designed to. So had this system and its intelligence has the same complexity, some of the same complex as a human does in the and learns over time. It's unpredictable in certain kinds of ways in the. So you still you also have to model that when you're thinking about it and you're in your thoughts, it's possible to model the the majority of situations, the important aspects to situations here on Earth and in space, enough to test stuff. [00:19:19] Yeah, that's this is really an active area of research. And we're actually funding university research and a variety of places, including at MIT. And this is in the realm of trust and verification and validation of, I'd say, autonomous systems in general. And then as a subset of that, autonomous systems that incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities. And this is this is not an easy problem or working with startup companies. We've got internal R&D. [00:19:48] But, you know, our conviction is that autonomy and more and more A.I. enable autonomy is going to be in everything that Lockheed Martin develops and fields. And it's going to be Retrophin, you know, it autonomy and I are going to be retrofit to existing systems. They're going to be part of the design for all of our future systems. And so maybe I should take a step back and say the way we define autonomy. So we talk about autonomy, essentially a system that composes, selects and then executes decisions with varying levels of human intervention. [00:20:29] And so you could think of no autonomy. So this is essentially the human doing the task. You can think of effectively partial autonomy where the human is in the loop. So making decisions in every case about what that autonomous system can do, either in the cockpit or remotely or remotely. [00:20:51] Exactly. But still in that control loop. And then there's what you'd call supervisory autonomy. The autonomous system is doing most of the work. The human can intervene to stop it or to change the direction and then ultimately force full autonomy or the humanness off the loop altogether and for different types of missions, want to have different levels of autonomy. [00:21:13] So now take that spectrum in this conviction that autonomy and more and more A.I. are in everything that we develop, the kinds of things that Lockheed Martin is, you know, a lot of times are safety of life, critical kinds of missions. I think about aircraft, for example. [00:21:33] And so we require and our customers require an extremely high level of confidence, one that, you know, we're going to protect life to, that we're going to get that these systems will behave in ways that their operators can understand. And so this gets into that whole field again, you know, being able to verify and validate that the systems have been and that they will operate the way they're designed and the way they're expected, and furthermore, that they will do that in ways that can be explained and understood. [00:22:12] And that is an extremely difficult. Challenge. Yes, so here's a difficult question. I don't mean to bring this up, but I think it's a good case, though, that people are familiar with. The Boeing 737 Max commercial airplane has had two recent crashes where their flight control software system failed and its software. So I don't mean to speak of Boeing, but broadly speaking, we have this in the autonomous vehicle space, two semi-autonomous. We have millions of lines of code software making decisions. [00:22:48] There is a little bit of a clash of cultures because software engineers don't have the same culture of safety often that people who build systems like Lockheed Martin do where it has to be exceptionally safe. You have to test this on the how do we get this right when software is making so many decisions. [00:23:10] Yeah. In this there's a lot of things that have to happen. And by and large, I think it starts with the culture. Right. Which is not necessarily something that AI is taught in school or B is something that would come, you know, depending on what kind of software you're developing. It may not be relevant. Right, if you're targeting ads or something like that. [00:23:33] So and by and large, it's not just Lockheed Martin, but certainly the aerospace industry as a whole has developed a culture that does focus on safety, safety of life, operational safety, mission success. [00:23:48] Um, but as you know, these systems have gotten incredibly complex. And so they're to the point where it's almost impossible. You know, state space has become so huge that it's impossible to we're very difficult to do a systematic verification across the entire set of potential ways that an aircraft could be flown, all the conditions that could happen to all the potential failure, failure scenarios. [00:24:16] Now, maybe that soluble one day, maybe when we have our quantum computers at our fingertips, will be able to actually simulate across an entire, you know, almost infinite state space. [00:24:28] But today, you know, there's a there's a lot of work to do to really try to bound the system to us to make sure that it behaves and predictable ways and then have this culture of continuous inquiry and, you know, skepticism and questioning to say, did we really consider the right realm of possibilities? [00:24:54] Have we done the right range of testing? Do we really understand, you know, in this case, you know, human and machine interactions, the human decision process alongside the machine processes. And so that's that culture that we call it the culture of mission success at Lockheed Martin that really needs to be established. [00:25:14] And it's not something, you know, it's something that people learn by living in it. [00:25:19] Right. And it's something that has to be promulgated, you know, and it's done, you know, from the highest levels at a company of Lockheed Martin like Lockheed Martin. Yeah. [00:25:27] And the same is being phased out as vehicle companies where that culture is not there because it started mostly by software engineers. So that's what they're struggling with, is there are lessons that you think we should learn as an industry in a society from the Boeing 737, Max crashes these crashes, obviously. [00:25:49] Are there tremendous tragedies there, tragedies for all of the people, the the crew, the families, the passengers, the people on the ground involved? [00:26:01] And, you know, it's also a huge business and economic setback as well. I mean, we've seen that it's impacting essentially the trade balance of the U.S. So these are these are important questions. [00:26:15] And these are the kinds you know, we've seen similar kinds of questioning at times. You go back to the Challenger accident and it is, I think, always important to remind ourselves that humans are fallible, that systems we create as perfect as we strive to make them, we can always make them better. And so another element of that culture, mission success, is really that commitment to continuous improvement. If there's something that goes wrong, a real commitment to root cause and true root cause, understanding to taking the corrective actions and to making the system future systems better. [00:26:56] And certainly we want to we strive for, you know, no accidents. And if you look at the record of the commercial airline industry as a whole and the commercial aircraft industry as a whole, you know, there's a very nice decaying exponential. [00:27:15] For years now, where we have no commercial aircraft accidents at all, are fatal accidents at all. So that didn't happen by accident. It was through the regulatory agencies, FAA, the airframe manufacturers are really working on a system to identify root causes and drive them out. [00:27:37] So maybe we can take a step back. And many people are familiar. But Lockheed Martin broadly, what kind of categories of systems? Are you involved in building, you know, Lockheed Martin, we think of ourselves as a company that solves hard mission problems and the output of that might be an airplane or spacecraft or a helicopter or a radar or something like that, but ultimately were driven by these, you know, like what what is our customer what is that mission that they need to achieve? [00:28:10] And so that's what drove the SA 71. Right. How do you get pictures of a place where you've got sophisticated air defense systems that are capable of handling any aircraft that was out there at the time? [00:28:23] Right. So that, you know, that's what yielded in essence, our 70 will build a nice flying camera. [00:28:29] Exactly. And make sure it gets out and it gets back at it. And that led ultimately to really the start of the space program in the U.S. as well. [00:28:39] So now take a step back to Lockheed Martin of today. [00:28:42] And we are, you know, on the order of 105 years old now between Lockheed and Martin, the two big heritage companies which were made up of a whole bunch of other companies that came in as well. [00:28:53] General Dynamics kind of go down the list today were you can think of us in this space of solving mission problems. [00:29:02] So obviously on the aircraft side, tactical aircraft building the most advanced fighter aircraft that the world has ever seen. We're up to now several hundred of those delivered building almost 100 a year. And, of course, working on the things that come after that. [00:29:21] On the space side, we are engaged in pretty much every venue of space and utilization and exploration you can imagine. So I mentioned things like navigation and timing, GPS, communication satellites, missile warning satellites. We've built commercial surveillance satellites. We've built commercial communications satellites. We do civil space. [00:29:46] So everything from human exploration to the robotic exploration in the outer planets and keep keep going on the space front. [00:29:56] But, you know, a couple of other areas I'd like to put out. We're heavily engaged in building critical defensive systems. [00:30:04] And so a couple that I mention, the Aegis combat system, this is basically the integrated air and missile defense system for the U.S. and allied fleets and so protects, you know, carrier strike groups, for example, from incoming ballistic missile threat, aircraft threats, cruise missile threats. You kind of go down the list of the carriers. [00:30:29] The fleet itself is the thing that is being protected. The carriers aren't serving as a protection for something else. [00:30:36] Well, that's that's a little bit of a different application. We've actually built the version called Aegis ASSU, which is now deployed in a couple of places around the world. [00:30:45] So that same technology, I mean, basically can be used to protect either an going fleet or a land based activity. Another one, the THATD program. [00:30:58] So, Thad, this is the theater high altitude area defense, this is to protect, you know, relatively broad areas against sophisticated ballistic missile threats. [00:31:11] And so now, you know, it's deployed with a lot of U.S. capabilities. Now we have international customers that are looking to buy that capability as well. And so these are systems that defend, not just defend military and military capabilities, but defend population areas. We saw, you know, maybe the first public use of these back in the in the first Gulf War with the Patriot systems. [00:31:39] And these are these are the kinds of things that Lockheed Martin delivers. [00:31:44] And there's a lot of stuff that goes with it. [00:31:46] So think about the radar systems and the sensing systems that cue these the the command and control systems that decide how you power a weapon against an incoming threat and then all the human and machine interfaces to make sure that it can be operated successfully and very strenuous environments. [00:32:08] Yeah, there's there's some incredible engineering that at every front, like like you said. So maybe if we just take a look at Lockheed history broadly, maybe even looking at skunkworks, what are the biggest, most impressive milestones of innovations? [00:32:28] If you look at stealth, I would have called you crazy if you said that's possible at the time. And supersonic and hypersonic. So traveling at first of all, traveling at the speed of sound is pretty damn fast and supersonic and hypersonic three, four or five times the speed of sound. That seems I would also call you crazy if you say you can do that. So can you tell me how is it possible to do these kinds of things? And is there other milestones and innovation that's going on you can talk about? [00:33:02] Yeah, well, let me start, you know, on the Skunkworks saga and you kind of alluded to it in the beginning, skunkworks is as much idea as a place. And so it's driven really by Kelly Johnson's 14 principles. And I'm not going to list off 14 of them. [00:33:19] But the idea and this, I'm sure, will resonate with any engineer who's worked on a highly motivated small team before the idea that if you can essentially have a small team of very capable, capable people who want to work on really hard problems, you can do almost anything, especially if you kind of shield them from bureaucratic influences, if you create very tight relationships with your customers so that you have that that team and shared vision with the customer. [00:33:53] Those are the kinds of things that enable the skunkworks to do these these incredible things. [00:34:00] And, you know, we listed off a number that you brought up stuff. [00:34:03] And I mean, this this whole you know, I wish I could have seen Ben Rich with a ball bearing, you know, rolling across the desk to a general officer and saying, would you like to have an aircraft that has the radar cross section of this ball bearing probably one of the, you know, the least expensive and most effective marketing campaigns in the history of the industry. [00:34:25] So just for people not familiar, I mean, the way you detect aircraft is I mean, sure, there's a lot of ways. But Radar, for a longest time, there's a big blob that appears in the radar. How do you make of plane disappear? So it looks as big as a ball bearing what's involved in technology wise there. What's the broadly said of the stuff you speak about? [00:34:49] I'll stick to what's in Ben Rich's book. But obviously the geometry of how radar gets reflected in the kinds of materials that either reflect or absorb are kind of the couple of the critical elements there. [00:35:04] And it's a cat and mouse game, right? [00:35:05] I mean, you know, radars get better, stealth capabilities better. And so it's it's really a game of continuous improvement and innovation there. I'll leave it at that. [00:35:17] Yes, they they did that something is essentially invisible is quite fascinating. But the other one is flying fast. The speed of sound is seven hundred fifty, 60 miles an hour. [00:35:31] Uh, so supersonic three Mach three, something like that. [00:35:36] So we talk about the supersonic obviously, and we kind of talk about that is that realm from Mach one up through about Mach five and then hypersonic. [00:35:45] So, you know, high supersonic speeds would be passed Mach five. [00:35:52] And you've got to remember Lockheed Martin, actually other companies have been involved in hypersonic development. Since the late 60s, you know, you think of everything from the X5 to the space shuttle as examples of that. [00:36:07] I think the difference now is if you look around the world, particularly the threat environment that we're in today, you're starting to see, you know, publicly the folks like the Russians and the Chinese saying they have hypersonic weapons capability that could threaten. [00:36:29] U.S. and allied capabilities and also basically, you know, the claims are based could get around defensive systems that are out there today. And so there's a real sense of urgency. You hear it from folks like the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, Dr. Mike Griffin, and others in the Department of Defense. That hypersonics is is something that's really important to the nation. [00:36:56] In terms of both parity but also defensive capabilities, and so that's something that, you know, we're pleased, it's something that Lockheed Martin's, you know, had a heritage in. We've invested R&D dollars on our side for many years, and we have a number of things going on with various US government customers in that field today that we're very excited about. So I would anticipate we'll be hearing more about that in the future from our customers. And I've actually haven't read much about this, probably can't talk about much of it at all. [00:37:28] But on the defensive side is the fascinating problem of perception of trying to detect things that are really hard to see. Can you comment on how hard that problem is and how how hard is it to stay ahead even if we go back a few decades? [00:37:46] Stay ahead of the competition. [00:37:48] Maybe I again, you've got to think of these is ongoing capability development. [00:37:53] And so think back to the early days of missile defense. So this would be in the 80s, the SDI program. And in that time frame, we proved and Lockheed Martin proved that you could hit a bullet with a bullet, essentially, and in which is something that had never been done before to take out an incoming ballistic missile. And so that's led to these incredible hit to kill kinds of capabilities. Pack three, um, that's the Patriot Advanced Capability, Model three that Lockheed Martin builds the thatd system that I that I talked about. [00:38:28] Um, so now hypersonics, you know. [00:38:33] They're different from ballistic systems, and so we got to take the next step in defensive capability. [00:38:39] I can leave it there, but I can only imagine. No, let me just comment sort of as an engineer, it's sad to know that so much that, like it is done in the past is classified or today, you know, and it's shrouded in secrecy. It has to be by the nature of the application. [00:39:03] So what I do so what we do here, my team would like to inspire young engineers, young scientists. And yet in the larky case, some of that engineer has to stay quiet. How do you think about that? How does that make you feel? Is there a future where more can be shown or is it just the nature and the nature of this world that it has to remain secret? It's a good question. [00:39:32] I think. You know, the public can see enough of including students who may be in grade school, high school, college today to understand the kinds of really hard problems that we work on. And I mean, look at the F-35, right. And, you know, obviously a lot of the detailed performance levels are sensitive and control. [00:40:01] But, you know, we can talk about what an incredible aircraft this is, you know, a supersonic super cruise, kind of a fighter, a a, you know, stealth capabilities. [00:40:12] It's flying information, you know, system in the sky with data fusion, sensor fusion capabilities that have never been seen before. So these are the kinds of things that I believe, you know, these are the kinds of things that got me excited when I was a student. I think these still inspire students today. [00:40:29] And the other thing and see, I mean, you know, people are inspired by space. People are inspired by aircraft. Our employees are also inspired by that sense of mission. [00:40:42] And I'll just give you an example. I had the privilege to work in and lead our programs for some time. And that was a case where, you know, I actually worked on a program that touches billions of people every day. And so when I said I worked on GPS, everybody knew what I was talking about, even though they didn't maybe appreciate the technical challenges that went into that. [00:41:08] But I'll tell you, I got a briefing one time from a major in the Air Force and he said, I go by callsign gimp GPS is my passion. [00:41:21] You know, I love GPS. And he was involved in the operational test of the system. He saw when I was at, um, in Iraq and I was on a helicopter, a Blackhawk helicopter, and it was bringing back, you know, a sergeant and a handful of troops from a deployed location. And he said, my job is GPS. [00:41:43] So I asked that sergeant and he, you know, beaten down and kind of half asleep. [00:41:48] And I said, what do you think about GPS? And he brightened up, his eyes lit up. And he said, well, GPS, that brings me and my troops home every day. I love GPS. And that's the kind of story where it's like, OK, I'm really making a difference here in the kind of work so that that mission piece is really important. The last thing I'll say is that and this gets to some of these questions around advanced technologies. [00:42:13] It's not you know, they're not just airplanes and spacecraft anymore. [00:42:17] For people who are excited about advanced software capabilities, about A.I., about bringing machine learning, these are the these are the things that we're doing to, you know, exponentially increase the mission capabilities that go on those platforms. And those are the kinds of things that I think are more and more visible to the public. [00:42:35] Yeah, I think autonomy, especially in flight, is super exciting. Do you do you see if a day here would go back into philosophy? Uh, FutureOne most fighter jets will be highly autonomous to a degree where a human doesn't need to be in the cockpit in almost all cases. [00:42:57] Well, I mean, that's a world that to a certain extent we're in today. Now, these are remotely piloted aircraft, to be sure. But, um, but we have hundreds of thousands of flight hours a year now in remotely piloted aircraft. [00:43:13] And then if you take the F-35 there, I mean, there are huge layers, I guess, and levels of autonomy built into that aircraft so that the pilot is essentially more of a mission manager rather than doing the data, you know, the second, the second the elements of flying the aircraft. And in some ways, it's the easiest aircraft in the world to fly. [00:43:38] And kind of a funny story on that. So I don't know if you know how aircraft carrier landings work, but basically there's what's called a tail hook and it catches wires on the deck of the carrier. And that's what brings the the aircraft to a screeching halt. [00:43:56] And there's typically three of these wires. So if you miss the first the second one, you catch the next one. Right. And, you know, we got a little criticism. [00:44:06] I don't know how true this story is, but we got a little criticism. The F-35 is so perfect, it always gets the second wires were wearing out the wire because it always hits that one. So but that's the kind of autonomy that just makes these essentially upper levels what the human is doing to more of that mission manager. [00:44:25] So much of that landing by the F-35 is autonomous. [00:44:29] Well, it's just, you know, the control systems are such that you really have dialed out variability. That comes with all the environmental conditions it out. So my point is to a certain extent, that world is here today. [00:44:44] Do I think that we're going to see a day anytime soon when there are no humans in the cockpit? [00:44:49] I don't believe that, but I do think we're going to see much more human machine teaming and we're going to see that much more at the tactical edge. And we did a demo. [00:44:58] You asked about what the skunkworks is doing these days. And so this is something I can talk about. But we did a demo with Air Force Research Lab at our laboratory. [00:45:08] We called it Have Rayder. [00:45:09] And so using an F-16. As an autonomous winchman. [00:45:17] And we demonstrated all kinds of maneuvers and various mission scenarios with the autonomous F-16 being that so-called loyal or trusted wingman, and so those are the kinds of things that, you know, we've shown what is possible now, given that you've up leveled that pilot to be a mission manager. [00:45:36] Now they can control multiple other aircraft. They can almost as extensions of your own aircraft flying alongside with you. So that's that's another example of how this is really coming to fruition. And then, you know, I mentioned the landings, but think about just the implications for humans and flight safety. And this goes a little bit back to the discussion we were having about how do you continuously improve the level of safety through automation while working through the complexities that automation introduces. [00:46:10] So one of the challenges that you have in high performance fighter aircraft is what's called Gloc. So this is conduced loss of consciousness. So you pull nine GS, you're wearing a pressure suit. That's not enough to keep the blood going to your brain. You have a blackout, right. And of course, that's bad if you happen to be flying low, you know, near the deck and you are an obstacle or terrain environment. [00:46:34] And so we developed the system at our aeronautics division called Auto Casso, Autonomous Ground Collision Avoidance System, and we built that into the F-16. It's actually saved seven aircraft, eight pilots already. And the relatively short time it's been deployed, it was so successful that the Air Force said, hey, we need to have this and the F-35 right away. So we've actually done done testing on that now. And the F-35, um, and we've also integrated an autonomous air collision avoidance system. [00:47:08] So I think the air to air problem. So now it's the integrated collision avoidance system, but these are the kinds of capabilities, you know, I wouldn't come a high I mean, they're very sophisticated models, you know, of the aircraft dynamics coupled with the terrain models to be able to predict when essentially, you know, the pilot is doing something that is going to take the aircraft or the pilots not doing something in this case. [00:47:35] But those it just gives you an example of how autonomy can be really a life saver in today's world. It's like a autonomous emergency, automated emergency braking in cars. [00:47:47] But is there any exploration of perception of, for example, detecting a Glock that the pilot has is out? So as opposed to perceiving the external environment to infer that the pilot is out, but actually perceiving the pilot directly? [00:48:04] Yeah, this is one of those cases where you'd like to, you know, not take action if you think the pilots there. And it's almost like systems that try to detect if a driver is falling asleep on the road. Right. With limited success. So, I mean, this is what I call the system of last resort. [00:48:20] Right. Where if the aircraft has determined that it's gone into the terrain, get it out of there. And and this is not something that we're just doing in the in the aircraft world. [00:48:32] And I wanted to highlight we have a technology we call Matrix, but this is developed at Sikorsky Innovations. The whole idea there is what we call optimal piloting. [00:48:43] So not optional piloting or unpiloted, but optimal piloting. [00:48:49] So an FAA certified system. So you have a high degree of confidence. It's generally pretty deterministic. [00:48:57] So if we know that it'll do in different situations but effectively be able to fly mission with two pilots, one pilot, no pilots and and have you can think of it almost like a dial the level of autonomy that you want but able. [00:49:16] So it's running in the background at all times and able to pick up tasks, whether it's, you know, sort of autopilot kinds of tasks or more sophisticated path planning kinds of activities to be able to do things like, for example, land on an oil rig, you know, in the North Sea, in bad weather, zero zero conditions. And you can imagine, of course, there's a lot of military utility to capability like that. You know, you could have an aircraft that you want to send out for a crude mission. [00:49:45] But then in the at night, if you want to use it to deliver supplies in an unmanned mode, that that could be done as well. [00:49:52] And so there's there's there's clear advantages there. But think about on the commercial side, you know, if you're an aircraft taken, you're going to fly out to this oil rig. [00:50:03] And if you get out there and you can't land, then you got to bring all those people back, reschedule another flight, pay the overtime for the crew that you just brought back because they didn't get where they're going to pay for the overtime for the folks that are out there. And the oil rig. This is. Real economic, you know, these are dollars and cents kinds of advantages that we're bringing in the commercial world as well. [00:50:23] So this is a difficult question from the ad space that I would love to be able to comment. So a lot of autonomy. And I you've mentioned just now has this empowering effect. One is the last resort that keeps you safe. [00:50:37] The other is there's the teaming and in general, assistive assistive A.I. And I think there's a there's always a race. [00:50:50] So the world is full of the world is complex. It's full of bad actors. So there's there's often a race to make sure that we keep this this country safe. [00:51:03] Right. But with A.I., there is a concern there's a slightly different race, though, there's a lot of people in the space they're concerned about the A.I. arms race, that as opposed to the United States becoming, you know, having the best technology and therefore keeping us safe, even we lose the ability to keep control of it. So this the AI arms race getting away from all of us humans. [00:51:34] So do you share this worry? Do you share this concern when we talking about military applications that too much control and decision making capabilities, giving to software A.I.? Well, I don't see it happening today, and in fact, this is something from a policy perspective, you know, it's obviously a very dynamic space, but the Department of Defense has put quite a bit of thought into that. [00:52:01] And maybe before talking about the policy, I'll just talk about some of the why. [00:52:06] And you alluded to it being a sort of a complicated and a little bit scary world out there. [00:52:11] But there's some big things happening today. You hear a lot of talk now about a return to great power competition, particularly around China and Russia with the U.S. But there are some other big players out there as well. [00:52:27] And what we've seen is the deployment of some very big, I'd say, concerning new weapons systems, you know, particularly with Russia and breaching some of the IRBM, intermediate range ballistic missile treaties. That's been in the news a lot. You know, the building of islands, artificial islands in the South China Sea by the Chinese and then arming those islands, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the invasion of Ukraine. And so there's there's some pretty scary things. [00:53:04] And then you add on top of that, the North Korean threat has certainly not gone away. There's a lot going on in the Middle East with Iran in particular. And we see this global terrorism threat has not abated. Right. So there are a lot of reasons to look for technology to assist with those problems, whether it's EHI or other technologies like hypersonics, which which we discussed. [00:53:30] So now let me give just a couple of hypothetical so people react sort of in the second timeframe. Right. [00:53:39] You know, your photon hitting your eye to, you know, a movement is, you know, on the order of a few tenths of a second kinds of processing times. [00:53:51] Roughly speaking, you know, computers are operating in the nanosecond time scale. Right. So just to bring home what that means, a nanosecond to a second is like a second to thirty two years or so seconds on the battlefield, in that sense, literally our lifetimes. And so if you can bring in autonomous or A.I. enabled capability, that will enable the human to shrink. You've heard the term the Guadaloupe. [00:54:24] So this whole idea that a typical battlefield decision is characterized by observe. [00:54:33] So information comes in Oriente. How does that what does that mean in the context? Decide what do I do about it and then act take that action if you can use these capabilities to compress that oodle loop to stay inside what your adversary is doing. [00:54:49] That's an incredible, powerful force on the battlefield. [00:54:54] That's a really nice way to put it, that the role of computing in general has a lot to benefit from, just decreasing from thirty two years to one second as opposed to on the scale of seconds and minutes and hours making decisions that humans are better at making. [00:55:10] And it actually goes the other way, too. So that's on the short time scale. So humans kind of work in the, you know, one second, two seconds to eight hours. After eight hours, you get tired, you know, you got to go the bathroom, whatever the case might be. [00:55:24] So there's this whole range of other things think about, you know, surveillance and guarding, you know, facilities, think about moving material, logistics, sustainment, a lot of these what they call dull, dirty and dangerous things that you need to have sustained activity. [00:55:43] But it's sort of beyond the length of time that a human can practically do as well. [00:55:48] So there's this this range of things that are critical in military and defense applications that A.I. and autonomy are particularly well suited to. [00:56:00] Now, the interesting question that you brought up is, OK, how do you make sure that stays within human control? And that so that was the context for the policy. And so there is a directive called 3000 DOT 09, because that's the way we name stuff in this world. [00:56:16] And but, you know, and I'd say it's it's well worth reading. [00:56:21] It's only a couple of pages long, but it makes some key points and it's really around, you know, making sure that there's human agency and control over use of semi-autonomous and autonomous weapon systems, making sure that these systems are tested, verified and evaluated in realistic, real world type scenarios, making sure that the people are actually trained on how to use them, making sure the systems have human machine interfaces that can show what state they're in and what kinds of decisions they're making. [00:56:57] Making sure that you've established doctrine and tactics and techniques and procedures for the use of these kinds of systems. [00:57:05] And so and by the way, I mean, none of this is easy, but I'm just trying to lay kind of the picture of how the U.S. has said this is the way we're going to treat A.I. and autonomous systems, that it's not a free for all. [00:57:21] And like there are rules of war and rules of engagement with other kinds of systems. Think chemical weapons, biological weapons. We need to think about the same sorts of implications. And this is something that's really important for Lockheed Martin. [00:57:35] I mean, obviously, we are 100 percent complying with our customer in the in the policies and regulations. [00:57:43] But I mean, A.I. is an incredible enabler, say, within the walls of Lockheed Martin in terms of improving production efficiency, doing helping engineers, doing generative design, improving logistics, driving down energy costs. I mean, there are so many applications. [00:58:01] But we're you know, we we're also very interested in some of the elements of ethical application, you know, within Lockheed Martin. [00:58:09] So we need to make sure that things like privacy is is taken care of, that we do everything we can to drive out bias in A.I. enabled kinds of systems, that we make sure that humans are involved in decisions, that we're not just delegating accountability to algorithms. [00:58:27] And so for us, you know, it all comes back. I talked about culture before and it comes back to sort of the Lockheed Martin culture in our core values. And so is pretty simple for us to do what's right, respect others, perform with excellence. And now how do we tie that back to the ethical principles that will govern how A.I. is used within Lockheed Martin? And we actually have a world. So you might not know this, but they're actually awards for ethics programs. [00:58:55] Lockheed Martin's had a recognized ethics program for many years, and this is one of the things that our ethics team is working with our engineering team on. One of the miracles to me, perhaps the layman, again, I was born in the Soviet Union, so I have echoes these to my family history of World War Two and the Cold War. Do you a sense of why human civilization has not destroyed itself through nuclear war and nuclear deterrence and thinking about the future? [00:59:29] This technology have a role to play here. And what is the long term future of nuclear deterrence look like? [00:59:37] Yeah, it's you know, this is one of those hard, hard questions. And I should note that Lockheed Martin, as you know, both proud and privileged to play a part in multiple legs of our nuclear and strategic deterrent systems like the Trident submarine launch ballistic missiles. [00:59:59] You know, you talk about, you know, is there still a possibility that the human race could destroy itself? I'd say that possibility is real. [01:00:08] But interestingly, in some sense, I think the strategic deterrents have prevented the kinds of, you know, incredibly destructive world wars that we saw in the first half of the 20th century. Now, things have gotten more complicated since that time and since the Cold War. It is more of a multipolar, great powers world today. [01:00:33] Just to give you an example, back then, you know, there were, you know, in the in the Cold War timeframe, just a handful of nations that had ballistic missile capability by last count. [01:00:44] And this is a few years old. There's over 70 nations today that have that similar kinds of numbers in terms of space based capabilities. [01:00:55] So so the world has gotten more complex and more challenging, and the threats, I think, have proliferated in ways that we didn't expect. You know, the nation today is in the middle of a recapitalisation of our strategic deterrent, I look at that as one of the most important things that our nation can do. [01:01:17] What is involved in deterrence? Is it? Is it being ready to attack or is it the defensive systems that catch attacks? [01:01:28] A little bit of both. And so it's a complicated game, theoretical kind of program. But ultimately, we are trying to prevent the use of any of these weapons. [01:01:42] And the theory behind prevention is that even if an adversary uses a weapon against you, you have the capability to essentially strike back and do harm to them. That's unacceptable. And so that will deter them from, you know, making use of these weapon systems. [01:02:04] Um, the deterrence calculus has changed, of course, with, you know, more nations now having these kinds of weapons. But I think, you know, from my perspective, it's very important, you know, to maintain a strategic deterrent, you have to have systems that you will know, you know, will work when they're required to work. [01:02:28] You know, that they have to be adaptable to a variety of different scenarios in today's world. And so that's what this recapitalization of systems that were built over previous decades, making sure that they are appropriate not just for today, but for the decades to come. [01:02:46] So the other thing I'd really like to note is strategic deterrence has a very different character today. Uh, you know, we used to think of weapons of mass destruction in terms of nuclear, chemical, biological. And today we have a cyber threat. [01:03:05] We've seen examples of the use of cyber weaponry. [01:03:11] And if you think about the possibilities of using cyber capabilities or an adversary attacking the U.S. to take out things like critical infrastructure, electrical grids, water systems, those are scenarios that are strategic in nature to the survival of a nation as well. [01:03:36] So that is the kind of world that we live in today. [01:03:40] And, you know, part of my hope on this is one that we can also develop technical or technological systems, perhaps enabled by an autonomy that will allow us to contain and to fight back against these kinds of new threats that were not conceived when we first developed our strategic deterrence. [01:04:03] Yeah, I know that Lockheed is involved in cyber. I saw I saw that you mentioned that, uh, it's an incredibly nuclear almost seems easier than cyber because there's so many attacks. There's so many ways that cyber can evolve in such an uncertain future. [01:04:20] But talking about engineering with the mission, I mean, in this case, that your engineering systems that basically save the world, it's like like I said, we were privileged to do to work on some very challenging problems for for very critical customers here in the US and with our allies abroad as well. [01:04:44] Lockheed builds both military and non-military systems and perhaps the future Lockheed, maybe more in non-military applications if you talk about space and beyond. I see that as a preface to a difficult question. So President Eisenhower in 1961, in his farewell address, talked about the military industrial complex and that it shouldn't go beyond what is needed. [01:05:10] So what are your thoughts on those words on the military industrial complex, on the concern of growth of their developments beyond what may be needed, that what where it may be needed is a critical phrase, of course. [01:05:29] And I think it is worth pointing out, as you noted, that Lockheed Martin, we are in a number of commercial businesses from energy to space to commercial aircraft. [01:05:41] And so I wouldn't and I wouldn't neglect the importance of those parts of our business as well. [01:05:49] I think the world is dynamic. And, you know, there was a time and it doesn't seem that long ago to me was I was a graduate student here at MIT and we were talking about the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. If you look at expenditure on military systems as fraction of GDP, we're far below peak levels the past. And to me at least, it looks like a time where you're seeing global threats changing in a way that would warrant, you know, relevant, relevant investments in defense, defensive capabilities. [01:06:28] The other thing I'd note for military and defensive systems, it's it's not quite a free market, right? We don't sell to people on the street. [01:06:42] And that warrants a very close partnership between, you know, I'd say the customers and the people that design, build and maintain these systems because of the very unique nature, the the very difficult requirements, the very great importance on safety and on, you know, operating the way they're intended every time. [01:07:11] And so that does create and it's frankly, it's one of Lockheed Martin's great strengths, is that we have this expertise built up over many years in partnership with our customers to be able to design and build these systems that meet these very unique mission needs. Yeah, because building those systems is very costly. There's very little room for mistake. I mean, it's just been Rich's book and so on just tells the story. It's nerve wracking, just reading it. [01:07:39] If you're an engineer, it reads like a thriller. [01:07:41] OK, uh, let me let's go back to space for safe. I guess I'm always happy to go back to space. So, um, a few quick maybe out there, maybe fun questions, maybe a little provocative. What are your thoughts on the efforts of the new folks, SpaceX and Elon Musk? What are your thoughts about what Elon is doing? This is competition. [01:08:09] Do you enjoy competition or what are your thoughts? You know, first of all, certainly, Elon, I'd say SpaceX and some of us and some of his other ventures are definitely a competitive force in the in the space industry. And do we like competition? Yeah, we do. And we think we're very strong competitors. [01:08:32] I think it's you know, competition is what the U.S. is founded on and in a lot of ways and always coming up with a better way. [01:08:41] And I I think it's really important to continue and have fresh ideas coming in new innovation. I do think it's important to have a level playing fields. And so you want to make sure that that you're not giving different requirements to different players. [01:09:00] But, you know, I tell people, you know, I spent a lot of time in places like MIT. I'm going to be at the MIT, the Betaworks Summer Institute over the weekend here. And I tell people this is the most exciting time to be in the space business in my entire life. And it is this explosion of new capabilities that have been driven by things like the, you know, the massive increase in computing power, things like the massive increase in comms capabilities, advanced and additive manufacturing are are really bringing down the barriers to entry in this field. [01:09:36] And it's driving just incredible innovation. And it's happening at startups, but it's also happening at Lockheed Martin. May not realize this, but Lockheed Martin working with Stanford, actually built the first CubeSat that was launched here out of the U.S. that was called the quake set. And we did that with stellar solutions. Uh, this was right around just after 2000, I guess. [01:09:58] And so we've been in that, you know, from the very beginning. [01:10:02] And, you know, I talked about some of these like, you know, Maya and Orion. [01:10:07] But, you know, we're in the middle of. What we call smart SATs and software to find satellites that can essentially restructure and re map their purpose, their mission on orbit to give you almost, you know, unlimited flexibility for these satellites over their lifetimes. So those are just a couple of examples. But, yeah, this this is a great time to be in space. [01:10:30] Absolutely. So Wright brothers flew for the first time 116 years ago. So now we have supersonic stealth planes and all the technology we've talked about. [01:10:42] What innovations? Obviously, you can't predict the future, but do you see Lockheed in the next hundred years? If you take that same leap, how will the world of technology and engineering change? [01:10:55] I know it's an impossible question, but nobody could have predicted that we could even fly one hundred and twenty years ago. So what do you think is the edge of possibility that we're going to be exploring in the next hundred years? [01:11:09] I don't know that there is an edge. You know, we've been around for almost that entire time. Right. [01:11:18] The Lockheed brothers and Gleno, Martin starting their companies, you know, in the basement of a church in old, you know, service station. We're very different companies today than we were back then. Right. And that's because we've continuously reinvented ourselves over the all of those decades. [01:11:38] I think it's fair to say, yeah, I know this for sure. The world of the future, it's going to move faster. It's going to be more connected. It's going to be more autonomous and it's going to be more complex than it is today. And so this is the world, you know, as a CTO, Lockheed Martin, that I think about what are the technologies that we have to invest in, whether it's things like A.I. and autonomy. [01:12:02] You know, you can think about quantum computing, which is an area that we've invested in to try to stay ahead of these technological changes. And frankly, some of the threats that are out there. And I believe that we're going to be out there in the solar system that we're going to be defending and defending well against probably, you know, military threats that nobody has even thought about today. [01:12:25] We are going to be we're going to use these capabilities to have far greater knowledge of our own planet. The depths of the oceans, you know, all the way to the upper reaches the atmosphere and everything out to the sun and to the edge of the solar system. So so that's what I look forward to. And I I'm excited. I mean, just looking ahead in the next decade or so to the steps that I see ahead of us in that time. [01:12:53] I don't think there's a better place to OK. Thank you so much. Lexi's been a real pleasure and sorry it took so long to get up here, but glad that we're able to make it happen.

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