EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Like many U.S. Space Force (USSF) Guardians, Capt. Drake Williams has a knack for making satellite (and rocket) science sound simple.
Williams, 27, Acquisitions program manager at Space Systems Command (SSC), was selected to represent SSC’s Battle Management Command, Control, Communications and Space Intelligence (BMC3I) Program Executive Office in Washington, D.C. at the USSF Day on the Hill event in April. There, he met with Pentagon leadership, congressional staff, and other Space Force peers, and spent a day engaging to boost awareness of USSF’s mission and BMC3I’s role.
“I run an AI (artificial intelligence) prototyping program, I3E (Integrated, Immersive, Intelligent Environment), and a regular part of my job is interacting with people who aren’t in the Space Force to explain our mission and what my program is doing,” Williams said.
“What we do is build out cloud infrastructure which helps us run AI prototypes. You need a robust digital infrastructure to run advanced large language models (LLM) or machine learning (ML) algorithms,” Williams said. “As a result of having that infrastructure, we’re able to prototype lots of different projects and try things out. The intent is to take the latest commercial AI technologies and apply them to Space Force mission areas.”
Even with all the advances in AI, Williams said humans are still necessary to accomplish the mission, and the Space Force is sticking to a human-in-the-loop (HITL) design philosophy; humans providing oversight, input, and ultimate decision-making in the operation of autonomous systems.
“We’re certainly not creating Terminator’s Skynet over here,” Williams said, referring to the fictional AI system from the “Terminator” movies. “We are just looking to accomplish a large and growing mission with a relatively small number of Guardians. The Space Force has a lot of sensors on orbit that are producing lots of data. We can process that data faster and get better insights with the help of AI. Space is dynamic and moves quickly; we’re interested in autonomous systems which can detect orbital patterns, bring things to our attention, and predict what our adversaries are planning before they do it.”
“We already have government versions of AI tools that we use to increase productivity and make better decisions on a daily basis,” Williams continued. “We’ve also prototyped an augmented reality (AR) tool – which we brought to Capitol Hill – that visualizes the space domain and helps us explain it to both senior leaders and people who are unfamiliar with space.”
The AR application runs on a HoloLens headset and features a three-dimensional, four-foot-wide representation of the Earth, with all the many thousands of USSF-tracked space objects orbiting it.
“You can see the ones that are closer to Earth, moving around in real time,” Williams said. “And it really helps demonstrate the scale of the space domain. The ones in Low-Earth Orbit – that’s up to 1,200 miles above the surface – they’re within inches of the surface of the Earth in the simulation and the ones in Geosynchronous orbit (22,236 miles above earth) are 10 feet away.”
“Another thing that hits you when you put on the goggles is just how many objects are in space,” Williams added. “You can immediately see how congested it is, and how many things we have orbiting Earth. You can also use it to show how constellations of satellites can work together to provide regional and global coverage.”
At the USSF Day on the Hill, Williams and his fellow Guardians explained how Space Force acquisitions and operations work. They also fielded questions about the difference between the Air Force and the Space Force, and between the Space Force and USSPACECOM.
“The goal of the USSF Day on the Hill was to help Congressional staff and the general public understand what we do, and why it’s important. We are still relatively new, and of all the services, the Space Force has the most abstract domain,” Williams said. “
As the newest and youngest military service, the USSF values opportunities for the public to interact with Guardians. With only about 9,400 active-duty Guardians, many times when Williams is traveling, people will tell him he’s the first Guardian they’ve ever met.
When it comes to explaining what an acquisitions organization like SSC does for the warfighter, Williams says he usually uses the Army as a concrete example; you can’t just buy a tank from a car dealership. The job of an acquisition professional is to gather the requirements for the tank (i.e. How many people should it hold? What fuel should it take? How heavy should it be?) and work with industry to procure and deliver a suitable tank back to the soldiers. There’s a lot of complexity to that process, and it applies to everything the military needs: submarines, satellites, aircraft carriers, and data networks. Acquisition professionals make sure that happens efficiently, affordably, and in line with regulations.
“The space systems that we acquire at SSC are critical to the Joint Force and our allies,” Williams said. “Our satellites provide communications, positioning and navigation, and missile warning capabilities. Our most recognizable system is GPS, which has enormous military utility and is also used by nearly everyone every day.”
So how does Williams explain BMC3I to a lay person?
“I describe BMC3I as a mission enabler for anything the Space Force wants to do,” Williams said. “Space Force satellites need to get their data down to our operations centers and Guardians need to be able to make sense of that data and send commands back up to space. BMC3I manages a global network of antennas, data transport systems, data storage systems, and control systems to make sure that happens,” Williams said. “We’re the connective tissue that makes the mission work.”