Keoki Jackson: Lockheed Martin
Guests: Keoki Jackson
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript · 00:00–09:23
The following is a conversation with Kiyoki Jackson.
He's the CTO of Lockheed Martin,
a company that through its 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.
I've read several books in preparation
for this conversation.
It is a difficult one,
because in part, Lockheed Martin builds military systems
that operate in a 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.
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 Kiyoki and I have a passion for space.
Us, 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, support it on Patreon,
or simply connect with me on Twitter @LexFriedman,
spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N.
And now, here's my conversation with Kiyoki Jackson.
I read several books on Lockheed Martin recently.
My favorite in particular is by Ben Rich,
Carlos Concord's personal memoir.
It gets a little edgy at times.
But from that, I was reminded that
the engineers at Lockheed Martin
have created some of the most
incredible engineering marvels human beings have ever built
throughout the 20th century and the 21st.
Do you remember a particular project or system at Lockheed
or before that at 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 great question.
There's a lot of things that I could draw on there.
When you look at the Skunk Works
and Ben Rich's book in particular,
of course it starts off with basically
the start of the jet age and the P-80.
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, it was by far the F-104 Starfighter,"
which was another aircraft that came out of Lockheed there.
- What kind of?
- It was the first Mach 2 jet fighter aircraft.
They called it the missile with a man in it.
And so those are the kinds of things
I grew up hearing stories about.
You know, of course, the SR-71 is incomparable
as kind of the epitome of speed, altitude,
and just the coolest looking aircraft ever.
- That's a plane that--
- That's a, yeah, intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance aircraft that was designed
to be able to outrun, basically go faster
than any air defense system.
But I'll tell you, I'm a space junkie.
That's why I came to MIT.
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.
And we've talked a lot about the 50th anniversary
of Apollo here in the last couple of weeks, right?
But remember 1976, July 20th, again, National Space Day.
So the landing of the Viking,
the Viking lander 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
various pieces of that mission as well.
So that's what I grew up on is these planetary missions,
the start of the space shuttle era,
and ultimately had the opportunity
to see Lockheed Martin's part.
And we can maybe talk about some of these here,
but Lockheed Martin's part
in 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.
So do you dream of the day when us humans
colonize another planet like Mars,
or a man, a woman, a human being steps on Mars?
- Absolutely, and that's a personal dream of mine.
I haven't given up yet on my own opportunity
to fly into space.
But as you know, from the Lockheed Martin perspective,
this is something that we're working towards every day.
And of course, 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,
starting with the moon, but ultimately going to Mars,
and being the platform 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.
And so that is something I wanna see happen
during my time at Lockheed Martin.
So I'm pretty excited about that.
And I think once we prove that's possible,
colonization might be a little bit further out,
but it's something that I'd hope to see.
- 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
and NASA to build launch systems and rockets
with the ULA.
What's beyond that?
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?
- 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.
- Sorry to interrupt on that.
So long-term presence means--
- Sustained and sustainable presence in an economy,
a space economy, that really goes alongside that.
- With human beings and being able to launch, perhaps,
from those, so like, hop?
- There's a lot of energy that goes in those hops, right?
So I think the first step is being able to get there
and to be able to establish sustained bases, right,
and build from there.
And a lot of that means getting, as you know,
things like the cost of launch down,
and you mentioned United Launch Alliance,
and so I don't wanna speak for ULA,
but obviously they're working really hard
to, on their next generation of launch vehicles,
to maintain that incredible mission success record
that ULA has, but ultimately continue to drive down the cost
and make the flexibility, the speed,
and the access ever greater.
- So what's the missions that are on the horizon
that you could talk to?
Is there a hope to get to the moon?
- 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 transfer 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.
Starting off with a stated objective by this administration
to get back to the moon in the 2024, 2025 timeframe,
which is right around the corner here.
- How big of an engineering challenge is that?
- 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,
do a couple of days of mission,
and bring 'em home again successfully.
Now we're talking about doing that,
I'd say more to, I don't wanna 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.
So those are certainly engineering challenges.
There are budgetary challenges,
§02Transcript · 09:26–19:24
and those are all things
that we're gonna have to work through.
You know, the other thing, and I shouldn't,
I don't wanna minimize this.
I mean, I'm excited about human exploration,
but the reality is our technology
and where we've come over the last, you know,
40 years essentially,
has changed what we can do with robotic exploration as well.
And, you know, to me, it's incredibly thrilling.
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 weather, 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, you got the time lag,
of course, 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.
And now with the advent of even greater processing power,
better AI 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.
And I'll give you an example.
We've got OSIRIS-REx,
which is a mission to the asteroid Bennu.
So the spacecraft is out there right now
on basically a year mapping activity
to map the entire surface of that asteroid in great detail.
You know, all autonomously piloted, right?
But the idea then that, and this is not too far away,
it's gonna go in,
it's got a sort of fancy vacuum cleaner with a bucket.
It's gonna 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 intercepted comets,
we've brought stardust material back.
So that's, we've gone far
and there's incredible opportunity to go even farther.
- So it seems quite crazy that this is even possible,
that, 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?
- Yeah, 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 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.
But the other thing that's really interesting,
you put together sort of that neat control
and data and imagery problem,
but the stories around how we designed the collection,
I mean, as essentially, you know,
this is the sort of the human ingenuity element, right?
That essentially, you know,
had an engineer who had a, you know,
one day he's like, "Oh,"
starts messing around with parts,
vacuum cleaner, bucket, you know,
"Maybe we could do something like this."
And that was what led to what we call
the pogo stick collection, right?
Where basically a thing comes down,
it's only there for seconds, does that collection,
grabs the, essentially blows the regolith material
into the collection hopper and off it goes.
- It doesn't really land almost.
- It's a very short landing.
- Wow, that's incredible.
So what is in those,
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 vehicles in space?
And for humans that may step foot
on either the moon or Mars?
- Yeah, it's a great question
because, you know, I just have been extolling
the virtues of robotic and, you know,
rovers, autonomous systems,
and those absolutely have a role.
I think the thing that we don't know how to replace today
is the ability to adapt on the fly to new information.
And I believe that will come, 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 essentially cobbled together
a way to get the carbon dioxide scrubbers to work.
Those are the kinds of things that ultimately, you know,
and I'd say not just from dealing with anomalies,
but, you know, dealing with new information.
You see something and rather than waiting 20 minutes
or half an hour, 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.
Those are the kinds of things that human presence enables
that is still a ways ahead of us on the AI side.
- Yeah, there's some interesting stuff we'll talk about
on the teaming side here on Earth.
That's pretty cool to explore.
- And in space, let's not leave the space piece out.
- So what is teaming, what is AI and humans
working together in space look like?
- Yeah, one of the things we're working on
is a system called Maya, which is,
you can think of it, so it's an AI assistant.
In space, exactly.
And you think of it as the Alexa in space, right?
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 these systems.
And so our vision is really that
when our astronauts are there around Mars,
you're gonna 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
and tell the humans and potentially deal with that
before it becomes a bad situation
and help the astronauts work through those kinds of things.
And it's not just dealing with problems as they come up,
but also offering up opportunities
for additional exploration capability, for example.
So that's the vision is that these are,
take the best of the human to respond
to changing circumstances and rely on the best
of AI capabilities to monitor these,
this almost infinite number of data points
and correlations of data points
that humans frankly aren't that good at.
- So how do you develop systems in space like this,
whether it's Alexa in space or in general,
any kind of control systems,
any kind of intelligent systems
when you can't really test stuff too much out in space?
It's very expensive to test stuff.
So how do you develop such systems?
- Yeah, that's the beauty of this digital twin, if you will.
And of course, with Lockheed Martin,
we've over the past five plus decades
been refining our knowledge of the space environment,
of how materials behave, dynamics, the controls,
the radiation environments, all of these kinds of things.
So we're able to create very sophisticated models.
They're not perfect, but they're very good.
And so you can actually do a lot.
I spent part of my career simulating
communication spacecraft, missile warning spacecraft,
GPS spacecraft in all kinds of scenarios
and all kinds of environments.
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.
In fact, we anticipate that it will be learning as it goes.
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
of the envelope that you have initially designed them to.
- So this system in its intelligence
has the same complexity,
some of the same complexities a human does.
And it learns over time, it's unpredictable
in certain kinds of ways.
So you also have to model that when you're thinking about it.
So in your thoughts, is it possible
to model the majority of situations,
the important aspects of situations here on Earth
and in space enough to test stuff?
- Yeah, this is really an active area of research.
And we're actually funding university research
in a variety of places, including MIT.
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 not an easy problem.
§03Transcript · 19:27–28:56
We're working with startup companies,
we've got internal R&D, but our conviction is
that autonomy and more and more AI-enabled autonomy
is gonna be in everything
that Lockheed Martin develops and fields.
And it's gonna be retrofit,
autonomy and AI are gonna be retrofit into existing systems.
They're gonna 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.
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 the autonomous system can do.
- Either in the cockpit or remotely.
- Or remotely, exactly, but still in that control loop.
And then there's what you'd call supervisory autonomy.
So the autonomous system is doing most of the work.
The human can intervene to stop it
or to change the direction.
And then ultimately full autonomy
where the human is off the loop altogether.
And for different types of missions,
you wanna have different levels of autonomy.
So now take that spectrum and this conviction
that autonomy and more and more AI
are in everything that we develop.
The kinds of things that Lockheed Martin does,
a lot of times are safety of life critical
kinds of missions.
Think about aircraft, for example.
And so we require and our customers require
an extremely high level of confidence.
One, that we're gonna protect life.
Two, that we're going to,
that these systems will behave in ways
that their operators can understand.
And so this gets into that whole field.
Again, being able to verify and validate
that the systems have been,
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.
And that is an extremely difficult challenge.
- Yeah, so here's a difficult question.
I don't mean to bring this up,
but I think it's a good case study
that people are familiar with.
Boeing 737 MAX commercial airplane
has had two recent crashes
where their flight control software system failed.
And it's software.
So I don't mean to speak about Boeing,
but broadly speaking,
we have this in the autonomous vehicle space too,
semi-autonomous.
When you have millions of lines of code software
making decisions,
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 at Lockheed Martin
do where it has to be exceptionally safe.
You have to test this on.
So how do we get this right
when software is making so many decisions?
- Yeah, and there's a lot of things that have to happen.
And by and large, I think it starts with the culture,
which is not necessarily something
that A, is taught in school,
or B, is something that would come,
depending on what kind of software you're developing,
it may not be relevant
if you're targeting ads or something like that.
So, and by and large,
I'd say 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.
But as you know,
these systems have gotten incredibly complex.
And so they're to the point where it's almost impossible.
The state space has become so huge
that it's impossible to,
or 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,
all the potential failure scenarios.
Now, maybe that's soluble one day,
maybe when we have our quantum computers at our fingertips,
we'll be able to actually simulate across an entire,
you know, almost infinite state space.
But today, you know, there's a lot of work
to really try to bound the system,
to make sure that it behaves in predictable ways,
and then have this culture of continuous inquiry
and skepticism and questioning to say,
did we really consider the right realm of possibilities?
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.
And it's not something, you know,
it's something that people learn by living in it.
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, and the same is being faced
at certain autonomous vehicle companies
where that culture is not there
because it's started mostly by software engineers.
So that's what they're struggling with.
Is there lessons that you think we should learn
as an industry and a society
from the Boeing 737 MAX crashes?
- These crashes obviously are either tremendous tragedies,
they're tragedies for all of the people,
the crew, the families, the passengers,
the people on the ground involved.
And, you know, it's also a huge business
and economic setback as well.
I mean, you know, we've seen it's impacting
essentially the trade balance of the US.
So these are important questions.
And these are the kinds of, you know,
we've seen similar kinds of questioning at times,
you know, you go back to the Challenger accident,
and it is, I think, always important to remind ourselves
that humans are fallible,
that the systems we create,
as perfect as we strive to make them,
we can always make them better.
And so another element of that culture of 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 future systems better.
And certainly 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
to years now where we have no commercial aircraft accidents
at all, right, or fatal accidents at all.
So that didn't happen by accident.
It was through the regulatory agencies, FAA,
the airframe manufacturers,
really working on a system to identify root causes
and drive them out.
- 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 a spacecraft
or a helicopter or a radar or something like that.
But ultimately we're driven by these,
you know, like what is our customer?
What is that mission that they need to achieve?
And so that's what drove the SR-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, right?
So that's what yielded an SR-71.
- Let's build a nice flying camera.
- Exactly, and make sure it gets out and it gets back.
And that led ultimately to really the start
of the space program in the US as well.
So now take a step back to Lockheed Martin of today.
And we are on the order of 105 years old now
between Lockheed and Martin, the two big heritage companies.
Of course, we're made up of a whole bunch of other companies
that came in as well.
General Dynamics, you know, kind of go down the list.
Today, you can think of us
in this space of solving mission problems.
So obviously on the aircraft side,
tactical aircraft, building the most advanced fighter
aircraft that the world has ever seen.
You know, we're up to now several hundred
of those delivered, building almost 100 a year.
§04Transcript · 29:00–39:02
And of course, working on the things that come after that.
On the space side, we are engaged in pretty much every venue
of space utilization and exploration you can imagine.
So I mentioned things like navigation, timing, GPS,
communication satellites, missile warning satellites.
We've built commercial surveillance satellites.
We've built commercial communication satellites.
We do civil space.
So everything from human exploration
to the robotic exploration of the outer planets.
And keep going on the space front.
But you know, a couple of other areas I'd like to put out.
We're heavily engaged in building
critical defensive systems.
And so a couple that I'll mention,
the Aegis Combat System.
This is basically the integrated air
and missile defense system for the US and allied fleets.
And so protects carrier strike groups, for example,
from incoming ballistic missile threats,
aircraft threats, cruise missile threats,
and you know, kind of go down the list.
- So the carriers, the fleet itself is the thing
that is being protected.
The carriers aren't serving as a protection
for something else.
- Well, that's a little bit of a different application.
We've actually built a version called Aegis Ashore,
which is now deployed in a couple of places
around the world.
So that same technology, I mean,
basically can be used to protect either
an ocean going fleet or a land-based activity.
Another one, the THAAD program.
So THAAD, this is the Theater High Altitude Area Defense.
This is to protect, you know,
relatively broad areas against sophisticated
ballistic missile threats.
And so now, you know, it's deployed
with a lot of US 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 militaries and military capabilities,
but defend population areas.
We saw, you know, maybe the first public use of these
back in the first Gulf War with the Patriot systems.
And these are the kinds of things
that Lockheed Martin delivers.
And there's a lot of stuff that goes with it.
So think about the radar systems and the sensing systems
that cue these, the command and control systems
that decide how you pair a weapon
against an incoming threat.
And then all the human and machine interfaces
to make sure that they can be operated successfully
in very strenuous environments.
- Yeah, there's some incredible engineering
that at every front, like you said.
So maybe if we just take a look at Lockheed history broadly,
maybe even looking at Skunk Works,
what are the biggest,
most impressive milestones of innovation?
So 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 the supersonic and hypersonic,
three, four, 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 it's possible
to do these kinds of things?
And is there other milestones
and innovation that's going on
that you can talk about?
- Yeah, well, let me start on the Skunk Works saga.
And you kind of alluded to it in the beginning.
Skunk Works is as much a idea as a place.
And so it's driven really by Kelly Johnson's 14 principles.
And I'm not gonna list all 14 of them off,
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 people who wanna 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 team
and shared vision with the customer.
Those are the kinds of things that enable the Skunk Works
to do these incredible things.
- And we listed off a number that you brought up stealth.
And I mean, this whole,
I wish I could have seen Ben Rich with a ball bearing,
rolling it 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 least expensive
and most effective marketing campaigns
in the history of the industry.
- So just for people that are not familiar,
I mean, the way you detect aircraft,
'cause I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of ways,
but radar, for the longest time,
there's a big blob that appears in the radar.
How do you make a plane disappear
so it looks as big as a ball bearing?
What's involved in technology-wise there?
What's, broadly, sort of the stuff you can speak about?
- I'll stick to what's in Ben Rich's book.
But obviously the geometry of how radar gets reflected
and the kinds of materials that either reflect
or absorb are kind of the couple
of the critical elements there.
I mean, it's a cat and mouse game, right?
I mean, radars get better, stealth capabilities get better,
and so it's a really a game of continuous improvement
and innovation there, and I'll leave it at that.
- Yeah, so the idea that something is essentially invisible
is quite fascinating.
But the other one is flying fast.
So speed of sound is 750, 60 miles an hour.
So supersonic is Mach 3, something like that.
- Yeah, we talk about the supersonic, obviously,
and we kind of talk about that as that realm
from Mach 1 up through about Mach 5.
And then hypersonic, so high supersonic speeds
would be past Mach 5.
And you gotta remember, Lockheed Martin
and actually other companies have been involved
in hypersonic development since the late '60s.
You know, you think of everything from the X-15
to the Space Shuttle as examples of that.
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 publicly folks like the Russians
and the Chinese saying they have hypersonic weapons
capability that could threaten US and Allied capabilities.
And also, basically, you know, the claims are
that these 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 something that's really important
to the nation 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 you can't talk about much of it at all,
but on the defensive side,
it's a 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 hard is it to stay ahead,
even if we're going back a few decades,
stay ahead of the competition?
- Well, maybe I'd, again, you gotta think of these
as ongoing capability development.
And so think back to the early days of missile defense.
So this would be in the '80s, the SDI program.
And in that timeframe, we proved,
Lockheed Martin proved that you could hit a bullet
with a bullet, essentially,
and 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, PAC-3.
That's the Patriot Advanced Capability,
Model 3 that Lockheed Martin builds,
the THAAD system that I talked about.
So now hypersonics,
they're different from ballistic systems.
And so we gotta take the next step in defensive capability.
- I can, I'll leave that there, but I can only imagine.
Now, let me just comment.
So if it's an engineer, it's sad to know that
so much that Lockheed has done in the past is classified,
or today, and it's shrouded in secrecy.
It has to be by the nature of the application.
So like what I do, so what we do here at MIT,
we'd like to inspire young engineers, young scientists.
And yet, in the Lockheed 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?
§05Transcript · 39:07–48:16
Or is it just the nature of this world
that it has to remain secret?
- It's a good question.
I think the public can see enough of,
and 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 obviously a lot of the detailed performance levels
are sensitive and controlled.
But we can talk about what an incredible aircraft this is.
Supersonic, super cruise kind of a fighter,
a stealth capabilities.
It's a flying information 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,
these are the kinds of things that got me excited
when I was a student.
I think these still inspire students today.
And the other thing, I'd say,
I mean, people are inspired by space.
People are inspired by aircraft.
Our employees are also inspired by that sense of mission.
And I'll just give you an example.
I had the privilege to work
and lead our GPS programs for some time.
And that was a case where 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.
But I'll tell you, I got a briefing one time
from a major in the Air Force.
And he said, "I go by call sign GIMP.
GPS is my passion."
So I love GPS.
And he was involved in the operational test of the system.
He said, "I was out in Iraq and I was on a helicopter,
Black Hawk helicopter, and I was bringing back a sergeant
and a handful of troops from a deployed location."
And he said, "My job is GPS."
So I asked that sergeant, and he's beating down
and kind of half asleep.
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,
okay, I'm really making a difference here
in the kind of work.
So that mission piece is really important.
Last thing I'll say is, and this gets to some
of these questions around advanced technologies.
It's not, you know, they're not just airplanes
and spacecraft anymore.
For people who are excited
about advanced software capabilities, about AI,
about bringing machine learning,
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.
- Yeah, I think autonomy,
especially in flight is super exciting.
Do you see if a day, here we go, back into philosophy,
future when 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?
- 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 we have hundreds of thousands of flight hours a year now
in remotely piloted aircraft.
And then if you take the F-35,
there are huge layers, I guess, in 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 to second elements of flying the aircraft.
So in some ways it's the easiest aircraft
in the world to fly.
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 aircraft
to a screeching halt, right?
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.
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 wire.
So we're wearing out the wire
because it always hits that one.
So that, but that's the kind of autonomy
that just makes these, that essentially up levels
what the human is doing to more of that mission manager.
- So much of that landing by the F-35 is autonomous.
- Well, it's just, you know, the control systems are such
that you really have dialed out the variability
that comes with all of the environmental conditions.
- You're wearing it out.
- So my point is to a certain extent,
that world is here today.
Do I think that we're gonna see a day anytime soon
when there are no humans in the cockpit?
I don't believe that,
but I do think we're gonna see much more
human machine teaming,
and we're gonna see that much more at the tactical edge.
And we did a demo,
you asked about what the Skunk Works is doing these days.
And so this is something I can talk about,
but we did a demo with the Air Force Research Laboratory.
We called it Have Raider.
And so using an F-16 as an autonomous wingman,
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,
now they can control multiple other aircraft.
Think of them almost as extensions of your own aircraft
flying alongside with you.
So that's another example of how this is really
coming to fruition.
And then, yeah, 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.
So one of the challenges that you have
in high-performance fighter aircraft
is what's called G-LOC.
So this is G-induced 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 blackout.
- Right.
- Right?
And of course that's bad if you happen to be flying low,
you know, near the deck,
and you know, or an obstacle or terrain environment.
And so we developed a system in our aeronautics division
called Auto GCAS,
so Autonomous Ground Collision Avoidance System.
And we built that into the F-16.
It's actually saved seven aircraft, eight pilots already,
in the relatively short time it's been deployed.
It was so successful that the Air Force said,
"Hey, we need to have this in the F-35 right away."
So we've actually done testing of that now on the F-35.
And we've also integrated
an autonomous air collision avoidance system.
So 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 call them AI.
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 gonna take the aircraft into,
or the pilot's not doing something in this case.
But those, it just gives you an example
of how autonomy can be really a lifesaver in today's world.
- It's like a autonomous,
automated emergency braking in cars.
But is there any exploration of perception of,
for example, detecting a G-lock that the pilot is out?
So as opposed to perceiving the external environment
to infer that the pilot is out,
but actually perceiving the pilot directly?
- Yeah, this is one of those cases
where you'd like to not take action
if you think the pilot's there.
And it's almost like systems that try to detect
if a driver's falling asleep on the road, right?
With limited success.
So, I mean, this is what I'd call
the system of last resort, right?
Where if the aircraft has determined
that it's going into the terrain, get it out of there.
And this is not something that we're just doing
in the aircraft world.
And I wanted to highlight,
we have a technology we call Matrix,
§06Transcript · 48:18–58:27
but this is developed at Sikorsky Innovations.
The whole idea there is what we call optimal piloting.
So not optional piloting or unpiloted, but optimal piloting.
So an FAA certified system.
So you have a high degree of confidence.
It's generally pretty deterministic.
So we know that it'll do in different situations,
but effectively be able to fly a mission
with two pilots, one pilot, no pilots.
And you can think of it almost as like a dial
of the level of autonomy that you want,
but able, so it's running in the background at all times
and able to pick up tasks,
whether it's 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 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 could have an aircraft that you want to send out
for a crewed mission, but then at night,
if you want to use it to deliver supplies
in an unmanned mode, that could be done as well.
And so there's clear advantages there.
But think about on the commercial side,
if you're an aircraft taken,
you're gonna fly out to this oil rig.
And if you get out there and you can't land,
then you gotta bring all those people back,
reschedule another flight, pay the overtime for the crew
that you just brought back 'cause they didn't get
where they were going, pay for the overtime
for the folks that are out there on the oil rig.
This is real economic, these are dollars and cents
kinds of advantages that we're bringing
in the commercial world as well.
- So this is a difficult question from the AI space
that I would love it if we're able to comment.
So a lot of this autonomy in AI you've mentioned just now
has this empowering effect.
One is the last resort, it keeps you safe.
The other is there's a, with the teaming
and in general assistive AI.
And I think there's always a race.
So the world is full of, the world is complex.
It's full of bad actors.
So there's often a race to make sure
that we keep this country safe, right?
But with AI, there is a concern
that it's a slightly different race.
There's a lot of people in the AI space
that are concerned about the AI arms race.
That as opposed to the United States becoming,
you know, having the best technology
and therefore keeping us safe,
even we lose ability to keep control of it.
So this, the AI arms race getting away
from all of us humans.
So do you share this worry?
Do you share this concern when we're talking
about military applications that too much control
and decision-making capabilities giving to software or AI?
- 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.
And maybe before talking about the policy,
I'll just talk about some of the why.
And you alluded to it being a sort of a complicated
and a little bit scary world out there,
but there's some big things happening today.
You hear a lot of talk now about a return
to great powers competition,
particularly around China and Russia with the US,
but there are some other big players out there as well.
And what we've seen is the deployment of some very,
I'd say concerning new weapon 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.
So there's some pretty scary things.
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 AI or other technologies like hypersonics,
which we discussed.
So now let me give just a couple of hypotheticals.
So people react sort of in the second timeframe, right?
You know, you're,
photon hitting your eye to, you know,
movement is, you know, on the order of a few tenths
of a second kinds of processing times.
Roughly speaking, you know,
computers are operating in the nanosecond timescale, right?
So just to bring home what that means,
a nanosecond to a second is like a second to 32 years.
So seconds on the battlefield in that sense,
literally are lifetimes.
And so if you can bring an autonomous
or AI enabled capability
that will enable the human to shrink,
maybe you've heard the term the OODA loop.
So this whole idea that a typical battlefield decision
is characterized by observe.
So information comes in, orient,
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 OODA loop
to stay inside what your adversary is doing,
that's an incredible, powerful force on the battlefield.
- That's a really nice way to put it.
That the role of AI in computing in general
has a lot to benefit from just decreasing
from 32 years to one second.
As opposed to on the scale of seconds and minutes and hours
making decisions that humans are better at making.
- 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 gotta go to the bathroom, whatever the case might be.
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, but it's sort of beyond the length
of time that a human can practically do as well.
So there's this range of things that are critical
in military and defense applications
that AI and autonomy are particularly well suited to.
Now, the interesting question that you brought up is,
okay, how do you make sure that stays within human control?
And that, so that was the context for now the policy.
And so there is a DOD directive called 3000.09,
because that's the way we name stuff in this world.
And, but it, you know, and I'd say it's well worth reading.
It's only a couple 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 that the systems have human machine interfaces
that can show what state they're in
and what kinds of decisions they're making.
Making sure that you've established doctrine and tactics
and techniques and procedures
for the use of these kinds of systems.
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 US has said,
this is the way we're gonna treat AI and autonomous systems.
That it's not a free for all.
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.
I mean, obviously we are 100% complying
with our customer and the policies and regulations.
But I mean, AI 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's so many applications.
But we're also very interested in some of the elements
of ethical application within Lockheed Martin.
So we need to make sure that things like privacy
is taken care of, that we do everything we can
to drive out bias in AI enabled kinds of systems.
That we make sure that humans are involved in decisions,
that we're not just delegating accountability to algorithms.
And so for us, it all comes back,
I talked about culture before,
and it comes back to sort of the Lockheed Martin culture.
And our core values, and so it's pretty simple for us.
And 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 AI is used within Lockheed Martin?
§07Transcript · 58:31–1:09:19
And we actually have a world,
so you might not know this,
but there are actually awards for ethics programs.
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 a layman,
again, I was born in the Soviet Union,
so I have echoes, at least in my family history
of World War II and the Cold War.
Do you have a sense of why human civilization
has not destroyed itself through nuclear war,
so nuclear deterrence?
And thinking about the future,
does technology have a role to play here?
And what does the long-term future
of nuclear deterrence look like?
- Yeah, this is one of those hard, hard questions.
And I should note that Lockheed Martin
is both proud and privileged to play a part
in multiple legs of our nuclear and strategic deterrent
systems like the Trident submarine-launched
ballistic missiles.
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,
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.
Just to give you an example, back then,
you know, there were, you know,
in the Cold War time frame, just a handful of nations
that had ballistic missile capability.
By last count, 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.
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 recapitalization of our strategic deterrent.
I look at that as one of the most important things
that our nation can do.
- What is involved in deterrence?
Is it being ready to attack?
Or is it the defensive systems that catch attacks?
- 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.
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 making use
of these weapon systems.
The deterrence calculus has changed, of course,
with more nations now having these kinds of weapons.
But I think, from my perspective, it's very important
to maintain a strategic deterrent.
You have to have systems that you know will work
when they're required to work.
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.
So, the other thing I'd really like to note
is strategic deterrence has a very different character today.
You know, we used to think of weapons of mass destruction
in terms of nuclear, chemical, biological.
And today, we have a cyber threat.
We've seen examples of the use of cyber weaponry.
And if you think about the possibilities
of using cyber capabilities or an adversary
attacking the US 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.
So, that is the kind of world that we live in today.
And, you know, part of my hope on this
is one that we can also develop technical
or technological systems, perhaps enabled by AI and 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.
- Yeah, I know that Lockheed is involved in cyber.
So, I saw that you mentioned that.
It's an incredibly,
nuclear almost seems easier than cyber
'cause there's so many attack,
there's so many ways that cyber can evolve.
It's such an uncertain future.
But talking about engineering with a mission,
I mean, in this case, your engineering system
is that basically save the world.
- It's, like I said, we're privileged to work
on some very challenging problems
for very critical customers here in the US
and with our allies abroad as well.
- Lockheed builds both military and non-military systems.
And perhaps the future of Lockheed
may be more in non-military applications.
If you talk about space and beyond.
I say 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 grow beyond what is needed.
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.
And I think it is worth pointing out,
as you noted, that Lockheed Martin,
we're in a number of commercial businesses
from energy to space to commercial aircraft.
And so, I wouldn't neglect the importance
of those parts of our business as well.
I think the world is dynamic and there was a time,
it doesn't seem that long ago to me,
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 a fraction of GDP, we're far below peak levels
of 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 relevant investments
in defensive capabilities.
The other thing I'd note,
for military and defensive systems,
it's not quite a free market, right?
We don't sell to people on the street.
And that warrants a very close partnership
between, I'd say, the customers and the people
that design, build, and maintain these systems.
Because of the very unique nature,
the very difficult requirements,
the very great importance on safety
and on operating the way they're intended every time.
And so that does create, and 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, yeah, just Ben Rich's book and so on
just tells the story.
It's nerve-wracking just reading it.
If you're an engineer, it reads like a thriller.
Okay, let's go back to space for a second.
I guess--
- I'm always happy to go back to space.
- So 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?
Do you see him as competition?
Do you enjoy competition?
What are your thoughts?
- Yeah, first of all, certainly Elon, I'd say SpaceX
and some of his other ventures
are definitely a competitive force in the space industry.
And do we like competition?
Yeah, we do.
And we think we're very strong competitors.
I think it's, competition is what the US is founded on
in a lot of ways and always coming up with a better way.
And I think it's really important to continue,
to have fresh eyes coming in, new innovation.
I do think it's important to have level playing fields.
And so you wanna make sure that you're not giving
different requirements to different players.
But I tell people, I spent a lot of time at places like MIT,
I'm gonna be at the MIT Beaverworks 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 massive increase
in computing power, things like the massive increase
in comms capabilities, advanced and additive manufacturing
are really bringing down the barriers to entry in this field
and it's driving just incredible innovation.
§08Transcript · 1:09:21–1:12:58
And it's happening at startups,
but it's also happening at Lockheed Martin.
You may not realize this, but Lockheed Martin,
working with Stanford actually built the first CubeSat
that was launched here out of the US
that was called QuakeSat.
And we did that with Stellar Solutions.
This was right around just after 2000, I guess.
And so we've been in that from the very beginning.
And I talked about some of these like Maya and Orion,
but we're in the middle of what we call smartsats
and software-defined satellites
that can essentially restructure and remap their purpose,
their mission on orbit to give you
almost unlimited flexibility for these satellites
over their lifetimes.
So those are just a couple of examples,
but yeah, this is a great time to be in space.
- 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.
What innovations, obviously you can't predict the future,
but do you see Lockheed in the next 100 years?
If you take that same leap,
how will the world of technology and engineering change?
I know it's an impossible question,
but nobody could have predicted
that we could even fly 120 years ago.
So what do you think is the edge of possibility
that we're going to be exploring in the next 100 years?
- I don't know that there is an edge.
We've been around for almost that entire time, right?
The Lockheed brothers and Glenn L. Martin
starting their companies in the basement of a church
and an old service station.
We're very different companies today
than we were back then, right?
And that's because we've continuously reinvented ourselves
over all of those decades.
I think it's fair to say, I know this for sure,
the world of the future, it's gonna move faster,
it's gonna be more connected,
it's gonna be more autonomous,
and it's gonna be more complex than it is today.
And so this is the world, as a CTO at Lockheed Martin,
that I think about,
what are the technologies that we have to invest in,
whether it's things like AI and autonomy,
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.
I believe that we're gonna be out there
in the solar system, that we're gonna be defending
and defending well against probably military threats
that nobody has even thought about today.
We are going to be, we're gonna use these capabilities
to have far greater knowledge of our own planet,
the depths of the oceans, all the way to the upper reaches,
the atmosphere and everything out to the sun
and to the edge of the solar system.
So that's what I look forward to.
And 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.
- I don't think there's a better place to end, Koki.
Thank you so much.
- Lex, it's been a real pleasure
and sorry it took so long to get up here,
but glad we're able to make it happen.
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