Dear Members and Friends,
We opened our 4th SHIELD program with the University of Southern California in partnership and collaboration on Global Space and Deterrence for the betterment of our nation to make the world a safer place. MDAA and USC, with its Price School of Public Policy and Viterbi School of Engineering, have created a World Class academic critical thinking cauldron of excellence on our nation’s most pressing policy and engineering challenges in Space, Missile Defense, and Deterrence. Our fourth Cohort is made up of active U.S. Military high ranking officers and civilian equivalents that serve today under 3 Combatant Commands, 6 military services, Space Operations Command, Army Space and Missiles Command, MDA, PEO Missiles and Space, and others.
We kicked off our 4th SHIELD program opening day with Lt General Phil Garrant – the Space Systems commander – followed by two days of lectures from Neil Siegel, Ph.D., Peter J. Robertson, Ph.D., Mike Gruntman, Ph.D., Assad Oberai, Ph.D., and MDAA Board members John Rood (former OSD Undersecretary for Policy), Mark Montgomery (former Policy Director for the Senate Armed Services Committee), JD Gainey (retired Naval Officer), Vic Mercado (former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities), and Riki Ellison (Founder and Chairman of MDAA). On our third day the SHIELD 4 cohort began their development of their own capstone projects.
The SHIELD 4 Cohort have established 5 areas to further study and distill into their capstone projects:
– Resiliency of Space Architecture
– Improving Simulation Modeling Capabilities in operations, testing and training
– Missile Defense Review/Defense of the US Homeland
– Space National Guard Pros and Cons
– Island Defense with Dual Use capability and Open Architecture
Our previous SHIELD graduate capstones have become law, courses of action, and published papers that are leading our National Security in Space, Missile Defense and Deterrence. We have high hopes for this years incredible cohort!
Fight On!
