COMMENTARY
By Troy Turner
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Roaming the floor and attending sessions on the first day of the 2025 Space and Missile Defense Symposium proved — all the important work aside — to be quite entertaining.
For those readers who are here with me, you might find interesting some of these tidbits about our colleagues.
Here’s a few examples:
Backpacking by example
Cummings Aerospace has developed a drone that has several distinguishing features about it, including turbo-charge speed, 3D-capable production, a likely future hypersonic variant, multiple task/payload capabilities, and equally important for the warfighter on foot… it’s light weight.
CEO Sheila Cummings, a respected hard-charger with many friends in the defense community, put setting an example of its mobility on her shoulders. Literally.
During some of the early field testing with the U.S. Army and other potential clients, Sheila put one of her Hellhound UAVs in a backpack and carried it around to show its ease of use on the battlefield.
Impressive.
That’s one Hellhound of a way to show a product.
Sheila Cummings shown speaking with a guest during SMDS25.
Did ya know?
Davidson Technologies CEO Dale Moore played college baseball at Virginia Military Institute, and during a friendly chat with AlaDefense.com on Tuesday, he recalled playing against some of the premier college baseball programs in the country, including the Auburn Tigers.
Most notable about that is, he hit a double off Auburn and future MLB World Series star pitcher Tim Hudson, who pitched for several years with the Atlanta Braves and Oakland As.
When Dale’s not talking about baseball, he talks about other important life topics… like quantum computing.
Laugh of the day
The commanding general of U.S. Space Command, Gen. Stephen Whiting, was a bigtime attraction to kick things off Tuesday for many of the more than 9,000 attendees here at SMDS25, and for various good reasons.
During his introduction, as is common practice, a phone number was highlighted on the big screens for audience members to text questions for a later Q&A.
It was a wrong number.
Whiting was interrupted during his speech by an announcement making the correction. Moments later, however, he had to pause:
“I can’t help but thinking about some little old lady in Decatur who suddenly is getting a flood of texts asking her detailed questions about space and missile defense.”
No ma’am, the world isn’t coming to an end based on these messages.
Sorry, little old lady in Decatur.
Speaking of commanding generals
No one talked much about Golden Dome, and no one said a word publicly about what everyone in the room is waiting to hear… that being a decision on moving SPACECOM’s headquarters from Colorado to Huntsville. Or not.
We all know our commander-in-chief holds those announcement cards.
Whiting, however, did make time for a nice, casual chat with AlaDefense.com when yours truly thanked him for his “War Eagle!” during his speech (Auburn’s battle cry).
He also has a few Roll Tide connections, but that’s not important.
Whiting has a critical job as commander of all military space commands, including the Army’s new Delta 40 MOS under Army SMD, Air Force, Space Force, the Navy and soon a Marine Corps space command. Times, they are a changin’.
Getting an opportunity to see the personal side of Gen. Whiting, however, was a real pleasure.
Even when a young reporter rushed in too late to hear his speech and asked if that was him over there in the blue suit.
Yep.
Oh, Canada!
Did anyone notice the nice folks staffing the Canada booth in the main showcase room?
It’s an honest question, since they’re located so far back and away it’s like they’re used to being the far country.
Still, it’s pretty cool to see how the Space and Missile Defense Symposium has grown over the years, and that includes the exhibitors that have joined what truly is one of the best military and defense-industry gatherings in the nation.
And, apparently, the world.
Several military officers in foreign military uniforms, for example, often are seen walking the floors or speaking in one of the sessions.
Plenty of engineers and technical experts and others from nations such as Germany, France and Italy are easy to be found and interesting to hear speak.
Canada is well represented with its colorful booth and friendly representatives.
Having traveled a good bit throughout Canada and visiting all of its provinces over the years, it’s a neighboring nation I admire and appreciate very much.
So, I asked one of the reps sitting at its booth where she was from?
“Atlanta.”
Oh well…
Thanks, everyone, for what you do to contribute to the defense and strength of our country.
SMDS is a wonderful showcase of many good things every year. You folks are the best of it.
I’ll see you on the floor.
Y’all be good.
Troy Turner is the editor and senior consultant for AlaDefense.com. He can be reached at [email protected]. His bio can be found here.
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