Pittsburgh's relevance in the broader national space industry is reaching new heights and the U.S. military is responding.
The latest indication of this came Friday when the U.S. Space Force and other officials celebrated the launch of a new national U.S. AFWERX Hub that's now located at the Nova Place complex in Pittsburgh's North Side neighborhood. This hub will also serve as Keystone Space Innovation Center, which will be run and developed by the Pittsburgh-based and tri-state-focused Keystone Space Collaborative organization.
As the first of its kind for the region, the hub will serve public and private interests, including the Department of Defense and space-adjacent organizations. Its location in the Nova Place complex is temporary for now as it scouts to build a more permanent base of operations nearby, which will someday include a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) as well.
"Pittsburgh has become a hub of high tech and innovation; it has built itself into that over many years," Four Star Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force, said. "There's an incredible number of new and innovative businesses that have grown up here in Pittsburgh in the areas of autonomy and robotics and space technology and advanced manufacturing that is incredibly important for the future of the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force."
The AFWERX hub in Pittsburgh is one of seven total AFWERX locations across the country. AFWERX serves as the innovation branch of the U.S. Air Force and it aims to partner innovative technology developers with military personnel. It's divided into three core arms — an investment program AFVentures, a training program that pairs military personnel with commercial interests called Spark and an industry accelerator program that uses government resources for "rapid and affordable fielding" called Prime.
According to Thompson, an Ambridge native, the Pittsburgh AFWERX location is special.
He touted the region's strong academic base emerging from "renowned research universities" like Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh as well as the region's historic hard-working culture and its ability to find and solve problems for hundreds of years.
"All of that comes together in a unique opportunity and in a unique possibility for the United States Air Force, the United States Space Force to work with Pittsburgh and the surrounding area," Thompson said. "[There is] absolutely business opportunity. People talk about Silicon Valley, people talk about Austin, Texas. I will tell you, this center and this region is the full equal of those regions as well."
Other opportunities will come from the Keystone Space Innovation Center, too, which will share space with the AFWERX hub.
"We wanted to create an actual physical facility to house both the Keystone Space Collaborative and the Pittsburgh AFWERX team to have a place where — folks in the community, new companies, entrepreneurs, established companies doing work in the space and space-adjacent fields — can come, co-work together, collaborate together and create new partnerships," Justine Kasznica, founder and chair of the Keystone Space Collaborative as well as a shareholder and chair of the Emerging Technology Practice Group at Babst Calland LLP, said. "We'll be running programs, events and venture opportunities as the years unfold."
Long term, Kasznica said she's excited to convert the space into a public and declassified lab facility to further encourage the development of new innovations "that can help accelerate America's leadership in the space sector." The Keystone Space Collaborative will look to coalesce all of that activity, she said.
"And that's both on the defense and civil side…It is incredibly timely because the space economy is growing," Kasznica said. "We think that we have what it takes to be dominant players in the new space economy of the future, and now is the time to act. Other states are further along in terms of [funds] that they are raising from the federal government and the private sector for space-related activities. But we are competitive when we look at us as a region. We have to bring that competitiveness to the next level, and a center like this will allow us to anchor our resources in one place."
Brian Kennedy, the senior vice president for operations and government affairs at the Pittsburgh Technology Council, believes that the nation's most complex challenges as it relates to national defense are going to be solved by people in Pittsburgh. He teased that the AFWERX hub is just one of many future endeavors the U.S. military will establish in the region in the coming months and years.
"By the end of this year, you're going to see a major presence from the Army Futures Command, which is already here working on artificial intelligence," Kennedy said. "I can't say how often I'm now hosting inbound military delegations. I probably hosted 100 just in the last eight months, probably 100 different generals, program directors, three star, four star [generals] that are coming to Pittsburgh looking for solutions."
Last June, military officials from the Austin, Texas-based U.S. Army Futures Command, in partnership with the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA), came to Pittsburgh to scout the region's various technology and innovation-related businesses for potential opportunities and investments. The trip followed last April's "Artificial Intelligence + Autonomous Systems Symposium & Exposition" event at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center put on by the Pittsburgh chapter of the AUSA.
