Space Power: Warfighting in Space to Win on Earth, 2019 Air Space & Cyber Conference, Gen. John Raymond.
Transcript
[Announcer] AFA’s Strategic Events Executive, Brigadier General Bernie Skoch. (dramatic music)
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome back from the coffee break and welcome to our last sessions of the day. We hope you’re having a wonderful Air, Space, and Cyber Conference. I can tell you that as of an hour ago we’re about 900 attendees ahead of where we were last year’s record-breaking attendance. So thank you for being part of that. Our speaker this afternoon is the newly appointed commander of U.S. Space Command, established to accelerate the United States’ space capabilities and to address rapidly evolving threats to U.S. space assets. U.S. Space Command’s mission is to deter aggression and conflict, defend U.S. and allied freedom of action, deliver space combat power for the Joint Combined Force and develop Joint Warfighters to advance U.S. and allied interests in, from, and through space. I would add that during our speaker’s presentation I’d invite you to send texted questions to the number that will be showing on the screen, and we’ll be glad to entertain as many as we can. So with that, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming General Jay Raymond. (crowd applauding) (dramatic music)
Good afternoon. How’s everybody? So this is the last thing between us and the end of the day, right? (crowd laughing) They save the best for last, just kidding. I was thinking, I was listening to the Chief, our Chief and Chief Master Sergeant in the last town hall and there was a discussion about how are we gonna survive this transition? ‘Cause they are clearly the A Team, and I have a great, I was thinking, I was in my seat, I was thinking. I think I’m gonna have Congress pass a law in the NDA that mandates that they’re gonna do that for six years. How about that? (crowd laughing) Everybody in with me? (crowd clapping) You know, I was also very interested in the suicide conversation and I wanna thank AFA for putting on this conference. It’s a great opportunity to connect with the past. We got to meet with some original Tuskegee Airmen. We got to meet with our future in the ROTC and Air Force Academy cadets that are here. And we also get to celebrate those that are presently serving. Last night we had a great dinner with the twelve outstanding Airmen of the Year and all of us. Well, I’ll tell ya. We have thousands and thousands of outstanding Airmen of the Year. And one of the questions that came up was about suicides and what are we doing about suicides. And the Chief with the Chief’s leadership and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force’s leadership, we did a down day focused on that. I’d like to, if you’d let me, just highlight three Airmen that work in Air Force Space Command. I ran into these three Airmen earlier today and I met them about three or four weeks ago. And as challenging as that suicide challenges are we have an opportunity. We’re a part of the world’s best Air Force. We’re part of a team that’s bigger than ourselves. We have the wingman concept. Let me introduce you to A1C Brittany Wright, A1C Tiffany Duffus. Will you please stand up? (crowd clapping) Let me tell you about these Airmen. Both A1Cs, relatively recently in our Air Force. Had gone to tech school and at tech school befriended another Airmen in that tech school. They work in our dental squadron at the area dental lab at Peterson Air Force Base. And one of their classmates called from another base in distraught. He was just distraught. And despair and was gonna take his life, potentially. Very significant possibility that was gonna happen. And so while one was on the phone, signaled to her friend, hey go get the First Sergeant. And got the First Sergeant and talked to their First Sergeant about what was going on. That First Sergeant sprung into action, called this base, found out the First Sergeant of the Squadron that was at this other base, and kept this individual on the phone until help could be there. And they got that Airman and got them the help that they need. Thank you for doing that. (crowd clapping) One other Airman I’d like to introduce, and that’s Staff Sergeant Whitman, Danny Whitman. Can you please stand up? Danny is from our security forces squadron at Peterson Air Force Base. And, you know, we had this strategic pause but before the strategic pause Sergeant Whitman was getting frustrated that the security force career field seemed like it was getting a big hit, it was taking a big hit with suicides. And didn’t want to just sit around not doing anything. So him and one of his teammates put together a suicide summit. This was long before a stand down day. And brought up, thought through some things that they could do to help tackle this problem. And I just want to say thank you to you as well. This is what, and this is not about space, I’m gonna talk about space here in a minute. But I’m passionate about this. This is what makes us the world’s greatest Air Force, and this is what gives me hope that we can combat these issues. It’s not programs from the top down. It’s Airmen like these three and many, many, many others across our Air Force that have done similar things. So thank you for your leadership. Thanks for your service. (crowd clapping) So today I’m gonna talk to you a little bit about space. It is an absolutely incredibly, incredibly exciting time to be in this business. This is a little mentoring tip. This is a developmental opportunity. I wouldn’t recommend this but my day to day battle rhythm is I wake up and I reach over to my nightstand and I grab my work iPhone and I read all the news clips about what people said I said, or what people said I didn’t say. And there’s not a day that goes by, not a day that goes by that space isn’t front and center in the news. And I’ll tell ya, in my 35 years of service I have never, never experienced anything like we’ve experienced over the last several years. And it’s not just a critical, it’s not just and exciting time. It’s a really critical time. And that’s what’s generating this conversation. We’re at what I call a strategic inflection point. You know, since 1991 largely since the First Gulf War, Desert Storm, our Air Force has been focused on integrating space into everything that we do. And there’s nothing that any of you do in any of your jobs, there’s nothing that a Joint Force does, that doesn’t do it better because space is enabling it. Nothing. Whether it’s humanitarian assistance disaster relief or whether it’s combat, space is part of that operation. The challenge is, and you’ve heard this before, that our adversaries have had a front row seat in watching this, and they see the advantages that we gain from this multi-domain integration that the Chief talked about. And they don’t like what they see. And they’re developing capabilities for two-fold. One, they’re developing capabilities for their own use so they can have that same advantage that we currently enjoy, and secondly, they’re developing capabilities to deny us that advantage. And the scope, scale, and complexity of that threat is very real and is very concerning. Everything from low-end reversible jamming to directed energy to concerning on-orbit activities to kinetic destruction of a satellite as demonstrated by the Chinese in 2007. And again, that threat requires us to make a change. So if you look at the National Defense Strategy, the National Defense Strategy talks about great power competition. It talks about global, multi-domain capabilities. It talks about what we, as an Air Force, bring with air, space, and cyber. We’re the best in the world at space. So if you read, if you do what I do and read those clips, don’t misread what you’re reading. We are the best in the world at space, and us with our partners, I know we have a lot of allied partners here that we are working very closely with to develop those partnerships. We are the best in the world. But on the 29th of August, we’re even better. ‘Cause on the 29th of August, we established United States Space Command. The reason why I say we’re a little better is that this command is going to be singularly focused on the space domain. It’s not space for space’s sake. It’s space for joint warfighting’s sake. It’s the rubix cube that the Chief talked about. I don’t know, do you remember how many combinations he said of different colors there were? If you take space out of that, that goes down significantly. It’s foundational to our success to meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy. And that’s what this warfighting imperative is. It’s a joint warfighting imperative and the reason why we’re standing up this command. So for those at STRATCOM, how many people are currently serving at STRATCOM or have served at STRATCOM before? Thank you. This isn’t saying that you did bad. I’ve been part of STRATCOM. I’ve commanded two operational components of STRATCOM. I’ve been the J5 at STRATCOM. I’ve been in the service component of STRATCOM. I’m pretty proud of what we’ve done, but we have an opportunity here to put the accelerator down. And one of the things that General Hyten talks about is that at STRATCOM, because of the responsibilities that STRATCOM has, space could at best be the number three priority with nuclear mission being one, nuclear command and control being two, and space being about number three. Well, today, with U.S. Space Command that’s it. Space is number one. And that’s going to provide us a significant advantage. Back in August of last year, somebody whispered in my ear. They said hey, we think we might be standing up a U.S. Space Command and so I was going TDY for an extended TDY and I brought a small team to come with me, and in the side room they planned and in the evenings after I got done with my work I’d sit down and we’d do the mission analysis for planning U.S. Space Command. Go to the first slide. It’s a really rough picture. It was an iPhone picture. But that’s it. That’s the planning team. And that was again in a little back room. Dave Totec, civilian on the left from STRATCOM, Ken Clock, a planner for the Joint Force Space Component Command at the time, Tom James who was the J3 of the Joint Force Space Component Command at the time and now the J3 of U.S. Space Command, Mark Main, a civilian out of Vandenberg who is steeped in the space business, and Governor Bratton, an Air National Guard Colonel at the time, now a one-star who’s now the deputy J3 at U.S. Space Command. And that team for a week did the mission analysis for what U.S. Space Command was gonna be. And what it was gonna be, the charge I gave to the team was think outside of the box. Build the command that we need, not the command that was before or under the constraints of what we have today. Build the command that we need to meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy. And that’s what they did. And if you look at the butcher block paper that we hung up on the wall and we did all the mission planning on, it’s pretty remarkable that what we planned back in August of last year is what we implemented and established on the 29th of August. Go to the next slide please.
We’re gathered here in the Rose Garden to establish the United States Space Command. It’s a big deal. As the newest combatant command, SPACECOM will defend America’s vital interests in space, the next warfighting domain. And I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody. It’s all about space. The establishment of the 11th Combatant Command is a landmark moment. This is a landmark day. One that recognizes the centrality of space to America’s national security and defense.
In my view, it’s not an overstatement to say that we’re at another Sputnik moment. And you could argue that the stakes are much higher than they were in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The re-establishment of Space Command should be understood as part of a broader effort to maintain our nation’s competitive advantage in space.
So today, we build on the legacy of this original United States Space Command. But this is a different command, built for a different time. Built to compete, deter, and win in an extremely complex and quickly evolving strategic environment. For the men and women that are standing in formation, and for those in this command, you are the foundation of our great strength. You have my complete trust and confidence and I couldn’t be more proud to serve at your side. You are the source of U.S. Space Command’s combat power, and I know that together, we will answer the call of our new national imperative for space. Now, it’s time to get to work.
So, how cool was that? (crowd clapping) Honor, absolute honor of my lifetime to go to the Oval Office and then have the President host the establishment ceremony in the Rose Garden. And I’ll tell ya, that just shows the importance of space to our nation. It was a huge honor to represent all the Airmen, Sailors, Soldiers, and Marines that conduct space operations for the United States today in partnership with our allies. It’s great to have Chief Toby Toberman. Toby, please stand up. (crowd clapping) You might be wondering in that clip. We merged two ceremonies. We had the ceremony at the White House and then we did a ceremony back at Peterson. You might wonder why we did that. It’s kind of like the justice of the peace and then the church service. We had the justice of the peace to make it official with the President, and then we went home to family and friends and had a so the Airmen, Sailors, Soldiers, and Marines of the command could actually have a chance to see the flag being unfurled. I’ll tell ya, it’s a pretty proud day for all of us. We’ve been working very hard. So, I talked about August of last year we started the planning. When we got back from that TDY we stood up a planning team and Brigadier General Rock Miller, Dave Miller, led that planning effort for almost the entire next year going over every possible thing that had to be planned to get us ready to where we are today. And I’ll tell ya, as of 29 August we were up and running and doing our nation’s work. As the President said in his talks, space is a warfighting domain. Chief talked about this a little bit in his remarks. He said that, you know, a few years ago, on this podium I wouldn’t be able to say space and warfighting in the same sentence, and today we say that without batting an eye. Every speech I give, every speech I give I talk about space as a warfighting domain just like air, land, and sea. Think about the implications of that though. They’re significant. It requires different partnerships. It requires different architectures. It requires different authorities. It requires maturing the warfighting domain pieces like hostile intent and ROE. It requires a change to how we professionally develop our space warfighters. So at the end of this year, we got to the finish line, right? And we established the command. Wrong. Now, we’re just beginning. And so now there’s a ton of work to do, a ton of work to do to mature this domain as a warfighting domain. Go to the next slide. So where are we going with that? Next slide, please. Well, back in 1986 there was a Goldwater-Nichols Act. And Goldwater-Nichols Act talked about jointness. It split the department up into two functions. One function is to organize, train, and equip, and the other function is warfighting. And in both of those functions, both organize, train, and equip, and the warfighting function, the U.S. is going to elevate the organization for those functions. So, on the organize, train, and equip side. That’s the Space Force. I’ll tell ya, both of these functions are imperative and they’re complimentary. So, on the Space Force side, today, Air Force Space Command is a major command in the United States Air Force, and we’re going to elevate that to the next level up as a separate service. Congress is working that right now. National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate has their version of the bill. The House has their version of the bill, and they’re coming together in conference to pass that legislation. We are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to establish a separate branch of the Armed Forces and the U.S. Space Force. U.S. Space Command will only be as good as the capabilities that a service provides them. That’s why they’re complimentary. And again I talked about that on the warfighting side we’ve elevated from a component command of U.S. Strategic Command, a component command that was called the Joint Task Force, I’m sorry, the Joint Force Space Component Command. We elevated that to a combatant command. Some of you may remember, back in 1985 to 2002, we had a combatant command called U.S. Space Command. And some of you are probably saying well what’s the difference? Well, there’s a lot of difference. Primarily what’s different is the strategic environment that we face. This command shares the same name but as I said in the video, it is a different command built for a different time with a different strategic environment. And so we custom built this to be able to handle that strategic environment. Specifically, if you look at this command, it is a geographic combatant command, the previous Space Command was a functional combatant command. The AOR for U.S. Space Command is a hundred, excuse me, a hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface and higher. That’s a big AOR. We have a combined force space component command. So we took the joint, and I’ll go into this in a little bit more detail on the next slide. But we took the joint force space component command and we made it a combined command to strengthen that partnership that we have with our allies. We are working that really, really hard. We exercise with our allies. We train with our allies. We man a C2 center with our allies. We’re gonna develop a C2 system with our allies. We’ve expanded more courses and professional development opportunities for allies. We are, it is clear, that we are stronger together. We’ve also stood up a joint task force for space defense. That’s also a first. And that command is gonna focus on protecting and defending the space domain. And finally, and I’ll walk you through this as well, we have a stronger linkage with our joint warfighting partners in other combatant commands around the globe. Go to the next slide, please. So, let’s talk about, a little bit about, the guidance and tasks that we’ve been given as the U.S. Space Command. And so if you look at the, again on the top, on the right hand side, it talks about the fact that this is a geographic combatant command with an AOR. That’s to strengthen the fact that space is a warfighting domain. And that will allow us to integrate more seamlessly with our combatant command partners. To stand up a command, you have to also have a set of missions. So the President signed a change to the unified command plan that lists the missions that are there. The missions that are on that list are largely what STRATCOM did with a couple exceptions. One, there’s a stronger, if you look at the first one, there’s a stronger emphasis on offensive and defensive operations. And if you look at kind of the middle, way down, it says the U.S. Space Command will protect and defend U.S. allied partner capabilities. One of the things that we’ve worked very closely with with our intelligence committee, I will tell you, that partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office has never been stronger. We operate day to day on what we call a unity of effort basis. And we sit in the same C2 centers, we share data, we share information back and forth, and that’s working very well day to day. But when a time of crisis comes, in my opinion, you have to have somebody that has the authority to make that direction, to make directions to protect and defend those capabilities. And that’s what we’ve come up with. And so, if you look at that, you see P mission. And it talks about the responsibilities of U.S. Space Command. We have agreed, come to agreement with the National Reconnaissance Office and Intelligence Committee that in times of crisis that we’re gonna follow a playbook that we’re gonna develop together that the NRO will take direction from the U.S. Space Command Commander to protect and defend those satellites. We’re not in the NRO’s chain of command but we are gonna be able to direct activities to be able to protect and defend those capabilities. Huge step forward. If you lump all those missions in those kind of four categories, I’d ask you to remember the four Ds. First of all, we want to deter conflict from ascending into space. Chief talked about it. We want to win this fight before this fight ever takes place. As he said, and I agree, nobody wins this fight if it begins or ascends into space. We want to change the calculus of any adversary that says if they think that they can negate our space advantage to be able to successfully achieve their interests, they’re not going to be able to do it. So they better decide not to even try. We’re gonna defend those capabilities and again, as I talked about, there’s a sharper focus on that defense. We’re gonna deliver and continue to deliver that combat edge to the warfighting commands across the world and I’ll talk to you about how we’re gonna do that in the next slide. And then we’re gonna develop joint space warfighters and also, more traditional warfighters that have a better understanding of space. Go to the next slide, please. So this is the command as it stood up on the 29th of August. About just shy of 300 professionals in the command, in the headquarters, if you will. Just shy of 300 broken up into two operational components. I talked about the combined force space component command. That’s gonna be Major General Whiting as the 14th Air Force commander and dual hatted as that. That is a combined command again. A first as of 29 August. And they have a C2 center called the Combined Space Operations Center out of Vandenberg Air Force Base. And that will be the C2 center that they will use to deliver space capabilities around the world. We then have a joint task force for space defense that’s located out of Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. They also have a C2 center. That C2 center is called the National Space Defense Center and that center is focused on protecting and defending that domain and they’ll support the joint task force space defense. We also have service components. The Air Force service component to U.S. Space Command is Air Force Space Command and I’m dual hatted as the Air Force Space Command commander and the U.S. Space Command commander. So I get to yell at myself in my joint hat when I don’t deliver something that I need in my service hat. We’ll also have Army service components, Navy service components, Marine service component that have been identified and that will be codified here in the coming months. We also have other capabilities, command centers like the Joint Navigation Warfare Center down at Kirtland. The Joint OPIR center up at Buckley Air Force Base. And the Missile Warning Center located at Cheyenne Mountain. So that’s the headquarters structure. The other thing that we’re gonna do is we’re gonna have integrated planning elements. And I wanna spend a little bit of time talking about this. This is modeled very closely after the way Cyber Command has done business. We need to develop a stronger relationship with combatant commands around the world. Today, there’s not a significant number of space experts in those combatant commands. We largely, as an Air Force, integrate at the air component level, but at the combatant command level there’s not many. So we’re gonna develop teams and embed those teams forward in each of the combatant commands to help us do the integrated planning that’s required to meet the global demands outlined in the National Defense Strategy. We’re gonna start with the first three are listed on the top of that slide. We’ve stood one up at U.S. Strategic Command. That was kind of easy ’cause U.S. Strategic Command had space experts that were there and we were bringing those space experts to U.S. Space Command and so we’ve left behind, if you will, a team that still works for U.S. Strategic Command to be able to do that integrated planning with U.S. Strategic Command. The next two priorities are EUCOM and INDOPACOM. We’ve already built shells of teams that have gone forward, have already started paying dividends, and we’ll continue to build those out as we go. And then every one of the combatant commands will get a team as we build these teams and build the folks that will be part of those teams. We see this as a significant advantage to U.S. Space Command, again, to meet the challenges of the National Defense Strategy. Go to the next slide, please. So here’s the priorities of the command. First of all, we’re gonna seamlessly transition to space warfighting responsibilities. STRATCOM, again, up until the 29th of August was responsible for space. When Secretary of Defense Esper signed the document that transferred space to U.S. Space Command, we’re now responsible for that. So we have seamlessly transitioned the day to day operations of space and we will continue to transition as we mature through IOC and FOC. And that’s the second bullet. We are gonna rapidly build capabilities to be able to reach IOC and FOC. We’re not putting a timeline on it. We don’t have a date certain that says here’s what it’s gonna be. It’s gonna be conditions based. And we’re doing the planning to lay out those conditions that will allow us to identify when we’ve reached those two significant milestones. We’re gonna fully integrate with our inter-agency partners and our combatant commands. I talked about that. I talked about that with the great partnership that we have with the National Reconnaissance Office and others, and I talked about that with how we’re gonna build the integrated planning elements with the combatant commands. Again, a significant priority. I cannot stress enough how important partnerships are. And the partnerships with our allies are really, really important. We see it every time we operate together day to day. We see it every time we exercise together. We see it every time we do wargaming together. In fact, just last week we played the Shriever wargame with our allied partners and we saw it again. We are gonna make that a continued focus for this command. On the commercial partnerships, it’s also an exciting time to be in this business. I was thinking the other day, I used this a couple times, I said it’s not a great term to use but there’s an explosion of activity in the commercial space business. We have more billionaires building rockets than we have launch weeks. Think about that. It’s kinda cool. There’s great opportunities here. Great opportunities to leverage that. And not only just in the launch business but also in the satellite business. And there’s huge, if you look at the number of satellites that are on orbit today out of all the things that we track, all the objects that we track in space, about 24,000-ish, a little over 1400-ish are satellites. In the next coming years, there might be 20,000 satellites. We need to leverage that. And then the last thing that I would like to focus on is this developing joint smart warfighters, and space smart joint warfighters. Let me go to the next slide to bring this to life. Anybody know who the gentlemen is on the left hand side?
[Man] Sully.
Sully. If you are on an airplane and there was an issue with an airplane, who would you wanna have as the pilot? You want Sully, right? I do. ‘Cause you know, even if you lost both engines, he’s gonna land that plane, and you’re gonna be safe, right? Who’s on the right? A fighter pilot. Is anybody shooting at Sully? No. It’s a different level of training. Today, we’ve had the luxury in the space business of developing Sullys. We have the world’s best space operators. But they’re operating in a benign domain. Have been operating in a benign domain. That domain has changed. We now have to build fighter pilots. That drives a different methodology to how we do business. I talked about it. You have to train differently. You have to have different architectures. You have to have different partnerships. You have to have different tactics, techniques and procedures. You have to have different authorities. All of that has to happen as we make this transition. The other thing is this fighter pilot better understand a lot more about space. Because in the future, I’m convinced, if we were to get into a conflict we’re gonna have to fight for space superiority. And that’s gonna require the full weight of the joint force. Go to the next slide, please. So this is Bernard Shriever. Largely recognized as the father of DoD space. And you look at a quote that he did back in 1957. I agree with that. I’ll tell you, as I said at the beginning, I couldn’t be more proud of where we are in the space business. I couldn’t be more proud of the advances we’ve made over the last years. I will tell ya, with the stand up of U.S. Space Command and with an impending post NDA and stand up of United States Space Force, it’s gonna provide us a huge advantage to accelerate our opportunities going forward. With that, I’d like to say thank you for listening and I’ll open it up to any questions you may have. (crowd clapping)
Thank you General Raymond. We’ve received many questions already, and we’ll start with the most serious one. A grave issue. Is it true that in the Space Command movie that’s upcoming that Bruce Willis will play your part?
Bruce Willis. That’s true. He doesn’t know it yet, but that’s true. (crowd laughing) So, I have Netflix like I think most of us, and I never had watched Netflix largely up until a little bit ago. And I was going through my banking statement. It’s the absolute, honest to goodness truth. I was going through my bank statement and I’m seeing the whatever it was, $14 a month or whatever it was was going out. And I’m like, what am I paying this for? And I turned it off. And about 2.3 seconds after I turn it off my three kids from around the country go (screams). What happened to Netflix? (crowd laughing) And I said I never watch Netflix. Dad, you gotta. So, I turned it back on. And about another month or so later, my daughter from Iowa sends me a text and said hey, space is really going big. I said, “What do you mean?” They’re doing, Netflix is doing a show about space force. And, who’s the guy, the actor? Steve Carell is gonna play ya. I said absolutely not. He’s got way too much hair. (crowd laughing) And so then if you go on Twitter there was a little joke going around about who’s gonna play who. Who’s gonna play the Secretary of the Air Force? Who’s gonna play the Chief of Staff of the Air Force? Who’s gonna play General Raymond? And all the notable bald headed actors were there and hopefully it’s Bruce Willis, but we’ll see. (crowd laughing)
[Skoch] On a different note.
We can keep going with those. (crowd laughing)
There have been several questions, General Raymond, about the possible militarization of space, the implications of a Space Command and of the Space Force with regard to that weaponization in the Outer Space Treaty. Do you care to comment on what those implications might be?
So, yeah, the Outer Space Treaty says you can’t have nuclear weapons in space. That’s about what it says. The rest, it’s the wild, wild west. So, I would look at this and I’d ask the question what are the implications if you don’t have it? The implications are huge. The success of our joint force is gonna be underpinned by the success that we have in all domains including space. And so, we do not want to have a war that extends into space, that begins or extends. We’re trying to deter it. As the Chief said, the best way I know how to deter that is to do that from a position of strength, and I think U.S. Space Command combined with future Space Force will be able to give us that strength to deter.
Yes, sir. Thank you. You mentioned briefly the vast amount of commercial investment in space and the explosive growth I think is the word you used to describe the commercial presence in space. Do you care to comment on what the implications again are of standing up a Space Command and possibly Space Force with this important partnership, and specifically do you see a role for a craft-like structure with respect to space?
Yeah, so, again, today we partner very closely with commercial space. Specifically, in our launch mission. We procure commercial launches. There’s a great opportunity ahead to partner on the satellite side. Let me give you an example. There are satellite companies today that are building thousands and thousands of satellites. Constellations in low Earth orbit of thousands and thousands of satellites. The capability is operationally relevant but more importantly the business model changes. Today we build satellites that are pretty expensive, and they’re relatively large, and they’re not all that defendable. And so as we look at this new business model that’s being generated by the commercial market we have an opportunity to leverage that. The risk calculus changes when you’re producing satellites, multiple satellites a day rather than a satellite every five or six years, so we’re really not just leveraging the capability but leveraging the business model to be able to redefine that risk. The other thing that a U.S. Space Command commander has is a sharpened voice, a stronger voice in requirements. And so it’s no longer good enough just to have a satellite that can survive launch and begin to operate and survive initial operations. You have to have a satellite that is defendable. And so U.S. Space Command will put a sharper focus on that.
Yes, sir. And along those lines, you did a, I thought, an outstanding job throughout your presentation. It was particularly enlightening to see the organizational structure as it’s evolving and emerging. Would you care to talk a little bit about the force structure that’s going to underpin that, specifically skillsets, AFSCs, joint force implications, reserve force implications. How do you see that evolving?
Today let’s start with the first one on the reserve. Today in the Air Force Space Command then under STRATCOM and then today under U.S. Space Command, we rely very heavily on our reserve and national guard forces to conduct space missions. That will have to continue into the future. In a joint command, it’s really important that we don’t fill this command up with just joint space operators. This is all about joint warfighting. This is having, it takes the full mix of warfighters to be able to fight and win for space superiority in the future, and so this, the U.S. Space Command side will have to be manned with a full compliment of joint warfighting. And we’re doing that today. If you look at who’s in the positions in that command, you’ll see a true joint representation, a total force representation across the joint warfighting skillsets. On a Space Force side, Congress is working through that right now. And what would be in a Space Force or what might not be in a Space Force and we’ll see how that plays out here in the NDA hopefully in the coming months. It’s really important that a Space Force be a separate branch of the Armed Forces.
As this emerges to a separate force, a separate military service, of course Title X has significant implications with respect to the difference between unified command and a military department which is, of course, under the UCPN under Title X charged with organizing, training, equipping. Do you see those roles changing significantly and do you see some rapid capabilities emerging with respect to weapons system acquisitions for space assets?
I think what we’re doing today in both of those functions are very consistent with the Goldwater-Nichols Act and very consistent with Title X authorities. It is important that as the law is built that the Space Force is, you know, Title X is changed to reflect that Space Force. That’s going to be really important going forward. I don’t see any significant changes. This will be normal, normalized warfighting just like any other service and any other warfighting command.
If we look at our historical commands in the Air Force, they were emerged originally to address an air power mission. Then, of course, we saw Cyber emerge as a mission area, and we saw Cyber Command stood up recently. Have you looked to Cyber Command for lessons learned?
We have. You know, when you’re only given a really short period of time, you look to anybody that you can plagiarize. That’s the highest form of flattery. And so we looked at Cyber Command and got the lessons learned from them. We also looked at NORTHCOM, and they just went through a stand up of a combatant command. So we’ve taken all of those lessons to help us do this and do it right and do it rapidly.
As a combatant commander, you significantly influence the supporting services with respect to the systems and the people that you need to do your mission. Do you think combatant commanders have about the right amount of authority or do you think they ought to have a little bit more authority?
So, in my two weeks of experience.
[Skoch] Yeah, in your vast two weeks of experience. Yes, sir.
I’m very comfortable with the authorities that I have in my U.S. Space Command hat to be able to shape requirements. I think they’re appropriate.
Talk to us again, sir, about capabilities development and rapidity of industry to be able to partner with you. Do you see some specific needs that if you could make your wishlist for five things that you wish industry would do differently, what would that look like?
I think, clearly, one of the things that we have to do is we have to move at a faster pace. We have to go faster. And so, I use this a lot but let’s say Orville Wright is a GPS satellite, and Orville is orbiting up in the medium Earth orbit providing navigation and timing for the world and we want to buy a clone just like him. An exact duplicate. How long does that take? Anybody guess? Five or six years. Let’s say we wanted him to have a different arm or a different elbow or a different whatever. How long does that take? It takes probably about ten. That’s not fast enough. And so when I talked about a different business model I went to a company recently and visited a factory and they were building an assembly line for space, for satellites. There was zero satellites that had been built and a few months later they launched 60. We’ve gotta get there. We’ve gotta be able to go fast. I would also say that, as the Chief laid out that multi-domain video that he showed. You have to be connected. You have to be able to link sensor to shooter. And so a better connectivity between multi-domains I think is going to be really important going forward. Got time for one more.
Yes, sir. And this is a very serious question. I’ve reviewed your biography for several years now and see that you’ve graduated from Clemson University. Is it Clemson or Alabama?
I thought you were gonna give me a hard question.
I can’t control the audience, sir.
My college roommate’s right there. Jordy Jordan. Go Tigers. I think … It’s obvious. (crowd laughing) I’ll just leave it at that.
Well, General Raymond, you have illuminated the room with your brilliance again and several questions were about the new Space Force and it’s uniform. So we would hope that you’d consider AFA socks as part of that uniform. Thank you.
We’ll bill that, thank you very much. Thank you. (crowd applauding) Thank you very much. (dramatic music)
Ladies and gentlemen, we invite you to return tomorrow morning at 8:30 where we will welcome our Secretary of Defense. Thank you for being here.