Lessons from Vietnam: ‘I Shall Always Be Grateful’

Lessons from Vietnam: ‘I Shall Always Be Grateful’

March 6, 2023 | By Patrick Reardon

The AFA Warfare Symposium kicked off March 6 with three storied heroes of the Vietnam War. This is the first in a three-part series on their talks.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith (Ret.). Smith joined the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron at Takhli Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, in August 1967. For the next two months, Smith flew 33 combat missions in his F-105 Thunderchief over North Vietnam. His 33rd mission, Oct. 25, 1967, struck Phúc Yên Air Base, just north of Hanoi. It was his last.

Maj. Gene Smith in front of his F-105 in October 1967, the month he was taken as a POW in North Vietnam. Courtesy photo.

“We took off that day, a beautiful afternoon,” Smith recalled. As the flight lead, he had carefully briefed his team to drop their bombs at 9,000 feet, no higher. “Guess who exceeded the 9,000 feet? Me. And when I pulled off the target my airplane got hit. Instantly, the airplane tumbled.”

Pitching uncontrollably, Smith bailed out awkwardly, sustaining a deep flesh wound in his right leg as he exited the cockpit. His parachute opened and he descended; as soon as his feet touched the earth, he was surrounded. Vietnamese soldiers armed with AK-47s fired, sending two bullets ripping through his left leg. 

“They undressed me with a machete and off we went to the Hilton,” Smith said, referring to the notorious Hoa Lo prison known eupemistically as the Hanoi Hilton. It would be his home for the next 1,967 days, where he and hundreds of other Airmen prisoners endured interrogation and torture.

“We spent five and a half years,” Smith said. “That’s the hardest part to understand about our conditions, is how long it was. The horrible indefiniteness of it all.”

Smith returned as part of Operation Homecoming on March 14, 1973; in all, 591 Americans came home as part of the operation between Feb. 12 and April 4 of that year.

Surviving was the true test of the their endurance.

“You can’t teach resiliency,” Smith said. “You can teach some of the factors in the equation. But you learn resiliency as a child. You learn resiliency when you’re in high school or college. You learn resiliency in your first days in the military, I hope. But the way we got through that was faith. Faith in God. Faith in your country. Faith in your family, that they would always be there for you. Faith in your fellow POWs.”

The faith that helped Smith withstand the darkest years of his life did not lead him to a lifetime of resentment or despair, but to a lifetime of service and repayment to his nation and his Air Force. 

“The most beautiful flag I’ve ever seen in my life was on the tail of a C-141 that pulled up into Gia Lam and took me, Lee Ellis, John McCain, Chuck Rice, and a whole list of others that were in that group,” Smith said. “I shall always be grateful. I shall always be grateful to my nation. I shall always be grateful to the Air Force for the wonderful life I’ve had.”

Space Force to Take on the Army’s Missile Warning Ground Stations in October

Space Force to Take on the Army’s Missile Warning Ground Stations in October

March 6, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—Space Delta 4, the Space Force unit responsible for missile tracking and warning, will take over responsibility for the Joint Tactical Ground Stations from the Army in October, its commander said March 6. 

The Army was originally slated to keep the JTAGS mission, even as the Space Force took over other services’ space missions, but last September 2022 it became clear that could change. At the time, Maj. Gen. Doug Schiess, vice commander of Space Operations Command, indicated the two services were in early discussions about transferring JTAGS. The transfer was confirmed in a January release about the Buckley Space Force Base. 

Space Delta 4 commander Col. Miguel A. Cruz, speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium, said the transition is slated for October, expanding Delta 4’s broad portfolio. 

“By the time all this coalesces, Delta 4 is going to have orbital sensors, ground-based sensors doing the strategic mission, ground-based sensors doing tactical missions and of course, all the array of antennas around the world that ensure that data transfer goes from one place to another,” Cruz said. 

The transfer will also create logistical responsibilities for Space Base Delta 2, the mission support unit also headquartered at Buckley. 

“When we look at the JTAGS sites, there’s a level of installation support—what type of infrastructure and, more importantly, parts and being able to sustain that,” said Col. Marcus D. Jackson, commander of Space Base Delta 2. “And so when we look at what’s being transferred over from the Army to the Space Force, … we will establish [memorandums of understanding] with the Army on the requirements for supporting JTAGS representatives on site, being able if you need to store equipment, if you have to store parts, having that as part of the interrelationship with Space Force and the Army. We’re in the process of working and doing that now.” 

That work is all part of the operational nitty-gritty of transferring missions across services. 

“It’s not like you can flip a switch and say ‘Here you go. Here’s the keys to the new mission and off you go,’” he said. “There’s a lot of planning that goes into transferring a mission into another service, to include the number of people that are going to transfer, how you’re going to train them, the training pipeline, the sustainment activities that goes with that because now money and sustainment responsibility go from one service to another.”  

In order for the transfer to proceed smoothly, Cruz added, the Space Force will lean on the “resident expertise” of the Soldiers in the Army. Some will become inter-service transfers, while others will filter out over time rather than leaving all at once. 

“It’s not like we’re going to be all Guardians on day one. Actually on day one, we’ll have a number of Guardians—we already have about 14 of them among the various JTAGS detachments—and then gradually transition those Soldiers as their normal PCS cycle ensues. That allows us the opportunity to hit the ground running, but also kind of go with the training wheels as we take that over.” 

Further developments at Buckley could follow. Col. Robert J. Schreiner, commander of the Aerospace Data Facility-Colorado at the base, said he “would not be surprised to see some evolution of the mission as we evolve to diverse and proliferated architectures, as we evolve to new and emerging mission sets for our mission partners.” 

ADF-Colorado is controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office and doubles as Space Delta 20, working with industry, other services, other government agencies, and allies—highlighting the vast number of organizations that have a presence at Buckley. 

“We have 110 other mission partners on site that we care for day in and day out,” Jackson noted. 

Another of those mission partners is the Colorado Air National Guard, which is also undergoing changes. The Colorado ANG has had both air and space missions for years now, but two of its units are at a crossroads, said Col. Chris J. Southard, commander of the 140th Wing. 

The 140th flies F-16s but is hoping to gain new aircraft like the F-35 or F-15EX before its current fighters are retired around the end of the decade, Southard said. Meanwhile, the 137th Space Warning Squadron operates the Mobile Ground Systems trucks that communicate with the Defense Support Program (DSP) constellation. But with those DSP satellites past their anticipated service life, the squadron is also in need of a new mission.  

USAF Shakes Up Its Plan for Tankers: Fewer ‘Traditional’ Refuelers, Focus on Stealth Future

USAF Shakes Up Its Plan for Tankers: Fewer ‘Traditional’ Refuelers, Focus on Stealth Future

March 6, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force is dumping its decade-old strategy of a three-phase tanker recapitalization plan, replacing it with a strategy that will yield about 75 traditional tankers beyond the current run of the KC-46 and then focus on a future, survivable tanker, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said March 6.

“We have come to the determination that the kind of KC-X, -Y, -Z strategy that was established in the 2009-2010 timeframe is no longer fit for … meeting the air refueling needs of the joint force in the 2030s and beyond,” Hunter told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

The new Next Generation Air-refueling System, or NGAS, is “focused on ensuring” that USAF tankers in the mid-2030s and later “will be able to survive and operate in a much more contested environment than the tankers of the past or the tankers that are in our current fleet,” which include the KC-46, Hunter said.

Through analysis done as part of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s operational imperatives, Hunter said there are too many “threats that are posed by potential adversaries to high-value aircraft, including tankers,” and USAF needs an approach that addresses those threats while still meeting its obligations to refuel the joint force “in all of the critical operations that are required for high intensity conflict.”

Hunter said the Air Force consulted with Boeing and Lockheed Martin on when they could deliver new tankers after Boeing finishes its current contract for 179 KC-46s. Boeing could produce an uprated KC-46 by 2032 and Lockheed could provide an “LMXT” tanker, based on the Airbus A330, by 2034. By that time, USAF doesn’t want to be buying traditional tankers anymore, Hunter said.

Buying 75 further “traditional” tankers beyond the 179 KC-46s, USAF can stick to its schedule of retiring the KC-135 and KC-10, Hunter explained. After that, it will pursue a competitive program for a new airplane, but he indicated the KC-46 offers the best opportunity to “dovetail” with current production and not have a break in tanker recapitalization. The Air Force will decide on how to approach the purchase of the 75 aircraft—whether it will be sole source or competitive—in the next few months, he said. Either choice would require negotiations, but a sole source award to Boeing could move the program faster. He noted that if the KC-46 is chosen, it will likely cost more; not only because of new capabilities that will be added, but because USAF got “a very good deal” on the KC-46.

The KC-46 has been a fixed-price contract that Boeing knowingly underbid. So far, the company has taken more than $6 billion in losses on the program, costs that USAF might have had to bear otherwise.   

“We do expect,” based on the information provided by Boeing and Lockheed, that “that that may lead us towards KC-46 as the answer … to that ‘five-year KC-135 recapitalization effort,’  is what we’re calling it,” Hunter noted. “But we do need to hear from industry before we make any final determinations.”

The plan for KC-Y had been to buy about 150 more traditional tankers, Hunter said, but the new plan will “accelerate” the purchase of more advanced aircraft for the mission.

Kendall has for the last year cautioned that the Air Force would probably forego a competition for a so-called “bridge tanker,” preferring to save the money and time of a competition and put those resources toward a more advanced aircraft. A second tranche of KC-46s would have new capabilities in communications and possibly control of uncrewed air vehicles, Kendall has said, but Hunter said those extra capabilities will be scaled back in the new scheme.

“We will go on contract for the last of those [179 KC-46s] in FY 2027 and take deliveries of those aircraft in 2029. So we were looking at a gap of … tanker production, under a competitive approach,” Hunter said.

“The last stage of the business case analysis will be giving industry information about our revised path forward and getting their responses about what they can provide and then make a sourcing determination … by the middle of this … calendar year,” he said.

An analysis of alternatives will get underway this year for the NGAS, and Hunter said that process could take 18 months “to a couple of years.” He also said the Air Force is looking toward an “increment one” of NGAS, and that the aircraft might be iterated in several variants, in order to get a stealthy tanker as soon as possible.

The Air Force wants to work with “a wide variety of potential industry partners, in order to inform our efforts and make sure that the capabilities that are being considered in the AOA is the best, the most innovative and effective options that are out there. … We will look at a clean sheet of paper approach not constrained to commercial derivative aircraft,” Hunter said.

The NGAS will have to have “the ability to go deeper into contested airspace … more advanced self-protection-type capabilities, more advanced networking capabilities,” Hunter said.

The Air Force revealed the NGAS name and idea in a Jan. 31 solicitation to industry. In that request for information, it said it seeks a new tanker to be in service circa 2040.

Asked if the NGAS strategy is an attempt to end-run or wait out Congress—some members of which are unhappy with Boeing’s KC-46 performance and want to see more tanker competition—Hunter said “there’s not a way around Congress.” If Capitol Hill “doesn’t like the plan that I’ve just described to you, they will have something to say about it” and this will “have an impact on our plans. I think we’re very aware of that.”

He said the Air Force will “make our best case that this is the right plan, the right path going forward … And we’ll get feedback. We’ll see what comes out in the … draft legislation and will respond accordingly.”

Ukraine Has Lost 60 Aircraft, Taken Down 70 in Russian Invasion, Hecker Says

Ukraine Has Lost 60 Aircraft, Taken Down 70 in Russian Invasion, Hecker Says

March 6, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—Ukraine has lost roughly 60 aircraft so far since Russia’s renewed invasion of the country in February 2022, while the Russians have lost more than 70, according to the top U.S. Air Force commander for Europe. After Russia’s larger air force failed to establish air superiority in the early days of the war, the air picture has turned into a mutually denied environment, Gen. James B. Hecker said March 6 at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“Russian, as well as the Ukrainian, success in integrated air and missile defense have made much of those aircraft worthless,” according to Hecker, who serves as the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and NATO’s Allied Air Command.

“[Russia has] downed over 60 Ukrainian aircraft,” he added. “Ukraine’s downed over 70 Russian aircraft. So both of their integrated air and missile defense, especially when you’re talking about going against aircraft, they’ve been very effective. And that’s why they’re not flying over one another’s country.”

Russian air defenses are located in Russia, Belarus, and parts of occupied Ukraine—and have the ability to move around. That has made it difficult for Ukraine to use airpower in the combined arms counteroffensive the Ukrainians are planning for the spring and summer. 

“They’re not doing a whole lot,” Hecker said. “They can’t go over and do close air support.”

The U.S. has attempted to bolster Ukraine’s air force with AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles, which have been jerry-rigged to work with the country’s Soviet-designed fighters.

“Obviously, they’re not as integrated with the airplane as it would be if they’re on the U.S. aircraft, so they do have limitations,” Hecker said of Ukraine’s employment of HARMs. “But they’re doing a pretty good job.”

The U.S. has also recently provided Ukraine’s air force with JDAM precision-guided bombs that have extended the Ukrainians’ strike capability. Hecker said that allows them to hit targets slightly beyond the current range of the GMRLS rockets fired by HIMARS launchers. The GMLRS rockets the U.S. has provided Ukraine have a range of nearly 50 miles. The U.S. has declined to provide Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles which have a range of nearly 200 miles.

“Recently, we’ve just got them some precision munitions that had some extended range and can go a little bit further than a gravity drop bomb,” Hecker said. “And it has precision. That’s a recent capability that we were able to give them probably in the last three weeks.”

But Ukraine still must fly low to terrain mask its aircraft against Russian surface-to-air missiles. Ukraine has asked for U.S. fighters such as F-16s, but the Biden administration has declined to provide them despite objections from some U.S. lawmakers.

Lockheed Martin Clears Crucial Hurdle to Restarting F-35 Deliveries

Lockheed Martin Clears Crucial Hurdle to Restarting F-35 Deliveries

March 6, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin restarted flying operations at its Fort Worth, Texas, facilities March 6, paving the way for deliveries of F-35s to resume after a nearly three-month hiatus. It’s not yet clear when the first new F-35 of 2023 will be delivered.

“We resumed F-35 production flight operations today following an F135 engine mitigation action,” the company said in a press statement. The move follows action by Pratt & Whitney to resume deliveries of F135 engines with the issuance of a technical order to address issues of harmonic resonance in the powerplants.

Lockheed has completed but not delivered 26 F-35s since the hold on flying operations was put in place after a mid-December crash of an F-35B at Fort Worth. Acceptance flights by Lockheed and Defense Contract Management Agency test pilots are needed to ensure the aircraft work properly and that any deficiencies can be documented.

“Safety remains our top priority; we will deliver the aircraft as quickly as possible after undertaking the multiple checks and test flights needed,” a Lockheed spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Flying was halted Dec. 14 as precautionary measure after the crash; the hold on flying meant acceptance tests could not proceed. Pratt stopped delivering F135 engines at the end of December.

Although Pratt and the F-35 Joint Program Office had said the harmonic resonance problem only affected a small number of aircraft, the entire worldwide fleet of F-35s will get a retrofit to fix the issue, which Pratt said only showed up after more than 600,000 hours of F135 engine operations. Officials from the engine maker told reporters early last week they had identified a fix and resumed deliveries of the engine March 2.

A time compliance technical directive (TCTD) was then issued by the JPO; aircraft that were not affected by the harmonic resonance issue will not have any flight restrictions placed on them while they wait for the fix, while the small number of aircraft that were grounded will be cleared to fly once they get the retrofit, which takes between four and eight hours, a JPO spokesperson said.

A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said all 26 undelivered F-35s will either get the retrofit before flying or receive an already modified engine. There are no changes required for aircraft production to incorporate the retrofit, the spokesperson added.

Maintaining What Matters: An Engine Fit for the F-35

Maintaining What Matters: An Engine Fit for the F-35

March 6, 2023 | By Patrick Reardon

The looming decision on the future of the F-35’s engine—Pratt & Whitney’s F135—has fostered plenty of debate, with some suggesting the F135 should be completely replaced with a new engine through the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), while others say integrating a new adaptive engine into the F-35 would be wasteful and unnecessary.

Even Pratt & Whitney—which is developing its own adaptive engine, the XA101, through AETP—insists that the F-35’s continued aerial dominance as a joint strike fighter depends on incremental upgrades to the existing technology powering it.

“Adaptive engines are sixth-gen technology,” said Jen Latka, Vice President of Pratt & Whitney’s F135 program. “That technology is what keeps us at the forefront in terms of the U.S.’s national advantage, so we are very thankful for the adaptive engine program—but while it’s critical to develop sixth-generation propulsion technologies, the AETP engines aren’t optimized for the F-35 program.”

The solution proposed by Pratt & Whitney, a Raytheon Technologies company, is an engine core upgrade (ECU) that can meet DOD imperatives for the F-35 that adaptive engines can’t, particularly maintaining tri-variant commonality—adaptive engines won’t fit in the F-35B and likely won’t be retrofitted into already fielded F-35s, and will not deliver a meaningful quantity of Block 4-enabled F-35s by 2028, when the warfighter needs them.

The ECU is a limited scope upgrade—the product looks very similar to the existing motor in the F-35 but incorporates the latest design tools into the same supply base. The upgrade wouldn’t require any of the F-35’s interfaces to change and is limited to what Latka calls “the power module,” which is just the core of the engine.

“What that means is you can come into depot for your regularly-scheduled overhaul with the current configuration and then leave depot with the upgraded core,” Latka said. Because the upgraded engine is retrofittable, the upgrade could be dropped in F-35s in the depot in addition to on the assembly line—greatly accelerating the pace at which Block 4-enabled F-35s will reach the operational fleet.

Photo courtesy of Pratt & Whitney.

Pratt & Whitney estimates that the ECU can save the DOD a total of $40 billion over the life of the program, but in near-term savings alone it has a clear advantage over a new engine. Latka reports that development will cost around $2.4 billion for the entire Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase over the five-year Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). That’s just a fraction of the price tag on fully developing an AETP alternative, which Secretary Frank Kendall has said will cost nearly $7 billion and result in reduced procurement volumes.

“In the next five years, there’s billions of dollars that could be saved,” Latka said. “And it’s not only the cost of a new engine—it would be that plus the core upgrade, because the core upgrade will need to be done regardless, to support the international customers and the STOVL variant.”

“And in comparing production costs, the core upgrade remains the financially prudent option. An upgraded F135 would be production cost neutral,” she said, “while the initial cost of a brand-new adaptive engine would be about two and half times that of current the F135 and would add about $4 billion in production costs across the life of the program.”

“We’ve already come down the learning curve and taken out 50 percent of the cost of the engine,” she added. Even accounting for an AETP learning curve, Latka said AETP “would still be more expensive than the current motor because it’s significantly heavier.”

While the savings offered by Pratt & Whitney’s single development program are impressive, they’re marginal compared to lifecycle savings. Sustainment is a crucial piece of the debate over F-35 engines, but its implications extend beyond just the cost. Pratt & Whitney’s solution can potentially save the Pentagon tens of billions of dollars over the F135’s (and the F-35’s) lifecycle because it retains an infrastructure that has already been built and invested in—and when sustainment efforts are disrupted, disruption soon follows.

“With a new adaptive engine, you are going out there and having to create a second infrastructure,” Latka said. “So, you would need all new tooling, all new support equipment, and all new depots. You have to fund two sustaining engineering teams, two configuration management teams … you have two of everything because you’re maintaining two totally different products.”

Photo courtesy of Pratt & Whitney.

Bifurcation threatens the interoperability of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, which depends on a common engine and global spares pool among American and international F-35 operators. The maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) network devoted to the F135, for instance, already has multiple locations around the globe that will be able to support ECU sustainment as well—with more planned in the future. But F-35As powered by AETP engines wouldn’t be able to utilize that extensive sustainment network and would need to stand up a parallel AETP sustainment network at a significant cost.

“The drive right now has got to be around maximizing interoperability among the partners,” Latka said. “Another issue is whether the adaptive engine is exportable; it’s sixth-gen technology. Perhaps it could be exportable one day, but it doesn’t appear to be right now.”

And with global tensions on the rise, Latka said, there’s a strict timeline on not only improving the F-35’s operating capabilities but also growing the fleet before a potential conflict happens. That’s harder to do while trying to fit brand new, unproven engine technology into an existing jet.

“When we think about the timeline and the pacing threats, cutting tails hurts that fight,” Latka said. “But secondly, we need to field an engine upgrade as fast as we can.”

While adaptive engine technology boasts improved range over the existing F135, Latka said that these enhancements could distract from what really matters to the combatant commanders: getting as many Block 4-enabled jets fielded as quickly as possible. Block 4 quantity and readiness equals relevant capability.

Pratt & Whitney has said its upgraded engine will be ready to enter service by 2028, facilitating SECAF’s readiness imperative while offering performance improvements and significant cost avoidance that allows increased investment in the Secretary’s other operational imperatives. But Latka reiterated that these improvements are ancillary to ensuring operational readiness—it’s quantity and Block 4 capabilities that truly matter, and Pratt & Whitney’s Engine Core Upgrade would deliver both while saving billions of dollars and ensuring commonality across the fleet of F-35s operated by the DOD and allied partners around the globe.

Watch, Read: ‘Lessons from Vietnam: 50 Years Later’

Watch, Read: ‘Lessons from Vietnam: 50 Years Later’

March 6, 2023

Col. John Gallemore, Director SECAF-CSAF Strategic Execution Group, moderated a session on “Lessons from Vietnam: 50 Years Later” to kick off the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 6, 2023. The panel featured three heroes from the Vietnam War: Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF (Ret.), the highest scoring ACE of Vietnam War and last American ACE; Col. Lee Ellis, USAF (Ret.), Vietnam War POW (1967-1973); and Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.), Vietnam War POW (1967-1973). Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Ken Goss:

Good afternoon.

For 40 years, it has been my privilege to speak to you at AFA events most often as the voice of AFA. When I say Airmen, Guardians, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2023 Air and Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium. Usually you hear me from the production table on the side with my colleagues from GPI, but today I’m privileged to be on the stage to introduce a panel who will talk about Vietnam, 50 years later.

These legendary Airmen will share with you about their experiences and their memories. Before I turn it over to the moderator, however, I want to take a point of personal privilege to talk about one of the panelists. Back when I was AFA Director of Government Relations, Lieutenant Colonel Gene Smith, in the first chair here, was the president and chairman of the Air Force Association at that time. During his tenure, he accompanied me to Capitol Hill many times where we worked much legislation of importance to our air force, our Airmen, and our families. Gene was a dynamic spokesperson for all of you. He delivered results through his personal contacts and his passionate case statements for support. Thank you, Gene.

Now please give a warm welcome to your panel moderator, Colonel John Gallemore.

Col. John Gallemore:

I don’t know why they clapped for me. They should be clapping for you.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Col. John Gallemore:

So General Allvin, CMSAF, General Wright, General Raaberg, General Skoch, thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to share the stage with really what I’ll call and I think you’ll all agree, three true American heroes. Now before we move into the formalities, sir, I’m not sure who signed and approved the flight schedule, but I’m going to point out the fact that you have a University of Georgia Bulldog, a Mississippi State Bulldog, a raging Cajun from southwestern Louisiana and a Aggie all on the stage with microphones at the same time with clearance to engage. So I’m fairly certain we have busted our acceptable level of risk. So with that being said to my left are two former prisoners of war and the last serving American ace in our active duty military.

The scheme of maneuver for today is fairly simple. Each of these fine gentlemen will talk about eight to 10 minutes. They’ll tell you their experiences and their stories and then from there we’ll try to get through a few questions realizing that we don’t have a whole lot of time. We’ve got about 40 minutes. I know that most of y’all are familiar with these three gentlemen, but let me just fill you in on a few quick facts. So Lieutenant Colonel Gene Smith. Immediately to my left, he grew up in Mark Mississippi. As I alluded to, he attended Mississippi State University where my daughter’s going to go this fall. He said he is going to take good care of her. He currently lives in West Point, Mississippi there at the old Waverly Golf Course and for those who’ve ever been there, it’s a fantastic place to play golf. And his beautiful wife Lynn is up here in the front row just as stage left in a tennis today,

Colonel Smith started his flying career as a radar intercept officer in the F-101 Voodoo. He subsequently attended UPT and was off to fly the F-102 Delta Dagger and then the 105 Thunder chief, aka the thud. On his 33rd combat mission, and as he’ll say his 32nd and a half combat mission, he was shot down, captured, and then remained in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for five and a half years. He was repatriated alongside Lee Smith who was just to his left on the 14th of March 1973.

So we’re closing in on 50 years on both of their repatriations and he continued his distinguished Air Force career along the way, earning two silver stars, a distinguished flying cross with Valor, a bronze star with Valor, a Purple Heart as well as a POW medal and a whole host of other awards along the way. He finished his career at 14th flying training wing there at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi and also served and has already been referenced as both the president and then the chairman of the board for the Airspace Forces Association.

Colonel Gene Smith. Sir, hold on one second. I got one more. I got two more intros to do.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

You’re cutting into my time.

Col. John Gallemore:

We’re good. We still got 36 and a half minutes. To Colonel Smith’s left is Colonel Chuck DeBellevue. Excuse me… At the end is Colonel Chuck DeBellevue. So Colonel DeBellevue grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. As I referenced earlier, he went to the artist formally known as Southwestern Louisiana. Now the University of Louisiana Lafayette as a raging Cajun. He currently lives in Edmond, Oklahoma and is married to his wife Sally, who is also in attendance there right next to Lynn in the front row. Colonel DeBellevue started his career as a weapon systems officer in the mighty F-4 Phantom. Following a quick stint at Seymour Johnson, he was off to Udorn Royal Thai Air Base in November of 1971.

During his combat deployment to Southeast Asia, he flew 220 combat missions and is credited with six air-to-air victories. Colonel DeBellevue came back, continued his distinguished career, retiring with 30 years of service and again retired as the last American ace to serve on active duty. Along the way here into Air Force Cross three silver stars, six distinguished flying crosses and 18 air metals. He continues to volunteer and speak around the world and was honored with earning the congressional medal gold medal in 2015. Colonel Chuck DeBellevue.

Bracketed by Colonel DeBellevue and Colonel Smith is Colonel Lee Ellis. Colonel Ellis grew up in Commerce, Georgia, university of Georgia Bulldog lives in Atlanta and is married to his wife Mary. Colonel Ellis started his flying career in the F-4 Phantom and was shortly thereafter deployed to Da Nang Air Base. He was shot down on his sixty-eighth mission, captured and remained in captivity for over five and a half years and was repatriated alongside Colonel Smith on 14th March 1973 and continued his illustrious career with 25 years of service back where it all began, at his alma mater, the University of Georgia. He earned two silver stars, the Bronze Star with Valor, the Purple Heart and the prisoner of war medal. Colonel Ellis is a nationally recognized speaker and publicist. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you three true American heroes. Colonel Smith, the clock’s counting.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

Clock’s on.

Is this thing on? Good. I think it is. Well one, let me tell you how good it makes me feel to look out here and see all you Airmen and Guardians and just people that believe in the United States and support our military and support our Air force. Orville, you and your staff have done a wonderful job. I’ve got 10 minutes to tell you what it was like to fly combat in Southeast Asia in 105 and be a POW that I was for five and a half years.

I was flying deuces in Germany in late 1966, having a great time. I had my own wine Keller down on a muzzle where I could buy Trenton Heimer Rosenberg Spate laser for a dollar and 15 cents and it was good as any sauvignon blanc I can get in the United States today. When I came back from a ski trip with my family and this friend of mine walked up to me and says, you better hold on you and I have got a 105 assignment to Southeast Asia. And I absolutely didn’t want to fly that airplane, but we very rapidly got out of USAF, Europe and on en route.

Fortunately I got Nellis and not McConnell and I started my checkout in a 105. I very quickly found out that airplane was really not what I thought it was. It was one of the fastest airplanes, if not the fastest airplane below 10,000 feet in the world. I learned that and how stable it was. One day early on in my checkout, I was coming back from the Indian Springs gunnery range where we did when I was looking around and learning to fly the airplane and I was four and the flight lead had us probably at 200 feet and we were smoking down into the Vegas Valley. And I noticed shock waves bending upon the wings of their airplanes and I said, “Holy smokes, how fast are we going?” And I took a glance at the air speed indicator 0.95 and it was just like sitting in that chair right there.

Plus I had about an inch of throttle left and I thought to myself, if I’m going to war, this is the airplane I want to do it in. Well, we quickly checked out, learned no tactics that they were doing in Southeast Asia. We ask and ask and ask, said they’ll teach them to you when you get over there. And I got to Southeast Asia in July of 1967. I didn’t even get my bags set down Takhli Lee before I was taken up on a familiarization ride and three other guys were along, too, in their airplanes and we were shown the pod formation that we would fly going north. That’s how quick it happened and we didn’t even know what the pod formation was. I flew five missions in the lower root pack and then I went north on my first mission. I could spend 30 minutes telling you about that mission.

But quickly it refueled out over the Gulf of Tonkin was my flight of four and three other flights of four and we were the third flight. Our target was the Bach Gang bridge on the Northeast railroad going out of Hanoi. Three minutes before we got to the target,, still a long ways down, 30 miles plus the sky turned black with flack. Now I says, “Oh shucks,” really loudly. And about that time the Weasels had not made a call of Sam’s, but about that time a SA-2 two went by me so close I could read the Russian writing on it and it scared the snot out of me among other things.

And then we got the call to get an echelon to roll in and a guy right in front of me got hit and it was just a big torch in my windscreen as I’m following my flight lead down and stuff going by me.” And I said, that guy never got out of that airplane. We didn’t hear a beeper or see a shoot or anything.” He came out on the same airplane I did after being captured by the Chinese.

Well, things went pretty rapidly after that. I made flight lead. They made me a flight lead. I don’t know whether I made it or not. After about the 10th mission or so and we started flying missions north. Every mission was 16 airplanes with a flight of four Weasel. From the first part of September up until the middle of October, not very many of the targets we hit were worth hitting. We lost some airplanes on those. In fact, in my class, the first guy we lost was on his third mission in the southern part of North Vietnam where he ran into the ground on a third strayfen pass on a suspected truck park.

And we all asked ourselves the question, is life worth that? And the answer is no. Things went along pretty good and in the middle of October things started heating up with some better targets. On the afternoon of October the 24th, 1967, we walked… I was scheduled that afternoon and we walked in and we’d had a target change from the one we had planned for. And it was the target was Fu Kin Air Base, which was the last MiG base other than Giam downtown Hanoi that we had not hit. Man, you’re talking about the heartbeat going up and getting excited. We were excited. I was supposed to lead the first bomb flight, but a young friend of mine he’s still around, he actually followed me to Columbus when we went there. He said he wanted that flight and I flew the wing commander’s wing. We absolutely obliterated Fu Kin. But another wing, two Navy wings hit it right after I did and then another 105 wing.

And we just were really excited because we felt like we had finally accomplished something in the war. The next morning the wing was scheduled to hit it again. That’s when we lost the second guy in my class. Ray Renning was shut shot down and he came out on the same airplane I did. He was a POW and we were scheduled to hit it that afternoon, but they changed it and we did not. We were scheduled to hit it the next morning. We did not. We were scheduled to hit it the afternoon of October the 25th and the target was changed and I was to lead the last flight that day, Wildcat flight. And the target was changed to the Doma Bridge. In fact, I was a soft in the tower when my number three man called me. He said, “Gene, we’ve had a target change”.

I said, “Well go ahead and plan it and I’ll be over there as soon as I get loose.” He said, “Man, you probably want to be over there.” So he said, “Do you know what the number of the target was this morning?” I said, “Yep.” He said, “Double it. JCS 1200, the Doma Bridge.” We were pretty well jacked up after the mission briefing and we went up to have lunch and my number four man looked at us and shook his head and says, “You guys aren’t going to make it through a hundred.” And I said, “Oh yeah, we will do that.” We took off that day and beautiful afternoon, shot a few SAMs after us, but I rolled in as the fourth flight. I had carefully briefed the guys. I said, “I don’t give a damn where your pipper is, but you pickled at 9,000 feet. Don’t try to do any maneuvering at all.”

Guess who exceeded the 9,000 feet? Me. And when I pulled off the target, my airplane got hit. I felt it, hit it, and then instantly the airplane tumbled and I later find out it just pitched up and then went into an uncontrollable tumble. My thought in the airplane was, I’m not going to die in this son of a bitch. And I could not… I had a hard time getting my hands to the ejection seat handle, but finally I did squeeze the trigger and everything worked automatically and now I’m floating down over Hanoi. Hit the ground. There were a million people, no, it probably was only about a thousand around me and they instantly were on me, Vietnamese with an AK 47, ripped a burst through me and two bullets went through my left leg, came out the inside, didn’t hit the artery or the femur or I wouldn’t be here talking to you today.

Had a big hole in my right leg where I could see the shin bone that I got must have gotten getting out of the airplane. And then they undressed me with a machete and off we went to the Hilton. You have all read about all of the things that they did to you. And I said, “I can get through this, I can get through this.” And after about an hour of being left in the Knobby room, I think it was later called, these three Vietnamese officers with a big dude came in and I got up and stood up and saluted them and they pointed to a low stool in front of a table and I went over and started my interrogations. You’ve all read about those. But the first you could… The code of conduct says name, rank, serial number, date of birth and nothing else but that.

Well, I gave them that and the next question, what kind of an airplane? I said, “I can’t tell you that.” And then I got tied up in the ball so small, I looked at spots on my body I had never seen before and finally they left the room and I said, “I’ll pass out.” Well, I didn’t. It was the most intense pain I’ve ever received. When they came back in, they asked me that question again and I refused again. And I said, “This is the most stupid thing you’re ever doing, Smitty, is to not tell them what kind of airplane you have. 16 of them just rolled in right down the street.” So when they came back asked for the third time, I told them. Then how many? Well, I didn’t answer. This just went on for a long time.

And finally I said, “I have got to figure out a way to get this.” So I started up making up stuff but answering questions. I spent about five to seven days… I never knew exactly how long and this question and answer period. And the hardest thing for me to get over when I got out was realizing that I had broken the code of conduct and that I would be forever ashamed. And I found out later that there was an awful lot of guys that did the same thing and they started doing it. The code of conduct has since been changed.

We spent five and a half years and that’s the hardest part to understand about our conditions is how long it was, the horrible indefiniteness of it all. Lee says, “Gene, you got to talk about resiliency.” That’s a buzzword I think in the air force now is resiliency. Well, let me tell you something about resiliency. You can’t teach resiliency. I don’t think you can teach some of the factors in the equation, but you learn resiliency. You learn resiliency as a child. You learn resiliency when you’re in high school, in college, you learn resiliency in your first days in the military, I hope.

But the way we got through that was faith to me, faith in God, faith in your country, faith in your family that they would always be there for you. Faith in your fellow POWs. That’s how we got through there. That was a resilience that got through there. And finally in December of 1972, we finally, our country finally figured out air power. Air power is the equation that brings it to the knees. I know I probably only got 10 seconds left but I’m going to tell their story.

During Linebacker II, Ross Perot, who’s been such an integral part, was such an integral part of our POWs for years. He kept a guy that was a PhD at Florida State in Paris to monitor the talks. The name was Harris. Dr. Jack Harris I think was his first name. And he told someone that one of the significant negotiators told him during Linebacker II says, we have two choices as a country. We can either negotiate seriously or we can commit national suicide.

That is our air power. And that got us out of North Vietnam. The most beautiful flag I’ve ever seen, I’ve ever seen in my life was on the tail of a C-141 that pulled up in Giam and took me, Lee Ellis, John McCain, Chuck Rice, and a whole list of others that were in that group. I shall always be grateful. I shall always be grateful to my nation. I shall always be grateful to the Air Force for the wonderful life I’ve headed.

And one of the things I made a commitment to when I was in North Vietnam is I will never stand on the sidelines again. I would be involved in the fight and since then I have, I’m getting in my elder years, but I still got a little kick in me. So I will try to do that. God bless to each one of you and don’t ever forget that you are a citizen of the United States of America and you are a part of the United States of America’s Air Force. Thank you.

Col. John Gallemore:

I’m glad I don’t have to follow that speech. But I will hand it over to the last serving American ace on active duty. Colonel DeBellevue, floor is yours. You could sit, take the podium, your world.

Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF (Ret.):

You know, as a former nav. We did okay.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

We did.

Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF (Ret.):

The Phantom in the MiG 21 sounds like a nice movie. It would’ve been better had we been better trained, but we weren’t allowed to fly against anything else but an F-4. You don’t learn much doing that. Next slide. Flew with the triple nickel squadron in the five 55th Tack Fighter squadron. That’s all? We had 39 MiG kills. 20 from Rolling Thunder, another 19 from Linebacker. That’s over three squadrons of enemy airplanes. That’s quite a score. Next… French Indochina… The French didn’t… Nobody liked the French over there, but that’s where the target, where Vietnam was. Hanoi was 285 miles from Udorn as the crow flies. Never flew that way, but that’s how far it was. So every time you went into Hanoi, you had to have enough gas left to fly almost 300 miles. That sets your thinking about how you’re going to fight. Next slide.

The Phantom and the MiG 21. What allowed me to go into Hanoi every day? You had to have the right mindset, the focus. It was discipline. Of course we were a military organization and discipline what it was all about. It was integrity. Your word is your bond. If you tell somebody you’re going to do something, do it. If you can’t do it, tell them because otherwise somebody may die. Could be you. Teamwork, it is a team sport. It’s not just you. It is all of us together that make the force what it is. Training, the old adage that you’re going to fight like you trained is true. So make sure the training is good. Next slide.

The team, we had two guys in the F-4. We were married up. We flew with the same eight guys for about eight to 10 weeks. It was amazing what we didn’t have to say in the air. Everybody knew which way we were going. We were always going in. We were always close with the enemy. But the team was more than that. Steve and I have Reggie Taylor between us, Staff Sergeant. He could do amazing things with 463, the airplane with all the stars on it. He got the engines heated up. They would detune the engines to make them last longer. Well on the D model F-4, the engines were screwdriver controlled. He had the screwdriver. It took us about four rides to get to where the bur engines were burning at max CGT. You could not catch the airplane. Tech Sargent Ames and his weapons load crew, they kept the missiles picked up. The Ames seven had a bad rep, they got rid of that. We used to fire two missiles to get one kill. We quit wasting a missile. They made it happen. Next slide.

This is my map that I drew. 50 something years ago, 50 years ago, it’s a bullseye map of Hanoi. It’s got asmet and DME rings on it. That’s how we navigated up there. The Mickey Mouse ears you see, that’s the SAM rings. If you’re inside those rings at a medium altitude, 12 to 14,000 feet, the SAM radar surface steering, missile radars can see you. So you’re in harm’s way. Somebody asked me, “How much time did you spend inside the cockpit?” About 85% of the time. How much time did you spend outside the cockpit? About 85% of the time. I’m not sure what I did with the other 15%, but I’m sure I used that up, too. On the 8th of July, we were the egress cap. We were the rear guard. As the strikes are coming out of Hanoi, we’re going in to make sure nobody follows them out.

Two strikers call out with fire lights. In our squadron, in our flights, if you, your airplane is falling apart, all you had to say is lead RTB. RTB, return to base. We didn’t care what was wrong with the airplane, we couldn’t fix it anyway. We would head out. These two guys, I hate to say it, but they were from Ubon, I think, were making a lot of noise. Get the saw ready, got a firelight, get the… North Vietnamese had more radios that monitor our freaks than we did. So we started heading east. The MiGS were northeast of Hanoi, then east, then southeast. We ended up in a valley southwest of Hanoi. When disco, our version of AWAC, the controller called out Paula, which was our call sign, you’re merged. Which meant on his scope everybody was in the same radar bin. He was now useless and we didn’t see anybody.

The F-4 leaves a telltale smoke trail unless you’re in burner. So we were heading northeast, we were weaving to make sure nobody got behind us. And after two minutes we hadn’t seen anybody. We turned southwest and as soon as we rolled out southwest, I picked up a black fly speck on a white cloud, 11 o’clock. Fights on. Our signal to the flight that we were getting ready to fight was when we blew the tanks off the airplane, went to full after burner and catch me if you can.

We ended up line abreast with the MiG 21 going opposite directions from us. It was a brand new shiny MiG 21. He turned away from us in a level turn. If an American ended flying that airplane, he turned into us. But he turned away. He was the bait. That tactic only works if you haven’t read his book, which we had. The F-4 is not an F-16. It is not a 9G airplane. If you read the F-4 book, it’s an eight and a half G airplane. If you don’t read the book, it’s a 12G airplane.

And the way to get the airplane turned around is to roll it up to 135 degrees a bank, full after burner, 500 knots, put the stick in your lap and 17 seconds later you come through at 500 knots. So we did that. Well, we started it. We rolled up and waited and here comes the number two MiG. The shooter turns away from us to follow his buddy. The MiG 21 is a delta wing airplane. It bleeds air speed in the level hard turn. So instead of having to go all the way around the turn, we cut the turn. Ended up 6,000 feet in trail with the MiG. Locked onto the mig. It’s an analog radar and analog missiles. It takes two seconds for the radar to have good data. Another two seconds for the missiles to be programmed. Four seconds. That’s 12 eternities I guarantee you.

Launched the first missile, immediately committed the second missile to follow. That first missile went through the airplane, cut it in two, burned both ends. The second missile went through the fireball. At that point we unloaded to get our air speed back. Tommy Feesel, our number four called out that he’s on him, came back into the fight. We’re now 4,000 feet from the other MiG, half missile. First time I saw the missile was an exited wing tip area. I think the missile motor was still burning when it hit him. Cut him in two and burned both ends.

We found out later that this was a green bandit. Green bandit was an ace. We color coded everything. Red, white and blue. 17, 19, 21. They wouldn’t commit, the other MiGS that were up there. Next, go back two slides. This is Fu Kin Air Base. MiG 21 is on final. We’ve just slowed down from 650. Who in the hell would… They told us to go orbit Fu Kin. Nobody in his right mind would do that. Yet, there we were. That MiG died. Our element lead got him. We had no gun on the airplane. And 10 minutes later we got two MiG 18s that were pruned to defense for Hanoi. So the flight got three kills. The most dangerous part of all of our missions was the air show. And if you’ve seen the Thunderbirds, they put on a great show. They practice. We would talk about it on the tanker.

The next war we fight. It’ll be you people prosecuting the war. It’s attitude, it’s love of country, love of family, love of God, knowing that you’re the very best at what you do and freedom is in your hands. I appreciate everything you’re doing. You’re wearing the cloth of this country. It means an awful lot. May God bless you and God bless the United States to the earth.

Col. John Gallemore:

Colonel Ellis, take us home. The floor is yours.

Col. Lee Ellis, USAF (Ret.):

Great. My wife will tell you I never mind talking. So I have to learn to listen a lot at home though. Well, it’s great to be with you all. We’re all honored to be here and to be able to share these stories with you. I’ve known Gene for a long time. As a matter of fact, I lived in the same cell with Gene for more than a year and a half. So I saw him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we know each other well. That was an amazing experience in those cells, and I’m going to tell you about that in a minute, but I had a couple slides. Yeah, thank you.

I wanted to show you a couple of pictures and let me back up. Here we go. Okay. This was me, a kid who always wanted to fly. I grew up plowing mules on a farm in Georgia, but I would look at… This was during the Korean War and I’d look up and see those airplanes overhead and I said, that’s me following this mule at his six o’clock is not me. And so three days after I graduated from… I finished University of Georgia, I went straight to Valdosta. 53 weeks later I got my wings and the assignment said F-4 Phantom Pipeline, Southeast Asia. 50% of the class, 67A, which we graduated in ’66, got the same assignment. F-4 Phantom Pipeline, Southeast Asia. Well, we went to Georgia Air Force Base and got some training. But on the way we went through Survival School and it was like the second or third group out at Fairchild.

And out there I met this guy right here, a guy named Lance Sijan. And we got to be buddies and well, we circulated the ladies quite a bit. And we played golf together as we got down to George and we had a lot of fun together. Part of the time we roomed together. We went to war together. When we got to the Philippines and we’re going to Jungle Survival School, they said everybody going to eighth Fighter wing at Ubon stand up. Sijan and Ellis, you’re going to Da Nang. Your orders have been changed. We both went. I went down on the 7th of November. Lance went down two days after me. I put this slide in here because I want you all to hear about him. You know Who he is. He’s only Air Force Academy guy to receive the medal of honor. But Lance Sijan was an incredible person.

He was athletic. He was good-looking. He was tough and he was kind. I believe that if Lance hadn’t been shot down, he probably could have been chief of staff of the Air Force. He was a great leader, a great person, a healthy person. And I just always like to think about Lance as a great example of the person that we all want to be as we wear our uniform. Well, in that cell in the Hanoi Hilton, when I first got there a couple of weeks after I was captured, it was six and a half by seven feet. Okay, that’s like a bathroom and a gas station down in Texas or Georgia or somewhere. Three other guys in there. There are four of us in there. And this photo is from Hill Air Force Space Museum. Right outside the gate, if you go there, it’s exactly the same size as our cells were in the Hanoi Hilton, the ones in the heartbreaks, you got well… Las Little Vegas section where we first went.

And I was in there with three other guys for the first eight months. The headline there says, stay positive. Sometimes it’s hard to stay positive, but you got to bounce back. You’ve got to believe that a better day is coming. You got to believe you’re going to get through this. And that’s so important. And resilience, it’s important everywhere. And the good thing was we had some cellmates that one day if one person’s down, the other person can say, man, we’re going to make it. Someday we’re going to walk out of here. Encouragement by your teammates is very, very important.

Well, we had some great leaders up there and these three guys were all O5’s, two lady commanders and one lieutenant colonel. The one on the right over here, Commander Stockdale, the Medal of Honor, courageous, reserved, quiet, tough guy. A results throw in guy, a mission focused guy. On the left you got Commander Denton, a more outgoing political who ran for senator in one and after he came home. A relationship, people, okay? In the middle, Colonel Reisner, some of both 40% of the population wired to be like the right side results mission focused, 40% wired to be like the left side, people focused. So think of General Brown over here on the right and General Robin Ran on the left. Okay?

And they’re both great. You can be a general, you can be an animal, you can be a CEO no matter which way you’re wired, but you have to learn to adapt and do some of that other side, too. Well these guys did and they were so… Their character was so great, their commitment, their courage as they set a great example for us. They got there two years before Gene and I got there and they had been through hell.

They spent more than four years in solitary confinement and they bounced back and bounced back. And when you feel like you are having a tough time, and you can look across the room and see a guy like Smitty Harris who… Guy’s been there was a total there of eight years. But Smitty got there before these guys did who’s been through hell and somebody’s been through tougher than you have. It makes it a lot easier to stay positive and bounce back and be resilient.

They had great confidence and great humility. But one thing they did was they clarified, took the code of conduct and clarified it for our situation. And here’s what they said, I’m in charge. Roger said, and here’s what I want you to do. Be a good American, resist up to the point of mental and physical damage. Go ahead and give in. Of course, first of all, follow the code of conduct. Do your best. Resist and be ready to bounce back because they can make you give in and they won’t let you die. They will torture you to the point where you will have to give in and they won’t let you die. So you got to be smart enough to be able to offset what they want. Don’t give them what they want.

And that’s what we did. Bounce back to resist again. Stay united through communications. And of course they told us we couldn’t communicate with anybody, but we did. Pray every day. Go home proud would turn with honor. So simple but so powerful for our culture. As a leader, you need to build your culture, clarify your culture over and over again. So everybody knows the culture. Joe Brown is doing a great job of trying to push that culture perspective all the way to the lowest levels in today’s Air Force. I think that’s really wise. Well, we did stay connected. We tapped on the walls. Those walls are about 16 inches thick. We’re trying to communicate. We’re going to stay connected because you’ve got to stay connected. The key to resilience is don’t be alone.

We had to collaborate. We had to come up with ways to defeat the enemy and offset them. We had to support each other. You can’t let somebody who’s alone be alone. You got to get to them. We would risk our lives to get to somebody in solitary confinement and say, man, we’re proud of you. We’re not going home without you. Hang in there, one more day. And so we did.

Well, the women back home, the wives especially and families, but the women, the wives, they were told to keep quiet. The military didn’t know what to do with MIA wives. They were told to keep quiet. And they did for a couple years and then they said, “No more. You got to do something for our men because they’re not following the Geneva conventions on treatment of POWs.”

Well, you see that civil Stockdale on the left. She started the group in San Diego, the group of wives and Phyllis Skelani on the right, she had the group in Virginia. But they were all across the country. And these wives stood up and changed the policy of the US government and changed the policy of the communist government by putting pressure on them internationally so that when Ho Chi Minh died in September 1969, as quick as they could decide who the next leaders were going to be and they got in power, they stopped the torture day to day. Occasionally there was a little bit, but for the most part, the torture stopped and we changed to a live and let live policy. And that’s why we were able to come home so healthy. The women changed our lives. It’s amazing what they did. Well, we bounce back and bounce back. Hallelujah. Yes.

I’m going to tell you a little bit more about that as I close out here in a minute. We bounce back, we bounce back, we bounce back. And this is my day, March 14th. And Gene Smith is just in a group right in front of me. He’s right in front of us. And that’s Tom Kirk who mentioned. Tom’s 94, he still goes to the gym. And that’s me back there on the right. It was a great day. We came home, spent two days in Clark Air Base. We got a physical, got a uniform, called home. We flew back and I landed at Maxwell Air Force Base because you went to the nearest regional hospital to your family and we refueled in Honolulu or in Hickum on the way home.

I’ve had a great life. But at many reunions I kept hearing the wives of the POWs talk about their romance and their love and all. And so a couple years ago I said, “Somebody’s got to write a book about this ’cause Hollywood couldn’t write a movie with this wild stories.” So I put together with a romance writer. We put together 20 stories of POWs who were there five to eight years. Two of them were married and stayed there eight years as POWs. And they came home and they’re still married. One of the wives passed away last year, but many of them were married more than 60 years. I was a single guy and I date a lot of girls. When I came home and finally I met Mary the right one. And we’ve been married 48 years. So those stories here and there, you can go to your online to powromance.com and see the book. It’ll be out in May. Go check it out. Thanks so much. Glad to be with you all. God bless.

Col. John Gallemore:

I have 40 seconds to ensure this is not a no stepper and I pass my first moderator mission. So I think it’s going to be a no stepper. Colonel Smith, colonel DeBellevue, colonel Ellis, thank you for your true dedication and your service to your country. I can’t think of three individuals who truly epitomize, duty, honor, and country. I don’t think anybody in this room can relate to the experiences that each of you endured during your remarkable careers. If there’s four things that I could take away from this would be discipline, resilience, perseverance, and teamwork. Because you can’t do it alone. Thank you for your perspectives and thank you for your sacrifices and I am glad that good Americans like you did and will continue to swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Thank you very much. God bless.

Ken Goss:

Ladies and gentlemen, the next session will begin momentarily. Please remain in your seats.

Watch, Read: ‘Evolving Threats: Protecting the Homeland’

Watch, Read: ‘Evolving Threats: Protecting the Homeland’

March 6, 2023

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, moderated a session on “Evolving Threats: Protecting the Homeland” at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 6, 2023. The panel featured Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, Commander, U.S. Northern Command, and Lt. Gen. John Shaw, Deputy Commander, U.S. Space Command. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Voiceover:

Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats, and join me in welcoming our moderator to the stage, the 11th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John E. Hyten.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Well, good evening everybody. It’s great to welcome AFA to Colorado. Since Laura and I chose to live in Colorado here, it’s great to watch AFA come back here. It’s great to have the Warfare Symposium here. So Orville, thanks very much for you and the team bringing them back.

We’re just going to sit up here for the next better part of an hour and just talk. We’re going to talk about Homeland Defense, we’re going to talk about space and fortunately we have some pretty well qualified people to do that. So I’ll do a quick introduction, and then we’re just going to jump right into questions and answers. And hopefully have a good time and maybe you’ll learn something. Maybe you’ll learn something about balloons, we’ll see.

So sitting to my left General Glen VanHerck, been a friend for a long time, currently commander of US Northern Command, Commander of NORAD, North American Aerospace Defense Command, former wing commander at Dyess, flew F-15s, F-35s, B-1s, B-2s, commander of the Warfare Center. Did a lot of good stuff, was Director of the Joint Staff when I was vice chairman. So we fought the Pentagon Wars together and there were some interesting times, we’ll just put it that way. But it’s great to have you here, General VanHerck.

General John Shaw, I’ve known for a long time, worked in the Pentagon together a long time ago, when you were a major, I was lieutenant colonel. That goes back a long way. Wing commander at the 21st, squadron commander at the 50th. Oh, much better wing than the 21st was at the time. Commander of 14th Air Force. Probably one of the great jobs, if you’re a space professional in all the world commanding all space operations at the time. Now the Deputy Commander US Space Command, and I think that’s enough of an introduction for everybody.

So let’s kind of jump into it. The two commands that are represented to my left have an interesting connection and the connection goes back to, well, October of 2002, October 1st, 2002. Because on October 1st, 2002, the United States made a great decision and a horrible decision all at once. After 9/11, the debate was that we needed a combatant command responsible for defending the homeland, and so we decided to stand up US Northern Command to do that. We also decided that we could only have nine combatant commanders, and so we needed to get rid of one. So we got rid of US Space Command on the same day we stood up Northern Command down south at Peterson Air Force Base.

Now, the stupidity of standing down Space Command equaled the brilliance of standing up Northern Command. But Northern Command was only really worried about counter-terrorism, defending against storms. But now General VanHerck has to deal about the emerging adversaries of Russia and China, and he still has to worry about terrorism and he still has to worry about natural disasters and he also has to worry about balloons, which is a significant challenge.

John Shaw and Jim Dickinson, the commander down there, stood up in 2019 again, because the nation realized that as we stood down US Space Command, the rest of the world started chasing us and chasing us hard, and building weapons to counter us, capabilities to counter us, on orbit capabilities, ground capabilities, all to challenge us. And now for the last three years, US Space Command has stood up provisionally in Colorado Springs, we may talk about that as we get there as well, to try to deal with the operational threats that we deal with in space. So that’s where we’re going to talk about today. So I’m going to turn it over to them to make some opening comments and then we’ll jump into question and answer. So General VanHerck.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Well, thank you very much General Hyten, and thanks for what you continue to do for our nation. I sincerely appreciate it. I’ll talk about balloons here in just a minute. So General Wright, great to see you again. Thanks for what AFA does, an honor to be here. Mr. Secretary, good to see you as well.

It’s great to be here with my neighbor. Truly, he is my neighbor. He lives right next door to me down at Peterson, and also in building one. Space Command is crucial to NORAD and United States Northern Command for our missions that we accomplish. Threat warning, provide the overhead capabilities to do that, attack assessment, nuclear detonation, C2, ballistic missile defense. All that doesn’t happen without Space Command, US Space Force. So it’s an honor to be here with you John, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.

I talked in September and just wanted to follow up on a few things. The world hadn’t gotten any easier by the way. It’s growing more challenging each and every day. Every day is one day closer to strategic deterrence failure, and I truly believe that we’re not necessarily going in the right direction. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Since I was here in September, obviously, you’re aware of the PRC continued down the path of their breakout with their nuclear capabilities. They’re developing capabilities with their bombers, their cruise missiles, standoff capabilities to hold the homeland at risk. Today, they can hold Alaska in the northwest portion at risk. Their outpatient is tenfold in hypersonic development and capabilities, that ought to concern us all. And of course, we saw what they did with the high altitude balloon.

Actually, that high altitude balloon was a great opportunity for NORAD and the United States Northern Command to get some attention that I think we deserved, that we’ve been talking about since several of my predecessors, I believe General Robinson’s out here, it’s hard to see you guys by the way, but we’ve been talking about the lack of domain awareness and the challenges that we face. In a five-day period, I got to speak in front of congressional engagements eight times over that, four times in front of the full Senate and the House, with the gang of eight twice, with many others. This week, I’ll get to talk more.

So it’s great to have that opportunity to tell our story about the challenges that we face, the domain awareness challenges that we have in the homeland. And magically the appropriators want to talk to me. In the history of Northern Command, the appropriators have never given us the opportunity to testify. Magically, the House and the Senate each want to talk to me this year. And so that’s a great opportunity to tell our story. I hate to say I like doing that, but I actually do like doing it. It’s a great opportunity.

We talked a little bit about the PRC, also talk about Russia. Russia, with their illegal actions, irresponsible actions in the Ukraine, we see what they want to do. They want to change the norms and behavior around the globe. We’re not out of that. The risk of escalation is still there. We need to keep our eye on that ball. From the homeland defense perspective, I’m very comfortable with where we are, but I’m also worried about escalation management each and every day.

The PRC and Russia this year since we last talked in September, sailed together, Surface Action Group, in the vicinity of Alaska. The Russians have moved another Sev class submarine on par with ours, very quiet, into the Pacific. Now I have problems not only in the Atlantic but also in the Pacific with Sev submarines that candidly go undetected for weeks and months at a time that can threaten our homeland. So a lot happening there for us to get after.

I worry most though about cyber, candidly. The unknown of cyber and we’re under attack each and every day in the cyber domain, and we’re under attack each and every day in the information space, especially in the information space. What you see on social media, what you see on TV oftentimes is being perpetuated by actors that don’t have our best interests in mind. PRC, China, violent extremists and many others, and they fan the flames of any internal discord of our nation. Don’t kid yourself. That’s happening each and every day. And I do worry about it.

The DPRK North Korea this year, an order of magnitude more ballistic missile tests than they’ve ever done in the past. 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles with the capability to strike our homeland. And transnational criminal organizations that continue killing more than a 100,000 Americans with their fentanyl that they pass across the border in their business model. And if you’ve seen over the weekend four US citizens were caught up in what I would say criminal activity, just south of the border. So not a shortness of things to do in the homeland, much to deal with each and every day.

So I’m happy to report that I finally have policy. It took me two years to get policy on what to defend. And that was shocking to me when I showed up into the job that there’s no policy. Really hard to come into the department with realistic requirements and build realistic OPLANs if you don’t have policy on what to defend. So I’ve got defense policy. It goes much broader than defense policy by the way. Now, it’s the lifelines that support our installations and the federal capabilities that we have that we have to get after as well.

And I turned in a commander’s estimate that looks at what do we need to defend? And what does that look like going forward? It’s two FYDPs, essentially. It’s a near term, which we’re pretty much stuck with what we have in the near term, and then it’s in the out years, if you will, FYDP 2.

I think the future of Homeland Defense looks vastly different than it does today. It’s autonomous unmanned platforms that can loiter for long times, that can create domain awareness, that can do kinetic and non-kinetic effectors. That frees up the joint force to go forward to do additional things. But that’s where I think we need to go. When it looks forward to Homeland Defense.

My campaign plan, I’m out three years in front now in our campaign plan. And campaigning is deliberate. That’s the three-year piece. It gives me the opportunity to compete for the global force management resources we need. Probably most importantly, it gives me the opportunity to compete for the intel community assets that allow me to validate the measures of effectiveness and performance in execution of that campaign plan.

We also campaign dynamically and respond to ongoing activities around the globe. And I have an internal, what I would call an institutional campaign plan that’s focused on changing the department, changing things that we need to do, and we’ve been successful there. I was the only combatant commander without a threshold force. Every other regional combatant commander had a threshold force.

The global force management implementation guidance is going to change some of those things. I was the only one that was written out. It said, oftentimes, “Except for Northern Command.” That GFMIG, if you will, is going to change and allow us to compete and work with the services to us share forces for 45 days. So given the opportunity to campaign is a big thing for us, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that.

The recent activities highlights the need to focus on the four strategic priories that I’ve had the whole time I’ve been in command. Domain awareness, hey, you can’t deter and you can’t defeat something if you can’t detect it. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. Information dominance, that’s about giving more time. The only thing I can’t give the president and the secretary defense enough of is time, candidly. And so we have to use that domain awareness and use artificial intelligence and machine learning to get further left. We need to get on orbit artificial intelligence and machine learning as well.

And when you disseminate that, that’s called decision superiority. Candidly, I think the services are focusing too much on sensor to shooter. We need more sensor to decision maker, when it comes to JADC2, and JADC2 capabilities, and then a global approach to that.

So I’ll wrap up here and just tell you that I believe the greatest risk that we face right now is actually the inability to change at the pace the strategic environment demands. And I’m talking change policy, change process, change culture, change institutionally our budget processes. And I look forward to talking more about that. Thanks.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

All right. Thanks, General VanHerck. General Shaw.

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

So General Hyten, General VanHerck, a pleasure to share the stage with you. It occurs to me that you both have had the burden of having to live next door to the Shaws. You on the row there in Omaha, sir, and then you right now, and I just want to apologize for the time my guitar amp got a little out of whack, any of those times, sorry.

It used to be so simple. So let’s go back, just kind compare to where we are in the strategic environment today, think back just 40 years, so 1983. A guy named Lieutenant Hyten was running around, I think, at that time. 40 years ago, we had a singular enemy. It was a bipolar world. It was the Soviet Union. The strategic threats that we faced, the vast market share of those strategic threats were traditional, classic ballistic missiles. They might have come from land, they might have come from submarines, but they were classic ballistic missiles. And we were pretty good at detecting those threats.

We detect them from space with our space capabilities, when they were on launch. And then we would refine where they were going to land because they were so predictable, because they were ballistic, with our missile warning radars, in 1983. Those are the same radars we’re using today, by the way. It was so simple. And in space, really all of our capabilities were geared towards the strategic war, not to the tactical, not to the operational, to the strategic fight. And by the way, what was going on in 1983, that’s actually when President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative was that year, and most importantly, Return of the Jedi came out that year.

Fast-forward 40 years, we no longer have a bipolar environment. Admiral Richard, the previous strategic unit commander used to call it the three-body problem. I loved it when he used that, that’s an astrodynamics term for when you have three bodies in classical mechanics. It becomes very chaotic and very hard to predict the interaction between all three of those. Well, we have at least three major nuclear powers now on the world, and then you could add an nth body to that with North Korea. It’s much more complicated. That strategic calculus of deterrence is more complicated than it’s ever been.

The threats are more complex than they’ve ever been. The market share of classic ballistic missiles has shrunk dramatically. And now we have hypersonic glide vehicles, we have cruise missiles. We have, even as China demonstrated just two years ago, fractional orbital bombardment capability. That’s nothing to take lightly, by the way, folks. It takes some deliberate engineering to be able to launch a hypersonic glide vehicle to put it into orbit and then to deorbit it and then bring it into a target. That’s a determined effort, that’s not accidental. And that’s a potential threat that we face.

And in space, the equation is completely different now. We use space for everything. It’s endemic in our society. It was not that way in 1983. It’s now intertwined in everything that we do in our society, everything that we do in war fighting. And that curve seems to only be accelerating over time. So tomorrow it will be even more important to our society and to our joint war fighters.

So no wonder that we’re under threat in the space domain. If I were on the general staff of Russia or if I was serving in the PLA, I would be advising the leadership go after the space capabilities of the United States. They rely on them to project power across the planet, and they’re not all that well defended. So we should not be surprised they were under threat.

John Hyten, you talked about the history of US Space Command. So that first US Space Command stood up in 1982, I think. Really close to that 40 year mark that I mentioned there. Stood down in 2002. We stood up the new version 2.0 of Space Command in 2019. One thing that was different about it though from the previous US Space Command is we were assigned an area of responsibility. The previous US Space Command was strictly in a joint doctrinal sense, a functional combatant command, provide trans regional support to the other combatant commands.

The new instantiation of US Space Command has an area of responsibility, and it’s actually a pretty deep concept that we’re still exploring and what that actually means in US Space Command. We now have to protect and defend space territory, and we have to think about it in those terms. In addition to doing what we’ve always done, and that’s ensure that our space capabilities are delivered down to the terrestrial domains for war fighting.

So it presents us with some really interesting challenges. The command has grown in the time I’ve been there. It’s literally grown in terms of the manpower. It’s more than doubled since I showed up as the deputy commander and continues to grow. And our AOR, by the way continues to expand. If you want… to the expanding universe. So it’s an interesting time for us.

I’ll close my opening thoughts by saying. A really wise man that I live next door to right now is says that, “Homeland defense doesn’t start in the homeland, it starts in other regions.” I would say that it absolutely also starts in Space Command’s AOR. And in fact, so much of what we rely on our society and in our homeland is in space today. It is inextricably linked to homeland defense today.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks, General Shaw. So let’s talk about threats and let’s talk about speed for a second. So Russia, with the economy the size of Italy has modernized their entire nuclear force, and the United States is just beginning the modernization of ours. North Korea, the last time I checked, the 118th largest economy in the world is building and testing more ICBMs than the United States of America. We have significant homeland defense problems, significant sensor problem. You look at our sensor architecture across the country, across North America, it’s ancient. It’s ancient.

And we can’t seem to move fast enough to deal with the threats. We have adversaries that are moving unbelievably fast, and we seem to not be able to take up the challenge and move fast again. So I’ll turn it to General VanHerck first, especially from a homeland defense perspective. How do you look at speed, the need for speed, and the challenge we have in getting the speed that we have to have?

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Thanks, that’s a great question. If I could solve that right now, I’d probably be doing something else then I’m doing right now. What I would tell you first is for me, when I said earlier, time is the only thing I can’t get enough of or give enough of, I think that time we need to get further left. For me, Homeland Defense, as John said, is not about starting an in-game kinetic defeat in the homeland. It’s about layered defenses. It starts with our allies and partners and my fellow combatant commanders, and creating the capability, especially from the intel community to give me options further left than we have today.

So how do you get after that? I think you have to be able to take more risks than we do today. I think that the failure today with the oversight, and I fully respect the congressional oversight that we have today, as a matter of fact, I had a great conversation with a Senator about this just last week, but we have to be allowed to fail. When China fails, they get on the horse and ride again. What we do is a two-year investigation on why we failed, and we slow things down. We can’t afford to do that anymore.

I think we have to look at our budgeting processes. We do a five-year FYDP and an annual budget, and the colors of money can’t change without going back and asking for the colors of money to change. I update my software every 14 days. You got to be able to go faster within the budget environment that we have today to give us more flexibility.

I would tell you from in an acquisition standpoint, where we are today is an industrial age acquisition process by tank, ships, planes, and those kinds of things. When you’re in a data driven information environment, software driven, you can do things differently than we do today. So for example, we have a very serial process through the development and requirements, testing all the way through fielding capabilities. In a software driven environment, you can do those things in parallel to field capabilities much faster than we do today.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Yep. So General Shaw, you talked about the difference between this US Space Command 2.0 and the original one, and you talked about having an AOR defined, and you talked about the need to protect and defend that AOR. We already have adversaries that are deploying capabilities against us in that domain. You don’t have time to do a deliberative process and spend the next two decades trying to figure out how to do that. You have to be ready right now. How are you dealing with it operationally today? And how are you looking at speed relative to where we’re going as well?

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

Well, most fundamentally, we need to, and I think Space Force is doing a great job of this on, and Mr. Calvelli in particular, is really driving it, what I’m about to say, but we have to change the way that we built space architectures. If we trace how we started building from the very beginnings of the Space Age and through the rather benign period of the post Cold War until we are now under threat in the domain. We built our systems for efficiency and I liken them to mega container ships or supertankers. We built large platforms for efficiency. That’s why you have supertankers on the high seas. They’re not built to be defended against, against threats. They’re built for economic efficiency. And we did the same thing in our space architectures.

And it wasn’t just the size of those platforms, it’s how we operated them. We operated them using the gifts that Kepler has given to us. Using orbits of fixed orbital energy, they don’t have to maneuver a whole lot. They can just stay in those orbits and do their job, whether they’re in geosynchronous or you have a mission design that has satellites and low earth orbit of multiple satellites.

We have to completely rethink how we do our space architectures. We’re probably going to have to be more nimble. We’re going to have to find ways to have sustained maneuver in the domain in ways that we do not do today. We’re going to have to find ways to commoditize some of our architectures, in the sense of which we’re always replenishing those platforms on a regular basis. And we’re also going to have to be far more nimble against threats than we are today.

So I think it starts with that and US Space Command has tried to move forward with that. Again, we’re a pretty nascent command, but we’ve written some initial capabilities documents with partnership with the Space Force that will get after these kinds of new architectures. Those are the building blocks that will get us to a fighting force in the space domain that will do, again, our two large missions, protect and defend in the domain and deliver space capabilities to the trust of domains.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks very much. Let’s talk about deterrence for a second. I’m of the belief that in many ways our country as a whole has lost the ability to understand what deterrence really means anymore, especially strategic deterrence. It is probably the most active mission that we do in the Department of Defense, and it’s not well understood how active that mission is in the Department of Defense. It’s also not just about the existence of nuclear weapons, and by their existence, somehow we magically deter all our adversaries. Just watch Ukraine, and you know that’s not true.

But nuclear deterrence is held, but strategic deterrence is a much more complicated effort. So General VanHerck, you talked about campaigning, you talked about a focused effort on campaigning. So talk about campaigning in homeland defense, campaigning for the homeland, and how that relates to strategic deterrence.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Well, first I would tell you that the foundation of homeland defense is the strategic deterrent. It’s our nuclear deterrent. We got to get that right, have a triad that’s effective. That’s what I talked about all the time. But I think we’ve been too focused on deterrence by punishment, and that doesn’t give our most senior leaders many options. So we need to bridge the gap between the nuclear deterrent and everything else that China and Russia have taken advantage of.

Shock and awe back in Desert Storm actually was shock and awe for the PRC and Russia and they’ve developed capabilities to hold our way of projecting power at risk, with the goal of basically delaying and disrupting our force flow, and destroying the will of the American people. What we have to do is give options to our most senior leaders to create and fill that space. Those options are what I would say are deterrence by denial. So ballistic missile defense can be viewed as a deterrence by denial, but that’s just one small subset of it.

What I’m looking for is the campaigning that you talked about where every day we demonstrate the readiness, responsiveness, capability, and most importantly, the resiliency in our homeland to survive any attack that anybody would ever think about. The reason policy was so crucial for me to get up front was to know exactly what I have to protect. And those things that I have to protect are those things that could bring us to our knees in a time of crisis. If you protect those, and it’s a relatively small number, what you do is you make the problem so big for any potential adversary that the strike on the homeland has to be a massive strike.

And now they’re looking at that from a standpoint of what comes back at them from a strategic perspective, but also it makes the deterrence by denial really tough. For me, campaigning is not only with my military counterparts and my allies and partners, it’s with the interagency. And so I have to campaign with FEMA, Homeland Security, and others to demonstrate our resiliency and readiness.

I would tell you that things that we do, like Allies Welcome, where we built eight small cities in a matter of weeks holding 74,000 Afghans, no other nation on the planet can do what we did. When you message that appropriately, it has a deterrent effect. Responding to COVID, where we gave millions of vaccinations, we treated millions of people across the entire continental United States. Nobody else does those things. When messaged appropriately, they have a deterrent effect. So I think about deterrence more broadly than just what I think the history of deterrence would be.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

So you talked about missile defense real quick there. Let’s spend a little time just walk through where you stand now in missile defense, what you’re trying to defend, how that defense is structured, and where you see the future of missile defense going.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Today, missile defense is ballistic missile defense. The Missile Defense Review did not task me to defend against hypersonics. There’s a misconception about that, that I’m going to defend against hypersonics. That’s the nuclear deterrent. That’s what it’s for. I support that. So today we defend against ballistic missile defense. And what I would tell folks, and I’ll say when I testify tomorrow and Wednesday, is that, “I’m comfortable with where we are against a limited attack from a rogue actor.” That rogue actor is North Korea, DPRK, and if Iran got capabilities, I do not and am not tasked to defend against Russia or China for ballistic missiles.

Where I’m lacking for missile defense is actually in cruise missile defense. And I’m very concerned about our ability to defend against cruise missiles, and that’s the avenue that’s really opened up for threats to the homeland. Cruise missiles launched from airborne platforms, sea platforms, undersea platforms. Think about a container ship parked in the Long Beach port out there or Port of MOTCO or MOTSU. Those are potential threats that we have to deal with and be able to deal with when we look at missile defense going forward.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

So John, deterrence in space, the adversaries looked at us for a long time. They realized we’re vulnerable. They’re building capabilities to deny us. You said if you were on the general staff or in the PLA, you would certainly be advising the leadership to challenge that. How do you deter somebody coming after you in space, given where you are right now?

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

So I think you teed that up. Well, I think we’re in a position now where it’s about strategic stability and vulnerability. We actually have a situation where we actually incentivize an adversary to take out our space capabilities because they can, and because we rely on them so much for everything we do, for the near fight there in the East China Sea, all the way to homeland defense. We need to change that equation around and make our space capabilities resilient to any kind of attack.

And I believe if we do that properly, we’ll not only close that window of vulnerability or will it change the strategic stability equation where we not only deter a war that extends to space, we deter war. Because an adversary realizes, “Hey, if I can’t take out their space capabilities then I can’t win.” And if we can be part of that overall strategic equation, I think we help the nation.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

I’m just a retired guy now that is trying to keep up. I used to know something about space and I can tell you in the answer you just gave, I think you strung together like 28 buzzwords in one sentence. That was pretty impressive. And I used to be really good at that, too. And the reason I was good at that is because you couldn’t say anything else except all the buzzwords. And you can’t sit here and still talk about some of the details, because so many things are still unbelievably classified in the world that you work in. So what are you thinking about in terms of classification over classification, how you work with allies and partners? How do you look at that problem?

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

I see it every day, and we have allies on our staff at US Space Command that we repeatedly can’t bring to meetings because of the way the security is set up. And I don’t know if we really get at this problem without a all hands on deck kind of effort to get after everything all at once. There are so many security classification guides and pockets of secrecy out there that it’s almost like whac-a-mole. If you try to hit one, then something else will pop up and we just as a department need to get after it. But I see it a lot. I saw it today. I saw it today when I saw we were having a tour out at Schriever, and I saw something on a slide that was stamped. I said, “Why is that so highly classified? That doesn’t need to be that highly classified. It should be way down there. And we need to absolutely fix it.”

I would say it’s also, it’s not just about declassification or reclassification, it’s also about how do we share information across the department and with our allies? So it’s a slightly different problem. It’s analogous to the lessons we learned after 9/11, it wasn’t always just about over classification, it’s about also we didn’t have the mechanisms to share data at the right levels across. So I think it’s really this two axis problem of getting classification down to a balance and finding ways to be able to share information better.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

All right, so let’s go down that path a little bit just with allies and partners. So you’ve both talked about allies and partners, when we talk about allies and partners, I think a lot of people think about EUCOM and our NATO allies. They think about the Pacific, you think about Australia and Japan, but when you’re US Northern Command and NORAD, which is maybe one of the greatest international partnerships in the history of a military partnership, but both NORTHCOM, NORAD and Space Command have significant efforts to expand the role of allies and partners and how you’re doing it. So we start with General VanHerck and then just jump right in General Shaw right after that, talk about allies and partners from your perspective.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Well, I think, first of all, it’s crucial. I kind of want to pile on to what John was just talking about. I have a binational command that’s 64 years old, it’ll be 65 in May, and I get planning orders that come out secret, NOFORN for NORAD in a binational command. I send emails into the department, secret FVEY that come back to me, the response, with an acknowledgement that comes back secret, NOFORN. It’s literally like that’s the auto send back for me.

They’re crucial. They’re part of how we defend North America. We don’t defend it without an ally, and that’s Canada. For homeland defense, I’m tested to do that through a layered defense. And as I said, that starts forward. Our allies bring domain awareness to us. We don’t have to go buy a new capabilities. They bring capabilities that we can have. Our allies bring authorities that I don’t have for conducting operations.

And I won’t go into a lot of details, but there’s some in the information space, there’s some in collection of intel even within our own homeland that they can bring that I don’t have. And they also bring what I would say is our asymmetric advantage, and that’s the network of like-minded nations that the PRC and Russia do not have, that we can utilize as we project power around the globe that we can message with. I think allies and partners are truly our asymmetric advantage, and we don’t use them enough.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

General Saw.

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

Actually, we are at a point now where if we don’t address this, we are going to miss a huge opportunity to really allow our allies to work and build interoperable capabilities with us at all levels of the capability sets that we need, because we won’t be able to talk to them about a lot of the things that we need. And now’s the time to do it, because they’re all seeing the same threats that we’re seeing. So we’re going to miss this opportunity if we don’t do it.

At the same time, I like to think that we are making positive progress, at least with the integration and interoperability with our partners in the space side. When I was in my last job out at Vandenberg is when we made the first deputy of the combined space operations center, it was a UK colonel, who’s a deputy, it’s an Australian colonel today. And I don’t know what nation it’ll be next, but I can’t wait to see. That’s great. And we have allied members on our staff. We did not have that when we first stood up. We managed to bring them in and they’re actually part of our staff, for those meetings that they can come to.

And we’re continuing to extend partnerships. Now, it’s interesting, there’s not a single nation that we engage with or that I’m sure Space Force engages with that’s not interested in space, not a single one. There might be some nations that aren’t interested in a Navy, because they’re landlocked. But every nation seems to be interested in space and what it can bring to them. And so there are opportunities for partnerships there and we’re reaching out to them. And we usually start with their space situational awareness agreements as sort of getting your entry into the door, and how we start talking about space and then we go from there. So we’re making progress slowly, but if we don’t move faster, we will miss a huge opportunity.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

All right. So let’s talk about some things that everybody wants to hear about, things that you actually talk about all the time. I’m just not sure anybody broadly is listening. So here you are on the stage with all your family and friends in front of you. And so what do you know about a big white balloon?

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Well-

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

That took all the helium out of the room right there.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

So I know a lot about balloons right now. It’s amazing. So what we know is China’s had a program for years that they’re utilizing to gain collection to places they haven’t been before. For me, it was an eye-opener. I didn’t find out about balloons flying over the homeland until January 27th of this year. I was aware of balloons around of the globe in August as they presented that to us. And at that time I tasked my team, I said, “It’s just a matter of time before one of these approaches the homeland or flies over the homeland. Let’s go figure out, from a legal standpoint, where we are and what our options are.”

And so lo and behold, there we were on January 27th getting notified of the potential of a high altitude balloon flying over our country. What I would tell you is the United States Air Force did incredible work with multiple platforms to take down that the high altitude balloon from China, and the other objects that we took down. It was PhD level work against these objects, if you will, and the high altitude balloon. Shooting something down at 65,000 feet that’s only going 20 or 30 knots, everybody thinks that’s easy. And I get asked questions like, “Well, couldn’t you just go up there and lasso it?” And I’m not kidding, I get questions like that.

But when you’re talking to the president about success rates for shooting this thing down, I call up the weapons folks down at Tyndall and go, “What kind of intel can you give me on success rates?” “We don’t have any of that info.” Okay, so we’re guessing essentially. And so I tell the president, “Hey, it’s 50/50 to take this thing out.” But going forward, we know a lot more now. In an unclassified environment, I can’t really talk about that.

I will tell you that we learned a lot about our domain awareness, and the fact that these things had flown over before and we didn’t see them, that ought to concern all of us folks. That we didn’t see them. I’m convinced now that we’ll see them, but we need to see them further out. And I think that this experience, not only for me and the commands I get the privilege of commanding, but for our nation will make us better going forward.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome. Thanks very much. So General Shaw, US Space Command 2.0 stood up at Peterson’s Space Force base now, provisionally. So it’s provisional headquarters right now as the leadership decides where it’s going to end up, finally. Is it going to be Colorado Springs? Is going to be Huntsville? Is going to be someplace else? If you would just talk to the audience about the status of where the command is right now in terms of readiness to deal with the threats you’re dealing with, and how you’re standing that up and how you’re dealing with what if drills as you look forward?

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

Well, so on the basing decision itself, I’ll just say what General Dickinson’s been saying publicly, and he’s probably going to say in his hearings, because he’s going to be at in front of the HASC on Wednesday and the SASC on Thursday, that, just a decision as soon as we can will be helpful.

Where the command is, again, to continues to grow and get better every day. And when I say grow, it’s not only bringing personnel in, it’s also going through the activities that a combatant command needs to do. The initial capabilities documents, the integration with the other combatant commands and developing our plans at various levels to be able to do campaigning from the space perspective. And we’re at a better point than we’ve ever been today. I think General Dickinson would say we’re approaching full operational capability, and he’ll be the one to judge more eventually there.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Let’s kind of look at the future. One of the terms that has bugged me a lot for a long time is the term arms race, like, “We need to avoid an arms race at all costs.” This nation has always been in an arms race. We will always be in an arms race as long as we have adversaries that are challenging us. That’s just the nature of the beast.

Now, there’s ways to control it, there’s ways to influence it, there’s ways to structure it. But we’re in the middle of something right now that I think is hugely important to the country and it’s hugely important that we win. John Kennedy in his speech at Rice University back in the early ’60s talked about space science and nuclear science, and neither one of them has a conscience. And whether it’s going to be used for good or evil depends on man, and only if the United States has a position of preeminence in that world can we define where that world is going to go. And we’ve done that in nuclear and space.

But now we have artificial intelligence coming along. We have quantum coming along that are going to challenge us. It’s going to be really important that we understand that. So from your command perspective, talk to the audience a little bit about artificial intelligence and machine learning, what you’re doing. And talk about the future of quantum, the way you see it.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Thanks, that’s a great opportunity to talk about those things. So I said time is the only thing I can never have enough of, and I think we have to utilize the software and data driven capabilities to be able to gain time for us. What we’ve been doing in the two and a half years I’ve been there is focusing on digital transformation in our headquarters and across our commands, the regions and components and subordinates, and getting away from PowerPoint driven briefings.

When I first got to the command, everything in my daily ops and intel briefs was a look at what happened yesterday. I’m like, “That’s really not that interesting to me. What I want to know is what’s going on right now? And what are we going to do about it tomorrow?” And the only way you do that is you take data and information and you present it live and you can manipulate that to see what the future’s going to look like, if you will.

That’s where we’ve been going. We’ve conducted, for us. Four global information dominance experiments. We took publicly available data and information and we were able to take not the recent Russian Ukraine, in this past year, but the one before where they moved south towards the Donbas. And we were able to take the information, both military information and commercially available information, anonymized cell phone information. And when you take it and you use machines to really analyze it, machines know exactly how many cars are in a parking lot for the last 60 days, and they can tell you when that changes. They know you, they know exactly how many weapons are parked on the flight line or in the weapons area, and they can cue you to look at that and cue satellites to look at it. We were able to gain three days of decision space that we didn’t see in real time.

Three days of decision space is incredible for our nation’s leaders to be able to conduct deterrence operations, pick up the phone and message. For me as an operational commander, I can posture forces to take advantage of that as well from a deterrence by denial perspective. And so those are things we’ve done. We’ve done four global information dominance experiments, and they’re truly global and they’re all domain.

What we’re talking about is fundamentally changing the way the department makes decisions. You’re able to now imagine a single pane of glass where all the J2s and our allies and partners can look at that and see a all domain picture of what’s going on versus potential adversary and even an opportunistic adversary. And simultaneously the J3s can look and create deterrents or defeat options. And the J4s can actually validate those options because the data tells them is the fuel in the right place? Are the crews ready? Is the platform ready? Are the weapons all ready? All of that can be done simultaneously, and now you can save enormous amounts of time.

The way that happens today, folks, is you get a regional perspective, where a plan order comes out to a combatant commander who produces a regional plan that comes into the Pentagon. And the first time you actually get a global look at that is when you have three and four stars sitting around the table and typically it’s a week or two weeks after the fact. Now you can do that in real time. Imagine how you change making decisions. Now you have AOs who have that information, who can make it in real time, where today it takes days and weeks and we have to make it at my level or your level. Think about fundamentally how that changes the way we can do business. That’s what we’re doing with data and information in AI and ML.

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

Let me first pile on to General VanHerck’s thought on global integration. We find ourselves as combatant commands usually on the same side of that discussion. You have to look at everything from a global, or we would say at Space Command, a supra global perspective, because it’s bigger than just the planet. It’s everything that’s going on around it as well. And if you start to narrow in and start in a region, then you’re going to miss a lot of the big picture that you need to get after.

In terms of the technologies you mentioned, I’m fond of saying that space and cyber are BFFs. They were kind of grew up together and rely on each other more than pretty much any other domain the way that they’re connected. And I think there’s two macro ways that we’ll need to leverage the technologies that cyber will bring us in the future.

The first General VanHerck just talked to, and that is going through huge amounts of data, huge amounts of data to detect patterns of what’s going on, and then get predictive on what’s going to happen next. The second major use for space capabilities in particular is as we move further and further up and out of the gravity well, until we have Guardians actually onboard them, and maybe we will someday, but probably not anytime soon, we’re going to need those platforms to be largely autonomous. And they can’t just be operating under code that’s already programming into them, they’re going to probably have to learn as they go, and we’re going to have to leverage those technologies as well.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Hey, can I-

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, [inaudible 00:45:56]-

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

… address one more thing? So I just had my commander’s conference last week and I had previously done an engagement in New York City at a forum called Ergo, and Tristan Harris was there. Many of you have probably seen The Social Dilemma, he’s the producer of that. You talked about AI and what it can do for us. What I can tell you also is it can also do a lot of negative things for us. And every day what we need to understand is that our culture is being manipulated, our kids are being manipulated through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning as they use their phones and their computers. And so it can actually do a lot of negative things.

What I would tell you is the data’s only good as the data. And if you manipulate the data and you produce, see what they want you to see, they’re actually manipulating us. So we have to also make sure we have resilient, secure, safe systems put in place. And that’s that foundational piece that we’re getting after right now to be able to do the C2 and everything we need to do.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

It really is all about the data. If you think about the ChatGT stuff that’s out there that everybody’s playing with now, think about the database that artificial intelligence algorithm’s running on. That database is the internet. It is truth and falsehoods and false narratives and stuff that people insert. That’s what it’s running on. But if you can control your data, protect your data, run on that enterprise, everything changes. And you didn’t pick up on quantum, but we had better win the quantum race as well, or this country’s in a significant world of hurt.

So one thing before we close, I’m going to give you guys an opportunity to give some final remarks, but before you do that, there’s a lot of Airmen, a lot of Guardians in this room, the Air and Space Forces Association embraces them all. You both have something very much in common with me, and that is you’re old, so I’ll give it to you easy. Go back to when you were a lieutenant and just share with the Airmen and Guardians in the crowd something that somebody told you that changed everything, or something you wish you knew back when you were a lieutenant. Because there’s nobody that can ever think you’re going to be a three or four star, it’s impossible. But go back to when you were a lieutenant and think of a piece of advice or something you wish you’d had known.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Gosh, you didn’t tell me you were going to ask me that. That’s a really tough question. So as I go back, just to think about it, first, I had the fortunate opportunity to spend four years at Kadena Airbase, as my first assignment. I look back at the people that were there at that time, many of those people went on to be great leaders. All of them tended to focus on the basic of leadership and war fighting.

And that’s what was instilled in me from day one and the opportunity to lead. And what is really what I would say the foundational aspect, for me at least, was the opportunity to lead at different levels. Don’t be afraid of risk. Don’t be afraid to take those risks. Don’t be afraid to take failure and move forward is what I’d say.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Yep, that’s perfect. Thanks.

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

I think for me it was, the biggest learning experience I had in my first operational assignment was just it’s really about working with other people and teamwork and trust. And I’ve kind of learned as I’ve gotten old that I also believe that that’s a core competence of our nation and our society and of our Department of Defense is that we can trust each other. I’m not sure that authoritarian societies can work on trust as well as we can. And it’s the core competence that we should never forget and realize that we’re all in together and we need to trust one another and build that greater confidence in working together. And I think we underestimate that as, again, a core competence of our nation and our society.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

It’s interesting because we were talking about deterrence and artificial intelligence and quantum and campaigning and all of these things that are really important to our nation. And I didn’t tell them, because I was listening to the chiefs in the last panel at the end, and I didn’t tell them I was going to ask that question, but I knew the answer they would give me. It would be about leadership and trust, because that’s really what it comes down to. That is the most important thing of everything that we do. So-

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Can I follow up with one thing?

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, absolutely.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

So I happened to be a lieutenant colonel when I got this advice and I was a squadron commander and happened to be at the weapons school and my boss happened to be a guy by the name of CQ Brown. You guys may know him.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Heard of him.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

And he pulled me in and it was my very first formal feedback, and I’m an 05, that ought embarrass us all. Okay? And what he told me was… First of all, I’m in a unit now that has 17 different squadrons from all different cultures across our Air Force and everywhere, and everybody approaches problems differently. And the first thing he said, and I won’t say exactly what he said to me, but he said, “Do you know, come across as an abrasive blank.”

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

I know what that word is.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

The best advice you could ever get, fundamentally change me and how I lead and how I approach problems didn’t change who I was and how I thought about things. But I can tell you I wouldn’t have gone much further if I didn’t get that feedback from our current chief of staff of the Air Force, and understand how much relationships matter. And he gave me that feedback. Now, he may deny that, but it’s true, he gave it to me.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

No, I think that’s perfect. So we’re down to three minutes, so you got 90 seconds each just to share your thoughts as we close out the evening.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Well, first, thanks for the opportunity. Really appreciate it. Every day I get up, I think I have the most noble, humbling job on the planet, and that’s defending your homeland. I don’t think it gets any better than that. And two and a half years into it, still have the passion to do this mission each and every day. I would tell you that we’re challenged folks, and we got to think differently. This recent events with the altitude balloon and the other objects has given us a platform to go after that.

Now’s the time to take advantage of that. Never let a good crisis pass. That’s my motto right now. We’re going to take the opportunity, but we’ve got to go faster, the field capabilities to defend our homeland. I didn’t talk about it, but from a deterrence perspective, I think I’m one part of the equation. Before a PRC or somebody else is going to make a decision, whether they’re going to try to take a Taiwan or something else, in their mindset, they have to be able to stymie our flow from the homeland and deter or dissuade us from intervening. My job each and every day is to make sure that they, on their mindset and their gray matter, believe that they could never bring us to our knees each and day. And that’s what I get to do and it’s very humbling. So thanks.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome. Thank you. General Shaw.

Lt. Gen. John Shaw:

I’ll close by making a very bold prediction. Now, make sure you take good notes here, this isn’t happening anytime soon, but someday. So right now, the US Space Force is the smallest service in the Department of Defense in terms of its personnel and in terms of its budget. One day, I don’t know how many years or decades from now, the US Space Force will be the largest service in the Department of Defense and probably have the largest budget.

And that will only be because our society’s advanced to the point that we’re projecting power across such vast distances that only the Space Force can deliver the ability to protect and defend in those distances and project power across those distances. So just want to leave with that thought that it may be small now, but just you wait.

Gen. John E. Hyten, USAF (Ret.):

All right, thanks very much everybody. You guys go do great things. Have a good evening tonight, and we appreciate your time.

Voiceover:

With that, ladies and gentlemen, our first day of sessions has come to a close, but the symposium is only getting started. We’re right back here tomorrow, starting with morning coffee at 0700, and keynotes from senior Air and Space Force Leaders beginning at 0800, with panels all day long. Be sure to also visit our exhibit hall featuring more than 100 exhibitors, which opens at 0910. We’ve got a packed, exciting schedule. We’ll see you tomorrow.

SDA Taps Raytheon for Seven More Missile-Tracking Satellites

SDA Taps Raytheon for Seven More Missile-Tracking Satellites

March 6, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Development Agency has added another batch of missile-tracking satellites to its expansive constellation, awarding Raytheon a $250 million contract March 2 to build seven spacecraft. 

Those satellites will join the already-planned 28 satellites in the Tranche 1 Tracking Layer of SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture—the initial contracts for Tranche 1 were issued in July, split evenly between L3Harris and Northrop Grumman Strategic Space Systems. 

The increase in the tranche size is the result of funds added to the SDA budget by Congress, agency spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea told Air & Space Forces Magazine, referring to the Raytheon satellites as the fifth orbital plane of the tranche. 

“This fifth plane award adds sensor diversity to our T1 Tracking constellation and achieved a price point of approximately $40 million per [satellite],” Elzea said. That price point is slightly lower than the contracts awarded to L3Harris and Northrop Grumman. 

The extra satellites will launch in late 2025, Elzea said, after the other Tranche 1 Tracking Layer satellites, which are slated to begin launching in April 2025. That timeline is also thanks to added funding from Congress—previously none of the satellites had been planned for launch before 2026. 

The Tracking Layer of the PWSA is intended to bolster the Pentagon’s ability to detect and track missile launches and flights. In particular, its position in low-Earth orbit will allow it to better track new threats like hypersonic missiles, experts say. 

“Developing a resilient and affordable proliferated satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit will improve our ability to track emerging threats like hypersonic missiles,” Dave Broadbent, president of Space & C2 at Raytheon Intelligence & Space, said in a statement. “Continuing to develop this architecture with SDA and our industry partners will be a high priority for us in the coming months.” 

Raytheon was one of the initial bidders for Tranche 0 of the Tracking Layer but lost out to L3Harris and SpaceX, who were selected to build four satellites each. Raytheon protested but lost. 

This is the first time Raytheon has been selected to contribute any satellites to the PWSA—York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris are all building satellites as part of Tranche 0 and Tranche 1 of the Tracking Layer and Transport Layer. 

SDA director Derek M. Tournear has emphasized the importance of avoiding vendor lock and spreading contracts among firms to encourage competition as more and more tranches are launched. He has said the agency’s plan is to launch new tranches every two years to continuously upgrade capabilities and proliferate the constellation. 

The very first launches of Tranche 0 are slated to begin this month after a delay caused by “careful analysis and … input” from contractors, officials said. 

Tranche 0 is slated to include 28 satellites in total—20 in the Transport Layer, responsible for communications and data transmission, and 8 in the Tracking Layer, for missile tracking and warning. Tranche 1 is now set to include 126 satellites in the Transport Layer, 35 in the Tracking Layer, and still others for experimentation.