Objects Accumulating in Orbit Put Space at Risk of Becoming ‘Unmanageable,’ Vice CSO Says

Objects Accumulating in Orbit Put Space at Risk of Becoming ‘Unmanageable,’ Vice CSO Says

Sept. 28, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. could lose its ability to effectively operate in space without action to lower the number of objects in low Earth orbit, top U.S. generals said Sept. 28.

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson said his biggest concern was not debris from objects currently in orbit but the growth of satellite constellations. Older satellites, however, are not going away, which could lead to a possibly “unmanageable” number of large objects in Earth’s orbit. In addition, the international community has yet to develop a clear framework for handling space debris, deconfliction, and de-orbiting defunct satellites. According to Thompson, without explicit rules, space will be too contested to operate in safely. The U.S. military fears that its space operations, such as the GPS satellites used for everything from targeting to timing, would be disrupted.

“If we continue on the current pace and trend and don’t put effective standards and norms and controls in place as a community of nations, we will get to the point where it becomes difficult to operate and manage,” Thompson said during a Defense One virtual event.

The U.S. currently tracks around 40,000 objects in orbit. Thompson said that number “will at least double in the near future.”

Some of the issues with objects remaining in orbit are practical. A core function of a satellite is to stay in orbit, not leave it, noted Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, the head of United States Space Command.

“From a technical perspective, it’s not as easy as you think,” Dickinson said during an address at Fort Sill, Okla. “It’s not like bending over and picking up a piece of trash. It’s in three-dimensional space. In theory, things are moving at 17,000 miles an hour.”

Dickinson said many commercial companies and some governments are interested in achieving better means of de-orbiting satellites. Still, the larger question was not technical but one of responsibility for the cost.

“The real question is who pays for it,” Dickinson said. “Would that be a DOD task or would that be the Department of Commerce or United Nations?”

The U.N. has a body looking at responsible behavior in space. The U.S. is seeking to lead on the issue by pledging it will not conduct kinetic direct-ascent anti-satellite tests and urging governments to create clear norms for space operations.

Dickinson suggested that the international community should treat space the same way it does shared environments inside the Earth’s atmosphere, such as pollution in the air and oceans.

“We’re going to have to address the problem, just like we have in other domains,” Dickinson said.

Thompson said issues such as the proliferation of objects in orbit, the growing threat posed by China as an adversary, and the rapid growth in China’s military space capabilities have largely resolved the Space Force’s need to justify its existence as an independent service to parts of the government.

“They weren’t sure now was the right time,” Thompson said of some critics. “Now the message is both from those who were believers in the beginning and even those who are skeptics—they say, ‘You know, I was a skeptic in the past, but you all are doing the right thing. This is a good move.’ Increasingly, we do not have to convince those folks.”

However, others remain unfamiliar with the Space Force but have had exposure to the other services.

“They don’t understand what the Space Force is,” Thompson said. “But that’s an educational problem that, with time, I think will improve.”

Of course, the challenges that exposed the need for a Space Force are also the ones the service has to confront. The Space Force has begun raising the concept that the domain will become a true theater of war in the future.

“We operate space systems in a relatively benign environment to provide information to the rest of the joint force, to our national leaders,” Thompson said. “Now we’re going to have to change that approach to not only continue to do that, but think about how we would do that under threat, under attack, and perhaps in a conflict.”

Watch, Read: CSO Raymond on ‘The State of the Space Force’

Watch, Read: CSO Raymond on ‘The State of the Space Force’

Sept. 28, 2022

Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond delivered a keynote address on “The State of the Space Force” at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Sept. 20, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

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Speaker 1:

General Raymond, the floor is yours.

General Raymond:

Okay, don’t start the clock yet I’m going to tell a story. And I don’t want my 40 minutes to wind down for the story, so there I was. I’m a first lieutenant at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota and Colonel Lance Lord shows up as my wing commander. Big man, scary man. Very first day has an officer’s call and I pedaled my bike over to the club from the big block building that we used to work in. And he gives a speech about professionalism and we were in Sac and you got to be professional, your uniform has to be perfect. 35 10 was the reg that we used to follow and you got to uphold standards.

And I proceeded to pedal back to the building and no kidding, the bike rack was here and the front door was where the front of this stage was. 15 feet to go to the building. And I look off to my right and about 300 yards away in Grand Forks, North Dakota, which is not a great place to be walking outside. I see a young man with this hat off and I said, “I got my marching orders from General Lord, I can’t let this stand.” So I make an intercept and I head off to the North 40 to intercept this young airman and I said, “Young man, you forgot your cover.” And he turns around and half his head is bandaged and he said, “Sir, I just had brain surgery.” And I said, “Yes you did, let me open the door for you.” And so General Lord, thanks for all that great mentoring advice. Appreciate very much and it’s always good to see you and thanks for being here today. Always brings back great memories.

Well good morning. It is great, Absolutely great to see so many Guardians and Airmen that are here today and at this week, which is the biggest professional development event that we have. My hat’s off to AFA for yet another spectacular symposium. I greatly appreciate all you do to bring us all together each and every year. But more importantly, AA has been a loyal wing man for Airmen throughout their entire careers. For me that began 40 years ago when I was an ROTC cadet at Clemson University. Go Tigers, Harvard of the South. I’m the guy with hair.

My college roommate, Jordy are you here where are you? I don’t see him, he’s embarrassed now but he’s here somewhere. But you can see I’m wearing the Arnold Air Society braid and been supported by Air Force Association from the very early day stages of my career. I put that picture up here, one to state thanks to Air AFA, but also it’s great to see so many young ROTC cadets here, and I see many Arnold Air Society braids on your shirts. And the only thing that I would tell you is, “This could be you. If I can do it, you can do it.”

My personal wing man, is my wife Molly. That relationship started a couple years before this, but 35 years ago we got married. This is our wedding picture obviously, and not only is Molly my wing man, but she’s our family’s wing man and over the past several years she has been a dedicated wing man to the Guardians of our new space force. Molly, thank you. I also want to take a moment to recognize another couple that are very important to Molly and I, and that’s DT and Mary Thompson, DT and Mary, thank you. This incredible couple has served selflessly and we have had the privilege of serving by their side for many, many years. They are model Guardians and we couldn’t be more privileged to have them as our partners and friends. DT and Mary, thank you.

I want to begin by saying on behalf of all Guardians active duties, civilian, happy 75th birthday to the United States Air Force. Although this is the Air Force’s birthday, we are part of the Department of the Air Force and we’re all celebrating with you, either as former Airmen or as current guardian to appreciate all the great support the Air Force provides to our new nurse service each and every day. We couldn’t be prouder of our older sibling. As I said last year at AFA in Orlando with the establishment of the Space Force, we have upped our game in both domains as the Air Force can now more fully focus on the air domain and the Space Force can provide dedicated focus on a critical domain of space. And although you’re the senior citizen and we’re just about to graduate from our terrible twos, together we make an incredible team and that is dominant in both the air and space domains.

Having served 35 and a half years as an airman, and nearly three years as a guardian, it is clear that I am in terminal count or in Air force terms, short final of my career. It’s an honor to be able to give one final presentation to this great group. On 20 December, 2019 in a hangar at Andrews Air Force base, the National Defense Authorization Act was signed establishing the United States Space Force effective that evening. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from that night. This is right after the law was signed, the announcement was made. Look at the look in General Goldfein’s eyes. It is my favorite, favorite picture, and look at Secretary Barrett like a proud leader knowing that we could do this. General Goldfein, I think you’re here. Sir, thank you very much.

That night on the airplane flying back to Peterson, we popped a cork and had a piece of cake to toast our new service. After that toast, the magnitude of the task at hand hit me pretty hard. We had to build an entire new service with largely out of existing resources without missing a beat on current day to day operations, and our national security demanded that we get it right. That demanded that we build this service independently, but to do so in a way that didn’t interrupt the great progress we’ve made in integration with the United States Air Force and our other sister services.

It’s a theme that our Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall stresses to us each and every day, “One team, one fight.” And under the AFA strong leadership and with a great, great partner in General CQ Brown, that’s exactly what we built. CQ, it’s been an absolute honor for Molly and I to serve closely with you and Shereen over the past couple years. And we’ve known each other, like we’ve said before, all the way back since Air Command and Staff College, but your leadership is making a big difference, not just for the Air Force but for the entire joint force and it’s a privilege to serve at your side.

We are extremely lucky to have Secretary Kendall as our secretary and undersecretary Jones as our undersecretary. In particular that SEC AAF’s operational imperatives have been a driving force inside the Department of the Air Force. And we have improved the quality of our analytical work and the planning that we’ve done. Sir, thank you for instilling focus and a sense of urgency to get after our pacing challenge. After decades of discussion and debate on that night on 20th December, 2019, the United States took an opportunity. An opportunity to elevate space to a level commensurate with its importance to our nation. An opportunity to enhance global security by amplifying deterrence and increasing the lethality of our joint and coalition forces, critical to integrated deterrence. An opportunity to firmly establish the United States leadership in space, and to shape the norms of behavior in the space domain. An opportunity to enhance global partnerships, uniting the world in common interest and it is great to see so many of our international partners that are here with us today. Many have whom elevated space in their countries as well.

Space is a global domain and we need global partners, we are stronger together. An opportunity to attract a new generation of civilian active duty, and total forced talent and a broader sector of Americans to serve our country, and to connect with. And develop and care for those Americans and their families using modern human capital development tools, applying more art than science. An opportunity to harness the accomplishments of industry, to create a few government commercial relationships to accelerate innovation, expand our industrial base. And to provide critical new advantages on tactically relevant timelines, I can’t overstate the criticality of industry to our success in space.

An opportunity to unite fragmented space entities across the Department of Defense in order to move quickly, make the best use of funding that we get and meet the urgency of the moment. An opportunity with our global innovative perspective, to redefine the character of warfare in our best interest and the interest of our allies and partners. Space flight has always been about opportunity for this country, we are a space faring nation. It is no different in the Department of Defense. The Space Force will ensure our freedoms and opportunities extend into space, and will show that we can meet any challenge anywhere. Seizing these opportunities was not about incremental change, it was about bold thinking, a new approach built for today and for the next 100 years, not for the past.

We faced two early challenges in my opinion. The first challenge is that we wouldn’t think bold enough, the second challenge was that when we did think bold, that bureaucracy might stifle our bold thinking. We were dead set against either of these happening and if we did this right, we wanted all the other services to be looking over our shoulder and say, “Man, I wish I had what they had.” Because we had an opportunity to start with a relatively clean sheet of paper. It hasn’t been easy, in fact its been hard. But space is hard, and that’s what Guardians do best. And I would like the opportunity to walk you through some of what we’ve accomplished, and more importantly introduce you to a few Guardians that have made this happen.

So when you started off, we started looking for the checklist, there wasn’t one. So we came up with a checklist and we said here are the six things we’re going to focus on, you can see them on the slide. We wanted to, if you’re an independent service, thought you needed to develop your own people, you had to have your own doctrine like the Air Force did back in 1947 in the Air Core Tactical School. Had to have our own budget, you had to design your force, both organizationally and force structure wise. Then you have to ready that force and then you have to present those forces to combatant commands.

So with that as our guiding principles, we set off and what I’d like to do is highlight a few of these areas and bring them to life for you. As I mentioned, we saw an opportunity to attract a broader sector of Americans to serve. Because of our small size and because we were starting from scratch, we wanted to fundamentally change our ability to develop our most important resource, our people. Again, applying a little bit more art than science. What we quickly learned was, if you had a service that had one person in it, like the Space Force did for about four months. That was really good, you could always tell that the force was really healthy, never had a DUI, it was really easy. Or a service of a million people.

You had to have the basics. You had to be able to transfer Guardians into the service. You had to be able to recruit new Guardians, you had to be able to assess them, develop them. You had to pay those Guardians, you had to educate those Guardians, you had to give Guardians an ID card, you had to have a uniform. But we also challenged our S-1 team to not just do the basics. We wanted you to think out of the box and do things differently. It was a lot to ask of them, it’s like asking an Olympic sprinter to run a marathon, it’s two different skill sets, do the job today but make a change, and they’ve done spectacular. I also want to recognize before continuing Chief Master Sergeant Toby Towberman, our Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, who has been so instrumental in shaping and helping lead this transformation of our human capital development, along with many other things. Chief, thanks to you and Rachel for your leadership and for being on this journey with us, thank you.

So our starting point was the guardian ideal. This is our human capital plan for Guardians and their families. The big idea is to take advantage of our small size and to provide a more tailored approach at an individual level. One part of this is identifying competencies for each job down to a very detailed level. It’s no longer good enough to say, “Hey, I need a lieutenant colonel space operator, or a master sergeant space operator.” We wanted to get down to, we wanted a Lieutenant Colonel or Master Sergeant with orbital warfare skills, with these certain technical skills. For example, data management skills and we wanted to have that for every single job so we could be more purposeful in our assignment process.

Guardians can do extraordinary things and the nation will call on them and rely on them to do those extraordinary things. They require unique skills, we should manage our force to reflect that. I would like to introduce to you Air Force Colonel retired now, Mr. Jason Lim. Jason, where are you? Sir, thank you. Jason understood this and has been our principle architect for this guardian ideal and for helping us get to where we need to be, thank you very much for your leadership. The ideal also articulates our core values which are connection, character, courage and commitment. Look today, look again 100 years from now and you’ll see that we are operationalizing these values and all that we do. Let me give you one example of a way that we are living up to operationalizing the core values of connection.

Senior Master Sergeant Tony Chua, Ms. Joey Sanchez, Master Sergeant Phil Lowry, and Master Sergeant Eric Mistro, led a small group within StarCom to think through how we develop guardian identity and basic military training. Early in the planning, they understood the importance of establishing our own traditions as well as the need to emphasize connection as a core value to the space force. They developed a patching ceremony for us to use at basic training, and two days before graduation, every new guardian receives their first Space Force patch. The patch that is given is not new coming out of the package, it is one that has been worn by a current Space Force guardian on their uniform. The patch is accompanied by a handwritten note welcoming them to the Space Force. Since incorporating into basic training, we are now expanding it to all members coming into the Space Force from inner service transfers to our USAFA, ROTC and OTS graduates.

I know we have a team that helped put this together here, if you’ll please stand up and Senior Master Sergeant Chua, if you could come up to the stage with me real quick, thank you. Senior Master Sergeant Chua is MTI down at basic training, been instrumental in standing up our Space Force basic training and what I would like to do is give you my patch… that I’ve been wearing on my uniform and if you won’t mind, I’ll take yours and put it on mine.

SMSGT Chua:

I don’t mind at all, sir.

General Raymond:

Thank you very much. Appreciate Your leadership.

We also had to address recruiting. We only recruit about 500 enlisted Guardians every year and about 300 officers. Our goal was not to take the first 500, or the first 300, but the best. And we’ve done so. We’ve completely changed how we recruit with the help of the Air Force recruiting service. Centralizing selection, enhanced assessments, board selection of every guardian that comes into our service by a group of senior mass sergeants. The good news is that we have more folks knocking on our door than we can take and our talent level is soaring. We’ve developed a university partnership program with 14 different schools that are included, focusing on attracting top tier talent and research. For officer accessions, if you sign a contract with us, we’ll commit to you and we’ll pay for your education.

Our diversity rates are increasing across the board, still not reflective of the nation that we serve, but we’re trending in the right direction. Our digital fluency is rising, which is so important to fueling innovation and tackling the tough space domain big data challenges. We have incredible young talent from road scholars, cadet wing commanders, Ivy League grads, national champions. I’d like to introduce you to a young specialist that I met back in Nashville. Specialist Autumn Lovell. Autumn, please stand. Thank you. I met Autumn in Nashville and had an opportunity to swear her into the Space Force before going to basic training, she wanted to be an intel specialist.

She already had her bachelor’s degree. She’d just graduated from tech school as a distinguished graduate and in the end of the course she was top performer in the end of course Operation Lone Star exercise. Specialist Lovell, I met at Peterson a couple weeks ago and she told me her goal is to be an officer, and specifically she wants to be a CSO. Autumn, thanks for taking a chance on us and for joining the Space Force and I can’t wait 30 years from now, watching your hearing as you testify to become a CSO, you’re that talented, thank you.

We’re also looking at less traditional ways to assess talent. This summer we accepted six cyber professionals to commission directly into the Space Force from industry. We’re bringing them in anywhere from a first lieutenant to a lieutenant colonel based on the credit we’ve given them for the experience that they’ve had with the industry. Our first person, our first officer that has come in directly from industry is First Lieutenant Jessica Thompson at Direct Commission. She can’t be with us here today because she’s at OTS, and she’ll graduate and join our forces as a cyber professional inside of the United States Space Force, we’re very proud of her.

The last critical piece that we’ve used to build this service is transferring volunteers from other sister services into the Space Force. Nobody has ever done this before on the scale that we’re doing, we had thousands and thousands of volunteers and we selected 895 Sailor, Soldiers and Marines along with the Airmen that have transferred into the Space Force. All of these are volunteers, you can’t order anybody to move from one service to another. It was pretty easy for space operators to volunteer because that’s where your job was going for the intelligence professionals, acquisition professionals, engineers and cyber professionals. They could have stayed in the Air force or they could have shifted. That was a harder decision I’m sure, but probably the most difficult group of folks that had to decide were those that were coming in from other services because they were volunteering to leave a service, some that had been Colonels, or Navy Captains, or Command Sergeant Majors that have volunteered to come in.

One of the cool things that I’ve got to witness over the course of this past year are what we call transfer ceremonies. Where folks come in and we’ve done it everywhere from Thule, Greenland to an island in the Pacific, to the International Space Station. It’s a really, really powerful ceremony and I’d like you to witness that today. So I’d like to invite Specialist Caleb Jones, Sergeant Eric Runyon, Sergeant Kale Jennings, Staff Sergeant Eric Raffin and Staff Sergeant Ross McClellen to come up on the stage.

So these five soldiers have volunteered to transfer from the army to the United States Space Force and if you wouldn’t mind, if you’re able to stand and we’re going to do an oath and transfer them from one service to another service. Thank you very much. Thanks for your service and we’re very proud to have you on our team. If you’ll raise your right hand and repeat after me.

I, state your name.

Group:

I [inaudible 00:22:36].

General Raymond:

Do solemnly swear.

Group:

Do solemnly swear.

General Raymond:

That I’ll support and defend the constitution of the United States

Group:

That I will support and defend the constitution of the United States.

General Raymond:

Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Group:

Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

General Raymond:

That I bear true faith in allegiance to the same.

Group:

That I bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

General Raymond:

That I’ll obey the orders of the President of the United States.

Group:

That I’ll obey the orders of the President of the United States.

General Raymond:

And the orders of the officers appointed over me.

Group:

And the orders of the officers appointed over me.

General Raymond:

According to regulations.

Group:

According to regulations.

General Raymond:

And the uniform Code of military justice.

Group:

And uniform code of military justice.

General Raymond:

So help me God.

Group:

So help me God.

General Raymond:

Congratulations Guardians.

Speaker 5:

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

General Raymond:

Thanks for coming out today. Thank you. Proud of you. Thank you very much. Welcome to the team.

Speaker 6:

Thank you, sir.

General Raymond:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Speaker 7:

Thank you, sir.

General Raymond:

So that’s what we’ve been doing to recruit, develop, and retain the best people, but it’s not sufficient. We must give them the capabilities designed for today’s contested domain while at the same time uniting the fragmented space entities across the department. As the missile threat continues to evolve and as our threats to our space assets continue to emerge, we must transform our space architectures to be more capable and more resilient, in line with Secretary Kendall’s first operational imperative. I’d like to spend a minute highlighting the force design work that we are doing, both organizationally and force structure wise. One of those key areas I highlighted earlier, that an independent service must do.

Organizationally we flatten the structure eliminating two layers of command and establishing mission focused deltas. Let me use missile warning as a case study. Pre Space force responsibility for ground based missile warning was part of the 21st Space Wing at Peterson. Responsibility for space based warning was responsibility for the 460th at Buckley. There are six different PEOs developing different portions of the architecture. Today we’ve united ground and space base into one missile warning delta under 106 Commander, and we’ve consolidated the PEO structure under one PEO at Space Systems Command.

In addition to this consolidation, we’ve also aligned detachments of cyber professionals from Delta six, and intelligence professionals from Delta seven with Delta four at Buckley. This alignment has enabled us to better understand key cyber training of the missile warning network and to be more threat focused, with dedicated intelligence professionals focused on this and other critical missionaries. At the headquarters level, the Department of Defense has also taken two big steps forward. First, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, JROC, issued a memorandum delegating responsibility for joint space requirements to the Space Force. And the Secretary Defense in a memo just a few weeks ago, delegated responsibility for the force design work to the United States Space Force, as required by law.

We established an organization called the Space War Fighting Analysis Center to do this work. This organization is led by Mr. Andrew Cox, and it’s comprised of our smartest PhDs on our best and brightest operators. The work they do is directly linked to Secretary Kendall’s operational imperative number one, delivering a resilient space order of battle. However, what we learn, that space is integrated into all of Secretary Kendall’s imperatives and that the SWAFC has really served as our analytical backbone for this whole effort. They first track tackled the missile warning, missile tracking force design to deliver more effective capabilities in response to the changing missile threat, and to diversify the architecture in space in face of a growing threat to those space capabilities. This is the most consequential work the Space Force has delivered and I am extremely proud of the SWAFC team. They have brought together the entire department and have delivered a design agreed to by all of our key mission partners.

All of this work is being done digitally in a collaborative manner with industry. Rather than delivering a stack of requirements telling industry what we want them to build, we are engaging early in conversations with industry to seek their inputs on how they would tackle that challenge. Finally, as General Brown highlighted in his speech, we are also wanting to be integrated by design, and so we’re sharing our force design work with our closest allies and our partners. Once the force is designed, we must acquire the capabilities. We have a great leader in place as the first Assistant Secretary for Space Acquisition and Integration, Mr. Frank Cavalli. Frank, thanks for being our partner, and thanks for being on our team. Frank, under his leadership, the Space Acquisition community is working together to acquire the next generation of space capabilities.

Let me note that the Space Development Agency will also formally transfer into the Space Force in just a couple of weeks, but thanks to the excellent collaboration over the past year, this transfer will be seamless. And as we seek to deliver this new force design, we need industry to come along with us. We cannot continue to do business the way that we’ve done in the past. A different force design requires different cost structures, different risk calculus, and different time horizons. Industry needs to deliver at a reduced cost on shorter timelines and the government needs to redefine its mission assurance to make this happen. Under Lieutenant General Mike Guetlein’s leadership, Space Systems command has responded aggressively by engaging industry at all levels, from the smallest of smalls, to our largest primes, through innovative forms like reverse industry days that seek to leverage industry’s innovation.

Mike’s mantra of, “Exploit what we have, buy what we can and build what we must.” Is helping space systems command prioritize to get after our toughest challenges. This brings me to the last responsibility of that independent service that I’d like to highlight and expand on, and that’s readying and generating the force to present to combatant commanders. We’re leading a fundamental rethink of what readiness means to a force that is primarily employed in place rather than waiting to deploy overseas, we are addressing each aspect of readiness. Do we have the right quantity, and the right mix of people? Do we have the right systems, including ground and space, hardware and software? Do we have the right basic, advanced and continuous training requirements? This means a different way of approaching training and sustainment, as well as new ways of reporting data up to higher headquarters at the Pentagon.

We are also expanding our exercise program beyond Space Flag to increase readiness of our squadrons. This week, Guardians are participating in Black Skies, an electronic warfare exercise that trains the force in a realistic threat scenario. Black Skies is the first of a series of exercises, StarCom will develop to build the readiness of operating in this new war fighting domain. The lessons we learned from these efforts won’t just benefit the Space Force by the way. Any employed in place mission will also benefit the entire department and will give us a more holistic view of the Joint Forces’ readiness. All of this will help us effectively present integrated combat capability into space operations, intelligence and cyber all nested together, largely under the leadership of Lieutenant General Stephen Whiting, at Space Operations Command.

Let me just use two quick scenarios to bring, why all this work is important. Let’s talk about launch. The United States has been the world leader in space launch since the beginning of the space age. As we operate ranges at both Cape Canaveral Air Force Space Force Station, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, to safely conduct commercial, civil, and national security launches from both coasts. Launch is a team sport, and the Space Force, along with our industry, civil, and inter agency partners have had an incredible string of success. But the manifest is changing and is changing rapidly. As a young colonel, I served as the Operations Group Commander at Vandenberg, this was in 2005. That year the United States launched 25 rockets from Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral together. Worldwide, there were just 67 launches that occurred. This year alone at Cape Canaveral, we are on track to conduct over 60 launches, and at Vandenberg is on track to conduct 18 launches. And in the next few years projections show that those numbers will soar to approximately 300 launches a year. Just think of that, just shy of one launch per day.

On four August, 2022, just last month, the Eastern range supported both the space based infrared GEO-6 satellite mission launch in the morning. And 13 hours later, they supported SpaceX’s launch of a South Korean lunar mission. That’s two launches, 13 hours. A feat that’s not been accomplished since 1955. In addition to the two launches from Florida, there were also two more US launches that same day, A launch of commercial astronauts from Texas and an [inaudible 00:31:59] launch from New Zealand.

This incredible feat was done on the backs of our Guardians. Guardians like Major Katie Carroll from the Fifth Space Launch Squadron. Katie, please stand. Major Carroll leads an effort for hybrid commercial cloud architecture supporting the Eastern and Western range. This effort will rapidly improve the information technology tools that our Guardians will need to maintain our world leading launch capabilities, we thank you. To meet the huge launch forecast on the horizon, our launch ranges are also in the midst of a significant transformation that we call Range of the Future. Pivoting to a flat digital autonomous range that will help reduce costs and increase the throughput, and serving as the foundation of our competition with China and Russia.

The last missionary I’d like to highlight is our missile warning mission. Just like launch, the critical missile warning mission is yet another mission area that has gone through incredible growth. The Guardians who operate are space based and ground based missile warning sensors provide that unblinking eye that warns and protects our nation and our allies from attack. You all know that on eighth January, 2020, less than 20 days after the establishment of the Space Force, our Guardians at Buckley’s Space Force Base, and four deployed in CENTCOM AOR detected and warned of a missile attack on Al Asad. Their timely actions ultimately contributed to saving lives of American forces deployed in theater. That SBIRS GEO-6 satellite that I just mentioned on launch, will complete the Constellation and will soon be supporting operators like Lieutenant Ashley Galloway. Ashley, please stand. Ashley works in the 11th space Warning Squadron.

Lieutenant Galloway is part of a team at Buckley Space Force Base that detected and reported on 4,150 missile launches globally since the first of the year. Just to give you context, throughout all of 2021, the system tracked 1,168, almost a fourfold increase. This is hard round the clock work, but I know the Space Force will be ready because of efforts and people like those of Lieutenant Galloway who found innovative ways to push our systems beyond the limit. As you can see, the Space Force team has accomplished a lot in just three short years, and I’ve just highlighted a few of them, and I couldn’t be more proud of the team that made it all happen. But I’d also like to highlight two significant initiatives that we’re working on, that when delivered will have a broader transformation of the Joint Force.

First, our Human Health assessment Program. We have to change the way we prioritize holistic health of our Guardians and their families. I know you all have heard a little bit about our thoughts on a new holistic health assessment program, and we’re still working through finalizing the details. But I think there is an imperative to experiment with new and modern approaches to holistic health and fitness. We envision that this will include access to localized professional services and rethinking how we see ourselves in our fitness beyond just run time, sit-ups and pushups. We are preparing Guardians for a different future, and we need to take care of the whole guardian accordingly. Again, this isn’t easy and takes significant planning to achieve, but our Guardians and their families deserve to be taken care of the best way we know how.

And on Total Force integration, over the past two years we have been working to redefine how we integrate with the Total Force. The guard and reserve are absolutely critical to our mission success. We’ve come up with a very innovative solution to combine both active duty and reserve forces into a single component. This is going to be hard work and it’s going to take the full support of the Total Force and the Department of Defense and the executive and legislative branches. In my opinion, this construct will do for the total force what Goldwater-Nichols did for the Joint Force. It will enable portability between full-time and part-time, allowing Guardians to work for commercial industry, work at NASA, work for the Intelligence community, and then come back full-time to the Space Force. It’ll enable us to attract and retain a higher level of talent and to continue to increase our diversity.

I don’t underestimate how much work this is going to entail. Our team of active duty and reserve professionals worked for almost two years on this proposal and we know Congress needs some time to work through all the details too, but we can’t shy away from what’s hard because hard is what the Space Force does and this will be a game changer. The United States is a space faring nation, and we will only be more so in the decades ahead. Today as a space faring nation, we depend on space to fuel our American way of life and our American way of war. We are also living in the most complex strategic time and at least three generations, a hinge of history and space is at the center of this moment, the work of Guardians will shape the future. Eventually I predict, even more than airplanes and submarines have in the past maybe. Our primary purpose is to deter great power war, we must do that by showing that we could win one.

In peace time we must be visibly present in orbit showing that the rules based order that we have upheld since World War II, applies everywhere, including space. As a new service, Guardians must serve in both protector and pathfinder roles. As protectors, Guardians safeguard America and our allies from above. As Pathfinders, Guardians will have roles that follow in the legacy of our greatest technological achievements, and the work of Guardians will signal our goals and expand our future opportunities. The United States Space Force has just begun and it has a great history ahead. We will draw new generations of Americans from all backgrounds and all walks of life into service to the nation.

We will always be above ensuring the security of the United States and our allies. And to the Guardians that are here today. You have a lot to do. Push the frontier, bring your ideas and your excellence and live up to your values. The country needs you and there is much ahead. And I couldn’t be more excited for the future of the Space Force. I congratulate General Chance Saltzman on his nomination and if confirmed, I know he will lead this great group of Guardians to even greater heights in the future.

Finally, one last thing as I get off the stage. How many people have been at events and have heard and now it’s time to play the Interim Space Force song? Well, we’re going to take interim out of that sentence and today we’re going to unveil for the first time ever our new Space Force song. To me, it captures the mission of the Space Force, it’s easily singable, even by people that cannot sing and trust me, you won’t hear me sing. It blends in well with the other service songs in the service medley, and it tells our story. I couldn’t be more proud of how this song came out and I’m really excited to share it with you today, please roll the tape.

First of all, we wanted a song that spoke to our Guardians, that brought to life our motto, “Sempra Super, Always Above.” And I got a text from a gentleman named Jamie Teachenor. Jamie was a Nashville singer songwriter who decided he wanted to give back to his country and joined the Air Force and joined the Air Force Band in Colorado Springs. And he supported us when we were Air Force Space command, and he wrote this song.

Jamie Teachenor:

I put together things from reading white papers and speaking with General Raymond and Chief Towberman. And so it was quite a long work in progress for a while because I wanted to make sure that everything that was in this song would adequately represent all the capabilities that our Space Force is involved with, and make sure I didn’t mess up on the mission or the vision of what the Space Force does.

General Raymond:

When that song came in, it also needed to be arranged. It needed to have the big musical score like all the other service songs have. And so we reached out to composers that they had worked with and there was a gentleman named Sean Nelson who is a member of the Coast Guard Band up in Connecticut and he worked just a masterful arrangement to this song and then it all comes together into something that I hope my Guardians around the world would be proud of.

Sean Nelson:

I went for it and I did what I thought was going to be the most exciting sounds, and it seemed to have worked.

General Raymond:

When I heard that, it was the glue that brought all the three pieces, words, music, and arrangement together. And I thought, “we’ve got something that we can be proud of.”

Speaker 12:

Please stand for the Space Force song.

General Raymond:

Jamie, thank you very much.

Jamie Teachenor:

Welcome.

General Raymond:

Thank you for bringing that to life for us. Well done, thank you. Thank you. Y’all have been really busy. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks so much. Thanks. Thanks for all the hard work. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks. Good to see you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sean, thanks. Its an incredible song, we’re proud of it. Thanks for that. Thanks for [inaudible 00:42:18]. All right. Please.

I think you just leave off that way.

Jamie Teachenor:

[inaudible 00:42:18].

General Raymond:

I’ll meet you right outdoors.

Jamie Teachenor:

Thank you.

General Raymond:

Thank you.

Gerald Murray:

General Raymond. Sir, on behalf of AFA, I present you the 75th Anniversary Coin. Sir, yesterday the secretary noted that from this time forward, you’ll always be noted as the Founding Father of the United States Space Force. And sir, we are proud absolutely to have you, and be able to support you in every endeavor that we can. Thank you.

General Raymond:

Thank you very much.

Gerald Murray:

Yes, sir.

General Raymond:

Thank y’all.

Gerald Murray:

Thank you.

MacDill Evacuated, Hurlburt and Eglin Move Aircraft as Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall

MacDill Evacuated, Hurlburt and Eglin Move Aircraft as Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall

Sept. 28, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

MacDill Air Force Base had been evacuated, the gates locked, as Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida today, Sept. 28.

Other Air Force bases in Florida remained open but on a heightened state of alert, with aircraft evacuated from several installations out of caution.

MacDill, which lies directly next to Tampa Bay, could face flooding and damage as a result of storm surge, heavy rains, and intense winds. Officials announced a mandatory evacuation of the base by noon Sept. 27 and flew the base’s fleet of KC-135 tankers to bases in Washington state and Maine.

In a video posted to Facebook on shortly after 4 p.m. Sept. 28, Col. Adam D. Bingham, commander of the 6th Air Refueling Wing, offered an update from Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where the 6th ARW has established a continuity of operations site.

“As the rains pick up and the winds intensify, we’re likely to see the worst of the storm in the coming hours,” Bingham said. “Continue to be safe with your family and your loved ones until you here directly from us and your supervisor about when it might be safe to return to your homes.”

The trajectory of Hurricane Ian, which nearly reached Category 5 status the morning of Sept. 28, had shifted so that the Tampa region was no longer expected to be hit directly. But Tampa mayor Jane Castor warned that the city could see “unprecedented flooding.”

MacDill was at Hurricane Condition Level 1 as of the afternoon of Sept. 28, meaning destructive winds in excess of 58 miles per hour were expected in the next 12 hours. Personnel were instructed to shelter in place, as it was too late to evacuate.

Elsewhere across Florida, Tyndall Air Force Base is at HURCON 4, meaning destructive winds could arrive within 72 hours, while Eglin Air Force Base is at HURCON 5, meaning such winds are possible within 72 hours. At 5 p.m. Eastern time, Hurlburt Field exited HURCON 5, with strong winds no longer in the forecast.

Meanwhile, Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station were at HURCON 1 and had closed all non-essential base facilities, Space Launch Delta 45 announced.

On social media, the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin announced that it had evacuated 25 F-35 fighters to Barksdale Air Force Base, La. An Air Force spokesperson previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the base would also move F-22s and T-38s to separate locations.

Meanwhile, personnel from the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Fla., had evacuated all their operational aircraft “out of an abundance of caution,” Col. Allison Black, 1st SOW commander, said in a Facebook post.

Hurlburt hosts a wide variety of Air Force Special Operations aircraft, including CV-22s, AC-130J gunships, MQ-9 drones, U-28As, and MC-130Hs.

In a briefing Sept. 27, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said the Florida National Guard had called 3,200 troops onto Active state duty, with another 1,800 on standby.

Neighboring states were prepared to activate 2,000 more troops, Ryder said, and Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., Moody Air Force Base, Ga., and Warner-Robins Air Force Base, Ga., had all been identified as incident support bases and federal staging areas if needed.

Wargame Ends Better With ‘Trans-Domain’ Moves Plugged In, Hinote Says

Wargame Ends Better With ‘Trans-Domain’ Moves Plugged In, Hinote Says

Sept. 28, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Better incorporating the joint force improved the outcome of a wargame held this summer, but a great deal of work will be needed to bring those “trans-domain” changes to fruition, Air Force futurist Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote said.

In a Defense One talk on the Air Force’s future structure Sept. 27, Hinote said the Globally Integrated War Game, which included all the services and the Five Eyes international allies and partners, was meant to discover whether “it would be possible for the joint force to come together … in a new way, maybe with a new design, and [if there would be] different results” from recent wargames in which U.S. forces did not prevail in a number of real-world scenarios.

The results were promising, Hinote said, although he declined to say whether the notional “blue force,” which he commanded, was victorious.

“What we found was that, sure enough … if we implemented Force Design”—the Air Force’s planned 2030s/2040s force structure—“the reforms, the new equipment, the new concepts, all working together into something that feels holistically better … could win,” Hinote said.

Force Design includes such capabilities as the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of aircraft, new missiles, constellations of sensors, and uncrewed aircraft, Hinote explained, but most importantly, the joint all-domain command and control system that will link sensors and shooters in all the branches together.

“I don’t necessarily go around talking about winning wargames,” Hinote said. “What I do believe is that you learn a lot through them. And what I will say is, you get to a better outcome if you get after this Force Design.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “have done an excellent job of aligning the Air Force with the joint design that wins in the future,” Hinote said.

All of the new capabilities “play into a better … joint force [and a] better combined force with our allies.” The wargame showed “definite movement in the positive direction,” he added.

Hinote said he’s “excited” about that because recent such games “didn’t go so well. However now, “We are seeing … a positive trend, and the closer we get to the Future Force design, the more likely it is we can offer the President real options and real objectives that can be met.”

The “new platforms, new weapons … all of that is important,” Hinote said, but “none of them, in and of themselves, really change” the outcome of major theater wars.

The greatest return on investment in the exercise—“the most … I have ever seen”—stems from “going from a domain-centric joint force to what feels like ‘trans-domain’ or ‘all-domain,’ and being able to move across domains in very seamless ways,” Hinote explained.

He predicted that “eventually, our best warfighters at the operational level will be pretty agnostic about domains; they don’t really care where your sensing is coming from. They don’t really care how the data gets from one place to another. And they certainly don’t care about where the effects are coming from.”

With a well-integrated system, “if those things are working together … across domains, the return on … investment is really, really high. We see incredible results when we can get to that level of warfare.”

He called it “almost the ‘Holy Grail’ of warfare … Being able to operate it fluidly across the domains.”

Chris Dougherty of the Center for a New American Security, also in the Defense One dicsussion, said true all-domain command and control will be a step change in warfare, comparable to the coordination of infantry with cavalry, and the later addition of crossbows to create a rudimentary “combined arms” concept.

In World War II, he said, the U.S. military branches effectively fought “separate wars” in their domains, and even today, they are “more about deconflicting, and not truly integrating.”

The future of warfare, he said, will be achieved by “breaking these barriers down” between the services so true integration can happen.

The key development will be creating a network that can be resilient under attack “because we all know that it will,” Dougherty said. But “I do think we can build this force. I think it’s achievable.”

The U.S. military has undertaken many significant reforms in the past 40 years—sometimes without them being appreciated for their value—and shifting toward true integration is manageable, Dougherty said. But “cultural changes will have to happen” to enable it, he said. He said there were valuable connections created between the Air Force and Navy as a result of the “AirSea Battle” efforts of a dozen years ago, and those continue under different initiatives. Hinote said the Air Force and Army are building new connections under that service’s Project Convergence, which is taking shape through various other exercises this year to find weak points in the connectivity.

The “next iteration” of integration “has to include the training, the organizational structures … how do we exercise it,” Dougherty noted. Importantly, “as Gen. Hinote said, we brought in the allies. We don’t fight alone. We will almost always fight as an ally or a partner. And to the extent that we can bring them into our planning and integrate them into our force development process, the better off we’ll all be and the stronger the overall deterrent will be.”

Hinote said air operations centers are a great force multiplier for the Air Force, but that means they will certainly be attacked, and “we have to find ways to push them to the edges” of the battle so that connectivity and command and control remain uninterrupted. The AOCs are also being integrated “with the Army, Navy, Space Force, and Marines, as well.”

He said “we see a really interesting possibility where you might have a joint task force headquarters … and you might have a ‘shadow’ headquarters that mimics that … and that’s your ‘sandbox’ to do your experiments, your training, get your reps in, execute your plays, and you would transfer that to the real center when the time came.”

The idea of a “standing task force headquarters … with a shadow headquarters organization, where you’re constantly experimenting, you’re taking the latest data, you’re tracking the high-value targets, and you eventually transfer that to your main operating headquarters … We feel that has the potential to be something that can change the game for us. And it’s got to be all-domain. It’s got to be … domain agnostic. But if we can do that, that seems to be one of the stepping stones” that will get the force to where it needs to be.

Brown: Air Force May Never ‘Slap the Table,’ Finish Iterating ACE

Brown: Air Force May Never ‘Slap the Table,’ Finish Iterating ACE

Sept. 27, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

As the Air Force moves forward with its efforts to operationalize the concept of agile combat employment, leaders need to embrace an iterative approach that builds on itself, recognizing that ACE may never be fully complete, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said Sept. 27.

ACE as an approach is built on the idea of small teams of Airmen operating in remote or austere environments outside of traditional fixed bases, capable of performing duties outside their specialties, moving quickly when needed, and acting based on a commander’s intent rather than waiting for specific instructions.

In order for that approach to work, Brown said during Defense One’s State of the Air Force webinar, the Air Force needs a cultural shift. Specifically, leaders need to “delegate more; we need to tolerate more; and we need to iterate more,” Brown said.

Airmen’s feedback will drive that iterative approach, Brown said, as they continue to train and test the ACE concept more and more. And because it requires a mindset of flexibility and responsiveness, change will always be needed.

“I don’t know that it’ll ever be done, partly because the environment will continue to change,” Brown said. “And I don’t want us to get to a point where we slap the table and go, ‘OK, we’re done, and we’re good to go.’ We do that, and we set ourselves up for where our adversary does something we didn’t expect.”

To avoid that, Air Force leaders need to keep thinking, wargaming, and planning to ensure ACE stays fresh, Brown said. 

Such an approach seemingly shares characteristics with software development and the Advanced Battle Management System, which officials have suggested will never be “a shiny platform on the end of a ramp.”

It differs, however, from other systems or concepts in which the Air Force has moved methodically toward full operational capability, typically considered the end of a development cycle.

Brown has spoken of the need for a cultural shift inside the Air Force before, most recently at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 19. Highlighting that need for ACE, he said Air Force leaders need to trust their Airmen to try things, especially when they’re dispersed and operating in areas where communications may be disrupted—a key assumption of ACE.

“What we don’t want is to have them sitting, waiting for instruction, while they’re being attacked or in a difficult situation,” Brown said. “I prefer that they actually be taking action to move things forward.”

With that approach, though, comes the certainty that at some point, an Airman will do something counter to how a commander wanted it done, or even mess up—what Brown termed an “‘aw, shucks’ moment.”

More exercises and training will help Airmen get some of those mistakes out of the way, so that in an operational environment, “where you don’t know what the actual outcome or actually the threat is going to be, … you’ve done enough critical thinking where you feel like you can actually make a decision,” Brown said.

But inevitably, something will go wrong in the real world. And when it does, Air Force leaders need to be prepared to work with Airmen instead of simply punishing them, Brown said. 

“When things don’t go quite right, it’s how we sit down and coach our Airmen through what did go right,” Brown said. “Now there is a level of accountability. If you purposely, willfully violated some guidance, then there’s a big level of accountability. But the other thing I personally look at—if something doesn’t go right, the first thing I do is look at myself in the mirror, and then [ask] did I provide an appropriate intent, did I provide the right guidance, did I provide the right resources, did I provide them the authorities to do what we asked them to do? And sometimes I can be just as culpable as they may be because there’s some things I didn’t do to help them out.”

The need for Airmen to make decisions without fear of serious repercussions is not an issue that Brown is alone in considering. At the International Air Chiefs Conference earlier this month, leaders from the Royal Canadian Air Force and Swedish Air Force both emphasized the need as part of the broader concept of distributed operations, which ACE would include.

“If you really want to do dispersed operations, distributed control and mission command, you need to build a culture that embraces that,” Maj. Gen. Carl-Johan Edström said. “You need to train your Airmen, your enlisted … from Day 1, to make them confident, to act on the commander’s intent. And that also means that you need to embrace mistakes and learn from them instead of punishing people that are doing mistakes. And that is very difficult, and it takes time.”

Complicating that task is the need for a balance between accountability and risk-taking, Brown said. He wants to avoid being “too constrictive and now more worried about compliance versus being an effective and credible combat force.”

And when it comes to compliance, Brown also noted that the service needs to update its policies to reflect how Airmen need to operate, not the other way around.

“Sometimes I don’t know that our policies keep track or keep pace with how the operations, how the geostrategic environment changes, which means we may have some few outdated policies we’re living by,” Brown said.

Pentagon Releases Report Detailing Civilian Casualties in 2021

Pentagon Releases Report Detailing Civilian Casualties in 2021

Sept. 27, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The Defense Department released its annual report on civilian casualties in 2021 on Sept. 27, the first such report since the department came under increased pressure to better mitigate the harm of U.S. operations and assess their aftermath.

The report details 12 total deaths from U.S. forces in “a declared theater of active armed conflict,” which the report defines as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria. All of the deaths occurred in Afghanistan in support of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. “DOD does not assess other U.S. military operations in 2021 resulted in civilian casualties,” the report says, and only actions “attributed to the use of U.S.-operated weapons” are listed.

Included are the 10 deaths on Aug. 29 from the case of mistaken identity that killed a family during America’s rushed withdrawal from Kabul. In addition, approximately five civilians were injured by American forces in 2021, two in Afghanistan and three in a Jan. 1 airstrike in Qunyo Barrow, Somalia. Three cases of potential civilian casualty incidents in 2021 in support of Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria “continue to be under assessment,” according to the report, which Congress has mandated since 2018.

The report details 10 deaths and 18 injuries from American strikes that occurred in Syria from 2018 to 2020 that previous annual reports did not account for. Information on one strike was the product of an independent review ordered by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. That strike killed four civilians and injured 15 others in Baghuz, Syria, on March 18, 2019, according to the Pentagon. All incidents of civilian casualties detailed in the report came from airstrikes.

America’s use of airstrikes, especially in the counter-ISIS campaign in Iraq and Syria, have come under scrutiny. Reports have suggested that the U.S. should do more to limit civilian casualties in some cases and that the Pentagon had a faulty system for investigating such cases. According to Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, more than 1,400 civilians have been inadvertently killed by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria. Some nongovernmental organizations have said the number is far higher.

Austin issued a directive Jan. 27 to review DOD practices to mitigate harm to civilians, including damage to infrastructure and resources.

On Aug. 25, the department released a Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which implements changes to how DOD judges the risk to civilians and how it assesses the aftermath of strikes.

“DoD’s efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm are a direct reflection of U.S. values; doing so is a strategic and moral imperative,” the report says.

China ‘Knows What It’s Doing,’ Pursuing Fighter Similar to NGAD, Kelly Says

China ‘Knows What It’s Doing,’ Pursuing Fighter Similar to NGAD, Kelly Says

Sept. 27, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

China’s approach to developing a sixth-generation fighter is similar to that of the Air Force—a family of systems with an “exponential” improvement in stealth over current platforms—and China both knows how to pursue that technology and is moving rapidly to develop it iteratively, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly reported. His priority is for the U.S. to get that technology first.

Though he said he could only speak in generalities due to the sensitivity of the topic, Kelly told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference that “by and large,” China views sixth-generation air dominance “greatly the way we see it: an exponential reduction in signature, exponential acceleration of processing power and sensing, and the ability to … iterate” improvements using open mission systems and “essentially, [the ability to] reprogram at the speed of relevance.” The Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter is known as the Next Generation Air Dominance platform family systems, or NGAD.  

Kelly said he’s determined that “we get to sixth-gen air dominance at least a month prior to our competitors.” Of China and other potential adversaries, he said, “They’re not dummies. They know what they’re doing.”

While Kelly could not give detailed information on what the Air Force knows about China’s efforts toward an NGAD-like capability, “I can tell you what’s not happening—they’re not having a debate over the relevance of sixth-gen air dominance. And I can also tell you, they’re on plan. Absolutely.”

The National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Kelly said, reports that China’s approach to developing advanced aerospace technology is highly iterative.

“We, as a nation, tend to let go of the trapeze and kind of make a leap for the next rung,” while “our Chinese ‘frenemies’ tend to iterate—5.1, 5.2, 5.3. They tend to iterate what they have, and morph and evolve.” This was China’s approach to building its fourth-generation fleet, he said.

“They started with Su-27, morph into Su-30, then their own J-16, Su-35,” he said, ticking off the upgrades and advancing versions of the Russian Flanker series of fighters that China purchased and then built indigenously.

“Then they build on that technology base,” he said. The Su-35, designed by Russia but which China has certainly tweaked to its own specifications, is “a good airplane,” Kelly acknowledged, calling it a fourth-generation airplane “with fifth-gen avionics [and] fifth-gen speed.” These aircraft will “make it a little easier when they go off the rung” to their next fighter.

“That’s an iterative plan to get to sixth-gen,” Kelly said. “We need to get there before they do. It won’t end well if we don’t.”

In his speech at ASC, Kelly said “China is building a first-rate air force … When it comes to a nation’s blood, treasure, and stature on the globe, the only thing more expensive than a first-rate air force is a second-rate air force.”

He also said the F-22 must be kept credible and relevant to a modern fight right up until the Air Force makes a “hot handover” to the NGAD. That will happen in roughly 2030.

Watch, Read: Secretary Frank Kendall on One Team, One Fight, One Year Later

Watch, Read: Secretary Frank Kendall on One Team, One Fight, One Year Later

Sept. 27, 2022

Department of the Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall delivered a keynote address on “One Team, One Fight, One Year Later” at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Sept. 19, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

If your firewall blocks YouTube, try this alternative link instead.

Air & Space Forces Association’s Gerald R. Murray:

At this time, I am pleased to introduce, a man who needs no introduction to us. Ladies, gentlemen, the 26th Secretary of the Air Force, the Honorable Frank Kendall. Secretary Kendall is truly a visionary leader who has served at various levels of government and industry and we are honored to have him kick off our 2022 Air, Space and Cyber Conference. Mr. Secretary, please come forward.

Frank Kendall:

Thank you, sir. Good morning.

Crowd:

Good morning.

Frank Kendall:

I’m very grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today. It means I survived my first year in office. Thank you to Chief Murray, Orville Wright, Doug Raaberg, for your leadership of the Air & Space Forces Association and constant support to our Air space forces. And thank you to everyone behind the scenes was worked so hard to put on this conference, which I noticed we don’t need to wear face masks. Yes.

When I stood before you a year ago, I had just joined the Department of the Air Force family. I have now lived through one of the DAF and the US Air Forces 75 years and one of the Space Forces, three years. A lot has happened in that year. We have encountered new challenges and existing challenges have evolved. I have done some of the things I told you I would do. Others are underway or planned. My highest priorities have not changed and they are still completely aligned with those of Secretary Austin as expressed in the National Defense Strategy and then as March 2021 memo to the department. First, the mission. Our pacing challenge is China, China, China. Next and always are people and teams. My goal here is one that every leader at any level should have, to leave the organization stronger than it was when I arrived.

As you’ll see, that covers a lot of ground. I’d like to give you a report today on where we are in each of these priorities and I’d like to discuss the work to come and how it will directly affect our Airmen, Guardians, civilian employees, and their families. I’ll try to give you a sense of what all this means to you. Before I do that, I want to say thank you to some of the wonderful leaders that I’ve gotten to know and admire over the past year. First, my senior leadership team: under Secretary Jones, General Brown, General Raymond. For the last year before I’ve met at the start of virtually every single workday, to think, to plan, to strategize and to collaborate on our shared goals and vision. It has been a fantastic partnership for which I am very grateful. You’ll be hearing from each of these leaders during the conference.

Under Secretary Jones will be discussing the global competition we were in. Jerome Brown will remind us of our heritage and that as we face new threats, the so-called impossible is a challenge we have met before and we’ll meet again. General Raymond will discuss how far the Space Force has come in just three years and point the way forward for the service and his successor. Since last fall, we’ve had almost a full complement of DAF senior political appointees confirmed by the Senate. I’m very grateful to have such a remarkable team of professionals finally in place and I’m anxiously awaiting the one assistant secretary of the Air Force we still have in the process to be confirmed. I’d also like to thank all our Airmen and Guardians, active, guard and reserve. Thank you for what you have done for 75 years and before and for what you will do for the years and the generations to come. You will keep America safe. Thank you.

Thank you also to our military… “queue music,” I didn’t do that. Thank you also to our military families, your supporters essential to the wellbeing of our Airmen and Guardians and to their ability to serve. For our DAF civilians who enable and support our men and women in uniform, thank you for your dedication and professionalism. Thank you also to our industry partners who provide the products and services we count on to do our jobs. Thank you to the many nonprofit groups who support our men and women in uniform. A special thanks to our civic leaders who work with us in communities across the nation. Thank you to our international partners and allies, many represented here today. Thank you for sharing our values and our goals as we confront threats around the world together. Finally, a personal thank you to our Board of Directors, the Congress, thank you for their support in ’22 and ’23.

For all of those associated with the Congress and for everyone I thanked, it’s been an honor to get to know you and to work with you over the past year in my capacity as Secretary of the Air Force. I would, however, like to single out one person for some special recognition. One of the members of our senior leadership team will be retiring from the military soon and as contributions to the nation to have been truly extraordinary. I’m proud to call on my friend and my colleague and I know that everyone he has touched throughout his career has benefited from that interaction, I know that I have. And I’m speaking of course, of the man who will hence forth be known as the father of the Space Force.

General “Jay” Raymond is the first chief of space operations. He is a very big human being in every sense of the word. Please join me for a standing ovation for the person who more than any other, brought the space force into existence and let it through its formative years.

Now we get the music. There we go.

We’re all delighted to have General’s Chance Saltzman moving fairly expeditiously through the confirmation process. Salty will have big shoes to fill when “Jay” retires later this year. Jay has done a job that no one has ever done before and he’s done it superbly. He built the world’s first base force and give it an incredibly strong foundation. I’ve been honored to have him on the Department of the Air Force’s One team.

Let me now give you an update on where we stand on the goals and priorities that I laid out last year. Then, I’ll spend some time talking about our efforts to improve the Department of the Air Force Enterprise with a particular focus on our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. I’ve said again for my first days on the job that my priorities were China, China and China. I’ve been beating the drum about China’s military modernization program for a long time, a dozen years, and I’d like to think that the message is starting to resonate.

I said last year that I would give a classified brief on Capitol Hill about the threat we face to anyone who would listen and many members of Congress have taken me up on that offer. Last week, we briefed the only oversight committee we hadn’t been able to schedule before, the Hack D. The threat brief gets the attention of people hear it, but one question of threat brief always provokes is, “So, what are you doing about it?” Last fall, I formulated seven operational imperatives, as vehicles to help answer that question. The list of seven, which I discussed at AFA in Florida last spring, represents a set of operational problems or potential capability gaps that the DAF needs to address in order to successfully deter aggression and if necessary, defeat it.

Very briefly, we had to get the space order of battle right to find the Department of the Air Force’s C3 Battle Management Modernization Program, acquire resilient ground and air moving target indication capabilities, define and procure the next generation air dominance family of systems to include an on-crew combat aircraft, provide resilient forward basing, mature the B21 family of systems and harden our ability to mobilize and transform to war against a peer competitor.

We have largely completed the initial round of work on the operational imperatives with a focus on identifying our needs for the FY 24 budget. We use those results to build our program objective memorandum. I know that the media people here have their pens out hoping that I’ll drop some hints, but I’m not going to. We are working within the Pentagon and the administration to build the President’s FY 24 budget and that is very much a work in progress. I can tell you that the operational imperatives will be reflected in the FY 24 Department of the Air Force budget requests and for the moment, that’s about as far as I can go. I will, however, make one related announcement. One of the findings of the operational imperative work to date is we have not appreciated the scale of the effort needed to modernize D staff C3 Battle management in a Jag C squared context.

Our efforts to date have not been adequately focused, nor are they been adequately integrated. As a result, I have appointed regular General Luke Cropsey, as a new integrating program executive officer for DAF C3 battle management. Luke will report directly to Assistant Secretary Andrew Hunter, but also for space systems to Assistant Secretary Frank Calvelli. He will have technical authority over the DAF C3 Battle Management Enterprise and take the lead in overall architecture and systems design, system engineering, configuration management and interface control. He will be the DAF’s interface to OSD and the other military departments for DAF Jag C Square technical development. To ensure general cropsey success, we will continue the collaborative operational and technical leadership team model used for the operational imperatives. John Cropsey will work with General Jeff Valencia and General John Olson, who will be the operational requirements leads for their respective services. To ensure that this critical effort to modernize DAF C3 battle management stays on track, the service chief and I will conduct quarterly reviews of the integrated profile of DAFC3 Battle Management Programs.

The DAF is a large ship that turned slowly, but to use the [inaudible 00:11:12] expression, ‘that helm is hard over’. We’ve identified the change we need to accelerate, to avoid losing. Now we have to resource that change and execute the plan to make it happen. We will continue to use the operational imperative framework, but for each imperative there will be a program of actions tailored to meet that specific imperative. As a result of our work to date, we have also initiated efforts to address the future of our electronic warfare suite of capabilities, our munitions roadmap and the future of our mobility and tank capabilities, all in the context of a rapidly changing and competitive threat. We will be reaching out to industry for your ideas, your concepts, your analysis, your products and technologies in each of these areas.

Let me turn now to our decisive national advantage against authoritarian competitors, our Airmen and Guardians. Our competitors are deterred from aggression, not just by weapon systems, but more importantly by motivated professional, empowered, and well-trained joint force. The entire leadership team of the DAF is committed to maintaining a high level of readiness in the air and space forces. To achieve this goal, you must first and foremost, recruit, retain, and support the world’s best Airmen and Guardians and their families.

I spent Saturday at NASCAR’s, Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee with some of our outstanding recruiters. The highlight of the day was interacting with those recruiters and with their families and with swearing in our newest Airmen and NA guardian. Next on the list of highlights, it was either meeting Richard Petty or getting a few laps around the track and the PACE car with Eric Jones. Eric is our driver for the Air Force sponsored car number 43. I haven’t decided which of those was a greater thrill yet. Richard Petty posted a picture on Twitter of the two of us talking and the caption read, “The King,” that would be Richard Petty, … meeting the secretary of the Air Force.” The first comment he got was that the caption should have been reversed. The secret of the Air Force meets the King. One of these people has a temporary job and the other is, well, the King.

It helps me keep my perspective and actually I don’t disagree with the sentiment that was expressed there. Seriously, our recruiters are doing a fantastic job in a very difficult environment. While recruiting has become a challenge across the entire DOD, the Air Force is generally in much better shape than other services and the Space Force is easily meeting its goals. We expect the Air Force active component to meet its recruiting goals for this year, but with less margin than we typically see and a downward trend that may pose challenges in the future. Part of this challenge is related to current conditions like a strong job market, combined with limited in-school recruiting opportunities as a result of COVID-19. However, there’re broader trends which demand our attention. We must all work to increase the propensity of young Americans to serve. We must help a broader population see themselves as someone who can succeed, grow and thrive by serving their country in uniform as part of a great team.

For young Americans who want an opportunity to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, challenge themselves at a job unlike any other as members of a great team, The Air & Space Forces are where you want to be. I’m getting a lot of questions from the media about Top Gun, which some have noticed is actually a film about navy fighter pilots. My response, in case you’re asked this question, is that first of all, the Air Force has a lot more fighters than the Navy and you don’t have to live on a ship for months in order to fly them.

Not to knock my sister service at all, of course. We’ve challenged our recruiters to increase the diversity of our applicant pool. We can’t just say we want the best and brightest. We need to focus our investment and our outreach toward reaching the best and brightest from all of America. We recently updated the Officer Ascension applicant pool goals. These were last revised in 2014. Our outreach to top talent must take advantage of and attract the broad diversity of our country’s talents. The science is very clear on this: a diverse team is a stronger team, one able to leverage different perspectives, different backgrounds and different experiences to solve the toughest of problems.

With these efforts, we’ve seen significant increases in female officer ascensions. We’ve increased our partnerships with minority serving institutions and strengthen community outreach that connects prospective recruits with mentors, especially those with an interest in aviation and STEM based fields and we know the diversity of our force also includes the incredible perspective and expertise in our Air National Guard and Air Force reserves.

They are at the core of all our mission sets, seamlessly integrating into our operational and our strategic objectives while enriching us with their diverse experience and expertise countered from the private sector. To ensure we have the fully ready force we need, we are also working to remove the barriers, hurdles, and headwinds identified in the disparity reports we published over the past year and before. We want to ensure we have the right mix of skills that we need to be operationally successful and we want everyone to serve to their full potential. These efforts come in many varieties. For example, we are putting cyber officers into a broader range of positions where their expertise can inform senior decision makers. Designed to assist us in identifying barriers to inclusion, the DAF Hispanic Empowerment and Advancement Team or HEAT, help us to update uniform name tags with accent marks.

Getting the small things right does matter. It shows people they are valued parts of the team. As we continue to reexamine our personnel policies to ensure we’re removing barriers that might have disparate impacts, under Secretary Jones and General Brown have been leading the charge to ensure that our female aviators have more input in determining whether they fly or not after becoming pregnant, while taking into account safety and operational readiness.

One of the greatest incentives to continue serving is our Airmen and Guardians know that we don’t just train, educate and grow them as leaders. We also take very seriously our obligations to take care of their families. As I’ve traveled to dozens of bases around the world, I’ve listened to our emanate Guardians discuss the challenges that they and their families face. Secretary Austin has personally engaged all the Department of Defense leadership to address these challenges and the DAF is leaning in to lead the way. The most common concerns I’ve heard from Airmen and Guardians about our inflation, housing cost or conditions and childcare. The DAF leadership knows we can’t expect Airmen and Guardians to give their all to the mission when they are worried about paying for gas to get to work, finding childcare or providing their family a safe place to live. That starts with compensation.

With the FY 23 budget, we expect the largest pay raise we’ve seen in nearly two decades. We are working with the Office of the Secretary Defense to ensure basic allowance for housing also keeps space with costs. I’ve heard from the husbands and wives or our service members how frequent moves can lead to job uncertainty and insecurity, and so we are expanding our efforts to reduce barriers to spousal employment opportunities, including additional work on state reciprocity in professional licensing. We are also implementing the basic needs allowance program that provides supplemental income for military members and dependents whose gross income falls below 130% of the federal poverty line. The past several months of inflation has put unique pressures on the finances as some of our Airmen and Guardians in critical specialties. Our system to adjust special duty pay was out of sync, with the rapid changes in our economy brought on by COVID and the invasion of Ukraine. That’s why I’m announcing today that the DAF will restore all of the cuts to special duty assignment pay that were scheduled to take place on one October, including… Thank you.

I didn’t get any music for that one. Including those for our recruiters. To address childcare needs. We are investing significantly in a military construction budget that prioritizes child development centers. Expanding capacity won’t alleviate today’s staffing challenges, which have been exasperated nationally by COVID-19 and low unemployment. We are aggressively developing and will soon announce new incentives that we believe will increase staffing at CDCs and expand alternative childcare programs. To address housing needs. We are working with local providers and officials to increase the availability of off base housing. We are working with privatized housing companies to enforce our contracts to ensure that such housing meets the standards we require and that the tenant’s bill of rights is implemented and enforced. Through our military construction program, we are addressing infrastructure challenges to our basis, especially dormitories.

I may now turn to some more controversial subjects. One of the events of my first year in office has been the Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down Roe v. Wade.

We know that many Airmen, Guardians and their family members are worried about the impacts of the decision and the resulting proliferation of state laws that affect them very differently depending upon where they are stationed. This, of course, a subject with widely varying views across the country and indeed within the A space forces themselves. The DOD is fully engaged in exploring how to best respond to this situation to support our people, but in the meantime, we are committed to and have been providing complete, accurate and accessible information on current rights and benefits to the DAF. The Supreme Court decision does not change any healthcare benefits provided by the Defense Department, or our policies relating to emergency, convalescent and sick leave that members can use to obtain medical treatment including reproductive health treatment.

Now I’d like to touch on the scourge of sexual assault, sexual harassment and interpersonal violence, especially domestic violence.

The recently released report on sexual assault in the military makes it clear that our efforts to improve in this area have not been good enough. While the DAF may have substantially fewer reported incidents than our sister services and we should be encouraged by that result, the fact that incidents are increasing overall, must be addressed. We are moving out as quickly as possible to implement the independent review commission recommendations and the direction in the NDAA to establish an independent reporting and prosecutorial system. There is one thing I want to make extremely clear today: eradicating sexual assault and harassment and creating a command climate in which no one feels disrespected or unsafe, is a commanders and leaders core responsibility and that will not change. Let me say that again, eradicating sexual assault and harassment and creating a command climate in which no one feels disrespected or unsafe is a commander’s and leader’s core responsibility and that will not change.

The service chiefs, your senior enlisted leadership and I all expect commanders and enlist leaders to build and maintain organizations in which sexual assault, sexual harassment and interpersonal violence are neither condoned nor tolerated in any form. Our leaders, you, will be held accountable for this now and always. The formation of an independent reporting and prosecution chain does not relieve our leaders of this foundational command responsibility. While prevention comes first, you must also do everything we can to support survivors of sexual assault and other forms of interpersonal violence. Just last month in line with IRC recommendations, we launched an integrated response co-location pilot program at seven of our installations to increase the awareness, accessibility and support to survivors. The pilot physically co-locate several resources to help survivors navigate available resources and better access the support that they deserve. Over the next six months, we will collect feedback including data and key metrics to leverage and scale this pilot program.

We want to improve how we respond and take care of victims of violence or harassment. We owe all our Airmen and Guardians a work environment and a community that they can trust and we will provide it. We will ensure that Air & Space Forces our organizations everyone wants to be a part of and in which everyone is treated with respect. We cannot tolerate anyone in our ranks who does not live those values, no matter what other admirable things they have done professionally. This past year we changed our guidance on how to determine whether someone who has committed sexual assault can remain in the military, to make it much clearer that sexual assault and military service are not compatible.

One of the most difficult parts of my job has been the over a hundred emails I’ve received telling me that a suicide had occurred in the department and the letters that I write to the families, the loved ones of each Airmen or guardian we lose to suicide. The vast majority of these suicides are our youngest and most junior people and by far the dominant means of self harm is a firearm. We are committed to improving resiliency and addressing the mental health needs of our force. Our suicide prevention focus starts with implementing the White House strategy for reducing military and veteran suicides and builds on the CDC supported strategies. We are also looking at how to strengthen and scale some of our initiatives that are showing promise like True North, our integrated resilience program that embeds mental health care providers and spiritual leaders within our organizations. As some of our senior DAF leaders have made clear by example, mental health is health. Seeking care when you need it does not demonstrate weakness. It shows courage, sound judgment, and maturity.

Building the innovative and professional force we need, requires effective talent management that provides the mix of skills and expertise we need while giving our people relevant options and opportunities and encouraging retention. The DAF senior leadership is actively managing our promotion processes to ensure we have the right depth and breadth of expertise in all our ranks, particularly in leadership. For example, we must have enough general officer through proficiency in technologies and systems in areas like cyber or battle management, so that this expertise is not confined to nearly focused organizations but also routinely represented at the highest decision making levels. Ensuring our leaders have these types of capabilities is critical to effectively addressing the facing challenge. To better manage our talent, we are revamping the entire evaluation system, moving to a 21st century IT platform and shifting away from the formulaic bullet statement approach that we have used for some time.

We are moving to a clearer performance statement system based around the assessments of Airmen’s leadership qualities and ensuring leaders are accountable for their unit climates. On the civilian side of the organization, we are also building a variety of programs to increase the flexibility of our civilian workforce and bringing in much needed talent including the Cyber Accepted Service, the Civilian Short Term Experiential Program, the Premier College Intern Program, and the Science Mathematics and Research for Transformation scholarship per service program. All of these will improve our capacity to meet our facing challenge. We have the world’s best fighting force and it’s only getting better, but we cannot be complacent about any aspect of our readiness, both today and for the foreseeable future. I focused a lot on our people today, but it all comes back to your mission and our readiness to perform it. You think that calling our immanent Guardians are decisive national advantage is just a tagline, take a look at what’s happening in Ukraine.

We’re seeing the price rush is paying for failing to invest in its people. We’re seeing failure at scale in action and it’s very visible on the battlefield. Beyond that, we’re seeing the difference between those who are fighting for a cause and an organization and a team that they can believe in and those whose only motivations are survival and avoiding harsh discipline. Some of you may think we’re preparing for a fight that hasn’t started yet and may never even happen. Unfortunately, we are already in the midst of a battle over fundamental values, our nation’s core values of freedom and democracy.

I’m hopeful that we can deter any military conflict between Major Powers. Between the US and China or Russia, where authoritarian system of governments have the clear potential for aggression. To deter that if necessary, when you must both modernize the Air & Space Forces and ensure that our Airmen and Guardians are as ready as possible for the pure competitor that they may be asked to win against at any time.

Once again, we are dealing with aggressive and expansionary authoritarian powers, something we have not seen for decades. For many of us, for our entire lifetimes, history has taught us grim lessons about what happens when we ignore the threat with authoritarian aggression. Aggressive authoritarian powers don’t stop until someone stops them. We’re seeing that in Ukraine right now. Some of you heard me say this on Thursday at the Air Force tattoo, but it’s worth repeating. Since World War II, our world has experienced unprecedented peace and prosperity because a coalition of democracies led by the United States has enforced rules based interactions between states to prevent aggression. We were strong enough to win World War II, defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War and deal with all the threats we have seen since, but our work is not done. Yesterday I saw a P51 Mustang flying formation with an F35.

For me, it was an emotional event. Eight decades ago, not terribly long before I was born, air power was at the very heart of saving the world from tyranny and an American Air Force was born from that moment. Today, that Air Force is joined by a space force that shares with the Air Force both a long heritage and the great burden of protecting our freedom. That burden is greater than it may ever have been, but we are ready for it. You are ready for it. I’m proud to be part of the Air Force family as we celebrate the 75th year of the Department of the Air Force. Fly, fight and win, air power anytime, anywhere. Semper Supra. One Team, One Fight. Thank you.

Kelly: Take an Iterative Approach to Collaborative Combat Aircraft or Risk Getting it Wrong

Kelly: Take an Iterative Approach to Collaborative Combat Aircraft or Risk Getting it Wrong

Sept. 26, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s approach to developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft—uncrewed airplanes that will fly in loose formation with crewed airplanes to perform missions such as sensing and jamming—should be rapid but iterative, lest the service get the concept wrong and have to back up and start over, Air Combat Command head Gen. Mark D. Kelly said.

 “Everyone is in agreement,” Kelly told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, that CCAs are “something in our future,” and he expects early versions will be in the hands of Airmen to start experimenting with in less than two years.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall “is right” that the technology exists for prototype systems to be built, Kelly said, but the right approach will be to let pilots work with them and decide where to put the emphasis in further development.

“The captains will lead us through this,” he said. “That’s the path we’re going on: get the tools to the Airmen and get out of their way. Let them iterate and innovate.” He urged that the Air Force listen to those who will fight with the CCAs.

“Throw it into the mix … and learn,” he said.  He said he’s sure that “if we try to foist” an end-item “on them and tell them how to do it, we’ll mess this up.”

The discussion now underway, he said, is “how are we going to get there? Are we going to swing for the fence and have these things almost operational in a short amount of time, or are we going to kind of get some singles and folks on base and try to iterate our way there?”

Kelly called himself a fan and an advocate of iteration, “because there’s so much we don’t know. And if we try to shoehorn our way into something … we may cue up an exquisite miss.” He also noted that exquisite capabilities usually end up being very expensive.

“And then if I build an exquisite CCA—exquisite means exquisite pricing—I could have a CCA that could punch into really, really highly-defended piece of airspace, I don’t have resilient comms, and that thing doesn’t know how to phone home … I don’t get it home.”

His advice to industry would be to make “clean sheet” CCA design “something you can iterate” with modular, interchangeable sensors, radar, jammers, etc.

“Unlock a nose, bolt on another nose,” he said. “Quickly take off the radars, put on the jammers,” so that the CCAs can rapidly adapt to a changing air battle.

“I would not lock us into…’it’s a sensor…a jammer…it can’t do anything else.’”

He acknowledges that many in the senior leadership want to go fast on CCAs; to rapidly put them in the field and start increasing the number of combat platforms for capacity, and also to impose cost on China by giving America’s pacing adversary more it must shoot at.

“I think we can iterate pretty fast,” Kelly said, but warned that “if we lock ourselves into” something of a certain size or capability, it could turn out to be “a race to failure … under the banner of ‘accelerate, change or lose.’”

If “we … find out we’re wrong, we have to go back to the start,” he said, and that would cost time and resources USAF doesn’t have to squander.

“But I agree with the Secretary: we need to start doing and iterating and test-driving this, and get ourselves away from some of the PowerPoint slides. … He’s right, that there’s enough out there that we can start iterating now.”

He also said the operational concepts and authorities have to develop in pace with the technology. Right now, he said, armed, uncrewed aircraft like the MQ-9 are limited to operations from just a few bases such as Creech Air Force Base, Nev., Tonopah Test Range, Nev., Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., and Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.

He said he lacks the authority to land such an aircraft “anywhere I want in the U.S.,” which inhibits their ability to integrate with the force and be incorporated into large-force training.

“You can race down the track of autonomy, but if you don’t have the authority to go right with it,” the concept will falter, he said.

“So I’ve got to have autonomy, authority and resilient comms (communications)” to make the CCA concept work, he said.

Overall, it’s too early to be thinking about what squadrons will look like with a mix of crewed and uncrewed aircraft, but some are, Kelly added.