5 Changes to Acquisition Focusing on Threat, Talent, and Tech

March 11, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Defense acquisition must evolve to address changes in the threat environment, the rate of technological advancement, and the demand for connectivity, among other shifts—while preserving a commitment to core values, integrity, and transparency, said the Air Force’s uniformed acquisition chief, Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson.

Speaking at the annual McAleese conference in Washington, D.C., on March 9, Richardson outlined—based on his 39 years in acquisition—five major changes that have already happened that are forcing the process to evolve, and which he doesn’t think “anyone would dispute.”

‘The quality of the threat is higher’

The quality of the weapon systems the U.S. faces is “very, very different” from “20-30 years ago.” The details are classified, Richardson said, but “you’re going to have to trust me if you haven’t seen some of that information.”

Moreover, “the scope of the threat is changing,” with cyber “playing a large role in everything we do.” Those two changes are profound, and “we’re feeling it,” he said.

‘Solo operations’ won’t work anymore

And “this is a big one,” Richardson said. “This idea that you can take an F-22 fighter or an F-35—or pick your platform—and you can kind of just work … without help. … Those days are gone, for lots and lots of reasons.”

The acquisition system must get away from thinking about platforms discretely and focus on “the entire fighting system, working together.” Closing kill chains without the Space Force or even the other services “is not going to be done by the United States Air Force” alone. He said systems such as the F-22’s inter-flight datalink (IFDL) “that only speaks to other F-22s … really, those days are gone. We’ve got to get away from that.”

And, “it’s not just that—it’s really everything. Think about logistics systems, enterprise IT, simulators, support equipment,” Richardson continued. He was a program executive officer for four classes of systems, and “PEOs just like to be left alone, right? They like to manage their risk, and they do that best by sort of shielding themselves from connections to other things. That’s going to have to stop. We’re not going to be able to do that anymore—not if we’re going to keep up.”

‘Expectations of the workforce are different’

The acquisition system will have to recognize this, Richardson said. “And certainly COVID contributed to that. I’m not sure it wouldn’t have happened anyway.” Employees want meaningful work, he said, and they may want to do it in different ways and locations.

“And … it’s not just an Air Force thing [or] … DOD thing. It’s not just the defense industrial base. … It’s a commercial thing, too.” This doesn’t mean employees don’t want to work, he added, but “they … require meaningful work. So we’ve got to make sure we give meaningful work. We’ve got to find new ways of having them do their work and maybe even new locations. And so that’s something that’s definitely weighing on me.”

Software-defined hardware adds agility

“And this is a good thing,” Richardson said—“the maturity of the hardware.”

Hardware is now software-defined, he said, even to the point of “changing the way the waveform looks without actually changing the hardware. … The hardware is much more agile, in terms of edits, so to speak. … I think that’s great.”

This transition has also changed “warfighting capability” because of accelerating computing power and the ability to do digital acquisition and digital engineering—which, he pointed out, is not “taking paper and turning it into a PDF.” Instead, going digital is changing design and support systems and will open up “a lot of opportunities … to meet those workforce expectations that I mentioned.”

The pace is accelerating—which presents risks all its own

“I’m an engineer. We all know what the rate of change is,” Richardson said—”it’s called acceleration.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s mantra of “accelerate change or lose … [is] exactly right,” Richardson said, allowing that this has “weighed heavily on my mind.”

He also warned against calls to go faster to achieve speed for its own sake.

“This idea that, ‘Oh, just take risk … ’ Well, we don’t take risk. We manage risk, OK?” The acquisition system must never simply dive into a program and “just hope it works out. … That doesn’t work. So we manage it. We do smart things.”

The constants—and what’s next

What won’t change in acquisition, Richardson said, are the Air Force’s “core values”; a focus on “what’s best for the nation” and the taxpayer; the need for transparency with Congress and “making sure programs are justified”; technical leadership; and a thorough and comprehensive “risk and test program management.” The basic “blocking and tackling” skills of acquisition will always be needed, he said. The Air Force will also always need a “professional, competent workforce” and “systems engineering.”

Richardson said no one is more qualified to oversee the Air Force’s technical program than its Secretary, Frank Kendall, “who wrote the book” on acquisition. In his first months on the job, Kendall “took a wire brush” to USAF programs, and, Richardson allowed, “we probably needed it.”

What must change, Richardson said, is a shift to “enterprise solutions” across the Department of the Air Force. While programs have been easier to manage when they don’t have to tie into other things, “that’s not the time we’re in anymore,” he said. “We need a lot more system-level thinking.” The Advanced Battle Management System, for example, must work across multiple commands, services, and technologies, and it will integrate logistics, information technologies, weapon system sustainment, mission planning, business systems—the gamut of what USAF does.

“We’re working on what’s called the digital infrastructure right now, the consortium approach to design what that should look like,” Richardson said. “And then once we get that, … we’ll start competing the parts and pieces to it.”

All weapon systems “need to be” integrated with and serve the enterprise, he asserted. “We can’t have single-purpose systems. … We are going to lose to adversaries that are more advanced than that.”

The Air Force must also shift away from a platform focus to “the mission systems on the platform,” he said. “I’ll know we’re there when the mission systems are the ‘co-stars’” with the platforms on which they ride, Richardson said.

The acquisition system must also change the way the industry and government collaborate, he said. The old system of calendar-driven preliminary and critical design reviews and other “Big Bang deliverable” events must give way to narrower-focus, more rapid updates that take advantage of new digital tools and make speed a given.

“This idea of Big Bang meetings, Big Bang design reviews … where the process kind of waits until a monthly deliverable comes … is not dynamic. It’s not flexible. That needs to change.” Rather than major milestones, “you’ve been doing it all along. And these new … digital engineering tools have allowed us to do that. And they allow us to do it in different locations so we can go to different locations.”

North Korea Has Tested New ICBM System, Pentagon Reveals

March 11, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has intensified its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance efforts and increased its ballistic missile defense readiness in response to North Korea’s tests of a new ICBM system, the Pentagon announced March 10.

According to a statement from Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby, the North Koreans conducted a pair of tests Feb. 26 and March 4 of the new intercontinental ballistic missile system known as Hwasong-16, which North Korea first revealed in an October 2020 military parade.

“The purpose of these tests, which did not demonstrate ICBM range, was likely to evaluate this new system before conducting a test at full range in the future, potentially disguised as a space launch,” Kirby’s statement read.

The prediction of a full-range ICBM test in the near future follows an October 2021 report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which assessed that “it is possible we could see a test of a long-range missile” from North Korea “over the next year.” Shortly after that report was released, North Korea tested a submarine-launched missile.

North Korea has announced missile tests in the past but did not make these latest two public—the U.S. chose to do so “because we believe it’s important to call out the behavior that we’ve been seeing, particularly in the last few weeks, and we believe it’s important for the entire international community to speak with one voice about the concerns that we know they have over the DPRK’s continued ballistic missile program,” Kirby told reporters in a March 11 briefing.

Pressed on exactly what actions INDOPACOM has made in response to the new tests, Kirby declined to discuss specifics.

“What has changed is we’ve increased ISR coverage in the Yellow Sea, and INDOPACOM has increased their ballistic missile defense readiness, and I think you can understand why we wouldn’t detail every bit of that effort,” he said.

The tactic of publicly revealing adversary actions they had not disclosed has become an increasingly common one for the Pentagon as of late—in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies repeatedly released intelligence indicating what President Vladimir Putin’s next moves might be, hoping to preempt and foil his plans. That tactic has, to an extent, continued after the invasion.

However, Kirby downplayed the notion that in revealing the North Korean ballistic missile tests, the Pentagon is following the same playbook.

“I would be careful drawing a direct bright line between these revelations about this program and revelations that we made early on, even before the invasion of Ukraine,” said Kirby. “When we believe that information should be in the public, we’re going to put it in the public. We’re going to state it as best we can. Obviously, there’s some stuff we know that we’re not going to talk about. But we believe that calling them out publicly for these tests was the right thing to do.”

Automating Launch Safety Is Helping the Space Force Speed Up the Tempo

March 11, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION, Fla.—Air Force and Space Force personnel and systems have stood at the ready to remotely destroy a rocket if it were to go off course from the Eastern Range and endanger the public.

Now as launch companies adopt autonomous flight safety systems, Space Launch Delta 45 is saving on mission control chairs and looping out about a dozen facilities across the base per launch.

Streamlining the launches is letting the Space Force do more of them.

The delta’s leadership views the autonomous flight safety systems, or AFSS—which end an awry rocket’s flight automatically— as “the fundamental enabler” of the service’s “Range of the Future” vision.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond’s “Range of the Future” initiative requires autonomous flight safety systems, or AFSS, for launches by 2025.

“We’ve already seen the tremendous benefits of that with SpaceX. The numbers are dramatic,” the delta’s commander, Gen. Stephen G. Purdy Jr., told Air Force Magazine during a recent visit to Patrick Space Force Base, some 15 miles south of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic.

Purdy estimated that a command-destruct mission involves some 16 range systems that must be used or staffed. That number drops to about five if the launch vehicle has an autonomous flight safety system to automatically blow it up, with onboard ordnance, or otherwise terminate the flight.

The Space Force’s Space Systems Command said the “significantly lighter instrumentation/manpower footprint” will lead to more launch capacity.

“This will be significant in processing our packed launch manifest,” a command spokesperson said. “We look to launch more missions to orbit in 2022 than in any previous year in the history of launch from the Cape.”

Purdy said that’s a welcome change from the mentality of years past.

“Many years ago, we were the range of the ‘No’ from a safety perspective and a scheduling perspective. If it was difficult, if it was painful, the answer was kind of ‘no’ first and then ‘no’ second,” said Purdy, a trained engineer and acquisitions professional. “You could do that when you only launched four or five rockets a year, right? If you’re launching a bunch more, you’ve got to figure out better ways to do things.”

SpaceX and Blue Origin already have the autonomous systems on their rockets, while legacy provider United Launch Alliance does not, but Space Force expects ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket to have the feature.

Part of realizing Raymond’s vision is to get rid of unnecessary equipment and bureaucracy in order to run America’s space ranges more like commercial airports.

De-coupling public safety from Eastern Range instrumentation requirements is helping Cape Canaveral fast-track Raymond’s vision, said Col. Mark A. Shoemaker, vice commander of Space Launch Delta 45.

“That is probably the fundamental enabler of the big Range of the Future vision,” said Shoemaker, speaking from his office suite, which is still decorated with an open-mouthed shark logo carpet emblazoned with the motto, “We are ‘Go’ for launch,” representing the delta’s 45th Space Wing predecessor.

Reconfiguring the command-destruct range for every launch “is one of the key pacing items today,” Shoemaker said. Without the requirement, the delta can conduct launches more often.

“Command destruct requires an entire room of folks, actually, right past that glass,” said Space Force Col. Pat Youngson, the delta’s chief of safety, pointing to a room just off Mission Control Room 1 in the Morrell Operations Center at Cape Canaveral.

“They sit on a console and actually [are] the man in the loop when the rocket goes the wrong way—they would actually turn a key and destroy the rocket,” he said. “We can turn range faster by not having all those extra pieces and parts. And that’s something Gen. Raymond has mandated for all of us to do.”

Once all the launch providers have autonomous flight safety systems, Space Systems Command estimates that 13 personnel will be freed up along with divestment in associated equipment.

For now, maintaining that equipment is a challenge in beachy conditions, including salt water, winds, sunshine, and even hurricanes.

“This is the Space Coast. We are in Florida. There’s a lot of water just over there,” Youngson explained.

“That water has salt, and the salt just starts eating away everything we have. As soon as you paint it, it’s going to start rusting tomorrow. And so that’s a lot of upkeep,” he said, noting that sometimes radars will be found inoperable.

Then there are the critters.

“There’s stuff that’s going to start breaking. There are animals here that like to dig, and so they’ll start chewing through wires,” he said. “You name it—there are things that are happening here.”

The best way to fix the problem, Youngson said, is less infrastructure. And that is achieved by autonomous flight termination.

“A lot of systems on the range we’re just not going to need anymore,” Purdy said. “We’re going to … squeeze out a lot of the older tech.”

Austin Set to Visit Belgium, Slovakia Amid Russia-Ukraine Conflict

March 11, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III is set to visit Belgium and Slovakia the week of March 13, his first visit to Europe since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon announced March 11.

In Brussels, Belgium, Austin will take part in a meeting with NATO defense ministers as the alliance continues to track the war unfolding in Eastern Europe. Millions of Ukrainians have fled the country, many pouring into neighboring NATO states, while members of the alliance continue to ship weapons and aid into the country.

President Joe Biden has pledged to defend “every inch” of NATO territory while remaining firm in his insistence that the U.S. will not send any troops into Ukraine itself. Still, thousands of American troops have deployed to Europe.

After the ministerial in Brussels, Austin will go to Slovakia, where he will “visit with senior civilian military leaders there to again make clear our firm commitment to NATO’s eastern flank and to talk about ways to deepen the U.S.-Slovakia relationship,” Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby told reporters in a briefing.

At the moment, Slovakia, which borders Ukraine, has no permanent U.S. troop presence in Slovakia, but the two countries have increased cooperation as of late.

In early February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Slovakia’s defense minister, Jaroslav Nad, signed an agreement for the U.S. to use two Slovak air bases for 10 years. Slovakia will receive American funds to modernize those bases, according to the Associated Press.

Then, Reuters reported that a contingent of American troops were headed to Slovakia as part of NATO’s Saber Strike exercise. Roughly 2,000 troops were scheduled to drill with Slovak soldiers in the first few weeks of March. Officials said the exercise had been long planned and was not in response to increasing Russian aggression.

Austin’s visit to Slovakia follows a previous trip he made to Eastern Europe in the fall of 2021, when he made stops in several Black Sea nations in a show of support against Russia’s influence.

Now, he will arrive in a region grappling with its largest conflict in decades—one that is growing increasingly brutal as Russia is accused of shelling civilian structures and areas and committing war crimes.

Fears are growing that Russia may use chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine. In remarks to the press March 11, President Joe Biden warned of a “severe price” if that happened.

“I’m not going to speak about the intelligence, but Russia will pay a severe price if they use chemicals,” Biden said.

Kirby likewise declined to discuss any intelligence reports but said he didn’t “have anything to report with respect to specific Russian chem-bio capabilities inside Ukraine.”

“I would only say two things. … One, this is a country that has a reputation for using those kinds of weapons on people, and we know they have a program,” Kirby added. “And two, we continue to watch for the potential—and I want to stress the word potential, potential—that they could be banging this drum with the intent of creating some sort of false flag event that they could use as an excuse to escalate the conflict even more.”

Kirby did confirm reports that Russia has conducted airstrikes on two airfields in western Ukraine, a region that has mostly been removed from the main fronts of conflict. Whether that signals a shift by Moscow to expand the scope of the war, however, Kirby wouldn’t say.

“It’s difficult to know with great certainty what the Russians are doing here. Our assessment is that they struck a couple of airfields in the west,” Kirby said. “It’s not like there hasn’t been any airstrikes in western Ukraine since the beginning of this operation 16 days ago. It’s just that we haven’t seen that as a routine matter. Now you’ve got two in one day—that’s notable.”

Congress Approves 2022 Spending Bill for Federal Government, Sends it to Biden’s Desk

March 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Late on the evening of March 10, the Senate passed a massive omnibus spending bill to fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal 2022, sending it to President Joe Biden for his signature.

For the Defense Department, in particular, the bill will provide $728.5 billion in discretionary spending for defense-related activities—roughly 5 percent more than the funding in fiscal 2021 and above the $715 billion requested by the Biden administration. It also includes $13.6 billion in aid to bolster Ukraine in its response to Russia’s invasion.

The 68-31 vote in the Senate comes after months of delays, disagreements, and negotiations that led to the federal government operating under continuing resolution for more than five months—one of the longer periods in recent history. The fiscal year will end Sept. 30.

While the government never shut down, top Pentagon officials repeatedly pleaded for lawmakers to pass a full-year budget and bemoaned the effects of operating under a CR, saying it hurt readiness, hampered their ability to start new programs, and slowed modernization.

The delayed process began in May 2021, when the the Biden administration released its budget request late, as has become typical for Presidents in their first year in office.

Democrats and Republicans then took months to make progress in negotiations—a bipartisan framework for the appropriations bill wasn’t announced until Feb. 9, and the actual text of the bill wasn’t released until the early hours of March 9.

From there, however, lawmakers pushed the bill through Congress at breakneck speed. The House passed the $1.5 trillion bill the night of March 9, and the Senate followed suit the next day, avoiding the need for another short-term CR—the previous one had been scheduled to end March 11.

Now, with regular funding restored, the Air Force should be able to proceed with 16 new starts and four production increases that it previously said had been delayed by CRs. And the Space Force will be able to move forward with the transfer of satellite communications capabilities and personnel from the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

The bill will fund a 2.7 percent pay raise for service members, previously authorized by the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. It will also provide funds for military families struggling with housing and food because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it includes nearly $100 million for the DOD to implement the recommendations of the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military.

The funds in the spending bill will also buy 48 F-35s, 12 F-15EXs, and 14 KC-46s for the Air Force, all equal to its budget request. It also pays for the procurement of 20 extra C-130Js, 16 for the Air National Guard and four for the Air Force Reserve; and four MQ-9s, despite the Air Force not asking for any.

While the 2022 budgeting process has finally come to an end, the fiscal 2023 cycle is set to begin soon. Defense Department officials have said they expect their budget request for the upcoming fiscal year to be released in the coming weeks. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and continued concern over competition with China, the topline will be closely watched—Republicans are likely to push for a large increase, while Democrats may argue for smaller growth or even cuts.

Russia, China Developments Ending Debate Over Nuclear Modernization

March 10, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with China’s threatening moves toward Taiwan and its new campaign to build up its strategic nuclear forces, likely signal an end to debate about modernizing the full nuclear triad, according to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

“I think that sort of removes some of the arguments that maybe we should have a smaller nuclear deterrent, maybe without as many legs of the triad, Kendall said at the annual McAleese conference March 9. “I think those arguments are pretty well put to bed now, given what China’s doing.”

The Air Force, Kendall said, is likely to get the green light to move forward with the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile system, B-21 bomber, nuclear Long Range Stand Off missile, and command and control modernization.

“You’ve all seen … that China is modernizing its nuclear [force] and expanding it significantly,” Kendall said. “That’s a problem we have to deal with.”

Russia’s move on Ukraine was unthinkable to some in government just a few weeks before but has demonstrated that the unthinkable can happen and that the U.S. must do what’s necessary to deter them both, Kendall said:

Russia’s invasion shows that war between big nations “still happens” and that war with China in the Pacific is a “real … possibility.”

“A lot of people didn’t think that he would do it,” Kendall observed of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. “We’ve been watching this. I’ve seen him build up his forces multiple times on the borders of Ukraine. And as we watched this one, this time was different. It was clearly not a show of force this time. He was serious about it. And a lot of people didn’t expect that.”

Now, however, “I think, for better or for worse—certainly for worse for the Ukrainian people, ultimately, for worse for the Russians—we’ve had a wake-up call. We’ve had an emotional event that says that, ‘Yes, war at scale, among great powers, among modern powers, can actually happen.’ It can also happen in the Pacific.”

Despite the Ukraine invasion, Kendall said his priority is still “China, China, China” because that country has invested for 30 years in creating a military capable of challenging the U.S. in every domain, including space. Making America’s space assets “resilient” is the top priority of Kendall’s seven “operational imperatives.” Also, “we cannot give the other side impunity to operate in space,” and other countries’ assets there must be held at risk by the U.S., Kendall asserted.

“So, we’re in a whole new world, there.”

That said, “there is a huge unfunded requirement coming in space,” Kendall warned. “When you look at what we need to have”—and some of those space architectures are being built now—“there’s a bill there, that’s coming. “We’ll start to pay it … when you see [the fiscal year 2023] budget,” but bigger bills will come later. In answer to a question, Kendall said he’s “not terribly worried” about the Space Force being able to absorb a lot of new funding, should it be appropriated. “We’re pretty good at spending money in the Pentagon,” he dryly observed.

Kendall said he is “comfortable” with the fiscal 2023 budget.

“I think we’ll be able to balance those things that we’ve talked about … and move forward. But as I look beyond that, I do see challenges ahead. We have tough choices ahead of us in the next several years as we better define the things we need and then figure out how we’re going to pay for it.”

Although he would not discuss particulars about the unreleased fiscal 2023 budget, Kendall hinted that it doesn’t have as much in it for missile defense as he would like.

“What I became alarmed about in 2010 … and what I’ve been watching progress ever since, is the purchase of ballistic and cruise missiles” by China, “targeted at our high-value assets.” The Air Force needs “good warning and tracks, particularly for ballistic missiles. So if there were one area where I think we would need much more robust capability” and funding, “that would probably be it.”

More generally, he said, if he had “extra” money, he would spend it on more analysis to make sure the programs being selected to pursue, “and modernization in general,” are optimized to USAF’s true needs. Although in the past few years, “‘going fast’ has been emphasized … it’s really important that you go in the right direction … about where you make those investments.” His seven “imperatives” are about “making sure we get all that right.”

Kendall also said there will not be as many efforts to divest aircraft, meant to free up money for new programs, in the fiscal 2023 request as there were in the fiscal 2022 budget plan.

“We made the case last year,” he said, and Congress “came through pretty well. I’m pretty happy with what they did last year. The exception was the A-10.” But “I will tell you … I don’t think you’re going to see the same scale of requested retirements in this budget as you did last year. There will still be some. Going forward, there will be some hard choices, further out.”

Kendall said his new imperatives for tactical and strategic uncrewed aircraft are priorities because the manned aircraft force now envisioned is just too expensive. He also said the F-35’s sustainment costs are not going down to where the Air Force needs them to be.

“What we’re looking at is a force in which the F-35 is the ‘low end’ of a ‘high-low mix.’ That is not going to work,” Kendall said.

“We’re not going to get the F-35 sustainment cost down to a level where that’s realistic.” While he hopes production costs will keep going down—something the program office and Lockheed Martin have said are unlikely—even at $80 million a copy, the F-35 is “not a cheap airplane. So we’ve got to figure out a way to get the capacity and quantity that we need.” He quoted the trope that “quantity has a quality all its own,” and added, “that’s very true.”

The Air Force, he said, “needs numbers, particularly in a situation where you can expect attrition. You need the ability to expand to deal with these threats. The higher-end, more expensive aircraft are not going to get you there.”

In the omnibus defense bill, the hypersonic AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) took a major cut, giving up half its funding to longer research and development. Kendall noted that “there was a lot of enthusiasm for hypersonics in the previous administration, and I think I’ve made the comment why I think China is developing hypersonic capabilities. And we have to think more carefully about what we need” in that arena, and not just “mirror what they’re doing.” Kendall said. “We need to take a look at our whole portfolio, not just hypersonics.” But with regard to ARRW, he noted a series of test failures and said he’d spoken to Lockheed Martin recently, saying, “They think they’re working their way through that” and will get back to flight testing “shortly.”

However, “ARRW still has to prove itself,” he said.

Raymond Foresees Cislunar Space as ‘Key Terrain,’ Guardians Going to Space

March 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force’s farthest satellites fly some 22,000 miles above Earth, with Guardians operating firmly on the ground.

But in the not-too-distant future, the head of the Space Force sees USSF satellites hundreds of thousands of miles away—and Guardians in space.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond isn’t saying this will happen in the next half-decade or so, he told audience members at the McAleese conference in Washington, D.C., on March 9. But especially when it comes to monitoring the vast reaches of cislunar space—the vast void between terrestrial orbits and the moon—Raymond said he envisions a need for the Space Force.

“First of all, I think it will become key terrain. And as … the nations of the world go further out from Earth, so is the Space Force going to have to do that,” Raymond said in response to an audience question about cislunar and lunar intelligence. “I’ve walked you through the near-term priorities: We have to be able to ensure that we can provide capabilities for our nation and for our joint coalition forces—it’s critical for the defense of all of our forces. If you were to look at the force structure of any other service, and if you took space away from it, that doesn’t close. They’re all built around having that assured access. That’s Priority 1.

“But as nations move out, and as the economy grows between here and the lunar surface, and as you look at key terrain for the defense of our nation, I think it’s an area that will be significant as we move forward.”

Raymond’s remarks come not long after the Air Force Research Laboratory released a video touting its forthcoming Cislunar Highway Patrol System—a satellite that will fly 272,000 miles from Earth. According to multiple media reports, AFRL will look to issue a request for prototype proposals by the end of March, followed by a contract this summer.

The need for domain awareness in cislunar space is likely to grow, Raymond has noted before. NASA plans on returning astronauts to the moon as early as 2025, and companies have interest in the region as well.

As for actually putting Guardians in space, Raymond noted that there are already a few Space Force service members who have been in orbit, and they give the service a unique perspective.

“They are Guardians that are NASA astronauts: Nick Hague works for me on the Space Force staff, and Mike Hopkins just showed up to work for me on the Space Force staff,” Raymond said. “It’s really cool to have people that have actually been a satellite—that have actually been in the domain—to help us understand it.”

Raymond also acknowledged public interest in the idea of service members actually operating in space. Such a possibility isn’t imminent, but Raymond indicated he thinks it will eventually happen, and not too far down the road.

“I don’t think that that happens in the next one, two, three, four, five years type of deal,” Raymond said. “But I do see a future … as things progress in space, I do see that there may be a role for Guardians that will be in space. So I think that will happen in the .. career timeframe of the Guardians that are coming into service right now.”

Those comments echo some made by the head of Space Operations Command in July 2021. Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting told Air Force Magazine at the time that his message to young Guardians was “if we think about a 20-year career arc, there’s a good chance there will be Guardians either on orbit or transiting through space for some military missions.”

Watch, Read: Leaders of US Space Command, US Northern Command Discuss Threats to the Homeland

March 10, 2022

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, moderates a panel discussion called, “The Threats Come Home,” with Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, commander of U.S. Space Command, and USAF Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, during the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Overhead Voice

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the stage, the dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies, Lieutenant General David Deptula.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Hey everybody, if you would please grab your seat and we’ll get started for this next session. Welcome to you all, I think you will find this session particularly interesting as the scale and scope of the challenges facing our nation today are immense. I really don’t have to go into a whole lot of detail on that because anyone reading the news knows that threats hold our homeland at risk today. Peer competitors are building new long-range missiles, cyber weapons, and other means of attack that pose severe challenges to our defenses. Looking abroad, the aggressive moves by not just Russia, but China also to seize territory and destabilize our allies and partners continue to menace our collective security. Now, just like space, we used to think of our homeland as a sanctuary. Well, that’s no longer the case. It’s crucial that we look to leverage a combination of existing and emerging technologies, allied partnerships, and forward-looking operational concepts to keep our nation safe.

So with that as context, let me introduce our two panelists for this session, who will be joining us virtually — it truly is the information age. As the commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, General Glen VanHerck leads the organizations with primary responsibilities for homeland defense and aerospace warning. Prior to assuming this role, General VanHerck served in multiple leadership positions, including most recently as director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. General James Dickinson is the commander of US Space Command, the 11th and most recently established unified combatant command. General Dickinson has had a lengthy career in army artillery and air defense, and has previously served as the commanding general of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command. So welcome, gentlemen. It’s really a pleasure to have you join us today, even though it is electronically. And what I’d like to do is start off by giving General VanHerck the floor, followed by General Dickinson, for some opening thoughts on defending our homeland in an era of renewed great power competition. So General VanHerck, you’ve got the stick.

Gen. Glen VanHerck

Thanks, General Deptula. And give me a thumbs-up. Can you hear me OK?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Can you hear him in the audience? I think we need to raise the volume. If you can hear us in the back, raise the volume.

Gen. Glen VanHerck

I’ll keep talking. Can you hear me better now?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Yeah, we’ve got you good now.

Gen. Glen VanHerck

OK. Thanks, General Deptula. Let me thank the Air Force Association in general, General Wright and yourself, for all your support to all our Airmen, Guard, excuse me, Guardians around the world. I apologize I’m not there with you in person. Business got in the way, let’s just say that, and I had to stay here in DC for some meetings today. But the theme of what you’re talking about today, threats come home, couldn’t be any more timely, candidly. You know, it’s something that we’ve been talking about it NORAD and NORTHCOM for at least the 18 months, I’ve been commanding, and the predecessors as well. And both China and Russia have done us a lot of favors. And unfortunately, they’ve done some favors, starting with their January, or rather July Fractional Orbital Bombardment, delivery of the HGV. And now with what Russia is doing, it’s got everybody’s attention, especially for the threats of the homeland. And so that’s helping move that ball down the field. So what’s really different today, when you look at the strategic environment? Well, the competitors, the strategic competitors we face today, have watched our way of projecting power for at least two decades, if not longer than that. And they understand if we’re allowed to project that force forward, that won’t turn out well. So they’ve developed capabilities below the nuclear threshold, to hold us at risk with the idea that they can delay. disrupt our force flow or destroy our will, so that we don’t project power into a regional crisis or a regional conflict.

And my concern with that, is they’re eroding our decision space and our deterrence options from the homeland especially. And it’s decreasing our senior leaders’ decision space. And what I worry about that is, the risk of strategic deterrence failure goes up dramatically. I’ll be happy to talk specifics on that. I’m not going to go into threat, I think everybody understands it. What I would just say is the threat today demands that we think differently about how we’re going to defend the homeland. And you don’t have to put a Patriot or THAAD on every corner and have batteries all over the place. It’s figuring out what we must defend that could bring us to our knees in a crisis or conflict. And that’s not my decision. That’s a policy decision that we’ve been working on for a while to get. And that’s a broad decision across the interagency, in my mind. It requires some significant analysis and linking of, what are those key critical infrastructure areas that we need to focus on? And why do we need to focus on it. Is it to protect our finance capability? Is it to protect energy and economics? Is it to protect foreign power projection? And we’re working through that now. And there’s obviously a sense of urgency to figure that out. But what it forced us to do at NORTHCOM and after I got into command was come up with a couple of different strategies, if you will. We had two strategies, actually a NORAD strategy and a NORTHCOM strategy, and General Deptula, I merged those to a single strategy, because the commands are absolutely inseparable. I, and now we, have a single strategy. And that strategy actually focuses on integrated deterrence. And so my strategy was doing integrated deterrence. And I think you’ll see the National Defense Strategy as well, we’ll focus heavily on integrated deterrence and campaigning. And that’s where we need to be. So we do need to figure out what we must defend. But also, we need to focus on that strategy that demonstrates integrated deterrence. And what is that?

Well, I don’t think there’s a common lexicon or understanding of what integrated deterrence really is. So I’ll just tell you what I think it is. It’s the influence of every lever that we have, not only here in the department, but across the entire interagency. It’s with our fellow combat commanders, it’s with our fellow allies and partners, and that in every operation activity, investment and exercise, whether that be under COCOM authority, whether that be in service authority, has a deterrent value when messaged properly. Services have deterrent value as they build readiness when messaged properly and we demonstrate readiness and capability. And so I think our allies and partners are absolutely asymmetric advantages as well, as we do theater security cooperation with allies and partners just as much. Now the Western Hemisphere is crucial, it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. But I will tell you that China and Russia are actively seeking supporters in the Western Hemisphere and campaigning. And those operations, activities and investments are crucial to us in the Western Hemisphere. So I believe, to be able to execute the National Defense Strategy, and to campaign like I’m talking about, requires us to get further left and think more about creating options in decision space, rather than reacting to threats in the homeland. We need to be able to react sooner and forward and generate a doubt in their mind about ever being successful in striking into our homeland. And that requires domain awareness. My top priority is domain awareness. It’s about having data and information from undersea to on orbit and everything in the middle and taking that data, analyzing it sooner than we do today. It’s using machines, it’s using artificial intelligence to give options to our key senior leaders in a timely manner, so that they can focus on deterrence and de-escalation if required and defeat if required.

I rely on Jim Dickinson significantly for domain awareness. SPACECOM is crucial, as is US Space Force and the United States Air Force. My missions, especially threat warning and attack assessment, Jim Dickinson provides that for me. My missile defense capabilities, SPACECOM provides much of that for me. So we’re tied together very closely to make sure that we get after the problems that I’m talking about. My ultimate goal is to focus on getting further left and campaigning and leveraging every opportunity that we can. What I would also tell you is the basics that I do, such as hurricane response, wildfire response, even COVID pandemic, every one of those, when you demonstrate readiness, resiliency, capability, responsiveness, when messaged correctly, has a deterrence value. And we need to think more about those things. The ability to react in this nation and respond is amazing. And so I’m looking forward to continuing to work with the services etc. to get more of that going. And if deterrence fails, I just tell you, my homeland defense design starts with my fellow combatant commanders forward and allies and partners, I need to generate effects forward in their AORs before they become a threat here in the homeland. And so I’m going to rely on General Wolters, I’m going to rely on Admiral Aquilino, to ensure those threats don’t actually come to the homeland. But if they do, we’ll figure out what must be defended. And so this requires culture shift. It requires everything we think about from a planning aspect to be globally integrated. There is no regional fight. They’re all global in nature. They’re all-domain in nature. It also requires us to think about homeland defense and the risk of strategic deterrence failure before we ever enter into any ladder of escalation. We’re on a ladder of escalation right now, General Deptula, and the discussion for potential escalation and de-escalation is a crucial part of where we are right now. And so I’ll pause there, and let General Dickinson go, and I look forward to any questions.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Thanks very much. Over to you, General Dickinson.

General Jim Dickinson

Hey, good afternoon. Great to see General Deptula, and thank you for that always kind introduction and moderating the panel today. And I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to Lieutenant General Wright for the invitation as well. And I think maybe today, somebody told me in my J-2 that it might be his birthday today. So happy birthday to General Wright. And then really AFA at large for again, inviting me to speak at this gathering today. So I think it was 21, September 2021, I think I was invited there. And I spent most of my time talking about how US Space Command became IOC. So I think today’s panel, though, is very appropriate with the threats come home. You know, this may seem a little bit counterintuitive, given my AOR that begins at 100 kilometers above the earth and goes out indefinitely. But everything US Space Command does every day is ultimately about national defense, defense of the homeland and defense of our allies. So for a few minutes here, I’m going to explain what I what I’m talking about in three parts. One is our role in integrated deterrence in today’s strategic environment, and mission and capability synergies between Glen and myself. So first, I think Glen did a great job with the integrated deterrence piece. I would just add to that, that integrated deterrence I feel is a whole of government approach. So unlike the Cold War, the threat is no longer clear and consistent. It’s important to leverage all levers of national power to deter. And quite frankly, it is the essence of Secretary Austin’s direction that he gave us in July of 21, which was to improve our capabilities, understand regional security and grow our partnerships. Really, the change was to widen the aperture of deterrence from simply military to the other levers of national power. And US Space Command, quite frankly, has been doing exactly that since we stood up back in August of 2019.

So how does US SPACECOM meet the SecDef’s guidance? Well, one is we counter competitor influence, we strengthen our relationship and try to attract new partners. And then we build and maintain a competitive advantage. This is all in concert with the SecDef’s vision for integrated deterrence by integrating both pre-existing and existing systems, and aiming to set requirements to field new capabilities, leveraging organic capabilities of our allies, mission partners and other combatant commands, which takes a lot of time but is a very worthwhile endeavor. We tailor to a region security landscape via our supporting role to the other combatant commanders. And I can explain a little bit later in the Q&A how we do the integration with other combatant commands. And really at the end of the day, is our supporting functions which I call the blocking and tackling functions like PNT, missile warning and satellite communications. We strengthen our relationships and attract new partners by expanding our allies and partners through agreements and campaigning. Right now the command has about, is partnered with about 29 nations, two IGOs, and 109, yes, 109 commercial companies that benefit from technical, we both benefit from technical and regional expertise. So these efforts formed the foundation of the military space enterprise contributions, I think, to the integrated deterrence, and in particular homeland defense. So space capabilities, I think this crowd, this audience would agree, are absolutely linked to not only US military, but the US wellbeing as a society and quite frankly, the global society. So why is this so important? Well, I think the threats are indeed coming home, as the theme for this panel. And so when I look at today’s strategic environment, I think what’s important is that deterring conflict in space is critical to deterring threats to our homeland. Threats to our interest in space constitute threats to our homeland. Really our modern way of life so depends on space, that a loss of space capabilities challenges that very way of life in almost every manner. And this critical domain is becoming even more competitive, contested and congested. So space is competitive. I think people would agree with that, because it is competitive, making a powerful aspect of integrated deterrence.

It’s part of almost every aspect of modern life, from filling up your gas pump to getting money out of the ATM, to checking the weather, quite frankly, on your app as you go to work or come home for work. It’s also key in how the US and our allies conduct operations. Without satellite communications and position, navigation and timing, the ability to conduct operations is heavily degraded if not impossible. Space is becoming an ever more valuable global commodity. And we must deter a war in the domain to protect our free and open access to those capabilities. So space is congested, making norms of responsible behavior through an integrated approach very critical. And what I mean by that is ensuring that we have an established norms of behavior so that we can conduct operations in space and have open access to that. And the Secretary of Defense has charged me to do that for the Department of Defense through a memo that he gave to me, or to the department, back last July. Decreasing costs of access to the domain and the global realization of its use in commerce, I think we can agree. Science and environmental minor monitoring have spurred a massive boom, and I think in a very good way. Let me give you an example. A legacy Delta IV heavy launch is roughly anywhere between $350 and $400 million, depending on a payload, the orbit it’s going to, while a comparable today, SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch is anywhere between $130 and $150 million. So that’s a drastic reduction in cost based on a great commercial market that’s able to leverage the economies of scale from a few spacefaring nations I’ll mention. About 60 years ago, there were just a handful of them. There are now over 16 active and seven of which have actually put probes to Mars. And this has increased, as you can see, congestion. So when I came to the US Space Command in 2019, I’ll give you a comparison, we tracked about 25,000 objects on orbit. When I assumed command a year later, that number was just about 31,000. When I was with you last year at AFA, it was about 35,000. And as I’m here today with all of you, it’s about 44,000. So that just shows you in a comparative status, how congested it has become.

Space is contested as well. Our competitors, chief among them, China and Russia, seek to challenge our very superiority in that domain. China, for example, is and we all recognize this, is our pacing challenge. China has fielded their BeiDou constellation, their own alternative GPS. That constellation is now operational. China is also rapidly advancing its space intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to compete with our information dominance in that domain. On orbit threats, China has, as has employed a dual-use capable experiment called the SJ-17 and the SJ-21, that can be used for grappling and disabling other satellites, a dual-use capability. And then from the terrestrial piece, terrestrial space weapons, both China and Russia have employed terrestrial weapons that threaten the use of that domain. So you can just see that the over the course of the last five or 10 years, they an absolute proliferation in the space domain, whether it’s contested, congested in that way. So just let me finish up real quick because I’m running out of time here, just kind of the some of the synergies between US SPACECOM and US Northern Command. So I think it’s fitting that Glen is here with me today, and I appreciate him being with me on this panel. But we really have a lot of synergies between each other. We share the imperatives to deter, detect and defeat threats to the homeland. We operated in a supporting and supported roles to one another. Missile warning and Missile Defense provide a good example of those mutually supported and supporting roles in the event of a missile threat. For example, to the homeland, US Space Command supports NORAD and NORTHCOM by providing early rapid and accurate missile warning data via our on-orbit assets as well as our radars and electro-optical sensors around the world. Glen VanHerck and his folks also support us Space Command in our global sets and roles and missions with contributing sensor data to the space domain awareness mission and to the support of the first Air Force components that support human spaceflight, spaceflight support, and quite frankly, defending the homeland, which gives us a stable base to ensure resilient modes of operation. So I’ll pause there for the Q&A. But again, thanks General Deptula for having me today.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Well thank you both for those comments and also for what your teams are doing to keep our country safe. So, let’s dig a little bit deeper into some of these subjects. The first question I have for you is for both of you. General VanHerck touched just a bit upon it. But with the emergence of new Long Range Strike weapons, like hypersonic glide vehicles, plus air- and sea-launched maneuverable weapons, what is NORAD, NORTHCOM and US SPACECOM doing to collaboratively meet this threat? Clearly, these kinds of weapons present major implications for our homeland.

Gen. Glen VanHerck

Thanks for the question, General Deptula. We talked, as you said, a little bit about it. It goes back to domain awareness for me. And General Dickinson provides that domain awareness for the threats that you’re really talking about. And we have to go to space much sooner than we are today. For me to be able to detect hypersonics whether they come from space, or whether they come from a cruise missile that’s a hypersonic cruise missile, and the capabilities we have, we’re gonna have to go into space to provide my threat warning and attack assessment much sooner. General Dickinson has embedded teams in all the combatant commands, JIST teams, I forget what the exact acronym stands for, to be part of each combatant command and their requirements. I worked closely with General Raymond as we were developing the budget and where they’re going for space. And I will tell you that I work the same with General Dickinson, I support where Space Force is going, we need to accept some risk near term to get to space sooner to get after the threats that you described. Other things we’re doing, over the horizon radar capabilities. Over the horizon radar capabilities just don’t benefit me from a domain awareness from maritime domain, from air domain; they also benefit the space domain awareness for tracking and backup and give additional capability to detect those threats that you just talked about. And so I’m encouraged when the budget comes out with where we’re going, I think you’ll see us advance our domain awareness capabilities quite a bit. The final thing I’ll say is, we’re sharing data and information back and forth from sensor capabilities, as we do through our global information dominance experiments, to give us an all-domain global picture, and partnering with SPACECOM to do that is crucial. So folks around the globe can have an integrated all-domain picture. I’ll pause there.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

General Dickinson?

General Jim Dickinson

Hey, absolutely. So it’s joint integrated space team. So that’s the JIST. And we have one at every one of the other 10 combatant commands that serves as our liaison integration plug, if you will, into each of the combat commands. And that’s what we have with Glen right now. From a sensor manager perspective, you know, that is one of my UCP responsibilities. And what we do with that, and we’ve been doing it over the last couple years is, how do we take the existing sensor network that we had back in 2019 — which was, quite frankly, you know, some of those geographic sensors that we have around the world plus the ones that we’ve, we have on orbit — and how do we add to that? How do we self-admit that. And so we’ve been looking at sensors that haven’t traditionally been used for space domain awareness, for example, in a role of space domain awareness. So we’ve taken some missile defense sensors that have typically, as I said, not been part of our integrated approach. And we are starting to integrate them into a sensor network that provides us a common operating picture that gives us much more fidelity. So sensors like TPY-2s, BMD ships, those types of sensors, we’re looking to how do we bring those together, put them into an architecture, integrate them to increase battlespace awareness. That is my number one priority within the command, is how do I increase my battlespace awareness? In particular, how do I look at the space domain. Part of that, I’ve got a responsibility to give that to the other combatant commands, in particular Glen VanHerck, in terms of a missile warning missile defense capability. So these sensors that we’re bringing on, we’re making the best use of the sensors we currently have in the Department of Defense around the world. And then we’re looking at the future of that. So what requirements do we need to put in addition on those sensors that we have today? And then what sensors do we need in the future to increase our battlespace awareness, space domain awareness, missile warning and missile defense?

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Well, very good. Thank you both. Now, when thinking about Homeland Defense, the mental image that people tend to have is a ICBM or bombers racing over the North Pole. But another increasingly common threat today in our information age are cyber attacks. General VanHerck, I’ve heard you talk about the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack as an example of the need to expand our definition of what constitutes homeland defense. And General Dickinson, you’ve pointed out that there’s no operating in space without cyber. How are you both addressing the increasing threats in the cyber domain? And how are you partnering with US Cyber Command in this area?

Gen. Glen VanHerck

You want me to go first? OK. That’s a great question. And it’s really on everybody’s mind, the secretary, the chairman, right now. You know, once we started getting intel, back last fall on what was ongoing, we started building partnerships and relationships. One of the first things I did, by the way, when I took the command was the need for a joint operation center. Believe it or not, I was the only combatant commander who didn’t have a joint operation center. And so I’ve stood up a joint operation center. The reason we didn’t is because nobody would believe you’d fight in and from the homeland. Well, the bottom line is that joint operations center is stood up now. And we’re building relationships. We’re building those relationships with CYBERCOM. But probably more importantly, from a broader homeland defense perspective is, we’re building those relationships with CISA. Under DHS and director Easterly, we’ve connected all those ops centers together, we’ve gone through the processes for, how do you identify a cyber attack in the homeland. That’s evolved in conference; General Nakasone, as the commander of CYBERCOM, has a responsibility for declaring an attack in the cyber domain. And I have the responsibility which would be done through a [inaudible] conference for a domestic attack and attack on our homeland. I think it’s crucial to point out who’s responsible for truly defending the homeland in the cyber domain. And General Nakasone is responsible for the DODIN only. General or Director Easterly is responsible for federal networks outside of the DODIN. Everybody else is kind of a volunteer play if you want to play. That’s where my most concern is. And what I’m doing is, we’re working through what’s called a unified command or coordination group right now, to define what are those key critical infrastructure pieces that must be defended, and apply resources? Now I tell you, we don’t have the authorities in DOD to do those kinds of things outside of there. So there’s some policy things we have to go look at. In addition to that, Dave, I would tell you, that we may not go look at law. So for example, one of my challenges is domain awareness in the homeland, in the cyber domain, to understand. But the laws don’t allow you to collect intelligence within your own homeland to know what pieces of key and infrastructure might be vulnerable. And so we’re building those relationships not only through Congress, the National Security Council, but with CISA and Cyber Command. I’ll stop there. General Dickinson?

General Jim Dickinson

Hey, great. So great question. And I would just say we we have the advantage that when we stood up two years ago, August 2019, we put a lot of thought in how we were going to grow and incorporate integrate cyber into the command from the very beginning. And I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is, we’ve just recently stood up our joint cyber center. And we made a deliberate decision to put that in order under our director of operations, or J-3. And that has worked out very well with us in terms of integrating ops and cyber defense, right within the headquarters, right within that JADO directorate, that also has a plug from General Nakasone, from the US CYBERCOM IP, or integrated planning element, that’s baked into that organization as well. The other advantage that the command has had is, as we have received our service components from each of the respective services, two of those service components are dual-hatted. So my MARFORCYBER is my MARFORSPACE. So Major General Ryan Heritage is dual-hatted as both component to Paul Nakasone, as well as the component to me. As well as Vice Admiral Ross Myers, who’s the NAVCYBER and NAVSPACE commander. And so he also has a dual hat to Paul Nakasone and myself. Those relationships there just breed, if you will, a good synchronization of space and cyber, really in a hand in glove type of relationship. So that I think that gives us the greatest synergy, if you will, in terms of bringing that together. There has been some good work within my Space Operations Command or my SPOC, which is my space service component in terms of standing up CSPs and making sure that we have good defense of our critical space infrastructure, space architecture. So I think in the command right now, we’re moving towards having that as a very synchronized effort within the command. And we’ve got some other things going on, but for for sake of time, I’ll pause there.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Well, thank you both. Now, this one’s for General VanHerck. We’ve consistently heard from our senior leaders, including this morning, that China is the department’s pacing threat. But if nothing else, the situation in Ukraine is a reminder that the threat posed by Russia isn’t going away anytime soon. To that point, General VanHerck, you’ve repeatedly said that Russia is the primary military threat to the US homeland today. So how do we simultaneously address the threats posed by both Russia and China, from a homeland defense mission vantage?

Gen. Glen VanHerck

Thanks, General Deptula. And you’re exactly right. You almost paraphrase my words exactly. But I want to make sure everybody understands that I’m on board: China is the pacing threat. China is the long-term existential threat there, they’re a then threat. Russia is a now threat in the military dimension to the homeland, because of the conventional capabilities that hold our homeland at risk, so we have to deal with both of them. The first thing I would tell you is, we must fund and upgrade the nuclear triad. The foundation of homeland defense is our strategic deterrent. And we cannot let that. When you talk about nuclear nuclear powers, you must have a command and control for the nuclear capability, nuclear capabilities across the triad ready to go. We must also maintain credible deterrence options below the nuclear threshold, so they won’t exploit those. That’s where I go back to the need to campaign and have options that create doubt that they could ever be successful by striking our homeland, whether that be kinetic or non kinetic, and the capabilities, that’s the integrated deterrence piece that is crucial. I would also tell you, General Deptula, we’ve got to get out of a regional perspective and focusing on China or Russia from a regional perspective. And I believe our plans and strategies must start with global end states where we will accept or not accept global risk, and apply that across the entire force and joint force. Instead, we plan from a regional perspective backwards, and we end up with old plans and campaign plans that consume 100% of the joint force. And so there’s a different model on how we utilize and plan for joint force. And General Brown and I have talked about that, as well. I think that there’s opportunities for GFM reform, and to be when I say GFM, I’m talking global force management, to best utilize the entire joint force to get after two strategic competitors. We can’t impact the force generation models of the services, but during the force generation, I think there’s opportunities to utilize the campaigning or the force generation for campaigning purposes. I’ll pause there and let you move on.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

No, it’s very good. Thank you. General Dickinson, the administration’s space priorities framework was released in December 2021. And it highlighted the need to protect our space-related critical infrastructure. Just what’s the significance of this designation? And what steps are you taking to actively protect space-based critical infrastructure?

General Jim Dickinson

Well, I think this designation is very significant, and that it underlines the importance that our national level leadership is placing on the space domain and our partners in industry. Other than the steps we are taking in the cyber realm to protect the link portion of our systems, we are improving our protection of our critical ground segments as well. Many of our ground assets, as many know here, especially our early warning radars, are really quite frankly, of the Cold War vintage, and in remote locations all around the world. And so while it’s a challenge, US Space Command partners with its service-side teammates to ensure that these assets are frankly resilient through firmware and supporting infrastructure upgrades. And we are taking increased steps towards protecting and defending those assets on orbit by enhancing SDA through increased collaboration with the intel community industry, and in a very good way through our allies and partners. So let me let me stop there.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Thank you for that. General VanHerck, there’s an increasing emphasis on the Arctic area of responsibility. And to that end, each of the services, as well as the Department writ large, has released an Arctic strategy. However, you also testified that the FY 22 budget did relatively little for the Arctic in terms of providing necessary resources. I guess I’d add, what what else is new? What are some of the key investments and capabilities necessary to maintain a credible defense of the Arctic?

Gen. Glen VanHerck

Well, the first thing I’d tell you is, I need access to force are ready, trained, equipped to operate in that environment. I’m the only combatant commander who doesn’t have a threshold force and a dedicated capability to operate the environment. Now a lot of people are gonna say, Well, you’ve got 100 5th-Gen fighters in Alaska. No, Admiral Aquilino, has 100 5th-Gen fighters in Alaska, they just happen to be in my AOR. So we’ve got some common-rail challenges that we can sort through there and those fighters are likely to go elsewhere. And so having access to ready and trained forces would help. That’s something I’m working on with the secretary and the chairman. The Arctic, there’s going to be opportunities and vulnerabilities that environmental change is going to create. And so domain awareness, like I talked about is crucial. And that’s the over the horizon radar, it’s undersea surveillance capabilities as well. But do we need infrastructure. Infrastructure to operate in and out of from the Arctic. So as part of NORAD modernization, and … I worked for the Chief of the Defence Staff in Canada, and Canada has to be supportive of the solution as well, to enable us to operate out of locations not only in Canada, but I would say we have to work with the EUCOM AOR to operate out of Thule, Greenland. Why this is important as part of that campaigning plan that I’ve talked about part of integrated deterrence. To be, you know, persistent in the Arctic, you’ve got to have infrastructure and capability, which means comms, you’ve got to be able to communicate really tough north of 65, you got to have fuel. The Navy needs fuel, as does the Coast Guard, we need fuel north of Dutch Harbor to maintain that persistence, those are some of the capabilities that I need, General Deptula.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

OK. General Dickinson, commercial space companies are all the rage nowadays. And they can provide capabilities to the government for a range of national security missions. As commercial entities play an increasingly prominent role in US Space Operations writ large, how do you envision that they could contribute to homeland defense?

General Jim Dickinson

Well, we really rely on the innovation of the American industrial base, certainly, to answer some of our most pressing concerns. I mean, there are numerous opportunities, but I think from an industry perspective, we really need their help in training our warfighters through modeling and simulation tools and space training and exercise ranges, both physical and virtual. You know, we’ve had a great outpouring, if you will, of commercial companies wanting to integrate be part of the Space Command enterprise, if you will. And we’ve seen such a bow wave of folks come into the CSPOC out in California, they’re at Vandenberg Space Force Base, as well as here in Colorado Springs, and really those two entities, 1, Vandenberg is the satellite communications mission in the partnership that we want to realize through that. And then here in Colorado Springs, quite frankly, through an element we call the JCO here, we’ve got a lot of companies coming … that want to provide and participate in space domain awareness. So it’s really just an overwhelming, you know, outpouring, if you will, of commercial companies wanting to be part of the enterprise. And so what we’re doing right now, so much so that we’ve had to step back for a second and create a new commercial integration framework and a new commercial strategy within the command to address the commercial interest in being part of the part of the team here. So we’re very excited about that. We look forward to it, and we’ll continue to work it.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Retired

Well, gentlemen, we’ve come to the end of this session of our aerospace warfare symposium. Thanks to both of you for your comments on these critical issues. And from the discussion today, it’s clear that SPACECOM and NORTHCOM are very fortunate to have you both leading these critical commands today. So on behalf of all of us at AFA, we wish you the very best as you continue to deal with the challenges that affect our homeland. And from those of us at Mitchell Institute, we hope that you have a great aerospace power kind of day.

Between Retiring Old Aircraft and Modernizing, Guard and Reserve Watch for Readiness Gaps

March 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Aging aircraft, limited sustainment funds, and still in-progress modernization are combining to cause concerns about readiness gaps in the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard, leaders said during the AFA Warfare Symposium.

The Air Force has continually sought to retire old aircraft in recent years, saying the moves are necessary to free up funds for modernization efforts such as the F-35 and KC-46. These potential retirements would likely have an outsized impact on the Guard and Reserve—their fleets have higher percentages of legacy aircraft such as the F-15C/D, A-10, KC-135, and C-130H.

“As [Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall] said, the average age of the Active-duty fleet is 30 years,” Maj. Gen. John P. Healy, deputy to the chief of Air Force Reserve, told Air Force Magazine. “Ours is a touch more mature, at 33 for the average. But 44 percent of that fleet is beyond its expected service life.”

Reserve leaders are in “lockstep” with their Active-duty counterparts in encouraging the Air Force to modernize, Healy added, a sentiment echoed by Air National Guard chief Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh.

But as those modernization efforts unfold, some are concerned about gaps developing between old systems going away and new ones coming online. In September 2021, Healy’s boss, Air Force Reserve commander Lt. Gen. Richard W. Scobee said, “in a perfect world, it would be heel to toe—you would have one butting up against the other”; before adding that, “on a regular basis, I am reminded we do not live in a perfect world.”

At the time, Scobee said he felt confident about the Reserve’s ability to work through any gap shorter than a year by sharing aircraft among units. Healy added in March that the three components of the total Air Force are all working together to align transitions “heel to toe.”

“There was discussion, and the great thing about the discussions as they go on in terms of how are we going to manage this from an Air Force perspective, … the fantastic partnership between the Active duty and the Reserve, and the Guard, for that matter, allowed the conversation to go on, to ensure that if there is a case where we might be talking about a cut or divestiture in any certain aircraft, that they understand that the base of mission needs to be covered,” Healy said. “And that’s the terminology we’re using. We’re not going to have any bases uncovered.”

Such transitions are currently happening at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., where the Reserve’s 916th Air Refueling Wing is swapping out KC-135s for KC-46s.

And there are plans for more. Healy pointed to the recent decision to base Reserve KC-46s at March Air Reserve Base, Calif., and Loh referred to the plan to integrate F-15EXs and F-35s at five different Guard locations in the coming years.

“Right now we have a couple EXs that are running through tests,” Loh said. “The performance that the pilots have relayed to me, because I’ve talked to them—it’s exceptional. Great airplane. So we’re going to bring it on as fast as we can get it from under contract, and the contracting piece is going through right now.”

But even as the Guard looks to move fast in acquiring new fighters, its current fleet is showing its age badly—Loh remarked to reporters that 22 Guard F-15s are “grounded right now because of just service life.” This follows comments he made in September 2021 that 20 of the aircraft were grounded because of cracked backbones.

Repairs aren’t simple fixes, either, due to a limited budget.

“We do have some gaps in readiness, and here’s where I need your help in advocacy, and I’ll just put it to you that way,” Loh said during a symposium panel discussion. “Our weapon systems sustainment accounts continually come under pressure. Last year in 2021, we were funded at 87 percent. In [2022], right now, it’s down to 79 percent, and we’re still sitting on a [continuing resolution].”

Flying hours are also down, Loh noted, to the point that some Guard pilots have had to stop flying before the end of the fiscal year. Taken together, all these factors form a challenge to readiness that he admitted “keeps me up at night.

“That bow wave is hitting right now, and all of those are challenges that require resources,” Loh said. “And we’re gonna get after those gaps: modernization, recapitalization, weapon system sustainment, and flying hours. All of them require resources.”