November 15, 2002

General Lyles: This is always a thrill for me to be back here at the AFA symposium and the grand ball that will take place this evening. I am particularly very proud over the last couple of years that we’ve transformed this to a space symposium. For me, it is a special treat to be involved in any capacity in this activity and certainly to be here in this audience. It is grand to look out and see old friends and compatriots and peers and the younger generation that is involved in space activities. It really is very fascinating for me.

There is an old saying, as a follow-on to the Marine Corps birthday that took place just a week or so ago: "once a space geek, always a space geek." Regardless of where I’ve been or what things I’ve done throughout my career, my heart in many respects resides in the space community, both here and in any place throughout our great U.S. Air Force.

This is a treat for me, particularly when I look out in the audience and I see all the familiar faces, it really is a thrill. It is more than just Old Home Week. It is like family. I can spend literally the whole rest of the day talking about association with some of the people who are here. I am particularly pleased to see the way the AFA leadership has evolved. Boyd Anderson with the Aerospace Education Foundation is a brigadier general retired, he was my mobilization assistant when I was commander of Ogden. I was succeeded at Ogden by Major General retired Pat Condon. As I look out at the front row, just the front row alone, I recall very fondly the great association I had and fun I had supporting and being supported. The corporate leadership that we worked with at Martin Corporation at the time was Mr. Pete Teets. There is a lot of comradery and friendship and association here in every aspect. It is just fantastic to be back in this great environment.

Just like General Lance Lord, I am particularly thrilled to look in front of me and see the Command Chiefs here from Air Force Space Command and my command chief, Chief Master Sergeant Dave Mimms, from Air Force Materiel Command. I was honored and humbled and I really emphasize the word humbled last week to receive the Order of the Sword indoctrination by the Chiefs on behalf of the enlisted corps for our U.S. Air Force and Air Force Materiel Command. Any time you can be amongst your Chiefs—Chief Ron Crado was there for that ceremony, the Air Force Space Command Command Chief—it really is heartening and it humbles because of what these gentlemen represent.

I was not quite sure exactly what to talk about for this forum. I have been coming to these AFA functions here associated with the west coast ball since 1978, as a captain, off and on, not here every year, but have been doing that since 1978. I dare say there are some out there who’ve probably been to a lot more than I have, but it is always a very special occasion. I like the way it has evolved over the years. In the past, it used to be just a west coast ball. Then it became a forum for all the four stars to get together—General Randolph used to do that in space. All the four stars would get together and have a forum to talk about what was happening in their particular commands and then we would have the ball. I think it is right and appropriate in today’s environment and certainly the emphasis out here, that it has now evolved into an AFA space symposium with the west coast ball at the end of the day. To me, that is exactly the way it should be. And probably the way it should have been, but it took time to get there.

Like Lance Lord, with the sort of education and academic focus, I am going to give you three main topics. The first is an obvious one. It relates to post-Space Commission and talking about Air Force Materiel Command linkage to both SMC and Air Force Space Command. Then I want to talk just briefly with a little historical perspective between air and space. And finally just a couple of comments about the future.

Let me start off in dealing with post-Space Commission and what I want to do is do nothing but give kudos and thanks and appreciation for the great leadership that Lance and Brian, Craig Koening, Bill Mikas, the entire team are providing to the space acquisition business. I had an opportunity to join the audience in the stage with Craig Koening a couple weeks ago. We were at a CEO conference at AQ. Dr. Marvin Sambur and I co-hosted it out at Orlando. Craig was one of the featured speakers. I can tell you that I was completely heartened and very pleased to hear what is going on as a result of the Space Commission realignment, what is going on today with space acquisition. The alignment of the PEO structure here within Brian Arnold, the linkage to the milestone decision authority, the Honorable Secretary Pete Teets, the activity that is being done as teaming with Space Command, both in Colorado Springs and Schriever and literally throughout the country. It is really impressive when you hear about the things that are taking place.

The streamlining of the decision process, the communication, the review process that Lance and Brian and Craig have set up, it is just, again, extremely heartening. My first comment relative to post-Space Commission is nothing but thanks and kudos. I think the Space Commission got it right in that regard and I am very pleased to see how things are progressing and how they are evolving.

In some respects, as we look at the other acquisition communities within the rest of the Air Force, there is now a model here that we can follow. We are going to try to in many respects. Dr. Sambur, the Secretary, the Chief and I have been talking about that subject a lot over the a lot over the last couple of weeks and we can take lessons from what Lance, Brian and others have lined up in working with Secretary Teets. I am very pleased and heartened to see how things have progressed in that regard.

My second comment related to that subject and post-Space Commission deals with the topic that Lance introduced briefly. It is enterprise leadership and enterprise management. When you say enterprise, that term is used a lot today. It is almost like the word transformation. It is used in everything you can imagine. So there is still some confusion as to what we really mean by enterprise. In early 2001, then-Secretary Larry Delaney and I made an edict that we should have enterprise leaders in various sectors of our U.S. Air Force. In a letter co-signed by Dr. Delaney and I, we designated the aeronautical enterprise to be under Lieutenant General Dick Reynolds. We designated the space enterprise to be under Lieutenant General Brian Arnold. We designated the command and control and ISR enterprise to be then under Lieutenant General Leslie Kenne, now under Lieutenant General Bill Looney. And the armament enterprise to be under Major General Bob Chedister. We always knew we had a

science and technology enterprise under Major General Paul Nielsen. That enterprise approach, that concept was intended to get all of us focused on capabilities and effects and, in all honesty, as Larry can tell you, we started this without using those terms. Those terms I think are very much in the mind of our current Chief and our current Secretary, but the enterprise approach fits very well with what we were trying to do, to get the Air Force and the Air Force acquisition community away from the stove pipe management of systems or individual programs and looking at how we need to integrate capabilities to fulfill a need or a requirement or a capability for our Air Force.

I am very pleased that our current Chief, John Jumper, has come up with a statement that we now quote and it says that enterprise management equals horizontal integration. That is what we were trying to achieve and that is what the objective is in the enterprise management activities that are currently going on. What really makes it special, if you look at what is taking place between Dick Reynolds, Brian Arnold, Bill Looney, Bob Chedister, Paul Nielsen and others in how they are working together as one team—they are looking at enterprise capabilities and effects for the U.S. Air Force and they’ve established a firm to make it a reality. It is called the Enterprise Integration Forum or EIF. It is an opportunity for those leaders to get together to look at needs and capabilities and effects for our Air Force and figure out, how do you integrate the systems, subsystems, the people, the ideas in their individual areas? How do you integrate those to give you what the Air Force needs for war fighting?

They’ve had three of these major meetings so far. One at Hanscom Air Force Base hosted by Bill Looney, at Wright-Patterson hosted by Dick Reynolds, down at Eglin Air Force Base hosted by Bob Chedister, and the next one is coming up very soon to be out here, hosted by Brian Arnold. They are focusing on effects. The last one at Eglin Air Force Base, hosted by Bob Chedister, was focused on the subject of anti-GPS and how do you counter the GPS-jamming capability that is out there in the world today? They are integrating things to give us capabilities.

The next step along the line of this enterprise approach, which is to me an evolution of what we’ve done or what came out of the Space Commission, is to institutionalize this. Right now, while we’ve made great progress since the letter and memo that Dr. Delaney and I co-signed, we still have to get to the point where it goes beyond just personalities—the great friendship and association right now between Dick Reynolds and Brian Arnold and Bill Looney and Bob Chedister and Paul Nielsen. And, don’t let me forget, our logistics center commanders also. Major General Chuck Johnson, who is also here in the audience, is part of those different forums. That relationship right now is working because they realize we need to do this, but it is also working because they are all great friends. They all have great respect for each other and they are bringing all this together in the right manner. We want to go beyond just personalities. We want to make sure that this is something that will endure. And, part of that endurance is going to be all of us trying to figure out where industry fits into the picture.

When we talk about enterprise and bringing together the great capabilities out there to create an effect for the United States Air Force or for our country, for that matter, we have to think of the industrial picture. Part of our challenge is to work with industry to figure out, how do we get George Muellner and Ron Sugar and Al Smith to work with us in terms of these enterprise and capabilities effects, notwithstanding their individual corporations and the needs of those corporations? We’ve done it probably easier, obviously, from the standpoint of the Air Force in these different sectors. How we do this with industry and get them to partner, to work with us, it is going to be one of our challenges and we need to get your advice on how we make that happen. To focus on effects and capabilities, not individual systems. That is going to be our challenge, but it is a challenge that all of us need to come to grips with.

The next major point I wanted to talk about, just briefly, and it is not a point per se, but it is one that I find very interesting. It goes along with the theme of this particular symposium: "Shaping America’s Future." When you think about the future, you have to think about the past. For us, the past is a very, very rich one. You probably can guess the obvious connection I am going to bring up right now. Starting literally in about a month, we are going to begin already celebrating the Centennial of Flight, that first manned controlled powered flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903. So, next year, 2003, we’ll be celebrating the centennial of that major event.

Next month, on December 17, we start that activity, by dedicating in Dayton, Ohio, a newly built Wright Memorial and Hoffman Prairie interpretive center that the community and Wright Patterson Air Force Base have been involved in and it will be done very near or on the property, adjacent to the property, of Wright Patterson Air Force Base. We are very proud of that particular heritage for the obvious connection between Dayton, Ohio, Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the Wright Brothers, but also because it really started all of us along the path to where we are today.

I am always intrigued and enjoy listening to Lieutenant General Dick Reynolds, who is not only an aviator and a great leader, but also a student of history. He, along with me, has been trying to spread the word about the Wright Brothers, their real story. Because most of us think of these guys as a couple of bicycle guys who developed and built and sold bicycles who happened to stumble upon this thing that we call flight, that we all take advantage and has evolved to where we are today.

But if you have an opportunity to really study them or look at the literature or even more important, do what Dick and I have done, go out and visit some of the old artisans in the Dayton area over the last couple years or so, who have been trying to build a Wright B Flier, using the original—and I emphasize the original documents and blue prints of the Wright Brothers—you will see that they were geniuses. They were aerodynamicists. They invented things along the way. But everything they did was complete genius. They were fantastic. When you look at and understand and look at even little spars or things on that first Wright B Flier and to see how they were designed with aerodynamics involved and in mind and you look at every aspect from [the viewpoint of] warp wing technology, shifting of the weight of the pilot to give CG control, everything was done in a manner of genius. It wasn’t something that somebody just stumbled upon.

We’ve been trying to spread this story about the Wright Brothers because it is a story most people in textbooks and history have missed. It is also a story that leads to where we are today in all of our activities.

We also have a unique connection to the Wright Brothers in many respects at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. In 1917, the Army Air Corps came up with the creed of Wright Field. It was to help to remember what Wilbur and Orville had done and to form a guide for research and experimental work that has gone on there at Wright Field since, either directly or managed out of Wright Field. That creed was later inscribed as a guiding principle in 1942 for the Army Air Force’s Materiel Center, what is now Air Force Materiel Command.

The creed begins by saying, "here on this ground where Wilbur and Orville Wright brought to full life, man’s age-old dream of rising in flight above the Earth, we at Wright Field consecrate ourselves to the splendid vision and unswerving purpose which motivated those great and honored pioneers of the sky. We hold in all humility to the faith that man can if man will." That story has paralleled everything from flight to space travel as Buzz Aldrin is complete testimony to here today. It has set the stage for everything that we’ve done since.

There have been lots of detractors. We all know, even today, I am very surprised to read in the newspaper about some who are challenging whether or not Buzz and Neal Armstrong actually did touch down on the moon. Some of you read about that. I found that to be completely incredulous. But then I stop and go back in history again and realize that back in the early 1900s, about 1900, even in the Dayton, Ohio area, there were those with religious backgrounds who questioned whether or not anybody could ever fly. There is that great story I like of an individual who basically said man would never fly. Man has done everything that could possibly be done and man flying is something that is akin to man walking on the moon. It [supposedly] would never occur. Well, the individual who said that at that time was Bishop Milton Wright, the father of Wilbur and Orville Wright. There were a lot of detractors, even back in those days. Father doesn’t always know best in some cases.

So, a lot of things have happened in history. And if you look at the parallel between aviation history in its 100^th year and where we are in space, there are some interesting parallels. I guess some people could say we started aviation activities in 1880 when Otto Lilienthal in Germany invented the first gliders, but we count the beginning of the clock on December 17^th in 1903 when the Wright Brothers had that first flight in Kitty Hawk. You notice I didn’t say anything about Kitty Hawk earlier because as Dick Reynolds well knows and as we are trying to spread the story and certainly everybody in Dayton is very proud of, the Wright Brothers had that first flight at Kitty Hawk, but they learned to fly and, history will tell you, they learned to fly in controlled flight at Hoffman Prairie, which is now part of Wright Patterson Air Force Base, just outside of Dayton, Ohio. That to us is where flight really began, not just a little glide—a significant glide obviously—but they really learned to fly at Wright Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton, Ohio.

History is replete with things like those firsts. The Wrights perfected the first practical airplane that flew 24 miles in 38 minutes in 1905. On August 8, 1908, Wilbur Wright, in absence of Orville, culminated about three years of activities of trying to justify the legality of their claim to flight, Wilbur Wright did that in Le Mans, France and he did it to convince a skeptical world that this actually had taken place and he was very successful in doing that. Dick Reynolds tells a great story of that particular event. I hope sometime you get a chance to hear him tell that. He is a master of recounting what took place on that August 8^th day in 1908.

In 1909, the first airplane was sold to the Army for 25,000 dollars. The F/A-22 doesn’t quite cost that, but it doesn’t go 40 miles per hour and 125 miles, either. The creed of Wright Field was [established] in 1917 as I mentioned. Things evolved in time. Lindbergh’s trans-atlantic flight, the first jet flight in the early 1940s. October 14, 1947, when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and on and on and on. You are all familiar with the history of flight.

The history of space is a little bit different. Not everybody knows what the beginning of that is, but we like to count 1926, when Robert Goddard was doing his launches with the first liquid-fueled rocket. We think of those major events like October 4, 1957, the launch of Sputnik. In 1961, President Kennedy’s challenge to go to the moon. 1961, also, Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space and a month or so after that Alan Shepherd becomes the first American in space. Alan Shepherd made a comment at that time, he said "the clock starts now." Some people think he was talking about that particular flight and orbit, I’d like to think he was talking about American man in space when he said that activity had started then and has been going on ever since. In July, 1969, the historic occasion when Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped their feet onto the surface of the moon.

You know all the other things that have taken place since then—the first space shuttle launch in 1981. The first major tragedy in space travel, January 1986, with the Challenger disaster. The first use of space in war, real use of space in war, in Desert Storm and on and on and on. Another significant event in the history of space was in the early 1960s when then-General Bernard Schriever established what we call affectionately The School House down on Manchester Avenue in Englewood that started the first full development activities for ICBMs and space systems and SPOs in general. Truly a lot of historic activities.

It took about 40 years from the Wright Brothers first flight to the first jet age flight in the mid-1940s. It took about 40 years from Robert Goddard’s rocket launches in 1926 until Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the moon. A lot has taken place in the history of both, but we are still early in the incarnation of what space activities will mean for our country and for the United States Air Force.

Let me just mention in talking a little bit about the future. . .What is next? We’ve got 100 years almost in airplanes and aeronautical activities. There are a lot of things that are still taking place. I can tell you as an example that Dick Reynolds certainly is not resting on his laurels, nor are the great people we have at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the great contractor community There are things happening in the aeronautical era that are still mind boggling when you think about it. UAVs, UCAVs (regardless of how we finally incarnate them), sensor crafts, smart tankers, making every platform we have part of C²ISR architecture, mini-UAVs (which we’ve already developed in our fielding). Micro-UAVs that will be inches long that DARPA and the Air Force and others are working on. There are still lots of things going on in the aeronautical area.

I might just add, just as an example, it was very heartening the night before last when I was holding my commanders’ conference up at Edwards Air Force Base to spend an evening social event at the large hangar there. Inside that hangar was the F/A-22. We had the Stovall version of the Joint Strike Fighter. We had a ship number six of Global Hawk, which we are right now preparing in case the balloon goes up here soon with war in Iraq. We had the oldest B-52 owned by NASA that was used to launch X-15s and is still being used for research by NASA and the Air Force. We had today’s generation F-15. And we didn’t have it yet, but the hangar was large enough so that next month, if we had that event, we could also put the Airborne Laser in there when it is delivered at Edwards Air Force Base in December. That event reminded me, we still have a long, long ways [to go] and a lot of exciting things going on in the aeronautical sector.

But, when I think about it, again, and segue into what we are doing in space, there are probably even more exciting things in the future for space activities. It is mind boggling. Certainly, you know of today’s systems we are developing—SBIRS High and SBIRS Low, GPS three, a very successful EELV program, Space-Based Radar. All the things that Brian and Craig and Bill Migus and the great team here are working on. But they are bound to be more and more things in the future. One of our key focuses within Air Force Materiel Command is to ensure that space science and technology is still relevant to the needs of Brian Arnold and Lance Lord. We are trying to do that.

As a matter of fact, our S&T budget is tilted more and more towards space technologies and you will see that evolution continue through the years. In FY 99, as an example, 39 percent, or $432 million, of our investments in science and technology went either towards space or air in space-related research, with 61 percent going to aeronautical things. By fiscal year ‘05, we are going to invest 59 percent, or $847 million, of our resources to either space or space-in-air-related technologies. That is a 20 percent jump in six years. By FY ‘07 it will go up even further. We’ll have 61 to 65 percent of S&T budget devoted to space technologies or relevant air technologies that relate to both air and space. That is a seismic shift in terms of technology focus, but it is the kind of thing we need to do. What we are focusing on are the things that Brian and Lance have asked us to do—space control, navigation, ISR, space environmental monitoring, information operations, satellite operations, force applications, space transportation and command and control communications-related to space activities.

I could give you the whole list of specific programs, but in the interests of time, I won’t do that. But I can tell you that we are very excited within Air Force Materiel Command that we are connected not just in the enterprise approach, but we are connected in terms of science and technology and doing the kind of things that Brian and Lance Lord want us to do.

As an example, even with some of the basic research that we are working on, some technologies like nano-technology, delving down to the angstrom level or atomic level of systems are really exciting in terms of what they will do for almost every system in the Air Force, but certainly space systems. In terms of weight gain, strength gain and thermal properties. There is a whole world out there that is just being explored—it has been explored very seriously by some countries like Japan, but we are putting large investments within the U.S. Air Force to make sure that we can take advantage of it.

And then an area I know that is very interesting to and of very strong interest, I should say, to Secretary Teets and Brian, is the subject of transformational communications, "transformational comm." As an example of that, many of you know about the possibilities of laser communications and I am extremely excited. I’ve talked about this at one of these forums in the last couple years, extremely excited about the possibilities here. I can’t get into all the details, but let me just tell you an example of something we did recently. At the end of September, we had the Chief and Secretary visiting Kirtland Air Force Base. In all honesty, we were out there to do something very serious. I joined them. We were there to present posthumously to the wife and family of Senior Airman Jason Cunningham the Air Force Cross. Jason was an Air Force PJ, a para-rescueman, who was killed on the 4^th of March during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. We were there to do this serious event, very emotional event, I might add, a very heroic and courageous recognition for Jason, to present his family the Air Force Cross.

While I was there, I took the opportunity of convincing the Chief and Secretary to spend the afternoon visiting the space technologies we have at Kirtland Air Force Base and to spend the night visiting the Star Fire Optical Range. There was a method to my madness. Because I’d been talking to the Chief and Secretary about the benefits of things that could come out of what is going on at the Star Fire Optical Range, particularly in the area of laser comm. I know they’ve heard me and listened to me, but I knew seeing it face on would make a difference. The two of them were extremely impressed, particularly our Chief.

As a result of that, and what they saw, we are now preparing, within the next couple of weeks as a matter of fact, to go back and sit down with the Chief in a brainstorming session. Leslie Kenne will be there. Bob Bealer’s guys will be there. We’ll have Dr. Bob Fugate from the Star Fire Optical Range. We’ll have others there from Space Command and our guys from the laboratory and the rest of AFMC and we are going to be talking about the possibilities of what you can do with that technology. Not just in terms of communicating and opening the banwidth picture from ground to space and space back. But what we’ve been able to demonstrate in terms of the air piece. And what we really want to answer to the Chief: Can we put together a critical experiment in a very short period of time to show how you can use that technology to communicate from air platform to air platform with that technology? I am very excited about the possibilities. We’ve got the right people involved. But again, it is the kind of exciting technology that relates to both air and space, though it came out of a space technology focus, it is something that will benefit all of us in the very near future.

It has been a very exciting 100 years in terms of the aeronautical activities for the United States and certainly for the world. But the next years for space to me are not just equally exciting, but are absolutely fantastic. We’ve been about 76 years since Robert Goddard, 45 years since Sputnik, 41 years since Alan Shepherd and that first American going around the Earth. A lot of fantastic things have taken place since then. We can only imagine what is going to happen in the next few years as we lead up to the 100^th anniversary or centennial of space activity for mankind.

Let me close – I am very excited to be back here in this community. I am always excited to be involved in space and as I said at the very beginning, once a space geek, always a space geek. Thank you for inviting me back. God bless all of you and keep up the fantastic work.

Q: Materiel Command has adapted to a lot of change in the 1990s and the last few years. What forces do you see that will shape the command in this decade as we move on?

General Lyles: The major things we are looking at [that would] re-shape the command are a couple of topics we talked about at our commanders conference this week, but the Chief and Secretary and I have been talking about at length for about a year and, certainly very seriously in the last month or so, and that is to restructure Air Force Materiel Command to make sure there is still a focus in our command to support Dr. Sambur and to support the acquisition leadership in the Pentagon and Secretariat, to support it with acquisition expertise we have within the command. We are seriously looking at a restructure to have senior leadership focus, enterprise focus on acquisition and sustainment within Air Force Materiel Command in support of all the things we need to do in our United States Air Force. That enterprise approach is going to be codified and institutionalized in what we are looking at. There are lots of things currently on the books, some of which we will be able to put into effect within the next year, but I think it is the right thing to do to make sure our command is poised to do what we do best and that is support the operators—the war fighters—in everything that they do.

Related to that, we are—as part of our transformation—making sure there is always an expeditionary culture and expeditionary mind set to everything Air Force Materiel Command does, that we are part and parcel of the entire structure for the United States Air Force and that we are teaming with everybody in the other MAJCOMs. Those two areas are part of the focus for what we are looking at, some of which I’ll be able to talk about in more detail in subsequent forums, but I am very excited about the possibility, particularly the emphasis on enterprise management.

Q: You’ve been involved a lot in the acquisition process and have a great understanding of it and have many issues going on in the command. You mentioned a few of them today. How can we simplify the acquisition process so we can deliver more quickly to the field?

General Lyles: Some of you may be aware or you may not, if you just have been completely focused on space, but we started earlier this year. Led by Dr. Sambur and Darlene Druyen and myself to look at an issue we call agile acquisition. Look at pathfinder programs that we are trying to use to look at ways to streamline the entire acquisition process. As Marv and I have tried to do in terms of our focus and intent for this, we want to reduce the acquisition cycle, the acquisition time, by three-fourths. In other words, we want it to be one-fourth of what it is today and be able to develop field capabilities in one-fourth the time that it takes today. Obviously, when you think of something like an F/A-22 or Joint Strike Fighter, you can say that is probably impossible. But if you look at it in terms of spiral development, evolutionary acquisition, there are a lot of terms there and making that a reality, we know it can be done and we want to use a lot of different mind sets and examples to allow us to do that. We are working on these path finders to figure out how to streamline the process.

Some of you have heard this story before and I’ll repeat it again. Our Chief, John Jumper, mentioned it last year at this forum. You may have been here and some may not, but I’ll just give it as an example. Two years ago, when John was commander of Air Combat Command, he came to AFMC, ASC particularly, and he said, "I want to see if we can launch a missile off of an unmanned aerial vehicle." We were very excited about that. We went back and put together a program, but in our usual risk-averse way of doing things in acquisition, we laid out a program that had about two years of testing, just to make sure we knew what would happen to the platform, what would happen to the plumes. We are engineers and we wanted to make sure everything would work perfectly. John hit the ceiling and rightfully so. Basically what he told us is, "you have permission to fail, but I just want you to try it, try something to see if it would work." Within a matter of a couple of months, we were able to demonstrate Hellfire off a Predator and I don’t need to tell you what all that has meant to the war on terrorism. That example, though it may be an extreme one, is what we want to do— to look at providing an 80 percent capability, being less risk averse and to be able to spiral capabilities we field for the war fighter and do it very quickly. There is no greater foot stomper for us within AFMC—and I know Dick Reynolds because his guys are involved and he is keeping his focus of using that as an example. That is what agile acquisition is trying to do.

Q: What branching off of our acquisition processes for space activities do you see?

General Lyles: As General Lord answered, the connection between Air Force Space Command and SMC and Air Force Materiel Command is just about right. As I said earlier, there are personalities that are making some of these things possible. But they are setting the stage for putting it all in concrete. I don’t see any branching off any further of anything that we have today. There were some questions with the original Space Commission, as you most of you know, as to whether or not our space technology efforts should be divided up and we give technology to Space Command. I think everybody realized that the technologies we use in space cut across all of our space, all of our laboratory directorates. Some of them have aeronautical and space focus. Some of them are just space focus, but endemic in everything that we do, so that linkage there is very important in maintaining the technology activities as a whole within AFMC, but always remember to support Lance and to support Brian. I think the way we are structured today is about right.

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