November 15, 2002

Secretary Teets: Thank you for that kind introduction and good afternoon. What a pleasure it is to be here today and have an opportunity to spend some time with you and hear the great speakers from this morning. I certainly did enjoy it. I’d like today to talk a little bit about a vision for the future and what the future of national security space really involves, in my view. At the outset, I want to say how much I appreciate the opportunity to work with the outstanding leaders in our U.S. Air Force that are involved very directly and very heavily with the space program.

The speakers we heard from this morning, namely Mike Ryan (one of my heroes for a lot of years), Les Lyles, Lance Lord, Brian Arnold and, of course, the industrial participants—Ron Sugar, George Muellner and Al Smith—what a great insight they provided to us today. In getting started, though, I would like to especially recognize the inspiring and effective leadership that Lieutenant General Brian Arnold has demonstrated in his time here as commander of Space and Missile Center. He has overseen the significant realignment of SMC from Air Force Materiel Command to Air Force Space Command. And he has laid out this new vision for the center: "To become the center of excellence for space and missiles by building a reputation of producing quality products, on time at cost, meeting warfighter needs."

Brian gets results. Under his leadership, SMC has in fact overseen the SBIRS High recertification activity. I’ve had the pleasure of working closely on a day-to-day basis with Brian and with Colonel Mark Borkowski. As a matter of fact, we are going to spend some quality time this afternoon talking about progress on SBIRS High. Brian also provided leadership that allowed us to shorten the on-orbit check-out of the newest Milstar satellite to an unheard of 64 days. He was successful, again, in an oversight responsibility role in fielding the Atlas V EELV launch vehicle. In the very near future, I think next Tuesday, if it goes as scheduled, I am confident that we’ll see the first launch of the Delta IV EELV.

These accomplishments give only the briefest glimpse of the leadership and command abilities of General Arnold. Qualities that I, as I say, feel fortunate to have experienced on a day-to-day basis as we have worked together. So, Brian, well done. I am really pleased to have the pleasure of working closely with you.

I must say, too, that I would be remiss if I didn’t say a word or two about my friend General Lance Lord. He has been an invaluable partner as we’ve tackled together the full spectrum of issues confronting us in the space business, from acquisition to operations to professional development of our people. I first met Lance actually many years ago when he had a previous tour at Space Command, but I didn’t really work closely with him. Then when I took on this job last December, Lance was the Assistant Vice Chief of the Air Force and, in that role, I started to work with Lance on a day-to-day basis and he is a joy to work with as well. Lance, I thank you for your leadership and vision and Lance has done a great job in standing up Air Force Space Command as an independent major Air Force command, as a four star general. Thank you, Lance, for your leadership and your great talk this morning as well.

With my time here today, we are coming to the end of this symposium and all of us, I know, are looking forward to a great evening. I’d like to share with you my thoughts on the theme of the symposium, which is "Shaping Space Activities to Secure America’s Future." I believe that today we face a greater challenge to our nation’s security than perhaps any since the dawn of the Cold War. Unfortunately, this ugly threat of terrorism will not disappear any time soon. The global war on terrorism we are engaged in will last years for sure, perhaps lifetimes.

There are other threats, too. Today, our nation’s armed forces may be on the eve of yet another call to duty in the Middle East. We, in the military space business, are part of the nation’s warfighting team. We will make a vitally important contribution to any conflict that we face. In our work to deploy and maintain our nation’s space capability, we must remember that more than just money or schedules are at stake. Lives and victory hang in the balance. As a result, I do believe that we clearly need to step up the intensity of discipline in our operations and ensure that we do all we can to maximize the effectiveness of our space capabilities to meet national security needs. The work we are doing now will make a very real difference in the outcome of our war on terrorism.

Coincident with the present national security challenge, the Air Force has been given another challenge: the responsibility as the Department of Defense’s executive agent for space. Today, I want to talk to you about how I believe these two challenges are intertwined and how the Air Force’s proud legacy of developing airpower over the last century can point the way to success for us all in space.

I can’t think of a better place for such a discussion than at a symposium sponsored by the Air Force Association. AFA has a long tradition of support for our Air Force and also support for the golden legacy of airpower and fighting and winning our nation’s wars. It is this legacy of airpower that I want to examine a bit more closely here today. It has been pointed out already and you’ll hear so much more in the months to come that we are getting very close to celebrating the Centennial of Flight.

In the relatively short span of military history in which we have wielded airpower, it has gone from a mere afterthought in military matters to center stage and has become arguably the decisive form of combat power. How did we develop the capabilities of airpower for national security needs? What did we do right? What did we do wrong? The real question for today, how can we apply those lessons of airpower to our development of space power as we move as an air and space force further into the 21^st century?

I believe we can distill the success of airpower down to three guiding principles. These principles can serve as beacons to guide us as we mature our nation’s space power. The three principles are: First, gain and maintain control of the high ground. Second, apply capabilities of the new medium to all conceivable forms of warfighting. Third, develop a new professional culture.

Our greatest successes with airpower have been when we’ve adhered to these principles. Our greatest failures have been when we have ignored them. We need to take the legacy lessons of airpower forward with us as we work to shape our space activities to secure America’s future.

The first principle that should guide as air and space professionals is the imperative to control the high ground. This has been a rule of warfare ever since the dawn of time. But as war fighting moved from Earth surfaces into the air, the military advantages of control of the high ground became even more pronounced. We’ve traditionally kept air supremacy because we have a very rigorous and aggressive doctrine of control of the air. The first thing we do in any military campaign or combat operations is to gain mastery of the skies and deny the skies to the adversary. It is rigid adherence to this principle that explains the amazing fact that we have not lost an American to an enemy aircraft attack in 50 years.

But it has also been true that an adversary, confronted by superiority in the air, will do its best to deny that control to the greatest extent possible. This drive to deny control of the high ground is nothing new. To illustrate, let me relate a story from the earliest days of airpower at work. It was five o’clock in the afternoon when Brigadier General Fitz John Porter lifted off in his craft on a solo reconnaissance mission. His mission began without incident. He conducted his observations, noting the enemy positions and locations of heavy equipment. But then, due to circumstances beyond his control, he strayed too close to enemy lines. The adversary seized this opportunity to deprive General Porter of his high ground. First came the small arms fire. Then came the artillery. General Porter summoned every bit of airmanship to put his craft back down safely on friendly territory. And he was successful. The date was April 11, 1862. Yes, General Porter’s observation balloon had broken free of its moorings and he nearly lost his life by almost falling out of the gondola he was riding in while maneuvering the balloon’s hydrogen valve to change his altitude at the right moment to land on friendly ground.

This, on the surface, may seem an insignificant event from a conflict that we normally consider outside the history of airpower. But the implications echo far, far into the future. General Porter had seized the high ground of the air in the most primitive of fashions perhaps, but effective nevertheless. The Confederate troops on the ground, aware of the valuable reconnaissance information that he was gaining for the Union forces, seized their opportunity to try to deny the high ground. It was truly one of the first examples of the tug of war of control for air. It was the start of a long tradition of adherence to the principle of controlling the high ground and gaining and maintaining air superiority in the face of a determined adversary—the most central tenet of air campaign operations today.

How must we apply this principle to space? Look at what we’ve been able to accomplish using space: collection of all kinds of intelligence, precision navigation and using it for weapons delivery, communication and transmission of information to users worldwide. How long before an adversary realizing the tremendous benefit that we gain from our space capabilities, across the spectrum of warfighting, will seize an opportunity to deprive us the use of them? How long will we continue to assume zero percent losses to our space systems during hostilities? The need to continue our thinking about space control is not just doctrinal rhetoric, but military reality.

Controlling the high ground of space is not limited simply to protection of our own capabilities. It will also require us to think about denying the high ground to our adversaries. We are paving the road of 21^st century warfare now. And others will soon follow. What will we do five years from now when American lives are put at risk because an adversary uses space-borne imagery collectors, commercial or homegrown, to identify and target American forces? What will we do ten years from now when American lives are put at risk because an adversary chooses to leverage the Global Positioning System or perhaps the Galileo constellation to attack American forces with precision?

The mission of space control has not been at the forefront of military thinking because our people haven’t yet been put at risk by an adversary using space capabilities. That will change. It is these sorts of events that the Space Commission members had in mind when they warned about the possibilities of a space Pearl Harbor. I believe we not only need to think about the mission and implications of space control—it is fundamentally irresponsible for us not to do so. Space is the ultimate high ground. Our military advantage there must remain ahead of our adversaries’ capabilities. And our own doctrine and capabilities must keep pace to meet that challenge.

The second universal principle we have learned over the decades of developing airpower is the need to apply the capabilities of the new medium to all conceivable forms of warfighting. In the earliest days of airpower, there was an unfortunate tendency to aim far too short of this ambitious mark. At first, there was a belief the airplane could do nothing to change the course of warfighting. You’ve probably heard the story of the British cavalry commander who wanted even friendly aircraft as far from his forces as possible because they frightened his horses. Or even Calvin Coolidge, who, upon receiving a request from the War Department to buy more aircraft, replied, "why don’t we just buy one airplane and let the pilots take turns flying it?"

But eventually—due more unfortunately to dire lessons than to vision—military leaders began to integrate air capabilities into warfighting. It started small. First as reconnaissance, then as support to ground operations in the form of close air support. Then it expanded, to long range interdiction and ultimately to the strategic strike and global mobility roles we knew in the Cold War and also in Desert Storm.

Perhaps the ultimate use of airpower happened during Operation Allied Force over Kosovo, where airpower strongly motivated the adversary to surrender. Noted British military historian, John Keegan, captured the significance of that campaign when he said, "now there is a new date to fix on the calendar—June 3^rd, 1999"—when the capitulation of Serbian President Milosevic proved that a war can be won by airpower alone. What a shift in the history of warfare. In a mere several decades, the exploitation of a new medium produced completely new war-winning capabilities. This then is the principle of applying the capabilities of a new medium; not only integrating them into other existing forms of warfare, but developing entirely new ones, ones even conceivably capable of winning wars on their own.

How do we apply this principle to space? At its earliest stages, space power was treated much as airpower in its earliest days, relegated to a relatively small reconnaissance role for a small set of strategic users. It is clear we’ve made significant progress since then at integrating space capabilities into land, sea and air operations. It is still the primary challenge that we face today—achieving effective integration—and we are not there yet. We need to keep working at that very hard. But if we limit our efforts only to application of space technologies to existing modes of warfighting, we have under-shot. If space capabilities in the form of overhead imagery helped the platoon leader on the ground direct his squads, that is good. If space capabilities in the form of precision navigation guide an F/A-22 and its bombs to target, that is good, too. But if that is all they do, if that is all we envision that space can do over the next few decades, then we’ve missed the boat.

It is no different than all the ways that our armed forces once found for airpower to support ground operations and do no more. And there are ways that space capabilities can support global strike operations in forms that we can scarcely imagine today. Are there ways we can use space capabilities to affect the decision-making cycle of an adversary or produce other effects to achieve campaign objectives in ways that air, land and sea forces cannot? Finding answers to these tough questions is one of the main reasons that Brigadier General Pete Warden is now here in Los Angeles working for General Arnold in the new SMC Office of Transformation.

One challenge General Warden is taking on is the rapid demonstration of responsive launch, finding ways to get a vehicle rapidly off the pad to any orbit in short notice. It is easy to see how such a responsive capability could be useful for rapid constellation replenishment and sustainment. But I leave it to your imagination and General Warden’s to find other ways to employ such a capability to achieve desired warfighting effects.

I suspect the day will come when space capabilities alone will achieve a campaign victory like June 3, 1999, when airpower did so over Kosovo. It is possible that we can no more perceive what such a victory would be like than the military leaders at the dawn of the first World War could envision the Kosovo conflict of 1999. But everything we’ve learned about capabilities in a new medium, especially our own experiences with airpower, tells us that day is coming.

The third universal principle that we can look back and see was critical to the successful development of airpower was the development of a new professional culture. This has been a blend of several profound influences. The love of new technology and a new frontier, personified perhaps best by none other than the Wright Brothers. The vision of airpower as a decisive form of warfighting as espoused by legendary figures, such as Hap Arnold, Curtis LeMay, and Billy Mitchell. The adherence to the belief that airpower must be centrally controlled by airmen who understand its unique capabilities and uses as espoused in our doctrine today. All these traits have combined to produce the airpower professionals that today wield airpower with devastating effectiveness.

How should we apply this principle, the need for development of a new professional culture to space? The Space Commission gave us a strong push in this direction. Earlier today, General Lord described the significant progress that we are making towards developing our future space professionals. But urge you to think about the implications of this step. We are not talking about the creation of a mere career field or sculpting a field of expertise. We are talking about an entirely new breed of warfighters, ones who will ultimately transform the power and scope of warfighting in the same way airpower professionals have done in the past century. This development and nurturing process entails great responsibility on our part. At the end of the day, adhering to this principle, developing a new professional culture—a space cadre—may prove the most decisive. All the technological capabilities in the world will prove useless unless we have the leadership, the vision, the motivation and the skills to employ these capabilities effectively. These are qualities we cannot produce overnight. It will take time to nurture, develop and mature this space cadre, as it did for the cadre of airpower professionals before it.

These then are the three principles to guide us as we work to shape our nation’s space capabilities. But there is one more lesson to learn from this discussion. The United States wields airpower more effectively than any other fighting force in history, precisely because it has embraced these three principles. We jealously gain and maintain control of the air, though others may try to deny us that control. We aggressively apply airpower in every conceivable manner to achieve our warfighting objectives from global vigilance to global reach to global strike. We proudly and actively support and nurture a culture of airpower professionals. We do all this better than anyone else and we must do the same in space. If we do not pursue control of space, someone else will. If we do not exploit space to the fullest advantage across every conceivable mode of warfighting, someone else will. And we allow this at our own peril.

If we do not develop a new culture of space professionals, a new form of warfighter, someone else may do so first with dire consequences awaiting our first engagement with such an adversary. Our success at wielding airpower has come with a realization that we need to do it before and better than anybody else. Let’s do the same for space.

We as Air Force members and as air and space professionals have great reason to be proud of the legacy of airpower. We also should know better than anyone, both the challenges and the rewards of exploiting a new medium in the interests of national security. This is an exciting time to be working to shape our space activities to secure America’s future.

There is also a challenge for each and everyone of you in this room. If you are military officer, we need you to think the new thoughts, to find ways to control the high ground of space and to effectively conduct space warfighting. We also you to lead and inspire those who follow you and develop a new generation of air and space professionals who, when their time comes, will shape the future. If you are in industry, we need you to combine the resources of today with a spirit of innovation to produce the technologies that we will need tomorrow to preserve our nation’s security.

No matter what your responsibilities, as you sit in this room are today, you have a stake in the future, a stake in our success or failure to properly equip and employ space capabilities for our nation. That goes for me, too. My commitment to you all is this: I intend to exert every effort in my duties to fulfill the Air Force’s responsibility as DoD’s executive agent for space, to do whatever it takes to ensure our nation’s space capabilities can perform every conceivable mission needed to conduct effective warfighting. The challenge is now. The time to act is now. The United States has a proud history of successfully wielding land, sea and airpower in the protection of our nation and its freedoms. It must be our goal that the United States carry this legacy of success into the medium of space. And with your help, it will. I thank you for the opportunity to spend some time with you today.

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