Foundation Forum
The Honorable F. Whitten Peters
Acting Secretary of the Air Force
AFA Space Symposium (Los Angeles)
November 13, 1998
"Commercialization in Space"
Good Morning. Thank you, Tom [McKee], for that kind introduction.
Thank you all for that warm welcome. It’s great to be here in Los
Angeles with the such a distinguished group of space experts and
operators.
I can vividly recall that on this date last year Monnie and I hopped
on a C-20 to come to this meeting one hour after being sworn into the
Air Force by Secretary Cohen. The whirlwind has not stopped, nor has our
enjoyment of AFA functions.
In the last year, a lot has happened. The Air Force Secretariat has
lost Art Money, Rodney Coleman, Sheila Cheston, George Muellner, and
Dick Swope, to name but a few. On the Air Staff and MAJCOM side, we are
on our third XO -- having sent Johnny Jumper to Europe and Pat Gamble to
the Pacific -- we have changed the leadership of the Air Force Reserve,
the Air National Guard, and the National Guard Bureau, we have lost
Generals Estes, Kross, McGinty, and Farrell to retirement, and General
Dave McCloud to an untimely death.
I must add, we have brought some great talent onboard to fill these
vacancies-with Rubie DeMesme, Jeh Johnson, Speedy Martin, and Nick Kehoe
on the Secretariat side. Dick Myers is at Space Command, Tony Robertson
at AMC, Marv Esmond is the new XO, Don Peterson is the new DP, and
“your” Roger DeKok is our new XP.
When I arrived in the Air Force, we were building up our forces in
South West Asia to enforce UN Security Council Resolutions in response
to Saddam Hussein. Today, after a brief drawdown, we find ourselves in
the same predicament. We have lowered our footprint in Bosnia, but
raised it again in Kosovo. We more or less finished the QDR force
adjustments, and started the Defense Reform Initiative. We flew F-22
Raptor 1, then added Raptor 2 and flew it across the country under its
own power. More recently, Raptor 1 went supersonic, and just yesterday
flew its first after burner take off. We announced EAF. We moved Keiko
the whale to Iceland. We awarded JASSM and EELV, sold our Chimpanzees,
and are trying mightily to sell off McClellan and Kelly. A few souls
flew KC-135s in the nude, taking the Expeditionary Mind Set and Bare
Base Operations where few have ever gone before! And Air Force beat Navy
49-7 and Army 35-7.
I am a modest soul . . . . I take credit only for the drubbing of
Army and Navy!!!
Turning to space . . . . Every time I try to think about space, I
prove to myself again that I am not a rocket scientist. But let me give
you my thoughts on some of the topics that will be discussed later
today.
John Glenn’s recent trip into space reminds us that a lot has
changed in space since a generation ago. But despite the wonders of
science and technology, as the saying goes, “the more things change,
the more they stay the same.”
At an air power symposium in the early 1970s, the first Chief of
Staff of the Air Force, General Carl Spaatz, unable to attend due to ill
health, sent a note which states a dilemma we still face today:
“Tell everybody that we are getting out of flying too soon
and into space too late.”
Today we are getting out of flying too soon because we have
aging aircraft which we cannot afford to replace or repair. And we are
getting to space too late because we lack the resources to maintain
readiness and to modernize at the same time.
If you recall the QDR, you will remember that we are notionally in a
time of strategic pause. A time when there should be enough “margin”
to deter or defeat aggressors in the short run, while rebuilding for the
long run.
But I would propose to you that 1998 demonstrated that we lack “the
margin .” In fact, with every budget drill, General Ryan and I
recognize that we have essentially have little to no flexibility in how
we spend the Air Force budget, particularly when we try to find room for
expensive, yet essential, new initiatives like space systems.
- Our top line has been flat or declining in real terms for 14
years, while within the last year alone the costs of spare parts for
our aging fleet has gone up by $1 billion, with no end in sight.
- We face pay raises and retirement reform for our personnel, both
officer and enlisted, who are leaving in alarming numbers for the
private sector. This is absolutely the right thing to do, but it
comes at a large price.
- We need to be spending dollars to recapitalize infrastructure not
well- maintained during the Cold War, such as military family
housing, the World War II Quonset huts that house part of our
hospital at Lakenheath and our squadron operations at Spangdalem,
and the 1960’s technology that is used to monitor and control our
space ranges. As things stand today, we seldom have funds for these
essential items.
- Additionally, dollars must be spent refurbishing our global
mobility capability by modernizing avionics and engines on the
KC-135 and C-5 aircraft, by adding glass cockpits to the C-141s just
to keep them flying through 2006, by modernizing the fuels
infrastructure - a critical limiting factor in every major theater
war scenario, not to mention a critical ingredient of EAF -- and,
yes, even by adding a bathroom at Moron, where until recently two
bathrooms served as many as 4000 transiting passengers a day.
- And try as we might to end less critical programs, we often find
Congressional adds restoring or increasing those programs - at the
expense of higher priority systems, such as space.
- Of course, to be candid the space world’s hands are not squeaky
clean either - Under legislation, the Air Force budget continues to
subsidize the costs of commercial launches from our ranges.
- Finally, additional “margin” is required to fund
emerging real world problems, such as contingency operations and Y2K
solutions.
- I could go on and on.
But the point is clear: with contingency operations 4 times as high
as during the Cold War, with aircraft on average 10 years older than
when the Wall fell, and with opposition to stopping almost any program
or closing any base, “the margin ” has been used up in daily
operations well before we start to consider new initiatives in space.
“Do-Able Space”
Recognizing the inflexibility of the Air Force budget, General Ryan
and I asked Dan Hastings, our Air Force Science and Technology Advisor,
to start a study on where the Air Force must invest in basic technology
to ensure that the Air Force is positioned to move forward on future
space systems even if fiscal realities preclude near and mid-term
spending on the actual fielding of new space systems. Dan called his
study “Do-Able Space” to emphasize that the program had to fit
within the Air Force top line. For my part, at least, this was an effort
to bring some of my space planners firmly back from intergalactic
warfare to the realities of earth, and to start a pragmatic effort to
move forward in space notwithstanding our harsh budget realities.
At the AFA’s Orlando Symposium last February, I described
“Do-able Space” as one way to identify key technologies and
capabilities that represent the first steps of our 21st
Century journey to Space. As John Kennedy once said, “a journey of a
thousand miles must begin with a single step.” The same is true for a
journey of a thousand light years.
As a result of Dan’s work and a follow on study by the Air Force
Scientific Advisory Board, we are making headway in identifying the key
technology drivers that must be funded to move forward in space. I am
pleased to report that Air Force Research Laboratory, under General
Paul, has been following a parallel approach, and has managed to double
the money devoted to key space technologies in the Research Laboratory
budget by the end of the FYDP.
A key facet of both Do-able Space and the AFRL research program is
the concept of “partnering” by which I mean coordinating research
efforts so that no money is spent to do the same work twice, and that
resources and research programs are coordinated to realize efficiencies
as well as to benefit from the synergy of the partnership. AFRL has been
doing this with NASA, DARPA, and other government agencies for a long
time, but now the challenge is to expand partnering between black and
white space and into the fast-growing private sector.
Partnering -- Interagency
With the “Discoverer II” radar satellite demonstrator announced
earlier this year, I believe we may have firmly established what Keith
Hall has called “Zebra Space” -- the successful integration of our
so-called “black and white” space efforts.
Discoverer II is a partnership of the Air Force, the National
Reconnaissance office, and DARPA memorialized into a first of its
kind Memorandum of Agreement, committing funding and personnel
resources to demonstrate mobile target tracking from space by 2004.
“Discoverer II” takes the concept of “force-multiplier” to a new
level by putting teeth in the front-end of the Find Fix Track Target and
Engage (F2T2E) capability. It also furthers DARPA’s efforts to build
smaller, cheaper satellites and provides NRO an excellent synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) platform. Equally important, the three-way joint
program office established for “Discoverer II” holds outstanding
promise as a path breaking model for the integration of national
security space activities.
Let me just note that Discoverer II is already under budgeteers
scrutiny because of cost growth predicted by an independent cost
estimate. However, as a technology demonstration we are committed to
make this program a reality.
Partnering -- Government & Commercial Sectors
We have also moved out on partnering with industry in the Evolved
Expendable Launch Vehicle program. Because Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and
the Air Force have EACH invested one billion dollars in
developing EELV, the United States -- both military and civilian; both
government and commercial -- will enter the 21st Century with very
capable, affordable expendable launch technology.
The government’s investment ensures that validated military
spacelift requirements will be met by commercial vehicles, while
stimulating the commercial launch industry and strengthening our launch
infrastructure. Having two domestic sources will reduce risk and provide
assured access to space for both government and commercial payloads.
EELV enables the U.S. commercial launch service providers to become more
competitive, not only from a cost standpoint, but also through vehicle
availability and flexibility coming from two competitive launch vehicle
families -- uniquely positioned to capture increased international
market share.
EELV IS TRULY A WIN-WIN PROGRAM.
Let me explain. By way of example, for DoD’s planned launches from
2002 to 2020, EELV will reduce the total cost of launch by $6B off an
estimated cost of $19.0B using current technology. Thus, the EELV
program should lower both government and commercial launch costs by at
least 25%, and we are committed to realizing a goal of 50% savings.
Moreover, to facilitate the creation of a commercial market, the Air
Force will provide each contractor an initial stable set of
government missions to demonstrate the potential of EELV, helping to
stimulate commercial sales for the new launch service.
The Way Ahead
The Air Force needs to move out on partnering. To do that, we are
widely circulating our tentative vision of near and mid-term space
priorities in the form of the work done by our Chief Scientist Dan
Hastings and by our Scientific Advisory Board’s Summer Study.
I have invited key players in the commercial and public sector to
join with senior Air Force leaders at a “Space Conference” to be
held in Washington on December 1st and 2nd. The
purpose of this conference is to share visions, to assess areas for
cooperation, and I hope, to take a cut at a near and mid-term national
agenda for space.
Dr. Sheila Widnall has graciously accepted my invitation to
leave the classrooms of MIT and harness the talents of the Space experts
from the public sector -- military and civil -- as they enter into panel
discussions with their counterparts from industry. Our panel discussions
will cover the waterfront:
- Air Force and the Commercial Sector
- Air Force and the Civil Sector
- New Technology Paradigms
- Directed Energy for Space
A cross-cutting issue will be the future of US space ranges. We need
to decide who should own, operate, and fund space ranges. We also need
to decide how many should be funded at government expense - can we
really afford to proliferate launch ranges to every state that wants
one? And we need to have this discussion against the reality of the
current Air Force budget. As evidenced by our inability to fund
improvements in range communications, computers and telemetry systems,
the current funding simply is not adequate for either military or
commercial launches in the future.
We are asking these “Stakeholders in Space” to establish a
consensus baseline of the current state of space, and explore the
opportunities available if we institutionalize “Space Partnering
Networks” between the public and private sectors.
Pardon the pun, but we believe that launching our Air Force on a
steady, reliable trajectory to go to Space is not “rocket
science.” Certainly, technical and legal issues abound, but we believe
that effective partnering will ultimately provide the keys to open those
locks. Our Conference objective is compelling and straightforward: We
need people to sit down together, brainstorm together, and
even, “agree-to-disagree” together, to produce a
“win-win” Space strategy. If we can reach agreement on a pragmatic
way forward - where military, commercial and civil efforts are leveraged
- perhaps we will be able to find the funds required to make a shared
space vision a reality.
Future Vision
As we look ahead, we have a full plate before us. Readiness is our
most important issue and taking care of our people remains our
highest enduring priority. We remain committed to establishing the
Expeditionary Aerospace Force, fully integrating air and space assets,
to improve our readiness.
At the same time, we are working our aerospace doctrine to remove any
cultural and structural barriers that impede our ability to fully
exploit the vertical dimension -- a dimension unique to air power of
the past and aerospace power in the future. In this vein, the
fielding of our new Aerospace Basic Course - to be required of all young
officers - should move us a long way toward removing those barriers.
When Helen Keller was asked what could be worse than being
born blind, she replied, “Having sight without vision.”
Today, we can see that we are blessed with highly trained,
motivated force. We can see that our young men and women in
uniform are the best in the world. We can see that we need to
overcome the fiscal challenges and break down the cultural barriers that
impede us from becoming a truly seamless, Total Aerospace Force. And we
can see that the way forward must be greater cooperation between and
among all government and industry sectors to ensure the vital commercial
and National Security Interests in Space.
But we lack the details of a vision that can be executed in a
stringent fiscal environment. It is only by bringing all sectors of
space together can we hope to flesh out an executable vision. Therefore
I applaud AFA for sponsoring today’s conference, and I look forward to
our Air Force conference. We want to move ahead, and with Roger DeKok
doing the planning, I think we have a unique opportunity to move our
planning process and the country’s planning process in the right
direction.
- We will listen carefully to what is said by all sectors.
- We will act on the best opportunities recommended by our experts
and yours.
- And, we will report back to you on our conclusions, in the hope of
reaching consensus.
Thank you for inviting me here today. I look forward to hearing
today’s discussions.
Gen. Shaud: Secretary Peters, we have a number of questions
from the audience. The audience is well aware of your recent travels out
with the troops. How do you assess the morale of the Air Force? How
concerned are you that the troops with such issues as the 40 percent
retirement at 20 years and the pay gap?
Mr. Peters: I would say the morale of the troops goes from
excellent in places like the Pacific, particularly in Korea, even though
it is a tough place to make a living, to close to dismal on the East
Coast of the United States in places like Shaw and Moody, which have
been vastly burdened by deployments. When Chief Bencken and I went down
the East Coast, it crystalized a lot of the problems. They are, in not
necessarily priority order, pay, retirement, op tempo and to much lesser
extent, medical care, although any time you mentioned TRICARE, you can
get somebody to mention something nasty about it.
On the pay and benefits front, we did get the 3.6 pay increase this
year. We are budgeting for 4.4 percent and I do think there will be pay
table reform in the next Congress.
Retirement. We almost got this year a return to 50 percent retirement
in at the flurry of last minute business of Congress, but that bill
became, as Dr. Hamre says, a pig - too fat to walk on its own and we had
that taken out. It was just a bridge too far. We will be discussing this
with Congress at great length this spring, but there is a good chance
that will be fixed.
Among our second term enlisted folks, op tempo is a major problem.
We’ve done some statistical work on EAF and we will see very dramatic
declines in op tempo rates if we can get to EAF promptly, both because
we are spreading the load evenly in the active force, spreading it to
the Reserve and Guard and also plussing up a lot of the enlisted
specialties that are the most hard hit by this. There is hope in the
future but we need a lot of work to get there.
Gen. Shaud: The bottom line to this question has to do with
raising the top line for Defense. How do we fund space when the Air
Force faces serious shortages in funding in so many other programs, a
couple of which you just mentioned?
Mr.Peters: I would say I would turn the hard problem over to
the Vice, but we have already tried that and so far, he hasn’t been
able to do much better than the chief and myself. The bottom line is, we
don’t. This is a major problem as Dick Myers can tell you. We are
locked in a very difficult situation between the operators, who clearly
want more space assets and it is the right thing to do and at the
moment, the Air Force budgeteers, including myself and the Chief who are
trying to keep what we have going. At a time we have offered what we
thought were $1.6 billion of old programs that we could get rid of, Cold
War relics, and we’ve been reissued $1.5 billion of them. Our problem
is that just spare parts alone is eating up whatever margin we’ve had
and we’ve been unable to get all OSD, OMB and Congress to agree to let
us stop any other major program.
Gen. Shaud: Last question. What role will the space force team
have with our Expeditionary Air Forces?
Mr. Peters: It is absolutely one of the most critical elements
of Expeditionary Aerospace Force. EFX 98 looked at the concept of reach
back and one of the things that is very clear with EAF, both because we
need to get out of town quickly and because of the chemical and
biological threat at the other end, we have to cut down the number of
people who are moving forward. The way to do that is to put together the
so-called global grid and to use electrons flying through satellites in
getting the information back to home base, back to the continental
United States and then back again to the front is the way to go. That is
what we tested in EFX - communications from aircraft, UAVs and
satellites to all of the above, back to the ground for analysis in fact
to all of the above. That is a key concept that has a very high
priority. Clearly, space from communication sensors are absolutely
critical. It is also critical to be able to do command and control. So,
very high priority area.
Gen. Shaud: Thank you.
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