Foundation Forum
Major General David L. Vesely
Commander, 14th Air Force
The Space Perspective
Mid-America AFA Symposium
May 3, 1996
St. Louis
I am going to share what I do know with you this morning about space
and your Air Force space forces, about how we are organized, what we are
trying to do, and the direction that I ve been given. I have selected
some applications of space systems that we ve been able to evolve
recently that apply to airlift forces because I thought that would be of
interest to you and then we will open it up for questions.
Space has a phenomenal future in military operations. Virtually every
senior leader in uniform today will acknowledge the future of space and
its application to military forces and military operations across the
entire spectrum. We are working hard to make sure that the 90 percent of
the space forces which is in the United States Air Force are going to
play a key role in that evolution.
First, why are we in space? It is stated in virtually every mission
and visions statement. Space is key and the U.S. Air Force has the lead
in space. Space provides some very great advantages. It is the ultimate
high ground. You can see a long ways from there. You can be there a long
time. It really is a global presence and there are no overflight
restrictions in space. You can be where you want to be and when you want
to be there. Those are great military advantages. My mission as
commander of 14th Air Force, which is all of Air Force space forces, is
to plan and execute those forces to support CINCs. My primary CINC is
CINC Space, who I report to directly as the Air Force Component
Commander to that CINC. But I support Theater CINCs worldwide.
I have been given three mission areas.
Space Forces Support involves space lift and getting things up
into space. It is not an easy matter and not an inexpensive matter, but
very important. We have a launch base on each coast. On the East Coast,
there is Patrick Air Force Base which supports Cape Canaveral, and on
the West Coast there is Vandenberg Air Force Base. Each of those bases
has great advantages. From the East Coast, we can launch into an
equatorial inclination. So, anything in geostationary orbit all your
communications satellites go out of Cape Canaveral. Out of
Vandenberg, we can launch polar orbiting satellites such as necessary
for weather satellites and imagery. Satellite operations for the
satellites in orbit are conducted from 50th Space Wing at Falcon Air
Force Base in Colorado Springs using a Global Satellite Control Network.
Space Control is ensuring we have the use of space for our
needs and denying those to an enemy if we need to. Just like air space
control, you have functions to perform. You must know what is up there,
and so we do space surveillance. We track over 8,000 objects in space,
some the size of a golf ball. We do that out of Cheyenne Mountain [Air
Station] in Colorado Springs and we know which of those 8,000 things are
active and what they are doing.
We also do Missile Warning in particular for ICBM warning,
warning of a missile attack that is going to come through space, also
out of Cheyenne Mountain using radar and space-based sensors that are
also global.
We need to protect our own resources that are in space.
We do that through a number of obvious and not so obvious means. We can
maneuver satellites. They can be protected against jamming and some
other things. If we have to, we need to engage and negate an
enemy's ability to use pace-based information. Have we done that? Sure.
We did that in the Desert War. We made sure that Saddam Hussein did not
have access to space-based resources. It is fairly simple. You target
his ground stations and take them out.
Next is Force Enhancement which we term support to warfighting.
We get five categories of information using space.
Precision navigation. You are all aware of the Global
Positioning System [GPS] constellation of 24 satellites circling the
globe sending out precise navigation and timing signals. With a receiver
in your hand, you can precisely set your location anyplace on the globe.
It has burgeoned into a megabillion dollar business and will continue to
grow. We all know how important space-based communications
are to all military forces and that is a function provided from space.
We also provide weather and intelligence
information to warfighters and senior leaders.
Lastly, we can provide theater missile defense warning,
which has just recently come up as a result largely of the Gulf War. We
were able to take those strategic warning systems that were designed for
ICBM warning and use them for tactical or theater ballistic missile
warning, which is no small feat and we did it in a very short time
during the Gulf War. We have expanded that warning and increased our
response and our accuracy. We provide these missions through our four
wings. The first two are the launch wings, the 30th and the 45th, out of
Vandenberg and Patrick. Falcon Air Force Base and the 50th Wing provides
worldwide space support, controlling those objects we have in space, and
the 21st Wing largely provides that missile warning in that space
surveillance. Our organization has some 25,000 people in 99 squadrons at
131 separate units in 44 locations spread across 15 time zones around
the globe.
The Secretary of the Air Force has established three priorities for
space forces. The first of those is to make access to space
routine for all warfighters. We are not there yet as military
forces have not fully learned how to use space-based information, but we
are getting there and it is accelerating rapidly. The next is to
improve military cooperation with the commercial space efforts.
I will liken this to the commercial airlift industry, which largely
spawned out of military developmental efforts early on in our aviation
history. Lastly, we need to make it a little more routine and
affordable to get things up into space. It is very expensive
today and not all that timely. We need to correct that.
What do we mean by making space routine? As I mentioned, we
need to incorporate space as a normal part of all military operations
and space-based information. How do we do that? I have space support
teams that are dedicated to each theater air component commander, they
understand that component commander s situation, and they plan with,
exercise with, train with and employ with each of those theater
commanders on a routine basis. As we speak, there are space support
teams in Vicenza [Italy], working with the Bosnia operation. I have a
space support team in Panama working counterdrug operations. I have
another team in Korea that is exercising as we speak. Their job is to
get those air component commanders comfortable with involving space
based resources in their operations. In order to control all these
forces, we have created a Space Operations Center. Some would recognize
it as an air operations center, but we deal in space. The Space
Operations Center allows me to understand the global environment,
understand the status of my forces, and what the supported commander
needs. That is all part of what General Ashy calls a normalization of
space getting space normalized into Air Force operations. We have to
plan, train and exercise space in order to make that routine an a normal
part of doing business. We do that every day in virtually every command.
The idea is to integrate space power into all military operations,
whatever they may be.
There are a few space applications that might be of interest to this
audience. First of all, how do we get space-based information directly
into the cockpit of an aircraft? It was very difficult to do in the
past, but we are doing that today. We have a system called the
Multi-source Tactical System, designed and developed out at Colorado
Springs, primarily to support the airlift force. Getting information
into a cockpit or an aircraft is a lot easier for a large aircraft
because we have the space for the equipment and we have the power. Into
this Multi-source Tactical System, we have incorporated GPS navigation,
over-the-horizon information, tactical situational awareness, imagery
and feeds from the AWACS. We need to give that enroute airlifter his
order of battle, charting, and route following information. Important?
You bet. We can update that information while the crew is enroute to the
target and we are doing that today.
It gives them a multi-layered battlefield. We can use multi-spectral
imagery and unclassified commercial imagery. Digitized charts can be
incorporated as well. The elevation data can be fused with the ground
picture provided by electronic intelligence. Incorporate that all
together and it gives the airlifter or tanker a pretty good picture of
what will be faced upon arrival.
The machine, which is basically a computer screen, is carried in the
cockpit and can show the terrain for the approach and departure at an
airfield. For example at Bihac in Bosnia, we have taken the imagery and
terrain elevation and digitally recreated what that aircrew is going to
see. They can actually preview the approach into that airfield. If you
have never been there before, it is important. If all of a sudden we
divert that aircraft to Tuzla and they haven t been there, they can sit
in the cockpit and preview and prefly that aircraft so they know what
they are going to see when they fly in.
We can also show the digital terrain with a threat bubble so the
aircrew knows to avoid the lethal threats. You can identify drop zones
and you can identify key visual landmarks as you are going in.
There is what we call area delimitation which combines quite a bit of
space-derived information with a combination of vector diagrams which is
land routing, digital elevation data and multi-spectral imagery. We can
delimit the terrain based on various characteristics to help with such
missions as looking for a Scud, and you wanted to target that launcher.
We know that Scuds are on fairly heavy mobile trailers, and they can not
go into steep terrain. We take out all of the steep terrain from a view
or if we wanted to take out the heavy forestation, that could be done.
You end up with an area delimitation process that allows you to focus on
key areas. Combined on a map, it may say Don t go look in those areas
that are red because he is not going to be there.
We have done the same thing in the air drop business. We did that a
couple years ago when we dropped into the Sarajevo area. The mission
planners for those drops were taking days to mission plan. Working with
the delimiting program, they didn t want to drop into the urban areas
because it tends to fall on buildings and people; they didn t want to
drop into steep terrain because it tends to tumble and fall into
inaccessible areas; and don t drop it into heavily forested areas or
into very wet areas. Through that delimitation process, you shrink to an
area of at least 600 meters by 600 meters and bingo, in a matter of
minutes or at most hours, you have your mission planning completed.
We are working a system for Air Mobility Command, called Combat
Track. A big problem in the desert was knowing what we had enroute and
keeping track of what was coming by air and by sea as well. We have
developed a system to actually label the cargo on board with the scanner
codes you ve seen in stores. We can then transmit that information,
along with the aircraft position, via satellite communications, to give
total enroute visibility on everything that is moving. The user knows
what is going to be on that airplane and on what pallet. It is an easy
way to track virtually all of your cargo. We are doing the same thing
with air refueling. We have proven you can bar code a receiver aircraft.
Fuel flow is read off the air refueling probe, and the information is
sent with a GPS position to the Air Operations Center, and they know
which aircraft got how much fuel and who is going to get to the target
on time and when.
Those are some of the military applications, trying to get
space-based information into normal, routine air operations.
The Secretary has also told us to concentrate on commercial
cooperation. We are activating a space port in California to complement
the space port in Florida. This allows commercial customers to use these
immense DoD facilities to launch commercial payloads. It is the same as
not having to build your own airport to launch your aircraft. Building
the infrastructure to launch is prohibitively expensive, so it is a
great commercial cooperation effort.
We have made our facilities available both at Patrick and at
Vandenberg for both ranges. They use our range tracking systems to do
the launch business. We are standardizing those range operations and the
safety issues so that customers are comfortable with how we operate on
both ranges. We are providing it to them at the delta cost whatever
it costs us to provide that service to them. Quarterly, we meet with our
customers, both the satellite customers and the launch customers, to
agree on a schedule for the ranges. It is working out very well.
The last area is trying to get launch affordable and routine. It is
not easy to do. We must make sure we understand how to do the launch
business. Air Force Materiel Command, before that Air Force Systems
Command, did all the launching in the Air Force because the systems were
largely scientific and developmental. Air Force Space Command is now
going to conduct those launches, and we are going to do that in a
normal, routine launch operation. We are reaching agreement with AFMC on
exactly how to do that. Again, we are standardizing the launch bases so
we can have a common terminology and operations and safety. We are
improving all of the processes associated with launching.
It is not a simple task and it is difficult to do. All of the launch
vehicles evolved from the early ICBM era and they are old systems. Even
though they ve been upgraded, we need a new family of launch vehicles
that is going to help us get things into space. We have a requirement
and a competition underway for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle,
which will be easily tailored to different satellites. If you need more
thrust, you just strap on more and you launch them. It will be awhile
before we get there, but it ought to really help us in becoming far more
affordable and routine in getting into space.
Let me just close with a look at the way ahead. We see that space is
going to significantly grow in national importance and particularly in
the importance of military operations. Space support to that warfighter
is going to increase significantly, and it will do so largely at the
demand of the warfighter. Once they understand what space can provide to
them, we will be in great demand. The exploitation of space is going to
continue, not just on the military demand, but across the board
scientific, civil, and commercial.
We believe satellite and booster design, which is probably fairly
primitive in its evolution, is going to be driven by market forces. We
are going to get to much smaller satellites and much easier ways to
boost things into space. Commercial launch is going toincrease, and we
feel that civil and DoD launch operations will probably decrease. It is
very similar to moving people and equipment around the globe. The
commercial industry is far better at doing that than the military and
that is why we rely on them. We see the same evolution in the space
business as well.
I hope that gives you a little better picture of where the Air Force
and 14th Air Force is going in space. I d be happy to take any questions
now.
Question: What is the role of the tanker crew in the barcoding
of information into satellites?
MAJ. GEN. VESELY: To be honest with you, that tanker program
is a developmental effort, and we just wanted to prove that we could do
it. There would be very little for the crew to do. The barcode reader
was placed on the refueling receptacle. The barcode itself was on the
aircraft that was being refueled. The information that is going to be
passed along involves what aircraft, how much fuel, where the refueling
occurred and that is all easily derived without any crew involvement
whatsoever. It is then passed via SATCOM in a databurst back to whoever
needs the information.
Question: What is the status on the National Aerospace Plane?
MAJ. GEN. VESELY: The National Aerospace Plane has not gotten
very far, but let me explain that arrangement. By agreement in the
administration, NASA pursues reusable spacecraft such as the National
Aerospace Plane. NASA pursues the technologies and the applications for
reusable space vehicles. DoD has a responsibility to pursue expendable
launch vehicles. We have a great interest in a reusable vehicle, but it
is a NASA responsibility. We lay out our requirements and ask them to
pursue certain things, but it is their responsibility.
MR. WALT SCOTT: Do you envision the new initiatives signed by
the administration and Israel to be an expansion of the missile warning
mission we have been given?
MAJ. GEN. VESELY: To be honest, I have not seen the agreement.
General Ashy suggests we provide missile warning to the theater
commander and let the theater commander determine how to distribute that
warning and share it with our allies, and our counterparts. I do not see
any increase in our mission requirements per se. We are still collecting
all of that information.
MR. SYMINGTON: Does the Defense Mapping Center here in St.
Louis provide you help with computerized maps?
MAJ. GEN. VESELY: Absolutely. They are the center of expertise
for digitizing terrain around the world and they are very heavily
involved in doing that. That information is critical to most of the
applications we demonstrated here today. We take that digital terrain
base and we then overlay imagery on top to give the effect of flying
through synthetically generated terrain. If you remember the helicopter
that drifted north of the DMZ in Korea the winter before last and was
shot down. We were able to recreate that helicopter s route using
exactly this kind of a scheme. You can even overlay weather on top of
it. In Bosnia, when we did the bombing campaign last summer, every pilot
preflew their route in a digital terrain generated database on a screen
and saw his target and dropped on that target before he ever got to the
cockpit. It became so important and so lucrative because they wanted to
minimize collateral damage. They were prohibited from flying if they
didn t prefly the mission.
GEN. SHAUD: Dave, thanks for getting us off to a wonderful
start. You gave us a god s eye view of Global Presence.
GEN. SHAUD: Dave, thank you very much.
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