General Bruce A. Carlson
Commander, Air Force Materiel Command
AFA National Symposium on Space
November 18, 2005
General Bruce A. Carlson: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning.
I'm sure many of you cringe at the idea that Bruce Carlson, whose bio includes nothing about space, is here this morning opening this symposium. And whenever I give a speech to an audience like this, I'm reminded of the general who asked for a 20-minute speech from his action group and of course they delivered three or four days later and he went off, delivered the speech, came back a few days later and called them all in and read them the riot act. He said he'd told them he wanted a 20-minute speech, and halfway through the speech, half the people walked out.
They said, “sir, we don't understand. We gave you a 20-minute speech. We gave you a couple of extra copies, but we can't imagine what went wrong.”
I only have one copy. [Laughter].
I'm not nearly as well versed as I should be, but I am a little bit of a history buff. I just spent the week at Edwards Air Force Base. I'll tell you a little bit about that in a minute, but on this day in 1966, Major Bill Knight set a new world speed record in the X-15 at 4,223 miles an hour. That was almost 40 years ago. In 1967 on this date we tested our first laser-guided bomb. Again, almost 40 years ago precision weapons were born. And on this day in 1989, we had the seventh flight of the B-2—a seven-hour and 17-minute mission. On that particular test flight we shut down every engine. I went and inquired about that. It was actually one at a time and we got them all restarted again. [Laughter]
What a great opportunity to be here this morning and talk to you about what we're doing in space. The Air Force Association always puts on world-class events, and for the most part they have an excellent line-up of speakers, a superb outline of panels, pertinent subjects and topics, and a great audience. I think today's symposium is on track to raise that bar just a little bit.
As I mentioned earlier, I spent this last week at Edwards at our fall Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) Commanders' Conference. It's a great opportunity to bring about 100 folks together from all over the command. At this particular one, we tried to reevaluate our strategic direction. We worked on a product that many of you are familiar with called the Balanced Score Card and we talked a lot about Continuous Process Improvement and how we're going to try to work that topic in enterprise-wide into the command. I think it was a great week.
But ultimately what we did was ask ourselves, “what are we putting into the warfighters' hands that increases their combat capability? Are we supporting the warfighter as expeditiously as possible?” I think that's a question that we all have to ask ourselves because of the dynamic world that we live in right now. I'll talk a little bit more about that at lunch, but as a preview, I think it's important to understand that we're fighting a very ruthless enemy, an enemy without morals, an enemy without any goal other than to kill Americans, dilute Western influence, and dominate the world. They're committed to getting us and any Western influence out of the Middle East and they'll use any tactics necessary to do that.
Of course, we know that this war has been going on in reality for some time, but if you look back at Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 and the recent attacks in Jordan, you'll see that each of those attacks included increasingly complex levels of planning, precise timing, and the incorporation of some, although limited numbers, of advanced technologies. These terrorists believe that they can win the war by essentially killing an American a day and driving us out of the region, but we're on the offensive to dismantle this radical ideology that is focused on killing Americans. The enemy realizes that the capabilities that we have resident in space are an integral part of our warfighting capabilities all across the battlespace.
Here are just a few examples that I know you're familiar with of how we employ our warfighting capabilities in space: high bandwidth, secure communications; fixing locations using hand-held, precision, light-weight GPS receivers; relaying those precise locations, both of friendlies and enemy forces; placing precisely-guided munitions on target using space capabilities.
Now what happens if our space capabilities become compromised by our adversaries or we lose them completely? What if we lose two or three of those space capabilities? Is it possible that we could do that?
I'd like to spend just a few minutes this morning telling you what we're doing in Air Force Materiel Command to ensure that the probability of that kind of thing happening remains very, very small. I'd like to tell you what we're doing to produce a future generation of space professionals and experts. I'd also like to tell you about what we're doing to incorporate technology into the space systems that we are launching and sustaining today. Finally, I'd like to talk for just a minute about what we're doing about tomorrow's space capabilities.
The Space Scholars Program is one that we have active in the Air Force. Our goal is to put sharp young students that have good ideas in an environment where they can explore the technical boundaries that they see around them and focus them on Air Force problems—problems that we see in warfighting and the use of our space architecture and assets—and finally let them rub shoulders with seasoned, technical professionals and researchers.
Our belief is that we need them to carry on this world-class space research that's being conducted in the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). That research includes things such as basic research on improving our computer power, composite materials to be used in space, increased solar power efficiencies, and sensors, both passive and active, and those of course are used to acquire critical intelligence and surveillance information. We also do work on space propulsion, improved flight dynamics, guidance and control, to name just a few of the things, but the list really goes on and on…
These young kids get to rub shoulders with some terrific folks. They're mentored and lectured and interact with the top people in their profession: the founder of PayPal, Nobel Laureate winners in physics, the former director of the National Space Foundation, a science advisor to a former President, the former Chief Scientist of the Air Force, etc. They get an international perspective from some renowned educators and researchers. They all share their intellect and their science and engineering perspectives with these young kids and try to focus them on doing things that we think are appropriate and necessary.
If you look at our track record over the past few years with this program, you'll see that we're making steady progress in this effort, 2005 being our highest participation rate yet. This last summer, in 2005, these young students studied and helped us contribute to microsatellite attitude dynamics and control, advanced solar cells in space, and advanced optical component technology. The call for topics in 2006 includes decentralized sensing, decision and control for autonomous spacecraft and constellations of spacecraft, and also tasking and data processing, data fusion for on-orbit detection of impact or changes in mass properties.
Next I'd like to talk for just a minute about an example of using our universities to contribute to the objectives of the Air Force in warfighting and space. This particular initiative is called the University Nanoset Program. It's a competition between several universities across the country and has the following objectives … First, to give young students who are in their final years of school, who already have a pretty good engineering background, some hands-on practical experience with unique space problems. Second, to develop and field (in some cases) small satellite technologies, all the way from planning, proof of concept, utility analysis, and finally construction of small satellites. Finally, we want to give them an opportunity to insert some technology into actual space demonstrations.
We think this is a great opportunity to reach out to a pool of young scientists and motivate them to do things that contribute to the warfighting needs that we have in this nation and also to our need for advanced technologies in space. Currently, we have memorandums of agreement, partnership agreements, and signed contracts to participate with several universities. It's a pretty good list of some of our top technical schools in the country.
Our youngest boy, Scott, is a senior at Utah State University. He's in mechanical engineering, but I know his compatriots are working on a contract to conduct a space-based, multi-aperture research and technology study—a smart study. They're performing some detailed cost modeling of several different microsatellite architectures. It's operationally useful, it puts kids in touch with our space researchers and our space operators.
At New Mexico State, we're engaged in a strategic study plan that just kicked off this past October. We're also actively engaged with several of our nation's other top universities, but it doesn't stop there—we're also engaging our military institutions of higher learning.
The great thing about this is that these are kids, young people, who already are proven engineers or researchers, and at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), for instance, we have two research projects currently funded in reconfigurable space electronics. They're working on things that are operationally relevant to us and useful.
At the Naval Post Graduate School, we also have another project dealing with future space applications, this one in the area of space control.
At the Air Force Academy, and I know General Lance Lord will recall this from just a couple of weeks ago, we have an ongoing and continuing program. It's funded to work within the physics and astronautics department to build some space-qualified hardware for what's called Falcon Sats 2, 3 and 4. It allows for some ride-sharing opportunities on AFRL space vehicles and during Corona the cadets brought this pretty impressive program out and displayed it for us. They discussed their effort, and I'll quote what one of them told me and then we'll try to figure out what he meant by it. But it's about a 43-pound satellite, 12.5 inch cube, and it's payload is called a MESA, a Mini-Electrostatic Analyzer. They'll launch the maiden voyage of Falcon 2 next week on the November 23, 2005.
So I asked one of these kids that looked like he was about 13 years old, “what does it do?” He said, "well sir, it investigates low latitude ionospheric plasma depletions and their effects on radio waves." I said, “good. That's great stuff.” [Laughter]
I copied that down and sent it back to my CAG, my Commanders Action Group, and after three weeks they came back and said that it really has to do with interference of GPS signals, so that I do understand. [Laughter]
So we're working hard to ensure that our best science and engineering students are actively participating in space activities that will contribute to the future of warfighting space in this country.
Next, I would like to tell you about our improved space computer program. This is an effort by AFRL, who I think have found a niche in providing next-generation, high performance, on-board space electronics, and I'd like to talk about three specific programs that they have ongoing right now.
The first one is called Improved Space Computing Architecture Concept (ISCAC). This architecture is the only approach to achieve distributed computing in a plug-and-play capability. So what that means to me is these guys have found new and innovative ways to put computers together that give them a three-orders-of-magnitude capability over the current state of the art. I'll talk just a little bit about what they've done with that here in a minute.
The second one is called a TPC or Two Power PCs. That's a new processor called the RAD-750 that achieves a ten-times improvement of performance for general purpose satellite mission control and so on. That particular processor was launched on the deep impact NASA mission about a year ago and it will be launched on the XSS-11 here shortly. It consumes about half the power of a traditional processor and gives us about six to seven times performance improvement over the old RAD-6000 processor. It's baselined into virtually every space system on the books right now.
A third initiative that's being run out of AFRL is what we call a CRAM Non-Volatile Memory. It gives us a four-times improvement in density, five-times improvement in speed, and it's about 1/8th the cost of current state of the art non-volatile memory.
The bottom line is that AFRL is making significant improvements in space computing capabilities and those are being implemented today. Many satellite programs are under contract currently to use these improved space computer program electronics.
The success that Deep Impact had was due in part to these on-board electronics provided through the AFRL's improved space computer program. That mission, if you recall, occurred on the 5th of July of this year and it was a complex experiment to probe beneath the surface of a comet. A fly-by satellite released an impactor satellite in the path of the comet. The comet I think was named Tempo One. It was a superb success and it employed AFRL's improved space computer program electronics.
XSS-11 has similar computing processing equipment installed in it as well. The Experimental Spacecraft System, or XSS, was developed back in 1998 and it culminated in the launch of XSS-10 on January 29, 2003. It had a 24-hour mission life and it was a successful mission. It did an autonomous inspection all the way around the Delta second stage that it had just separated from, and live video of that event was transmitted to the ground.
XSS-11 was launched on the 11th of April of this year. It's planned to be a one-year mission life. AFRL developed many of the capabilities that are employed on that satellite system to include electronic components, sensors, thrust and guidance components. So far, to date, we've experienced several significant tests and AFRL engineers have had the opportunity to actually fly the satellite. The successful demonstration of these new, low-cost satellites that weigh 100 kilograms or less will open up significant opportunities for our warfighters for a variety of future military applications to include space servicing, diagnostics, maintenance, space support, and more efficient space operations.
This is the way ahead, as I see it. We have to realize that our space systems are vulnerable to attack by those who mean us harm. They are critical to our success and the bad guys know that.
Second, it's important that we cultivate the next generation of space professionals and technical experts and nurture these young students about our needs in space and use our government institutions of higher education such as AFIT, the Naval Post Graduate School and the Air Force Academy to help us contribute to what we're doing in space.
Finally, we must look for creative ways to bring new capabilities to our warfighters not just in the future, but today.
It has been a privilege for me to spend a few minutes talking to you. Thanks for letting me kick off this year's National Symposium here in Los Angeles. I think it's another world-class event brought to us by the Air Force Association and I'm proud to be a lifetime member. Thank you very much. [Applause]
Q: You were talking about a number of initiatives that we have, especially with our young scholars in space. Do they have any interaction with industry? If not, should they?
General Carlson: When we bring them in, of course, AFRL is embedded in just about everything that we do in our product centers and many of them, although not all of them, get exposed to industry during their “internship.”
Q: Our coop and internship programs have a hiring rate of about 50 to 80 percent, but the program at AFRL you described has a much lower hiring rate. How can you see this being improved?
General Carlson: We haven't had the success in hiring them that we would have liked to. We are, however, having success in many of our other technical areas, with mechanical engineers and others at our logistics centers.
We're working on a program to one, make sure we can hire them in at the right grade. Right now those are low GS ratings of 5's, 7's and 9's. When we're able to get them at 5's, 7's and 9's, the deal we make with them is that we'll keep them for a year, send them off, pay for their master's degree, and then bring them back and very quickly promote them to 12's. However, industry has been successful in outbidding us.
Another problem that we're having is some of these kids are foreigners and they come here for an education. We use their intellect while they're here, and then they go back to India or China or Taiwan or a number of other places. So we haven't been as successful as we would like to be. We're taking a look at that to see if there are things we can do to motivate these kids to get them into more operationally relevant engineering. But that's about all we've been able to do so far.
Q: AFMC's three Air Logistics Centers (ALCs) have been recognized for their lean and continuous process improvement work which helps to ensure that our warfighters are successful on the job. These programs have been forward-thinking in creating value and eliminating waste. How have these accomplishments impacted the transportation efforts of other MAJCOMs and operating agencies?
General Carlson: A couple of things are ongoing. The Secretary just published a letter last week that went to all of us that says this is now an Air Force institutional goal to incorporate lean throughout the enterprise.
Specifically, in Air Force Materiel Command, I work with Lieutenant General Donald J. Wetekam, who is on an initiative called ELOG-21. That's an initiative to take the isolated pockets of lean that have grown up inside of our ALCs and spread that in sort of an enterprise-wide way throughout all three of the logistics centers.
Finally, when I became Air Force Materiel Command Commander, I said there were three things that I wanted to focus on. First, education and training for our young civilian accessions and our young engineers. Second is wellness in the command. Third is this idea of continuous process improvement across the enterprise.
I'm convinced that there is waste, a limited amount of waste, in Air Force Materiel Command and I'm going to try to get rid of it and improve the processes that we have. I think this supports directly the Chief's goals which of course are to fight the war, take care of our people, and then to recapitalize the Air Force. In the budget environment that we're entering, I think if I can generate some savings and generate some efficiencies, then we can use that funding to help recapitalize the Air Force.
Q: How does AFRL interface with the Air Force’s Space and Missile Center (SMC)?
General Carlson: I see myself as direct support to SMC. In fact, Lieutenant General Michael A. Hamel gets some of the best acquisition people that I can generate out of AFMC. Of course our labs, the AFRL, is integrated completely into what they do. We just finished what we call an Integration Summit at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where we spent a day together and worked on subjects that we think are of common technical and operational relevance to both of us. So we have a pretty good relationship that I think will continue to grow and develop.