General Lance W. Lord
Commander, Air Force Space Command
AFA National Symposium on Space
November 18, 2005
General Lord: Thank you. It's a delight for me to be here on behalf of the 40,000 men and women of Air Force Space Command, and to spend the next few minutes talking with you.
Thanks [Air Force Material Command Commander] General Bruce Carlson for a great start-up here and a great kick-off. Thanks to [Director of Strategic Security, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations] Major General Roger W. Burg as well for helping us get started. [AFA Executive Director Don Peterson], thank you, and with your permission I'd like to talk about [General Peterson’s alma mater] Texas A&M here just for a couple of minutes, but probably not in the way you all think. [Laughter]
Three weeks ago, I was invited to go down and spend some time with the Texas A&M team and I had a chance to go to College Station, Texas. I'd never been there, but I’d heard a lot about it as all of us probably have. There may be some other Texas A&M graduates in the room other than Pete-O, I'm not sure if there are or not. But I think that a lot about that school is misunderstood. [Laughter] It really is. If I were Mack Brown and the coach of, as they say at Texas A&M, “Texas University,” not the University of Texas, they call it “TU.” If I were the coach at TU going into College Station, Texas, this weekend as they will, undefeated, number two in the nation, to face the 87,000 fighting Texas Aggies, who are all fired up after midnight yell practice, I think I’d know I’m in for a big game for sure this weekend. TU will be lucky to come out of there even. I predict. You heard it first right here on this stage.
But the real reason for me to go down there was that I had a chance to talk to almost 400 cadets out of the Cadet Corps there who are Air Force ROTC individuals. We had a wonderful session on Saturday morning and then had a chance to review their troops as they marched in for the game and then met with President George H.W. Bush and Dr. Robert M. Gates, the president of the university, who you all know from his National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) background. Let me tell you, we have dedicated professionals, just like our young people here from Loyola, Marymount, and UCLA and USC who are involved in ROTC. We have them all over the United States. We're bringing the best and brightest out of this nation.
So we want to say congratulations to them and go fighting Texas Aggies this weekend, Pete-O.
I was in Florida yesterday for Florida Space Week and had a chance to speak at the Kennedy Space Center about their the great partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). [NASA Administrator] Dr. Michael Griffin was there the day before. Under Secretary of the Air Force Dr. Ronald Sega was there last night. I had a chance to talk to those folks there and I got to see some 6th graders who were touring the NASA Space Center there in the visitors area. It was great to see their interest in things related to space, because that's about the level we've got to aim to get kids excited and energized about space, because that's when they start making the kinds of commitments we need in the Aerospace Education Foundation (AEF). I want to congratulate Air Force Association for working hard through AEF, but we need to make sure that we can spread the word, too.
Space enabling the joint warfighter ... Certainly I know the panel that Lieutenant General Michael A. Hamel will moderate with Dr. Alexis Livanos, Joanne Maguire and George Muellner will have a chance here in just a few minutes to talk about that partnership and the critical nature of this, but I would argue that we're not just enabling the warfight, we are also at war in space. We're at war in space because we're supporting winning the Global War on Terrorism, and as a result we've got to protect and defend the constellations and the kinds of capabilities we put forth from space and we've got to think in those kinds of terms. We'll have a chance to reflect a little bit, taking advantage of what General Carlson as well as General Burg talked about. I'll give you a couple of examples that might help fill you in a little bit on your framework there and we'll go from that. But don't forget, we're at war right now, making sure that we protect those tremendous assets and we'll continue to do that. That's what the 40,000 men and women of our command are directed to do.
I want to congratulate and thank the Air Force Association. This is my fourth time to be honored to appear on this stage and talk about these kinds of things and how important they are. I will state categorically, claiming limited executive privilege, that this forum here in Los Angeles has done more to advance the state of the business that we're involved in in space than any other forum we meet in on a year-to-year basis, so thanks to the Air Force Association. [Applause]
I’d also like to mention everybody here in the California Air Force Association organization for the great work they’re doing.
As we talk about what's going on in our business, let's focus a little bit on this day in history. As you heard earlier, lots has happened. On this day in history in 1944, the 15th Air Force sent 680 heavy bombers against oil refineries in Austrian airfields in Italy. We escorted those bombers with 186 P-51s. Now I don't do math in public, but let me tell you, that put thousands of Airmen into harm's way, that's for sure. On the ground, most of those bombs didn't find their intended targets. We got that job done, but we had to do it with what? Repeated applications of brute force strength, working that kind of business. Back then there were no space assets enabling the warfighter like there are now.
Today, a single B-2 enabled with space assets can accomplish each of those missions with pinpoint accuracy. Those used to have a home in that command that General Carlson commanded so ably, the mighty 8th Air Force, working hard day in and day out.
Space enabled. You talked about Joint Direct Attack Munitions, JDAMs, well, you've heard me say this before, but GPS puts the DAM in JDAM. Damn, that was accurate, you know. [Laughter]
Many ask why do we need to be prepared to defend our assets against attack? In space, we certainly do. But why do we have to worry about that?
General Burg talked about the sanctity of space. Some would say that we're not threatened in space. I want to disabuse everybody of that argument. I think our worst problem is for us to assume that space is benign and that we'll never be challenged in that environment. We're sometimes our own worst enemies about being complacent about the environment we operate in.
Let's go back to October 3, 1993. American efforts to capture Somalia's leading warlord were under way. That fierce battle in Mogadishu left 18 Americans dead and 77 wounded. Estimates of enemy killed ranged between 300 and 500. More than 700 were wounded, including women and children. Analysis revealed it took approximately 27 minutes for Task Force Ranger to complete the rescue mission from notification to completion.
Now, enemy forces' reaction times were less than that. They were inside that loop, resulting in a deadly firefight. I know you all have probably seen “Blackhawk Down,” you've looked at all this stuff. You kind of know the history of that.
Now, had satellite communications interference been used, I think we could have messed with the enemy's timeline right there. We could have disrupted that decision loop and improved the probability of Task Force Ranger's successful extraction and avoidance of that firefight. The simple act of using the kinds of capabilities that we can develop to deny somebody using space-based communications against us could have saved up to 500 lives—both American and Somalian. Would that have been worth the price? Absolutely it would have been.
In recent operations, the kill chain of find, fix, target, track, engage and assess has been compressed to shorter and shorter timelines. During the air war over Serbia with Operation Allied Force, a single B-2 mission from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri took off with two crews and 16 JDAMs to attack the Novi Sad railway/highway bridge. Attacking during the night to minimize collateral damage and using only five of those JDAMs, the bridge was destroyed. Not only the bridge spans, but each one of the bridge abutments. Now if we'd have done that in World War II or Vietnam, it would have taken hundreds of aircraft sorties, thousands of bombs, many air crews put at risk to destroy the bridge. And even then we might have only been able to drop a single span, maybe two at the most.
Now most look at those before and after photos, and perhaps you've seen them. If you've been in our headquarters and gone through our space intro briefing, you kind of get to see that. You say, “well, that represents the destructive powers of space-based capabilities.” I see that, but I also see a lot more. I think of those bombs that were not dropped, the broader destruction that did not have to occur because of our precision that is based very heavily on military space.
As Americans, we try to limit death and destruction on both sides of the line. Space allows us to do that. You talk about space enabling the warfighter to do his job with less destruction, less collateral damage, and less people in harm's way.
Space capabilities go beyond destroying high value targets. One of our greatest success stories comes in our ability to recover downed pilots. Perhaps you've heard [Air Force Chief of Staff] General T. Michael Moseley talk about that. On April 3, 2003, Major Mark Main, our space duty officer, was on duty in the Combined Air Operation Center during Operation Iraqi Freedom when an F-14D and two crew members aboard Junker 13 (that was the call sign) ran into problems and had to eject over Southwest Iraq in an area where we were concerned about surface-to-air missile activity. Back then, General Moseley said if we eject somebody over that area and they had to float down, they were really going to be in trouble. They'll kill you if they find you.
Think about that operation and let's flash back to the Vietnam era. Colonel Bud Day spent 2,018 days at the Hanoi Hilton because he didn't have the luxury of a space-enhanced search and rescue, or a GPS.
The capabilities from space take the search out of search and rescue. We picked up the crew from Junker 13 after only 100 minutes from the time they ejected until the time they were picked up and whisked out of there—100 minutes. Colonel Bud Day, a Medal of Honor winner shot down in Vietnam, was in prison for 2,905,920 minutes. I think the stark difference really tells the story. Space is important and critical to what we do in this business.
That same technology is also more important than ever to the civilian community. It's estimated that 18,000 people worldwide were saved with the help of satellite-aided rescue and searches, with 5,000 of those in the United States.
Space takes the search out of search and rescue. Space enables the warfighter. It enables us to do a lot of things. We need to focus on that.
Space helps us do tremendous things, and 2005 has been an unprecedented year for this community. The last Titan 4 launch closed out the book with 368 launches. The first GSP-2RM embarked on a new chapter in precision navigation and timing, the world's greatest free utility.
Where's Al Ballinger? Stand up, Al. Al is the program leader for GPS. Great work, Al. [Applause] We know you're not doing this all by yourself, that's for sure. It takes a great launch team, a great satellite integration team and industry partners to put this together, launch it on the range and get things going. GPS really is a tremendous advantage not only for us militarily, but certainly economically.
You've probably heard me tell the story … Anybody here have GPS in their automobile? Yeah? People use that. [Laughter] We're using it. My friend Bowen Ballard bought one of those GMC Denalis, a great big souped-up truck, and was on his way out on the interstate. He got down the road and pressed that OnStar button. The voice comes on and says, "yes, Mr. Ballard, may I help you?" He says, "yeah. Where am I?" The response was, "well, you're on I-65, you're heading toward Atlanta, Georgia. You just passed Auburn, Alabama, and you better slow down." [Laughter] So we know who you are and where you're going and how fast you're going. I hope that's a comfort to you. [Laughter] We've got the tapes.
Peacekeeper deactivation ... Ten thousand men and women of this Air Force, certainly Air Force Space Command, previously under the command of now Lieutenant General, then Major General, Frank G. Klotz and now-Brigadier General Thomas F. Deppe, north of Interstate 80 up there in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We deactivated that weapon system. It truly did live up to its name. It kept the peace.
Advanced new systems, extremely high frequency satellite vehicles 1 and 2, over 60 percent complete. We're working on wideband gap filler stuff. Minuteman III, guidance replacement, propulsion replacement, Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) highly elliptical orbit payload delivery, the first geo and thermovac, etc. There is lots going on, a lot happening. We also saw that in 2005 we had the passing of one of our greatest heroes, General Benny Schriever.
Now Mike Hamel and those guys who live and work here in Los Angeles, why don't you and all the team from the Air Force Space and Missile Center (SMC) stand up ... I want to recognize you for all the hard work you're doing. [Applause] Thanks for letting us come into your Area of Responsibility (AOR) here. Have you got my house fixed over there on your alternate headquarters over at Fort MacArthur?
Let’s trace our heritage back to the little red schoolhouse here in Englewood, 1954—General Schriever and 50 years of space. We really transformed modern warfare and turbocharged the global commerce and economy following in General Schriever's footsteps. But you know, there's one thing that separates the champions from the rest and that's that the champions are never satisfied with the status quo. They don't rest on their laurels and we can't either.
My last meeting with General Schriever was about two weeks before he passed away, and I had a chance to give him the first Space Badge. It’s one that I wear today proudly, and pretty soon everybody in the space-credentialed business will wear this badge—as soon as we can get the Army and Air Force Exchange Services to punch those out. We were fortunate to present that to General Schriever.
When I was with him in his failing days, it was tough for him to communicate, but he and I had had a chance to do so. Many of you in the audience probably worked with him and will know exactly what I'm talking about. He kind of grabbed me by the arm and pulled me over and looked me in the eye, and Joanie, his wife, and I were there with him. He said, “keep going, keep going, keep going, keep pushing hard.”
You'll recall that General Schriever, in the early days prior to the launching of Sputnik, wanted to talk about space superiority. In fact, he made a couple of speeches about it and he was censored right away. “Don't talk about that space superiority stuff. That's not something we want you to talk about.” What happens when Sputnik is launched, all of a sudden they grab General Schriever: “Come on, tell us a little bit more about this space stuff, you know? It's important. We don't want to have to play catch-up in this business.” [Laughter]
So we've got to follow on in his footsteps, keep going, keep going. We've kind of made the transition. Last year in Los Angeles we celebrated the 50th anniversary of General Schriever and the little red schoolhouse. Many of you were here.
We're at the point now where we're almost touching the jet age, if you will, of space. We've really got to make that work. It's going to be a competitive environment. We're going to compete with potential adversaries to exploit the unlimited and the ultimate high ground. We're going to compete here with industry to make sure that we and the United States as well as our allies find the most capable way to field advanced systems at the best possible price. And as General Burg so aptly told us, we're going to have to compete for funds in this fiscally constrained environment. There's a whole lot of pressure on not only the U.S. federal budget, but certainly the defense budget from a whole lot of other things this nation has got to stand up and work with. But I'll tell you, the payoff is there because if we deliver, we're going to be able to develop capabilities.
Now I'm not alone and I know you're not in your appreciation for the capabilities space brings to the fight. General Lance L. Smith who is now the commander of the Joint Forces Command, our new component commander, but he was the former Deputy Commander of U.S. Central Command, and he also understands space from the up-close and personal use of what was going on in day-to-day life in Baghdad. He said when he was over there, "you space guys are providing us our life line. We use it, we take it for granted. But if we ever lost it, people would die."
As we think about that and work hard, we've got to remember that that's who we serve, those people we're connected to and those kinds of capabilities.
Now if we're going to compete in the 21st century and we're going to be able to do everything we need to do to make that jet age really come true, we must get our acquisition house in the right place and keep it that way. We've got to commit the right amount of financial resources, and as General Burg and General Carlson talked about, we've dominated in this realm in air and space, but it's going to require us to sustain the pace and keep up the commitment.
Dr. Sega's message as our Under Secretary of the Air Force is pretty straight-forward, along with that of our Chief. We must develop our people and horizontally integrate within the space community.
And what we need to do really is under the leadership of Mike Hamel as supported by Materiel Command, as they had their first meeting together to talk about it—we've got to manage space as an enterprise. We can no longer have the lost patrols and everybody out in different directions doing their own thing. We've got to integrate and be part of a space enterprise across this whole business area and have a combined strategy here that we execute.
The Under Secretary is going to push us back to basics, and that's where we've been and that's where we're working hard to make sure that we continue to work in that business.
I call it the three P's of success: the people, the process, and the partnerships that are going to pay off for us. You heard about one of the best people in this business and that's our Chief talking about his priorities. Win that Global War on Terrorism; get those people in the right place at the right time with the right education; and lastly, recapitalize the force so we'll continue to deliver these kinds of capabilities. We're going to work that hard. No doubt in my military mind. We need leaders all across the space community.
We talked about Dr. Mike Griffin, the Director of NASA as well as Jim Kennedy down at Patrick Air Force Base and others in this business. And Dr. Donald M. Kerr at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Someone asked General Burg a good question about the NRO this morning. I'd like to follow that up if somebody would want to ask me the same question. If you won't, I'll ask myself later about how our relationship with the NRO is going to continue to change and get better for the future.
We’ve got a tremendous record with current and legacy systems. Yeah, we've had some fumbles, you know that. You know, I played football in college and we fumbled the ball. When you look at your schedule your senior year and you see you've got six away games and four home games and you know on your six away games you're going to play Homecoming for everybody you're going to. [Laughter]
Now why do they want to play you on Homecoming? They want to win. So you're going to say, “well, we're going to have a royal this year, aren't we?” And damn, at the end of the year, it didn't happen. Seven teams took us up on that. But you learn from that. I learned from it. You don't get anything done by coming back to the huddle and hollering at the quarterback or hollering at the running back—“why'd you fumble?” Or the running back talking to the guards and tackles, saying, “you didn't block the right guy.” Or the quarterback talks to the receiver, saying, “you've got concrete hands. Why didn't you catch the ball? I put it right out there for you.” Nothing happens that way.
When you get everybody together, you stop complaining, stop whining, and start playing as a team, and you do a whole lot better.
I'll tell you, we've got the quarterback in charge right here in Los Angeles, Lieutenant General Mike Hamel, who is going to take this team and we're going to the Super Bowl. And after that we're going to Disneyland. [Laughter] I'll tell you, we can do it. [Applause]
He invited me out here last year; it was July, I think. He said, “what are you going to talk about?” I said, “I'll tell you from the stage.” [Laughter] But I said, “Mike, you and your team are the best we've got along with your tremendous support from Dr. Bill Ballhaus and the aerospace team.” Bill, thank you for all the great work you do and your folks as well. I told him what we've got to do is we've got to make sure that we have our credibility as an acquisition team and acquisition experts. We've got a lot to be happy for and excited about, but there are some things we need to work on. So how about putting together a plan by the end of this year and by January 1, 2006 we're going to start executing on that. And by December 31, 2006, Air Force Space Command, led by the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles under Lieutenant General Mike Hamel's leadership, will not only be the acquisition experts for the space business, but they will be the models for the Department of Defense.
So we're behind you one thousand percent. We're going to be able to deliver on that because we've got a lot to build on. That's the kind of team we have out here. We’re going to stand up to that and we're going to be able to deliver because that's what the Chief says—have the right people in the right place at the right time to do the right kind of things to deliver these kind of results. That's building your game plan, that's executing, that's working as a team.
I remember that year I was talking about in football when we had a particularly bad series of downs and I'm kind of walking off the field slumping, and the coach grabbed me by the arm because I was the closest guy to him. Never go off after you've had a bad series right by the coach, always go off by the end of the line. [Laughter] He grabbed me almost by the face mask and pulled me over there and says, “you know, I recruited you guys on potential, but unfortunately the president of the university is grading me on my performance. How about executing your strategy?” [Laughter]
So that's what we've got to do, we've got to execute our strategy. We're doing that. We’re putting together this great team.
And the Aerospace Education Foundation has kind of helped us get the key here. We're building space professionals. We've got an education curriculum. We're working harder than ever to develop our future space acquisition experts and leaders. Al Ballinger and his other acquisition SPO leaders and directors are part of that and we want to have them as long as we can. Not program managers for life, but a minimum of four-year tours in that business to make sure we have the right people at the right place.
We’ve graduated our first Space 300 class in our space professional development area. We've got Space 200 and Space 100 on the way. Space acquisition schools further reinforcing solid systems engineering, cost analysis and program management.
Now each one of those things, if you look at them individually, you’d say, “well, that's just one of the plays in the play book. Will that one go for a touchdown? Will that one go?” Well, if you put them all together, they will be the game plan that we're going to execute and it's going to pay off for us. Mike Hamel and his team along with our great industry partners are going to deliver on that. There’s no doubt in my mind.
Let me just discuss something that General Burg talked about, about how important it is in the education business to focus. He talked about Falcon Set 2 and so did General Carlson a little bit, about our capability with smaller satellites. Cadet 1st Class Jeff Gurlack, who was kind of the leader of that outfit there that's doing Falcon Set 2, is a pretty smart kid. He tried to talk to me about differential calculations. Now when you talk to a lineman in football about differential calculations, it's tough. But then we really started talking about “how did you put this team together?”
Well, he's got his team working hard. He's gone across the school. He just didn't stop with those interested in space, he asked the management students who are studying management and leadership science, “how about helping me put the development plan together for building this satellite?” He went to get the computer engineer folks who are doing computer programming, and he said, “come down and sit down with me and write the computer program that we can use to operate our satellite.” He went to the space kids who were going to come to the Air Force Space Command and said, “how about working on the command and control structure so that we can command and control the satellite?” He put this whole cross-discipline team together and built a team within the Air Force Academy to deliver the satellite, a model that I think will pay off for them and certainly for us. So we're leveraging that kind of capability. It's important, as we found out.
You can't start too early to get people interested in this business we're involved in. Taking a note from the Aerospace Education Foundation of the Air Force Association, toward that end we in the Air Force and certainly in Air Force Space Command are going to be part of that. We're going to unveil fairly soon a new initiative. Part of the space professional development program is to have a continuing education program regardless of where you are in Air Force Space Command or where you're assigned in the business, be it on the northern tier working hard in the ICBM business or at the Cape or on the West Coast up here with Jack Weinstein at the 30th Space Wing, or any place in between. We've got 40,000 men, women, contractors as well, who are all part of that credentialed space professional corps.
Now what we're going to ask each one of them to do as part of this is spend a couple of hours each year in the elementary middle school and high schools of the United States talking about space face to face with young people to tell them what we do in this business. We're going to have uniformed, civilians, officers, enlisted people, everybody, myself included, out in the schools of America spreading the word about how important it is to work in this environment. I think that's an AEF kind of an initiative that we can follow through on. It's really going to pay off for our business, so we look forward to being involved in that.
Those are the people, the processes. We know the recipe for success. I think we've talked about that. We've got to follow that. Positive, repeatable and predictable results based on your game plan and execution.
It just so happens that on November 17, 1987—that was what, 18 years ago yesterday?—Columbia University's football team set an NCAA record by losing its 40th straight football game. That's a different kind of persistence. That's not what I'm talking about. It is repeatable, but it's not the type of persistence we're after. [Laughter]
Mike's been investigated and looked at and probed by some of the best in the world, and they've looked at his programs. We were criticized, rightfully so, for allowing costs to replace mission success as job one. We’re back off of that now. We’re focusing on mission success because we know that the costs of failure are always, always more than the costs of success, so we're going to work that hard.
We witnessed this firsthand back in the 1990s. We saw a good part of $11 billion in space assets literally go up in smoke due to successive launch failures. That was some pretty deep and pretty expensive deep ocean surveillance, that's for sure. [Laughter]
We're out of that business now. Forty-four successful launches in a row on our way to a thousand in a row. There’s no reason why we can't do that. We know the recipe. We can work this together.
We've got a new process, our National Security Space Acquisition Policy. I testified to Congress earlier this year about that. We've instituted that, we're working it hard. Mike and his team are going to deliver. They'll be the best in the world by the end of the year. There won't be anything left to do. [Laughter] We're going to incorporate this space enterprise and we're going to lead this business, we're going to execute our game plan.
That's why the partnership with industry and aerospace and others is important. We've got to be committed to that. Aerospace makes up about 25 percent of our total acquisition workforce and we couldn't do it without them. They're really helpful for us, making sure that we keep people in this business.
Now I've looked at the acquisition business all the way back to George Washington. In the last 200 years, more than 900 GAO reports have been rendered on that, and a dozen major commissions. 4,000 studies have set their sights on the topic of military systems acquisition. I'm not an expert and I didn't stay in a Holiday Inn last night. I stayed right here in the Hilton. This is tough stuff. This is hard to do. But I think we know that we're in charge and we've got the right way ahead and we're going to get on with doing business. We're going to quit blaming and start aiming and be successful. General Schriever's counting on us! If we don't do it for anybody else we ought to do it for him. I'm confident we can.
I’d like to mention my friend Cleve McClary. Cleve was wounded in Vietnam very severely—one eye missing, a hand blown off, a leg severely fractured. He still runs marathons. He has a motto. It's called FIDO—fix it and drive on! So FIDO, folks. Let's do that. Let's focus on success here and drive on. We've got a lot of things to do. The whole world is counting on us to win this war and we've got to do it. People are the success, the processes we're instituting with Mike Hamel and the partnerships are going to pay off for us.
We've now been at war for 1,503 days. That's three times as long as our involvement in World War I, it's longer than Korea. Some of us in this room, maybe some in your family, have lost good friends and family in the process, so what's the point, some would say? The point is that 55 million people now live in freedom because of the dedication of U.S. forces, and they can only do what they do because we do what we do and you do what you do to support them. So we've got to maintain that laser-sharp focus. We've got to win this Global War on Terrorism. We've got to make sure that we have the right people in the right place. And lastly, we've got to recapitalize these forces. We may need to take some belt-tightening measures. We've got to do some organizational structures, but we'll be able to do that. And we will enable the warfighter and protect those assets. I think we'll be successful as we go.
Lastly, let me close with a quick thing that happened to me recently and then we'll get on to the questions and answers.
Like most people in the military, I saved up my military leave the last fiscal year to the last couple of days, so we went down to Florida to take the grandkids and everybody to Patrick Air Force Base to stay down there and visit with the folks. I wanted to go see Shamu the whale. I wanted to go to Sea World. I wanted to take my grandkids to see Shamu and have a whale of a day, as they say. You know? Come on, you've got to listen and work with me here. [Laughter]
So we went in, I had on my shorts, my Ron John's T-shirt, my Ron John's hat. I knew where Cocoa Beach was, you know. I walked into Rec Services there on the base and like most GI's, I pulled out my wallet and I've got one of those transparent things there where you get your ID. So I put it up there on the counter, and the lady back behind the counter looked at me and she said, “may I help you?” I said, “yeah, I'd like to buy some tickets to Sea World to see Shamu the whale.” She looked at me, she looked at my ID card, she looked back at me, she looked at the ID card, and she said, “you're still on active duty?” So I said—well, there's a lot things I could have said—but I said, “yes, ma'am. I am. And I've got the best job in the whole world. And I'm doing this because my grandkids are going to go see Shamu, so thank you very much.” If you're not in space you're not in the race, so thank you. How can I help you? [Laughter] [Applause]
Q: You had mentioned you wanted to comment on the changes with the National Reconnaissance Office?
General Lord: That’s right. Right now, we are trying to set the course for the future. We had the change of command. Bruce Carlson was there, Mike Hamel was leaving, Major General Willy Shelton was coming in to take over 14th Air Force, and we created the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was really the hub, if you will, for the day to day command and control of space assets worldwide. Not only to focus efforts if we need them in a global context, but anyplace else in the world that they might be needed. So we've got that, the command and control under the STRATCOM, General James E. Cartwright, and now under Lieutenant General “Chilly” Chilton's Joint Force Component Command, Space and Global Strike. So we had the capability to exercise that process.
We've got a place to focus our white world space. And I talked to Dr. Kerr in our recent Corona meeting about how we could hook the NRO folks in and make sure that we're all connected with the Joint Space Operations Center (JSPOC). I think those changes will come together quickly and help us be the solution to what General Burg mentioned, where some folks see us heading apart as opposed to seeing us standing closely together.
I think if you drew a big circle and said, “okay, this represents the total intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance world we're in and the national reconnaissance guys live over around the corner," I think there's another circle we could draw around the NRO and the Joint Space Operations Center and focus on the operations, and that will help us organize this process.
My argument all along has been that we've got a limited amount of folks in this business. We've got about 1,300 Air Force folks in the National Reconnaissance Office. We want to get the best out of them. They're space professionals, they're part of our team. We've got things we need to do, to work hard together, so we'll be able to take the best of our talents and focus them together in a way that will guarantee the rich don't get richer and the poor don't get poorer.
We share this town in a way that will make not only what we do in 14th Air Force and Joint Space Operations better, it will make the NRO better as well. I think that's a way we're going to start and there's a whole lot more to do after that. I think it will pay off in terms of the systems we build in the future and how we work the taskings and all the things that go with the complicated way we operate together. That will all come as we put the people and the talents together. It’s a great opportunity.
Q: Is there a way industry can participate in the National Security Space Institute; for example, as students or faculty?
General Lord: The National Security Space Institute, with Frank Gallagher and now Brigadier General Erica Studeman, who is an Individual Mobilization Augmentee (IMA) to the Vice Commander. She's our President of the National Security Space Institute. We got her from Purdue University. She has a PhD and is a smart lady who really is working hard in that business to lead it.
The National Security Space Institute has short courses, long courses, covering all the things we do, GPS, missile warning, etc. Space 100, 200 and 300, putting all that together… We're now over-subscribed there. Every course we have is filled and we're trying to build courses as fast as we can.
Luckily, I was able with [former Under Secretary of the Air Force] Peter Teets' help (and now I'm sure with Dr. Sega’s) to protect the line in the budget in the five-year defense plan for space professional development. In FY06, it's about $18 million, and every cent of that is devoted to space professional development and if we had more we could spend more. That's what our plan is. We developed a relationship with the University of Colorado Springs and other universities in the nation to hook together in a way that we can really amplify the capability.
I’d ask everyone to visit our website. Come see what's available and we'll squeeze you in if we can. We're going to take military, all services. We're taking contractors where we can as well as civilians in the business.
Q: Is the present trend to use commercial satellite bandwidth as a stopgap? Are we going to deploy our own platform for future security?
General Lord: I think we're going to have to use commercial capability. If you look at the size of the commercial space business and how it's booming relative to what we're doing in the military side, we're going to have to take advantage of that. We're going to have to work together. The space business is over $100 billion a year and growing at about 15 percent a year, a big business. That's probably underestimated. Perhaps our experts from industry can tell us, we're going to have to continue to rely on that.
There are things we need protected military communications for. We need low probability of intercept, low probability of detection. We've got to have the capabilities to do that. So we'll have a mixture of civilian and military kinds of capabilities. I'm convinced that whatever we've got we'll use and we'll probably continue to do that as we go.
We'll have dedicated narrow band. Excuse me. We'll have the capability to replace our MilStar when it ages out with dedicated military connections. MilStar, by the way, was really very useful in Operation Iraqi Freedom, giving the Air Tasking Order and the Space Tasking Order to the troops in seconds as opposed to the piles of paper that used to be really thick. It got that data over. We'll continue to use commercial capability.
Q: How will the European Galileo GPS system affect our strategy?
General Lord: To Al Ballinger and his team, my hat's off to them. They worked this really hard because we started out at opposite ends of the table, arguing about frequencies and how we're going to use GPS versus Galileo and they worked hard to get us closer together. I think we've got an agreement now that there's going to be no interference and no overlays in ways that will interfere with GPS. We'll let Galileo do what they're doing and we're going to continue to modernize and work the GPS constellation as hard as we can because I think that is a critical United States advantage. But we'll let our European partners continue to compete and work in that environment. We wish them well, but we're going to press on with GPS.
Q: Your command has been doing an Analysis of Alternatives, looking for options on the next generation land-based strategic deterrent (LBSD). Could you talk about that?
General Lord: The LBSD, the Land-Based Strategy Deterrent Analysis of Alternatives, is finished. I think the Vice was briefed last week. I'll get that probably next week sometime and we'll be able to release that once we get the final chop. This was fortuitous because Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, when he was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, he was the guy that said, “I'm going to look at this personally,” so now he's going to get a chance as our Secretary to look at it and press on.
I think there are some great possibilities to do things in interesting and neat ways in the future, and I look forward to getting that up to them right away. I think there's a need to think long-term. There are lots of capabilities there—speed, range, lethality, accuracy, low cost, all those that go with that kind of system and we're dedicated to making sure that we have a strong, vibrant force in the future.