AFA Policy Forum

"The Road to Space Supremacy"
The Honorable Peter B. Teets, Undersecretary of the Air Force,
The Honorable Sean O'Keefe, NASA Administrator,
and General Lance W. Lord, AFSPC Commander
Air & Space Conference 2004—Washington, DC
September 14, 2004

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Mr. Teets: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I can't tell you what a pleasure it is for me to be here today and have an opportunity to participate in this forum. I think the topic at hand is certainly a vitally important one and one that we all need to care a lot about and pay close attention to. I can't think of three better people to be involved in this discussion with you this afternoon than General Lance Lord, Commander of Air Force Space Command; Administrator Sean O’Keefe, who runs the entire NASA operation, and of course I feel that it's a real pleasure for me to be here as Undersecretary of the Air Force, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office and DoD's Executive Agent for Space. And we all three have vital interests in the subject at hand, which is of course—“The Road to Space Supremacy.”

I have a few comments that I would like to make and then Administrator O’Keefe and General Lord will provide some comments and then we look forward to some questions and answers and interaction with you all.

I believe that today it is fair to say that the United States is the leading space-faring nation in the world, but it certainly hasn't always been that way. Forty-five years ago today the Soviet probe Luna 2 reached the moon. Now it didn't land on the moon, it impacted on purpose, but it was still the first man-made object to touch the surface of another world.

It was a simple spacecraft. After all, this was only two years after Sputnik 1. It carried Geiger counters, a magnetometer and a few other things. It launched on September 12, 1959, and it confirmed that the moon had no appreciable magnetic field and no radiation belts. It hit the moon on September 14th, just off the Sea of Serenity—not far from where Apollo 15 would land 12 years later.

But what does the anniversary of a Soviet lunar mission have to do with US space supremacy or space dominance?

At the time that the Soviets launched Luna 2, the United States and the Soviet Union were taking their first faltering steps on the road to space. We called it the “space race,” and it was not a foregone conclusion that we would win.

Remember the old song, “You take the high road and I'll take the low and I'll be in Scotland before you”? Well, we took a different road than the Soviets did as we built our space program. We kind of took the high road, so to speak, that is the high technology road, with finely tuned, one-of-a-kind spacecraft and rockets that performed extremely well but were relatively delicate in their operations.

They took a different road. It was a lower tech road perhaps in some ways. It was something like a brute force road with mass produced spacecraft and rockets that were less sophisticated, but certainly much more operationally responsive. And it's a mistake to assume that one approach is always better than the other.

The fact is that in today's international commercial launch market our launch vehicles struggle to compete effectively.

I use that comparison simply to show that even though we have superiority in many aspects of space capabilities, we don't have space dominance and we don't have space supremacy. I think the fact is that we do need to reach for that goal of space supremacy and space dominance because it is, of course, the ultimate high ground.

So what is required for us to move forward on the path to true space dominance? I think we need strong and enduring commitments in three distinct areas. The first and unquestionably the most important I do believe is the development and maintenance of a strong, professional cadre of military and civilian government personnel.

I say government personnel because it is up to our government to provide the leadership for our achieving space supremacy and space dominance, and there can be no doubt in my mind that the most important single factor is the development of this space professional cadre that you've heard talked about, referred to in the Rumsfeld Commission results. We are, all three of us that you're going to hear from today, very much involved and engaged in bringing online, into government operations, that professional space cadre.

If we do that right, I believe the rest will fall in place. If we do that right we'll have professional acquirers, we'll have people who have experience in development of these leading edge high tech systems, we'll have extremely well qualified and trained military officers who can operate the systems that give us such an edge in our warfighting capabilities. There can be no doubt that we enjoy the benefits today in major, major ways of our national security space systems.

The first and most important ingredient is developing this cadre and I think we're working real hard on it. I really take my hat off to General Lance Lord out at Air Force Space Command, who has been in the process now of installing a system of training and education and discipline that will sincerely develop a professional cadre of operators and acquirers. That is very much a work in process, but it's one that's being developed with a lot of energy and a lot of resources.

Similarly, of course, the President's vision for space exploration is something that has I think kind of re-excited our nation's youth in becoming part of our national space activity. I know Sean O’Keefe will be talking more about that in just a moment.

The second area that I think we need to focus attention on is certainly related to the first, but the way I would try to phrase it is that I believe we need a strong and consistently funded industrial base able to produce quality space systems and products. By that I mean we can't have a roller coaster effect here where we're asking our industrial partners to build up one year only to crater the next year; and we can't have them developing the talented workforce necessary for production of high tech space systems and then at the same time in the following year ask them to lay those same people off.

So I think it important for us to have a certain amount of consistency and constancy in our investment in important space systems.

Over the course of the last three to four years, we have certainly seen significant increases in the resources that we've applied to our space systems activity, and in turn the acquisition budget has gone up substantially. We're embarking now on some very, very aggressive and important new space systems to bring on-line in the national security arena and of course for the space exploration initiative as well. So I do think it important for us to be consistent and constant in that kind of application of resources so that our industrial base remains strong.

There was a period of time back in the '90s when the nation was harvesting the peace dividend when perhaps we let some of the industrial base start to wither, and at that same time people who had been involved in the space program for many, many years decided to start to take retirement. So it was kind of a double whammy effect. In point of fact, I think we've taken steps already to start to rebuild and we need to continue that in a very strong way.

The third area that I think we need in order to achieve space dominance is going to be, again, a consistent and very significant government investment in leading edge space system research and technology. We are at the forefront of space technology. We need to remain there.

I know that certain European countries have certainly picked up the challenge and have started to invest more heavily in leading edge technology. Certainly China has shown some of that same inclination. We need to maintain a strong and vital space systems research and technology endeavor going forward. That's what will keep us on the leading edge.

We need to also build the case to Congress of why it is that these space systems that we're in the process of trying to acquire and develop now are so important to our future national security.

I thank you very much for the opportunity to offer these few thoughts to you this afternoon, and I look forward to questions later. Thank you very much, and I'd introduce Sean O’Keefe.

Mr. O’Keefe: Thank you, Pete, it's great to see you again and it's a pleasure to be here as part of this important exploration and review of the road towards space supremacy.

To be sure, at NASA our focus of answering that question is to be found in a specific direction that the President issued on January 14th of this year. It resolves an awful lot of questions about exactly what our focus, what our attention, what our strategy, what our plan at NASA should be. He was very explicit about it. In my 20-odd years of involvement in public service, mostly from the national security end but now certainly in this capacity at NASA, I have never seen a more exhaustive, explicit, direct presidential directive. It removed an awful lot of ambiguity about where we were going. Quite frankly, in the debate that has dominated the civil space policy side of the equation, some would argue the post-Apollo era involved everything from soup to nuts, every idea that anybody could possibly imagine was argued, debated. Lots of different organizations formed up around various schools of thought. The only thing that was absolutely common was Norm Augustine's observation from the early 1990s that while all agree and are unanimous in the view that there should be a vision for space policy, that no two people can agree on what it ought to be.

On January 14th of this year, that was resolved. The President was very explicit about what he insisted upon. In that there is, again, very little interpretation about where we need to go and what our direction needs to be. Along the way, that is a contributor towards the road to space supremacy in so many ways as a tag to this particular discussion today.

For civil space policy, and indeed, I think the larger application of the overall agenda, exploration is the point. The President’s view, which he expressed very explicitly in the presidential directive and in the charge that we have for the vision for exploration, is that it is about active exploration, and along the way an awful lot develops that supports that from a technology standpoint, from the broader education points I think Under Secretary Teets spoke to, as well as the development of all of us as Americans to be much more competitive in this world that we live in.

There is very clear indication from all we can tell that the American public agrees with that. They believe that yes, indeed, it is about that factor.

In the last nine months since the beginning of this calendar year the NASA website has been deluged with better than 14 billion hits. Let me repeat that. Fourteen billion hits to the NASA website. That's something that every marketeer I've ever had the opportunity to talk to in the last few months can't even comprehend. They just can't even imagine it. This is more than the IRS gets, okay? The attention span, the interest level that people have in exploration and what we do and what we're attempting as humans to accomplish and understand more about the neighborhood which we live in that is this solar system which is but one very, very small piece of this broader galaxy and universe that we live in, is something that excites the American people.

Having two Mars exploration rovers land on a planet that is 125 million miles away didn't hurt. Having a successful insertion to the rings of Saturn by the Cassini Mission didn't hurt. And even the Genesis Mission that looked as ugly as anything you could possibly imagine on reentry, and it impacted, yes indeed—all of the science objectives that were intended for that mission have been recovered and are being analyzed. So thankfully it was not an Olympic event. There were no style points awarded for the manner in which it arrived. [Laughter] So how it looks on the way in is rather irrelevant to the mission objective. Fortunately, that was not part of the equation.

But nonetheless, all those factors, the X-43 flight in March that successfully set a new record for speed, all those kinds of factors are the kinds of things that have excited the American imagination and attention and indeed I think across the world. It motivated the concentration to the question of, “is exploration the objective?” Yes indeed, it is the very essence of what we're about and why this initiative is so important.

The specific construct of what the President directed in this very explicit presidential directive that I referred to can be quickly summarized, given its depth of specificity, I'll just summarize it into a couple of brief points.

First and foremost, the primary immediate objective is to return the space shuttle to flight. Not for its own sake, but for the purpose of completing the International Space Station. Aboard the International Space Station right now at this very moment, with the Expedition 9 crew, as a crew member, is Air Force Colonel Mike Fink. He's doing an absolutely exemplary, just tremendous job at this very moment. He's been there since spring and will be returning home here in October when Expedition 10 relieves him and Ganadi Padaka, the cosmonaut commander of Expedition 9.

We have had the continuous presence of humans in space now for the better part of three and a half years. This is a remarkable achievement, for the first time in human history to see that continuous effort that is underway aboard the International Space Station, which is about halfway complete. The space shuttle, once returned to flight, will be in the role of completing that particular effort and accomplishing the science objectives, which are to understand the effects on human physiology of a long duration space flight. Indeed, another step in that road to space supremacy.

Again, it will be attendant upon the return to flight of the space shuttle, which we intend to accomplish only after completion of all the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. We're well on the road to that at this juncture. I can't thank Tom Stafford, Air Force General Retired and former Apollo Commander, for his extraordinary leadership in external review of our efforts to accomplish all the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and to do them diligently to assure that we accomplish the objectives and return to flight as safely as we can. Knowing full well we will never eliminate the risk of this task, but we can certainly mitigate them much more than we have.

At the conclusion of the activities on the International Space Station, and again, continuing efforts to really yield the harvest of science and research on human physiology in long duration space flight from that remarkable platform in space, the next major step that we're also concurrently pursuing right now is through Project Constellation. This project will develop a crew exploration vehicle to go beyond low earth orbit and to therefore accomplish what we set out to do some 30 years ago—but never quite finished the task—which is not only to return to the moon, but for the purpose of spending time understanding exactly how to live and work in that environment for extended periods of time with the objective of going beyond.

The crew exploration vehicle, Project Constellation, is in large measure an effort right now to look at the most creative, most innovative, most entrepreneurial approaches that we can for the purpose of developing a capability to go beyond low earth orbit. That's currently underway with the better part of 11 different teams from across not only industry, but also universities and think tanks, who have teamed together for the purpose of coming up with new and creative solutions to this important task, to understand how we may go about accomplishing that. In addition to the aerospace industry, there are many other participants that are well beyond the scope of what we would typically ascribe to these kinds of activities.

The other major effort that's under way, also that's part of the President's direction, in addition to this challenge of longer duration presence in space condition, is also to accomplish the task of getting there in a span of time that would be informative enough to do anything with it.

At the present time, our speeds that we accomplish in space and in-space propulsion are much the same as they were 30 to 40 years ago. Incremental improvements to be sure, but by and large planning on and using the same essential gravitational assists that we've used for all that time.

As a consequence, the Cassini Mission to Saturn that we've just celebrated here in its insertion to the rings and its now continuous revolution of that planet for the next several years, was launched some seven years ago. This is in our own neighborhood. This is an area right here within our own neighborhood, around this puny star that we call the sun, that is not even in the center part of this galaxy. We are on the periphery of this galaxy. So accomplishing exploration anywhere at this juncture is in its very infant stages. Just getting around our own neighborhood. Accomplishing the task of getting anywhere more rapidly is part of the object of Project Prometheus, our effort to specifically develop in-space propulsion and power generation capabilities that transcend the limitations that we've seen thus far and that have lived with for this long a period of time.

Along the way, the objective of this directive also is to accomplish the task by not an either/or proposition of human or robotic means—manned versus unmanned mission, a shopworn debate to be sure, and one that in the course of the annals of our recent history which is really only the beginnings of our efforts in space exploration over the last 30 to 40 years, has dominated the debate. We've finally come to the conclusion after decades of wrestling with this argument that it isn't either/or, it's both. It is a manner in which working together and in unison those particular capabilities that only humans can provide or that robotic capabilities can achieve, when worked together, can accomplish these tasks. In so many ways we are working through a wide range of technology developments for the purpose explicitly of demonstrating those particular capabilities.

Again, the primary objective is active exploration; it's about the active understanding of this neighborhood we live in. Along the way, it is also about the important education, professional development objectives that Undersecretary Teets referred to, and indeed technological developments in the last 30 years that we as a nation can identify as a consequence of our commitment in the Apollo era towards that particular task. In turn, we have improved our standing, our economic prowess, and our competitiveness in the world market.

The Aldridge Commission which was appointed by the President following his directive specifically outlined a set of implementation strategies we need to follow and approaches we need to conquer in order to achieve the objectives of the plan that the President has laid out for us and in the direction he has given us and what he expects to see achieved. Along the way in that process there are a range of technologies to be conquered as well as capabilities that need to be wrestled with, but most importantly I think the Aldridge Commission put an accent on the proposition that it is fundamentally NASA's charge to transform itself. That is a commentary on and a description of that which has dominated the revolution of military affairs, described as transformation within the national security establishment that we now encounter and understand in a much more profound way.

But its application to what we do has differences. It is in part about technology development. It is in part about the professional development activities and again, so many other aspects of what we can and must accomplish in order to achieve the President's objectives and plan, but it is also about really reliving and maybe reinvigorating that which got NASA started in the first place some 45 years ago, which is to be a much friendlier atmosphere to creative, innovative, entrepreneurial solutions than what we have been in the recent past. In that regard I think what the Aldridge Commission has helped us focus our attention to is the very nature and charter of what we're involved in.

What I've found in my experience in the national security realm when we speak to acquisition questions is an emphasis on understanding not only how to develop something, but specifically then how to produce it and produce it in sufficient volume to accomplish the requirement, the task.

At NASA we produce almost nothing in volume. As a matter of fact, three of something is a big, big run. So as a consequence, it's always a unique developmental process and once completed you move to the next level of conquering the next limitation of what the technology prohibits in order to achieve the next objective and not be bound by the task of learning curves and the functions of what typically would be the focus to acquisition. That's not what we're about.

In many ways, reliving, reacquainting ourselves, readapting, and I think specifically endorsing these objectives of the transformation that the Aldridge Commission has prescribed for us is the path and the road towards that which is not new. It's just something we need to reinvigorate along the way, and it is something we committed ourselves to in a very, very specific way.

Let me conclude with a couple of anecdotal points. First and foremost is one that it is important to remind ourselves of. As much as we talk about the road to space supremacy, we've only been in space for a very, very short period of human history. It's very recent. In the continuum of time it is a mere blip. Each and every step in the course of human history has always been attendant to a set of challenges which needed to be overcome.

I was reminded of a tremendous passage read from David McCullough's book on John Adams in which Adams, having been extremely instrumental in having founded the capability and really promoted the capability in that early, early phase of our democracy and in this experiment we know as a republic, sought to see a way to exert world dominance on the world stage by the means of force projection. At that time it was primarily through maritime capabilities. Now, being a former Navy Secretary, I lit to this analogy in a way that very specifically caught my attention. And having been a champion, as he was, of the Constellation, which was the first ship of the fleet, and in turn the Constitution and so many that followed thereafter, there was a passage in which he lamented on a specific event that Constellation sat at anchor in the Boston Harbor for several days because the weather wasn't right.

Here it was, the hope and dream of this new republic to demonstrate for the world to see our capacity as a maritime, as a naval power, to project forces around the globe, restricted because the wind wasn't right.

We are in that same phase today in space exploration. We are in the age of sail, right now. Even though we've been at this for the better part of four decades we are essentially doing it the same way we've been doing it. Incrementally better by a long shot than what the early pioneers of the space era and the space age were engaged in, but it's essentially the same methodology.

We've got to break through that, transcend those limitations and take it to a much higher level to even get to the age of steam, and that's an awful lot about what the President's agenda and the President's direction is all about. And at its core is a proposition that he has left indelibly marked in my mind in which he said, "Exploration is not an option we choose. It is a desire written in the human heart." And it is that what we are dedicated to doing in bringing about what I think will be a contribution to this road to space supremacy.

I thank you all for your attention.

General Lord: First let me thank the whole Air Force Association for a great conference. I will encourage all our folks, as Peter said—although I can't make a direct order to people to join the Air Force Association—I will tell you that I'm a life member and I checked my membership status when I came in today and I asked them, “when does my membership expire?” They said, “well you're a life member.” I said I was just checking to make sure this speech was going to go okay. Maybe you knew something I didn't about the expiration date on my life membership. But things are going good and I encourage you to think about being part of this great organization. It's a wonderful team, and they certainly do support what we do in the space business.

Thanks also to Mr. Teets, our Undersecretary, as well as Administrator O'Keefe for being part of this.

As Administrator O'Keefe just said, the space age, and this panel especially, all of us have been alive for the entire space age so I think it's important for us to think in those kind of terms. We're celebrating our 50th anniversary of the Air Force being involved in the space and missile business, and certainly we're standing on the shoulders of General Bernard Schriever and the folks at the Western Development Division that got started in August of 1954, and now Lieutenant General Brian Arnold and his team are carrying on in a great way there. So congratulations to Brian and the folks from SMC for all the great work they're doing.

We've introduced the world, in 50 short years, to asymmetric advantages provided by space and certainly space proper, and we wanted to talk a little bit about that today. Space superiority on the road to space supremacy.

Our message is clear and it’s something that I know you all know about. You've heard our Secretary and our Chief talk about it. You can't go to war and win without space. So I'm privileged to be here and have a few minutes to spend with you and give you my perspectives. I think we depend, as the Secretary said, on our people that help us provide the capabilities, that wonderful professional cadre we're putting together as well as our partners in NASA and industry and Congress that help us; and lastly, we all depend on our ability to integrate space into air, land and sea operations. That sets us up for providing the effective combat capabilities that we certainly admired in Operation Iraqi Freedom and we depend on every day.

Our command is less visible and we operate underground in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. We also operate a low earth orbit as well as geostationary orbit, so you might not see us every day, but I'll tell you we're there and we're working hard. And we operate some of the most powerful weapon systems in the world and I know you know that. Intercontinental ballistic missiles that are really out of the eye of the public, but that we depend on for the fundamental part of our deterrence.

As our Chief, General Jumper, says ICBMs provide the top cover for our nation and our forward deployed troops and we're proud of those folks day in and day out.

We also provide around-the-clock warning for missile attacks and we control the ultimate high ground with 24/7 space surveillance of almost 10,000 objects that orbit around our earth.

Secure communications flow in and through space. We depend on those. And our space capabilities, the things that Mr. Teets and Mr. O'Keefe both talked about, make our world seem smaller. They make our operations more secure and without question they help us provide those decisive combat effects.

At the end of the day, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and Coast Guard people, they benefit from the magic of Air Force Space Command along with our partners. They may not always know where or when or from where, but as you know, we can't go to war and win without space.

So we need to treat that medium of space and those capabilities very carefully. We need to treat space superiority with the utmost concern. We need to maintain and establish space superiority in our United States Air Force, and those words have got to roll off our tongue just like air superiority. It's not our birthright in the Air Force, but it can be our destiny if we work it hard and continue to aggressively follow that.

So space superiority really is our day-to-day mission and space supremacy is our mission and vision for the future. We will accomplish space superiority by working hard every day, and in doing so we'll be able to achieve and maintain space dominance through our people. As Mr. Teets mentioned, that strong professional cadre I think we're putting together is the absolute important element there. And also with the help of our partners, our industry partners, many of who are represented here plus our Congress and folks in the Department of Defense and others, and certainly our partnership with NASA.

You should know that Mr. Teets and Administrator O'Keefe as well as I, and General Cartwright and Dr. Ron Sega from DDR&E all sit together in periodic partnership meetings to make sure that we coordinate and work together.

Finally, we can have the best space professionals and great partnerships with full funding and all the necessary support, but we must ensure our capabilities are integrated into the deliberate planning, execution and assessment phases of each combat commander's theater of operations. I'll say that again because it's important. We must ensure our capabilities are integrated from the beginning, from day one—not at the end or an annex that's separate from the basic plan. It's got to be integrated. You've got to think about space superiority from the first day you put your plan together. You can't assume it at the end. It can't be an afterthought.

Let me say just a little bit about why that's true and a little bit about some of our people. I'm going to cite two folks here, but they're really emblematic of all the people in the business. Let me tell you about one of our space professionals, Captain Keith Biddle. Captain Biddle was a space ops officer up at Thule Air Base. After earning a double major in missile warning and space surveillance, we decided to warm him up. We moved him south to Minot, North Dakota, to where he could really grow his space and missile expertise. He served proudly as a Minuteman III combat crew commander, but then he answered the call to serve and volunteered to deploy in support of combat operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He really strapped this mission on and learned well and, after four weeks of training there in Colorado Springs at our Space Ops School, he was deployed to Combat Joint Special Operations Task Force on the Arabian Peninsula in January of this year. For the next three months he monitored over 230 Blue Force Trackers. They provide the capability to track friendly forces with space-based capabilities, across almost a quarter of a million square kilometers in hostile territory. Those are incredible assets to keep track of our people on the ground.

One evening, a United States Army Special Forces convoy three vehicles strong comprised of approximately 12 Special Operations troops encountered the enemy. An enemy of about 50 people, so they were outnumbered and not at the best odds certainly for a three-vehicle convoy.

Captain Biddle immediately reported his current troop positions to the air liaison element and then the close air support aircraft rallied to the coordinates that Captain Biddle provided.

While the aircraft were en route, Captain Biddle passed the same info to a nearby Marine unit who engaged the remaining enemy, allowing the 12 soldiers from the 5th Special Forces Group to get out of harm's way and back to safety. Although several soldiers were wounded, the only casualty was a badly damaged Humvee.

The quick dissemination of space-based and space-derived, precise coordinates enabled timely reinforcement precisely when and where the soldiers needed it most. The two squads of Marines engaged the enemy and helped divert a potential disaster. Now the proud warriors of the 5th Special Forces Group can thank the Marines, the close air support, and the magic provided by Captain Keith Biddle.

I'd like to take a moment to thank Keith who's in the audience today. Keith, would you stand up and take a bow for all your great work there in doing this business. [Applause]

Thanks for joining us today, Keith. He represents almost 10,000 officers in the enlisted space and missile professions who come to work every day to make sure that we've got those kinds of combat effects.

Now it's not just officers doing this business. We've got a lot of great enlisted professionals, many of whom are in this room. We got to see one of them last night, Tech Sergeant Teresa Mossoni from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, a non-commissioned officer in charge of the food service business, and she deploys out in the ICBM alert facility. She's a role model for all of us and one of the 12 Outstanding Airmen that the Air Force Association recognized last night.

Even with our intense focus on developing our space professionals, that alone will not ensure that we have what we need. Our nation's rise to space dominance has not simply been a story of intelligent and dedicated single individuals, but rather a story of successful teams.

Under the leadership of Secretary Roche, General Jumper and Mr. Teets, we have an educated leadership team that's put us on the road to space supremacy. We need to continue to develop those partnership and relationships with our key partners. We've learned by working with General Arnold and his team that we can work together and improve and make things better every day.

Some critics have pointed to the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) as a poster child for problems we've experienced in the space acquisition business. Many of you know that the SBIRS program suffered from an under-estimation of the technical complexity, the risk, and also from requirements growth. We've put—with Mr. Teets' leadership and certainly the Chief and the Secretary along with Lieutenant General Bryan Arnold and our team at Los Angeles—together the reforms we needed to make sure we turned the corner there to prevent a repeat of the problems we've experienced acquiring SBIRS.

There's no doubt in my military mind that we are recovering from the SBIRS acquisition hangover that we've had. I want to get off of the Secretary of the Air Force's poster for poor acquisition here. I think we've got our picture off of there, Brian, and that's because of your great work.

Now we're not perfect, and Mr. Tom Young who took a look at us said we've got some work to do yet, but I think that you and your team have turned the corner and we thank you for your dedicated service in Los Angeles. So Brian, thank you very much. [Applause]

Our partners in industry are absolutely critical to the success of developing these capabilities, and I believe our national defense industry is the center of gravity for us on our road to space supremacy. Above all, and as they work hard together with us, mission success is important.

We're also heavily reliant upon our support from our partners in Congress and we need their help to maximize the efficiency of our developmental programs. Mr. Teets talked about that. And we also appreciate the Air Force Association's efforts to help us spread the word on the importance of space.

As Secretary of the Air Force Dr. Roche likes to say, space capabilities are no longer nice to have, they have become indispensable and essential. Programs in the future like Space-Based Radar, transformational communications architecture, and all those will come as a result of it.

Lastly, a little bit about space integration and why we need to think about this from the beginning. Of course, our enemies know that we rely upon combat power from space to wage our modern warfare and bring those combat effects. We need to allocate the necessary resources now to defend our interests in space not only now but in the future. We must develop and deliver the full spectrum of space combat capabilities and effects. Today's and tomorrow's commanders will need this flexibility.

As we know from Operation Iraqi Freedom and the attempts by Saddam Hussein to jam the GPS system, plus other countries involved in jamming signals from space, space warfare has begun. With every advantage we gain from using space systems comes the equally important responsibility to protect it.

Many friends and foes point to the high cost of developing space systems and capabilities, but I offer a different perspective. Can we afford to lose our space superiority? I'd say no. Loss of space superiority would clearly impact every level of waging modern warfare. From deliberate planning, tracking friend and foe, to target development, engaging targets and assessing damage.

Imagine for a second reliving the Kosovo air campaign in 1999 without precise navigation and timing. Or eliminating the use of precision-guided munitions which rely on spaceborne assets. We have become accustomed to precise, even surgical combat effects while eliminating unnecessary collateral damage—putting less people in harm's way. It's the way we fight. Therefore we must ensure that up-front integration into all aspects of campaign planning.

Integrating space in the deliberate planning process must be forethought, it cannot be an afterthought. We are blazing a trail to space supremacy, but we need to think about it from day one.

As the first commander of Air Force Space Command to experience space combat, I offer my assessment. Integrating space into all phases of theater planning and operations is a two-way street, though. We need to continue to grow people like General Buzz Moseley and Lieutenant General Dan Leaf and our Joint Forces Air Component Commanders and Combatant Commanders who know how to integrate the inherent combat advantages provided by space into theater planning and operations.

I've said this many times. We have completed the transition from a nation interested in space to a nation with national interests in space. We must protect and defend our interests in space. Our road to space supremacy is important. In fact it's critical to our security. Our nation depends on it.

Thanks for being with us today, and we look forward to your questions.