General Lance W. Lord
Commander, Air Force Space Command
AFA National Symposium – Los Angeles
November 21, 2003

General Lord: It is a delight to be here, as a graduate of the rocket science program at Otterbein College in Ohio, where we had a class of one [laughter]. Thanks to Chief and Ellen for being here with us and thanks for a wonderful time. Thanks to the whole AFA organization, Aerospace Education Foundation and certainly to our Eagles who are gathered here with us. We are standing on the great shoulders of all those great people, so it is a delight to be here.

If you have a chance—and I did—I went out to the membership desk out here for Air Force Association members. I know you all have an opportunity if you like to join. I walked up and I said “I’d like to check the expiration date on my membership.” and they check the computer and said, “Oh, General Lord, you are a Life Member.” And I said, “Well, take a guess—I want to see if I can get through this speech [laughter].”

It is kind of like being here in LA with the Los Angeles Lakers. Hot Rod Hundley played here years ago with Elgin Baylor. They did a really fine job and one night they were interviewing Hot Rod after the game because they could never get to Elgin, but they could always get to Hot Rod. And they said, “Hot Rod, how did you do tonight?” He said, “We had 75 points. What a night. Me and Elgin, we did great.” They said, “Well, how did you do?” He said, “I had two, Elgin had 73 [laughter].”

So, we are really depending on all those we work for and are scoring points with. As the Chief said, “Why do we do what we do?” We serve a greater cause and certainly those folks out there, while we are here talking and doing a little analog—as our friend Hal Hornburg at ACC would say, a little analog face-to-face talking in a digital point and click world—those folks are out there scoring all the points. That is why we are here and thanks to all of you for being here with us today.

I’d like to spend just a few minutes with you talking about the space business from my perspective. As we sit and reflect and look at those banners up there and it really kind of sends chills up your spine to see what we’ve been able to accomplish in the medium of air in 100 years.
As we take this 100th anniversary look, as we did last September and certainly in Washington with the Air Force Association, it is fitting that we honor Wilbur and Orville Wright. There is an excellent book that the Chief gave us at Corona recently, Conquering the Air, about Orville and Wilbur and their accomplishments in this business and what they were up against and all the pitfalls and the barriers they faced. Their dream really was to take a craft and move it into the medium of air. They actually, on this date in 1903, were just checking and testing out again their propeller shafts, which they’d broken and they were trying to get ready to fly. And they were testing the winds every day to make sure. And as you know on December 17th, they overcame those and actually flew. That is historic and something that really set the case for us, with a hundred years of powered flight and as the Chief said, 50 years of space history, it is amazing that we are able to come together and talk about that.

They faced a lot of barriers, as we talked about. People were telling them it couldn’t be done. In fact, here are a few famous quotes from the time -- someone even said at the patent office, “Everything that can be invented has been [laughter].” That was in 1899. That is what they were up against—the thought that you couldn’t do things like this. “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” Well, they proved that wrong. Later on, “Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.” We’ll we’ve got heroes and Eagles here that proved that is a wrong assumption. More recently, in 1967 someone even said man will never reach the moon, regardless of all scientific advances. Two years later, what happened? As General Jumper said, we walked on the face of the moon.

So, keeping the tradition of “Up from Kitty Hawk” and talking a little bit about that, and true to my academic tradition, and certainly since we’ve got the Air Command and Staff College here, I’d like to hit three main points [laughter]. You will graduate soon and be out of there [laughter]. We are paying your tuition. You are going to get your letter sweater and you are going to go out and do great things. It is tremendous to see you.

Space power has really transformed our society and our military continues to move us forward. With the support of our Chief and Mr. Teets and certainly our Commander in Chief, the President, and our Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Secretary Roche. Some refer, as the Chief mentioned, to Desert Shield and Desert Storm—which was really the first space war. But, as the Chief said, since 1991, we’ve made some tremendous high-tech advances.
It paid off in Operation Iraqi Freedom, as we learned. American forces set benchmarks for speed, precision, lethality, reach and flexibility, in a matter of minutes not weeks, hours or days, as in past wars. We were able to identify and engage targets to support the troops on the ground and achieve the combat effects.

Buzz Moseley, who is now our Vice Chief, when he was the Air Component Commander at Operation Iraqi Freedom, he talked specifically about space and some of our capabilities. He said, “The satellites have been just unbelievably capable, supporting conventional surface, naval and special air forces. They’ve made a huge difference for us.” He was at the heart of air and space integration.

Space warriors were deployed, as General Jumper said, in a coalition throughout the war. I had an opportunity last Thanksgiving week to visit Southwest Asia at the height of preparatory operations. We had 1,200 people from Air Force Space Command deployed—about 700 of them were deployed into Southwest Asia in support of operations and many of them were working right there, shoulder to shoulder with their air colleagues, integrating air and space to achieve the combat effects. Then with reachback to 14th Air Force and Major General Mike Hamel—please stand up and be recognized—the commander of the Space AOC.

We’ve got an incredible synergy of combat effects because of work like Mike and his team integrated together as the Chief has asked us to work together at the air and space integration across the combat capability of our United States Air Force, and aided by the medium and high ground of space.

The Chief talked about the operational pause and with our new Vice Commander, “Fig Leaf,” Lt. Gen. Dan Leaf, at Air Force Space Command, up close and personal relayed a story to us about space operations engaged in the land component business as he was the air component’s representative to the land component commander. And he talked about space and the day-to-day effects that it had for an Army on the move and certainly in the operational pause. You saw what effect space and integrated capabilities can bring. The sum total of the operation in there and certainly with the Third Infantry Division and the 3/7th Cav that was engaged right there at the point during the pause, so to speak, was zero killed and zero dead, while we were able to achieve tremendous combat effectiveness.

That is air and space integration. As the Chief said, we wonder what the commander of the Medina Division thought about that so-called pause. We were integrating air and space to tremendous effects. If we think back, as we talked about last night with the Eagles, about what happened in the B-17 raids in Schweinfurt and all the sorties it took and the heroes who were involved in that activity, and then you see, thanks to General Jumper’s great depictions on the screen, what you can do with air and space integration today. Today, a single aircraft with GPS-guided joint direct attack munitions. I mean, this is probably a little parochial for me to say as a space guy, but I said, GPS, the Global Positioning System, puts the damn in JDAM. Damn, that was good [laughter].

It is a great capability. You can do with 10,000 pounds of ordnance what it took millions of pounds of ordnance to do before in terms of greater accuracy, and precision and then less collateral effects, which is certainly something that we want to achieve and it really speaks volumes about our capabilities.

Space remains strategically important through missile warning, our ICBM deterrence. As a matter of fact, a week ago today we were at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. We had a great time talking to those folks. One in the four security police persons in the United States Air Force are assigned to Air Force Space Command in support of guarding and supporting the nuclear mission. But these are all parts of our capabilities that we integrate. And as the Chief has talked about, the ICBM business is kind of the foundation and the Top Cover for everything that we do in our day-to-day operational capabilities. So, what we’ve done is we’ve tried to take a message and a lesson from our operations and integrate those lessons within the space business and make sure that we continue to operationalize space. Over the last 12 years, bringing space more and more into the fight has been our objective.

We put this high on our agenda and it has paid off. We took lessons from the air business, missile operations and emphasized discipline and structured operations and sound technical data coupled with our experience and I think we’ve been able to achieve some great operational successes.
We’ve pushed responsibility down to our junior NCOs and certainly deep into the organization, with our enlisted and civilian professionals. We produced the best effects that we can to support our customers as General Jumper talks about, the troops in contact. Military space today is an integrated team of officers, enlisted people, and professionals and certainly on our contractor teams who are represented here today, and we appreciate them as well.

Now, when we rightfully tout successes in Operation Iraqi Freedom and certainly Enduring Freedom, we must move forward to face, I think, even a greater challenge and the Chief talked a little bit about that. Space helps shape and provides an ever increasing asymmetric advantage for our nation’s military. It is the center of gravity now. We must not let it become a vulnerability. Our future adversaries understand that we have this advantage and I think they are trying to develop capabilities right now to thwart that.

We’ve enjoyed a period of unchallenged dominance in military space, enabling improvements since Desert Storm and we certainly saw them demonstrated. Now, our jobs as we face the future would be much easier if we could expect this trend to continue unchecked, but it won’t. We must protect this advantage.

Let’s quickly reflect a little bit about the past. As we saw last night, when our Eagles talked, our World War II combat vets and young technical wizards really became the space pioneers that led us on these technological innovations. General Jumper mentioned the Western Development Division that was formed here in 1954, so 2004 really marks the 50th anniversary. And, from that Western Development Division came the nation’s ICBM fleet, the Corona, Discoverer and all the things that the Chief talked about. As a matter of fact, 42 years ago today, a satellite was launched from Point Arguello at what is now Vandenberg Air Force Base. Those folks who are the direct descendents of General Schriever and the Space and Missile Systems Center are here today under the leadership of Lt Gen Brian Arnold. I’d like all our warriors from the Space and Missile Systems Center to stand up and be recognized for all the hard work they are doing.

They’ve innovated, designed, launched and overcome a lot of obstacles. Really, in the past, we’ve achieved significant progress in operationalizing space. We can’t lose that technological edge because that is key to the medium of space. But since we’ve been a command, we’ve done a lot of introspection and we’ve found that we know how to operate, but we don’t have as much depth and technical expertise as our forefathers did in this business. In certain cases, we know how to operate our system, but we don’t know as much as we need to know about the medium of space.

So it is critical that we work that hard in our overall construct. We will create a cadre of space warriors that are equally skilled in operational art and technical expertise. Our military space operations must be powered by a team of professionals who understand the business. I think that is something our Chief has recognized, too, as he looks at building professionals from the ground up—across our Air Force, not only officers, but enlisted and civilian professionals. It is an absolute imperative for us to develop our personnel resources. We found in our early discussions about this, with the space cadre, as well as the rest of the folks the Chief has asked us to talk to on force development, which we can’t over-communicate when talking about our people’s futures. Our people want to be involved in this interactive process, talking about the future, helping, shaping and influencing our future in this business. Chief, I am not trying to suck up to you, that’s for sure. But I’ll tell you—history will be kind to you 20 years from now when they look back and say that the Force Development Initiative was going to be a major deflection point for our United States Air Force. I am convinced of that. I think our younger officers and enlisted professionals and civilians are going to take us every place we want to go, so thanks for your leadership on that.

Well, the present and the past have really helped us. Let’s talk a little bit about the future, as we recognize 50 years in space. Our charter for the future is to maintain a highly successful force enhancement role, the things we’ve traditionally done to support our military, the things that we’ve talked about, the key integration aspects of putting space and air together to create the combat effects. We must develop and deliver the full spectrum of space combat effects, though.
We’ve got to continue to do what we’ve talked about, in terms of force enhancement, but be a full spectrum space combat command, in conjunction with Air Combat Command and the other commands in the United States Air Force to fully protect and defend the medium of space. We discussed this yesterday at the Space and Missile Systems Center. People said, “We agree. We are just like that, except our runway is vertical.” Think about that now.

We are really working hard to do that and I think our strategy, “Commanding the Future” is our flight plan to transform the space business. The team of tomorrow must build on the successes of today and the immense progress made by the air and space missile pioneers, many of whom are in this room. We are going to take bold steps at Air Force Space Command. We understand our role as airmen—it is kind of in our DNA that we think about air superiority. We know what you can’t do if you don’t have air superiority. That is how airmen think and how airmen act. Space is no different. Space superiority is also our mandate. It must roll off our tongues just as easily as the term air superiority. We live in a much more unsettled world now and space is critical to our operations, so not only do we have to integrate air and space, we have to think in terms of integrated air and space superiority.

We are working hard in space surveillance and situational awareness to make sure that we understand and can operate in the medium of space and be ready should some adversary try to shape it differently. As Secretary Roche talked about recently, he said the war in space has already started with Saddam Hussein trying to jam our global positioning system signals. We’ve got to have the ways to detect these events and other attempts to attack our asymmetric advantage. I am convinced, it is not a matter of if this will happen; it is just a matter of when and it better be us and we had better be able to shape that competition in a way we can continue to achieve our effects.

So, what is the big breakthrough that we look for in the future? Our Chief talked a little bit about that. I was asked the same question in New York City in a recent visit. Somebody said, “What’s the next big breakthrough in the space business?” I said, “It is not technical.” We’ve got a lot of technical issues to solve. It is about how we unleash the rich human potential we have in this business, to do what the Chief asked us to do, which is to horizontally integrate air and space and create combat effects. And as the Chief said, we’ve got to find that guy with thick glasses who lives in the basement and has no life. Well, he gave me permission to get Lasik surgery, so now you know where that guy was [laughter]. We’re going to field those integrated air and space capabilities and we are going to integrate them like the Chief said, to shorten the kill chain and make sure that we can find, fix, track, target, engage and assess any place, anywhere on the globe, in support of military operations to be the clenched fist or the helping hand of air power. Whatever our task, or whatever the future demands out of the people of Air Force Space Command and Chief, we are going to deliver integrated effects from integrated air and space capabilities.

As we come together today, I’d like to announce one special thing that we’ve decided to do with the Chief and the Secretary and the Under Secretary’s approval to show that we are really serious. As we talked about earlier, we had 32 successful launches in a row and that has been done with the great support of two great contractor teams dedicated to assured access to space, plus a great leadership team with General Arnold and the folks at SMC in Los Angeles as well as our launch wings on the east and west coasts.

We will take our detachments at the launch bases that used to work for Brian Arnold at the Space and Missile Systems Center and combine them with the launch wing operations into a launch group that is a synthesis of both acquisition and operations. Because, launch and assured access to space is not all operations and it’s not all acquisition. It is a little bit of both. Effective 1 December, we’ll be together at the launch bases. We’ve got Brigadier General Pavlovich and Colonel Frank Gallegos here from the 45th and 30th. These are going to be the warriors who lead us to a thousand in a row in this business [applause].

Every payload is a national treasure and it is something that we want to guard and direct. We talked about the past. We talked about the present and we talked about the future. Chief, we are dedicated to what you want us to do to work to make sure that we can integrate those effects.
In closing, let me quote these four key sentences from Thomas Jefferson. Number one, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” We are all familiar with that. Number two, “Information is the currency of democracy.” We know that because the horizontal linking of information is critical not only to what we do day in and day out, but it certainly is a key to our communications. Number three, he said also, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” And then “The most valuable of all talents is never using two words when one will do.” So I am going to abide by that.

And finally, every speaker, certainly on the AFA stage, should remember the story of Chicago White Sox manager Jeff Torborg’s trip to the mound to remove pitcher Jim Kern. Jim was getting shellacked. He was getting shelled. It was like ten to nothing at the end of the second inning. The skipper went out there and he got to the mound and he said, “Kern, I’m taking you out.” He said, “Skip, I’m not tired.” And the Skip said, “Yeah, but the outfielders sure are [laughter].”
If you are not in space, you are not in the race! Thank you very much.

Q: How would you grade our performance thus far as executive agent for space and what major challenges do you see for the Air Force in this role?

General Lord: I think Mr. Teets in his role certainly putting a focus on getting us direction. What we have and we’ve evolved in a way that lots of entities are interested in certainly providing direction and advice and guidance in the space business and Mr. Teets in his role has put his arms around the whole community and certainly I think we’ve made major successes. In the area that we are going to talk about when we meet with him on Monday in Colorado Springs, in the area of counterspace and making sure that we have space situational awareness and have the right kind of defensive and offensive counterspace measures for the future, he in his role is going to be critical in helping us consolidate the leadership there.

I think what has happened over the last couple years, certainly with Mr. Teets and the nature in which he’s been able to lead and communicate across the whole community, is people recognize that Mr. Teets is the executive agent and he is the one we look to. I will tell you, I am delighted to be a wingman with Mr. Teets and we are working hard in that respect.

Q: The issue of an independent space force is often raised. Would you see that as being more or less effective?

General Lord: We have a separate space force—it is called the United States Air Force and it is the air and space force, the world’s most respected capability. I agree with the Chief. There is no need to think about that. What we need to do is just evolve along the road of air and space integration. We need to set ourselves up with an operational framework. We need to understand the application of space capabilities within the overall construct of the air operations center and support to forces in contact. As that evolves and if conflict in space occurs, our actions have got to be based on an operational framework. Where else do you operate in this medium other than in the United States Air Force? That is why the military is involved. We are going to be the ones that guide, guard and direct and work the medium of space. There is no need to set up a whole new organization. Maybe 50 years from that might occur. But there is no need to do that now. Our Air Force, with the powers of the executive agent to reach across the other services and help work those together, we are the space force and we are part of the United States Air Force and I am proud of it.

Q: The Chief showed a great video on the B-2 and JDAMs earlier. This reminds us of the emphasis we are putting on the speed of getting from the sensor to the shooter. How do you see our machine-to-machine interfacing progress as we try to apply that in an even more rapid way?

General Lord: The Chief has put us on a great task to look and work this very hard. Those are intellectual breakthroughs. They are not technical problems. For the next several years, we are going to live life on the seams because as we look at space-based radar, transformational comm and how all those systems get worked, these are going to be all exercises and problems of integration. They are not going to be technical problems. I mean, we’ll have to solve a few technical problems in the satellite business, but how we work new systems--how we task, how we exploit the information derived from space, these are intellectual issues, not technical issues. Our contractor folks are geared up and thinking about how to make sure they can use the technology and leverage the technology to help us. I think the wisdom of the Chief’s vision about integrating this is going to pay off in the long run. This will help us maintain our advantage.

Q: The recent manned space flight in China, how do you see that impacting us and what are the potential military considerations?

General Lord: I think that represents a major step for them as a nation and that should give us cause to really be concerned about another space-faring nation involved in a competition that will seek to work against or maybe thwart our asymmetric advantage. They are going to be a substantial competitor. That’s why I said we need to shape this environment as opposed to react to it. So we had better get ready. They represent a potential threat for us and we’ve got to get ahead and stay ahead.