2024 Air, Space & Cyber: The Nuclear Imperative

The “Nuclear Imperative” panel at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Melissa Dalton, Under Secretary of the Air Force; Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command; Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command; and Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and integration. The panel, held September 18, was moderated by Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.), AFA’s Executive Vice President. Watch the video:

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.) Executive Vice President, AFA:

Well, good morning again, and thank you for joining us to discuss the nuclear imperative for modernizing our nation’s nuclear enterprise, one that has underwritten global security for nearly 80 years.

You know, the Economist magazine recently indicated, quote, we face more adversaries and technologies spreading into new domains, such as space and into the hands of those with sophisticated missiles such as Houthi militia.

Counter proliferation is more complex and less predictable than the old bipolar contests between America and the Soviet Union.

This makes extended deterrence more difficult and more dangerous. In short, the nuclear imperative to modernize our nation’s triad and command and control enterprise is non-negotiable and compels us to approach it even more holistically than ever before. Please welcome my panelists. To my left the Hon. Melissa Dalton, Undersecretary of the Air Force. Next to her is Gen. Anthony cotton, Commander United States Strategic Command.

General Tom Bussiere, Commander Air Force Global Strike command. And to the far left is Lieutenant General Andrew Gebara, Deputy Chief of Staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration. Let’s get started.

So, undersecretary Dalton, please set the scene for us. You know, China is mirroring our truck, our triad. You know, Putin is unabashed in his rhetoric to use nuclear weapons. Iran is closer to a bomb. North Korea has demonstrated global reach with its arsenal. The New START Treaty expires in February of 2026 so why is nuclear modernization a top priority for the department now?

Hon. Melissa Dalton, Under Secretary of the Air Force:

Well, thanks so much, Doug, and it’s great to be here at AFA. It’s been a terrific set of discussions the last two days, and I’m really looking forward to the vital conversation this morning with some great teammates here up on stage. Why nuclear modernization today? The security environment we face today is unprecedented. We face for the first time in our nation’s history, two strategic competitors that are nuclear states with large and growing nuclear arsenals. When we look at the PRC and its breathtaking modernization over the last two decades, we see today they have over 500 operational nuclear warheads, far exceeding prior projections. And in the 2030’s we expect that they’ll likely have over 1000 meanwhile, we see Russia brandishing its nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict and also possessing novel nuclear capabilities that are designed to challenge our escalation calculus. The stakes are incredibly high. Now let’s pause and reflect on how we got here. The fact is, we mortgaged our nuclear modernization for 30 years, and for a lot of understandable reasons, we had the post war, post-cold war, peace dividend. We were fighting counterterrorism globally. But the fact is, the bills are now way past due, and in that time, our competitors went to school on us, and they caught up.

Now the United States today is fielding the most powerful military the world has ever seen, but our national defense is underpinned by one crucial thing, our nuclear deterrent.

Everything else is built on that foundation, and that is why it is the Department of Defense’s number one priority. The 2022 nuclear posture review reaffirmed our commitment to delivering a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent, and that security guarantee extends to our allies around the globe, and that can never be in question.

And so, when you take stock of all of these factors coming together at this moment in our nation’s.

Three we have a once in a generation opportunity to get it right, and to get it right, we must take a holistic approach.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, General Cotton, you know you’re as the commander of a unified combatant command. You’re responsible for conducting strategic deterrence nuclear operations and a lot more. So. How is STRATCOM now addressing both the conventional and nuclear integration, literally, to avoid strategic surprise.

Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command:

Yeah, Thanks Doug. And it’s great to see room full of not only strikers that represent Air Force, Global Strike Command and General Bussiere’s command, but everyone in the room that represents the United States Air Force, the Department of the Air Force, because you all play a role in the strategic deterrence assurance mission that I hold Doug, I think when we talk about what the Under Secretary just mentioned, and the fact that I was given an opportunity when taking command and 22 due to a line that was in the posture review that allows us to look at the for sizing and shaping to ensure that we can meet the current and future threats, we immediately went to work to understand what Does that mean. The Under Secretary made mention, in fact, that since the advent of a nuclear weapon, we now have two nuclear peers.

We’ve never had a strategy that had to deal with that, because that’s never been something that was true until we saw the breakout of the PRC in the 2018 timeframe. So, with that in mind, when we look at the capacity and capability of what I have as forced presentation, two thirds of that comes from the men and women that are in this room. Two thirds of NC, three for example, also belongs to United States Air Force, if not even a little more than that. So, it is imperative that we understand that it’s not a department. Imperative that we maintain the nuclear security and nuclear triad. It is a national imperative. It’s national policy that the foundation of what we hold dear. The framework of that is nuclear deterrence. And to add to that, and I’ve seen this in the last 19 months of being in command, our allies and partners are counting on us more than ever, and the assurance and deterrence efforts that we do daily. And a lot of the men and women that are in this room that represents United States Air Force that carries out that mission does that daily for our allies and partners. You hear the term umbrella. Call it what you might but it truly is. What we’re talking about is the assurance mission that does a couple of things. It limits proliferation, not only of our adversaries, but also of our allies, because they know that we will come to aid.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Gen. Bussiere, obviously you’re sitting next to kind of one of your bosses here, but as the Global Strike command is responsible for organizing, training and equipping two thirds of the nuclear force capability to the combatant commanders, obviously, as a force provider, two questions. You know, first, what are your thoughts on the future role of Global Strike deterrence? And I’ll come back to, what impact will modernization recap have on global competition.

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, Commander, Air Force Global Strike Command:

Thanks, Gen. Raaberg. And before I answer your questions, I want to say thank you to AFA, our industry partners and our airmen.

So little bit of a paid political announcement here. Since October 27, 1962, there’s been ICBMs on alert for 54 years. The Minuteman three weapons system has been standing the watch today as we sit here enjoying each other’s company, learning about our Air Force, where we are going in the future. Our Airmen, operators, maintainers and defenders are making sure our way of life is secure. So, I want to thank them and their families for doing that.

So strategic deterrence is a unique concept. If you ask 10 people in this room, what it means to them. You might get 10 different answers, but I’d offer to you just a kind of a thought that there is no other element, there is no other element of US military power that can provide or replace the deterrent effect. Effects that nuclear weapons provide, and has provided for decades, and that’s the underpinning, the foundation of what we do for our nation and our closest allies and partners and, of course, general cotton. So as if we take that as a fact in a given, let’s look at what we’re doing right now and the unique aspects of what we’re going to have when we recapitalize the entire triad, in our case, the air leg and the land leg, and many facets and aspects of our nuclear command and control and communications framework, something that we have, quite frankly, never done in our nation’s history at the same time, and the unique aspect that we have an obligation to general cotton in the nation is to maintain full operational capability while we transition from legacy to new. That’s going to be a very difficult, complex and complicated task, but we have no other option. We have to do it. And we’re not just doing it with the land leg. We’re doing it with the air leg, and that air leg provides not only our nuclear deterrence force, but it also provides a long-range Global Strike conventional capability for general cotton and the nation

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Gen, Gebara, since last year’s charged by Secretary Kendall at this conference, the Department of the Air Force has been addressing great power competition, from governance to organizational changes. So, what are some of those changes, and what does the analysis now show?

Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, Deputy Air Force Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Integration:

Well, Doug Raaberg, thank you very much for the question. Thanks as well for AFA. I mean, just look out in the audience here. It’s just another great success for AFA. So, thank you for hosting this and the efforts there. You know, as we, as we look at the need to re optimize for our future, and the Secretary and the chief have done, you know, a fine job in the previous day’s talking about those specifics. But I’ll just talk the specifics of the nuclear case. You know, when I joined my first bomb squad in December 1993 it was about 10 days, 11 days after the b2 arrived at Whiteman Air Force Base. What that means is, at the three-star level, I’ve not known a nuclear deterrent in the United States that was not B twos, B 50 twos and Minuteman missiles, the exact same tail numbers, the entire 31 years, not the same type, the same tail numbers. So, we’ve done a lot of amazing things in the past, but bringing on new stuff is not necessarily one of the things we’ve done in nuclear. If you go five years to the future, everything is different. So, it’s a very exciting time. And there really isn’t a mission space more in need of reoptimization and looked into the future than the nuclear mission space, is the way I see it. So, some of the specific things we’re getting after in realization of this gargantuan modernization task that we’ve talked about, we are going to elevate the nuclear weapons center from a two-star command to a three-star command, and we have already placed a general officer to control the Program Executive Office of both ICBM, both the Sentinel and the Minuteman. ICBM, adding stars is really important, of course, but really, it’s the experience that those officers bring with them, having run large programs before, and the staffs that come with them that will really optimize us to be able to handle this large influx of modernization that the nuclear submission space hasn’t had to deal with in the in the past. So that’s one, as you look to our line of effort on unit of action, that’s a really important one that we’re working with every day so early on in the GPC efforts, as we you know, as we’re whiteboarding what we need to do to make our Air Force better, there’s a lot of effort put on. How do we get the right forces to be able to deploy and operate in theater? And that’s very important, of course, but there was also very early, early on in understanding that there are missions that have in place, combat missions. The ICBM wing is a perfect example of that, but there’s others around our Air Force. And so as we, as we go through that unit of action, line of effort. We’re taking great care to make sure that we do no harm to those in place missions as we get ready to be able to do what we have to do in other mission spaces. And then I guess, I guess the final one I’ll talk about, there’s others, but the final one I’ll talk about is our training and exercises. Line of effort. So this is, this is led by our half a three organization, but we are working very hard to infuse all our training and exercises with the types of issues that will happen in a nuclear environment in the future. So so maybe that’s dealing with radiological threat, but maybe it’s also just something like, you know, the adversary is threatening nuclear use, and so we can’t fly in this area those kind of things. So I think across the board, we’re working hard on it. Thank you.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

So let me write off that Under Secretary Dalton, this is a kind of an important question, because we really touched on the, more or less the holistic approach to modernization. So, would you do us a favor and amplify on that? Please?

Hon. Melissa Dalton:

Absolutely and thanks. So much for the question, because this is one, I’m really passionate about. We tend to, for all the understandable and important reasons, focus on the missile or the bomber, the weapons platform when we talk about modernization. And again, it’s incredibly important that we get that right. But arguably, just as important are the other elements of the equation that enable that weapon system, and arguably need more emphasis as we move forward, if we think about what it takes to enable, for example, the ground-based leg of the triad, which is our most responsive. It’s geographically dispersed across five states, which presents dilemmas for our adversaries. It really requires a holistic approach to wrap your brain around it and also to enable that weapon system. And it really comes down to three things, people, infrastructure and partnerships. So first on, our people and my colleagues have already highlighted the tremendous contributions that our airmen are making every day. I had an opportunity to travel just in the last couple of months to our three ICBM bases, and I was deeply impressed with the commitment and creativity that our airmen are bringing to the fight every day. But as we move forward with modernization, and as we ask them to continue to field an aging system in Minuteman three, we need to ensure that they are continuing to build their skills. They’re getting the training, they’re conducting exercises to ensure we’ve got the sets and reps to be able to respond at a moment’s notice, as the nation demands. We also need to ensure that we’re cultivating nuclear expertise in the defense industrial base, because we’ve been focused on other things for the last 30 years, arguably, some of the skill sets in the DIB have atrophied across the nuclear enterprise, and so to be able to drive forward over the next few decades, to deliver on these modernization imperatives, we need to strengthen the talent in the DIB as well, and also to highlight back on our Airmen, our security forces in particular. We ask so much of them, so do we have the right capacity to ensure that they can perform their missions against again, across that very geographically dispersed mission space every day. Do they have the air and ground transportation that they need to fulfill their missions? And I know we’ve got some good work underway to address those requirements. When we talk about infrastructure for the ground base, leg thinking about the launch control centers, the launch facilities, the silos themselves and what it’s going to take to sustain Minuteman three while also bringing Sentinel online. We need to take a holistic approach to how we’re envisioning that infrastructure, but also the equipment to maintain our weapons platforms, both Minuteman three and Sentinel as we move forward and finally on partnerships, we have to cultivate partnerships at the state and local level. Those community and wing command relationships proved vital when we undertook the project back in the 1960s really a Civil Works project that we are once again going to undertake with the Sentinel Program, and so we are committed at the Department of the Air Force to communication and transparency and building those partners to include through our civic leaders to ensure that that we can work forward together. There are, of course, interdependencies across all of these different elements, and it’s going to be incredibly complex to be able to sustain Minuteman three across all those elements while also bringing Sentinel online. And we’re going to have to do this, of course, in a cost-effective way to ensure that we’re being accountable to the American taxpayer, but we really do need to take this holistic approach in order to get it right.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Gen. Cotton, let me take the undersecretary’s point about the people aspect, especially the ones that really underpin the entire security, surely and safety of our nuclear enterprise. US Strategic Command stands at the forefront of the largest modernization effort, you know, presumably it’s going to have a direct impact on readiness, but also combatant commands plans. So, I can only imagine, how do you raise kind of what I call the nuclear IQ of all joint personnel to keep pace with this modernization effort.

Gen. Anthony J. Cotton:

Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Doug, so going back to where the Under Secretary left off, and I think it’s incredibly important for everyone in this room to understand, we always have to understand that the adversary gets 51% of the deterrent to vote so safe, secure and effective, incredible weapons systems, safe. Secure and effective and ready personnel are incredibly high marks on understanding on that 51% of the vote on today’s not the right day to try to do something against the United States or allies. So, we spent a lot of time at STRATCOM not only understanding the modernization that’s happening across the entire portfolio, but we’re also talking the platform delivery systems as well as the weapons. All of them are getting modernized at the same time. I’m the only combatant commander that’s dealing with something like that, by the way, but it is incredibly important for us, for the two legs of the triad that are represented here in the Department of the Air Force, and then the sea leg that’s with the Department of the Navy, to ensure that we get the transition from legacy to modernized systems exactly right, because I’m also one of the few combatant commanders that can’t afford to have a gap and come up with a mitigation strategy that we might not be able to do. So that’s what’s incredibly important there. So having service components understand and, and I have two right there in the front row who do understand what the Secretary and the chief that the ability for general busier to be able to sustain the legacy systems until the modernized systems can come into play, are incredibly important. And then finally, you talked about, thanks for mentioning nuclear IQ. I’ll give the credit on that term to Sir Tony Ratigan from the UK. But we had a conversation last July in which we talked about how over the 30 plus years, folks have actually from the strategic level down to tactical level, have forgot the reps and sets on what it means to have adversary that has strategic influence on you, right and more, so, what does that nuclear IQ look like? So, and conversations with the with the chairman, where we at STRATCOM, along with the Joint Staff, in particular, Lieutenant General dad Anderson and the j7 we’re putting together for the joint force level. You know, how do we get those reps and sets back in understanding, you know, what a lot of us old timers remembered, you know, whether you’re a no striper or had four stars on you, you at least understood the fundamentals of what a nuclear peer, what that really meant. So, we’re building that out. We’re also going to have a conversation with the Secretary, because he owns, he directs then service secretaries to have conversations in regard to accessions. And how do you do that from that perspective? So, the good news is there’s an understanding on how important this under this deterrence factor is, and knowing how to articulate it, how to advocate for it, understand what your adversaries that are holding you at risk truly have the potential of Being able to do. And those conversations are well underway, and you should start seeing more things roll out. Matter of fact, the joint staff that j3 has already started a program in which they’re introducing, I would call lesson plans, if you will, or talk, or talks and discussions that happen at the j3 staff, and that’s going to expand to the joint force in the near future.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Sure, you talk about legacy platforms, obviously, from submarines to bombers to the intercontinental ballistic missile system. So, I’m going to go to you Gen. Bussiere, because really, the real baseline question is, can Global Strike command sustain the current weapons systems through the ongoing generational recap and the modernization efforts and still be able to maintain that deterrence posture that’s been the strength of our nation?

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere:

Yes.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you for saying that.

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere:

Let me expand upon that, so I don’t have looking at them funny, by the way, right answer, so I actually don’t have an option, right? Our nation demands it. The world demands it, and I’m going to need the help from everybody. I’m going to need the help from the Secretary and the chief from our Airmen, their families, our communities, to support our airmen and families, from industry, from the American public. We can’t do it by ourselves. You know, to the under secretary and general cotton’s point about the most valuable weapon system we have in the Department of the Air Force and Air Force Global Strike. Doesn’t come with a national stock number. Doesn’t come with a tail number, it comes with a social security number. And we have to make sure we maintain the viability and health of our airmen and their families as they maintain that strategic deterrence force from today and into the future. Our nation has missed this before. So, this year, in August, we celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Secretary and the chief’s decision to stand up Air Force, Global Strike command, as the belly button and the force provider for the Air Force’s equities to us, Strategic Command, very purposely, stood up our command last year. I put a sign over my door as I walk into my office and I I look at Curtis LeMay’s desk that he had when he was commander of Strategic Air Command, and that sign above my door says, Remember why we exist very purposefully so as we transition from legacy to new and we make sure our airmen have the tools to do what we’re asking them to do, we always have to reflect back on the fact that our nation has got this wrong in the past, and we need to remember why we stood up this command.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

We’re going to keep going Gen. Gebara, because I think this is very important topic and capitalize on the fact that during the Cold War, the United States Air Force truly built an enormous amount of nuclear expertise. So, given the reemerged nuclear imperative and great power competition, now, how is the Air Force thinking about rebuilding its nuclear expertise? Specifically?

Lt. Gen Andrew J. Gebara:

Yeah, thanks for the question. So, before we get to building out additional nuclear expertise, I do, I do want to highlight there are 1000’s of people every day doing that work today, and I’m just couldn’t be more proud of them. They’re underground, they’re in five states. They’re guarding things, they’re on console, they’re in the air. They’re refueling people. So, there is a lot of expertise at kind of the at that level. I think what you’re really talking about is the greater Air Force. And I think no better example of what the chief is talking about when he says one air force that the nuclear mission said is not for the nuclear guys, it’s for the Air Force, right? And so, it’s not about you nuclear guys keeping it safe, and then over to STRATCOM if it really goes bad. What it’s about is integrating throughout our Air Force. If you look at the nuclear weapons powers today, there are three in Indo PAYCOM, there’s three in UCOM, there’s two in CENTCOM, and then there’s us, right? So that is not just a STRATCOM mission. That’s an everybody mission. Now there is, there’s different levels of gaining experience, whether it’s training Air Force, a 10 my role has a career functional management opportunity that we, you know, we work on that. We work with the people that are upgrading our Airmen, developmental command on kind of how to how to do that education, and then all the way into what I would call implementing our conventional nuclear integration plan, up to and including the four-star level. So, the end of next week, we’re going to have a TTX, a tabletop exercise about these kinds of issues, and we’re going to brief it out at Corona and so it needs to happen across the board at all levels. You know, when I was younger, at the end of the Cold War, the biggest threat we had was on no notice, 1000 ICBMs just coming over the North Pole. And how would you handle that? And that’s horrific to even think about, but it’s actually a pretty simple tactical problem. There’s only a couple things you can do with something that bad. But what if, God forbid, there was a low yield use in Europe tomorrow? Or what if? What if there was a demonstration of a nuclear use or a nuclear test? Or what if? What if we had to adapt the Indo PACOM regional fight we were doing because a nuclear power had a red line, and we couldn’t fly in certain areas. These are the kind of things that our war fighters, need to understand from the beginning. It doesn’t need to be just kind of at the presidential level with no other discussion. I was at Nellis about maybe a month and a half ago, and I got a briefing from the ICBM weapons instructor course instructors, which is something that when I was instructive weapons school, we didn’t have. It’s pretty, pretty impressive. But one of the things they do is they integrate these kinds of things into all of our different weapons, weapons school instructional goals. So, what does it mean if you’re flying through this area and there’s a radiological threat, what does it mean to airplane? How can you do this? So, I think at all levels, we need to build that experience, not just at the tactical level and not just at this strategic level. Thanks.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Let’s go a little higher and way higher. Actually, I’m going to open this question to all of you, but I’d like to start with you, Under Secretary Dalton, it’s really, it’s all about space that underpins many, many parts of the enterprise. So specifically, what is the US? Is space Force’s role in the department’s vision for the nuclear enterprise itself.

Hon. Melissa Dalton:

Thanks Doug, our Space Force operates, of course, our satellite constellations that are absolutely crucial to our nuclear posture. Our guardians are standing watch, 24/7, 365, to provide indications and warnings for potential launches. They may well be our first alert of an adversarial launch. So, they play an incredibly critical role here in this equation as we move forward. And you’ve heard this from Secretary Kendall and our Space Force leaders over the last couple of days, we need to be building an operationally resilient satellite architecture. One of the ways that we are doing that is an investment in the next generation OPIR capability to enhance the monitoring for both ballistic and hypersonic missile threats that will also be more survivable as we see other emerging threats presented by our potential adversaries. This is going to be a bridge to the proliferated Leo and Mio constellations for missile warning and missile tracking, but the benefit to highlight for next generation OPIR is when you have sensors in geo and polar orbits, it provides persistence and stair coverage that’s really quite crucial in adding strength and resiliency to our architecture, and in combination with the MIO and Leo proliferated constellations that we will be bringing online that’ll Allow us to defeat a variety of missile threats across the trajectory of the missiles from pre to post boost phases. And you know, this is all we’re moving forward with these investments because of the threat landscape. It’s against the backdrop, unfortunately, of the risky and irresponsible behavior that we see from the PRC and Russia in this space domain, they have demonstrated their capability to take down satellites out of orbit, and this can have deeply destabilizing effects when you bring the lens of our nuclear posture and the role that our satellites are playing for nuclear early warning. So again, just to underscore the vital role that our guardians are playing and the important investments that the Space Force is making in operationally resilient architecture.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Gen. Cotton just you know you work very closely with General Whiting as space comm commander. How’s that working?

Gen. Anthony J. Cotton:

Yeah, so first at the at the component level, though, ISR is incredibly important for us. Syndication and warning is incredibly important for us, but nuclear command, control and communications is even more important to us, and thanks to the guardians that are represented in the Space Force that provides that capability for us at STRATCOM, as well as the relationship that to your point that I have a Stephen whiting who has taken that early warning piece as part of his UCP now, and I don’t want to not over emphasize the importance of what the Space Force provides for us in regards of nuclear command and control and communication. So, thanks, continue to proliferate and have hardened systems out there. I see Mr. Covelli out there, off to the Off to the right those are the things that are going to be imperative for us, and that always gives us that leading edge as we look at our adversaries and what does our thin line, NC, three systems look like? Also understand that we have a new threat vector, and that threat vector is two adversaries that understand how important NC three is to us, right? So, so something that we may not have thought was a threat vector in the past is something that we are going to have to continually pay attention to in the future.

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere:

Yeah. So, I’ll just add in that the strategic deterrence force, the nuclear forces are underpinned by many, many different capabilities, services and commands. So, I can’t do my job for the nation in general, cotton without the professionals in the Space Force, whether that’s indications of warning or communications or understanding the fabric of the globe. I can’t do my job without the pros from Dover, from AFMC. I can’t do my job without the pros from Air Mobility Command. I can’t do my job without the pros from air Education and Training Command that develop, recruit and sustain our airmen and their capabilities. I can’t do my job without my brothers. Sisters and pack after you. Safety it is. It is a teamed effort across the board, and that’s total force, active duty, Guard and Reserve, little elements across the fabric of our department that have key and essential pieces to make sure our nation can do what we’re asked to do.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

We have about five minutes remaining. As usual, all panels go quickly, and there’s so much of a rich conversation. But I’d like to just get some, you know, some closing thoughts from each and every one of you. But I’d like to start with General Gebara, you know, some closing thoughts, some takeaways for our audience, especially regarding this nuclear imperative.

Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara:

Sure, I appreciate it. Before that do that, I would just say, could not be more shoulder to shoulder with My Space Force colleagues on the Air Staff and space staff and very everything we do is with them. We could not function the nuclear mission space without them. So shout out to my Space Force teammates. You know, I would just close by saying, as you, as you look at this gargantuan modernization task, there is a there’s a large swath of things to do, of course, but there is also a lot of goodness. I came back from Europe last week. We are well on our way to modernizing our NATO commitments in theater. We have airplanes in flight tests. Now we have cruise missiles and flight tests. Now that doesn’t mean that everything will be perfect, but we are well beyond the PowerPoint stage of this modernization task. We are not at IOC yet, but we have a lot of promise and a lot of great things going forward. I’m very thankful that, as I talked about for 30 years, you could have done this thing and nothing changed. It is very exciting to be at a time of consequence where you can be in a mission space that is so rapidly changing and so thank you very much.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Gen. Bussiere. Your takeaways?

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere:

Yeah, just I’ll end where I started saying thank you. Thank you to the Secretary and the chief and the senior leaders on the stage for what you do every day to support, enable and empower airmen that do this most important mission. And thank you for the conversation.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Gen. Cotton, final combat and command perspective, please.

Gen. Anthony J. Cotton:

Yeah, I’ll be really short. I think what’s important, because I see that we have our industry partners are also in the audience. You have to produce so I can present, produce so I can present, my job is to present forces to the president United States. You have to produce so I can present.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you. And Under Secretary Dalton closes us out with some final thoughts. Please.

Hon. Melissa Dalton:

Great. Well, it’s been a terrific discussion, and really appreciate the opportunity. Once again, meeting the nuclear imperative is not possible without three things, resources, leadership and commitment. On the resourcing front, we need timely appropriations. Congress is debating this week whether to implement a continuing resolution to keep the government open. Secretary Austin’s been very clear in terms of what those impacts would be of the CR in the short term for the nuclear enterprise to include delays to the B 21 program, and if it’s a six-month CR, we would see delays to the mark 21 are entry, vehicle, man three sustainment and the Sentinel Program. So, the stakes are pretty high. We need resources aligned and on time. Second is leadership. I mentioned the NPR direction to deliver safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent. It also talks about the deterrent being credible. And when we talk about credibility, we usually talk about it in terms of capability, and of course, that’s vitally important, but credibility is also about leadership, and the leadership to deliver that capability to the warfighter. And so, with the leaders here on stage and many others, the Department of the Air Force is committed to delivering modernized nuclear capabilities to the warfighter. Finally, commitment. We have a commitment to the American people and to our nation’s defense to provide a nuclear deterrent that will underpin everything. We have a commitment to our allies and the extended deterrence commitments that we’ve held for the past 70 years, and we have a commitment to our airmen and guardians to provide modernized capabilities to match the creativity and ingenuity that they are bringing to the mission every day. We have a once in a generation opportunity to get this right, and we cannot fail you.

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