Integrating Space to the Global Fight
March 4, 2025
Watch the Video
Read the Transcript
This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. Thank you very much, and congratulations to all of you who’ve hung in for the last panel of the day. I assure you, it will be the most interesting and warfighter-focused. It’s going to be a great panel that we have.
This past year has demonstrated, I think, to us clearly just how critical space capabilities are to modern military operations. From Iran’s missile attacks on Israel to ongoing operations across multiple theaters, Spacepower’s become an indispensable element of joint warfighting. The evolution of space as a warfighting domain has fundamentally changed how we think about military operations and regional security. The establishment of Space Force component commands across our geographic combatant commands represents a major shift in how we integrate space capabilities into theater operations. These components play a vital role not just in delivering space effects, but in building crucial partnerships with allies in their regions and partners and developing theater-specific tactics and procedures and ensuring space superiority where and when it’s needed.
The challenges these commands face are as diverse as their geographic regions from sophisticated counter-space threats in the Indo-Pacific region to electronic warfare concerns in the European Theater and near-constant missile attacks in the Middle East. Yet they share common challenges in areas like information sharing, force presentation, and multi-domain integration. Today we’re fortunate to have an outstanding panel of leaders who command Space Force component commands across multiple combatant commands. Leading us off is Lieutenant General Doug Schiess, Commander of Space Force’s Space and combined joint force Space Component Commander. Good to have you with us General Schiess.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
Thanks, sir. Appreciate it.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
And we also have General Anthony Mastalir, Commander of Space Forces Indo-Pacific Command. Coming to us from across the Atlantic, we have General Jacob Middleton, Commander of Space Forces Europe and Space Forces Africa. Welcome. And rounding out our panelist, Colonel Christopher Putman, Commander of Space Forces Central Command. Gentlemen, thanks for joining us. Let’s just jump right into some questions that I’d like you to address. As I mentioned in the introduction of threats and mission demands you face can vary significantly by region. I was wondering if each of you could maybe give a quick thumbnail outline on some of the specific space-related challenges you’re each dealing with in your respective AORs, and General Mastalir. Let’s start with you.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Yeah, thanks, General Chilton. First of all, thanks to the Air & Space Force Association for another outstanding symposium. Really, really glad to be here. We talk a lot in this venue about the increased capability that China is bringing in the space domain, both on orbit and then counter space capabilities. And that certainly is a challenge for us at Space Forces Indo-Pacific, but I’d like to expand briefly on that because China is also racing toward parity in all the other domains, and that’s an important distinction if you think about what General Wilsbach talked about earlier today in that he no longer talks about air superiority, he talks about air and space superiority because he needs both. In fact, I would say it’s space and air superiority because we need to establish space superiority first.
And the reason why that’s a challenge for us in the Indo-Pacific is exactly because China is racing toward parity in those other domains. So the other components, the air domain, the maritime domain, the land domain depend on the Space Force more than ever to provide protecting the joint force from space-enabled attack. So that’s a challenge that we have, all of us have, in terms of establishing that combat credibility, honing that warfighter ethos, but doing so in a way that we can protect those other components as necessary. So it’s a scale issue on one hand, and then it’s also ensuring that we’re able to meet that challenge across multiple domains.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. General Middleton, in your two AORs, you’ve got Europe and Africa, so you’re probably second biggest out there. Any specific challenges in your AOR?
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
Yes, sir. So I’ll echo what General Mastalir said, starting off with thanking AFA for another great event. The challenge for us, I’ll start off with a quick story that I know my folks have heard me tell before. I travel a lot and I’m on a transatlantic flight, and a guy a couple of rows in front of me, flight attendants coming through and asking, “Hey, would you like coffee, water?” And he’s like, “No, I would like Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi’s out.” Wi-Fi’s out for the flight and he’s upset. The interesting thing about that story is that he had no idea that was space and he didn’t care.
So the challenge I have echoing a little bit what General Mastalir said, is going through the components, every other component has a space dependency that they’re not tracking that they’re dependent on. So we’re taking a look at those plans, identifying those dependencies, and those dependencies become MySpace requirements to go back to General Cavoli and General Langley, and in some cases work with General Schiess and the service to satisfy. And so that is a big challenge working through two components, figuring out those dependencies. So I think that’s probably not unique, but it is a challenge.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Okay, thank you. General Schiess.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
General Chilton, thanks for being here. We all sit here because of the things that you did while you were in active duty.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
We appreciate it/.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Too kind.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
Thanks to the AFA. Thanks for sticking it out for the warfighters here at 4:30. I’m sure there’s some receptions you could all be at, or maybe I can’t tell if you’re out there or not. So are you out there? All right. Okay, good. So thanks for sticking that out. So sir, I think the biggest challenge that we have at S-IV-S in working for our main combatant commander, General Whiting at US Space Command, we have taken on some new responsibilities for US Northern Command with the new priorities of administration. But the biggest challenge is as General Whiting likes to say, being a supported and a supporting command, because we have to work with these gentlemen here and their teams, the women and men that work for them to ensure that their combatant commanders can get after what they need in their terrestrial AORs, while as General Mastalir talked about the fight in the counter space area, that will really be defining how we’re working in the INDOPACOM. So it is a supporting and supporting challenge to make sure, and that’s because we’re, as general Mastalir said, we’re protecting the joint war fighters from space-enabled attack. How do we do that? And if you heard the CSO yesterday, you heard him talk about the ability to degrade, deny and disrupt. And so we have to have that ability so that his components and the forces that he’s working for Admiral Poparo can get through the same with Jake here, and Tool. And so we have to do those things while we are also protecting or defending the assets that we have. And Air Marshal Godfrey was up here, and not just our assets but the assets of our allies while also continuing to deliver the space-enabled capabilities that we have done for decades to be able to do that.
So that’s the challenge we have there. The reason we have that challenge is because there are adversaries out there that are getting after it. My combatant commander, General Whiting, he’s changed from saying breathtaking speed from the Chinese to jaw-dropping speed. I don’t know what the next thing is that he will say, but it’ll be something else because they’re just getting after it. Right now, the Chinese are developing a kill web that puts our joint forces, our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Guardians at risk each and every day that are in the INDOPACOM theater. And Russia also is getting after the things that they can in this area, while we can never forget what’s going on in the central command area too. So it is a challenge each and every day to help these gentlemen do their job and also provide the effects that all of our warfighters need on a daily basis.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. Colonel Putman.
Col. Christopher Putman:
Thank you sir. And again, thanks to the AFA for hosting this event and certainly the fellow members here on the stage. I think from a challenge perspective is just the nature of the fight in CENTCOM. I think everyone knows the Houthis are very active and who would’ve thought a couple years ago the Houthis would’ve been the first people to take an anti-ship ballistic missile shot at a US Navy warship. While that is a challenge, it’s also an opportunity for us to integrate space across all the domains and all the warfighters, get our sets and reps in on a somewhat smaller scale against a very dynamic enemy. The Houthis are evolving very rapidly. But we can get our sets and reps in across all the components to include space and working with Spacecom. And then the opportunity here is we can take that, learn, scale it up and share those lessons learned with General Mastalir and General Middleton. So it’s definitely a challenge, but I see opportunity there as well.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great, thanks. And I’m going to reverse the order here and come back right back at you. This spectacular defense of Israel that we saw last year was a clear integration of space and air power and missile defense all brought together in an integrated fashion. It takes me back to Desert Storm, really the first time we saw theater missile warning being used to provide warning for Scud attacks and help counter that threat, and those were onesies and twosies. This was an incredibly large attack that was blunted. Can you talk a little bit maybe from the CENTCOM perspective? Your space component worked there, the lessons learned, if you will, from how we got to where we are and what maybe we need to be thinking about in the future?
Col. Christopher Putman:
Yes sir. As a captain, I was at the AOC in 2003 for the last time this happened, working for General Mosley, we had single-digit missiles. Fast forward to the twenty-twenties, this was a significant increase, and I don’t think our ability to react got that much better between 2003 and last year. But the delta between April and October was light years of improvement, and I don’t think we could have done that without having a component back at home and a component in theater that solely focused on the space mission, able to provide feedback directly to the component back home to implement the changes on their end that directly impacted our abilities to defend, again, in October.
So it’s with no great amount of foresight that General Saltzman decided to put the components out there. It is definitely paying off in combat today as you outlined. The other thing I’ll add is it gives General Crill, in our case the combat commander, someone to ask directly questions about space and how that impacts the war fight. Before they would have to go to the air component, and he has a whole bunch on his plate, and in my opinion, he just didn’t have the time to dedicate the proper amount of resources as he should to the space domain. And we now have that single component, so then I can pick up the phone and call General Schiess.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. General Schiess, your perspectives.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
Yes sir. I’d actually go back to the first night when Russia started their attack into Ukraine and the number of missiles that we saw at that time, we had never seen those amount of missiles either. And I had been at Tool’s seat in the CENTCOM CAOC before where there was five missiles or something to that effect, and we were really, really good at that and watching that. And then you go into the April attack and the fact that you have missiles headed towards one of our allies and then we have our own and allies shooting back at those missiles, and then kinetic events as those missiles all being registered by our overhead. The 11th I think won the award earlier today. They left to go to reception I think. Oh wait, they’re there. But the activities that they and their other combat squadrons that were working those nights provided outstanding support to CENTCOM.
But as Tool said, him and I were on the phone a couple of those times trying to figure out how we could get what General Corilla needed, and we did an after action on the April and realized there was things, and that’s when I went to General Miller at SPOC, the organized training equip, and said, “Hey, what are the things that we can do from a TTP perspective?” And just outstanding Guardians went to it and they came up with things that we could do. There also were some great acquisition folks that said, “Hey, we’re pretty close to some theater, auto-release things that we can do. Can we take some risk in these areas?” And then I went to my combatant commander and said, “Hey sir, we’ve got to be able to do this so that we can get after what General Corilla and Colonel Putman need to do.”
And so what is that? Six, seven months there, and we put all that together. We need to now take all of those things that we did there, make sure that we can be better for if there’s another thing, but get ready for what will be an even more incredible amount of missiles if we get into a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, or again in the European area. So great work by Guardians, great work. The teamwork like Colonel Pubman said, to have the component there in theater to be able to speak to that combatant commander, and then the connection between the two of us, I think, is what really got us to where we were to be able to get after what both combatant commanders needed them to do.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. You said something there that got my attention about, I can only imagine there was a lot of hand jamming of between, even at CENTCOM, between the information you’re getting in on the incoming missiles and tasking, who’s going to address which tracks, et cetera. You see an opportunity there for some automation going forward.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
Oh, definitely sir. And as we work with SPOC and Space Systems command to get after the next generation, I mean, I think someone I was on another panel was talking about FORGE and how we can get to better capabilities. But yes sir, AI. And you know this, sir, from a ITWA standpoint of making sure that we are always ready to be able to tell the Secretary of Defense and the president if they’re under attack, or that North America is under attack, taking that challenge, but then also getting to what we need to be able to do at the geographic combatant commander. And so taking whatever we can, AI, ML, TTPs to be able to get after that so that we can do both at the same time is very important.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
If I could just add one part, which when you think about the lessons learned and listening to what happened, it behooves all of us to say, “Hey, are we training and exercising to the right level? So I have to look at INDOPACOM and Space Forces Indo-Pacific, am I ensuring that those Guardians that are performing these missions, that I’m stressing them in the right training scenarios and the right exercises that we have that built in so that we don’t face something like that that we’re not prepared for. And that’s the commander’s responsibility. So that’s something that we all, I think, from a lessons learned perspective have to go back to our components and our combatant commands and make sure that we implement.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. Thanks. General Mastalir, I’m going to keep picking on you here. Ed Mitchell, the Mitchell Institute, we are constantly advocating for congressional support, executive support to increase the manning of the Space Force. And it’s not just because we need more people in uniform, we need more people to be doing the things that need to be done. For example, how big is your component command in INDOPACOM?
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Yeah, so we started with 21 Guardians when we activated. We had 20 at PACAF. Remember we were all Airmen at the time embedded in the AOC or across the air component, and we have now doubled in size a couple of times. But what we started with we knew was not going to be enough to sustain the growth that we need to achieve. We have roughly, this year we’ll bring on about 80 uniformed Guardians. And when you think about some of the other embeds that we have, LNOs, number of Air National Guard folks that are on NPA days supporting us, especially providing some of those unique skill sets that we don’t have in the Space Force, we’re pushing a little bit closer to a hundred.
Now, what I’ll tell you is when we’ve done all the mission analysis, and we have now about 10,000 hours of mission analysis that has gone into this, including bringing out Transcom’s JECC team, the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command, that went methodically through the battle rhythm of INDOPACOM, looking at all of the touch points, we have built baseball cards for every single position that we need on the staff to understand what are the inputs, what are the outputs, where is this Guardian contributing to the joint force in this particular environment? And you roll that up into a programming plan across Space Forces Indo-Pacific, and across Space Forces Japan and Korea, which are also under my flag, you’re looking at a headquarter size of somewhere between 400 and 500.
Now, we don’t have a program in place to get to that, but we’ve defined what right looks like based on the level of integration that’s going to be necessary to achieve success.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
And that number may shock some people. But having worked in AOC and exercises in the head of the CAOC, I don’t know how you do it with a smaller number than that, particularly if you’re going to go to 24/7 operations in a conflict.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
That doesn’t get us to 24/7, so at that point you need space planning teams, which is the beginning of a surge model for the Space Force, but you need that additional support to flow in. I’m talking steady state operations just to integrate during competition and then in the ramp up to crisis or conflict.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
And can you maybe give the audience some examples of the disadvantages of not having the right number of people in this phase, not even in 24/7 ops?
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Well, and think about some of the critical missions that we’ve moved to space. So when you think about MTI, space-based MTI, when you think about bringing PWSA, Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, the transport layer, missile warning, missile track, link 16 from space, none of these are going to be ubiquitous at the onset. So we’re going to need Guardians tasking these systems and understanding what the priorities and objectives are at the combat and command level and being able to integrate those with the global provider. And Jake hit on something earlier in his comment, which is really important. It’s understanding the space dependencies. And right now, I would venture to say that most joint warfighters don’t truly understand all of the space dependencies, for example, to achieve a PK on an LR-SAM.
So when you see an environment in the space domain that’s degrading because the adversary is taking shots at you and now you no longer have the blue space at 100%, you have to be able to model that degradation and report back to those other commanders and say, “Hey, your LR-SAM, it may close, but not during these hours. So when you go back to your planning cell, when we’re planning that strike, we need to shift it if you want the PK to close on that particular target.” Now, if the space component doesn’t bring that to the joint force, who’s going to bring that?
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
No one will.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
So that’s something that the Guardians have to get after, and I’ve been working a lot with a number of different organizations that are currently building those models, but we have to get them into the theater so that the war fighters have access to that data.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, thank you. General Middleton, how about from your perspective? Have you got a new command there?
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
Well, the first thing that we do is we steal everything from Chachi that he’s doing and what everybody else is doing. I mean, he has all the scar tissue, so there’s no need for me to take that beating. So we’re running the same thing, we’re taking what he’s doing and we’re just adapting. But what I will answer is that last question, when there’s a resource limitation, where does it hurt? And it hurts in accurately exercising what it’s going to look like if we get into conflict. I’ll give you one example here. We’re briefing up the chain as all the components are briefing up the chain, and each component, and I won’t say which component, but they’re briefing that part of this, and it’s a great plan. And whatever they didn’t cover, they have a slide and up in the corner there’s a satellite that says Space with a circle around it. And whatever they couldn’t do Space was going to do. And I didn’t say anything, but I’m looking at this slide, I’m like, “Yeah, dude, that’s not going to happen.” We’re not going to do that.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Not resourced to do it?
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
We’re not a resourced to do it, you don’t understand Space. And so the challenge we have is that we have to add realism into the exercise. And so as we do that, what I’ve been doing is going to the other components and then they say, “Hey, here’s your space dependency. What do you want throughout this span of this conflict? What do you want us to invest in that you want to see around the entire? And then what are you want willing to pay for? Not just money and bodies and research, you have some empty space I can use. Do you have some desk space, some computers?” So it’s not just an understanding piece, but it gets them invested in getting after the campaign objectives. So in addition to what Chachi is saying, that’s where I see the biggest challenge with limited resources.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. Colonel Putman, you’ve probably got some scar tissue here. Wishing you had more people at certain times?
Col. Christopher Putman:
Yeah, for sure. Two things on the people in CENTCOM, it’s all about the five meter fighting. A lot of the work that these two gentlemen have done of building the organization, I just haven’t had time to do because I’m focused on the exact opposite. I’m focused on the 24/7 on the current fight. So it just is what it is, and that’s why we share lessons learned across each other. I think one thing I’ll add where the lack of people’s really hurting me is the international engagement piece. When I took over this job from General Mastalir, I had no appreciation for how deep the international engagement demand signal was going to be in CENTCOM. We think of Five I’s and the traditional folks, but there’s a deep desire to become space baring nations in CENTCOM, I just don’t have the people to go out and do the international engagement and maintain those relationships as I should be. And we’ll see what the effects are down the road, but it’s really hurting us by not having enough people to maintain those relationships.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, you got to build trust and partnerships in phase zero so that you can have them by your side and effective in phase two, three and the rest of the fight. It’s a great point. It’s not just about building a plan and practicing it, there’s so much more to the component commander’s responsibilities, and Chachi, you must be, I mean with Japan, Korea, you have a huge AOR to traverse and a lot of people to interact with.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
Well, so Tool brings up a great point with the international engagement and that’s why our S-Five is almost always on the road engaging with other nations. The other unique aspect that probably something we didn’t think about when we were Dyrspace IVs and that we didn’t have to deal with at least in Indo-Paycom and probably certainly in EUCOM as well, is you have a lot of folks that want to bring capability and bring kit and demonstrate, and that’s good because we need those ideas. But it got untenable to a point where Admiral Paparo signed out, we call it the one voice for space memo, which is if you are going to bring something into this AOR to demonstrate, to test, maybe leave behind whatever, great. But please, if it’s space related, coordinate with my space component commander so that we can get our arms around what’s going to the Pen, what’s going to Japan, what’s coming into Oahu, what’s going to be put out at various ACE locations. How are we going to bring this capability in so that we have some understanding and we can integrate it along with Indo-Paycom processes to make sure that we de-conflict properly.
So we want vendors to come in and demonstrate their wares and bring their ideas, and they’re doing it, but it’s helpful to have the component be that front door, if you will, when it’s space-related. And those are activities that as a DURAspace four, none of us would’ve ever thought about doing. But it is a constant steady stream and I’m thankful for this, but of vendors and defense industrial base representatives that want to meet and talk about the capabilities that they’re going to bring to the AOR.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great, thank you. Cross-domain support’s pretty important in the joint fight, that’s why we fight jointly. I think I reflected back on readings of OIF and how that was done and how the air, land and sea component in that particular fight trained together before the fight started, worked very closely together, and as a result they were able to help solve each other’s problems when the balloon went up and things started happening. So whether you call it cross-domain operations or helping each other out in your various roles, so when you think about space, space is just not all up in the vacuum. There’s cyber portions of it, there’s terrestrial portions of it, socio-dependencies that our adversaries have, et cetera. I’d like to hear your thoughts on how you’re working with the other components on how they can support your mission, which is to gain and maintain space superiority. So we’ll start at this end and work our way back.
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
So two thoughts on that. First, back to the lack of people, my number one priority as soon as I can get a few extra folks, is to have an LNO embedded at R-Sent Nav-Sent, et cetera, across all the components. with everything else we have to do right now, I just don’t have the bandwidth to do that right now. I think I’ll give you an example of that cross-domain integration. We had a carrier come in from the Pacific. I got on the phone, talked to the skipper, and before they got into the AOR, we flew a team of Guardians and Soldiers, because I’ve got Soldiers on my team, out to the carrier.
They spent a few days planning the operation and just building that knowledge of what the carrier strike group could bring and what Spacent can bring. And just the operations thereafter were just, I don’t want to call them flawless, but much better than I’ve ever seen before. And that’s a relationship you have to nurture and continue to work at because we had another carrier come in later on that we just, for a whole host of reasons, we didn’t have the opportunity to fly out there and sit on the boat with them, and it didn’t go as well. So you have to work at it and you have to work really hard to build that understanding across the…
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
And you bring up a great point. I know in OIF, my good friend General Dan Leaf was the LNO over at the land component, and so you can’t just send an inexperienced person over there. You got to send someone over there that really understands what space can and cannot do and embed them in each of the components to be effective. Again, an argument for increased manpower for the Space Force in your particular areas. General Schiess.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
Yes, sir. From our perspective, I put this into three different areas. One is the other components of US Space Command and how we, I think people may not know that there is an AFSPACE out there, which is First Air Force. I know my buddy, Luke’s torch is not in here, but there is components from all of the other services and they are bringing some kit to US Space Command. And I think all of us have been designated either, I wish we’d come up with the same name, but we’re all either the CGFSCC or CFSCC, or T whatever for our combatant commands. And so that’s responsibility for me for a joint planning process to bring them into our planning because General Whiting expects us to do that. They bring different capabilities. I have some tactical control of some other service capabilities, and so we have to work together with them to do that.
What’s great when you mentioned cyber, two of the other components, they’re not only the space component but they’re also the cyber component. So space is NAVCYBER, MARFOR space is MARFORCYBER. So that brings another capability that we can then work together. And then of course until the Space Force stands up a cyber component, 16th Air Force is their AFCYBER to support US Space Command. So we have to work across all that. So that’s one area. The second is I have to work across all of these gentlemen too, because pretty soon all of the electromagnetic warfare assets are going to be with them. And so that’s great, but we have an AOR and my command commander says when they fire into the AOR, we need to coordinate that. That doesn’t mean that we get into a shooting war, then they’re going to have all the ability to do whatever they need to do for their combatant commander. But I also might need some of their electromagnetic warfare fight for what’s going on in the space fight. So we’ve got to work across each of us here to do that.
And then lastly, and I’ll bring this up, I think we had a question but we ran out of time, is they’re working with all of the other nations that are in their AOR. But then again we are as well from operational Olympic Defender, and so working with the UK, their national SpOC and the CANSpOC and the AUSSpOC, then now Operation Olympic Defender is now also France, Germany, and officially today New Zealand as well. And so that adds more complexity into that conversation. And I think my buddy Chris Gardner might be out here somewhere, but Chachi, him and I were on VTCs and he’s getting out of his caravan there somewhere in Australia to get on a VTC with us. But we had to coordinate all of that to make sure all of our national leaders were ready to go. So it’s all of those things together to make sure that we can get the mission done for our national leaders.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, pretty complicated. General Middleton.
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
Yes sir. So like what General Schiess said, I don’t think across any components, but definitely not in UCOM and AFRICOM, what we’d do without US Space Command. So that coordination is really important, I won’t rehash that. What we’re doing that may be a little unique, I’m not sure, within the component for UCOM and AFRICOM is that when it comes to basic intermediate and advanced targeting, we are leveraging not just all the components within UCOM and AFRICOM, but we’re leveraging Delta 7, the Space Force, the 1st Space Brigade, and we’re trying to set up a focal point here, well actually in Colorado Springs. So we get everybody’s interests, a lot like air, there’s a lot of space capabilities across the services so we can de-conflict but also integrate that capability getting after those objectives. But like General Schiess said, none of that will be effective as it needs to be without fratricide, without coordination across all the components.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great, thanks.
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
Yes, sir.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
So when I think about cross-component coordination, kind of two major cases, one of course is the Counter-C5ISRT mission thread and that’s dismantling the red kill chain. So when we talk about being able to protect the joint force from space-enabled attack, we have to ensure that space command that has capabilities that General Schiess has, Cyber command and all the services that bring kit to bear on that problem set that we understand is synchronized to the timing and tempo of the terrestrial force. We’re not going to fight in space for space’s sake, we’re ensuring that the actions that we take in space support the terrestrial warfighter in the scheme of maneuver necessary to achieve those objectives.
So that’s thing number one. Thing number two is when direct-descent ASATs roll out and they start firing into low earth orbit or even out to geosynchronous orbit, somebody has to project power and destroy those. Once the authorities are given, Space Command doesn’t have that capability. So that’s when we’re going to talk to folks in the other services at Indo-Paycom and say, “Hey, there’s a target we really need you to neutralize quickly because it is taking away the space capabilities that you depend on to close your blue kill chains.” So those are two, I mean, that’s where cross-component coordination becomes critical, and those are the two major use cases that I focus on.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. Being able to nominate those targets and get them to the top of the list and making sure everybody understands how important they are.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
And again, if the space component doesn’t bring that to the table, who is going to bring that?
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
No one.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
I can tell you, you think it happens, but it doesn’t. That is one of the roles that the Space Component plays in these combatant commands to ensure that the right attention is placed on those targets at the right timing and tempo.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
And sir, if I could?
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Please.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
I think that’s where we work really well together so that Chachi can go and say, “Hey, we will put it on our target list, he’ll put it on his target list and then we can talk to folks to make them understand that this is important not just for space’s sake, but for their ability to do their mission, their ability to get their munitions to where they need to be able to get them, but also protect their flight.” And I think that’s where we’ve seen in the exercises that we’ve been in that we can be the most effective working together.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Absolutely. It makes perfect sense, thanks. Let’s talk a little bit about commercial. We’ve seen Starlink being utilized in the Ukraine. I’m interested in how your commands are thinking about utilizing commercial, how you’re maybe utilizing it today in your exercises. And I’m particularly interested in whether or not you’re getting the overhead SIGINT support, the overhead IMINT support in a timely enough fashion to affect your battle rhythms when you exercise. So Chachi, let’s start with you.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir:
So, we’re all sharing this space, I think, to a certain extent. We have a pilot that we’ve been conducting several rounds with understanding how to provide that type of imagery from space, to what I’ll say is underserved users within the command. Because the reality is the combatant command, even Indo-Paycom, the priority user does not get all of the commercial imagery that it wants or needs. And some of that is just a function of the fact that we’ve developed muscle memory in terms of what we’re asking for when you think about NTM and other capabilities, we almost at some point say, “Well, that’s not a priority, we need to save that capacity for our priority targets.” When in reality commercial opens up that envelope quite a bit and brings a lot of capability that perhaps now some task force that’s planning a low-level op that wouldn’t think they could get that kind of imagery, even though it’s commercial, it may absolutely 100% satisfy their needs.
So understanding how to integrate that into a process so that at the J2C, we’re not running multiple processes, but we take full advantage of what commercial is able to bring to us. The other thing we’re working a lot right now, and probably not where you intended to go with this question, but we’re working a lot right now with commercial AI and understanding how are we going to build an AI-enabled headquarters? And this is something that’s happening at the Indo- Paycom level and is trickling down to all of the components. And I think that’s just another example of using new tools that allow us to help us do our job better, actually take some of the pain out of the manning issues in some cases. Because if you can do things AI-enabled that reduce that manning footprint necessary, or the number of man hours, that’s time that you can buy back. But those are two examples I have. I’m sure my colleagues have others.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, General Middleton, you’re right there in the sake of it in the European AOR.
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
So here’s what I would say. We have a legacy construct with MTM, very exquisite systems, limited. We have a priority scheme. Everybody’s priorities doesn’t get covered. What I’ve been telling folks is that if you have a requirement that’s not being covered by the priorities, you need to speak up and make that a requirement, validated requirement, so we can push on the system to cover more things. I think that’s the byproduct of the Space Force being created is that we can do more on the intel side, so the statutory side.
The commercial side of the house, there’s a reason why there’s no US internet command. My understanding is DARPA helped with that. If you’re looking at me to work the internet, I would be looking at military requirements and you would not have the capabilities you have today. Letting commercial take over that makes it difficult for our adversaries targeting scheme and provides a level of capability that’s not only beneficial to us, but beneficial across the globe. So I’m a big fan of commercial doing the things that they do, and we should be concentrating on things that are military unique requirements that only we can do. I know we’re running out of time, so I’ll stop talking.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s okay, we’re the last panel. What I was going to suggest is that, because you’re exactly right on the rack and stack of priorities for national tactical means, that there’s some more important users that can trump a tactical requirement, or even an operational requirement in time of conflict. And it just seems to me that utilizing commercial is the answer to that. We don’t need as exquisite of imagery, for example, to fight a fight, particularly at the operational level of war. But it gets back to who has tasking authority over those commercial satellites. You don’t want them going through the same vetting for prioritization. And so are we making progress there? Are we exercising that?
Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton:
We are. So I’ll say this. So we leverage TacSRT a lot, and so it’s just a Space Force contract mechanism where we put in requirements, the contractors bid on it and we get what we need in 72 hours or less. But to be clear, I don’t have a TacSRT requirement, I have an information requirement. I don’t need Intel. I need to be able to get information to the tactical level when needed, and I don’t need to go through the collection management process to do that.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That saves so much time. That’s right. General Schiess. Just a few final comments here folks, then we’ll wrap.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess:
Okay. Sir, I’d say on the commercial side, a little bit different than the other components here, and we’re trying to support them in that. The areas that I would talk about and they talked about TacSRT and our joint commercial office, we are really in the service trying to figure out how we do that better. Right now, it is an incredible thing that we use to be able to get after space domain awareness, to be able to get after other things, that we can go out to a marketplace and buy those things. And then we have to just figure out how we can do that for them so that that can be easier for them. And so the JCO is an incredible capability that we’ve just got to put all into. You talked about exercising, put that all into the processes there.
The other thing that we have too in S4S is the commercial integration cell where we have 16 companies now. That’s not enough, but 16 companies that have cleared folks at the top secret SCI level that are flying either SATCOM or maybe Imagers or SDA capabilities. And then we can provide them with threat-based information so that we can work together. Because we might see, much like some other things where if something happens in the commercial world that is really maybe a start to something that we haven’t known about and they can give us that threat and then we can provide that out to all those companies so that they can take the actions. And so that’s a work that we’re doing to be able to get after that and continuing to work how we bring in more commercial capability to get after whatever these individuals need for their combatant commanders or whatever general Whiting needs as well. So it’s an ongoing work, but we’re getting after it.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. I’m going to put Colonel Putnam in the unenviable position of being between the bar and closing comments there. So your last few remarks here.
Col. Christopher Putman:
Did you want closing comments or commercial?
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
No, no. Let’s wrap with this discussion on using commercial assets to support your fight.
Col. Christopher Putman:
Yeah, just real quick, I’ll give you an example. When we built the Humanitarian Relief pier in Gaza, TacSRT was where we went. We had daily products able to provide those at a not classified basis to everyone that had a concern there, and they were able to see what they needed to see at an easily disseminated product.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Good. So you’ve exercised it in real time?
Col. Christopher Putman:
Huge success.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Well that’s great. A great model maybe for our other components. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a treat to host this panel. These are four great leaders doing incredibly important jobs of integrating space in their combatant commands. And how about a round of applause for this panel? Thank you. Thanks for sticking it out with us.