Defending the Homeland

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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

All right, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a real pleasure to be with all of you this afternoon, especially to be in the presence of three such outstanding military officers and leaders who I have had the pleasure of working with for many years now. This session, as you all know, is about defending the homeland. The most recent National Defense Strategy has Defense of the Homeland as line of effort number one. Not surprising to anybody, as it always should be. We understand the importance, and we also understand that regardless of our presence around the world, regardless of our effectiveness as a military power, what we do with friends and allies, if we don’t defend the homeland, then we’ve failed. I would also argue that we’re in a time of change right now and a significant flux in terms of what it means to defend the homeland, perhaps as significant as the rise of the nuclear threat in the 1950s, maybe even all the way back to the British invasion. That’s the British invasion of 1812, not the Beatles invasion of 1964. What I’d like to do to start, though, is I’m going to start by briefly introducing these outstanding leaders to all of you, and then I’m going to ask each of you, once I’m done, is to give us your two- to five-minute elevator speech about your command and what it does, not just related to the homeland, but broadly as well. Okay? So I’m going to start with General Stephen Whiting. General Whiting is the commander of the United States Space Command. He’s a 1989 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He’s a career space operations officer, and he’s commanded at the squadron, the group, the wing, the numbered Air Force, the field command level, which is the equivalent of an Air Force major command, and now obviously is the third combat commander for the second iteration of U.S. Space Command. Next, General Gregory Guillot, also a 1989 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He’s a senior air battle management. He’s got nearly 1,400 hours of flight time, multiple combat deployments. He’s also commanded at the squadron, the group, the wing, and the numbered Air Force level. He is also most recently, before this recent command, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, so certainly steeped in all the challenges and threats we have in multiple AORs. Then finally, Lieutenant General Michael Lutton. Michael is the deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command. He is also a 1989 graduate, although that’s of Kent State University, but clearly 1989 was a good year. As I said, deputy commander of U.S. STRATCOM. He’s a career space and missile officer. He also is commanded at the squadron, the group, the wing, and the numbered Air Force. So gentlemen, welcome, and it’s great to be here. Okay, so again, let’s talk. I know many in this room know not only each of you gentlemen, but your commands, but this is also a professional development event, so I’m sure there are folks in the room, especially young and emerging leaders who may not know exactly what your commands are and what they do. So General Guillot, if we would start with you. Give us your two- to five-minute elevator speech about your commands, plural, and what they do.

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:

Thank you, and good afternoon, everybody. It’s great to be here. I think the first thing I would say about NORAD and NORTHCOM is, although it usually is set as one organization, it’s actually two different organizations with different chains of commands and a different set of authorities, but both focused on homeland defense. On NORAD, it’s the world’s only binational command, so the United States and Canada. It’s been established in 1958, and it’s adapted over the time as the threats have changed. NORTHCOM was established in 2002, and it’s more of a traditional geographic combatant command with a focus on homeland defense in all domains, whereas NORAD is just in the air and then maritime warning. NORTHCOM is in all domains and against all avenues of approach. We’re a little different than other geographic combatant commands in that we have very few assigned forces day to day because in the United States, the services retain the forces, which is different from other geographic combatant commands. So we have about 20,000 people, and with the exception of our headquarters, all of our forces are given to us. through the GIFTMAP process for operational needs. So like I said, we’re about 20,000 right now.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Okay. Thanks, sir. All right, General Whiting, if you would, please.

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting:

Yeah, thanks, General Thompson. Great to see you, and great to be on the panel with General Guillot and General Lutton. Space Command is a combatant command, just like General Guillo highlighted, and at our core, we have the same broad responsibilities, and that’s to defend American interests and plan, integrate, and execute U.S. military operations in our AOR. And our AOR begins 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface and extends up from there. So we are a geographic combatant command, just like U.S. Northern Command. Often, people refer to us as a functional or a global combatant command, like STRATCOM, and we do not in any way push back on that because we have responsibilities that in some ways are functional as well. But I like to speak of our mission in terms of three moral responsibilities, and those three moral responsibilities at a high level are, number one, it’s our moral responsibility to make sure we can deliver space capabilities to the rest of the Joint Force through all levels of conflict. The rest of the Joint Force, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the other combatant commands, are all sized with an assumption they’re going to have access to space through all levels of conflict. So we’ve got to be able to continue to deliver that through all those levels. The second moral responsibility is to protect and defend the constellations we have today against the threats that are now arrayed against us. Those threats are no longer future possibilities. They are operational realities. And the reality is that many of our constellations were not built for this environment we find ourselves in. So we’ve got to figure out how to use space capabilities, but also the rest of the Joint Force to help defend those constellations. And then third, our third moral responsibility is to help protect the Joint Force and the nation from space-enabled attack. We’ve talked a lot about China’s space-based tracking targeting system that they’ve built, the C5ISRT system designed to hold the U.S. Joint Force at risk. And then we can think about modern threats that Golden Dome is trying to defend against. Those are the kind of things U.S. Space Command has to help the rest of the Joint Force protect themselves against because those threats are so significant.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Thank you. So, General Lutton, people don’t automatically think of defending the homeland when they think of U.S. Strategic Command, but they should. How about talking a little bit about your mission and how it supports defense of the homeland?

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton:

I appreciate that, and it’s an honor to be here, represent the 41,000 joint team members of U.S. Strategic Command on behalf of Admiral Correll, our commander. And that’s a total force team, right? That’s active duty, Guard, Reserve, and our civilian teammates that make that mission happen. And it’s an honor to represent the alerted force, whether that’s our ballistic missile submarines that are at sea right now or our intercontinental ballistic missiles that are on alert right now or our teammates across other combatant commands. I think what I would underscore that’s been mentioned already that may not be well understood is combatant commands get their responsibilities through the unified command plan that’s promulgated down from the president. Each combatant command is specified to defend the homeland first and foremost. We have six additional responsibilities under that that range from strategic deterrence, nuclear operations, all the way to joint electromagnetic spectrum. We do that through the lens of deterring adversaries but also in defending the homeland.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, gentlemen, we could probably talk and spend an entire session talking about the threats, the threats that you recognize, that you exercise against, that you plan for, and actually conduct operations in consideration of every single day. But to do that, we would need the entire time allocated to the session and probably have to go to a classified level. At the same time, it’s important that the nation and the population understands what you face and what you prepare against. So if you would, just briefly maybe take your top two predominant threats, those that concern you the most, and describe those for the audience. General Guillot, please start.

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:

Thank you. And I would say that when NORAD was established, we had one threat, which was the Soviet Union, from one avenue of approach, which was from the north over the Arctic, and in one domain, the air. And they didn’t have ICBMs yet, so it was a gravity bomb with no standoff distance capable. Today we face four or more legitimate threats to the homeland from all avenues of approach and in all domains. But to answer your question, what are the two that I probably worry about the most, one is cyber. The cyber threat is the most persistent and present threat that we have. I’m often asked when doing congressional testimony, “What’s our next attack going to be?” And I say, “We are under attack right this very second in cyber,” from nation states and from proxies to them, into trying to get into all of our systems to the tune of hundreds of thousands to millions of attempts a day on not just our networks but on space comms and trans-comms and everybody else’s as well. So I think the cyber threat is one that we all need to always keep front and center. The other would be the advanced missile threat. ICBMs, hypersonics, both very critical threats that we need to face from more countries than just a few years ago. And those countries are advancing those capabilities significantly with countermeasures and ranges and maneuvering that make them very difficult to detect, track, and kill. But also the cruise missile threat is increasingly important. It’s one that the adversaries have and intend to use to break our military ability to fight and project forces forward and to break the will of our country to fight. So I would say those advanced missile threats in cyber would be the two that I spend most time being concerned about.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Thank you. General Whiting.

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting:

General Thompson, it dawns on me that if we had been sitting at the February 2019 AFA convention, wherever that was held, there would not have been a U.S. Space Command and there would not have been a U.S. Space Force. And the reason we have those two organizations today is all about the threat. And I would start by pointing to the single greatest potential threat that I worry about, which is the reported Russian nuclear ASAT. If Russia were to launch that, of course, it would violate the Outer Space Treaty that they’re a signatory to, but it would be an incredibly destructive and indiscriminate weapon that would hold all nation’s space capabilities at risk. And, of course, that’s just something that we wouldn’t want to tolerate, and so that’s my number one point concern. But more broadly, the second concern would be how fast China has fielded a suite of counter space weapons. That begins with cyber that General Gio well hit on there, constantly trying to probe our networks. But everything above that on the non-kinetic scale, including SATCOM jamming, GPS jamming, high energy lasers, direct descent ASAT weapons, co-orbital ASAT weapons. We’ve even seen demonstration of an on-orbit logistics and refueling capability, and China’s just moved incredibly fast. And so that would be the second threat I would highlight that causes most concern.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Thanks. General Lutton.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton:

I would echo both cyber and counter space, largely because of the temporal dimension, right, with respect to cyber space. The ability of cyber to disrupt or deny or degrade, that has a different temporal dimension, if you will, than a ballistic missile. Additionally, there’s potential ambiguity with cyber that is very much a focus of our command, right, in resolving ambiguity. And counter space, I would say the same thing, as far as how do you resolve that ambiguity to understand what is occurring in time and space, and is that a potential threat or not to our allies, partners of the homeland. So those two areas.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

All right, thank you. It’s hard to have a discussion these days about defending the homeland without sooner or later the discussion heading towards Golden Dome. And we know General Mike Guetlein’s responsibility is to develop and deliver that system, but it would certainly be delivered to combatant commands to conduct those operations. And as you all know very well, that’s the kind of thing you just don’t toss over the fence once you’re complete. So if you would, talk a little bit about what your interaction has been and how you foresee the development of Golden Dome in terms of your commands. General Whiting, if you would start, please.

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting:

General Guetlein’s just been a fantastic partner throughout this, in his new appointment leading the Golden Dome efforts. And so we’ve been fully engaged with his office. We have sent liaison officers to sit in the Pentagon with his team for months at a time to really make sure we’re as tightly connected as we can be. I would highlight that the President’s executive order on the Golden Dome was incredibly visionary, and it talked about some very specific space-based capabilities, talked about improved tracking from space. It also talked about space-based interceptors. And so we want to make sure that those capabilities, as they come online, can nest right into our overall command and control system, but more importantly, that those command and control systems can nest well with NORTHCOM and to other combatant commands as well. Because if you think about some of these modern threats, they’re going to launch in one AOR, combatant command, transit through space, and then ultimately NORTHCOM is going to have a huge role to help defend the American people from those threats. And all of that is going to have to work incredibly tightly together. And for that reason, when the Golden Dome was announced, Northern Command and Space Command joined together and went to the Pentagon and said, “Hey, we want to co-write the requirements document for the Golden Dome,” and we got an instant thumbs-up, and we delivered that on very fast timelines to make sure that General Gutlein understands what it is that we believe, in concert with all the other combatant commands, is needed for this system.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

General Lutton.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton:

Yeah, I think two parts. One, being a really good teammate for General Gutlein as he executes that mission. And so those capabilities that I would say are unique to our combatant command, as we can team with him, we bring those to the table and integrate with him. And then the other piece, just day-to-day within his organization, our three combatant commands are actually a part of an executive council that supports him in his role that he’s been tasked by the President to accomplish.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

General Guillot.

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:

Like both General Lutton and Whiting said, we have an incredibly tight relationship with General Gutlein and his team. Like Space Com, we’ve also put a liaison officer there to make sure that our command’s perspective is always understood, and General Guetlein just does a great job of reaching out to us to making sure that we’re on track. I think it’s important to frame the cooperation by illustrating that as soon as he was confirmed, the next day he flew to Colorado Springs and met with the two of us there, with Stephen and myself, and I outlined as the supported command for it what I thought we needed to get against all those advanced missile threats that I just described a few minutes ago, and the way that I hoped that we could approach the problem. And Stephen was there, of course, because so much of it involves space, whether in the detection or ultimately in the defeat. And the three of us left the room without any exaggeration, 100% aligned on what we thought Golden Dome for America should look like, the timeline, what should be emphasized first, what would be a follow-on capability. And then General Guetlein, to his credit, and his team have remained faithful to that and come back to us any time they’ve had to make a tweak because, you know, for whatever reason, to come back to us and say, “Does this still fit with what you think we need?” And the answer has always been yes. And therefore, I think that we’ll have demonstrable capability much faster than a lot of people think. When Golden Dome first was discussed, I think some thought it would be a 2040 Buck Rogers type of capability, and it’s not. It’s much closer, and a lot of the capabilities are there, and then I think Mike Gutlein and his team are doing a great job of tying it together for the Homeland Defense mission.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

That’s exactly right, and in fact, as many folks know, so much of an effective Golden Dome architecture certainly would be about defending the homeland, but I think if we had other combatant commanders up here on the stage, when you think about the required sensing network, the data fusion and movement networks, the command and control required to do effective defense of the homeland would also have great applicability for our joint forces out in other AORs. So Golden Dome is not just about–although it’s certainly key to defense of the homeland– it’s about so much more than that as well, and so much of that architecture would help for the entire warfighting enterprise of the United States. Okay, so we all know, and you know certainly, we talk routinely about military operations being a team sport. We start with the joint force and how we’re organized in that regard, but for all of you and really for every one of our warfighting organizations, there are other allies and partners and key folks that you depend on to help support your mission. They may be in the U.S. interagency. They may be other nations. If you would, how about talking about one or two of those key partners, be they inside U.S. government or allies, who help you and specifically support your mission as it relates to defending the homeland?

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:

General Guillot, if you’d start. Well, it would be hard to talk about partners without starting with Canada, as NORAD is by national command, as I mentioned earlier. But we have a couple of other geographic combatant command partners in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Greenland, and because Greenland is militarily administered by Denmark, we have a really great relationship with Denmark. And it shows the combatant command to combatant command relationships where General Grynkewich thinks that’s great, that for things to do with North America, I work with the Danish CHOD, and then for things that deal with NATO and the European continent, he does, and there’s never any friction, there’s just a lot of courtesy copies to make sure everybody knows what we’re doing. So we have great international partners. The two gentlemen here show the great combatant command partners. I think later on we might talk a little bit about how we try to share and help each other out in that regard. And then just really quickly, NORTHCOM is a little bit unique, and we have probably more interagency representation inside of our combatant command than others because it was born to synchronize all homeland defense activities, and one of the most important aspects of that, in my opinion, is making sure that there’s not a seam between homeland defense, which I define as military capability from the border outward to protect the United States, and homeland security, which is loosely defined as from the border inward by largely law enforcement and the interagency. So therefore, to make sure that there’s never a seam between homeland defense and homeland security that our adversaries could exploit, we have about 20 interagency partners, SES level, inside of our building with access to their leadership and then access to our command leadership to work all these issues and make sure that nothing can navigate or establish a seam between homeland defense and homeland security. So I would say interagency is extremely important there, and also in our DISCO role, Defense Support to Civil Authority. In our nation’s worst time, whether it’s a man-made or a natural disaster, and the local or federal authorities don’t have the capability to respond, they can ask the Secretary of Defense, who will task us to provide that capability. And we have that on an XOR, not through the regular GIFMAP process, so we can respond extremely quickly with the other elements of the interagency and local and state forces and entities to make sure that we respond in a DISCO role.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Thanks. General Lutton.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton:

Yeah, I think I would bin it probably into two to three areas. Our headquarters has Allied team members on the headquarters staff, so Republic of Korea, Japan, UK, and Australia. We’re looking to grow that. We expect to grow that a little more this summer, and we think that’s integral. We think that’s integral to deterrence. Additionally, we have great joint teammates across the combatant commands. And then as far as partners, I really think it’s our defense industrial base, our industry partners, that are critical to what we do, and then our national labs and interagency partners. And for us, interagency is really the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Yeah, and that’s another element of U.S. Strategic Command that so many people don’t understand is partnerships with nations who are close allies who don’t themselves have nuclear weapons, and one of the reasons is because they trust us and have that confidence that we provide the deterrence that they need so they don’t need to develop their own nuclear forces. So that’s an important aspect of defending our partners and allies, our homeland, and the job that Strategic Command does. General Whiting, how about Space Command?

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting:

Yeah, this idea of working well with all the stakeholders is so important that at U.S. Space Command this year, we’ve designated 2026 as our year of integration to really drive some deliverables about how we improve our ability to work with all these stakeholders. We’ve already been talking about the great cross combatant command work, so let me focus on two areas. One is internationally. Our closest space partners are represented in Operation Olympic Defender, which is our named operation in space, and we have a multinational force for that Operation Olympic Defender, and I’m wearing the patch on my left shoulder right now of that operation. But working together with France, Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, we are executing on-orbit operations. We’ve talked about three of those that we’ve done over the last 18 months or so. We’ll be talking about some more in the future as those continue to come to fruition. But working together, we’ve developed CONOPs on space domain awareness, on the defense of orbital assets, missile warning. We’re going to be working navigation warfare, but just continuing to advance our ability to operate at seven nations who are committed to ensuring that space remains a place that all of our countries can operate for all the benefits that we derive from it. And then the second partner that I would highlight is our interagency partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office. Most in this audience will know that they operate a fleet, a big fleet of satellites that provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance on behalf of the nation. Well, we’re the beneficiaries of a multi-decadal process of working very, very closely between the joint side of DOD as well as with Space Force, and now with NRO to cooperatively protect and defend those assets. And we do that from the National Space Defense Center predominantly. But I’m continually in dialogue with the director of the NRO, Dr. Chris Scalise, fantastic partner. His team is in our battle rhythm, every battle rhythm event we have. And then at the NSDC, we’re planning those operations together. And there’s just no daylight between us, very proud of that relationship and how we’ve built on the great success that we’ve had now for many, many years.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Excellent, excellent. General Whiting, let’s stay with you. You talked about it, cross-command support. General Guillot talked about it as well. How about each of you now talk specifically about the capabilities that you bring to support the other two commands, not just in their role of homeland defense, but more broadly?

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting:

Yeah, thank you. You know, being the third commander of this iteration of U.S. Space Command, as you highlighted, DT, you know, I inherited some very smart choices that were made early on. I think one of the smartest was we took about 100 billets that would have otherwise been in our headquarters and we decided to put those in liaison elements and all the other combatant commands. And we call those a JIST team, a Joint Integrated Space Team. So, you know, next door at Building 2, down at Peterson Space Force Base, and then at Offutt Air Force Base, we have a team that is assigned to U.S. Space Command but sits persistently with these other combatant commands to make sure that at the headquarters-to-headquarters level, there’s no daylight between us as General Gio or General Lutton and Admiral Correll are doing their combatant command planning, that we have our representatives right there to inform them of what Space Command can do and make sure our plans align. So very proud of that, and we try to leverage that for best use each and every day. Additionally, we have our Combined Space Operations Center out at Vandenberg Space Force Base under our Space Force component, U.S. Space Force’s space, that is continually working to fulfill the space support requests of other combatant commands, and those typically come through the Space Force components of those combatant commands. And I know General Guillot just recently stood up his Space Force component, so again, tying us closely together. And then at a mission level, the two areas I would highlight, on behalf of General Lutton and Admiral Correll and U.S. Strategic Command, we’ve got a big role to play in fulfilling the space-based portions of NC-3 and the Integrated Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment system and making sure that STRATCOM can connect to their forces and ensure that the President can connect to their forces using space-based capabilities. And similarly, on behalf of General Gio and NORTHCOM, we’ve got to be able to assure global missile warning through that ITWAA system. That’s one of the unique features of the U.S. military, and we do that in concert with Canada, Australia, and the U.K., that any missile launched anywhere on the planet, we are detecting that immediately and providing that warning to fielded forces, but also up through ultimately the Missile Warning Center and then up to General Gio so he can make the assessment of whether North America is under attack. And so that’s a vital part of that moral responsibility that we owe that to General Gio to make sure that he has that data so he can make the best decision possible.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

General Lutton.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton:

Yeah, I think what General Whiting– I would just underscore on the nuclear command control communications, obviously, unbelievable teammates with U.S. Space Command on that, and U.S. STRATCOM as a mission partner with U.S. Space Command is an unbelievable consumer and user of space capabilities. So that is critical for our mission, and the integration between our two combatant commanders, I think, is critical to defend in the homeland. With respect to NORTHCOM, we realize we operate within General Guillot’s AOR, right? So if we go outside of one of our main support bases within Global Strike Command, whether it’s a bomber base or an intercontinental ballistic missile base, we’re actually in his AOR. So the teamwork and the integration and the site pictures that we have there, I think, is critical. That’s also true of our SSBN force when they’re going from the dock to the dive point, going out to sea, it’s working together as joint teammates to ensure that they can be effective and get out to sea or get the weapons out to the launch facility to get those sorties on alert and deter potential adversaries.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

All right, thanks. General Guillot.

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:

Well, the three of us have not only worked together for decades, but we’ve been friends for decades, so it’s great to be up here with them. But I think that transcends into our headquarters and to our commands daily. We look to make sure that we’re really good teammates, and I’ll be honest, I think in the Homeland Defense Mission we probably receive more than we provide to these great teammates, but I think we do provide some good for them. One is we want to make sure that we are protecting their assets that are critical infrastructure. So obviously we don’t defend anything in space, but we certainly have on our list of things to defend on Earth many of General Whiting’s capabilities that we need to make sure are protected against the adversaries. And the same thing for General Lutton, and I’ll also throw General Reid in as well for TRANSCOM, knowing that if there’s any crisis, that not only do we have to defend the traditional targets, but we need to make sure that those bases can conduct their operations to move strategic forces or transportation forces, mobility forces around the world. So that’s what we try to do is to make sure that we’re defending our teammates there. In the nuclear C2 world, I’d say that we try hard to be good teammates to STRATCOM, and we back them up in several vital areas. We remain trained and proficient in certain roles that we might pick up if General Lutton and Admiral Corell need us to. And, of course, we hope we never have to do that, but if the need is there, I want them to have confidence that we can pick up that role for a short period of time for them until they reestablish the ability to do that. And then I think General Whiting’s command and ours have really found some new capability where we can share assets instead of providing an asset for one or the other. And if you look at LRDR, which is a capability that I think was largely developed to help with the missile defense for us to track and guide interceptors, but it has a lot of space capability. And, in fact, it became operational in its space role before it did in our ballistic missile defense role, and I’m totally fine with that. We’re looking for more ways where we can do that, find capabilities that we might have that might help General Whiting in his global space awareness and space defense mission. And there’s not a single event that goes on of any consequence where we don’t call each other and say, “Hey, do you need anything? I know you guys are working that. Is there anything that we can do?” And it’s really valuable having that teamwork from these two guys and their commands.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

Okay. So General Whiting and General Guillaume, if we assume a standard commander tour length of, let’s say, three years, both of you are probably closer to the end of your tour than the beginning. If you would, two things. Perhaps the one thing that you’re most proud that your command has accomplished during your tour, and the second is, is there one big thing–I’m sure there’s more than that– one big thing you hope to get accomplished inside your commands before it’s time to say, “Thanks,” and move on to the next thing. General Guillot, why don’t we start with you?

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:

I think that what I’d like to–well, first I’ll go on the success. Sorry. I think that we have established in not only our command but with other commands, General Grynkewich and Admiral Papparo in particular, a culture of sharing capabilities and making sure that we’re helping each other, combatant command to combatant command, in ways that probably haven’t happened before. And I think if you look back over time, there was a reputation, whether it was real or warranted or not, that combatant commands would say, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours should be mine,” and we haven’t taken that approach. So Indo-PACOM, NORTHCOM, and UCOM routinely share resources, which, one, keeps the pressure on the enemy without a new set of forces coming in to pick up just because they cross a line on a map. And it also helps the services because now the services only generate one of that type of capability that can be just transferred with C2 across the line. And this is all legal within the GIFTMAP rules. We can do that. We inform the secretary, but we can do it for up to 30 days, and we do it routinely. And like I was saying, the services benefit because they only generate one capability instead of two or three, and then the others can be building readiness or supporting joint warfighting in another way. So I’m really proud of that, and I think the three of us feel that some of that is personality and the events of the day that drive that, and so we’re trying to capture that between the commands in a written way so our successors already have that in place where we can do that very freely. What I’d like to do is see that transcend a little bit more into campaigning, and I think this is where the services, and in particular the Air Force, would benefit from this, where if we can do cross-combatant command campaigning, it certainly sends a deterrent message that will be very important. It will help each of our combatant commands with our readiness, but it also helps the services with readiness for a very short period of time. They can work with multiple combatant commands in a lot of mission areas, gain some mission focus, and then go back to training for other missions without the fear of an extended deployment. So we’re looking to tie cross-combatant command cooperation in with campaigning, and that’s something that I certainly hope that we have wrapped up before I, unfortunately, have to leave the position.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

General Whiting.

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting:

General Thompson, you know how there’s this stereotype that often in military planning that at the very end space and cyber get sprinkled on, and maybe that’s because the classification level is such that in the primary planning you couldn’t talk about it, maybe it’s because people who are doing the primary planning haven’t had the opportunity to serve in those areas and so they don’t understand it. I can tell you today, and this is not something I in any way take credit for. It’s been a long journey, but certainly I think we’ve contributed here at the end, hopefully. When we’re in now the tank or when we’re in combatant command level meetings, it is routine that somebody like General Guillo or General Lutton or Admiral Correll or Admiral Papparo, they are the ones leading the discussion about space and how integrated space is now into their mission. In some of our mission areas, it is the first thing we talk about, and it is the go/no-go for success for the whole joint force. And so I’m very proud that these days that it just gets sprinkled on at the end, I think those are by and large behind us. There are certainly pockets we’ve got to keep knocking down, we’ve got to do better on security, but really hardened when I go into these meetings now. We’re not convincing people this is important. They are often leading with it like, “Hey, Whiting, I need this from you,” or, “Hey, we’ve got to hear what General Whiting has to say about this,” because it’s fundamental to their mission as well. And then the thing I want to get accomplished this year is really to execute on this year of integration. As we think about space as a team sport and all the stakeholders internationally across the combatant commands and the joint force, the interagency, commercial, academic, how can we really drive those relationships forward? And so in December, as I’ll be culminating probably my time, that I can look back and say, “Yeah, we really left this in a better place than we inherited it.”

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

General Lutton, you’re early in your tenure, both you and Admiral Correll. Have you gotten your marching orders from him? Have you figured out what your first big thing is? How about talking about what’s on your radar is the big thing to do at least early in your tenure?

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton:

Yeah, I think for me as the deputy, the commander has laid out several imperatives. The first two that I really look at are operationalizing emerging technologies. Two examples of that, if there are any folks in the room from Air Force Materiel Command and Rapid Sustainment Office, right? We’re looking at things like additive manufacturing and how do you integrate additive manufacturing into the supply chain, in particular coming from the air component Global Strike, to get at what the chief is talking about with fixing aircraft. We do it in the commercial sector. We do not do it on scale, at least with the assets in Global Strike Command. So the boss is looking at that. Emerging technologies in general I just use additive manufacturing. And then I would say on the higher end, artificial intelligence. How do we deliberately, responsibly integrate artificial intelligence into our business? We’re going to do it. We are doing it. And having that site picture where that is going to require significant integration with our universities, our national labs, and our industry partners. So that is the first one. The second one is driving strategic integration, and that is both kinetic, non-kinetic, nuclear, and non-nuclear. The threat picture demands it. The country demands it. And defense of the homeland requires it.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

All right, gentlemen, we’re coming to the end of our time here. I’m sure everybody is going to take everything away that you all said, but if, in fact, they’re going to leave this room with one thing, maybe it’s something you’ve already talked about, maybe it’s something that we should be talking about more, your final message to this group and to the entire– not just Air and Space, but joint force, what would be that one thing that you want this audience and the rest of us to know as we walk out of this session? General Guillot, why don’t we start with you?

Gen. Gregory M. Guillot:

I’d like everybody to take away that I think the days of a large regional conflict are over. If there’s a large regional conflict, it will have global implications, and it will be with an adversary that wants to harm us here in the United States. And so there’s no longer a mutually exclusive home game or away game. Anything of consequence will be a home and away game, and therefore it’s important that our homeland defense forces are very well integrated into the planning and execution with the other combatant commands to make sure that we have the right forces pushed forward, we retain the right forces back here to make sure that we can enable the away game victory at the same time that we protect all of the critical capabilities here in the U.S. to include those of STRATCOM and SPACECOM. So that’s the biggest takeaway I would hope that people see now, which is very different from maybe even just three or four years ago.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

General Whiting.

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting:

I’d just highlight that homeland defense is becoming more and more dependent on space. It’s been dependent on missile warning and NC3 for a long time, but now as we go to space for Golden Dome aspects, for the future HCF constellation, for AMTI, those kind of things, we’ve got to now invest in all that it takes for a force to be successful. That’s the joint functions in space. You need fires, you need movement maneuver, you need protection, you need sustainment, you need intel, all of those things, command and control. But you also got to have the dot mil PF, the organization, the training, the facilities, the people, all that it takes to deliver a force that can ensure that space is delivering for homeland defense. And that’s just going to take continued investment on behalf of the nation. And I endorse the comments of the CSO and others and the SECAF who have been talking about that recently.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

General Lutton.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton:

I would just underscore every combatant in command has the responsibility, first and foremost, to defend the homeland. U.S. Strategic Command is proud to serve our part and be a lethal, trusted member of the joint force.

Gen. David D. Thompson, USSF (Ret.):

All right, gentlemen, thanks so much. I knew it. Most of the folks in this room already knew it. But the rest of you should have no doubt now that the defense of the homeland is in tremendous hand. Let’s give these outstanding leaders a hand.