Building a Combat-Credible Force to Deliver Space Superiority

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Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Good morning, everyone. I’m Jennifer Reeves, Senior Resident Fellow at the Mitchell Institute’s Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence, and it is my pleasure to moderate this morning’s discussion. Over the past several months, the Space Force has released two important documents, the Future Operating Environment 2040 and the Objective Force Baseline. Together, they ask two fundamental questions.

What kind of strategic environment are we likely to face, and perhaps more importantly, what kind of Space Force must we build to succeed in it? U.S. Space Command’s recent Space Warfighting Environment 2040 brings a distinctly warfighter perspective to that discussion, exploring how the entire joint force will experience fight and win in that future environment. And these are not academic discussions. These discussions shape everything from force design and operational concepts to requirements, budgets, acquisition, and ultimately our ability to achieve space superiority in future conflict.

We are so fortunate to have three leaders who bring complementary perspectives to this challenge. Lieutenant General David Miller, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Strategy Plans, Programs, and Requirements, where he leads the Space Force’s strategy, force design, and budget development. Major General Anthony Mastalir, Director of Global Space Operations at U.S. Space Command, responsible for executing global joint space operations and employing space forces around the world.

And Mr. John Trumpfheller, Director of Force Design and Analysis, where he leads the analysis and design work to shape that Space Force of the future. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. And gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Let us dive right in.

It’s been a busy year for the Space Force with the release of Future Operating Environment 2040 and the Objective Force Baseline and the FY27 budget that greatly expands the resourcing of the service. General Miller, what has changed in the strategic environment that convinced the Space Force it needed to fundamentally rethink how it organizes, equips, and fights?

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Yeah, I think really, first of all, let me say thanks to the bald people in the audience because you’re the only reason I can see any heads at all. So all you people with hair are killing me because I’m blind up here. But first off, I guess there’s really four things that we use to fundamentally shape any approach we’re making to decision-making in the department.

I think really, for us, it’s the same as you find in the United States Army, United States Marine Corps. First is we look at our strategic guidance. And in this case, I don’t think anybody would disagree. We have more alignment from the President on down to the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Chief, frankly, all the Joint Chiefs on the importance of space power and the fact that it is no longer a nice-to-have, it is a must-have for this joint force to provide options, fight and win on timelines and at reasonable costs in blood and treasure that we can sustain and offer to our — so I think that’s clear.

We have guidance that tells us space superiority from VLEO to cislunar is the exact quote you’d find from the President. The second thing we look at is the threat. I think depending on which senior leader is talking, they’re all struggling for an adjective or an adverb to describe how shocked they are at the rise of China, the advance, the 900% increase in capabilities on orbit. Russia’s continued challenges have not constrained anything with their space or counter space program continuing to field a number of destabilizing capabilities.

So the threat is proceeding apace even if there’s maybe a perspective of stability in other domains. The third piece that we look at is technology trends, is where do we think we are. Now there are some technologies that have great promise. I remember 15 years ago, I was told that directed energy was going to be the next thing, and it was only five years away. It’s still, you know, a few years away. But there are things that you do see. The cost of launch has gone down.

Our ability to get more mass to orbit. Multi-mission systems are there. The advances we have in cyber and automation as well as AI. There are things we can and should leverage as we build a force moving forward. And then I think the last thing is our concepts. If you look at the warfighting concept, the chairman was just talking to all of us. Really it is, the only thing I can say is the joint force has doubled down on space power because there really is no other credible alternative.

We cannot close on timelines with effectiveness and mass required without having a capable Space Force. So we pretty much focused on three primary objectives. The first was have a resilient and combat credible force. And that meant that we knew we had to be able to survive and operate through all phases of conflict. We had to first and foremost be able to fight effectively. And then we had to be able to impose costs. Those costs either allow for off ramps, deter opportunistic aggressors, or provide us optionality to any president or secretary.

The second piece was it had to be purpose built for space superiority. That is why that advance that was discussed in the space budget is so important. That we had mission terrain that we hadn’t accomplished yet or begun to invest in yet that the joint force needed us to do in order to be effective. Frankly, the combined force needed us to do. And then I think the third piece for us was we had to present independent options to the joint force’s toughest problems. There is frankly options only the Space Force can reasonably provide on timelines that the president, the chairman, and the secretary want. And that is how we began to shape it. So when you see the pieces of that objective force – and Trumpf will talk to you more about it – or when you look in the time horizon I work in, which is five to seven years primarily for the program force and requirements, it was along those three lines of effort that we were focused.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

So that’s really interesting, right? And General Miller is looking five to seven years. General Mastalir, as you know, as the key operator from where you sit at U.S. Space Command, do you already see pieces of that future in the operating – or the future operating environment emerging today?

Maj. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir:

Yeah. Thanks, Boots. And thanks to AFA for putting this panel together and including me on it. This is a great question because the future operating environment – if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you spend some time with it. There is a real thoughtful analysis on what the future could look like if we make the right decisions and right investments and what it could look like if we don’t make the right decisions and we misuse our resources. It describes a lot of scenarios, one of which, to your point, we’re seeing today. Joe Miller talked about a five- to seven-year horizon. Our horizon — we are at the horizon. It’s tonight. Most combatant commands are looking at the capabilities that they need to fight today or over the next 18 to 24 months. Today, we’re seeing — and you’ll read about this in the future operating environment – a resilient — the adversary building a resilient kill mesh. And this really started about, you know, 10, 11, 12 years ago, but has accelerated really exponentially over that timeline. And as the PRC develops more launch capacity, we’re getting to the point where we’re seeing a kill web that used to be a kill chain, a space-enabled kill chain, with links that we could potentially exploit to a mesh that is far more robust.

It would be far more difficult to dismantle, which is going to be important if the joint force is going to be successful. We have to be able to understand, you know, General Whiting talks about three moral imperatives. One is that Space Command continues to deliver the space effects that the joint force relies on. In order to do that, we have to defend capabilities on orbit throughout all spectrum of conflict. And then we have to be able to protect the joint force from space-enabled attack, which drives at dismantling red kill webs.

So that’s becoming an increasingly difficult task, and the analysis that is in the future operating environment is really, really helpful as we think through that.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s great. So actually, let’s keep going. General Miller mentioned the phrase combat-credible, and it’s become central to how the Space Force describes itself. So from a U.S. Space Command perspective, what does a combat-credible Space Force actually look like? And is it different? And if so, how, from the force that we’ve operated with over the past couple of decades?

Maj. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir:

Yeah, if you listen to Cooler during his intro, he hit on something that was really important, that we’ve done this before, certainly with the Air Force. And one of the things he said is, number one is you have to understand your environment, you have to understand your threats. And I can think back to when then-Colonel Deanna Burt and I were at Schriever, then Schriever Air Force Base, at what was the 50th Space Wing. And for the first time, for the first time, we started training our crews to think about threats in space other than, you know, the vacuum of space and thermal stresses and radiation, all of the environmental pieces, which we had kind of grown up with. You know, in those days, if you had a satellite that was three axis stabilized, solar panels were pointed at the sun, the antenna was pointed at the earth, rock and roll, you were good to go. That started to change in 2015, and we started to invest in what was our Air Force space operators at the time to better understand what the threats were gonna be that they were facing. So when we think about Combat Credible, there’s a lot of different frameworks that you can use. One is, as General Miller mentioned, the Joint Warfighting Construct, which very clearly identifies what’s required, what joint operational principles are required.

When I talk to a Guardian, I can gain an immediate sense for whether or not they’ve fully embraced combat credibility, because they’ll start talking about their weapon system and what their pace plan is if they lose primary, or how they’re gonna switch to an alternate string. They start working through contingencies at the tactical level. At the operational level, they start talking about attrition and combat losses.

You know, combatant commands, all combatant commands have a few things in common. One of them is operational planning and force employment. And in operational planning, if your planners are thinking through, I’m gonna lose these satellites probably early in the fight, and this is how I’m going to transition that mission to ensure that the joint force stays in the fight. You’ve achieved some level of combat credibility at that point, because now you’re not just thinking about your weapon system, you’re thinking about how to employ it in an environment where there are threats that can take it away, but yet you’re focused on preserving support to the terrestrial warfighter.

And that’s the combat credibility that Guardians have to bring to every planning cell and every discussion. And that’s really, really important. A huge step in getting us there is the investments that General Miller and his team have made in OTTI, with the National Space Test and Training Complex. This is going to, number one, ensure that our Guardians, who by the way, today, STARCOM is training and producing Guardians that are better educated and better trained than at any point in our history.

We are absolutely at max readiness coming out of our STARCOM units, in terms of their ability to execute their weapon system. In fact, some of the Guardians, most of the Guardians that are coming out today are better trained and better educated than a lot of the squadron commanders, in terms of the training that they received when they went through. Think about that. So we are absolutely on the right path toward achieving that combat credibility.

And it’s the investments that we’ve made in the Space Force and then being able to apply those resources in a joint environment in the combatant command that’s gotten us to this point.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

I think that’s great. And sir, I’d like to real quick touch with you, thinking of combat credible, this operational perspective, how does that roll back in when you’re in the budgeting, planning requirements process?

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

Yeah, there’s over a thousand line items in the budget, so I can’t give you all that. But I’ll give you a couple of examples of how it manifests itself most prominently. And you could look at this in the ’27 budget that the president submitted to Congress.

So to Chachi’s point of what maybe myself or Colonel Burt, or General Burt, and when I was working with Colonel Burt, we lived with an environment where we had over-prescribed in a very few places, a lot of mission, and never really built out the primary alternate contingency and emergency. And that was because our force, Air Force Space Command, was built out of two engineering commands. It was built out of what was, at the time, electronic security command. And it was also built out of what was a systems command for the Air Force. And they prioritized one thing and one thing only, maximum efficiency for the longest period of time and the minimum amount of stuff. And that was because we were in the Air Force, and frankly, we had a benign environment we could operate in.

One key example that you’d be able to see today, if you looked it up, well, we looked at the attack surface of just our installations and began to see where we had prescribed our mission terrain, in particular, associated with much of what we do. And frankly, it’s only in a couple of places. And if you looked at that, and we, frankly, put way too much information out in the information space for everybody to see, and you begin to accept what General Guillot says all the time, which is the homeland is not a sanctuary.

You have to assume, just like every other adversary we fight is gonna be, they’re gonna come under attack at some point, through some way, even if it’s just through cyber or other means. We have to look at that attack surface and broaden it. So now you see us investing in resilient operations centers in other places. Each one of those will have a common ground architecture that you will learn to operate from. If the PA is building a new weapons system, they will go to a resilient ops center or we will not fund it.

They will have a pace plan associated with their comm, HVAC, cooling, everything that it takes to keep mission going through a fight. We’ll be able to train on the ops floors at the security levels required when we’re not in commit cycle. There were some key fundamental precepts to the core three things that deliver combat credibility. The first is fight effectively, right? That you are executing the mission you have to.

Second thing is to survive and sustain through all phases of conflict. We know we’re gonna take hits. We have to operate through. And the final piece is be able to impose costs. There has to be a reserve or capability that you offer that is unique as a service. We did that not just in the ground segment. You see it in the on-orbit capabilities and other capabilities we’re investing in.

There was no air moving target indicator mission in this Space Force doing space-based sensing and targeting two years ago. That capability is already starting to be fielded. The data network that allows the joint force in its entirety every branch of the joint force to both operate at mass in the future, be able to receive data link updates over the horizon, and simultaneously be able to communicate securely and maneuver at a pace that outpaces an adversary is built on the Space Force’s space data network backbone, and we’re investing in that.

Every one of our constellations will begin to move to some level of resilient proliferation, distribution, and we will disaggregate from what was a force that was extremely good, but built and engineered for efficiency, to a force that is built to fight. And that’s really the approach that we have taken, and I think that you’ll see that. And frankly, that alignment I described a moment ago, you see it in the budget.

You don’t have to take my word for it. The budget, frankly, I don’t think we should give all this information out, but it’s unclassified. You can literally Google what we are spending our dollars on and it will tell you where the investments are. And I think that demonstrates this transition that the future operating environment, Trumpf hasn’t said a word yet, the future operating environment and the work that this team did has really set the stage for us to be able to program to.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

And that’s amazing, because we’re going right to you, Mr. Trumpfheller. As we’re all hearing, ladies and gentlemen, the objective force of the future, this is not about just a new kit. It’s about a new, fundamentally different way of organizing and employing military space power. So Mr. Trumpfheller, what are your biggest design decisions that distinguish tomorrow’s force from today?

John M. Trumpfheller:

Well, thanks. Thanks for AFA for putting this on. It’s great to be up here on this panel and talk about force design. I think there’s several things, and both General Miller and Chachi have talked about this, touched to it in some way. But the transition from, you know, focused on global military operations to space control, significant element of standing up an independent Space Force.

But when you take that in practicality and start designing the force to focus on that, it drives a lot of different behaviors and it drives a lot of different things in the service. And I think one of the pieces that we’ve seen is this integration across different missionaries. It’s been required, so that approach has been helpful. Though when we published the objective force baseline, we had the unclassified that was released at Space Symposium earlier in the year that talked about those global mission operations mission areas.

We also have a space control section and in addition to covering the other core function on launch, sort of space access. So it’s more comprehensive, I think is one thing. And the other piece is there’s an element of integration across missions that may not have existed in the past where there were silos that were created across the different mission areas. So with those two things, I think it also gets to this idea that it’s as much about the process of planning and developing the force design or the objective force document as it is publishing that document.

Because one could argue because the changing nature, technology, advancements in threat, et cetera, that once you publish it, it’s almost out of date the next day, which is why we’re on an annual cycle to keep this refreshed every year with a reset at the five-year point on our force design, our objective force document. All the while continuing that force design plan, doing the analytics, doing the war games, and developing the concepts that are, you know, have an eye to the future, taking into account the trends that happen that we’ve documented in the future operating environment. So I think the approach is fundamentally different just, you know, based on the structure and the process and then the changes in the environment we’re experiencing.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

So if we can dive into that even a little more, I mean, it’s ultimately an exercise in choices. And, you know, if we optimize for everything, then we’re kind of optimizing for nothing. So what are some of the most important tradeoffs that you can help us with? And Mr. Trumpf, I will keep going with you. What are some of the most important tradeoffs the Space Force has had to make in designing the objective force? We want the nitty-gritty here.

John M. Trumpfheller:

Yeah, thanks. That’s an important — we talk about this at sort of a high level, and I had this discussion with both General Saltzman and General Schiess about, you know, once you produce an objective force document, if you went back and assessed, like, what does this mean? What are the trends if you aggregated all of those decisions we made?

And you come up with some interesting things. And General Miller touched on this idea in the past where we had these very exquisite space systems on orbit that were, you know, designed within an inch of their life. They were supposed to be up there for 25 years because launch was so expensive. And we didn’t think there was going to be a refresh rate that was going to be relevant or cost – it was cost prohibitive, and it was focused on efficiency.

So now we’re in the proliferation game, and we see that with AMTI and some of the other constellations we have — are launching or have launched, and so there’s a big shift in trades on what we think missions – what missions are appropriate for proliferation and what need to still have that exquisite element to it. There’s also an element of what, as we get into space control and global mission operations, what are the effects that we want those systems to have, either in-domain or out-of-domain with, you know, sensors back to the terrestrial sphere? So figuring out what that looks like, that trade space, and as AI becomes more dominant, how much autonomy do we want built into our systems? Do we want that built in up front? Do we want the flexibility to bolt that on later as it advances, keeping in mind we still need to develop Guardians and their expertise in the operational art of space warfighting? We also need to leverage that – those technological advances that are going to – we know are going to be a part of the future force, as the chairman was talking about earlier in his speech.

And some other areas are how much do we want to pre-position and how much do we want to have launch on demand for reconstitution so we can be a resilient force? So we’re — if you’ve seen, we’ve done some of that work recently, and what does that look like as we scale? I think another area of trade space that we discuss is single mission platforms versus multi-payload platforms, and what are complementary missions and complementary orbits that might benefit from having multi-mission payloads instead of having a singular constellation that’s focused on a singular mission.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Oh, that’s great. And so let’s keep that — this thread of tradeoffs going. General Mastalir, sir, speaking of tradeoffs, what’s your perspective from an operational perspective?

Maj. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir:

Yeah, so when we look at the kit that we have today, we’re going to be looking at trades, again, across those, you know, three moral imperatives that I talked about. We’re going to need to continue to deliver those space effects, but then we also have to either defend blue space, defeat red space, right?

And how do you apportion your assets accordingly? You know, one thing to keep in mind, all combatant commanders, number one priority is homeland defense, period, full stop. And that is an important aspect because many of the capabilities that we fly to support the joint force are also supporting national command authorities, presidential decision-making, nuclear, NC3, so defending the homeland is really non-negotiable. And looking at the conflict and how we think it’s going to progress, understanding at what point do we need to defend blue and to what extent do we need to defend the joint force from red space-enabled attack.

So those are, you know, today, given the kit, those are continually trades that we have to make in real time. One of the things that’s in, you know, the force design, which is really important, is maneuver. You know, maneuver warfare, again, goes back to one of the original principles of war. It’s also a joint warfighting construct. We don’t have a long legacy or heritage or culture of maneuver warfare in space. We have a tendency, historically, we’ll park something, let Kepler determine where it’s going to go, very easy to calculate where it is a few days later, makes it incredibly easy to target because it’s basically a stationary target.

It’s like putting all your aircraft wingtip to wingtip on the tarmac and never moving them. We would never do that. You know, the air domain would never do that. We shouldn’t accept that in the space domain. But more importantly, when you have maneuver and you have rapid reconstitution, it changes the way you think. You start to shake off this psychology of scarcity. If I took a bunch of planners and said, “Hey, we’re going to plan an operation.

We’re going to call it Midnight Hammer. We’re going to destroy Natanz, and we want you to figure out how we’re going to do that. Oh, but we don’t have any tanker bridge available.” Well, that completely changes the calculus. How are we going to get the B2s out of Whiteman? I mean, it’s a completely different problem set when you don’t have, you know, dynamic space maneuver in terms of how you’re going to operate. And you’re constantly calculating how much delta V you’re going to take in order to engage or achieve a military effect.

So it’s more than just extending the life of the capability. It’s really about changing the way we think. And things like rapid reconstitution are part of that as well. And then working through those TTPs and that operational planning, when do you reconstitute? What do I have on orbit in terms of spares? And what do I have to launch? And how quickly can I get it up to ensure that the joint force is successful?

So these are the kind of trades that, you know, we’re making every day in our exercises and in our campaigning.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s great. And so we’ll button up this thought about trades and risk with General Miller. And sir, with the budget, and it may be bigger, but it’s finite, how do you decide which risks we’re willing to accept today in order to build the force we need tomorrow?

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

First of all, I don’t decide. I give input. It’s not — everyone has to blame Miller when something isn’t getting funded. Not how it works. So I would — so just to — it is worth having a discussion. I mean, there is a robust – we’re doing it right now for next year’s budget. And we’re looking at what we do in ’27. This is an ongoing thing. This is a fairly understood problem set we have.

It’s the President’s budget, though. And as soon as he signs it, it’s policy. It’s not just budget. It doesn’t say recommended. You know what I mean? It says here’s what I want to do. So ultimately, we aggregate up decision-making through the Secretary. Deputy typically runs that. Deputy Feinberg, who’s phenomenal, by the way, really driving us to do a much better job at these very discussions and decision space on trades.

And obviously, Secretary Meink will be in meetings with the Chief, sometimes the Vice. And it’s a discussion, a lot of analysis in advance. And it really sort of hinges on a few key things. The first thing is national security strategy and national defense strategy guidance and priorities. What is the plan and guidance that they’ve given us to operate in? To Chachi’s point, we are not gonna accept risk in homeland defense as a core mission set.

We’re gonna continue to do that. And all these other missions that the Joint Force continues to ask us to do, they have said we can not do nothing. So everything is additive. And so there’s a baseline amount of capability that we have to sustain. We are trying to make a pivot to new approaches to do some of those missions. Those pivots are dependent on a couple of things that you might understand.

Where are we at in maturity of technology? Can the vendor actually deliver at the size, scale, and timelines that we want? Are they able to deliver it at the cost point that we think is reasonable to assume? Does it integrate? Is it interoperable? I’m not interested in bespoke things that work with nothing and that just generate more revenue for a specific vendor. We’re integrated in a Joint Force that needs to be able to do it.

And then finally, obviously, we butt everything up against our operating concepts and the joint operational problems. And then we literally score it and grade it and make a choice or recommend a choice, I should say. And the deputy lives, he usually makes these decisions, but ultimately goes up to the secretary. And then we have a discussion with OMB and nobody ever talks to the president. He gets to tell us what to do. But that’s the process we have. I will tell you, it is a fulsome discussion. The co-commons, they get to, General Whiting gets, he has, gets to call Miller and say, “Here’s what I want in the budget.” He actually writes issue papers to describe it. Admiral Cooper writes some. Every combatant commander has a voice in this process. Every service chief has a voice.

It actually is, I think, a fairly good process. As laborious as it is, and trust me, it is, one of the reasons we’re wrapping this up early is I have a meeting I have to get to with some members on the Hill who they don’t wait for me, you know what I mean? They wanna have a discussion on programming and budget. We have to get those things done. I will give you confidence, though. It is a robust discussion.

Everybody’s opinion gets heard, and ultimately, I think we come to answers that are the best we can within the budget. And then when they do things like change the budget and say you’re getting less, we will get to a number. Trust me, I will get to a number. That is not gonna be a problem. It’s the choices that we make at endgame that help us get there. If we’ve had that fulsome discussion, if we remain strategically aligned, informed by technology, and realistic assessments of what vendors and acquisition can deliver on the timelines we expect, and we stay grounded in those core missions that are no-fail, generally speaking, we all come out in a similar place of where we need to get to.

The key, I think, decision transition point is this balance of why you have co-coms and service chiefs. Co-coms are concerned with today, as Chachi said. They are all about everything now, gotta have it, and they wanna own everything, right? That is not how things typically work, but they have a strong voice to meet readiness needs today. Service chiefs, who are not in the chain of command, by the way, and cannot order a ship to sail, can’t order a bomb to drop, can’t order an aircraft to sortie.

Service chiefs are modernizing their force for two people after them, and so you’re balancing modernization and readiness all the time. I think the department does, frankly, a pretty good job, given all the interests of stakeholders, to include the intelligence community and everybody else whose interests we have to satisfy. It’s not easy. Ultimately, there’s never room for everything.

As much as I know we need 25,000 Guardians in the next five years, as much as I know we need about 12,500 civilians in the Space Force in the next five years, the actual requirement, I could argue, is more. That is what we got to in the discussion, and that’s what the president told us to do. So don’t feel like it’s not a fulsome debate. I assure everybody gets a voice in this, and it continues, and the good news is it’s an annual cycle, and we get to revisit it months later, no matter what.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

So, ladies and gentlemen, we just have a couple minutes left. What a great conversation this has been, and I want to close with this. For each of you, imagine we’re sitting here together at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in 2035. What would convince you that the decisions we’re making today are the right ones? What would success look like for a combat-credible Space Force capable of delivering space superiority?

You each have one minute. General Miller, let’s start with you.

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:

I’m gonna take the full three minutes, so. No, I’m not gonna do it. I think it’s, I’ll give you a couple things, and you’ve heard ’em already. If this force is sized, shaped, and readied to defend the homeland, implement the National Defense Strategy, and continue to build the force that we need 10 to 15 years in the future, it will look something like this.

We will not be operating out of the only places we operate today. We will have about 20-something thousand Guardians, and we will know we need more, and we’ll have about 10 to 12,000 civilians, and we’ll know we need more. We will be partnered with international allies who are with us in things like launch and operations moving forward. We will have interoperable systems that close offensive and defensive kill chains in, from, and to space.

We will be presenting independent options that are real options that don’t demand things on the Air Force or the Navy that are demands on them today that we can provide from space. And fundamentally, we will have a level of joint in our communications, but also in the leadership of Guardians in the Joint Force that we have not seen today, which means that the interest that we have seen today turns into requirement tomorrow for those Guardians to be in those places on those staffs and effectively leading in this Joint Force.

I think that is what success will look like. That’s the only way we won’t compromise readiness, frankly, is if we do those things. It’s the only way we’ll actually get to the modernized force that the Joint Force demands us to get to. And we will obviously be operating at a level and a pace that is so significant that we will be combined and allied by design, but leveraging as much commercial as we can from before we go.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

Mr. Trumpfheller.

John M. Trumpfheller:

Okay, so I think probably the most important thing if we’re sitting here nine years from now would be looking back is that we’ve deterred conflict against adversaries. And that’s gonna be a force that’s resilient, that has the kit that it needs to fight, that’s integrated across the Joint Force, but also a kit that has Guardians that are expertise in warfighting in their domain, and the adversary knows it and has decided this is not the day.

And then looking forward, I think from that point, many of the things that General Miller mentioned, but I think it’s a force that is not static, that is continuing to change and adapt to its environment and has an agility to it that allows that to happen.

Maj. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir:

So the only thing… I completely agree with everything that’s been said, the only thing I would add is we would, we’re gonna see the continued normalization that we’re seeing today in terms of space and how we think about it and how the joint force employs it.

The standing up the space service components has really allowed the combatant commands to fully appreciate what their space dependencies are. When I have Admiral Cooper and Todd Benson calls me up and says, “Hey, we want these red satellites gone “and we wanna make sure these blue satellites “are here for this.” And Admiral Cooper is talking about this, that’s a win. We have combatant commanders who understand not just how many fighter squadrons they have allocated to them or apportioned to them, but how many space systems they’re gonna need and how they’re gonna be available and what red space systems need to go away. So this is the kind of thinking that Space Force service components as well as US Space Command bring to the process. And if that continues, we will truly have joint all domain military operations, which is what we’re all striving for.

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.):

That’s amazing. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for this discussion. Let’s give a big round of applause to Lieutenant General Miller, Major General Mastalir, and Mr. Trumpfheller.