Deterrence in an Increasingly Dangerous World
March 5, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Hey, welcome everybody and thank you for those of you sticking around late on the last day of the symposium. You’re going to be in for a treat because this panel is going to probably bend all of our minds as we talk about deterrence, not just theory, the fundamentals, but also the application, how we’re going to deter in a couple of new domains and in a new environment. Today we find ourselves in perhaps the most complex strategic environment since World War II. We will soon face simultaneous challenges from two nuclear armed peer competitors alongside increasing threats to our space capabilities. Today the U.S. homeland is no longer a sanctuary to things like attacks in the cyber domain and attacks in the space domain. These new threats to the homeland threaten our transportation systems, our banking systems, our energy supply systems, our water and food chains. Certainly the nuclear deterrent threatened that as well, but we have been blessed with a period of strategic stability and by that I mean no adversary is tempted to strike first since 1945 in the nuclear area. But now we have some other domains to think about. Advancements in conventional space, cyber, and nuclear operations compel us to consider just how we deter attacks, but also not just nuclear attacks, space and cyber-attacks. How will we establish strategic stability in the domains of space and cyber? Now we must account for multiple competitors, cross-domain escalation risks, and new technologies that are reshaping the strategic landscape. And given these challenges, it’s especially fitting for us to hear from three distinguished leaders from combatant commands that are responsible for executing our nation’s deterrence strategy across these three critical mission areas.
I’m pleased to welcome to the stage Lieutenant General Thomas James, Deputy Commander for U.S. Space Command. How about a round of applause for General James? Also excited to have with us Lieutenant General Tom Carden, Deputy Commander of NORTHCOM. And last but not least, from Strategic Command, Vice Admiral Richard Correll. I’m going to start with a question for all of you, and if you want to spend an hour answering it then that’ll be the only question. But I think this will be a quick scene setter for all of you. This question is about deterrence was something we thought a lot about during the Cold War. I would argue we essentially in our military schools and just day in and day out, by and large except for the nuclear community, stopped thinking about it in 1992 to our peril. And that’s kind of how we got to where we are today. And so that focus began to erode with the fall of the Berlin Wall. And so to help set the stage for the audience, can you explain why we’re in a back to the future moment here? In the case of STRATCOM, I would say. But also, why we’re in a new world with regards to deterrence for some of these other capabilities. So why don’t we just start at the far end and work our way forward.
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, USA:
Yes, sir. Thanks for the introduction. And on behalf of General Whiting and the 18,000 members of the United States Space Command, all the services, we actually have a Coast Guardsman as well. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about what strategic deterrence looks like from a space perspective. So I was really going to go after STRATCOM, who had all the hard parts to talk about the deterrence piece. But I’ll put some of my ideas and thoughts of why this is more important now than it used to be and what are the things that we have to think about in deterrence. We talk about the nature of warfare and how it remains constant and doesn’t change, but the character of warfare does change. And I think that applies to deterrence too. I think if you looked at deterrence calculus just 10 years ago and the way we look at it today, it’s different for a lot of different reasons. One, if you’re familiar with the DIME construct, and if you look at diplomacy, I think that we see diplomacy has effects, certainly, but there are absolutely instances where modern day adversaries are able to kind of duck around the diplomacy piece or they just don’t give it the wherewithal that you think that you should. The potential for Russia to launch a nuclear weapon into space in violation of the Outer Space Treaty, if we believe that’s something that will occur, is in that line of where diplomacy doesn’t seem to have the teeth that it did before, potentially. Why is that? And how do you deter to that piece? And the information world, from when I was a young corporal in 1984, didn’t know what a cell phone was, certainly didn’t know about social media, and the power of all of that that we’ve seen in just the last few years. And if you look at the Ukrainian conflict and the way that social media played not just information but it had impact on the battlefield and the way that the fight went, I think from strategic operational down to tactical. Some of the information ops has power in it but certainly has changed. The character of how we think about that has changed. I think economic sanctions are a thing that we’ve tied to since post-World War II is an effective tool that we’ve used, but we see that as adversaries get acclimated to that and they understand the impacts, they build workarounds and coalitions that help get around that economic piece. And so, in my mind, the military part of what we do for deterrence is critical to build an underpinning or the structure and the foundation that those others fit on. And that it really is important to look at the peace through strength idea that we’ve heard increased lethality so that we have a credible military foundation for our ability to deter. Does, you know, standard or the academic studies of Schelling and Brody and the rest of them, do you have a capability that is credible and do we believe as an adversary that you have the will to use it and do you have the processes in place to be able to use it in a way that can affect us and cause us not to reap the benefits we think we would from conflict and get a basic deterrence calculation? Certainly, space has a role in that military power to increase the lethality of the joint force. We’ve been, you can argue that Desert Storm was the first space war and that we’ve learned since then and our adversaries have watched how to use space to give huge asymmetrical advantages. And of course, our forces around that. And I think that our adversaries see the real advantage and the power that space integration brings. I think that adversaries have learned two things from watching that. One is it is a real asymmetric advantage so how do we take that away from U.S. and its allies and then how do we use those same capabilities and systems to increase our lethality and our ability to fight? And so based on that, and I’ll bring this to an end, but I could, really I could talk on this for a while if somebody else is buying the drinks. But is this thing on? Anybody out there?
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah.
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, USA:
Sorry. General Whiting has this idea of moral responsibilities that he talked to on his first day in command at U.S. Space Com and I really like this. It gives more gravitas to the idea of what Space Com and Space Force and the space enterprise and capabilities do. And number one is to build that peace through strength from our military force, we have to be able to ensure that we can provide those joint capabilities that give that asymmetric advantage, that we’ve got the systems in place, right timing, capabilities that can integrate rapidly with that joint force and it applies across all domains, multi-domain approach and multi-combatant commands. The second part is how do we protect those if we believe the adversaries think it’s important to take that away from us? So on orbit, terrestrial links, how do we protect that system that’s in place? And the third thing is if we believe that the adversaries gain advantage from their space capabilities and General Whiting will tell you that some of our potential adversaries, CCP and others are moving at a breathtaking pace. If you look at what they see from space and the importance of it and the time and energy and money they put into the space fight, we have to be able to protect the joint force from those space capabilities for the terrestrial fight. So I would lay that as an initial context from Space Comm’s focus in the way we kind of think about the forces in place that allow us to deter, but the rest of the conversation is when deterrence fails, we are positioned to defend and defeat our adversaries.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. It’s a good introduction. Admiral Correll, you, I would argue the STRATCOM never stopped thinking about deterrence, but you have a new adversary growing rapidly to something we have never seen before, two near peer adversaries. Your thoughts?
Vice Adm. Richard Correll:
Yes, General Chilton, thanks for the question. And yeah, just to build on Tom’s comments, we are in a back to, I would agree we’re in a back to the future moment in the sense of the importance of strategic deterrence and what does that mean for the full range of capabilities and the full levers available to our country, not just the military, military being an important element of that. So, but it’s not back to the future in the sense that it’s not Cold War 2.0, right? As you said, two plus, you know, nuclear adversaries and Sir Tony Radakin and some others have used the term third nuclear age. And I would agree with that in terms of, you know, the capacity and capability within the nuclear portfolio as represented by China and Russia in particular. The other factors that I would highlight are the growing, in terms of the complexity of the strategic environment. I think most would agree this is the most complex strategic environment certainly in my lifetime. And you know, some examples of that growing complexity are the rapid pace of technology and its implications for the joint force and this potential global all domain fight in delivering strategic effects globally. I think you could argue that we no longer see a future where there is a geographically contained fight. It you know, it has the potential to go global and almost certainly will go global as it escalates. We have the rise of nuclear and non-kinetic capability and the growing strategic relationships and the incentive for that, in particular the war between Russia and Ukraine have, you know, have influenced the strategic environment in that regard. So I think the central question from a deterrence perspective for the joint force going forward is what does winning look like? There’s an operational piece to that and there’s a strategic piece to that. And so I think our challenge is winning at the operational level while deterring at the strategic level, right? And the dilemma is to succeed operationally while deterring strategic escalation because nobody wants, you know, a nuclear war and there are no winners. Thank you.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Could I follow up in your unique situation with the rise of a second near peer, is it fair to say that the status quo of our current nuclear deterrent is not acceptable?
Vice Adm. Richard Correll:
I think that’s a fair statement. We got to continue on the path that we’re on in terms of, you know, the capability and capacity within our portfolio. If you were to ask me is what we have sufficient today, I would say yes, but we’re increasingly challenged by the growth in capabilities. You have modernized Russia and you have a rapidly capability development with respect to China. So that puts a premium on effectiveness and efficiency within the capabilities we have. It’s broader than nuclear. It’s the full spectrum of capabilities for the military element of national power.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you.
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, USA:
Can I tag on to a thought that I don’t want to forget later and then we’ll get to Tom who’s got the real stuff to talk here from North Com. But the idea of the global fight is exactly right. And every time we go through our exercises and we look at the regional fight and try to contain it in that way in our approach, we understand that doesn’t work anymore. That is a big change in the way we think about deterrence today. You do an operation in space, you don’t have anything to mask or hide behind. Everybody sees what you’re doing. We’re pretty open in the way that we talk about space on spacetrack.org. We provide information, so we’re trying to hide our activities and show that there’s responsible use of space there. But the way that we operate is global. The satellite that is over one of the regions at LEO won’t be there in ten minutes. We have to think it will be another part of the world. How do you do that global? And then the complexity you got to on technologies advances, we have learned, I think like cyber and others have, we have to be tied very tightly with industry and the commercial. Our partnerships, General Whiting talks about space as absolutely a team sport. And I think that all that different partnership and alliances gets at part of our deterrence. That shows strength not just in the capabilities you’re able to share, but the fact that you’re willing to put that type of partnership together to begin with. And I think alliances are a big part of our deterrence in that global, not regional environment that we have to operate in.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Very good. Thank you. Over to you, General Carden. I’ll tee you up here. We used to once upon a time have a thing called Continental Command that defended the United States of America and Canada. Of course, we have NORAD, a great and essential bilateral alliance. But we kind of stopped thinking about that until 9/11, and resulted in the standup of your command. So this is new business as well for NORTHCOM. And with that, tee up over to you for your thoughts.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Carden, USA:
Well, sir, thank you very much. On behalf of General Guillot and all the service members at NORAD and NORTHCOM, it’s an honor to be here to represent them today and talk about the important subject of deterrence. Certainly my teammates talked about how hard this is, but hard is not hopeless. And as represented here on the stage, I mean, with STRATCOM and SPACECOM here on the same stage and working together, this is not the first time we’re together. We spend a lot of time coordinating with each other every single day for the all-domain defense of North America and to make the world a safer place for all of us. And we’ve looked at deterrence, I would argue, for a very long time as deterrence by punishment at the end of the day. And as Rich already mentioned, if we end up in a shooting match with nuclear weapons, nobody’s going to win that one. And one of the things that we spend a lot of time thinking about is deterrence by denial, deterrence by resilience. I mean, there’s some cost calculus that our adversaries do when they start looking at effects on North America, which is what we’re obviously spending a lot of time doing at NORAD and NORTHCOM. And when they see networked, resilient capabilities, you know, in the Army I grew up in, just a good solid pace plan and not putting all of our capabilities in one domain. The layered all domain defense construct is enabled by the gentleman on my left and your right. And I’ll tell you, the mix of technologies, operational concepts and capabilities networked together really just send a message to our adversaries when they start doing the math is today is not today to pick a fight with the United States of America. So, you know, I don’t think we built F-22s to take bombs on morale rides around the Middle East. I mean, at the end of the day, F-22s, F-35s, satellites, strategic weapons. I mean, certainly we have got a very complex playing field ahead of us. But I think we as a nation, as a joint force has demonstrated a commitment and a determination to make sure that that cost calculus keeps us all just a little bit safer every day. It’s just an honor to serve with these two teammates in that endeavor every day. Thank you.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. You know, you bring up a great, another part of deterrence theory that underpinnance is either you threaten the adversary with unacceptable punishment or denial of objective, what they’re trying to achieve. And when you start developing strategies for this, it’s important to understand what the key decision maker values and what they fear. And in the Cold War, we did a lot of talking with the Russians. Even then, we weren’t exactly sure. So we covered probably a larger target set with our nuclear deterrent than we needed to. But we felt it was, it touched at least all the bases that they worried about. And I think one of the, maybe one of the biggest mistakes we make as Americans is assuming everybody thinks the same way we do. That Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin value their citizens the way we value our citizens. I don’t think that’s true for a moment. So how are you, in each of your commands, how are you getting after studying the Chinese culture, the Chinese decision-making calculus, the Russian, the North Korean? These are all, these are all different cultures and they need to be addressed appropriately. And let’s start with STRATCOM in the middle this time.
Vice Adm. Richard Correll:
Okay. Thanks, sir. First, I emphatically agree with the premise of your question. You know, with respect to STRATCOM and how we approach this, we have a team of deterrence analysts that account for norms, culture, and unique adversary decision calculus. An example, right? When you look at the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi as the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, and you look at the history of China and the role of the Chinese Communist Party in decision making, you have to go all the way back to Mao Zedong and the great cultural revolution to see an instance where a single leader of the Chinese Communist Party has, you know, accumulated that much decision making authority. So that’s just an example of one of the factors you might consider in terms of deterring effectively and accounting for norms and culture. And there’s risk there, right? Because, you know, with that accumulation, we all have blind spots, and I would argue that the decision making can be more fragile and more consequential. Deterrence at its core is cognitive. You’ve heard that, I think, as a recurring theme here. And, you know, distilling it all down to basic principles, if I had to say in just one sentence, I would say it’s a competition at the nation state level between demonstrating political will and risk taking. So, you know, as we think about how we deter effectively, we have to account for the complexity of the decision making and the culture, as you indicated. Xi, Putin, KJU, Khomeini, their perceptions matter, and how we factor that in. All of that for STRATCOM goes into an assessment that we refer to as the risk of strategic deterrence failure. And so just a quick definition with respect to that. And this is the framework that we use in thinking about deterrence writ large. So, a strategic deterrent failure would be an attack or series of attacks, regardless of means, so not just nuclear, right, that causes or was intended to cause catastrophic or existential effects on US vital interests that could drive consideration of a strategic response.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Okay. Thanks. You know, I heard someone recently say they were tired of saying we have to deter China. We have to deter Xi. And I think that’s an important point, which is it schools us to get schooled on his decision calculus. And I think NORTHCOM has one of the tougher jobs because I believe one of our centers of gravity in America is our population. They get to vote. And we saw the effects of our populist will in the Vietnam War. How that closed out. We’ve seen it in more recent conflicts. And so I would expect that’s who our adversaries would want to target early to break the will of our people and cyber and threatening our borders with consequential capabilities has got to be something you’re really thinking about. So over to you, sir.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Carden, USA:
Well, you’re certainly right. I mean, there’s never an easy day at NORAD and NORTHCOM for sure when it comes to problem assessment. When we start talking about strategic messaging, and there’s certainly the diversity of thought out across the adversary landscape, and we don’t have, we’re not staffed the way STRATCOM is. But the way General Gio normally communicates it to us is, hey, we need to distill this down and what are our adversaries have in common? What do they respect? What is going to, what are they going to put at the baseline when they start doing the calculus? And it really just goes back to peace through strength. Every one of our adversaries have that in common. Every one of our adversaries respect our strength, our will, whether it’s political will, military will and capability. And I think, you know, with NORAD and NORTHCOM, and obviously through the Arctic we have a pretty strong linkage with UCOM, INDO-PACOM and NATO. When you’re attacking the United States of America, you’re not just attacking us. You’re attacking our allies and you’re attacking our partners. And we work that angle very, very hard. We try to communicate that in detail. You know, I’ve been doing this for a little while. And, you know, if I sit through one more China bad brief or one more Russia brad or Iran is bad, I get it, right? Everybody gets that part. But what we have to really do is think about what are those common threads that they have and how do we address that? Because now, if we can do that in a fiscally constrained environment, we’re deterring more than one adversary at a time as opposed to trying to pluck each one in some specific way.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Got it. Thanks. General James, how are you guys trying to get inside the head of Xi and Putin?
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, USA:
So it’s something that we look at, you know, all the time. And we’ve actually worked a lot with STRATCOM and with NORTHCOM on the analysis you’ve done on the potential for strategic failure. And then ensuring that it’s not a bunch of American or Western thinkers sitting around a table going like, “Here’s what I would do.” You know, if you look — I think if you go back and look at a lot of different writings on Pearl Harbor, Japan was convinced that their attack was going to cause deterrence even if it didn’t achieve the effects that they wanted because that’s just the way they approached it. And it’s just hard to make yourself turn and look from the other side that if we had attacked them, is that what they think they would do is be deterred? And the answer was no. So how do you make sure that — I’m trying to remember who wrote “All wars must end” to understand that deterrence thought process and what adversaries are really going to do. We spend a lot of time with folks that are smart in those different cultures to understand what are the real things that those leaders are concerned about and how do you show that they put those at risk through their activities when you compare that with the capabilities that we have and the potential that we use. I was part of US Space Com 2.0. When it stood up, I was General Raymond’s J3 and I had to write a mission statement for him and we spent about maybe 45 minutes to an hour talking about the main ideas of what should go in the mission statement. He kept talking about deterrence. So young in my career kind of and I wrote down the mission statement and I said I’m not going to put deterrence in there because you cannot deter from space. That’s not really a thing. And the way that I had grown up thinking about deterrence from an Army special operations kind of perspective. It took about six months and a couple of two by fours upside the head but I got it. I understand it and I was able to use that at Joint Task Force Space Defense to see how space really is part of that piece. But in that organization with some incredibly bright folks and probably one of the brightest intel officers I’ve ever worked with, every time I talked about deterrence in space, you would say you can’t do it. And so we go through this piece and here’s where I would say my negotiated peace settlement is between those two schools of thought. And that is space is absolutely part of the calculus. Integrate it with other things because deterrence using one type of capability or just one thought, you left a lot on the table. And one plus one plus one can’t equal ten if you work together and you have all those things in peace and so in place. So we would talk about anything that we did we thought might have some kind of escalatory or an emotional response, we work with STRATCOM to see what they’re seeing from their standpoint. We work with the regional combating command that has responsibility maybe, thinks more about that particular adversary than others do to try to understand that piece. Another part that complicates the space and deterrence is it’s new. Now there’s a lot about I think the idea of warfare conflict in space that follows principles of war, the natures of war. That’s a different domain but a lot of those still apply. But there’s certainly unique characteristics and things we need to think through. One is the fact, and you hear this all the time, satellites don’t have a mother. Well they have an engineer that feels very associated with it for sure.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Not enough.
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, USA:
But the idea that you can destroy a satellite and not affect humans I think is starting to lose some of that sense that caused the potential chance of escalation because it was low risk. And I think when you look at things like potential loss of a lot of satellites at one time, you see the impact because of the way our lives are so integrated with the space environment, it has an outsized impact for what people thought in the past. So we try to make sure people understand, that nations understand, and not just nations, what really complicates deterrence if you start looking at the changing character deterrence I talked about, not the non-state actors. And how do you get at those that are a string, a coalition of different small groups that are affecting, that we’re concerned about, how do you deter those as well? When you don’t have the nation state and maybe that’s a place where diplomacy can’t have the effects it normally would because you don’t have that governance structure in place. All those are the things we think through on space. I think a big part of it is you can see the activities that we’re doing, a lot of that. We see the number of satellites that we’re putting up right now and just from Starlink alone the number that we put up is increasing. I think the number one thing we have from a deterrence perspective that helps us get at the changes and the differences in culture in this is the understanding across the globe that the people from the industrial base to the agencies to the military folks that are focused on the space warfighting problem are really, really good at what they do. And I think that helps bend the deterrence piece in our favor, is our people.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. Did you have something you wanted to add, Admiral?
Vice Adm. Richard Correll:
Yeah, if I could, just a couple of thoughts on that. One, just going back to the homeland defense piece that you started with. The way I think about it in terms of threat vectors for the homeland, I think you can bend them into four big threat vectors, right, that we’ve got to account for, that we’ve got to account for. So four threat vectors as far as defending the homeland. The first would be cyber, second would be counter U.S. space capabilities, the third would be novel missile systems, and the fourth is a congested and contested electromagnetic spectrum. And so in terms of homeland defense and the ability to deliver effects from the homeland, that’s I think a pretty good framework for how the joint force can approach that, and that’s part of the ongoing conversation. Just like you don’t fight a war in a single domain, you don’t deter in a single domain. So with respect to space and deterrence with respect to our space capabilities, you can go back to the first principles of the ability to impose costs in the space domain, that looks like offensive space capabilities, to deny benefits in the space domain, that looks like defensive space capabilities. But we’ve also got to be very clear that we will go cross-domain. And so with respect to the space piece, I think it’s important that we have resiliency and that our adversaries understand that any impacts to space won’t be constrained to space for a response in terms of the cost to the potential adversary. And then to the missile defense piece, tying that back to a comment you made previously about how you think about strategic stability, I agree with how you frame that. And I would say from a missile defense and this executive order with respect to Golden Dome, and I’m touching on Tom’s territory here, but from a STRATCOM perspective, enhancing that ability is stabilizing overall. And there’s three points I’d make with respect to that. It can enable off-ramps in an escalation scenario. It can create room for diplomacy. And then the third one would be reduces the adversary’s opportunity for coercion, whether that’s nuclear or some other capability.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s a great point. We always talk about deterring attack. But what we’re seeing more and more, and demonstrated by Putin in Europe, is coercive strategies based on nuclear capabilities that he has that we don’t have, because we retired them all. And I suspect, can’t say for sure, that Xi is building up to parity so he can coerce us in the Western Pacific, give him freedom of action with his conventional forces. So these are things we’ve got to be thinking about, for sure. Back to the space domain, I can remember in the early part of this century, the argument for not putting offensive capability in space or defensive capability was nobody else uses space as much as us. Why kick the beehive? Well, that’s totally changed. And I’m not sure the message has gotten through to everybody yet that China’s military is equally dependent on their BAIDOW systems, their over-the-horizon communication systems, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as we are. And that to deter them, we have to plant seeds of doubt that they’re going to have those things in a conflict. How do we go about doing that? I mean, the CSOs talked yesterday about the need, the reason for the existence of the Space Force is to provide space superiority to the joint force was a seminal speech, I think. But now it’s time to plant those seeds of doubt that will lead to deterring an attack. Your thoughts on that, General James?
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, USA:
No, that’s a great question. And I think part of it gets to, you know, I talked about our people and the fact that we have a tremendous ecosystem that allows us to build strength in our space capabilities. It’s the exercises that we do, both with different services, multi-domain, multi-combatant command. We show that we’re really good at how we operate as a joint force. It’s to show the system capabilities as we have them, just numbers of satellites and capabilities, the different types of capabilities we have. You know, we go a long way to try to point the idea that General Mattis has said, I’m sure others have said this as well, that nobody wins a nuclear war. You just talked about it a minute ago. We said that before from Space Comm, is nobody really wins high-intensity conflict in space because we’re so dependent on it, to your point. And not an understanding as well before, but today I think that’s changing rapidly. And not just from the military capabilities, just for our ability to operate and live our lives the way that we do, the economic collapse that you could have with loss of satellite capabilities, the information loss that we have, things that we’re used to. I actually had worked with General Hyten years ago in a discussion. I thought I could develop my own mad version of not mutually assured destruction, but mutually assured dependencies. So much of the world is dependent on GPS satellites that if you take those out, you’ve probably hurt yourself as much as you thought you hurt your adversary. How do we highlight those types of things? Unfortunately, I had a very smart strategist tell me it’s not mutually assured dependencies, it’s mutually assured interdependencies, which made the acronym MADE, and it just didn’t carry the same weight from there on out. But it really is to show our resolve, our capabilities, where we’re going into the future. I think Golden Dome is a great opportunity of peace through strength, and that whole piece pulled together, of the capabilities that we’re going to bring into that from a space perspective, how it will have other abilities to be used to hold adversaries’ capabilities at risk in a way that we haven’t before. And I think the fact that we’re highlighting that and then use Golden Dome as the accelerator to push those capabilities forward, both to make sure they’re messaged and show how they work. And the idea of Golden Dome is not one organization running that. The power of Golden Dome, in my mind, I think, is it is multi-combative commands, allies, agencies working together to make that whole thing as important as it is. Our space domain awareness capabilities, that’ll be key to that, and how we’re already tying into non-traditional sensors, non-traditional use of some of our capabilities. All of that has got to sow concern into the minds of an adversary that thinks that they’ve got a good chance to affect our space capabilities interacting with all the other capabilities that we have. The fact that we can use all of those systems at the timing and tempo and the methods that we see, those options are really important to senior leaders. And I think it’s those different options that really provide us the ability to do deterrence from a United States perspective.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. I’m going to turn to NORAD, NORTHCOM again here. Well, I mean, we’re talking Global Dome here, and that’s obviously the flashlight’s going to turn in your direction for that, the Golden Dome. But I’ll give you a counter-argument. One, I don’t think it’s destabilizing at all to have missile defense. I’d be happy to have that dialogue with anybody, particularly with a near peer, and certainly not with an inferior. But if we had a perfect missile defense capability over the United States today, but did not have one over Okinawa, Japan, Wake Island, Hawaii, the second island chain, for example, then would Xi be deterred from going into Taiwan? I think the Golden Dome over the United States is a great initiative to go, but I would posit, for argument’s sake, that first things first, defend the fort, eliminate the threat of the anti-access aerial denial, area denial strategy that the Chinese have put in place in the Western Pacific. What are your thoughts there?
Lt. Gen. Thomas Carden, USA:
Well, that’s certainly a well thought out, complex argument with respect to Golden Dome. And I’ll just kind of go back to what General Gio has laid out as the strategic principles. If you go back and look at his recent post-terror testimony, he talks a lot about global integration, enhanced domain awareness. In other words, if you can’t see it, you can’t kill it, can’t defend against it. And so that layer domain awareness, also there’s a forward layer. And as was just alluded to up here, Golden Dome does not come to fruition without the two teammates on the stage, the other geographic commands, because that forward layer, as you just noted, is super important. Obviously not quite as an easy sell, if you will. You’ve got many voices there. He who defends everywhere defends nowhere. And so you’ve got to be able to take care of home first before you can do it. Now I think we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. I mean, we, as you well know, sir, we do soil samples on other planets. I think we’ll be able to figure this out as we go through the global integration, enhanced domain awareness, information advantage, decision advantage, and decisive action. And while Golden Dome obviously is a new concept for many people, essentially the framework is already there. We do missile defense, ballistic missile defense, with respect to North America, every single day. Now, we need to enhance that capability, and we’ll be able to bolt on additional capabilities as they go online. But I don’t think we’ll see a situation where we will be able to do that at the degree that we’ll be able to do it in the homeland at the forward layer. Not to say that we’re not going to do it at all. I think you’re going to see a simultaneous build to get after that vision. You know, obviously I’m a little bit biased, but I think my boss did a really good job of articulating that to the Congress and the American people during this posture hearing, so I encourage you to go back and take a look at it.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Terrific. Thank you.
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, USA:
I was just wondering about how the space looks at any of these that appear to be regional, like it’s over NORTHCOM. We look at that as a global fight. And so I would maybe a little bit of a counter to what you postured there is, in our vision of how space is interacting with the Global Dome, it’s a global piece, because the capabilities you develop for Golden Dome we’re going to use for other potential capabilities certainly has a deterrent factor that I think would play into other regional fights as well. And so I think it’s kind of a win-win in that ability as you focus on that and build to that, and it gives all the community something to really focus on to get at. You’re building capability that helps you in those additional fights. So not an either/or. And I would agree with that as well. It’s a matter of timing. And America’s a big place to defend. I mean, look at the defense of Israel in the recent attack was incredible, but Israel’s pretty small. And so these are big challenges ahead of us.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got about 10 other questions I’d like to ask this panel, but the clock here says there’s a red light flashing at me, so I’m going to have to quit. You know, I’ve always believed that the greatest calling for our men and women in uniform is not to fight and win our nation’s wars. It’s to deter warfare. And if deterrence fails, the second thing is fight and win with the capability. So the importance of this panel and this mind-bending thought process that we just witnessed here, there’s so much more to talk about. I’d encourage our audience members to get into deterrence theory. There’s not much new under the sun. What is new is these new domains that are at risk and how we’re going to deter our adversaries from attacking our vital national interests in those domains. Gentlemen, thanks very much. How about a round of applause for our panel?