Keynote Address—The State of the Space Force

Watch the Video

---

Read the Transcript

---

Kathleen Ferguson:

Good morning. I’m honored to introduce our next speaker and welcome him to the AFA stage. Not for his first time at AFA, but for his first time giving his keynote as Chief of Space Operations. General Douglas Schiess took command of America’s youngest service just 12 days ago. This is a most consequential moment for the space enterprise. Space remains America’s great advantage on and off the battlefield. Our adversaries know it. They are watching closely and looking for ways to disrupt the capabilities that underpin our American way of life and war. General Schiess put it directly during his confirmation hearing, “We need the ability to have space superiority. And what that means is we have to have the ability to counter someone else’s ability to hold our satellites at risk.”

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the third Chief of Space Operations, General Douglas A. Schiess.

Gen. Douglas Schiess:

Good morning. How’s everybody doing? All right. Kathleen, thank you for that kind introduction and thank you to the entire AFA team. What an incredible conference we have going on here. Congratulations to AFA on 80 incredible years of championing our air and space warfighters. So since you just turned 80 and the Space Force is about to turn seven, it basically means the AFA is like our grandparents. Every time we come to visit, you treat us well, you hype us up on some sugar, you leave with a bag full of treats and great memories. And I assume that means next week you’ll be completely exhausted from all the energy and enthusiasm us grandkids bring and you’ll be in desperate need of a vacation. I know that vacation will be well deserved.

Burt, I was talking to a few folks this morning and I asked them if you were going to give them some time off and they said two days. I said Saturday and Sunday. And I don’t know. They said we’re already working for March. So maybe a couple more days, Burt. I don’t know.

Secretary Meink, sir, thank you for your tireless leadership across our department. It’s been an honor working with you for a long time and it’s an honor to work for you now. Please take my keynote today as that I’m already at work and already trying to get after your priorities.

General Wilsbach and Cindy, thank you for being here. Thank you for your partnership. I’m energized to serve alongside of you with Debbie and then make sure the department is getting after what we need to do and as a joint chief as we further our services war fighting capabilities. So thanks.

So obviously a lot has changed since the last time I was here at National Harbor. For one, and previously talked about exactly 12 days ago, almost to the hour, I had the profound honor of assuming responsibility of the Space Force as your Chief of Space Operations. It is truly a privilege of a lifetime for my wife Debbie and me to serve this nation and to advocate for Guardians around the world. But before I get to my remarks, it’s a little early so I want to get some blood pumping here. Could I have all the Guardians in the house please stand up?

All right. Keep standing. Don’t sit down. Maybe do some squats. All right. Now when I say Guardians, I’m talking about those in and out of uniform. So we need our civilians to stand up and we need our legacy Guardians, our retiree Guardians. We need all of our Guardians to be standing up please. All right. I also want to add our Guardian families. Please stand up. Everybody stay standing.

All right. How about those Airmen that support our Guardians and our Space Force mission? I need you to stand up. Those of you stationed at a Space Force base. Remain standing. Those who help us with our finance, our logistics, our security forces. All right. Now if you are a person still sitting, but you depend on Space Force Guardians doing their jobs or someone that benefits from the advantage Guardians provide, come on, I know, stand up. You use Google Maps. Maybe you use Waze or DoorDash or something. Everybody should be standing now. I was an Airman for almost 30 years, so integrity first. Make sure if you’re standing.

All right. All right. Now look around the room. This is what it’s all about. Guardians projecting space power, underpinning joint force success and delivering benefits in, from, and to space for our nation. The number of people standing up in this room is just a small example of how we benefit from the capabilities the Space Force generates. Thanks so much. Please take your seats.

All right. We have come an extraordinary distance in nearly seven years, and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish in such a short period of time, but we know we have much more work to do. As you just saw, everyone in this room benefits for our nation’s use of space capabilities. Our service must meet demands of the increasingly contested and expanding domain from low earth orbit all the way out to cislunar space. That’s why we are laser focused on our growth, urgently maturing our capabilities, developing our people, and increasing capacity to outpace evolving threats.

As Guardians, we embrace this mission with such conviction because the Space Force is purpose built for it and we have had visionary leaders champion us from the very beginning. Our first CSO, General Raymond, much like the first Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Carl Spaatz, built the foundation that made our service an enduring, indispensable war fighting branch. He established early on that space superiority is non-negotiable for American dominance.

Following him, our second CSO, General Saltzman, just like the second Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Hoyt Vandenberg, led the next critical phase, turning that foundation into a combat ready force. Here’s what our force looks like today in action. Please roll the video.

How about that? Pretty cool, huh? All right. All right. What an exciting time to be a Guardian. Our foundation is solid and we are delivering combat ready forces, and now we must grow our combat power. To drive that growth, my time as CSO will center on three priorities, forge the Guardian ethos, arm and grow the Guardian force, and integrate Guardian power at scale.

Forging the Guardian ethos is our foundational priority because ethos underpins how we act and the character of our service. It is the reason why character is the first of the Guardian’s core values. Before you became an acquirer, a space operator, an intel analyst, or a cyber operator, you were a Guardian first. The Space Force acts together as one Guardian team, a military force uniquely trained and equipped to deliver unparalleled space war fighting advantage.

Guardians like Tech. Sergeant Jenna Hill embody the heart of our force. Enlisting as a space systems operator eight years ago, Jenna recently completed her first year as a Space Force basic military training instructor where she personally inspired and mentored hundreds of new Guardians already. Her journey comes full circle. As an 18-year-old trainee from Windsor, New York, Jenna was awestruck by the professionalism of her own instructors who instilled in her an unwavering pride in herself and her service.

Today, she passes that same spark to the next generation of space war fighters. Alongside all of our dedicated military training instructors, Jenna plays a pivotal role in strengthening and expanding our training pipeline. And at home, Jenna takes care of the most important role, being a proud mom to her three-year-old daughter, Charlie. Jenna, I think you’re in the audience somewhere. Please stand up and be recognized and thank you for what you do.

Guardians like Jenna are motivating our newest recruits as they instill in them what it means to be a Guardian. Things like developing the unique technical skill sets that it takes to perform the mission in the space domain. And committing to our Guardian values of character, connection, commitment, and courage. And of course, proudly singing that Space Force, almost said Air Force, Space Force song anytime we can. I still sing the Air Force song too.

As Guardians leave their initial skills training and hit their duty station, they are fired up and ready to execute. It’s incredibly inspiring to witness. Our youngest Guardians are living out what was considered science fiction just a few years ago. They are the very vision of what it means to be a modern war fighter. That, that is Guardian ethos in action. And because of that Guardian ethos, I am confident today that we have the world’s greatest Space Force, but we must remain clear-eyed that today’s advantage cannot be assumed for tomorrow.

Which brings me to my second priority. We must arm and grow the Guardian force. Space is both a battlefield and the backbone of our joint force. We face determined and credible adversaries who are building and fielding counter space systems at incredible speeds to target directly the United States space advantage. So that is why we don’t just monitor the domain, we stand ready to defend it. So let me be crystal clear. Today, Guardians operate on orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space enabled attacks.

And in the coming years, with the resources entrusted to us, by the way, we need your help Congress, we will make disciplined and responsible choices about how we build and sustain our combat advantage. Which means scaling our ability to respond to threats. This means accelerating resilient space-based sensing and tracking architectures like airborne moving target indication, or AMTI, to directly feed into long range joint precision fires.

It also means building operational concepts and designing a force that has the training and kit to outthink, outmaneuver and outfight any adversary so the president has critical options at the ready anytime he needs them. Intentional growth in these areas today will provide for tomorrow’s combat advantage. This growth must happen quickly, and that starts with having the right organizational structures and the authorities in place to acquire and deliver capabilities to our war fighters.

We continue to overhaul our acquisition structure to strip away bureaucracy. We are, for example, empowering our program acquisition executives, our PAEs, with increased authorities and the ability to make appropriate trades across their portfolios, and we are also ensuring that they are directly tied to our requirements and missions, all to increase efficiency and build capacity where it is needed today. Although we still have further to go in our acquisition transformation journey, we are already starting to see what’s possible.

Guardians right now are doing seemingly impossible things on unprecedented timelines. All throughout the country while partnering with industry, they are quickly turning requirements into fielded combat power. I want to share a short story about Victus Haze. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, the Space Force routinely runs a series of Victus exercises that grow in complexity each year to test out different capabilities. This particular Victus Haze mission earlier this year demonstrated the ability to launch and respond to an on-demand on orbit threat in just 17 hours.

Space Systems Command, our industry partners and Combat Forces Command prove to the world that if an adversary targets the United States Space Force, we have the capability to deliver a swift response and we are going to continue to work on getting faster and faster.

However, for Victus Haze to succeed, a few things had to happen. First, our acquisition and operational Guardians had to break down some legacy silos and displayed a great benefit of working together to deliver systems at threat pacing speed so we can field systems that match the way we need to fight today.

Second, our industrial base responded, demonstrating that they stand shoulder to shoulder with us in this fight, and then when a threat is immediate, they can help us deliver military space power on time. So today, I’d like to acknowledge the Guardians and industry partners who made that happen, some of who are on the screen right here behind me, Mr. Brian Song, Captain George Eberwine, Captain Alyse Parker, First Lieutenant Kristi Fortenberry, and Tech Sergeant Gretchen Gregory, Sergeant Jeffrey Rickard, and Sergeant Kevin Thomas.

So as you can see, as we arm and grow our force, the third priority becomes pretty clear, integrating Guardian power at scale. Our Guardians have been tested several times this past year. When the order came for Epic Fury, the Space Force was a part of the decision calculus on whether we executed the joint campaign at all. We were a part of the minimum force package.

This is the minimum force required that a commander considers when sending military forces into harm’s way. The joint force made it clear, without the Space Force’s capabilities, the joint force could not and would not move forward. During Operation Epic Fury, our components, notably at US Central Command and Space Command, with support from our components at European Command and Pacific Command, demonstrated that Guardians are not supporting from the sidelines as a nice to have, but we are delivering space power directly into the fight as a need to have.

One of those impressive Guardians is Specialist Gray, who hails from Tampa, Florida. She joined the Space Force just two years ago, but listen to the impact she made in her short term already. She deployed to the CENTCOM AOR as a part of the 42nd Electronic Warfare detachment, and with hours of OEF kicking off, she received a priority target package with one critical objective, reconfigure her weapon system and execute critical non-kinetic fires.

With absolute focus on the mission, her world narrowed to a single screen and her Guardian training took over. She locked onto the target, optimized her weapon system and waged electromagnetic warfare against a determined adversary. Even as alarm red sirens were blaring and incoming missiles targeted her site, she courageously held the line, protecting forces, denying adversary capability, and delivering space effects until her commander had to literally pull her from the console to safety.

And now she’s back at home station spending time with her spouse and her pets. Specialist Gray is just one of the outstanding members of an entire enterprise of dedicated Guardians, including the acquisition professionals that developed and fielded the weapon system that she operated, the intel Guardians that developed the targeting package that she used, and the cyber Guardians who ensured communication connectivity and network defense for the command and control. The Guardian instructors who trained her for combat and the list goes on and on.

All of these incredible Guardians, including the ones we highlighted today, are bringing everything they’ve got to fight to make sure our joint force succeeds. Please give all Guardians a round of applause.

All right, when we are talking about integrating Guardian power at scale, this is the kind of stuff we are talking about, embedding Guardians on the front lines, delivering combat credible forces to combatant commands, maturing capabilities through rapid acquisitions to stay ahead of the threat, and bringing space expertise directly into the joint battle space. All to give combatant commanders like Admiral Cooper in Central Command the space capabilities needed to fight and win.

That is our unique contribution to the joint force. That is the Guardian advantage. So looking ahead, we must expand that advantage. We must build a sustained pipeline of Guardian talent, equipped with the appropriate training and the kit and advanced capabilities to ensure our joint force is fully powered by space expertise. We must ensure today, tomorrow, and for as long as we have the pleasure to serve, that our joint force can execute because Guardians are there both at home and abroad and in harm’s way.

Yet, I’m mindful that Guardians are only as capable and resilient as the people who enable them. I know our department is working hard to accelerate our missions and our expected growth, and that growth is felt everywhere. Even by our Air Force partners who stand with us, but most deeply by our families who serve alongside of us. We ask our loved ones to navigate the stress of deployments, the uncertainty of rapid change, and the heavy demands of a military life.

So if we are to grow as one team, we must support the families who carry the weight of our service. That’s why Debbie and I will focus on addressing stress points and strengthening the support networks needed to deliver the quality of life of our Guardians and our families and what they deserve. Debbie and I see you. We hear you. We’ve been where you’ve been. We know that it’s not an easy life as a military family. That’s why we need to ensure that we work hard every day to make sure that it’s still a good and fulfilling life.

We are fully committed to finding the solutions. We want Guardians to step into the fight with absolute confidence, knowing that our families are taken care of and secure. Our families are Guardian families and we will ensure we do everything we can to take care of them.

So as I start to wrap up, I’ll leave you with something to reflect on as you continue to hear from leaders at this conference and even when you get back home to your mission and your bases. Our aim is deterrence. Deterrence is strongest when we have a credible force and a resolve to do it, and that is what the Space Force brings to you. A bad day in space is felt by everyone. It’s felt by our joint force, it’s felt by our nation’s economy, and it’s felt by the citizens all around that rely on space capabilities.

Guardians, we cannot fail, and we know that we won’t, and I know that you’re going to get after it. Because each and every day we want our adversaries to wake up and look at the Space Force and the joint force and say, “Today is not the day to take on the United States and our resolve because we won’t let you.” We deter from a position of strength. It is responsibility and privilege that comes with being a Guardian. We are entrusted with something extraordinary, a critical domain and an outstanding mission, and it determines whether the joint force can fight at scale and precision so that we can get after our nation’s business.

We are battle tested. We’ve seen that. We’re combat proven, but we cannot stop here. The threat is evolving. So how do we do that? By forging our Guardian ethos. We are one team delivering and employing war fighting capabilities and combat effects. We need to do that by arming and growing our Guardian force. We will ensure our force is combat ready, equipped with resilient systems needed to deter conflict, and if necessary, to fight and win. And we do that by integrating Guardian power at scale.

We guarantee that America, our allies, and our partners have the space expertise and the capabilities to allow the success of the joint and combined force. We do that by delivering space superiority. We do that by ensuring that we get after our nation’s interests in, from, and to space. We must build the force our nation needs for today, tomorrow, and every day our nation calls, we will be ready.

So AFA, thanks for everything you do. Everyone here, thanks for being here. Continue to enjoy the conference, the opportunity to hear from our senior leaders and catching up with colleagues. I look forward to serving with you. Semper Supra.