General Saltzman Keynote Address
Transcript
13 February 2024
Thanks to AFA for continuing to support the department with events like these and Secretary Kendall, thank you for your continued leadership and vision in this time of accelerated change. Your unwavering commitment to the space Force’s future has allowed us to stand up new missions and build new partnerships to secure our nation’s interests in and to space.
Gentlemen, I could not have asked for a better partner in the department as you understand the importance of the critical relationship between the Space Force and the Air Force and you continue to be a strong advocate for guardians and airmen. Thank you.
And finally, to all the guardians and airmen that are in attendance today, you all are the foundation for the success of the department as we re optimize our organizations to meet the challenges of greater competition for the space, power enthusiast, and history buffs in attendance, I will point out that it was this week in 1957 that Major General Bernard Schriever gave his famous Space superiority speech. At the first ever astronautics symposium Schriever, who was head of the Western Development Division, now Systems Command was charged with developing a workable ICBM. And unsurprisingly, his speech dealt primarily with missiles. But he didn’t stop there. Despite the fact that some leaders in the new Air Force didn’t want to distract from their primary air superiority mission. Schriever was a big believer in speaking truth to power, and he firmly committed to lifting the veil of secrecy surrounding what he saw as a very real struggle for space.
The Compelling motive, he said, for the development of space technology is the requirement for national defense. In the long haul, our safety as a nation may depend upon our achieving space superiority. Several decades from now, he said, the important battles may not be sea battles or air battles, but space battles, and we should be spending a certain fraction of our national resources to ensure that we do not lag in obtaining space supremacy.
Time Magazine summed up General Shriver’s sensational remarks this way, the conquest of outer space appears right around the corner. And that corner must be soon turned if the US is to maintain its air supremacy.
Now the speech was very well received, in fact, a little too well received in the view of some immediately after his speech, Schriever was told by the Secretary of Defense to never use the word space again. That gag order lasted about eight months when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik on October 4 1957 and the space race officially began. Today the space race that started in the 1950s has evolved into the immensely more complex, great power, competition and space that we are engaged in now. And the United States Space Force was established to meet these challenges. When the Space Force stood up, we worked hard to meet several charges given to us by Congress. First, we were tasked to create a lean organization focused on operations. Second, we were charged with increasing the acquisition speed needed to put the most cutting edge space capabilities into the hands of the warfighter.
Third, we were tasked to better integrate commercial and allied space efforts.
And fourth, but perhaps most importantly, we were expected to address the threats in the domain and build a cadre of military space professionals that are best in class laser focused on warfighting and space. Now there are many other assertions but these were the big ticket apps that kept coming up. The Space Force from day one accepted these challenges, and it is on a path to meeting them. And in at least one effort. I think we’ve already succeeded. And I’m here today to tell you the Space Force guardians are the best in class.
The guardian spirit is shining through everywhere I go. I see a sense of urgency. I see the seriousness about the threat. I see dedication to improvement and addressing shortfalls. It’s the spirit, it’s this spirit. That gives me confidence that we’re on the right path. And we’re doing all of this while remaining lean, agile, operationally focused. In fact, our guardians represent less than 1% of the total DoD active personnel. To put that in perspective, the entire space force could go to work down the road at Fort Carson and we would still have room for 10,000 more people.
To go one step further. The Space Force is about 3% of the total department of defense budget. Despite those numbers, the entire military satellite communication enterprise, all aspects of both strategic and theater missile warning, and the position navigation and timing, constellations, missions that are vital to the success of the joint force, fall to the guardians to operate, sustain and protect. This has got to be the greatest bargain in the department of defense, not just in critical capabilities and indispensable. services that we provide to the joint force. And in the case of GPS really to the citizens of the world, but also in the force multiplying value our guardians bring to the fight wherever they’re called on to support. The Space Force has brought a level of clarity and focus to operations in from and to space. That the Department of Defense did not have before its establishment. In this lean operations focused service dedicated to space deliberately stood up only five career fields, intelligence, cyberspace, Space Operations, developmental engineering. And program management. That’s it.
This allows our guardians to focus exclusively on delivering capability, understanding the threat, conducting operations and protecting the joint force from space enabled attack. And I contend that this focus has started producing benefits a significant challenge given to the Space Force was to increase the speed of acquisition to ensure our processes were sufficiently Agile to keep pace with potential threats, but be nimble enough to take advantage of the latest commercial developments. And since that time, the Space Force has developed delivered and deployed capabilities at a speed it is uncommon in the department defense, particularly related to space capabilities. For example, this past year, the Space Development Agency delivered 23 satellites into low Earth orbit to support our missile warning missile tracking and space data transport layer. This is increasingly the resilience This is increasing the resilience of these no fail missions by shifting missile warning communication capabilities. From a few exquisite yet vulnerable systems to a much larger number of harder to attack systems in low Earth orbit. We will create the resiliency needed in these critical mission areas.
But the fact that this first tranche went from order to orbit in under two years proves just how fast we can acquire and deliver capabilities when properly motivated and resourced. Another example of Guardians increasing acquisition speed comes from our Victus Knox tactically responsive space program. And I know some of you may have heard me talk about this effort before, but I think it’s a truly remarkable feat. The Victus Knox satellite was built and tested in less than 12 months after being put in storage until it was needed. It was flown to Vandenberg Space Force Base, made it to a firefly rocket and ready for launch. And under 60 hours. It was then placed in orbit and 27 hours later and ready for operations 37 hours after that. That’s five days from the warehouse to operating on orbit. Now, while that’s still a singularly discrete event in terms of on orbit capability the event streamline processes that can be used over and over again to speed on orbit delivery.
The success of Victus Knox marks a major milestone in our nation’s ability to respond to adversary action with the operational speed necessary to control escalation, attribute malign behaviors and deter irresponsible behavior in space. We’re looking at building upon his success with the launch of Victus Hayes next year. A similar approach focused on end to end execution using commercial capabilities.
Now around the same time the space for stood up the Joint Staff established initial requirements for the Moving Target Indication program from space. The ultimate goal of this program is to replace legacy air breeding farms with more survivable space assets that can perform targeting activities needed to close long range kill chains on a global scale. The Space Force was able to build on the efforts of the Air Force, analyze Options and select a way ahead in less than a year.
Now for the professionals in the room you know, getting a program started is sometimes the slowest part of delivery. And as a next step, guardians are collaborating with mission partners developing innovative operational concepts to ensure Spacebase Moving Target Indication meets all operational requirements set forth by the Joint Force.
The Space Force also took FY 23 appropriations and built a cyber test environment focused on missile warning ground networks. We did this in less than a year and it has already hosted seven major training exercises. These are just a few of the examples of the Space Force delivering capabilities with a sense of urgency. Now there is still work to do, but we are moving in the right direction.
The third area we were asked to address is to better integrate commercial space efforts across the department defense by acting as the focal point for the technical abilities.
We have taken this charge seriously because of how essential the commercial sector is to our resiliency and capacity. The Space Force goal here is to increase our competitive advantage by integrating commercial space goods, services and activities to support joint and combined operations. To that end, let me describe some of the exceptional work that Space Systems Command accomplished in establishing the tactical surveillance reconnaissance and tracking pilot program this last year. This initiative will leverage the global data marketplace to deliver commercially sourced sensing and data fusion analytics to meet the unclassified space awareness needs of our downrange joint and partner warfighters. I’m excited to announce that the TAC SRT pilot has now officially kicked off and has already directly supported combatant commands. For example, the team are rapidly responded to earthquakes in Morocco, Japan, floods in Libya, and the most recent outbreak of wildfires in
South America by providing near real time information and support.
These are great examples of how the Space Force is integrating commercial space capabilities at the speed of relevance with scalable programs to support any combatant command.
And we’re not just focused on better integration with our commercial partners. We’re working to improve our integration with our allies. One of the biggest barriers to integration has been outdated classification policies. Now to mitigate that barrier, just last month, the Department of Defense released an updated classification policy. One that enables us to fundamentally rethink the way we approach classification of space systems and the effective rate. This policy advances national defense strategy priorities by expanding access to information within the US government and reducing barriers to space integration with allies, partners and commercial space actors. I believe this is the most significant change in space classification policy in 20 years, and it will allow us to share more information more quickly with more stakeholders to better address the challenges in today’s competitive space environment.
And speaking of improved coordination with our allies. Back in September, the US signed a memorandum of understanding with Australia and the United Kingdom on the Deep Space advanced radar capability. This effort will provide 24/7 All Weather capabilities that increase our ability to detect, track identify and characterize objects in deep space. It will expand our ability to monitor and detect potentially hostile actions in space and if necessary, take defensive action.
Additionally, in less than 30 days after the memo was formalized, construction began at site one in Australia the Space Force was primed to act responsibly and rapidly to deliver this capability.
Along the same lines, the Space Force has also partnered with Japan to deliver to space domain awareness payloads to provide comprehensive warning of impending collisions in the geo belt these payloads will expand our on orbit approach to understanding the domain identifying threats and sharing data between the United States and Japan. Recently joining the now 10 nation combined Space Operations initiative, Japan is proving itself as a tremendous space partner.
These are just a few of our cooperative initiatives and programs aimed at protecting and defending activities that undermine the safety and security of space. And I can assure you, we will continue to aggressively leverage opportunities to improve cooperation, increased coordination, and promote interoperability with our allies and commercial partners. So don’t be shy. Don’t wait for us to ask the perfect question, or to deliver you the perfectly worded set of requirements. We want to hear your ideas. Now perhaps the most critical and complex ask of the Space Force was to address the threat and build space experts who understand it.
As the space domain continues to become more and more contested, and congested, the Space Force has been working hard to ensure our guardians have the training and skills to navigate these unique threats. Let me give you a good example. Intelligence guardians have actively run a two year Campaign of Learning where threat knowledge is tested, debriefed and embedded in our thinking, all so that it can be fully integrated into every aspect of our mission.
The standards are high. We know we need to be experts in the space domain. But we also need to teach the joint force and external stakeholders so they better understand the threat. And to that end National Space Intelligence Center recently published their first ever competing in space unclassified threat primer. Additionally, they have also published a classified version, which we delivered to Congress and other senior stakeholders.
We’ve gone beyond just knowing the threat. We are now ensuring there is a widespread detailed understanding of this threat. And in the final aspect of this charge, the Space Force was asked to build a cadre of space experts who understand how to put all this together. A cadre taught from the first day in the service, how to win in the domain, shaping the future leadership and expertise within our service. And we needed to create an environment that allowed a distinct Space Force culture to emerge. And it started with the creation of a new basic military education program. And further services recruits coming to basic training or on average of about 18 years old. For the Space Force. Our recruits average about 22 year olds and many have college experience. But mostly they’re just fired up about military space. And that created an opportunity for us to explore different basic training focus.
So we created a tailored program for preparing new trainees for military service to provide new Guardians a space specific curriculum, everything from space history to space vocabulary, and its short history. It has graduated 1153 Guardians steeped in our core values of character commitment connection, encourage guardians who are ready to serve a wide variety of missions, and in units around the globe. Now we will work hard to inspire them next, to pursue a career long effort in the Space Force.
One step in that direction occurred at the end of last year when Congress approved the Space Force personnel management act. This is a revolutionary new way to manage our talent.
We now have the ability to rethink workforce roles, contributions and career paths, we will have the ability to have full and part time positions inside the Space Force. Now this is not a separate Space Force Reserve component. It is fundamentally different, an active force of full and part time positions and the ability to shift between them without leaving the active Space Force. This new talent management model will be phased in over the next few years, because we’ve learned a lot from the intersection, I’m sorry, the inner service transfer process over the past four years. And we’re committed to ensuring stability in our workforce. We don’t want to inadvertently cause harm to people in their careers as we implement.
We are committed to getting this right so we will be deliberate as we manage bullet structures, personnel moves and transfers and all of the administrative details needed to execute these authorities. So we’re working on getting this right, but we want to get it right quickly. So all this is to say I’m extremely proud of the Space Force and all the good that it has accomplished. But as good as we are, as much as we’ve done, as far as we’ve come. It’s not enough. We are not yet optimized for great power competition. To some degree, all of our efforts to move in the right direction have highlighted some key deficiencies that we need to correct. And that’s why we spent so much time in recent months examining all aspects of how the Space Force organize trains and equips how we equip the service to support the combatant commands in this era of great power competition. And that’s why we’re implementing new initiatives such as standing up a futures command, redesigning our initial officer training course, to optimize for potential conflict in the future. These are just a few of our efforts. Back in September, I outlined how the Space Force is creating the structure and the processes we need for a future what some of affectionately referred to as the Saltsman puzzle chart.
Now it’s called that not because it takes a long time to put together in the end, you realize there’s a piece missing? No, that’s not why they call it that. Rather, is because all of these activities must fit together. They’re required. They’re all required, they must work together to form a coherent outcome. And at the core of this discussion was how the service is driving towards a purpose built Space Force for great power competition. At the time, we all had focused on our on these initiatives under four separate bends force design, force development, force generation in force employment. But what we realized through our optimization discussions was that the four bins that we identified in September matched up with the great power competition pillars of capabilities, development, people, readiness and power projection in the initiatives I introduced yesterday, the space futures command officer training course, units of action all fit perfectly into this model. And they fit because at the core, the purpose of all the Space Forces optimizations initiatives, is to increase our warfighting capabilities.
And so I thought it was important to take time today to talk a little more about some of the other efforts that the Space Force is going to undertake, above and beyond the ones we mentioned yesterday.
Our first pillar is capabilities development, centered on a forward looking planning process that ensures competitiveness over time. initiatives under this effort are aimed at optimizing the service for the transmission of operationally relevant technology at a pace and scale that exceeds that of rival powers. While space futures command is a major part of this capabilities development effort, it is not the only one. The Space Force will also reprioritize and streamline science and technology pipelines to better meet warfighter needs at the point of delivery.
We are prioritizing these science and technology needs based on the future operational concepts so that the research labs can map their efforts more directly to our highest priority activities. Our goal is to maximize operational return to the nation on our own investments. Streamlining this process will ensure that the relevance of science and technology investments in their integration into our force design occurs over a long term.
Our second pillar is people and it is a gold to create joint minded warfighters who understand the battlefield context of the space domain and who are well equipped to act within it.
The Space Force inherited a variety of operational cultures, disparate organizational structures and different training requirements when we stood up four years ago and these conditions have evolved over the past couple of decades, driven by a pursuit to optimize to have optimal efficiency to the point that we lost focus on effectiveness, effectiveness across organizational structures, workforce roles, training requirements, among other things. This has to be corrected. So in support of our optimization efforts, we have been working to establish clear delineation of roles, responsibilities, and the duties of our officer enlisted and civilian guardians to better align and optimize our force. And I’m excited to announce that this work is now complete.
And we have a clear set of narratives and principles for each category of our guardian workforce. And we will use that information to real realign our unit structures and our developmental initiatives to optimize our guardians for great power competition. I mean, just take a minute to describe these roles in a little more detail.
First. For the officer guardians, they are our services principle leaders and planners. They’re accountable for military decision making at the tactical, operational and strategic goals. They’re tasked with leading commanding planning and directing resources within the space force in the joint organizations. Second, our enlisted guardians. These are the services technical specialists. They are a primary warfighters trained as frontline operators and technical experts responsible for unit readiness. They are tasked with executing operational orders while serving as leaders themselves weapons system experts and advisors to their officers, civilian counterparts.
And finally, for our civilian guardians, they possess high levels of unique technical and specialized experience supporting all the space power disciplines. They provide the operational stability, unit continuity and depth of expertise critical to mission success over time.
And then these Terms of Reference provide us with clear roles and functions for officers enlisted and civilians, all with the goal of streamlining daily operations and facilitating future career development. And along with the creation of the officer training course, and Space Force personnel management act, these initiatives under this pillar are aimed at expanding the training, education and the development opportunities to guardians to meet the services high tech operational demands. And that brings us to our third pillar readiness in the past, our readiness standards have reflected our ability to procedurally operate our systems in a benign environment. And while this is stillness necessary, it will no longer be sufficient to fight for space superiority against our pacing threat.
We have provided space effects with impunity for decades, these days are over. Our service must define our readiness by our ability to deter and defeat rival powers rather than our capacity to provide services to others. And it begins with providing all our guardians with the realistic threat based training they require through a robust Operational Test and training infrastructure, what we call OTTI. OTTI is an umbrella term describing the collection of distributed enterprise wide test and training systems processes, effectively integrated and synchronized to establish and sustain combat readiness across the spectrum of conflict. We are already building live ranges to conduct events in the actual environment, ensuring ground truth is captured for systems and tactics evaluations. We’re also creating an intelligence-informed inventory of adversary capabilities with opposing forces whose tactics reflect actual counterspace threats to the space, ground and link segments. And finally, we are investing in high fidelity mission specific simulators that replicate each unique mission area weapons system and their associated crew positions. These simulators will encompass the full spectrum of training, from initial qualifications to advanced employment.
And looking forward we know these are substantial organizational training and equipping challenges that could impact the Space Force is ability to ensure it systems and operators are ready for sport full spectrum combat operations in the space domain.
Therefore, we must develop and maintain capable, sustainable, active and collaborative architectures to conduct realistic Test and Evaluation, full spectrum training, tactics validation to ensure maximum warfighting readiness. Improved readiness will help us better orient Space Forces towards the high end fight and ensure our guardians can win the contested space domain.And our final pillar is power projection. As a service focused on space superiority we know we must fully integrate it into the joint force. Properly trained, equipped and ready to accept mission command for assigned objectives. And yesterday, we introduced combat squadrons as the unit of action for the Space Force and the implementation of our Space Forces generation model. We talked about how they will both enable the accomplishment of advanced readiness activities and force generation. And as I said yesterday, integration sometimes starts with our service components around the world.
Our service components are central to space power projection, because they are essential to the proper integration into joint plans.
The expertise these components provide will allow effective and realistic inclusion of space effects. They drive realistic joint training. They ensure effective security cooperation activities with our allies and partners, and they enable seamless global collaboration between all elements of the space enterprise. We have already seen the positive effects. For example, our response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our ongoing efforts to protect us and allied forces, particularly with regards to the Houthi situation in Yemen, and the ongoing conflict in Israel and our efforts to strengthen space related defenses at a time when the near peer adversarial threat is growing from China and to an extent north. Korea and Russia. All of these efforts were enhanced by the work of our service components. And by normalizing force generation and presentation. We provide the combatant commanders with sources prepared to meet their space warfighting requirements and project power just like our sister services have for decades.
As I finish up, I’m in awe of how far we’ve come in four short years. I’m excited for where we’re going in the future. Our Space Force is just under 14,000.
Officer enlisted and civilian guardians are small when compared to our sister services, but do not take our size for our value or our impact. But just because we’ve come a long way does not mean we have arrived. And let me be clear on this point. It is also true that no team is more capable of getting us ready than the guardians of the Space Force and let me close with another comment by General Schriever. He said he and his group accepted that they were taking risks, because they knew if they did not develop the long range ICBM capability, and a reliable satellite reconnaissance system. It would strain the strategic balance between the US and Soviet Union. Quote, we never lost confidence. He said, even when we had failures, which we had plenty of in the early days. Of course, there were concerns, but we met them every time.
Today the risk of moving too slow, is far higher than any risk associated with rapid change. We must evolve. We must take risks. We must solve problems. And we will because I know our guardians and they have proven they have the confidence and skills to deliver. Now is the time to prepare so that we will be ready to meet any threat anytime, anywhere to secure our nation’s interests in from and to space. Thank you Semper Supra.
