Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On Space The U.S. Military 20240712

Panelists. Good afternoon, general shaw, Major General john shaw joining us from Vandenberg Air force base. Welcome. Can you hear us . I can hear you break can you hear me, sandra . Perfect. Major general john shaw, he is the commander of the Space Operations commands under the u. S. Space force and he is also the commander of the combined force Space Component for the u. S. Space command. Communications, gps, Weather Services but not a lot of people understand we also provide support for human spaceflight. Walk us through the mission and. Thank you. Thank you for hosting and greetings from the air force base on this beautiful Central Coast of california. Thanks for this opportunity. A lot of things upfront so i guess i will talk for a little bit. It was not only an incredible weekend but its been an incredible month, the month of may 2020. Earlier this month we launched in x. 37 from Cape Canaveral. The people in the air force to transfer and now who do we have that may be a transfer to the space force. On top of that they have recruiting commercials in the month of may that are kind of cool to watch and interesting. I point out in both of the commercials here at annenberg airspace. Its a new one we are going to move into later this year and then i couldnt finish by not acknowledging we also had the netflix version make its debut. So i dont know i think you need a special addition to capture all those things. With all that, we continued as a space force into Space Command with the expertise of our professionals to continue to do the Operations Worldwide in the midst of the pandemic that is affecting all of us right now and im proud of the fact that we were able to do. Let me clarify the task force devoted to talk with you in a minute but i would like to set the stage. Here at the combined space center at annenberg and we do have an Important Mission for the lions share of this support to the personnel recovery. The department of defense has been supporting since the beginning. 60 years ago when workers to sending humans into space the department of defense was supporting that and weve been through the entire history and we are proud to support in that regard about what happened this past weekend was a change. It marked a new era not only for nasa but also for us supportingg them. Let me walk through why we had those changes. We are in a different place than we were. We should point back to to a gargantuan events that happened with regards to this peace organizations. The first on december 20 was space force standing up again as it showed u should six branch oe United States military. We had stood down the command and we started back up again and that was a massive event. One way to look at this if we were to do a documentary of these that happened in 2019 and he would probably title it the rise of space force in the return of Space Command, two things that happened in 2019. So why does that matter for us . Space command inherited wealth worth of strategic responsibilities for the spaceflight. As the commander of the United States Space Command is a sign that the duties by the unified command that comes down to us from the president. He was assigned to the duties of the managers support team in the spaceflight and my role as a compliment commander within the United States Space Command at the operational level they follow the command and control for all of the forces and capabilities and events that might surround support for human spaceflight and so that is my role in that regard as you asked. Others we can talk about a little later because i dont want to loose focus on this. In the same role, im responsible for the global integration Space Capabilities fighting other National Security needs i also work for general raymond as the chief of Space Operations at the commanders of Space Command which was what 14th air force was redesignated as. There was a lot of paperwork that went on at the end of december of last year. I was an air force commander and became the commander of what we call Space Operations command and then the space forces that are presented so under me in that regard as well and that includes who you will hear from today. Those are capabilities that are presented. So again i have a great front row seat to where both have the eyewear here. Organizationally, with support here operationally it involves a lot more than just the personal Recovery Mission that people hear about in a moment. Weve been supporting the human spaceflight for decades even during the shuttle era and during the postshuttle era by providing awareness to the International Space station said if there is a piece of debris that might be coming close to the space station, the network that works for me and my joint hat will detect that and notify nasa and they will make the decision to make an adjustment for the International Space station to support that. Weve been doing that for a long time. But theres other pieces with regards to the recent launch beyond what was done in florida. We actually set up some networks to enable the personal recovery forces that might be needed globally and that is Something Else that we have to do. Theres also International Partnership to this. We were in touch with among our allies letting them know what was going on and in a particular case i would like to think the united kingdom. They helped us with some of our awareness analysis it is a big team effort and nerve center for this right here is combining space operation. That is how it is kind of different than it has been in the past. The second way that this is different, last weekend was different from this, is the methodology. Its true we have been saying the first time we returned from american soil since 2011, the shuttle era but we are not using the shuttle we are using a capsule so we have to go back to 1975 to remember when weaver last supporting for the personal recovery operations and that is a whole different profile in terms of Mission Planning and scenarios. They have the ability to maneuver and land in an airfield that requires a certain amount of support. The capsule doesnt have to but it has the possibility of landing anywhere. Another thing that is a little bit different is in the early age of human spaceflight, they supported kind of three capsules in a serial fashion. We had mercury, gemini and apollo and the recovery forces learn how to recover one cupful that they could learn how to recover another in got to apollo in the mid60s to 1975 that is the one they focused on. The Lieutenant Colonel has to focus on training for three capsules simultaneously. They trained for the one we saw launched this past weekend and theyve also been training for possible recovery of the star liner capsulher capsule begin pd they also are training for the possible recovery of the council that nasa is developing so we put a lot on the plate to be able to maintain the techniques to potentially recover astronauts from any of them and therell different in some degree. And then one more thing thats different that made a new era for support for the spaceflight is technology is different than it was in 2011 and much different than it was in 1975. We have gps. We didnt have that before. We have the networks around the globe that are much more robust than we had in 1975 to enable the global footprint for the possible recovery and rescue operation. We didnt have those in 1975 into th1975 andprovided speed al reach and the ability to provide air rescue that we didnt have a 1975. You put all these things together we are in a new era to separate the human spaceflight and were proud to be part of the team supporting nasa and with that i would actually like to return over. Let me introduce him by saying i did put him in charge of the task force 45 and hes in charge of the personal recovery forces worldwide to conduct those operations as needed and then from that perspective i would provide many other support needed from other combatant commands we coordinate with the other forces that he was at the tip of the spear and even more so with Lieutenant Colonel so id like to talk more about this obligation. Thank you for that overview. The commander of the 45th space wing, commander of the Eastern Range, commander of the 45. How did it go and affluence point did you know things were going well and you just didnt need to do anything else . Thank you for allowing us to be here and be a part of this. Its been an incredible month with the launch and then in the last couple of weeks or actually years preparing for the next and for this specifically. The director of the Eastern Range and task force 45 we had a lot of different roles on wednesday and again on saturday and first off we had our normal launch that we do to provide what we like to say Public Safety and resource protection so we were responsible for that. Wednesday folks said that the weather just wasnt right on saturday the weather cooperated and they were able to provide us the information we needed to make the right decision and then of course we also had Mission Assurance so we were right there alongside our partners to make sure that the mission was going. On the launch of side it happened to be a pretty busy challenge at the end. We had issues we were waiting for and at the weather didnt clear up until about 30 minutes later and then unusual for the Eastern Range we actually had some rain at the end and incredible folks that work the instrumentation were able to fix those and make sure we had a green range and then we were working with some issues to make sure we had all of the right data. But once we got about four minutes to go i knew we were going to be cut and the god andy activity was focused on the task force 45 where the airmen across the air force came together and across the world actually we had forces here at the air force base and in charleston and hawaii that were ready to do what they needed to do if the astronauts got into trouble so we were prepared for five years for this day and theyve had a long history. Weve been doing this mission making sure that we were prepared to help out the astronauts with an issue so they are a bunch of rescue experts and they do an incredible job. I cant say how proud i am this week and all the way up to a watching them go through. Pretty cool for me and i know for everybody else thats here at the air force base. We dont know when exactly they are coming back, but when they return . When they come back down and we can talk about more of the details of that yes they have to be prepared as they orbit back down and hopefully everything works out and they get the capsule themselves but again if there was an anomaly to be able to execute that. Host there is a video we would like to show so if that is okay lets go ahead and see the video first. With the retirement of the program in 2011, the u. S. Hasnt seen the spaceflight in almost a decade. The airmen of the 45th Operations Detachment have stated Mission Ready and have been here since the beginning of human spaceflight. Redstone rockets to those today oversea postured forces. Theyve been training and working to prepare for any type. This training allows the team to work with them and demonstrate current and future. The continued ability to ensure that it isnt their last day. Have you been training them for this idea, how long have you been doing it and what are some of the highlights for you . I appreciate you putting that together and showing that. The last two years have been getting ready for this. Weve been working as we finalize and put this rescue scenario. We are pretty small about 30 personnel here. When we get ready to execute the mission and we grow to about 150 people that use this mission. In contrast. There were 24 aircraft and seven dp vessels that were used. Today we posture 150 members in the three different locations so we have over the last couple of years we then put those plans together. We are on the hook three hours prior to that but when it lifted off is when we got our high alert foster and was ready to respond. These are the men and women that we look to and those that are saving lives and combat theater and in iraq and afghanistan they are the same ones that are here executing the mission still. Its exciting to be part of the mission a is part of history again. The rescue motto is the same as a civil search and rescue. It is humbling to be part of that culture. Host how is the preparation going . We have been. Last april we conducted a large exercise as kind of the capstone event. We had the star liner and we conducted a profile with the star liner. Each of the capsules is unique the way that we egress them from the dragon is differen dragon ie star liner which is different then the overriding capsule as well as contingency rescues. Just so people know your unit is very small so when you train do you train with the same people are different people . Its a great question. Internally it includes activeduty aiactiveduty air fo. One navy member, government civilians, contract teams and reservists that come on an so wn we get ready to do the training event, we have to get orders through the u. S. Space command to come through patrick. We coordinate all that and put together the profile and the training and then my small core of cadre trained them to do the mission and then we go out and execute the training and validation. Host when we have the launches of astronauts from russia did you also train for those missions . Specifically we have a task to support the air medical evacuation on the landing of the mission so every time they come back we have a small team over in germany and they organized a medical team in case we need to support that. When we have partner nations that fly on the commercial programs because we have partners playing on the dragon and star liner and they will train with those astronauts and be prepared to support them on our capsule just like they did for the kernel when they had the board in 2018. Host i know brian has been picking up a lot of questions from the audience but i want to ask Major General paul of this sounds very exciting as far as all the changes happening in the human spaceflight and how they would be able to support the different missions. A lot of people since we announced this event, a lot of people have asked me whats going to happen when we have more commercial human spaceflight and Space Tourism . Do you see the space force taking o up any new roles in supporting the broader commercial Spaceflight Community . I think we will have to wait and see what happens as that evolves and how the government chooses to regulate that. I think i can safely say that our need to continue space awareness will ever increase as there is more and more human activity whether it massa or commercial tourism. There will be they neede the neo prepare and someone is going to have to do that and i think it is likely the department of defense will be a part of that team. You mentioned with a rolled up the last few weeks and you said it was interesting we see a lot of the spaceflight on the commercials so it sounds like the messages they want people to see some connection between the space force in human spaceflight even that you dont fly to space. Is that reasonable to say that . They will lobby sending them any time soon. Maybe a long time from now we will be doing that but not anytime soon. We will be supporting any human for going to space for exploration in the way that was described here already today. I think any images you see in the commercials were meant to transcend anything we are dealing with today to inspire the next generation. Okay, so do you have any audience questions so far for the panelists cracks yes, i do. I have a couple of good ones. One just really builds off of what the general was just talking about for the future space force to deploy operators into space. The question is what role if any does Space Operations command half to assist future lunar operations . Sure. So, first of all, as nasa continues with this project to bring humans into the lunar sphere the need for the awareness will remain the same way that has been the need for the Space Command and awareness and protection of the International Space station and that will be necessary in the environment, too and i would expect the department of defense will with some degree assist with that awareness. We i also think that missions whether they are scientific or civil or National Security related art going to extend beyond the geosynchronous sphere in the next couple of decades and so there will be, again, a focus from a different benefit Defense Operations that extend out to that. Another audience question that we have is probably best directed to the director. Since space x. And boeing, since the launches are commercial and not nasa, how are space x. And boeing paying for Space Operations command for the rescue support and how much do you charge for a launch and reentry landing . So, i will start that. All of our activities that we do here at Cape Canaveral air force station and out at annenberg for reworwere reworked with commercl entities, we do charge them for some of the activities that they do. I will say in this business about eight years ago and i came back, we have really been a greadone agreat job of trying te costs down and trying to recharge for the things they need to be able to do their missions for any commercial, not just commercial manned flights abut any. Specifically for the rescue forces, we try to do a lot of training so we can use a lot of the funds to do that but we do have to provide that information and costs but i will pass over to see if he has any more direct specific information. Dot bubble of extra to add there. The primary thing is all of the orders and support for the rescue side is wanting on interference reimbursable basis so all of the flight hours and all of the things that are specifically and directly associated with supporting this commercial crew program are funded directly through and its a reimbursable. We provide the costs back and in fact there is a budget that they provide us that we manage with all of the specific rescue equipment that is nasa funded. We maintain it and employ it, but that is all nasa funded as a part of that program. On that topic to give people a sense of how many are involved, im assuming that you have a team of about 150 people ready to deploy to the landing site in the operation and they have to get there within a certain amount of time and you can talk to put that envelope is as fast as or as long as, but youve got 150 folks, and they have to be ready to go. Then when the all clear sign was given that they were not wanting we had to be ready again on saturday. Is that correct . Thats for the Lieutenant Colonel. Yes, it is. So those 150 people were between three different locations. Actually its more than that because that includes ive got and ellen know that works at Johnson Space center as if hes sitting right next to the landing support officers. I had a member sitting next to the recovery director and then weve got the person know. Its not 150 old thing to one location. The actual recovery operation is going to be quite small and depending on whether it is yet patrick or someplace else, youve got 11 members of supporting and then the Guardian Angel team along with them so support for employment is actually quite low. We have a tighter and shorter Response Time line and thats because we may get an alert posture all the way from the launch all the way until they get the spacecraft docked and opened. Any time along their, there could be an anomaly that would require the council to return. So they are on alert the entire time which means their response is within one hour for takeoff and however long they take to get anywhere on the globe. It is definitely going to differ based on the location. Sure. Thank you. So, if you mentioned the space force is trying to inspire people and inspire the next generation. In the last month, youve been hearing from airmen that were invited to transfer to the space force. What have you heard from them . I know we heard numbers like 6,000, 7,000. How many do you think are going to be transferring and are we going to see . I will confess up front i did sign in my transfer Application Form at the beginning of may and sent it to the pentagon so now i have to wait and see if my offer to resign my commission and the air force and then accept a commission at the space force will be accepted. And i have had numerous conversations with airmen both enlisted and officer asking should i do this or should i not into those are all interesting conversations. Most of them are what are you passionate about and what do you want to do with . Life is short. So, how do you want to spend your time in the service to the government and how do you want to spend your time so those are the kind of flavors of the conversations that will be had. As for the of files and have put in applications. We do have the need for thousands, so i know, as i mentioned at the beginning, i know our personnel experts at the pentagon or probably post a single visa petitions now as we speak and the process will be one of it is just simply numbers. It is if we get the right number of cyber professionals applying into the right number of intel professionals that we are going to need and then its even complicated further by where are they in their career and did i get enough lieutenants and enough majors, did i get enough senior ncos. So its going to be a big process to see where we end up. But i will say its kind of remarkable is less than six months old born on the eve of the winter solstice and we are not even close to the summer solstice yet and here they are peoplwe arepeople of playing too the space force and we have made decent progress in the last less than six months. I think it is pretty good considering and its only the beginning of a much larger journey. Thats great. Thank you. Any comment on that . What are you hearing from people and are you moving to the space force . I decided on the first, the first day eligible. I sent it off to the pentagon and am waiting to see what the chief of operations says about that and we have to be confirmed by the senate as well, so looking forward to eventually wearing the blue threads on the uniform. When i talk to folks, we primarily have operators here, Program Management acquisition folks and a little bit of cyber folks and. What do they join to do with. It was exciting. This month is my 20th year from whe28th year fromwhen i was coma Second Lieutenant so there was a little device ive been here for a long time and i know we will still be a part of the air force so ive had the same conversations that i think that overall its mostly excited and we are looking forward to it and we have to remind ourselves just like he said that we are only six months old or less than six months old so there is a lot of what are things going to be like, what are we going to be called, those kind of things but when we look towards the future and think about the importance that we have in things we have to do to protect their interest in space, most people are pretty excited about it. Great. Thank you. Do you have any more questions . Absolutely. Theres quite a few questions here. Lets find a good one for everybody. I had one just a moment ago. Give me just a second and i will find it. This one is for the Major General. Can you describe briefly what the u. S. Space force is and will be doing with respect to space Traffic Control especially the large number of satellites that will be in orbit over the next five to ten years . They continue to perform the mission of tracking what is going on in all of the regimes and analyzing for possible coalitions that could happen. We call them conjunctions and notifying any owners or operators of either of those objects and potential collision that it may happen and in many cases of features to mak if thea small maneuver to decrease the odds that such a commotion whatd happen and that continues to be something that we do. The president did sign a space policy directive last year. Here at the air force base we are watching what they do to try to make the transition in the longer term. As somebody focused, i look forward to the opportunity to move the space traffic and the department of commerce so we can push our focus on looking for possible threats and things that are out of the norm. I think its good for me to point out that we have had multiple launches in the last year of these proliferated low earth orbit constellations. Space x. Most notably but also one web and the first of the launches when you have 60 at a time tracking them was kind of a challenge. They never had to do that is not on a routine basis. But we hav have since as the nur of launches has progressed weve gotten better and better at cataloguing those objects and watching them as they move from their initial deployment orbits into their final orbital positions as part of the constellation of service. So, weve learned a lot. It continues to be a challenge and we will continue to learn and we have only seen the beginning proliferated over the orbit and we are working with the department of commerce to hand the mission to them. Thank you very much. They have another audience question or i wanted to ask quickly since you are talking about states, general raymond put out some warnings about the missile launches and bigger being viewed as threats to u. S. Satellites. So what is the posture now as far as identifying what are hostile attacks and are just routine operation, how is your approach to understand what threats you face and you have to be prepared for. For many years now weve been pointing out examples but its contested and potential adversaries are developing the capabilities targeting ours or our allies capabilities. I think all of these events and the ones that you were referring to back in a pool point to the fact that this is why we did what we did. Why waste it up to those responsible for the space area of responsibility and why we have now a separate service in the military space force because this is the new reality that its no longer the domain but its like all of the others and we are organizing ourselves for that reality. In 2002, you coauthored a paper that advocated that the dod should have the mission in member in the audience asked him what should the role be . A quick explanation of what this is. Planetary defense, we talk about it in the Space Community today refers to defense of the planet against asteroids, natural threats that are beyond earth orbit that are near earth orbiting objects that could impact with calamitous results. Thats what they defined. And they actually have an office of Planetary Defense and the chief of Planetary Defense and the fact most of the focus that have been given to g. All of the possible threats statistically. This sounds like its probably a mission for the department of defense at some point. Theres a lot of synergy between what we are attempting to do to better understand the space domain for the National Security purposes and what theyve done to try to catalog a better awareness of potential threats and then being part of a much broader team in terms of remediation to threats or Emergency Response to an event that might happen. There would be some sort of Emergency Management response part of the nation to support wherever that landed and they would be happy to be part of that. Thank you we see how youve been supporting launches during this pandemic and youve spoken with us multiple times about how you are doing social distancing now we have the month of june coming up with some big missions coming up and i understand you are going to have more launches and gps, the 2020 launch so things are not going to be slowing down that much. How are you preparing to separate the launches under these restrict Health Conditions . Thank you. Bringing on these Safety Systems has allowed us to make it much smaller. Obviously not all of them have this yet and even within that, innovation across the Eastern Range and partners on the western range its been going on for several years now and we found ways to get less people so its allowed us to have physical distancing and we are learning face coverings even where there isnt a lot of room and taking ten teachers and so we are going to continue to do that. Last saturdays launch was the 11th of the year and as we talked about before, the 90 day challenge and whats happening for sure and then we have our 12 month calendar so for the rest of the year we still have 31 launches on the rest of the calendar so that would be 42 launches for 2020 and six of those are National Security space payloads and several as you mentioned with the mars 2020 with nasa and then the crew mission with space x. We also look forward to another Operational Test with boeing for the storyline theres a lot of great launches coming up over the next few months. June is going to be busy. There is no rest for the weary. We have a launch on wednesday night and then a couple weeks later we will have another than we are fostering towards the gps launch at the end of the month so three of them are on schedule right now for july and then obviously the big bars 2020. Then we have our delta in augu august. We continue to do everything. We evaluate i have at least two times a week or three times a week i meet with our Public Health officials. We look at how Brevard County locally, how the state of florida is doing and we continue to make decisions to make sure that the force is healthy. Thats one of the things we have to tell folks isnt just keeping the force healthy but making sure that we do the mission and i think theyve done a pretty good job and thats because the men and women have been doing what they need to do with personal hygiene, staying at home when they can so theyve done a good job and we will continue to do that as we go through this pandemic. Thank you. General, the states are playing such historic organizations. There has been some chatter that the space force is going to change the name, but they wont be called wings anymore. Is that true . That is something that is being looked at by the leadership of the space force and the department of the air force and no final decision has been made on that yet so we will see. This is in the context of a much broader cultural question about the space force and held much of its culture is derived from its heritage coming out of the air force and how much independent culture needs to kind of strike out. So it is withhold the names they called in the space force, what will we call the members of the space force. We are running into the last few minutes. Do you have any more audience questions . There is a lot of audience questions and one that i think people will be disappointed if i didnt ask concerns the Netflix Series space force. Before i ask, quick show of hands of anybody that has seen at least one episode of the series. Okay good so this question works. Lets just start at the top and go down the line since we are kind of coming up on the top of the hour. Are there any aspects of the series that are a good representation of how things actually happen to succumb i guess i will go first. I did catch two episodes of that open weekend and that is a binge watch for me. I thought the show had some funny moments. But i have to say there were some parts that had me concerned that the science of the show fell short in a couple of places. Im a fan. I believe the show Big Bang Theory lasted as long because the science and i in it was read treated its audience with a little bit of highlevel education. So i think that it would be a lot better if it got its science right. So if you want to come here to o the air force base we can show you some rockets and show you the people that run the real space force and how they do their jobs. For me i watched two of them on friday when it came out and then on the weekend so im up to four. I think that they are getting a little bit better as they go along. Ive gotten a lot of questions about whether icing kokomo when im stressed out and i do not. I agree with the general i think that there are some science parts but they can get better but its interesting i like to make fun of myself and watching this is something thats kind of funny. I recently started watching the wall. I saw a picture of the other nighthe other nightand im lookl to make sure that im hoping there would be more of that. I think a little bit more the science would be better. Whether there are things that are incorrect or not, i cant speak to that but i will say one thing somebody sent out in email with a bunch of pictures from the launch over the weekend. One of them was interesting. It had a pocket in the background and the first thing i thought of the ipo thought is tt something to do with this but i definitely laughed when i saw it because i thought who is out there picking it up to make sure they dont [inaudible] that is one of the things i applied here. Im in the first three episodes, so there are still questions to be answered. Its very funny. What can i say. They want to bring us home with a question about the real space force . Arent they called the real space force on twitter . They want to bring it back to reality . Of course. Since we have a few minutes left i wanted to maybe get on with you if you would like to weigh in come the people that are excited i know that we hear a lot about how much interest there is in the people that want to join what are you going to be more like the air force or have more of a joint flavor at some point . Are you interested in bringing in folks from other services. Find that its only been 6 of these things take time but what if youre thinking of what is going thow it isgoing to develoe and standout as an independent service . I think one of the fundamental tensions or balances that will happen Going Forward is a balance between integration with the other services and its own independence but have to decode and that is about balance. Ive said before on the periodic table of military capabilities, we need space to be carvin. It has to be an element that bonds with Everything Else if there is a soldier on the ground or sailor or marine, whatever they are doing, space has to consist of war fighter so they cannot be off to the side of the periodic table. Weve got to be there and we need to do that at all levels and be thinking about that. But at the same time we have to be able to think independently. One reason it came out and we saw that develop over a longer appear to do with independent tt thinking about air power that extended beyond just the battlefield if i think about it strategically they worked in conjunction with the other domain. Space force has to do that to develop its own culture, doctrine, thinking. The space environment is different than the other domain and we are going to have to do that and i think youll see thae that as the space force goes forward will be a balance between the two things that we have to do both. Thank you so much. How about you, general, i know you are an operator but you must have some thoughts about the future and where would you like to see that space force Going Forward . I think that we ar are oftena good start, and i think that we do have to build our own culture. We have been doing that. The air force Space Command has a history and we need to build on that. I have been fortunate to be one deployed in the capability is the Central Command and saw how critical that is to all of our other domains. We have to be able to make sure we dont separate so much that we are not tied in, and i dont think we are on track. But as you asked about names and different things, i think we have to chart our own course and we have to be able to build on that and build our culture and doctrine and do things a little differently and i think we will continue to do that but with the mindset that we are all partners and we have to provide those effects with our other sister services. Thank you so much and thank you, general, colonel thompson, thank you for your time and for giving us all this education about what youve been doing. Its been fascinating to hear all of this, so thank you again and please lets good morning. The subcommittee will come to order