Transcripts For CSPAN U.S. Space Commander Remarks On Space

Here at csis and its my pleasure to welcome you to this event today featuring general john raymond whose command of u. S. Space command, and command of air force Space Command in colorado. We are lucky to have him join us for a public conversation with todd harrison, director of airspace security project here at csis and general raymond is going to speak first and then they will have moderated conversation following by audience q a. There are very few things that can be considered bipartisan in nature in washington. Space and space threats are one of those and so i hope you will join me in welcoming general raymond. [applause] gen. Raymond thank you. I greatly appreciate the invitation and more importantly thanks for your leadership and wise counsel. I always enjoy coming to csis and had to apologize to the cas csis team because i always get more out of these engagement them i give. I hope we get to that, and have really good conversations and things i could take away and continue to work on. I will tell you about three ago, before i took the air force Space Command as commander job, csis held a dinner series, dr. Hamre hosted a dinner series where we brought folks into talk about the challenges in space. I always marvel as i was preparing for these remarks, i marvel at what the folks that were in that dinner would think today because we have made a ton of progress. I mean a ton of progress. We have really put the accelerator down and that made some great games. Theyre still a ton of work but as i reflected back on those conversations and look at where you are today, the fantasmic made, its significant. I think the thing that is driving is one simple sentence. As 11 words in the sense. Space is a war fighting to make just like air land and sea. It used to be you couldnt say that in public. Space and war fighting in the same sense. The u. S. Wants to keep the space domain safe and that still our goal is to deter any conflict beginning. But we didnt say that publicly. Now, every speech i give i say that and usually right up front. It rolls off of our lips really easily. Implications of that have really been driving my battle rhythm for the last three years as we have pretty much changed inrything in how we operate air force Space Command, and it is driving how we are building and standing in Space Command. That would really be the focus of some brief remarks upfront and then i would really like to get to the q a and the dialogue. Its a great opportunity for me to talk a little bit about the newest command, the 11th combatant command. U. S. Space command is more than just a command focused on space. U. S. Space command is really in globale department integration. If you look at National Defense strategy and global challenges that we face, we are intimately involved in those conversations. Theyre the best in the role that space. On the between ninth of august, a ceremony at the white house and the rose garden, we got a little bit better because we stood up this command and this command is singly focused on the Space Command. That alone provide significant demands. Its not my tertiary or secondary job. Its my primary job. We come to work everyday focused on this demesne and providing advantage for our nation. About ago, a little over a year ago, in august of last year, i was told hey, there is a potential we will stand up a combatant command and start planning. People in san antonio, texas and said we have to plan this command. In the evenings when i get done , i wase work i was doing huddled with the team and reviewed planning and gave direction. At the end of the week, we came out with here is how we would build this command. It is fascinating for me to be given the opportunity to begin planning and then to plan that command and then to stand it up and get it going and lead it in the beginning. It is the highlight of my career. We started with those five. We brought that plan back to peterson and set up a little tiger team of about ten people. For the next year, we planned that command, and its pretty unprecedented if you look at doing all this in one year from planning to standing up in a year is a pretty heroic feats. Very proud of the team. Today, we are about 400 and here over the next couple of months beginning next year i think our numbers will raise up to about 500 in headquarters. Many of you know that we had a u. S. Space command back from 19852002. And some might say why did we bring it back, or whats different about this command compared to the one that stood down into thousand two . 2002 . As i said in the ceremony that we had at Peterson Air Force base, this is a different command custom built for a different day. Purpose built. Its purpose built to get out of the National Defense strategy, its purpose built for the strategic strategy that we face today. If you look at the missions that the president signed in the unified command plan and assigned to me as commander of the u. S. Based command, it has a much sharper focus on protecting and defending satellites. Not just u. S. Satellites, but our u. S. Military satellites. Partner, allied commercial satellites. That is a much sharper focus on offense and defense. Thing, onee biggest of the biggest things is it is a geographic command. The functional combatant command didnt have an aor. It provides abilities around the globe. We stood about today, but to strengthen that, the department stood up the command is a geographic combatant command within a aware that is aor that is 100 kilometers above the the earth surface, and higher. Thats a big aor, really big aor. To get after that protect and defend peace, we custom built this command and we stood up a joint task force for space defense. We were first without an operational level component focus on that protect and defend mission, and so thats been very, very hopeful. As we are a geographic combatant command we are planning to have integrated planning elements that will embed in all the other combatant commands to help us stay connected with those commands. Again thats purpose built. Because the challenges we face in the fiction would be global challenges. That will require all combatant commands working together. We have a stronger connection with or allied partners. We have made great, Great Strides in that over the last few years. Im really proud of where we are. When we stood up the command we again, purpose built a combined space force component. Before, i was the commander of a joint forces command as part of stratcom. When we stood this up, we made it operate out of the same centers and i will provide huge advantage to the folks for us and our partners. We also get additional authorities. Space policy director ford mandated with what authorities does u. S. Space command need to do those missions. We put those together, very hopeful those will be approved here in the very near term. Ties to our partners. There are several partners i would like to focus on. One is our joint war fighting partners. Again, as our National Defense strategy states, the challenges we are going to face in the future are going to be global challenges. A challenge in the pacific is not just indopacom. That will require all the combatant commands together to be able to handle those challenges, for example. Im convinced that in the future, if we were to get into a conflict with a peer or nearpeer competitor we will have to fight for space superiority. That is a joint war fighting challenge. Thats a joint war fighting challenge that will require other combatant commands to be supportive of me and our u. S. Space command hat. Our partnership with our allies i have talked about. We have increased the training opportunities with our allies. We have exercised with our allies. We do wargames with our allies. We have stood up a Space Operations center. We now turn joint force Space Component command into a combined component command. So i see great, great doing close to payloads with allied partners like japan, putting a hosted payload on a satellite. Doing a hosted payload ,artnership with norway as well as examples. We also have a close relationship with the interagency. Our relationship with Intelligence Community has never been better. Our relationship between us and nro is at an alltime high. We have a standard, a shared strategy, share concept of operations. We man a c2 center called the National Space defense center. Ill tell you in speeches ive given over the last couple of years, i said we have gone from preschool to about fifthgrade. A handful of hours out at the and ftc a week or so ago. I will tell you that im changing that. We are in high school. We have made some really really , significant gains based on the data sharing that we are able to do, based on having Situational Awareness tools. We have really made some great, Great Strides. And our partnerships with commercial industry. And i see this as a big growth area Going Forward. We have commercial integration satellite on the floor at the combined force operations center. I see great steps ahead in being able to leverage this, and i talk about this, i say this in speeches its kind of bad term two. To use in the Space Business but this explosion in commercial space. I think theres great opportunities ahead. So they have built this command where we have built it to meet the National Defense strategy. If you look at the National Defense strategy and look at the priorities of National Defense strategy, rebuilding the readiness and strengthening allies and alliances and rebuilding the department, those are all things that u. S. Space command ties into. Our priorities for the command of five. First, we will transition space or fight response was from u. S. Strategic command to u. S. Space command in full. We have done that, we did that starting on 29 august. We are responsible for Space Operations. We do that day today. Not only have we not missed a beat, we have enhanced the game a little bit. We are leading this going to full Operational Capability and we are moving out with a sense of urgency to be able to do that. If we are already doing operations, what are the other things we are working on . Requirements, component doesnt have a requirement function, a combatant command does so we are building out our requirements team. Intelligence. I will tell you that may be one of the most important things that we do early on is to rebuild that intelligence function that atrophied once the u. S. Space command that stood down in 2002 when away. I think the most significant thing and are highest priority action is planning. Not just planning by ourselves but planning in concert with the combatant commands around the world that we partner with. Why we are building these integrated planning elements to embed with the other combatant commands. The other rarity is to expand key allies and partnership. The last one is growing fighters. That is a twopart problem. That is growing Space Operators that extended joint war fighting and its building what you and i may consider more traditional joint war fighters to better understand the space. We have gone from about five people to 500. We are building that team and im really proud of how we brought this Team Together and gotten to move them really, really quickly. We have gone through a joint manpower validation process to figure out what the command is going to look like. We have hired in quite a planning element leads and stand at the first integrated planning elements both at indopacom, eu, and struck him. Ratcom. Were working very close with northcom as well. We took up, visited with africom so were very late in with your Strategic Command as you can imagine, northcom, indopacom, eucom and now after, and really appreciated them. We are embedded in the Global Integrated east of the department so were playing and wargames and exercises as part of that and i think thatll are we playing but helped leading the effort for the department. Weve enhanced our engagements with our allies. Went over and break the military committee at native to try to get a more formal relationship going with nato. Nato is about to declare space as an operational domain and i think that will be very important that we have that linkage. On the planning side, we are developing the Campaign Plan for space. That will be done at the beginning of next year. We published our first integrated party list of having much more of an influence on the budget, if you will, and thats again, a much more heightened voice at the combatant command level than we were at the component level. The list goes on and on, but you can kinda get a sense of where we are headed. We are ready now and were going stronger each and every day. We are in line with the direction from the National Defense strategy. Were building a fighting force to respond to the competitive congested and contested strategic and five we face today. We have a great opportunity as i tell our team that were not wedded to the past. We are starting from scratch and so we can build this command in a way that gets after the challenges that we face. With that, i think i will close and open it up for a dialogue. I really again, appreciate the opportunity to be here. I think im extremely, extremely proud of the airmen, sailors, soldiers and marines that im privileged to lead in the u. S. Space command. I couldnt be more proud of how quickly they have come up on the step and provide an advantage to our nation, not just to our nation, but to our allied partners as well. I would like to take a minute and introduce chief tolman, our Senior Analyst for the command as well. He is with me. So again, i thank you for the opportunity and look forward to the dialogue. [applause] general raymond, i want to just say thank you again for coming here to csis to share your thoughts on the future of the United States Space Command. I wanted to start with kind of a basic definitional question because i was i was telling a friend earlier what i was going morning, youonday during this event with the commander of the United States Space Command and she asked me, what was his job before that . Because new command and i said he was command of air force Space Command and, of course, the question was, whats the difference . Can you help define for folks what are the roles and responsibilities of air force Space Command and United States Space Command, how are they different in how they function . Gen. Raymond thats a great question and what i get quite frequently. Not only did i get a new job but i kept my old job as well. I get to yell at myself for the one half and get an opportunity to do that over the last couple of weeks. Like you, how could you be so stupid . Its fun to have that conversation. Back in the 80s there was a law that was done called the goldwaternichols act, and the goldwater snakelike divided the department into two punks. One is organized train and equip and one is a war fighting function. Services, organized and quick, army, navy, air force, marines and him a air in my air force Space Command hat, i am in the organized train and equipment business. We procure satellites, train operators, we have the c2 capabilities to conduct those operations. Organizedcused on train equipment. In that hat, i worked for the chief of staff of air force and secretary of defense. In the joint hat, in the war fighting hat, that is joint business and so the u. S. Space command falls on the war fighting side. I will just, eucom, we have more fighting focus is a completely different function. In my air force hat, i organized train equipment, air force forces and i present them to myself and my use Space Command hat to be able to execute. I also have an army, and that is called a Surface Service component. I have an air force Space Command, i will also have an army component, a navy and Marine Service component. Its two different functions, different roles but theres a close partnership. So thinking ahead to the future, one of the Things Congress is debating it and considering is whether or not to create a space force. Can you talk about how a space force would be different . Gen. Raymond absolutely. Let me state im really eager for congress to pass this ndaa so we can have a space force. In both hats and both functions, the organized train and equip function and the war fighting function, the u. S. Is looking to elevate space. Entity that is singularly focused on the space domain. And so in the war fighting at we hat, we did that when we took a component who used to work for u. S. Strategic command and elevated that to its own combatant command. Similarly, on the organized side, today, air force command is a major command working for the air force. We are looking to do is elevate space into separate it from air force and have a singularly focused Service Focus on this domain. In that way, it is similar to corps model. Ne you have the secretary of the air force that would have both chief of staff of a space force or however the law comes out and that wouldair force work with the secretary of air force. Just like in the navy side, there is a secretary of the navy that has a command of the marine corps and chief of Naval Operations on the navy side. And so u. S. Space command, putting on that hat for a min