Transcripts For CSPAN3 U.S. Space Commander Remarks On Space

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 are considered bipartisan nature in washington but concern over space and space threats are one of those and so i hope you will join me in welcoming general raymond. Thank you. 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 csis team because i always get more out of these engagements that idea. A great, id hope will get to that, have a really good conversation and are some things i could take away and continued to work on. I will tell you about three years ago just a little over three years ago before i took the air force Space Command as commander job csis held a dinner series, dr. Hamre hosted a dinner series what we brought folks in to talk about the challenges in space. I always marvel as i was preparing for these remarks, i marveled 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 have made some great gains. Theres 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 sentence. 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 us 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. And it rolls off our lips really easily but the implications are really significant. The implications of that have really been driving me for the last three years as we have pretty much changed everything that on how we operate in air force Space Command, and its driving how we are building and standing in the us Space Command. Thats really will 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 Space Command at our nations your Space Command. U. S. Space command is more than just a command focused on space. You Space Command is really helping the department did its arms around global integration. If you look at National Defense strategy and global challenges that we face, we are intimately involved in those conversations. We are the best in the world at space. On 29 august in a ceremony at the white house in 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. And that alone provides significant advantage. Its not my tertiary or secondary job. Its my primary job. We come to work everyday focused on this domain providing advantage for our nation. About a year ago, a little over a year asgo, in august of last year, i was told hey, theres a a potential will stand up a combatant command and start planning. So i took five people on the tdy to san antonio, texas, locked five people in the room and said okay, we have to plan this command. In the evenings when i got done with the work i was doing on that tdy, i was there for another reason. I would huddle with the team and review the plan and give direction. At the end of the week we came out with heres how we would build this command, if given the opportunity and its fascinating for me to be given the opportunity to begin planning and then to plan that command and instead it up and then get it going and leave it is just a great, the highlight of my career. We started with those five and we brought that plan back to peterson and we 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 the years, its a pretty heroic lift. 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 noticed, 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 in 2002 . As i said in the ceremony that we had at Peterson Air Force base that recognize and established this u. S. Space command, 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 and five at that we face today. If you look at the missions that the president signed in the unified command plan and assigned to estimate of u. S. Space command, it has a much sharper focus on protecting and defending satellites, and not just u. S. Satellites but our u. S. Military satellites. Its partner or allied commercial satellites. That is a much sharper focus on offense and defense. Probably the biggest thing, one of the biggest things, is the geographic that command within a your Space Command with a functional combatant command, didnt have an aor. It provided Space Capabilities around the globe. We still do that today but to strengthen that, the department stood up the command as a geographic combatant command with an aor that is 100 kilometers above the the earth surface, and higher. Thats a big aor, ao are great really big higher. Thats a big aor, really big aor. To get after that protect and defend piece, we custom built this command and we stood up a joint task force for space defense. First on 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 but of a joint force command i was part of stratcom. When we stood this up we made it a, 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 will come back with what authorities does u. S. Space command need to do those nations. We put those together, very hopeful those will be approved here in the very near term. We have ties to our partners. Their solo partners i would like to focus on. One is our joint war fighting partners. Again as our National Defense strategy states, the challenges were going to face in the future are going to be global challenges. A challenge in the pacific is that 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. Thats a 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 have talked about. We have increased the training opportunities with our allies. We have exercise with an ally. 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 qss satellite. Doing a hosted payload partnership with norway as well. As example. We also have a close relationship with our interagency. Our relationship with Intelligence Community has never been better. I relationship between us and nro is at an alltime high. We have a standard, a shared strategy, a shared concept of operations. We met at c2 center called the National Space Defense Center. Ill tell you in speeches ive given over the last couple of years i said weve gone from like preschool to about fifth grade. I just spent a handful of hours out at the nftc a week or so ago. Now i will tell you im changing that. Were in high school. We 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 are commercial industry. And i see this as a big growth area Going Forward. We have commercial integration satellite and combined force operations center. I see great steps ahead in being able to leverage this, and i talked about this. Its kind of bad term to use in the Space Business but this explosion in commercial space. Theres great opportunities ahead. So as i built this command again 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, strengthening alliances and new partners and reforming the Partner Department of those all things u. S. Space command ties into. Our priorities really command our 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 and not only have we missed a beat, weve actually enhanced the game a little bit. We are leading this going to full Operational Capability and were moving out with a sense of urgency to be able to do that. If we are already doing operations. What are the other things . Requirements, component doesnt have a requirement function, a combatant command does so building out our requirements team. Intelligence. I will tell you may be one of most important things that we do early on is to rebuild that intelligence function that atrophied once the u. S. Space command that stood that in 2002 went away. I think the most significant thing and are highest priority action is planning. And not just planning by ourselves but planning in concert with the combatant commands around the world that we partner with. And thats why we are building these integrated planning elements to embed with the other combatant commands. The other is to expand key allies and partnership. The last one is going space war fighters. Thats a twopart problem. Growing Space Operators what extent joint war fighting and its building what you and i may consider more traditional joint war fighters better understand the space. Whats our progress to date next well, weve gone from about five people to 500. Were 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 a quite a planning element leads and stand at the first integrated planning elements both at indopacom, eu, and stratcom. Were working very close with northcom as well. We rich set of the combatant commands, took up, visited with africom so were very linked 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 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 briefed the military committee at native to try to get a more formal relationship going with nato. Nader 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 strengthened him much more i voice at the combatant command level than we were at the component level. The list goes on and on but you can 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 environment we face today. And 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 begin to appreciate the opportunity to be here. I think im extremely, extremely proud of the airmen, sailors, soldiers and marines that im privileged to lead. I couldnt be more proud of how quickly that come up on the step and provide an advantage tarnation, not just to our nation are allied partners as well. I would like to take me and introduce chief tolman, our Senior Enlisted Advisor command as well. He is it with me. So again thank you for the opportunity. I 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 definition of question because i was telling a friend earlier, what i would be doing monday morning, you know, doing this event with the command 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 and how did the function . Thats a great question and what i get quite frequently. That only did i get a new job but i kept my old job as a period i get to yell of myself for the one half and i got an opportunity to do that over the last couple of weeks. Like you, how could you be so stupid . laughs its fun to have that conversation. Back in the80s 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 force Space Command had i am in the organized train and equip business. We procure satellites, train operators, we have the c2 capabilities to conduct those operations. But thats focus on organized train and equip. In that hat i work for chief of staff of air force and secretary of defense. In the joint hat, in the war fighting had thats 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 had i organized train and equip air force forces and i present them to myself and my use Space Command had to be able to execute. I also will have an army and thats called a surface im 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 then thinking ahead to the future, one of the thinks congress is debating and considering is whether or not to create a space force pickard to talk about half space force would be different . Absolutely. Let me state im really eager for congress to pass this ndaa so we can have the 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. To have an entity that is singly focused on the space domain. And so in the war fighting at we did that when we took a component and a used to work for u. S. Strategic command and elevate that to its own combatant command. Similarly on the organized, train, and equip side today air force Space Command is a major command working for the air force. What were looking to do is to elevate space and to separate i