Integrating Air and Space: Defining the Orbit

An Eaker Colloquy on Aerospace Strategy, Requirements and Forces

January 12, 1999
National Press Club

The Eaker Institute is the public policy and research arm of the Air Force Association’s Aerospace Education Foundation and regularly hosts colloquies to explore issues and forces that are shaping the use of aerospace power and its impact on the aerospace industry.

Panel:

Jack Price: Good morning. I am Jack Price, President of the Aerospace Education Foundation and a member of the Executive Oversight Committee of the Eaker Institute for Aerospace Concepts, the public policy and research arm of the Air Force Association’s Aerospace Education Foundation. On behalf of the elected leaders of the foundation and the Air Force Association and our distinguished Eaker fellows and our Eaker staff, we welcome you to the first of the 1999 colloquies sponsored by the Eaker Institute.

Besides the distinguished fellows and panelists that we have this morning, I’d like to take a moment to briefly introduce a few of our special guests. We are proud to have with us Lieutenant General Roger DeKok, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs, United States Air Force. We are also pleased to have a couple of senior statesmen with us today. General Bill McBride is here along with General Larry Skantze, the head of our Science and Technology Committee for the Air Force Association.

We have a number of leaders of the Air Force Association. Among them, from Fairfax Station, Virginia, AFA President Tom McKee.

It is my pleasure to introduce the executive director of both the Air Force Association and the Aerospace Education Foundation, General John Shaud.

This begins our third season of special events for the Eaker Institute. In late 1996, the Institute was founded and initially funded through a very generous gift from the family of the late General Ira C. Eaker, one of the truly great air power advocates and a famed World War II commander of the Eighth Air Force. An aviation pioneer, General Eaker was a reasoned intellectual who succeeded in articulating the early case for strategic air power. He continued to write a syndicated column and to lecture on air power for several years following his retirement from the Air Force. The Institute seeks to emulate General Eaker’s intellectual approach and unique ability to further air power thinking.

We call this a colloquy, a conversation, because there need to be candid discussions about aerospace strategy, forces and requirements, today and into the future. We believe today’s distinguished panel can contribute to this conversation about integrating air and space strategy and forces. Now let me introduce the moderator for today’s session.

Dr. Rebecca Grant is president of IRIS Independent Research and has been closely involved with a number of studies exploring new strategy concerning the integration of air and space. She is a former RAND analyst who also served as a member of the personal operations staff for former Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice and Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak. Please help me welcome Dr. Grant.

Dr. Rebecca Grant: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here this morning to discuss this enormously important topic. It was 1957 when Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining said, “we airmen, who have fought to ensure that the United States has the capability to control the air, are determined that the United States must win the capability to control space.” It’s now been more than 40 years since Sputnik lifted the roof off the world. Every Chief of Staff, especially since the 1980s, has made space a priority. General Ron Fogleman announced in 1996 that the Air Force was transitioning from being an Air Force to being an Air and Space Force to one day being a Space and Air Force. The current Chief of Staff, General Mike Ryan, has told us that, expeditionary aerospace forces will provide regional CINCs with one-stop shopping for aerospace power.

In many ways, today’s United States Air Force is already an aerospace force. That is not because there is a general in Colorado who wears three hats commanding space forces. It is not even because the Air Force invests 90 percent of the nation’s military space dollars. Nor is it because more than 80 percent of Americans who wear the space professional’s uniform are in the Air Force uniform. No, the reason that the Air Force today is already in many ways an aerospace force is that it provides integrated aerospace power to the joint warfighter. It may be a B-2 that is feeding precision information into its GPS-aided weapons. It may be a C-141 getting an email enroute with an update on its next landing site while providing humanitarian relief. It may be a young lieutenant in a squadron at Shriever Air Force Base who flies a satellite. It may be an F-15 pilot in his or her cockpit who received real-time updates on targeting information. It may be a major in a command center who tracks a missile event. They all do the same thing: they make air and space work together, and therefore, they are airmen, but they are also aerospace operators.

We are here today also because the Air Force, and indeed the nation, are restless. The Air Force is by nature a technology loving, innovative organization. It wants to continue to do the best it can in providing aerospace power for the nation. It wants to be able to make space and air war together and create capability that did not previously exist. The Air Force wants to excel in aerospace, break the barriers and excel again. And yet, we recognize there are major challenges: keeping up with commercial technology; balancing scarce resources; and investing in the research that will bear fruit for tomorrow’s aerospace capability.

The fact remains, either the Air Force will continue to integrate its capabilities and improve its aerospace power, or the march to space will continue on without it. That is not news. In 1982, a congressman from Colorado Springs suggested changing the name of the Air Force to the aerospace force. In 1990, an Army commander in Panama said, “space doesn’t just help me. I can’t go to war without space.” And we know, as General Moorman and so many others have said, that Desert Storm was the first space war. In Bosnia air operations in 1995, we saw again an increased level of integration of air and space into aerospace power.

Warriors want to see a full potential of space recognized and developed. But we know there is a lot of work to be done. The Navy long-range planners have recently written that space is an ocean and an ocean is where navies go. They have also said that unless we choose to make it happen, there is no reason a nation that is a sea power should become a space power. We could say the same thing about air.

The Air Force’s leaders, including every chief of staff in the last decade, have made it very plain that their Air Force will be out in front carrying the banner and leading that march. The 20^th century was an air power century. The 21^st century belongs to aerospace power. But now, the key issue is, how will the Air Force step forward and take that leadership position, and indeed, what are those next steps. That is what my distinguished panel will talk about this morning.

Let me first introduce them and then tell you about the format of this morning’s proceedings. First to speak will be Thomas S. Moorman, Jr., retired United States Air Force general, and a career-long master of space systems and application. He has been known to call himself the reigning space cadet, and that is what we will call him, our space cadet. Next up will be Dr. John M. “Mike” Borky, who also had a long and distinguished Air Force career. He is now Chief Engineer, Technical and Training Services, Strategic Business Unit, at TRW. He is a technology high priest and also a broad-minded strategic thinker in fields from avionics to C3I. We’ll call him our technocrat. Finally, we will have Howell E. Estes, III, retired United States Air Force general, a former U.S. CINC Space and former fighter pilot. With deep experience in warfare and joint warfighting, he has also been called, most recently by General Moorman here this morning at breakfast, an aviator who found the space religion. We will call him the convert and hope that he speaks with the enthusiasm of the converted!

Each of our panelists will speak for about five minutes. We will then have a moderated discussion. Toward the end of the session we will break it open for your questions. Without further adieu, General Moorman.

General Thomas S. Moorman, Jr.: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I am very glad to be here, and I want to thank the Air Force Association for sponsoring this event. The AFA does an excellent job of stimulating debate about matters of importance to our Air Force. It’s great to see a bunch of old friends. I see two of my predecessors as Vice Chief [Air Force Vice Chief of Staff]: General McBride and General Skantze.

I am a little bit nervous with General McBride and General Skantze in the audience. General Skantze over the years has graded me on performance, and I am still working on a C plus. I will probably live down to his expectations. As Rebecca said, I have been asked to speak from five to seven minutes, and I’ll try to keep it to that. I have to comment, however, about the remark of my being the reigning space cadet. Since I retired, my empire is a little smaller than it used to be. In fact, I’m not even sure I am in charge at home since we moved. Reigning is a little too strong.

But I am very proud of being a space cadet and very proud of the Air Force’s role there. Rebecca said it, but I want to reinforce it: if you think of the 20^th century as the air power century, then I devoutly believe that the 21^st century will be the aerospace century. But we need to get on with the debate, and I’ll return to that discussion.

A message I want to leave with you is this: from my perspective, I can think of no more important intellectual subject for our Air Force to study than the integration of air and space. I mean that most sincerely. Let me try to couch that in terms that will resonate with you. This isn’t a cliché, the integration of air and space. How we do it will shape our United States Air Force. It will impact everything in the 21^st century. Everything from future doctrine, to our operational concepts, to our weapon systems, to our education and training (that is, how we socialize our people), to our personnel policies, to how we organize and, finally, every bit as important, to how we fight. In short -- and another foot stomper -- how we integrate air and space will define how we think about ourselves and how we think about our craft.

Accordingly, the integration of air and space, I believe, will require major cultural change, and I do not want to understate that. It will also require a new operational paradigm. (I had to get “paradigm” into this talk to make this of standing.) But I think the word was created properly for this, a new way of thinking. Quite honestly, from my perspective, we are still very separated in our thinking, very stove piped in the way we attack problems. We continue to define ourselves, either by our disciplines or by our weapon systems or by our functions. Our disciplines being supply officers, pilots, intelligence officers or logisticians; weapon systems may be, F-16 driver or C-141 driver; or we may define ourselves in a functional specialty sense, for example, “I am a space guy.” We’ve got to drive that kind of thinking out of our Air Force as a first order.

Rebecca spoke of General Twining’s commitment for the Air Force to win the capability to control space. The concept of “aerospace,” as I believe you all know, originated with Thomas D. White in 1957. He characterized it as an operationally seamless medium. Space, because of the nature of it -- high tech, highly classified, very Cold War, an inside the beltway concept and issue -- became immediately, within our Air Force, the province of the civilian community. We started employing space assets a little bit in the latter parts of Vietnam -- in weather satellites, for example. In the decade of the 1980s, we started getting organized for space. Three space commands and a unified space command were established. In the latter part of the 1980s, we started using space in various contingencies: in Grenada, in Libya and in Panama. But as you all well know, it was not until Desert Storm that space really became appreciated for its importance and what it brings to the fight. Time doesn’t permit a recounting of the way space was used in Desert Storm, and it is old news. But I do think it is interesting to think of Desert Storm as the first conflict at the dawn of the information age. That is the way we have to think about space.

The integration took place there, be it for Scud hunting, be it for GPS guided munitions, or be it for weather satellites, that impacted how we constructed the ATL. That created a transformation. Just ticking off the documents you see today. . . every document produced by the Joint Staff or by the individual services begins with either information superiority or information dominance. If you look at Joint Vision 2010 or Army After Next or From the Sea or our own document, Global Engagement, space is extraordinarily well supported and well appreciated.

Speaking of Global Engagement, I was very proud of that document when it was created, but I want to touch on a sentence there that I spoke at the Secretary’s space conference. That is the sense Rebecca referred to when she said that we are transitioning from an Air Force to an Air and Space Force on an evolutionary path to a Space and Air Force. I was very pleased with those words when they were written for several reasons. First, they underscored how important space was going to be in the 21^st century. Second, it was a clarion call. I have come to think, however, that in some ways those words can be taken out of context. I think they have been taken out of context. That is, some read those words, air and space, as separate, which seems to give rise in a lot of camps to reinforcing the separateness of those domains. I want to make it absolutely clear that I don’t believe that at all. I think the current Chief, General Mike Ryan, has it just right: it is the unifying concept for the United States Air Force for the 21^st century. While some time way in the future you may have a Space and Air Force, but space and air are still together. Space may have a much more prominent role than what we can envision today, but the two are still together.

Why is it important to do this? It really gets down two pretty simple concepts. First, to me, an integrated aerospace force is the most operationally effective way to employ forces for the joint and the coalition fight. Aerospace forces will allow us to find, fix, track, target, engage and assess any opponent, globally, 24-hours a day, all-weather, 365 days a year. We are not totally there yet, but we are pretty close to being there, and that is an extraordinarily powerful concept that cannot be achieved absent this unification, absent this integration. That is the operational paradigm change that I am talking about. You see it best manifested now in the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance realm as it is tied to the employment of precision guided munitions and the passing of the PGM results through broad-band communications to a decision maker. That time frame, the OODA loop, is getting shorter and shorter. That is going to be the competitive advantage that the Air Force brings to the fight.

On the efficiency side, everyone today will talk about constrained resources. Integration is also the way to illuminate the proper design for systems of systems in cases of architectures and also the needed trades among competing systems. Quite frankly, we need a way to better do cross-system trades to save money to afford the things we are going to need in the 21^st century. I agree with Roger DeKok’s white paper, Beyond the Horizon, which will soon be published, that we have made a lot of progress in this area, but we still have a long way to go.

Let me try to summarize very quickly. The Air Force must get on with aerospace integration. And it must get it right. The future imperatives demand it. There is the imperative to support the air, land, sea and undersea forces. In the near-term expeditionary forces are enabled by space. But we’ve got to make that linkage a lot tighter to get the kind of leanness that we need. Another imperative is to become more efficient. Another imperative is to respond to future threats and needs.

Let me digress just quickly on Desert Storm. Countries now know the value of information because there were a lot of lessons learned. There is an old phrase that says, you learn a lot more when you lose a war than when you win one. I would have a corollary to that which says that people who don’t participate in the war learn a lot as well. A lot of people went to school on Desert Storm about the value of information and the value of space.

Another aspect is commercial space. Finally, another foot stomper for you -- the commercial space world is exploding, and what that means is, we are going to have a different world in the 21^st century. I could talk about that at length. Let me give you two major themes from the commercial space explosion. The first is the availability of data to adversaries. It is easily available now. That is, they can buy remote sensing data, navigation data and communications data and buy it relatively affordably. The second major commercial theme is that we are now spending more money in commercial space, and we are diverging at an order of magnitude every year. Recently, there has been 20 percent growth in commercial space versus two percent in government space. You’ve heard the term before, but commercial space on-orbit infrastructure is an economic center of gravity. In the not too distant future we will have trillions of dollars of assets. Commercial space is not only an imperative for national security, it will be absolutely indispensable for our way of life. There’ll be hell to pay it’s interrupted. What you should get out of that is, the United States Air Force, as the space service, will be required, I believe, to protect those resources. This is a mission we have had for years, but the scope of it hasn’t been that real. We’ve been worried about national security satellites for years, but not commercial satellites. We must protect commercial investments.

Finally, we must be able to control the high ground. We undoubtedly will get into a discussion of the implications and politics of that, but there will come a time when we must do it. Our United States Air Force in all this also must be proactive. The future demands it. We’ve got to be visionary and we’ve got to be committed. We must be the thought leaders in this area and be perceived to be that. The United States Air Force must retain the image of being the place where you go for intellectual thought in the aerospace business. We must force this cultural change. Cultural change is the hardest change of all. I am talking about decades. We must be faithful and responsible stewards of aerospace programs to improve investing in technologies for future systems. Mike Borky, who will talk to you today, ran a superb study in the Scientific Advisory Board on that, and we must invest in those enabling technologies that allow us to control the high ground.

This is an extraordinarily complex and inter-related issue with a lot of dynamics to it, but it really requires an internalization process and a commitment, and it begins with stimulating the debate. This morning’s session is a good start on that. Publishing the Chief’s white paper, to me, is the next step. The bottom line is that I hope -- and I commend to the AFA to be out in front of this -- I hope that this white paper gets the right type of debate and gets the intellectual juices going. If we do not do that, if we are not perceived to be good stewards, or to be the intellectual center of good ideas, I guarantee there are folks out there who are very willing to tell us how to organize and who will tell us how to organize the space mission in the future. Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.

Dr. John M. “Mike” Borky: Thank you, Rebecca, and good morning ladies and gentlemen. I probably ought to make it explicit at the outset, given the affiliations that have been cited, that what you are about to get are my personal opinions on the subject, and I am not standing up here as a spokesman for the Air Force. Obviously, this is a subject in which I have been deeply embroiled for a number of years now.

We are here this morning to talk about the future, which is always a hazardous undertaking. It depends a lot on the background and the special interests of who is taking the look. I am reminded of what the stockbroker said to the archbishop. He said we are both in the business of trying to get our customers to heaven. It is just that yours have a little longer planning horizon.

What I am going to do in the next few minutes is share a couple of thoughts on this very important subject of evolving an integrated aerospace force. In keeping with my opening thought, you are entitled to know that my perspective is that of a technologist, of a system acquirer and a logistician. More recently, my perspective has been as an analyst of both system and force structure architectures. The concerns that those background experiences make uppermost in my mind have to do with first defining and acquiring the right forces and then getting those forces to the fight and sustaining them while they are there.

I am going to do two lists, and since I flunked SOS [Squadron Officer School], each list has four items on it, not three. First, I will talk about four fundamental trends, which, in my view, largely impel us toward the integration of air and space. Then I have a couple of thoughts about what might be elements of an effective strategy for actually doing that. The ultimate goal, of course, must be to have the Air Force and the entire defense establishment of the nation have available the means to meet the nation’s security requirements in a very different world that we are going into.

So first, four things that I think make this important.

The first is that the security environment we deal with is changing very rapidly. We must now expect that contingencies may arise, literally, at any place on earth. We must expect a growing level of ambiguity about the threat, about the intentions of an adversary that we are going to have to deal with and about many other key aspects of an emergency contingency. All this makes it very hard to know that we’ve picked the right course of action, and it puts a premium on flexibility. We already see the emergence of new, and in some cases, very different threats, and they are coming from a wide variety of actors, many of whom are new to us, but all of whom share the fact that they don’t like us. We must expect to be called upon to act in shrinking timelines and the expectation will be levied upon us that we can deliver an exquisitely precise application of force. I could go on and on about the dimensions of this new security environment. But the point that is important for today's subject is that there is effectively no way to do that without an integrated air and space force that has the ability to gather and process the necessary information and then to carry out the indicated course of action.

Second, we are rapidly becoming - and not entirely by choice - a U.S. garrisoned force, but with the kind of global commitments I’ve been speaking of. The magic word today is expeditionary. That is a fundamentally important and sound concept, but as a “loggie,” I would point out there is no aspect of packing up, deploying, setting up, employing and sustaining an expeditionary force package that does not require far more effective use of space than we are able to make today.

With respect to a third fundamental, I agree very strongly with the thought of General Moorman and others that access to and use of space is already of vital national economic interest and will, like every other interest before, sooner or later tempt our adversaries to find and exploit weaknesses. I don’t think we have to wade very far into the policy of weaponizing before we come face to face with the fact that we will, sooner or later, be called upon to protect, not just the property, but the freedom of action of our nation’s citizens. Space is going to be thrust upon us as a security challenge in its own right, and we had better be getting ready to meet it. A corollary of that is the fact that as commercial space overwhelms the space environment in which we live, there will be options to derive space capabilities from commercial, or at least non-developmental sources, far more affordably than what we have been accustomed in the past. Both dimensions of the commercialization of space impel this kind of fundamental discussion.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, America’s defense establishment, for the foreseeable future, will be asked to provide for the nation’s security with severely constrained resources. The rule of today is “affordability uber alles.” Every military task has to be approached from the standpoint of the most affordable way to accomplish it, and I argue, showing my prejudice as a system engineer, that today and tomorrow, very seldom will a single system do the entirety of a military task. Increasingly, it will involve the integrated use of a variety of assets - space, air and surface, and for the Navy, even subsurface. Each of these has its own unique strengths and attributes which, synergistically, will almost always provide the most effective answer at the lowest cost.

So, with those thoughts for background, let me suggest a couple of pieces of what might be a workable strategy for evolving the legacy force that we largely inherited from the Cold War into the one that I argue we will need in the decades ahead. The reality is a world where hostage rescue, forced-cessation of hostilities, counter terrorism and humanitarian relief (although increasingly under fire) will be the kinds of tasks that we do on a daily basis while, at the same time, we have to fit readiness to fight a major theater war somehow into the resource equation.

Here are some thoughts.

First, I think it is imperative that we define and implement a true force structure architecture. The phrase that you hear is system of systems. What I am talking about is a construct within which each of our assets (which can be systems, people, whatever) can be fitted together in a context that they can be used collectively to best effect. It ought to be the framework for organizing, training and equipping our forces. I confess that architecture is my professional passion. I am an architecture bigot and proud of it. I do not think that the architecture construct has been or is being used today nearly as effectively as it needs to be in thinking through these kinds of military questions. The architecture has to provide for obvious goals like commonality, interoperability and jointness. But it has to go far beyond those. In particular, it has to address system requirements and trade offs. We have got to get to the point where we are willing to reduce the requirements that we levy, for example, on a space-based sensor if the architecture tells us that by operating together with air breathing and surface assets the job can get done at lower cost and lower technical risk. That kind of trade off simply does not happen very effectively today. I think the Air Force ought to get its own house in order, evolve a truly integrated aerospace force and argue from a position of strength to help the Defense Department as a whole reach the same goal, and I lobby for at least a flag-officer force architect who is charged with that task. On a related note, I would like to salute the work of the Aerospace Integration Task Force. I urge the support of everybody here and everybody who cares about the future of America’s security in helping that task force reach the very difficult goal that has been set for it.

Second is the need to find much more effective ways to use commercial space, both products and services, to satisfy military needs. The two major aspects of this are, first, a proactive and continuing dialog with industry. In determining the best way to satisfy a military requirement involving space, the Air Force has to know what commercial space can bring to the party so that both the requirements definition process and the acquisition process can be predicated on accurate and current knowledge of what the commercial options are.

As the Defense Science Board pointed out in a recent study on open systems, there are a host of obstacles in law and regulation. Unfortunately, above all, culture stands in the way of the effective use of commercial products and service, but I can see no affordable solution that does not involve overcoming those barriers. So, the two thoughts in using commercial space are that, first, we have to get into the mindset of making more effective use of commercial space and second, we have to be willing to make the right acquisition decision as to the best means of satisfying a particular requirement.

Third is the need to develop both military and civilian leaders with genuine expertise and insight across the operations and the systems and technology aspects of air and space. Some important first steps have been taken in areas like the professional education of our young officers and in areas like senior staff to commander discussions across air and space organizations. But much more needs to be done. A fair share of our best and brightest have got to grow up as aerospace experts.

Fourth and finally, I would urge a more aggressive and perhaps creative program of force experimentation within the Air Force to explore and refine and ultimately validate the architecture and the doctrine and the tactics and the organizational structures of an integrated aerospace force. Analyses and war games can take us only so far, and we need to work out in the field and under realistic conditions of joint and combined operations the best ways to achieve the synergies among air, space and other system elements. It is important that joint experimentation has emerged as a major thrust within the Defense Department. I believe that the Air Force has got to play fully in this arena, both as an opportunity to demonstrate the military worth of aerospace and to build a defensible, objective and factual basis for its own decisions in this area.

In the time constraints, we can only can only scratch the surface of a very complex issue. I think the Air Force is launched on a journey, both intellectual and intensely practical, and that journey will last for quite a number of years. Ultimately, an integrated aerospace force must be the final destination. Events like today’s colloquy can help to inform and shape the debate, and I, too, look forward to your questions.

General Howell E. Estes, III: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to be with you here today and to share my personal thoughts on an issue which I think is very important. Today we are looking at a means to an end. The integration of air and space in the Air Force is just a means to an end. It is not the end in itself, and it is only in relation to the end that this means becomes important. What is the end? The end is a higher calling of national security and protection of our way of life. I will try to relate to you why I think that is so important. In a nutshell, you have heard the two previous speakers talk about space and where it is going and what it means to the country in terms of economic development, and so I am not going to spend much more time on that. There is lots of verbiage out there in lots of different places about the emergence of space as an economic center of gravity for our country. If you don’t believe that, you are not paying attention to what is going on. This is not just somebody who believes in this business of space standing up here saying it. It is a fact. Lots and lots of money goes to space worldwide, and there is lots of investment in this country. All you have to do is look at the number of satellite constellations that are going to be launched over the next 10 years to get a feel for the dollar value.

More important to the discussion today, though, is what does space mean to our military. We have heard that alluded to by the two previous speakers. In a nutshell, we need to remember that space has been important to our military in the past, and we’ve migrated four mission areas to space already and most of a fifth mission area. We are going to migrate more missions to space because of the same reason that we migrated the first five - it makes sense. You can do the missions better from space. It is just advancement in technology that gives us the wherewithal to do that.

Most of the people in this room, including the media, have read Joint Vision 2010. You know the importance of space to the joint vision, but it is not something that we can sit back and say is going to happen without an awful lot changing in the way our military does business.

It is a critical point, though, to remember what needs to be done and to get on the course to be able to do it. We have already downsized the military, and you’ll recall Joint Vision 2010 said we are going to make this smaller military more effective because we are going to enable it to do things it could never do in the past. That key enabler is information. If you look at space, many of the sensors that provide the information for Joint Vision 2010 concepts reside in space, and virtually all the information that is going to flow to warfighters, air, land and sea and space forces is going to flow through space. Space has been critical to the military in the past, and it is growing in importance, if for no other reason than the reason I just gave you. I think there are lots of other reasons why space is important to our military, but that one is key.

As we look ahead, and we see the importance of space to the economy of this country and the economy of the world at large, we also see the importance of space to militaries. We see it, then, as a source of national power for nations. If it is a source of national power, somebody is going to come along and challenge it. We’ve been through this time and again; there are plenty of examples in history. We’ve got to pay attention to protecting this huge investment that this nation and other nations are making in space. If we don’t do that, if we don’t chart the course to start the business of protecting those assets, we are going to find ourselves in a position where we find them at risk and are unable to respond to threats.

This isn’t going to happen overnight. I am the first to admit that. So, what I’d like to do is talk about four major issues in relation to the Air Force now that play in this regard.

The first one you’ve heard from other speakers, but it is worth mentioning again because it is the key to the whole thing. That is, if we don’t change the culture of the Air Force to an aerospace culture you can kiss space good bye. It is not going to stay in the Air Force. This is a very difficult process. We can sit here and say we are changing the culture, we’ve got lots of things going on in the Air Force today to do that. I am the first to stand up to admit there is progress being made. One of the major reasons is not only our Chief, but General DeKok sitting there as the XP. And there is planning being done by the Air Force to really create an aerospace culture. This is a very difficult proposition because we are born of air as an Air Force, and it is very difficult to let go of things we understand. But we are going to have to do it.

And now is the time to do it because we can afford to take risks today with the threats we have worldwide that we may not be able to take in the future. If we are not willing to take those risks today, we certainly will never take them when more relevant and large threats materialize in the years ahead. We’ve got to take advantage of this day and time.

What is the problem with that? Lots of people talking are about readiness concerns with today’s force. Every time I hear this, I recognize these are real concerns -- especially regarding, for example, balancing readiness and modernization. We can’t balance exactly, and in some cases we’ve probably gone too far in terms of reducing readiness to free up resources for modernization. But we made a conscious decision as a country to do this. The minute we started reducing readiness, all these little vignettes started coming out, some of them real, some of them perceived. I am not saying there are not readiness problems in our military today. What I am saying is, we know they are going to be there because we created them to free up resources for modernization. We keep forgetting that point. In all fairness, sometimes when we start moving that readiness pendulum, it swings too far because you can’t control it, and there certainly are some areas that need some attention in readiness. But, we should expect reduced readiness because we did it on purpose. Back to the issue again, we’ve got to change the culture. The culture of the military, the culture of the Air Force in particular, has to change so that aerospace becomes a meaningful word.

Secondly, and most importantly, the Air Force budget has to change. This isn’t going to change overnight. I am not talking about swinging one or two percent. I am not talking about putting a few more hundred million dollars into research and development. What I am talking about is making a concerted effort to start the process of changing the Air Force budget to fund those kind of things that are going to prepare us for tomorrow instead of today.

It is going to take 20 percent in my estimation of the Air Force budget to be able to fund the kind of things we need to do in space and to be good stewards of space as an Air Force. If we are not willing to do that, if we can’t see our way clear, then I am back to the words I used before: you can kiss the space mission good bye. Because somebody is going to do it. For all the reasons I’ve given you. The nature of our interests and investment are moving to space. Somebody in this country is going to have to protect it.

The third point I’d make is, the Air Force needs to make a concerted effort to migrate missions to space that it now does in the air. We’ve already done a lot of them. We are going to do more. Surveillance will probably be the next one. We should do that when the technology is there to do it, and we are convinced that it is there. We just had Dan Hastings, the Air Force Chief Scientist, do a space study. Mike Borky and the crows from the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board just came out with a report, very aggressive on space, saying, in my personal opinion, all the right kind of things. I apologize to Mike. He said he wasn’t here representing the SAB, and I need to point that out. He is here speaking his own mind, which is good. But the fact is, when technology is there and resources are there, we need to migrate these missions. And we can’t do it without a plan. We need to think about what we are going to do and make the proper assessments and take the proper steps to put ourselves in a position, dollar wise, so that we can do these migrations.

The fourth point gets to the resource issue. You hear people talking about it, and it is probably the thing I hear out of the Air Force more than I did when I was in uniform. You hear people constantly asking where the heck we are going to find the money to do this. We are not getting any more money. We know how that works. There is a one-third, one-third, one-third split [among the services] and everybody has reasons why they need more money. The Air Force thinks it needs more money because it has this mission of space and it is doing this for all services and this is a national mission, not an Air Force mission, so we need more money. I can go to the Army and the Navy, and I’ll get the exact same arguments about what they are doing for the country. The Army would cite all of the effort and money they’ve had to put into Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia area, Kosovo and the like. That is not an Army mission; they are doing it for the country. That is going to be their argument. The Navy has presence around the world. They’ve got ships doing the nation’s bidding around the world. That is a Navy mission, but it is also a national mission. They need more money because they are the one’s doing the nation’s bidding. All I am saying is, this argument about “we need more money because we are doing a national kind of a mission” is not going to play in our service any better than in any other service, in my opinion, and there is an equal argument for all three. The fact is, when you keep hearing that there aren’t enough dollar resources to do what the country is asking the military to do, that is why you see the Chairman, the Chiefs and the Secretaries up on the Hill and in public forums talking about the need for more money for defense. Otherwise, we are not going to be able to do what the nation is asking us to do.

On this issue, though, the Air Force has got to find a way to divest itself of resources and force structure it doesn’t need. That is real easy for me to stand up here and say. As a practical matter, it is extremely difficult, and why? Because there is a political following for every single one of these things that we need to divest. I mean political in the sense of the Congress. I mean political in terms of cultural followings within the Air Force. Both of those have got to change. If they don’t change, then you can kiss the mission of space good bye. Because the Air Force will not be able to divest itself of the things it no longer needs to create the cash flow necessary to fund this modernization in the future.

I have one last point I want to make and then I will sit down. We’ve got to start worrying now about protecting investments we make in space because they are so critical to the country. It falls to the Air Force to do that. We’ve got an awfully good example of a case in point just recently of where we haven’t paid close enough attention, in my book. If you look at the debate over national missile defense, you’ll see we were aiming toward a three plus three strategy - three years for development, three years for deployment. Everybody, myself included, looked out and said, based on all the intelligence we have, we are convinced that a threat is not going to materialize before we can get this system out and deployed. We said we were OK, and we will be able to protect this country from rogue state missiles.

We all know what happened this fall. The North Koreans tested a multi-stage missile. This country, in my estimation, is going to be at risk from those missiles within five years, if not sooner. You look at what is going on with national missile defense and you say, what is the problem? We said we were going to develop it in three years. That is the year 2000. Deploy it in three years. We’ll have the system out there in 03 if this threat is going to materialize, like you said.

Unfortunately, in the last week, the Defense Department has announced that development of NMD is two years behind. And now, all of a sudden, on this crucial issue of this nation being at risk to rogue state missiles, we are not going to have a system in place before these missiles put our country at risk.

We cannot afford to let this kind of dialog extend to protection of assets in space. There are lots of people in this country who want to procrastinate on a lot of issues dealing with national security. We have grown up generations of people who have thought about national security issues as something on distant shores, not affecting this nation, not affecting the way we live day to day. Folks, that is getting ready to change. Rogue state missiles are one element of it. Information attacks are another element of it. Loss of space assets is another element of it. It is going to affect our daily lives. It is going to affect the way Americans live every day. We cannot afford to have this procrastinating dialog on these key national security issues that keeps kicking them out into the future. We have got to pay attention to these issues. Thanks very much.

Dr. Grant: We are now going to move into the discussion phase, and the first question I have for the panelists is a simple one. You’ve all stressed the importance of aerospace integration. What are the two or three things the Air Force most needs to do right now and in the next few years to make that happen?

General Moorman: I would take a page from Howell’s book on a couple of areas. First, I think we need to get on with the establishment of our professional military education process. This Air and Space Basic Course is absolutely crucial. Second, milestones need to be established to migrate the surveillance mission to space. Third is a need for a very comprehensive look at commercializing various functions to free up money for some of the things that are in that bucket called integration of air and space. Mike Borky alluded to the Defense Science Board study that showed constraints in our ability to commercialize. We must break those down because, in many areas, the commercial people are moving much quicker than the national security people. We ought to take advantage of that capability.

Dr. Borky: Getting the aerospace integration plan out into dialog and being able to establish within the service and then nationally a consensus on the approach to integration is probably my top priority. The other two that I would mention have to do with acquisition and with requirements determination. In the acquisition sense I talked about the fact we have to find better ways to use commercial space. There is an entire process of reforming the way we plan and execute acquisition, and there are a thousand dimensions to that. We could talk about that for hours. The other, in a requirement sense, is not just running wargames and doing engineering trait studies, but also doing the exercises. You play the way you train theory. We need to have air and space much more vigorously exercise in integrated exercises so we can learn the lessons and figure out the right way to do it.

General Estes: If we don’t get a divestiture strategy that works and divest ourselves of some of this excess structure and resources, we won’t find the money for what we need to do in space. As I mentioned, it is an easy thing to say, difficult thing to do. The Air Force has been trying to do this for years.

From a personal perspective, I think you’ve got to get a new strategy with the Hill. You’ve got a lot of folks up there who are very interested in certain aspects of the structure because of the importance to their states. We’ve got to find some allies who can help balance this issue by appreciating that changes need to be made. . .folks who know we need to move forward and who will work with the people who are hanging on to the old structure and say, “listen, we’ve got to move ahead and find something in it for everybody.” Not many people are going to stand up publicly and say that to you. But somebody has to do it because that is where the issue is. We’ve got to find a way to work the political situation so that we can move ahead with divestitures because it’s the Air Force that wants to get rid of these things. Many people in this room have worked this issue for a long time. We’ve just got to find a different way to work it. If we don’t, we are not going to be successful. That is point one.

Secondly, for a long time I’ve been very high on partnering with commercial space. There are three key partnerships that the Air Force needs to strike up and strike up hard, and the Air Force is making progress here. The first is with our allies. We cannot provide of all of these things to all of our allies without some support from them. They’ve got to help us fund some of these things. There is a source of resources. They get the benefit of advanced technologies at low cost. They aren’t going to put a lot in, but they can put some in. It will help with coalition warfare because we will be better able to operate with other countries, and they will receive benefits they otherwise couldn’t afford. I think that partnership is important.

The second partnership opportunity is with the civil sector. The partnership with NASA is key to the Air Force’s future in space. There is no sense for the Air Force to do it all alone when there’s a civil organization that is doing a lot of the same things. We should get mutual technology development and operational benefits.

The third one is with the commercial sector. The military is not going to build many of the things in the future in terms of remote sensing and communications that the commercial side is going to do. Why in the world shouldn’t we take advantage of it? Culture change required? You betcha. But we’ve got to do it. Otherwise, we are going to sit here and not take advantage of what is commercially available, which will be well beyond what the military has developed.

To take a good example: Iridium is up there with a hand-held commercial telephone system operating today. You can talk to anybody in the world over an Iridium hand set through satellites and cross-links. The military can’t do that today. They are never going to fund a system like that. The list goes on. Wide band systems are coming. We keep talking about “netric” and “centric” kinds of things in the military and being able to operate on networks to be able to bring data together to embellish and help the warfighter do the job better because we can trade transparencies in the battlefield. How can you do that if you don’t have a communication system? Commercially it is going to be there. But government is never going to build a system like that. We’ve got to change our way of thinking about commercial systems. At the same time, the military needs to realize that a commercial system won’t provide all the benefits of an owned system. So we have to determine what we absolutely have to have and what isn’t so important and start moving down that commercial road. Because if we don’t, we are going to be left behind. We are not going to be able to do the kinds of things in communications that we could do commercially if the government doesn’t change its way of thinking about commercial systems.

Dr. Borky: The most important near-term thing to me is an external and an internal plan for the meaning of integration of air and space. What does it mean to the Air Force? What does it mean to the Joint community? What does it mean to the public? If we don’t have an internalization process and acceptance and understanding, it will be worse than pursuing it not at all. That is, if you bring something up, raise expectations and don’t internalize them and have a plan to implement them, it is worse than having never started down that path. I worry a little bit about that. I commend that to the institution. There are a lot of people who do not believe we are serious.

Dr. Grant: Point well taken about process and things we need to do. But let’s turn this back and talk about the actual substance of the aerospace operational art. How do you gentlemen see the Air Force needing to better integrate its systems, and what will that do specifically for the joint warfighter?

Dr. Borky: I think of operational art as something that can only partially be quantified. It has elements of a craft and an art with explicit academic skill. It is fundamentally the ability to make good decisions, often under terrible time pressure and with very ambiguous or incomplete information about what to do, how to employ the assets that you have available, how to out-smart the other guy, and so on.

I think operational art is driven first and foremost by the circumstances in which the operations are carried out, and that is where I see a strong affinity between air and space. Both share speed, access, broad scope, flexibility and surprise -- a lot of common operational attributes -- much more with each other than either does with operations that are constrained by surface friction. In my mind, the fundamental insight that a commander needs to effectively apply air breathing and space assets has more in common than in difference. Both involve the ability to understand the effective ways in which the end-state that you are after can be reached with those kinds of assets and their unique advantages and limitations.

Dr. Grant: General Estes, what insight does that future commander need to properly apply aerospace power?

General Estes: Having been an air commander in Korea and the J-3 on the Joint Staff for General Shalikashvili some years ago, it became very clear to me that we had not taken the steps necessary to fully utilize everything that was available to us; namely, we hadn’t used space in the right way. This is what got me started on this process of trying to understand this business a little bit better. I can remember in Korea, we didn’t even have a space person on the staff over there. I am sitting there looking at two-dimensional displays, stuff from the 1950s in terms of technology, and I am supposed to fight an air war with this. I go out to a carrier where they’ve brought a lot of high tech into it and they are looking at three-dimensional displays of the battle space around the carrier involving all of the ships, aircraft and so forth. You can tell friends from enemies. I said, “why do we have this for a carrier task force, and here I am, the air commander in Korea, and I am looking at 1950s vintage stuff.” I don’t understand this. They are using a lot of space stuff to bring those displays into that carrier. Back to try to answer your question.

What a commander needs, whether the command is air, land or sea or joint, is transparency and to know what is happening in the battlespace for which he or she is responsible. We say we are going to provide that knowledge in the future. That is how we are going to enable our forces to do a better job. That is how we are going to integrate them better. That is how we are going to make every bomb, bullet, missile and rocket count. Because it is going to hit the right target at the right time because of the transparencies we create on the battlefield. I argue that the sensors are here today. The challenge is integration. If we just make use of what we have today, and fuse the data, cross link it properly and display it in a way that a warfighter can use, we will be light years ahead.

That is what I think needs to happen. That is the value to the warfighter. That is what the joint warfighter is looking for - a more in-depth understanding of what the adversary is doing so he can take the tools the country has provided and apply them in a very efficient way for a limited loss of blood and treasure to the United States of America and, ultimately, to the adversary. Take our actions in Iraq as an example. We are absolutely uninterested in doing any damage whatsoever to the Iraqi people. Any such damage would be a by-product of the larger effort. We are taking great pains as a nation to limit the loss of life, both on our side and on the enemy’s side. It is the nature of modern warfare. So, I think it is of the greatest importance that we use all the resources available to improve the warfighting commander’s understanding of the challenges he faces from his adversary so he can use the tools available for achieve his objective at the least cost. That’s the promise we have made in Joint Vision 2010. We’ll see if we deliver.

Dr. Grant: Let me ask a question that will be of interest to everyone. Do we need to defend what we have in space today, both what the military has and potentially commercial assets? And, is it time to think about applying force from space, either on other things in space or on things on the surface of the earth.

General Moorman: My comment is that the choice of verb is interesting. Do we need to begin? Actually, from the day CINC Space was created, the “protection” mission has been a portion of the “defend” mission. That has been the responsibility across the board. The answer to your question is, most assuredly we have always appreciated the need to be able to protect our on-orbit assets. Primarily we’ve been focused on national security assets, but as all the speakers have pointed out, the commercial world demands we understand ultimately how to protect its assets too. By the way, right now, they are not real interested in being protected. That is a different question and it will take a little time to talk about. But it is going to cost money and nobody wants to spend money on that.

People have been thinking about striking things from space for some time. Back in SAC in the late 1970s, there was a program called TRIM, which used depleted uranium rods to strike things from orbit. So the thought process has been going on. My sense is it is incumbent on CINC Space, for example, to continue to be the source to drive the thought process about enabling technologies for those kinds of capabilities when and if national policy dictates. But most assuredly, my personal belief is that external events some time in the future will create an environment where we will need them. It will be criminal if we have not worked the technology problem.

Dr. Borky: On defending space assets, this is something we have looked at hard for a number of years now because you can’t advocate increased use of commercial space without addressing the issue of vulnerability. If we are going to put commercial systems on the critical path of the execution of military operations, then we’ve got to have adequate assurance. General Moorman is exactly right. When you put that question to a businessman who is worried about return on assets employed, the two things that you will get back are: A) show me the validated threat; B) that is what insurance is for. Recognizing that every ounce of payload devoted to, for example, hardening is an ounce of payload revenue foregone, I don’t have the answer to that. We talked about it at some length at the Secretary’s space conference. I believe a major piece of the answer has got to be some government investment in product or in technology or in other schemes that make some measure of protection on board those systems affordable so the business case can be made and commercial service providers can find it attractive.

Another important aspect is that the threats are multi-dimensional. When I was growing up, we thought that protecting space assets meant radiation hardening. It still does in some instances. But it is a very expensive proposition to do and has to be applied selectively where radiation is the threat that the system must be able to survive. But you equally have to address jamming. You have to address temporary disruptions over the area where you’d like the system to be working and a thousand other things. It is a very complex, multi-dimensional problem, but the bottom line of it is, yes, we must find ways, both because of the growing commercial importance of an assured available space infrastructure and because of the military need for an adequate level of assurance.

On the issue of applying force from space, I come at this one in exactly the same way I would come at it hanging a new munition on an attack fighter. The question ought to be about the most operationally and economically effective means of prosecuting a target. Space has some tremendous advantages. Speed and assured access are high on that list. There are some scenarios one can think of. For instance, a real-time totally surprising surgical strike. Perhaps not carpet bombing, but taking out a particular, highly valued asset. The effects don’t have to be lethal. Non-lethal effects can have profound psychological impacts. The ability to deliver those kinds of effects from orbit would have enormous operational leverage. But we have to always ask these questions in a force structure context, in my opinion, how does that fit in with other classes of systems and weapons and other devices for achieving those effects. We don’t want to go at it that this is the be-all, end-all, and omnipotent system in orbit that takes care of all of my problems. I’ll never be able to afford it.

General Estes: Let me hit an issue here that my colleagues have hit: the recognition in the commercial sector of the need for protecting assets in space. A year ago I would agree with them. Today, I don’t agree. I think there is recognition starting in the commercial sector of the need for protection. And why? Because their revenues depend on a bit stream being sent to somebody, and if that bit stream stops, the revenue stops. And so, as these commercial systems are developed for movement of information, the need to ensure the continuity of that bit stream is going to increase in value, and therefore protection is going to increase in value. I see a lot of people starting to recognize this.

Let me just give you two examples. This may not be as developed as far as some of us would like to see it, but let me tell you where I think it is going, and I’ll give you a couple of examples of why I think it is going to go there. Look where we were with GPS 10 years ago. There are people in this room who had trouble convincing the Defense Department we ought to put that system up in the first place. What the hell do we need a system in space to do navigation for [they asked]? Anybody asking that question today? It is not only a military system. In fact, the military gets the least use out of it. The commercial sector development of GPS will be $8 billion in 2000 alone. Look what happened in just 10 years of our view of GPS.

You want a more timely one? Look at remote sensing. A year ago people told me there was no business case for remote sensing. Read the article in Space News this week if you don’t think there is a business case starting for remote sensing. It is coming. It is going to happen. This protection issue is much like that. We can see it. We may not have all the pieces quite together yet. But 10 years from now we are going to be glad we did something about this issue in the commercial sector.

To the issue of weapons in space, I have been very consistent on talking about this issue, and I will not change my theme today. The value of developing systems is different than the value of deploying them. On the issue of weapons in space, our country needs to develop them so that, if, in fact, there is a requirement to deploy them at a future date, we are ready to roll. If we just keep putting this issue off, we could reach a point when the President turns to his military advisors and asks what can we do to protect our assets, and we don’t want to have to say, “we don’t have any answers to that because we haven’t been working on it.” There is a huge value to doing the development work, not deploying it, holding it there in abeyance for deployment if it becomes necessary for national security purposes. That folks, we all understand, is going to be a political decision made by the civilian leaders of our country, not by our military. There is a great value in developing it because if we make the development known, it is a huge deterrent for anybody trying to affect assets in space. If we keep it quiet and we have these black world programs that deal with this kind of thing, then there is no deterrent value. Nobody is going to know they are there. They may suspect it, but they are not going to know. So there is a balance there between protection of technology capability and deterrent value.

We were talking at breakfast this morning that the nuclear business back in the 1940s and 1950s was much that way. How do we get the deterrent value out of nuclear weapons to counterbalance the eastern bloc if we don’t talk about what we’ve got? The stealth fighter program was somewhat the same way. You can use examples of this throughout history. I think there is a greater value to developing. It is important to the nation that we do that, and it’s important to our security. I don’t advocate deploying until the national leadership decides the time is right.

General Moorman: Let me make one comment about that, and I want to reinforce what General Estes has said. Twenty years ago you could not even breath publicly the idea that you even ever had a thought about a weapon in space other than conceptually. I think it is very interesting, and a lot has to do with the national missile defense issue. Now you have discussion and language with respect to space-based lasers in the law. That discussion is driven by the space-based laser threat and an appreciation that if such a threat materializes, and a lot of us believe it will, then the best way to deal with it is from space, not with a proliferation of ground-based systems. The counter measures and difficulty of dealing with it from the ground and the expense thereof is fairly substantial. The reason I raise this is that there is now discussion about space-based systems as demonstrators. You couldn’t talk about that as recently as five to 10 years, and that is a major breakthrough, and I think it is threat driven.

Rick Newman (US News and World Report): I’ll address this to General Estes because I think you took this on most directly. Is the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter an impediment to funding to space at the right level, or do you think the right amount of savings will come out of base closures?

General Estes: I’ll give you my personal opinion and other panelists may have different opinions on this. We have got to remember that there is no question. There is an air mission which the Air Force must be able to do as part of the joint warfight for this country. We are America’s Air Force. That has been a view the Air Force has had for a long time, and there is a larger context. There are American Air Forces, and I see people in the room who have argued this case in a lot of forums about the value of three air forces versus just one. In any case, to the issue that you’ve raised, we’ve got to remember there is a very important calling for the Air Force on the air side that we must pay attention to. We are going to need modernized systems there just like we are going to modernize in the space area. You’ve got to bring both of them along. The issue is, do we need the numbers that we’ve needed in the past in terms of Joint Strike Fighters. I think the F-22 program, personally, has been scrubbed to the point where if you take one more dollar out of that you are going to end up with no program. That is my personal belief. That thing is down to the bare bones, and before you know it, it is not going to be worth the cost of doing it. We’ve got to maintain that level. I think Ron Fogleman gave the best explanation I’ve heard about why it is important for this country to have an air superiority fighter. He goes back in history, being the historian that he is, and tells a great story about the wars we’ve been involved in where we didn’t have air superiority versus where we did. And one case where we didn’t, if you recall, for some period of time, was Vietnam and look at the result. We’ve got to have that. We don’t even want a close competitor in this game. Because it enables so many more things to happen when you have air superiority.

Joint Strike Fighter. How many do we need is the issue? Do we need the numbers we needed with the old force, or are we going to enable these new Joint Strike Fighters to be much more capable as compared to a Block 50 and Block 40 F-16. I think the answer to that is, it is going to be a much more capable airplane if we do it right because we are going to put things into the cockpits of those airplanes that make them more capable. Do you need the numbers? My personal view is, it is an issue that needs to be looked at and needs to be addressed because there is a possibility of some movement there. That is my personal belief. That is what I am saying. It isn’t that we don’t need a Joint Strike Fighter. It isn’t that we don’t need an F-22. They are just as important to the future of the air side of the Air Force as some of these systems we are talking about on the space side. But you’ve got to balance this because the missions are going to move and some of the things we do with F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter are going to be done from space in the future. That transition is going to happen over time as technology allows it.

Dr. Borky: The answer to your question is yes. Balancing the big ticket items and making the profile match the appropriation is going to be a challenge for as long as the rest of us are breathing. I like to challenge the conventional wisdom about the cost of space systems. We have grown up believing that space somehow is divinely ordained to be obscenely expensive, and we have paradigms for developing space systems that grew up when the threat was paramount and the cost was, if not irrelevant, then at least distinctly secondary. That has now changed. The fact is, that a combination of intelligent use of commercial product services and best practices, technology for affordability as opposed to technology for raw performance and other very real and very mature approaches can dramatically lower the cost of space systems. As one example of what is underway to prove that, the Discoverer 2 program aims to demonstrate a pair of radar SATs at a cost per satellite on orbit of something about a 10^th to a 5^th of what conventional wisdom would say such systems cost. Yes, it is and always will be a tough programming challenge, but we ought not to just assume that things will cost what they’ve cost in the past.

General Moorman: It falls to me to scoop up all the rest now that we’ve talked of big ticket trades and acquisition reform. Concerning the F-22 and the JSF, I completely agree with the two comments of the gentlemen on my left. There is also a component that has been alluded to and that is divestiture strategies for infrastructure. The movement of missions to space. The requirements trade process. Doing the system of systems business. When I was on the JROC [Joint Requirements Oversight Council], I always believed that the country, not just the Air Force, but the country had far too much ISR - intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. But we had no way to do the trades to figure that out. The divestiture process is complicated, and it will require all services and help from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Congress to really make progress.

Dr. Borky: I have to add a footnote. That kind of dilemma, which is a real one, reminds me of someone who asked me recently, which would you rather do without, air or water?

Kim Wills (RAND Corporation): General Estes brought up the point of perhaps the mission of space could be removed from the Air Force. We’ve been working this area for a number of years and have interviewed various Air Force senior leaders on this subject. In light of constrained resources, would the Air Force survive, and should the Air Force survive if space becomes viable?

General Estes: I have argued against a separate service for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the reason you raise and that is, we would have to create another service with the scarce resources we now have. They are not going to give the Defense Department more money to set up another service. That is money then that would not be available for anybody’s forces because of the structure that would have to be created. I don’t think it is right. We are not ready for separate service yet. Yes, space is important, and there are a lot of people who don’t think it is getting its fair play. That is all very interesting, but the answer to me at this stage is not a separate service. There are those folks out there who have been very candid and some of them in my position as a CINC a couple times earlier than I was who have been very clear on this issue. One gentleman argues that it all comes down to resources, and the Air Force is not going to be able to sort this resource issue, and so if space is really to be funded the way it needs to be, it is going to have to go to a separate service. That is his belief, and my argument is the Air Force can’t stand that. We can’t afford to lose this mission. That is why we’ve got to do this cultural change and truly integrate air and space in a way that makes sense for the country. If we don’t, as I said, we can kiss it good bye because what this gentleman is talking about, and others like him -- and there are some of the Hill talking about this -- is too important not to get done. Somebody is going to do it. And they are going to do it right. The timing is the issue. I think we’ve got to be very careful, in my book, and this is one reason why the Air Force has got to do more than just talk about this issue of integration of air and space. It has to do something. As Tom Moorman keeps saying, now is the time to do it. Not tomorrow -- not next year. We’ve got to quit thinking that writing words and saying them publicly in little bumper stickers, as Tom calls them, is the answer. It is not the answer, folks; you’ve got to make a cultural change. You’ve got to believe in this. It shouldn’t be the space people out there promoting space. It ought to be the air people promoting space. That is when the culture changes. Until that happens, we are not there.

General Moorman: That latter point is absolutely right. Just look at the makeup of this panel. This is not an issue about space guys, geeks, cadets and converts talking about aerospace integration. This is a corporate Air Force problem that demands the attention of the entire Air Force, but as we tend to show you, we are not there on cultural changes. We tend to think of this in terms of: how do I employ space better; or, how do I keep the mission? I can’t be any stronger than that.

Questioner (unidentified): You mentioned the space-based laser, General Moorman. It is often brought up as an example of the way we are moving toward this issue of weaponizing space. And yet, in recent weeks we are seeing that the Air Force seems to be backing away or putting the brakes on the space-based laser development program. Do you think they are doing the right thing? And the second part, do you think the restructuring of this readiness demonstrator program is just a question of resources, or do you think the nation jumped the gun from a technology standpoint?

General Moorman: I am not as current as some other people you might question on this. But my sense about the space-based laser issue is the imperative is brought to you by a great interest in national missile defense and a concern that we need to move down that pike. There has been a debate. There is a difference of opinion within the executive department and within the Congress as to the timing and pace for that program, whether the technology is available and how to structure the program. That is a tough technological challenge. It is exceedingly tough, and because of the increased interest, that program has been accelerated. It has been on people’s scopes, but there continues to be very daunting issues about it. My sense is that we are going to have a space-based laser development program. We are going to debate when that is going to be. But it falls in that camp of what General Estes was saying. I used the term enabling technologies. He used the term development. That is one of those kind of capabilities where we have to keep pressure on so we can get that capability for the country when our political leaders say it is time.

Dr. Grant: Thank you all for coming.