Toward new air and space horizons

Air Force Speeches, Feb 19, 2005 by John P. Jumper

I remember at the AFA Convention in September we wanted to get a couple of these guys that we used to talk about at the AFA Convention because during Operation Iraqi Freedom we'd actually found these space guys and put them and their kit in the Air Operations Center. The difference was unbelievable. They were able to bring space power to bear not only in a collection mode but in the real time targeting mode. We couldn't find any of those guys, not because they were in the basement but because they were deployed. That is how far we've come as we talk about operationalizing space.

Another thing we did in these past few days in CORONA is to approve a set of space wings. Space wings that will be worn to connote space operators. In order to be in the space business you will have had to come through an operational space tour to know how we fight with space, to understand the effects of space before you go out in the world and start buying things for space. It's the same way we look at operational skills in the rest of our Air Force. You will earn these wings in a rigorous progression of operational duties that will be recognized by the rest of our Air Force.

We need to be more responsive in space, and I don't mean responsive in the terms of what now takes weeks and months we need to take just weeks; I mean responsive in hours, maybe days. We talk about joint warfighting space. That means putting the warfighter in the loop, in the real-time loop using space assets, and to talk more about effects than we talk about platforms. I think the journey we're on with operationalizing space, with having space operators is going to put us in a mode where each and every space professional understands the warfighting effects they're having on the battlefield, in the battle space, and how the space piece fits.

Responsiveness, I hope to be able to get through our efforts in joint warfighting space, and this again, we're working with Lance Lord and others to get concepts where we can launch in a matter of hours or days. We can take mini-sats, micro-sats and small sats, put them up and concentrate over a specific area of the earth; be able to network properly at the machine-to-machine level with National Security Space, but also to be able to take those effects and put them right into the hands of warfighting commanders on the ground and in the air.

We need to protect our assets. Many of the capabilities we describe today and all of the business about networkcentric warfare depends on space communications. It must be robust, it must be protected, or all of this business about networkcentric networking and reachback is for naught. As Mr. Teets says, we have plans to put things like laser communications and other robust communications capabilities into space and those, as we build them, will have those more robust capabilities.

And then the Air Force needs to take this and present it as a force that is useable by other regional commanders around the world. We see the standup of Strategic Command. We see Lance Lord as the component commander of the Strategic Command, and in the operations center, Air and Space Operations Center that will function for Strategic Command we will find the functionalities of air, of space, of cyber, information warfare, airborne and all the other aspects that we use information warfare and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance), presented to the STRATCOM Commander for use around the world.