Thank you for that kind introduction.
I’d like to thank the Satellite Industries Association for the opportunity to talk at this forum.
I wanted to take a few minutes this evening to discuss what the Department is doing in the area of space mission assurance, as well as some of the new areas we’re looking at as we drive forward into the future.
But let me start my comments by going back to the early Cold War years when it was all about nuclear weapons and missiles, and space was largely an afterthought. The Eisenhower Administration wanted better and more reliable missiles and smaller nuclear warheads without losing explosive yield. That’s where the scientific energy was focused.
All that changed in October 1957 with the “beeps and squeaks” heard round the world when the Soviets launched Sputnik, and then Sputnik II a month later. President Eisenhower’s popularity plummeted. Time magazine chose Nikita Khrushchev as their man of the year – putting his smiling mug on the cover along with a picture of Sputnik. And the space race was on.
Although it would take another three months for the United States to successfully launch a satellite into space, satellite development and launches kicked into high gear. NASA was created in early 1958. And the CIA began its Corona spy satellite program, launching the first one into space in august 1960 – the first use of a satellite for strategic reconnaissance.
In the 1960s, while NASA concentrated on manned space flight, DoD began developing its early satellite constellations driven by the imperative to prevent strategic surprise and ensure nuclear deterrence. this led to the establishment of the national reconnaissance program for strategic intelligence, ISR satellites for nuclear war planning and targeting, weather satellites to support reconnaissance, navigation satellites (transit) for Polaris SSBNs, launch detection/early warning satellites, nuclear detonation detection payloads, communications satellites for nuclear command and control and EAM dissemination.
Although the focus of the national security space constellation remained on nuclear warfighting, things began to change in the 1970s. Through the tactical exploitation of national capabilities program, or TENCAP, we began to give our conventional warfighters a glimpse at the eye-watering capabilities our strategic space constellation provided.
At the same time, DoD more fully exploited space-based communications. And just as importantly—if not more so—it began developing the global positioning system, or GPS, to provide Joint forces precise timing, positioning and navigation information.
Thus, in 1990, when Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi army to invade Kuwait and the U.S. led a coalition to eject them, we had in place the space-based building blocks needed to form the first true theater level battle network.
Now a battle network is simply a combination of three interconnected grids: a sensor grid that senses the environment—including both red and blue forces and weather; a command, control, communications, and intelligence grid that aims to develop a common operational picture, determine the actions necessary to achieve desired battlefield effects; and some kind of effector or weapons grid to translate decisions into action and effects on the battlefield.
Space-based capabilities dramatically improved the entire US joint battle network. Space-based ISR and weather capabilities allowed U.S.to peer into and throughout the battlespace with impunity, gaining full understanding of the Iraqi order of battle and its disposition, and how weather might impact operations. The GPS constellation allowed all three grids and the entire battle network to be synched in time and space, and enabled precise navigation across trackless desert sands. All of this allowed new organizations such as the CAOC to plan precise attacks, and space-based comms allowed U.S.to command and control forces in real time through the theater. And Desert Storm saw the very first GPS-guided munitions employed in combat, auguring in the capability to strike targets precisely day or night, even in bad weather.
These capabilities helped U.S. and allied forces to overwhelm the Iraqi forces, and in the process demonstrate what we referred to as the second Offset strategy.
Now an Offset strategy simply leverages our high quality people, technological superiority, and innovative operational and organizational constructs to compensate for an adversary’s advantages in time, space, and forces. And the space-based capabilities developed during the 2nd Offset strategy allowed U.S.to project more power, more precisely, more swiftly, at less cost, with less force structure, and with far fewer casualties than would otherwise be possible.
That’s why 1991’s Desert Storm is often called the first space war, because of the enormous advantages provided by our national security space constellations. After the war, we continued to refine and exploit these capabilities, primarily by aggressively pursuing GPS-guided munitions, which allowed 24-hour a day guided munitions bombardment regardless of weather. We refined and demonstrated these capabilities in Yugoslavia and Kosovo, and Afghanistan and Iraq.
Indeed, today, global imaging, communications, navigation, and precision has become so deeply enmeshed in our Joint operations that it is truly central to our concepts of deterrence, assurance, and warfighting.
Unfortunately, along the way, we started to grow comfortable in the belief that space is a virtual sanctuary. But as this audience knows, that is no longer the case.
Both Russia and China have studied our way of warfighting, searching for gaps to exploit. Both have focused on our space systems as a potentially vulnerable center of gravity – and they are aggressively pursuing counter-space capabilities. That means, as Secretary Carter said last week in California, DoD must now prepare for a conflict that extends into space. And in our budget, we're continuing to invest more in space, totaling more than $22 billion just this year alone.
Russia and China’s pursuit of counter-space weapons, and other anti-access, area-denial capabilities, is leading to an erosion in the margin of conventional superiority we have enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. That’s why we’re pursuing a 3rd Offset strategy – to ensure our conventional deterrence remains as strong in the future as it is today.
The 3rd Offset strategy is based on the premise that advances in artificial intelligence and autonomy will allow the Joint force to develop and operate advanced Joint, collaborative human-machine battle networks that synchronize simultaneous operations in space, air, sea, undersea, ground, and cyber domains.
We believe that breakthroughs in artificial intelligence will allow new levels of autonomy – the delegation of decision-making authority – within Joint battle networks, leading to entirely new levels of human-machine collaboration and combat teaming. That’s the technological special sauce of the 3rd Offset strategy.
And space will be as central to the battle networks we develop in the 3rd Offset strategy as it was to those we built in the 2nd. The key difference now is our adversaries will be targeting those battle networks with a range of weapons – cyber, kinetic, directed energy, and others. So we need to think about how we’re going to “fight the constellation.”
Now, clearly it’s in nobody’s interest to have a space war. It would disrupt the entire world’s reliance on space services – affecting the world’s financial centers, transportation, utilities, telecommunications, and much more. So we’re back to thinking about how to deter adversaries from thinking that our space systems are vulnerable. The way to do it is deterrence by denial. Deterrence in space is not about imposing costs the way nuclear deterrence was in the cold war. Simply saying that if you shoot my satellite I’ll shoot yours is not credible. If we start blasting each other’s satellites, the whole world loses, because the resulting massive debris fields would pollute orbits and make them unusable.
When it comes down to it, deterrence in space is fundamentally about denial of benefits. That in turn depends on convincing adversaries that we have strong space mission assurance. And it must be strong enough to inject deep doubts in an adversary’s mind about the prospects for a successful attack.
What’s more, we need to build a system that is postured for victory if deterrence fails. Because a force meant to deter conflict can only succeed in deterrence if it can show that it will dominate a conflict.
So how do we do that? The first and most important step is making our architectures and our operations more resilient: hard to find, hard to catch, hard to hit, hard to kill. We’re going to do that with a dynamic, layered, defense-in-depth that encompasses the full range of passive measures required for denial, such as different orbits, mobility, deception, distributed architectures, as well as active measures, such as threat suppression and damage limitation.
The key fundamentals in this regard are:
· Eliminate mission critical, single-node vulnerabilities;
· Create uncertainty, complicate risk calculus, and increase targeting difficulty;
· Adopt passive and active measures to evade, withstand, and operate through threats;
· Distribute value and orchestrating across hosts, orbits, spectrum, and geography;
· Electively leverage inter-sector and international cooperation; and
· Demonstrate the resolve and capabilities to deter and defeat attack.
We’re also making organizational changes with an experimental platform for battle management and command and control of our space assets – the Joint interagency combined space operations center, or JICSpOC. In December, I observed a TTX where I saw the value of having our commercial partners there participating, helping U.S. better understand the challenges we all face in an increasingly crowded, and contested, domain. We’ll take what we’re learning and continue to refine JICSpOC and more fully integrate DoD space operations with those of the intelligence community.
In the meantime, however, let me say a few words about the things we already know. Throughout most of the space era, we’ve rarely faced threats beyond the natural environment, jamming, or a nuclear detonation in space. We designed our systems to handle those threats. But just because we didn’t optimize for the threats emerging today doesn’t mean the task is insurmountable, or even cost prohibitive.
And it does not mean we have to trade off capability in order to gain resilience. It simply means we need to put our innovative minds to the task.
And that brings us to two great American and allied advantages, both of which are represented by those of you gathered here tonight:
○ The first advantage is our international partnerships and strong alliances.
○ The second is our tremendously innovative commercial sector and its global partnerships.
Let me say a few things about both. Whenever and wherever the United States military operates today, we do so in coalitions. Our allies bring important opportunities to add redundancy and resiliency. By leveraging their platforms, we can proliferate and distribute the capabilities we have on orbit. And by inviting them into our space operations centers, we will provide greater interoperability as a coalition, and jointly work to protect our combined space assets.
At the same time, we also want our commercial partners in the mix because of the tremendous innovative capacity of the commercial sector – including the firms represented here tonight, both those based in the U.S. and those based in the nations of our trusted allies.
That innovation is resident in both the traditional space entities that are achieving ever faster data rates and better protection for satellite communications as well as the new space entrants pursuing new ways of exploiting space to deliver both traditional and new kinds of services.
As I noted earlier, well up until the 90s, it was government investment driving space innovation. It used to be the space industry benefited from a trickle-down effect of technology transfer where everything from tang the orange drink to Teflon coating flowed from government to the commercial sector.
Today, it’s working the other way. Consumer demand for ever smaller devices with greater computing power and more functionality is leading to advances in space that we are now adapting to address government needs. We’re seeing this innovation in new concepts for commercial launch, for proliferated constellations for a truly worldwide internet on orbit, for more persistent space-based imaging, for space situational awareness, for on-orbit servicing, for hosted payloads, and much more.
For example, in the next five years, it looks like more than a dozen GEOINT constellations – with more than 500 smallsats – will launch, and begin to continuously image the earth. I was just out in Silicon Valley where I had the chance to visit Planet Labs. They’re going to put up 150 smallsats, referred to as “Doves”, in a sun-synchronous polar orbit. And every day, day in and out, during daylight, each Dove will take two pictures per second, staring straight down, transforming the entire flock of Doves into one giant earth line scanner.
Can you imagine it? We need to figure out how to harness the incredible power of such constellations. This is a big part of the 3rd Offset strategy: leveraging decision science, big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to accelerate the speed of information. We’re going to exploit autonomy and predictive analytics to act inside the enemy’s operations cycle. We’ll accelerate the processing of imagery using deep learning and automated object detection techniques that can scale to any problem.
We’re looking to all of you to help U.S. out. The question is not: will American and allied industry innovate. We know you will always innovate. The real question is: will government stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on industry’s innovation and your international partnerships?
Three examples suggest we can capitalize when we put our minds to it.
o First, we are pursuing new opportunities through the defense innovation unit experimental (DIU-X) and our pilot program with In-Q-Tel.
o Second, the national geospatial intelligence agency has issued a commercial geointelligence strategy focused squarely on capitalizing on all the potential commercial industry is offering.
o Third, in the DoD, as we look to our future satellite communications requirements, we’re taking a good look at how to change our buying practices for commercial SATCOM instead of just purchasing on the spot market. Using pathfinder activities we are looking at how we meet requirements through mechanisms such as purchasing transponders on orbit or purchasing a satellite as part of a commercially operated constellation.
In conclusion, let me leave you with a concise sense of what all this means for the future of government, allied, and commercial space activities. The 3rd Offset is all about identifying and prioritizing new technologies and capabilities, adopting them early, and incorporating them into new operational and organizational constructs that utilize them to maximum effectiveness in defeating the anti-access and area denial challenges of modern potential adversaries. It’s essential that we apply these concepts with respect to assuring the space-based capabilities on which so much of our military depends, and improving the level of space-based support our Joint Force has come to rely and depend upon.
So closer partnerships with industry and allies will be a big part of our mission assurance and mission support efforts at DoD. Your futures and our future in space are as intertwined and interdependent as our orbits. That gives all of us and all of the people we support – whether they be the customers you serve or the people our militaries defend – a vested interest in ensuring that potential adversaries conclude there is no advantage to be gained by attempting attacks in space and that they choose peaceful means to resolve their political differences on earth.
In closing, let me thank you for the opportunity to speak here this evening, and thank the entire commercial satellite industry for your many contributions to our nation’s security.