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# 									The Space Force’s Critical Role in National Security							

FPC Briefing

Lt. Gen. David N. Miller Jr., Commander of Space Operations Command

Thursday, May 9, 2024, 11:00 a.m. ET

New York City

May 9, 2024

## 								Summary							

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The U.S. Space Force turns ‘5’ this year.  Lt. Gen Miller discusses the Space Force’s critical role in national security, its function in providing and protecting capabilities used every day by the world’s population, and how space is becoming an area of increasing strategic competition.
   

**NEW YORK FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, 799 UNITED NATIONS PLAZA, 10TH FLOOR**

**MODERATOR:** Welcome to the New York Foreign Press Center.  Thank you for being here today.  We’re here for our briefing with General David Miller, Commander of Space Operations, to discuss the Space Force’s critical role in national security.  My name is Melissa Waheibi; I’ll be your moderator today.  This briefing is on the record and being recorded.  Transcript will be available on our website at fpc.state.gov later today.  And as we begin, we ask that your Zoom profile reflects your name and your media outlet.  General Miller will offer opening remarks, and then we’ll have a period of Q&A which I will moderate.

At this time, sir, the floor is yours.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Thank you.  Thanks to all the folks who are here and online on Zoom.  Appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.  As the team mentioned here and as you probably saw in advanced notes, I’m the Commander of Space Operations Command in the United States Space Force.  We had an opportunity to come to New York for some recruiting events; had an opportunity to swear five guardians into the Space Force this morning in Times Square – that was great – and I’ll finish the day today at a high school where we’ll get a chance to talk to some other folks who are considering either serving as a military or civilian.

Our service is by far the youngest of our military services.  We’re four years old, approaching five here in December.  We oftentimes – because particularly as we rolled out this service, everything has the word “space” in it or “command” or “force.”  So it’s a lot of sometimes confusion about what – who we are and what our difference is between maybe U.S. Space Command, which is the combatant command, and United States Space Force, which is the military service.  So I came today to talk to you a little bit about that – about the origins of the service, maybe give you an opportunity for your questions, obviously, as most important right now, but just a little bit of backstory.

Our service was established in 2019.  It was in direct response to some activity and trends that we saw in the domain that were concerning.  If you look at the logic and arguments used in Congress, either on Capitol Hill or from the Department of Defense, we had seen some things occurring or trends in the domain that led us to believe that the space capability that resided principally in the Air Force at the time – and this was in 2019 – that the military services and the nation would be better served by setting up an independent Space Force, and that was because of a few things.

We had some trends of adversaries developing specifically counterspace technologies designed to deny or defeat the advantage that the United States military has garnered from space in the past, and that’s an ability to see over the horizon, shoot over the horizon, move and communicate.  We rely on space in almost every military formation we have.  Carrier strike group through infantry brigade through marine expeditionary unit, all of them were built and have some level of dependence on integrating space into their formation.  So we were concerned because increasingly adversaries were building capability to deny that space capability to those – the joint force.

The second piece was, as we watched, adversaries saw how the United States prepares for and conducts operations, how we garner quite a bit of advantage in precision, range, lethality, coordination of forces, and began building their own space capabilities to find, fix, and potentially target United States military forces.

So in 2019, a lot of quick debate, but we had been studying this for 30 years prior to that.  When I was a captain in 1998, I met – at the time he was the former secretary of defense – Don Rumsfeld, who was leading a study on standing up an independent space corps in the United States Air Force at the time.  So this was something that was long studied.  But in 2019 it was quick because the previous administration, there was a quick discussion in some sense relative to the standup of the Air Force, which was six years of legislation before the Air Force was stood up.

So because it was so rapid, we recognize that maybe we haven’t gotten the word out, talked enough about what Space Force does for the nation, what we do for allies and partners, and how we are integrated into your daily lives whether you are aware of it or not.  The most visible manifestation of that is in our Global Positioning System and the position, navigation, and timing signal that that Global Positioning System, which is operated by one of my units – 2nd Space Operations Squadron – and provided by the Department of Defense.  I Ubered last night to a restaurant.  If you don’t have that PNT signal, you won’t know where your car is, where it’s going, and when it’s going.  Similarly, banking, gas pumps, international trade – the encoding signals, signatures for secure communications, all are dependent on that timing signal from GPS.  We often – that’s the easiest manifestation for people, not to mention satellite communications, surveillance and reconnaissance, your weather that you get and you see on TV.  Those things all come from space capabilities that the United States military provides.

So, again, we organized the service in 2019, stood it up in December of that year, and right now we have an opportunity to be here in New York, and I wanted to take – seize the moment to maybe talk to some partners who we don’t usually get to, to give them a chance to hear a little bit about our service.  So I’ll stop talking for now, but I appreciate folks who are here today and I look forward to any questions you have.

**MODERATOR:**Great.  Thank you, sir.  Yeah, at this time – this is the Q&A portion of the event.  For those in the room, just indicate you have a question and I’ll call on you.  State your name and organization.  For those online, same practice, only raise your virtual hand.  And if you have a question to offer in the chat, I can read that on your behalf.  When you’re called on, again, state your name and organization.  So any questions?

**LTGEN MILLER:**Yeah, please.

**MODERATOR:**Yeah.  Go ahead.

**QUESTION:**  Logan Church, Television New Zealand.  I have two questions.

**MODERATOR:**Yeah, certainly.

**QUESTION:**  I wonder if you could perhaps describe what’s happening now in terms of space.  You guys see obviously a lot of – it’s a changing world since 2019.  So perhaps describe what’s happening now and where you see things – where you see this arena, I guess, going forward.  And then secondly, with that in mind, what that means for United States allies such as New Zealand.  We are a spacefaring nation as well, obviously a lot smaller.  So, yes, those two questions, please.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  That’s a great question.  Thanks, Logan.  I guess to summarize it with two key themes that we’re seeing that are continuing apace.  The domain is becoming increasingly congested.  Many, many more active satellites or spacecraft on orbit than there were even five years ago, certainly way more than there were 10 or 20 years ago.  And it’s also becoming increasingly contested, that competitors and potential adversaries continue apace at developing counter-space systems and fielding them that are of concern to the United States military and the Department of Defense.

An example of the latter first.  In November of 2021, you may recall the Russian Federation launched a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon that destroyed one of their satellites, created about 1,500 pieces of debris, many of which are still on orbit, many of which provide a risk to the International Space Station where their cosmonauts are, similarly to other spacecraft that are at orbits at that altitude or below.  Obviously that concerns us.  The amount of trackable debris has increased coincidentally, obviously, with that, and some of that debris is very small and it’s harder to track than we have had in the past.  So we get concerned about sustainability of the domain, right?

Simultaneously we’re concerned about the security implications of nations fielding destructive anti-satellite capabilities, which is why you saw a couple of years ago our Vice President lead with a declaration that the U.S. would no longer support or do those activities of destructive anti-satellite tests.  And you saw a bunch of nations jump on board with that.  Not everybody has.  So it’s increasingly contested and that’s why you have a military service that’s focused on this now.

From a congested standpoint, there’s challenges there but there’s also a lot of opportunities.  Many commercial vendors have begun to field proliferated constellations that offer a level of resilience, coverage, and capability and capacity that is remarkable compared to where we might have thought 10 or 15 years ago.  It’s not just in on-orbit operations for communications, let’s say, like Starlink.  You may have heard of that.  It’s also in the launch enterprise where there’s more vendors providing more options for launch.  That has exploded in both technology opportunities.  We’ve also seen it, though, in some of the missions that we have done in the past.  So where in the past, maybe 10 years ago, the primary and almost exclusive provider of spacecraft positioning data was the United States military, you see commercial vendors now getting into that space and providing radars or optical tracking of debris or objects on orbit.

So I think that that trend of both contested, which is – certainly has a level of being disconcerting to us –I wouldn’t – none of that I would say was a surprise to us.  We predicted it.  That’s why we stood up a service.  That hasn’t changed.  But certainly also congested.  And like most things, there’s both challenges and opportunities in each of those.

We continue – and I’ll re-emphasize this again and again today.  While we are certainly the newest branch of the United States military, you’ll hear a consistent theme from us:  We are not looking for or do we seek any conflict in, through, or from the space domain.  We view that the opportunities – it is the ultimate global commons, as we call it.  The civil, commercial, and just general benefit that the American people, but our allies and partners throughout the world, get is incredible from operations in the domain.  We want to keep that sustainable.  Our job is to deter it – conflict – and not seek it out, but it’s also our job to be ready for it, and that’s, I think, the main purpose of why you see five years ago – well, not yet five years, but in December five years ago the United States stood up a separate service focused on this.

Does that answer your question?  Thank you.

**MODERATOR:**  Great, thank you.

Alan?

**QUESTION:**  Alan Bulkaty news agency RIA Novosti.  Would you uncover, please, your cooperation with the Russian colleagues in this domain, if there is any cooperation at this point?

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Sure.  I think so the – in this case maybe the U.S. Government as opposed to just the United States Space Force, but I can give you a couple of examples.  So obviously we continue in the civil space arena to cooperate with the Russian Federation on –   NASA continues to work with the Russian Federation on the International Space Station, launch and recovery of astronauts, coordination.  I think that that continues with Roscosmos, and I think that if you could speak to NASA specifically, but I think that they see that that’s an important relationship and they want to sustain it, keep going.

Our partnership from the military perspective with the Russians may be not as continuous or formal per se, but that doesn’t mean that there’s any – perfect example:  In advance of that November destructive anti-satellite test, we did send a delegation to talk with our Russian partners about the potential dangers of that, why we thought it was irresponsible, and specific examples of what we thought would happen – which, frankly, turned out to be very accurate – of what we thought would happen.  That did not deter them from doing that.

We have also at times engaged – and you may recall this – in 2019 there was reporting about what are now several on-orbit anti-satellite demonstrations that the Russians did.  In 2019, our first chief of space operations, General Raymond, remarked about this and we sought to engage on this to demonstrate what – how it was irresponsible to launch anti-satellite weapons in the vicinity of U.S. national security assets and then do tests of anti-satellite technologies in and around those.

What we’ve tried to do since then – and you saw this in late ’21 – was the Secretary of Defense has released tenets of responsible behavior that we advocate for.  They’re things that you would anticipate us saying, and if you looked at other domains, they are consistent: do not create long-lived debris on orbit; avoid harmful interference; conduct yourself with due regard of other spacecraft; notifications if you have an emergency or problem so that we can all work together to try to resolve that problem; operating at safe distances and in a manner that’s not provocative – things that you might anticipate the Navy would do.

We have actually, frankly, between our allies and many partners gotten, I think, a good result and reception from that.  We continue to hope and seek out opportunities for competitors to try to get them to align to those as well.  While it may not be something that I could say – and it’s really for the State Department – something that’ll lead to a treaty and tomorrow, declaratory policies and behaviors are reinforcing of stability.  We believe in that.  That’s why you’ve seen us take those actions ourselves.

Okay.  Does that answer your question?  Okay.

**MODERATOR:**  Great, thank you.  We’ll move to a question on Zoom.  Ralph Gore with Free Eurasia Media, go ahead and unmute yourself and ask your question.

**QUESTION:**  Thank you so much.  Ralph Gore from Free Eurasia Media.  General Miller, thank you so much for this opportunity.  With the U.S. Space Force celebrating its fifth anniversary later this year, there’s undoubtedly a keen focus on recruitment efforts to bolster its ranks given its critical role in national security.  Could you please elaborate on Space Force’s current recruitment targets for 2024?

And also, furthermore, I’m curious about the recent decision to raise maximum enlistment age to 42 within the Department of Air Force.  This question is probably personal capacity – as someone who is 43, I’m curious about the potential for individuals like myself to contribute to Air Force mission.  Are there any options for age waiver for individual who is 43 who is interested?  And whom at senior level to approach to seek age waiver if a recruiter is not interested?  Thank you so much for this – answering this question.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  That’s fine.  That’s great, Ralph.  That’s like nine questions.  Well, let me try to cover – so the recruiting piece – so in terms of numbers – and we can certainly get you exact numbers.  I’ll give you the approximate numbers, Ralph, of where we are for 2024.  Military right now for the Space Force in 2024 – I think we’re just over 9,400 is what our authorized end strength is for the United States Space Force military personnel.  That’s our people in uniform.  Our civilian component is over 8,000 – not quite 8,500, as I recall – but we’ll get you specific numbers.  So you add those two together, you’re 17,500 personnel, by far the smallest military service, Ralph.  And that was, frankly, part of what we talked about as we stood up the service, that this was going to start with a very focused group of folks and then as needed would grow.

You’ll notice that the number I just gave you is about a thousand bigger than where we started four-plus years ago, and you say, well, why is that?  Well, it’s like I said in the opening, Ralph:  The demand for space power across the joint force and our coalition partners just keeps going like this, and as a result, we have not stopped any missions that we have started and had going on, and we are taking on new missions all the time.

A mission in 2024 that you’ll hear the Secretary and my boss, General Saltzman, talk about – the service chief – is ground moving target indicator capability in space.  That’s not something we had done in the Space Force previously.  That’s a new mission, right, Ralph, so that’s something that we have to take on.  That has to – because we’re not turning off any other missions – in fact, we’ve gained more new weather capabilities, new surveillance capabilities, and so on – we’ll grow to that.

In terms of our recruiting, we do not have a challenge on recruiting great people.  For – we’re going to open up for an opportunity for inter-service transfers, Ralph, which is folks from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and so on to transfer into the Space Force.  We’ll have another round of that.  Typically, Ralph, we are – we usually get dozens of applications for every seat that is open, and I don’t project with our size right now, because we’re – if anything, we’re on a graceful growth as missions come on as needed – I don’t anticipate a challenge, Ralph, meeting our recruiting goals at this point.  Like I said earlier, I swore in five folks this morning.  It was the highlight of my day.  Don’t get me wrong, I love you guys; it’s good to see you.  But the moms and aunties and brothers and sisters who are there, they make you smile.  Those folks were some of the most talented that we have.  America continues to give you the – give us the best in their sons and daughters.  So I have no concerns whatsoever.  In fact, I think our prospects are brighter than ever.

In terms of your specific situation, there’s always waivers in the United States military if you’re persistent.  As far as why the recruiting age increased in the department, that’s a great question.  I don’t have a specific answer to that.  We can certainly take that for action, for a look.  I guess what I would say is we’re on the hunt for great talent, and if that great talent is 10 or 20 years over what the mean age of the service member is, that’s just what it is.

In our service, I will point out to you – I’ve pointed out two different folks who are serving in the Space Force, Ralph.  One of them is our military folks who wear a uniform like me; another is our civilians.  So even if, let’s say, there’s not an opportunity for someone to join the military because of an age restriction or something like that, that doesn’t mean you can’t serve.  Half of our force, almost, is made up of impressive, impressive civilian teammates, and they are just as vital to our operational missions as the military teammates, and they work literally side by side with our military professionals.

It’s just there’s some things that are inherently military that we do – targeting functions and some other functions that we say, no, those are military functions because they have consequences in rule of law or in international law, and we have responsibility to the military chain of command to execute those.  Those are things that we tend to reserve.  But the space is wide open for our civilians, whether that’s in our forward disciplines – there’s only five, Ralph, that we have – space operations, which is mine; cyber operations; ISR – intelligence, surveillance, or reconnaissance; engineering; and acquisition.  That’s it.

My installations – in my command, the defenders at the gate, those are airmen.  The civil engineers who are working in my power plant keeping the mission systems going, those are airmen.  The people who work in personnel and administration, those are airmen.  But that’s the relationship we built, was to keep our Space Force team mission-focused, Ralph, and we’ll rely on our combat support and combat service support to be provided by the United States Air Force.  And in my command, half of my team is airmen.

So there’s about somewhere – depending on how you’re counting – between 13-5 and 15,000 people in Space Operations Command; half of that team is airmen.  So there’s plenty of opportunities to serve, Ralph.  I’m sure – depending on what you’re trying to do, there’s a good opportunity.  I don’t know if that’s, like, a made-up background sitting behind you, though; you’re not going to get that background in the Space Force, probably ever where you’re working.  (Laughter.)  But it looks beautiful.

**MODERATOR:**  All right.  We’ll come back in the room.  Karlijn.

**QUESTION:**  Yes.  Karlijn van Houwelignen, AD, Netherlands.  You mentioned the Space Force was set up because of concerns of the capabilities of adversaries.  And I wonder how that is now, five years later, and specifically also recalling some reports about nuclear space weapons developed by Russia recently.  And I have a second question.

You also mentioned that space capabilities are very important for the military in general.  So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what this means for the war in Ukraine, for example, if there is any space capability that, from the United States side, that plays a role there.

**LTGEN MILLER:**Yeah.  There’s a lot baked in there, I’m trying – probably do a shock group here to try to get as much of your question.  Also, I’ll start with the contested nature of the domain, which was the beginning of your questions there.

Yeah, it’s not changed since the concerns that were argued – and don’t take my word for it, go look it up – in the summer and spring of 2019 of why we needed a Space Force now at that time was primarily about the threat from competitors like Russia and China.  And a concern that if we don’t dedicate a military branch of professionals to do this, that we run the risk of distraction.  And that comes from having part-time workers do it versus full-time dedicated folks.  And I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense; I mean, it’s just when you’re in the Air Force, you’re in the Air Force.

The logic was if we have folks who dedicate the focus on this 24/7, Space Force will have new options they come up with, innovative approaches that may not lead to traditional outcomes that we’ve seen in the past.  And also, we begin to build a depth and competency in – mission sets that we just – because of the nature of the Air Force driving assignments that we didn’t have before.

My – as a – I’ll give you a perfect example.  I as a colonel was deployed to Iraq in response to the ISIS threat in 2015 after my O-6 command tour.  And I was doing military cooperation and support with the ministry of information forces that they had there – minister of interior forces, and some information capabilities that they had.  There is probably something that relates to space in there, but that was to fulfill an Air Force requirement.  And I think the benefit of having a service is you get to really focus on, hey, how do we use our people, particularly when, as I mentioned, we’re the smallest.  So that was part of the logic.

So to the point of contested, that’s not changed.  The threat has only increased in – I would say in scope and lethality, as you saw in November of 2021.  And then the most recent revelations that you saw – I think Dr. Plum spoke to it last week in testimony – about concern about nuclear weapon and the anti-satellite platform from the Russians.

Those specific questions – it’s best to refer to the National Security Council on those questions.  I’ll just say that the American people pay our military to prepare, be prepared for eventualities like that, and take a look at what’s the worst case and what’s the most likely, come up with a range of options and present those to our leaders, and we will and do.  That doesn’t mean that we pick one way to respond to those or that we tend towards conflict.  We try to deter it wherever possible.  So it’s not changed, but neither has our mission primarily, which is to deter conflict.

In terms of the latter part of your question, I look at it this way.  There is a lot of opportunity that’s come out of the establishment of the Space Force professionalization of military services.  You’ve seen between the UK, France, Germany, Australia – I can – Japan, Italy, we’re probably approaching a dozen nations that have either established their separate space force, re-missioned their air force, or established a separate command dedicated to – and that’s because I think they all recognize that those two trends I spoke to you about at the outset of being contested and being congested are not changing, and that the importance of space capabilities to the defense of their nations is so important.  They don’t want to part time it either, right?  They want to have dedicated folks who grow up in this business.

In terms of civil applications, like I said, GPS I think is the – it’s probably one of the most consequential innovations in the last 50 to 60 years that people understand least about, because they don’t see to day to day.  They’re in 12-hour orbits, 20,000 kilometers in the sky or an orbit, and they just don’t get a chance to touch it.  But it’s affecting their daily lives, every day.

One of the reasons we fight so hard for a message on deterrence, to find opportunities for cooperation, to partner with allies, to avoid miscalculation and to set tenets of responsible behavior is there’s no real winner in a fight where there’s destructive capability on orbit.  That’s – the prospects aren’t good for anybody for something like that.

So our focus has been – and I think will continue to be – promoting those strategies and operating concepts that are stabilizing, promote security, strengthening of our alliance and partnerships, and transparency where we can, and demonstrating through our actions – even if it’s going to be real – and it is going to be very difficult to get to any new form of treaty with anybody right now.  That’s just – that’s the reality, I think, of where we are.  That doesn’t mean that nations can’t take responsible – and I think you see that happening.  I think there’s more opportunities as NATO expands to see that, and I think in the commercial enterprise, because of new entrance into launch, intel, surveillance, or reconnaissance, or space domain awareness missions or comm missions from the commercial side, I think there’s more opportunity with these to partner than there are challenges ahead.  Does that make sense?  Good.

**MODERATOR:**  We’ll go back on Zoom to S.H. Song with Yonhap News.  Feel free to enable your mic and your video if you choose and ask your question.  You’re unmuted, but we can’t hear you.  Okay, we’ll come back.

We’ll go to the room.  Feel free to state name and ask question.

**QUESTION:**  Thanks for being here.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  For sure.

**QUESTION:**  And presenting your very interesting insights.  I was wondering if —

**MODERATOR:**  And can you state your name and organization?

**QUESTION:**  I’m sorry.  My name is Manik Mehta.  I’m syndicated, mainly in Asia.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Great.

**QUESTION:**  Now, I’m sure you have been following the space programs of India, and they just – a few months back, they were able to land a spacecraft on the southern side of the moon.  And now India has this interest in sharing technology, not just sharing but exchanging technology, which means that there will be a give and take.  How open are you on this score?  And my second question relates to any space activities you carry out in the South China Sea, that China’s building up all kinds of islands and what have you, including a base for developing space activities.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Yeah.  Well, on the former point, I think in terms of this – the cooperation relationship between militaries, between India and the United States military, that’s largely the Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Paparo’s team that does that.  Certainly the DOD has a role in that, and I think it would best for them, but we can certainly get you their information for specifics.  What I can speak to is my experience on this.

When I was in my last position as the director of operations at United States Space Command, we had an opportunity for the Indian military leadership to come out and exchange ideas, highlight areas they were interested, and then we talked to them about where we were headed.  I think the United States military with likeminded nations has always demonstrated a willingness to cooperate.  So in terms of what I think, my personal opinion is you’d see receptivity to offers like that, and I think there are good opportunities, particularly given some of the technologies that the Indians have demonstrated.  So I think that there is potential there, and my team can certainly pass you information for INDOPACOM in particular to see where Admiral Paparo and his team – and we have now in the Pacific a Space Force component headed by Brigadier General Mastalir, who works in PACOM day to day.  And we can certainly pass you that information in particular.

In terms of the East Asian littoral, South China Sea military space applications – probably much the same that you would see anywhere.  The pictures you’ve seen, even from commercial imagery, about the construction of those islands – those come from space.  They just happen to be maybe commercial; Maxar maybe or somebody provided that.  Our mission still is to support, finding indications and warning of potential crises.  That’s one of the things we do, and that’s one of the things we do in partnership, frankly, with the Intelligence Community.  So we’ll continue to do that.

The United States Navy or Air Force or Marines that are operating in the Pacific – in particular in and around the East Asian littoral – they need satellite communication, right, to communicate.  They don’t run lines between ships, particularly at ranges that are over 12 kilometers or over the horizon.  They use satellite communications to talk.  They use the GPS or PNT signal to encrypt their communications, to support if there was a need for military operations, weapons engagements, things like that.  So while our footprint on a particular – in a particular military formation may not be large, if at all, the capability we’re providing to them is still significant.

And like I said, there isn’t a significant military formation in the Department of Defense that we have that doesn’t have some connection or reliance on space capability.  It’s just too game-changing to not be able to see, shoot, move, and communicate over the horizon.  You’re just too limited.  So —

**QUESTION:**  You like that word, “game-changing.”

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Yeah.

**QUESTION:**  What do you understand by that?

**LTGEN MILLER:**  So if you relied on traditional – if you didn’t have space integrated into your military formation, your battalion, you’d be limited to what you can see.  That’s it.  Or what you can launch with an aircraft.  And your range would be coincidentally limited, right?  If you can look globally and see trends and activities far beyond any weapons range, and then simultaneously use that information to find and target threats that are coming at you, you’ve just out-won your adversary in any potential engagement.  If you wait to what you can see, they likely can target you, because they can see you, too.  Does that make sense?

So that’s why it’s game-changing for the United States military, and that’s why every military formation has space integrated into it.  That we – we are a global military.  We operate in the middle of the ocean, in the Arctic, in the Antarctic, and the only way to do that is with indications and warning of potential threats that are global, communications that allow them to speak anywhere in the world, and the ability to get there and maintain those communication links.  And that all comes from space.

**QUESTION:**  Thank you.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Yeah, you bet.

**MODERATOR:**  Thank you.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Thank you for your question.

**MODERATOR:**  We have time for about one more question.  We did receive a couple in the chat.  I’ll address one regarding NATO.  This is from Stefanie Bolzen of German Welt:  “Thank you for doing this briefing.  Can you please talk about areas of cooperation with NATO, and if space will be a topic at the Washington Summit?”

**LTGEN MILLER:**  The Washington Summit?  I’m going to have to refer you to the Department of Defense on the Washington Summit.  I do not know.  I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be either indirectly a topic or something, just given so much activity, Stefanie.  But we can certainly get the department to refer you to that, and you guys may know actually – from the State Department – moreso than I do.  There’s so much going on in space.

Areas for cooperation, sure.  We just had a NATO space symposium – I think it was in France, in Toulouse – last week, as I recall.  We just in the last several months conducted some exercises with allies and partners, Stefanie.  In April there was a meeting of 18 space chiefs with my boss, General Chance Saltzman, and they talked about areas for partnership on everything from space domain awareness, to surveillance and warning, to you name it; we covered the gamut of opportunities.  And we are – actually I was supposed to have the call last week – we got sidetracked – but with our UK partners I have an opportunity to chat with some of the leaders there, in particular as an example on areas where we can strengthen the partnership.

I guess I’ll summarize it to say there isn’t a week or month that goes by that we are not strengthening or fortifying the partnership with NATO.  We are to the point now where you will see – it was just announced two weeks ago.  My deputy now Brigadier General Devin Pepper is going to be the deputy chief of staff at NATO Allied Command Transformation.  That’s the first time we’ve had a Space Force general officer on the NATO staff in Virginia.  General Lavigne, who’s the commander there, I think he spent time at U.S. Space Command – has been a part of that.

I think , Stefanie, that we have normalized this almost to the point where it’s indistinguishable from the relationships that you see in the other domains.  The only thing left to figure out is while day to day in the Alliance structure in NATO you’ll have an Allied commander for land, air, and maritime, we do not have that yet for space.  There’s a Center of Excellence for space, where we’re working through operating concepts.  But as I mentioned, many nations are in the process of either standing up and dedicating military services or commands to doing so.  And I think that’ll be something that’ll be discussed.  And when is the right time to do that?

So I think the prospects are really good, Stefanie.  I think cooperation is about what you’d expect for establishment of a military service.  And as other nations – I know Germany, as an example – just in the last couple of years General Traut has stood up at a commander there, space command.  We’re continuing to see other – because of those two trends I started with, domain being increasingly contested and congested, we’re continuing to see our NATO partners realize that we’ve got to build skilled professionals with the competency and capability to operate as a part of a combined team.  And I don’t anticipate that that’s going to change.  If anything, you’re just going to see it speed up.

**MODERATOR:**  All right.  This is your final question.  So you addressed activity in the Pacific.  This is from Mark Magnier from the South China Morning Post: “If possible, would love some additional thoughts on how you see China’s capability and how that might play out with the Taiwan conflict, and same for Pyongyang vis-à-vis North Korea.  Thank you.”

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Yeah, I think if you look – so I’m going to point you to a couple of products.  And we’re going to have some leave-behinds.  I think we’ll send links to folks for you.  But I’ll give you a couple references, and then I’ll get to your question.

So the – every year the United States military – actually the Defense Intelligence Agency I think through the DOD – puts out a military power report that assesses the Chinese capability in every branch or domain.  And I think if – it’s year to year, but you can watch it.  I think you’ll see that continued growth and integration of space into their military forces – if anything they are either beating or meeting their projections from five or ten years ago.  They’ve got hundreds – over 450 ISR satellites on orbit right now, dedicated to surveillance warning targeting.  They’ve had over 60 launches last year, which is about their pace.  Their record pace I think the year before was about that much.  They continue to exercise electromagnetic warfare capabilities to disrupt satellite communications, PNT or GPS.  They have high-energy laser systems that are built to deny or disrupt surveillance and reconnaissance systems.  They are a very capable military force.

In terms of how it would apply in conflict, I would suggest you review their doctrine that’s also covered in that periodical that I mentioned to you.  They – space is a domain of warfare for them.  They reorganized their military in 2015 to create effectively a space force.  They continue to exercise every year at that integration, and I anticipate that they view as part of their informatized warfare concept space is something that’s essential to securing the high ground that they want to secure and also to dominating in adversaries’ information space.  So they’re a very capable adversary.  And we don’t want it to turn into conflict is what I would say to you.

So we continue to seek out – this is why I’m here talking about tenets of responsible behavior, emphasizing areas where we could cooperate.  The Department of Defense, in particular the chairman and the Secretary, have started to normalize again military cooperation and mil-to-mil discussions with the PLA.  I think that’s healthy and a good thing.  That’s a stabilizing force to prevent miscalculation.  I’m not going to go through scenarios and speculate.  That’d be better for Admiral Paparo and his team to go through.

Our job is to be ready.  That’s what the American people expect.  We don’t want a conflict, but it would be a mistake – frankly, a grave mistake – to assume that we’re not ready for that.  So I seek – and I think every military leader that I’ve run into will tell you the same thing – Mark, we want to partner where we can, cooperate at a minimum, and avoid the potential for crisis and conflict.  And if there’s any confusion about that, hopefully this is yet one more voice saying, no, that’s not what we’re about; we’re not looking for a fight here.  But our task is also to be ready.  We have a National Defense Strategy and a Secretary who’s directed a level of readiness that we are achieving.  And we hope that and plan for opportunities where we can seek to de-escalate any tensions and have normalized military relationships that can avoid miscalculation that lead to crises so —

**MODERATOR:**  Yeah.  Briefly.

**QUESTION:**  We talked about two main adversaries, Russia and China.  What’s the main focus for the Space Force?  Are you focused more on China, more on Russia?  How do you evaluate that?

**LTGEN MILLER:**  I think the best way to answer that – it’s a good last question – is the Secretary has said – Secretary of Defense – China is the pacing threat that we are concerned about.  Russia is a more acute threat, given the proximity and the conflict in the Ukraine right now.  We have to contend with both.

**MODERATOR:**  Great.  Thank you.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  You bet.

**MODERATOR:**  This concludes our briefing for today.  Thank you to General Miller for being here.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Thank you.

**MODERATOR:**  Thank you for all who participated, both online and in the room.  A transcript will be available later today.  Have a good afternoon.

**LTGEN MILLER:**  Thank you.  Appreciate it.

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