U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

i 

29–461 2019

[H.A.S.C. No. 115–83] 

SPACE WARFIGHTING READINESS: 

POLICIES, AUTHORITIES, AND 

CAPABILITIES 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MARCH 14, 2018 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York 

MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

TRENT KELLY, Mississippi 

MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin 

MATT GAETZ, Florida 

DON BACON, Nebraska 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

LIZ CHENEY, Wyoming 

JODY B. HICE, Georgia 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

CAROL SHEA–PORTER, New Hampshire 

JACKY ROSEN, Nevada 

A. DONALD MCEACHIN, Virginia 

SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California 

ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland 

STEPHANIE N. MURPHY, Florida 

RO KHANNA, California 

TOM O’HALLERAN, Arizona 

THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York 

JIMMY PANETTA, California 

JEN STEWART, Staff Director 

SARAH MINEIRO, Professional Staff Member 

LEONOR TOMERO, Counsel 

MICHAEL GANCIO, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Davis, Hon. Susan, a Representative from California, Committee on Armed 

Services ................................................................................................................. 2 

Thornberry, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac,’’ a Representative from Texas, Chairman, 

Committee on Armed Services ............................................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Harrison, Todd, Director of Aerospace Security Project, Center for Strategic 

and International Studies ................................................................................... 6 

Kehler, Gen C. Robert, USAF (Ret.), Former Commander, U.S. Strategic 

Command .............................................................................................................. 2 

Loverro, Doug, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, Department of Defense ................................................................................. 4 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Harrison, Todd .................................................................................................. 79 

Kehler, Gen C. Robert ...................................................................................... 46 

Loverro, Doug ................................................................................................... 58 

Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking Member, 

Committee on Armed Services ..................................................................... 44 

Thornberry, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac’’ ............................................................... 43 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Banks .......................................................................................................... 92 

Mr. Larsen ........................................................................................................ 91 

Mr. Rogers ......................................................................................................... 91 

Mr. Turner ........................................................................................................ 91 

(1) 

SPACE WARFIGHTING READINESS: POLICIES, 

AUTHORITIES, AND CAPABILITIES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 14, 2018. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac’’ 

Thornberry (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. 

Last month, when Secretary Mattis testified on the new National 

Defense Strategy, he said, quote, ‘‘Our competitive edge has eroded 

in every domain of warfare: air, land, sea, space, and cyber,’’ end 

quote. 

That statement has two relevant points to today’s hearing. First, 

space is a domain of warfare, not just an enabler. Second, we are 

falling behind where we should be when it comes to space. Today’s 

hearing will discuss how we catch up. 

As we refocus our defense efforts on strategic rivals, it is clear 

that they are putting significant effort into space. I believe the 

American people still do not fully realize how dependent our country is on space, not just for military and intelligence purposes, but 

in our everyday lives as well. That dependence creates a vulnerability, which, like in the other domains, we must count on the 

American military to protect. 

This committee is focused a lot on readiness and rebuilding our 

military. When it comes to space, there are a number of questions 

that need answers. For example, where should we be making our 

investments? Are we attracting and developing the right kind of 

space warfighters? Perhaps most crucially to me, are we putting 

the appropriate intellectual effort into space as a warfighting domain? We look forward to the insights that our witnesses today can 

give us. 

Finally, I would point out that this committee has been very active in trying to prepare the military and the Nation for the challenges of space. We have streamlined Air Force acquisition authorities, eliminated red tape, empowered a single accountable organization for space forces within the Air Force, and empowered the Deputy Secretary of Defense to oversee Air Force space reform efforts 

among other things. But we will not relax our efforts. This topic 

is just too important. 

I would yield to Mrs. Davis as the acting ranking member. 
2 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thornberry can be found in the 

Appendix on page 43.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CALIFORNIA, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Kehler, Mr. 

Loverro, and Mr. Harrison, we all welcome you, and we thank you 

for being here. We look forward to your insights on adapting 

space’s contested domain and how we can protect our assets and 

deter a war in space. 

I ask unanimous consent to submit Mr. Smith’s remarks for the 

record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the Appendix on page 44.] 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate each of you being here. We are 

joined by General Robert Kehler, former Commander, U.S. Strategic Command; Mr. Doug Loverro, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy; and Mr. Todd Harrison, Director 

of the Aerospace Security Project for the Center for Strategic and 

International Studies. Obviously, more complete bios are in the 

materials on each of these gentlemen. Without objection, each of 

your full written statements will be made part of the record. And 

we look forward to your comments as well as your answers to our 

questions. 

General Kehler, the floor is yours. 

STATEMENT OF GEN C. ROBERT KEHLER, USAF (RET.), 

FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND 

General KEHLER. Thank you, and good morning, Mr. Chairman, 

Representative Davis, distinguished members of the committee. I 

am honored to be here with you today to present my views on space 

warfighting readiness. I am especially pleased to be here with my 

two long-time colleagues, and I want to thank the members of the 

committee for your leadership on these important matters. As a reminder, Mr. Chairman, the views I express today are mine. I am 

not here representing the Department of Defense or Strategic Command or the United States Air Force. 

Mr. Chairman, the United States is perilously close to losing the 

significant advantages that come from being the world’s leading 

spacefaring Nation, and time is not on our side. Decades of dedicated investment in space have yielded important warfighting and 

intelligence collection benefits for the United States and our allies 

and partners. But our adversaries and our potential adversaries 

have noted these significant benefits and have moved aggressively 

to field forces that can challenge our space capabilities from the 

ground, through cyberspace, and in space. 

As always, deterrence is the preferred outcome, and our ability 

to deter a conflict that begins in or extends to space is based on 

our readiness to fight such a conflict. I believe classic deterrence 

theory applies to space. Adversaries will be deterred if they believe 

they cannot achieve their objectives, will suffer unacceptable consequences if they try, or both. This is not the first time the U.S. 
3 

has had to consider challenges to our space capabilities, but today’s 

problem is potentially far greater in impact. 

Given our dependence and that of our allies and partners on 

space, the loss of critical assets today could prove decisive to our 

ability to successfully prosecute a military campaign. As a result, 

the United States has to be prepared to plan and conduct complex 

operations in space that involve joint interagency and combined, or 

allied, capabilities and forces in the context of broader commercial, 

nongovernmental, and international actors and interests. Space operations must integrate seamlessly into multidomain operations. 

We should not be preparing to fight (and deter) an isolated ‘‘space 

war’’ as some headlines would suggest. Space is an integral component of our warfighting structure, and challenges to our space capabilities must be addressed within the context of that structure. 

As you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, there is a lot of work underway to address the shortfalls, much of it stimulated by your interest and that of Chairman Rogers and his subcommittee. So let me 

take just a moment to highlight a few areas that I believe deserve 

special attention. 

First, national leadership has to align on a comprehensive plan 

of action as well as the ends, ways, and means to implement such 

an action plan. The national security space enterprise exists within 

the overall national space enterprise, and its success is linked to 

the viability and vitality of that enterprise. The current National 

Security Strategy recognizes that unimpeded access to and use of 

space is a vital national interest and notes that the United States 

will respond to threats to our vital national interests in space ‘‘at 

a time, place, manner, and domain of our choosing.’’ To effectively 

deal with a conflict that begins or extends into space, this general 

policy has to be implemented in a manner that is helpful to commanders and operational planning and execution. 

Second, given the multiplicity of actors involved in today’s military operations, including space, it is important to clarify the relationships and responsibilities among the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, other U.S. Government space operators, and other 

actors, like commercial space operators, to ensure that we have 

unity of effort. Regarding acquisition authorities, I think it is important to align authorities with service responsibilities and delegate those authorities to the lowest feasible level. 

Third, countering an adversary’s efforts to deny our space capabilities begins with an operational concept, or CONOPS [concept of 

operations]. Bringing the ongoing space CONOPS work to conclusion and updating joint force CONOPS to account for degraded or 

denied space capabilities are complementary and high-priority activities. 

Next, in my view, today’s joint warfighting structure is both appropriate and adequate to prepare for and fight a space-related 

conflict. The commander of U.S. Strategic Command has the necessary responsibility and authority to organize his command for warfighting effectiveness, and, by the way, those changes are underway, to develop plans to conduct exercises to establish relationships 

over which he doesn’t have command authorities, and, basically, to 

do the things necessary to make sure that we are prepared. This 

is the same process we use for the other domains and the other 
4 

commands, and if we use that same process, that is going to help 

us ensure integration of space with other efforts. 

Finally, space and other forces have to be equipped and trained 

to fulfill their mission responsibilities in the face of determined adversary action against space assets. Capability architectures, not 

just space architectures, but capability architectures have to become more resilient and defendable, and all forces have to be prepared and equipped to operate in an environment that assumes 

space assets will be degraded. Rapid acquisition, aggressively leveraging commercial capabilities, better integration with allies and coalition partners, and realistic training all play a role in addressing 

these issues. 

Mr. Chairman, you asked for my perspective on the current readiness of U.S. forces to succeed and successfully operate in a conflict 

that begins in or extends to the space domain. In summary, we are 

not yet where we need to be, but I am encouraged by the focus, 

commitment, and sense of urgency I see from all parties. Fortunately, we are not starting from scratch. The young men and 

women that make up our space forces and their leaders provide the 

solid foundation we need to meet the challenge. 

Following Desert Storm, the United States Air Force and others 

made great progress in bringing space support to national leaders 

and the warfighters. Now it is time to shift from a mindset that 

presumes space superiority to a mindset prepared to gain and 

maintain space superiority as a first condition of providing that 

support. From acquisition to operational execution, the U.S. needs 

to field a force that is ready for space conflict. 

Thanks again for inviting me, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of General Kehler can be found in the 

Appendix on page 46.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Loverro. 

STATEMENT OF DOUG LOVERRO, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR SPACE POLICY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Mr. LOVERRO. Chairman Thornberry, Mrs. Davis, members of the 

subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today to join General Kehler 

and Mr. Harrison to talk to you about an issue that is critical for 

the Department of Defense [DOD] and for our Nation and, as you 

have already said, DOD space warfighting readiness. 

Space is vital to our national security. It underpins DOD capabilities worldwide at every level, from the engagement in humanitarian assistance, to conventional conflict, and up to and including 

nuclear war. As importantly, space provides a lifeblood to U.S. economic vitality empowering the lives of our citizens worldwide, and 

it increasingly represents one of those rare industrial sectors in 

which the U.S. continues to hold and expand its unqualified advantage. 

In all three space sectors, national security, civil, and commercial, the U.S. leads the world. Let’s make no mistake about that. 

But while our leadership in both civil and commercial space remain 

secure, our leadership and our capabilities in national security sec-
5 

tor are being actively and aggressively challenged just as General 

Kehler has stated. 

Our adversaries know that the U.S. military relies on space to 

empower its operations and to wield an overwhelming military advantage, and they don’t like it. That understanding was succinctly 

stated by Chinese strategist Wang Hucheng two decades ago, when 

he wrote that ‘‘for countries that can never win a war with the 

United States by using the methods of tanks and planes, attacking 

U.S. space system may be an irresistible and most tempting 

choice.’’ His observation was not just idle speculation. It became 

the basis for Chinese and Russian strategy, which they have been 

working on ever since, and which they will soon bring to fruition. 

Understanding all this, the question posed by the hearing today, 

are U.S. space warfighting forces ready, becomes particularly pertinent to understand. Unfortunately, my answer is not that different 

from General Kehler’s answer. No, we are not ready. Or more properly, I don’t believe we are on the firm path to be ready. Before we 

discuss why, let me make two things emphatically clear. First and 

most critically, this is absolutely not an indictment of the incredible 

members of our military armed services and intelligence community charged with this responsibility. They stand ready to maintain 

U.S. space capabilities in every way humanly possible, given the 

tools at their disposal. It is the tools that are not up to the task. 

Second, no adversary should mistake that statement as an invitation to attack. The fact is that U.S. space forces are robust. And 

faced with any attack that could be mounted today, I am fully confident they will continue to provide the U.S. with the warfighting 

edge to assure an adversary’s defeat. But the harsh reality is that 

our current ability to withstand an adversary attack is based not 

on our warfighting readiness but, rather, their lack of a fully developed and operationalized threat. If that threat did exist, then I feel 

the answer would be quite different. 

In your invitation to appear here today, you cited several elements that must be assessed to gauge our warfighting readiness. 

Those elements included policies, current and future capabilities, 

allied and commercial integration, and our organizational structure. In my written statement, I have addressed each one, and I 

would ask that those all be included in the record. 

Finally, before I close, let me add two more thoughts. First, to 

echo General Hyten and General Kehler have stated over and over 

again, deterrence and war do not occur in isolated domains, rather 

it is at the sum of our capabilities and actions across all domains 

that leads to deterrence during peace and victory during war. But 

the role that space plays in this equation is paramount, because 

losing space degrades not only our space capability, but degrades 

our capability in the three other terrestrial domains as well. Assuring space forces survive assures the ability of those terrestrial 

forces to succeed, and that leads to the deterrence we seek. 

Simultaneously, we must accept that no capable adversary will 

hesitate to exercise their sovereign ambition to eliminate the U.S. 

space advantage. Regardless of how ready our space forces are, 

that readiness will not deter a determined attack. Therefore, we 

must make certain that our space forces can withstand such an onslaught. 
6 

Second, while the question of space warfighting readiness is 

made up of many elements, I want to elevate one of them above 

all others. That is, the human capital element, or, more specifically, 

the people. In my testimony, I have pointed to several areas where 

we need to reassess our plans, our budget, and our strategy. And 

I know that if we want to, we can reshape those plans and our 

budget and close the short-term readiness gap. 

But in the long term, we must face the fact that to remain ahead 

over the next half century, we are going to need to grow the kind 

of space leaders that can think doctrinally, technically, and operationally for space in the same way we grew those leaders in the 

1930s and 1940s for air. We could have not done it for air from 

within the constraints of the pre-World War II Army personnel system. Likewise, we would not be able to do it for space from within 

the constraints of our first pre-war Air Force personnel system. 

In 1937, General Frank Andrews, for whom Andrews Air Force 

base is named, wrote, ‘‘I don’t believe any balanced plan to provide 

the Nation with an adequate, effective Air Force can be obtained 

without providing an organization individual to the needs of such 

an Air Force.’’ The creation of the United States Air Force propelled changes in air power that moved our Air Force from the 

equal of its contemporary counterparts to a modern force that is, 

hands down, the best in the world. 

The same will be true for space. If we are to assure U.S. space 

warfighting readiness far into the future against the rising threats 

we see today and those that we will face tomorrow, we must establish, either within or outside the Air Force, an organization individual to those space needs. 

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Loverro can be found in the Appendix on page 58.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Harrison. 

STATEMENT OF TODD HARRISON, DIRECTOR OF AEROSPACE 

SECURITY PROJECT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

Mr. HARRISON. Chairman Thornberry, Representative Davis, and 

members of the committee, I want to begin by thanking you for the 

opportunity to testify today on this important and timely topic. I 

also want to thank my CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies] colleagues who have contributed to our work in this 

area, especially Zack Cooper, Kaitlyn Johnson, and Thomas Roberts. While the thoughts I am sharing today draw from the work 

our team has done, the opinions I express are not intended to represent those of my colleagues or CSIS. 

The United States is critically dependent on space across the full 

spectrum of conflict from counterterrorism operations to high-end 

combat against a near-peer adversary. This dependence on space 

creates a vulnerability because our space systems are not protected 

across the full spectrum of threats. Conflict that begins or extends 

into space, particularly if it becomes kinetic, will not end well for 

anyone. Our primary focus should therefore be on deterring conflict 

in space, and I believe there are three main areas where we can 
7 

do more to improve our deterrence posture and the readiness of our 

space forces. 

First, we need a clearer understanding and articulation of the 

thresholds for escalation in space, especially at the lower end of the 

spectrum of conflict. Ambiguous escalation thresholds can invite 

grey zone aggression in space as we are seeing occur in other domains today. Adversaries are probing at the seams and finding 

ways to advance their own ambitions without triggering direct, 

overt conflict with the United States. What is different about the 

space domain is that we have little history to draw upon or widely 

accepted norms of conduct to serve as reference points. It is, therefore, in our interest to work with international and commercial 

partners to establish sensible norms of conduct and to abide by 

them. 

Another complicating factor is that adversaries can use methods 

of attack against our space systems that are difficult to detect and 

attribute and may have reversible effects, such as jamming, lasing, 

and cyberattacks. It is nearly impossible to deter an attack if you 

cannot attribute the source of the attack, or know with confidence 

that the effects being experienced are, in fact, malicious. We cannot 

establish clear and credible thresholds without the ability to detect 

and attribute threats to our space systems in a timely manner. 

A second area where we should be focusing more effort is the development of innovative space capabilities. We are in the midst of 

a renaissance in commercial space, but it is difficult for the military to stay attuned to these advances if acquisition officers are rotating into space programs with little, if any, prior space experience. One potential remedy is for the Air Force to create a dedicated cadre of space acquisition professionals, both civilian and uniformed military, that are managed separately from the rest of the 

Air Force acquisition workforce. This would allow for more specific 

training, a deeper level of technical knowledge, and more relevant 

career experiences. 

The slow pace of the budgeting process is also a major roadblock 

to improving capabilities. Under the normal budget process, it 

takes about 2 years to move from having an idea to having funding 

to pursue that idea. Given the pace of innovation, especially in software and electronics, that is simply too long. One potential solution 

is to create something like a working capital fund for space innovation with greater flexibility and authorities. This would be particularly helpful for smaller prototyping and rapid response programs. 

A third and final area I believe needs more attention is the problem of communicating our thresholds and capabilities. While certain aspects of our national security space systems must remain secret to be effective, too often the U.S. military and intelligence community default to over-classification. Secrecy invites suspicion 

among our allies and partners and does little to deter our adversaries. The over-classification of information inhibits our ability to 

work with international partners and commercial firms, both of 

which can play an important role in improving the resilience of our 

space systems. And just as important, over-classification is effectively an overhead tax on all our space activities, adding complexity and time to everything we do. 
8 

Another way to improve the communication of thresholds is to be 

more explicit with commercial space operators about how attacks 

on their systems will be treated. Without such clarity, commercial 

space operators may not be willing to accept the risk of doing business with the government in the event of a crisis. One approach to 

consider is an indemnification program for commercial satellite operators that will cover losses incurred due to a conflict in exchange 

for commitment by these firms to prioritize U.S. Government customers in a crisis. 

In conclusion, much remains to be done to improve the readiness 

of our national security space forces for the wide range of threats 

we face today. I commend the committee for focusing attention on 

these issues and holding the Department of Defense accountable 

for strengthening our deterrence posture in space. 

I look forward to answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Harrison can be found in the Appendix on page 79.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you all. 

Mr. Loverro’s statement really got my attention where he says 

not only are we not ready, we are not on the path to be ready. Now, 

this committee deals with lots of issues that we are not going to 

solve all of a sudden. But I think a lot of times, the question for 

us is are we on the right path? Are we getting there? Now, we may 

have differences sometimes about the sense of urgency, how quickly 

and so forth. But if we are not on the path to be ready, I think 

that is a pretty significant thing that should require us to rethink 

our path. 

General Kehler, do you agree that we are not on the path to be 

ready? 

General KEHLER. I think it depends on what he means. I don’t 

quite understand—so I am not going to speculate. I will just say, 

I am not aware of—I don’t think I am aware, as an outsider now, 

of everything that is going on. What I am aware of, though, I think, 

is significant. And if we break this down and say are we doing the 

warfighting things that are necessary, plans, courses of action, establishing command relationships, all of those things, I believe 

those steps are underway. That is because we fight with combatant 

commanders, and we have a combatant commander focused on this. 

And so, A, I think the warfighting steps that are necessary are underway in order for us to have better plans and exercises and all 

the things that go with that. 

In terms of organizing, training, and equipping, I think that 

the—again, from what I have seen, I think that some significant 

decisions have been made in terms of architectures, et cetera. I am 

not clear that the acquisition has caught up with that, and I would 

question whether our acquisition processes are sufficient to do 

what needs to be done in the near term. 

Beyond that, I would not blanket say that we are not on the 

right pathway. But I respect Doug Loverro’s views on this, and I 

would be interested in hearing more about why he thinks that. I 

might agree with him. But as a blanket statement, I don’t. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Mr. Harrison, do you have an opinion if 

we are on a path to be appropriately ready for warfighting in 

space? 
9 

Mr. HARRISON. I would have to lean more towards Mr. Loverro 

on this one. I would say that—to what General Kehler said, in 

terms of operations and our operational readiness today, I think we 

are making good progress, as far as I can tell as an outside observer. I think when it comes to long-term readiness, though, which 

depends much more on the space architectures that we are building 

and how we are thinking about operations in the future and how 

we are moving out towards acquiring the capabilities that we need, 

I don’t think we are on the right track there. I think we have been 

stalled for several years now. For almost a decade, we have been 

stalled in transitioning to more resilient space architectures. And 

so in that sense, I think that we are not on a good path. We could 

do much better. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Mr. Loverro, do you want to add to your 

statement? 

Mr. LOVERRO. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would be pleased to. 

So, first of all, let me echo what both General Kehler and Mr. 

Harrison have said. We are working the warfighting plans. We are 

integrating space into those warfighting plans. That is active, ongoing. It began, really, under General Kehler, under his leadership, 

and has continued ever since. And, again, with the tools we have 

at hand, our warfighters and our war planners are doing the best 

they have. 

The problem we have is that, while we have an excellent vision 

for what we do need, and, in fact, General Hyten, who appeared 

before this committee earlier, last week, created what he called the 

space enterprise vision. And that vision is excellent and comprehensive. We can argue whether or not it is perfect, but it is a very 

good vision. 

But the plan that the Department of Defense submitted to this 

Congress, which is called the budget, doesn’t reflect that vision. It 

does not reflect the elements necessary to make that vision happen. 

And I will point to three specific areas that are missing. 

Number one, the space enterprise vision includes extensive cooperation with allied and commercial, as both General Kehler and 

Mr. Harrison have said. And yet, there is zero investment in that 

commitment in the budget. 

Second, everybody in space understands that in order to operate 

in space effectively and to learn how to operate in space, you are 

going to need to exercise and exercise extensively. That requires 

test assets. That requires test infrastructures. 

In my written testimony, I speak to the Red Flag exercises that 

occur at Nellis Air Force Base. The Air Force spends a lot of money 

practicing operational tactics and doctrine. We do not have an investment that represents that in space. 

And lastly, the things that are in the budget represent more old 

school space architectures that are fundamentally almost impossible to assure the new space architectures that would lead towards 

assurance, and they are 10 years late. We have a SATCOM [satellite communications] jamming threat today. Today, if we went to 

war in the Pacific, our PACOM [U.S. Pacific Command] commander 

would be hard-pressed to communicate, and yet we have nothing 

on the books until about 2027 to solve that problem for him. And 

by that time, the adversary will have gone through two or three 
10 

generations of his capability. That is what I mean by not being on 

the path. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. I think there is a lot to follow up on, and 

I know members will want to. 

Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all of 

you. In many ways, I think you just addressed part of that, Mr. 

Loverro, of, you know, where are the gaps. I mean, what is it specifically? And, Mr. Harrison, if you could, perhaps, pick up on that, 

whether it is the way the Pentagon is organized on some levels. We 

have talked about refining even what kind of unified or sub-command there is. What—are there authorities that are missing? Is it 

culture? Often it is. We know that there is a slow pace sometimes 

to move ahead in a risk-adverse culture. 

Can you help us define a little bit more of what is slowing that 

down and what, at this point, if, in fact, you are suggesting that 

we really haven’t planned that for the budget, what is it that specifically could be done with some of those authorities? 

Mr. HARRISON. Well, first, I think a lot of it is culture, that you 

have got a space community that many of the people grew up in 

an environment where space was considered to be more benign. I 

would argue it was never benign. There are always threats. The 

difference, though, was that we were more confident in our ability 

to deter threats in the past, and so we were willing to assume sanctuary. We had that posture for so long, I think we forgot that it 

was an assumption. And now, we are facing proliferation of 

threats, not just, you know, with adversaries like Russia and China 

that have pretty sophisticated space programs themselves, but all 

the way down to the level of nonstate actors that can use jamming 

equipment. They can acquire it. They can build it. They can operate it. And I think we have been very slow because of the culture 

they built up over time to respond to that. 

Part of it also is the acquisition culture. And, you know, I worked 

in this as a contractor, and I can tell you that, you know, we have 

built up institutions within the Air Force and the other services as 

well, to a lesser extent, though. We have built up institutions within our military, within our FFRDCs [federally funded research and 

development centers] that support the military, and even within 

our defense industry. And those institutions are centered around 

the types of capabilities that we needed in the past when deterrence was more assured. 

They are very slow to adjust. Those institutions are very slow to 

adjust to the threats that we are facing today. And so, I think that 

is where we need to light a fire under people. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Could you be just a little more specific about that? 

Mr. HARRISON. So, for example, we got into a mindset of building 

highly aggregated, very expensive satellites in small numbers. And 

it has proven incredibly difficult over the past decade to get the Air 

Force and the specific program offices to break out of that mind 

set, that maybe we cannot be building these exquisite Battlestar 

Galactica satellites where we aggregate as many things on them as 

possible. There were good reasons to do that in the past. Those reasons don’t exist anymore, and that is actually a vulnerability. We 

need to figure out how to build more resilient, more dispersed ar-
11 

chitectures. And I think people are just slow to make that transition because they grew up in an environment where it was all 

about aggregation. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Is there an alternative to that? Anybody want to— 

in that domain that you would suggest? 

General KEHLER. Well, there are. First of all, I agree with what 

is being said. I think we are where we are not because people have 

slapped their forehead and said we don’t know this, but for lots of 

reasons. Part of it has been priorities. When our priorities are elsewhere, and we see that not only in space, but we see that in the 

nuclear forces, we see that in other parts of the Department of Defense where our priorities have been elsewhere. I do think there 

are cultural issues. I do think there are other things that contribute to this. Resources and how many resources we have put to 

these issues, et cetera. 

I do think there is a cultural issue. I do think that we have the 

pieces in place to address those cultural issues. I think that we 

have been slow to try to address some of those. I would like to see 

us pull those pieces together, and I would like to see us give some 

of the current leadership more authority to move faster. And I 

think we must deal with our acquisition issues. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yeah. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wilson is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I very much—and 

thank each of you for being here. I very much appreciate the focus 

that the Department of Defense is putting forth on this space area 

of responsibility, and I am particularly grateful for the leadership 

of the domain of space by Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking 

Member Jim Cooper and their very visionary sponsorship of legislation in this field now has been adopted by President Donald 

Trump. So they are very effective individuals. 

As we continue to advance our own technologies, we have to understand and be prepared for the expansion of capabilities of our 

adversaries across all four orbits of outer space. And in particular, 

can you identify, the best you can, the capabilities and challenges 

that other nations have identified for their activities in space, beginning with General Kehler? 

General KEHLER. Sir, I think that—at least what I have observed, both in uniform and now subsequent to that, is that our 

near-peer competitors—if you single out Russia and China in particular, they have developed strategies that are specifically intended to diminish our ability to project power, diminish our ability 

to have global awareness, to fracture us from our allies. All of the 

things that we see them doing at the strategic level have a space 

component to them. And they have been aggressively pursuing capabilities that allow them to execute that kind of a strategy. It is 

part of what we would talk with the Chinese about—talk about the 

Chinese in terms of anti-access/area denial strategies. With the 

Russians, we talk about their interest to dominate in the near 

abroad. They have escalation strategies that they believe involve 

space, et cetera. 
12 

And so, I think we need to make sure we understand their strategic approach and how space fits into that in order to be able to 

counter it. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Congressman Wilson, let me add to what General 

Kehler said. And I agree exactly with what he said. Let me change 

the discussion less from the strategic side and more to the material 

side, if I might. And if you will permit me, I would like to just correct something that you mentioned, because it is a misconception 

almost everybody has. 

You talked about the four orbits that we have. Kepler defined an 

infinite number of orbits. We choose to use four. That is a foolish 

choice. Back in the 1960s, we launched satellites that today sit 

halfway between the Earth and the moon to observe nuclear tests 

on the face of the Earth. We knew how to do that in the 1960s. 

We understood that they were safer and more resilient that far 

away, and we could still conduct our mission. 

The adversary has seen how we operate in the four orbits that 

you talked about. They are ready to target every one of them, and 

they will target them in such a way that it will be very difficult 

for us to defend our capabilities. We are not constrained by gravity 

or physics to those placements. And yet culturally, we have a hard 

time moving away from them. And it is a very important strategic 

concept to understand. It is one of those blind spots that we don’t 

allow our people to think about, because being in geosynchronous 

orbit for communications is convenient. But the Army doesn’t 

march on the sides of ridge rather than in the valley because it is 

convenient. They march on the sides of ridge rather than the valley 

because it is more protected. 

For military capability, we may be convenient to be in geosynchronous orbit, but it is not militarily wise to be in geosynchronous 

orbit. And we can launch satellites in other orbits that are far 

harder for an adversary to attack, much more easily to attribute 

the attack once the attack occurs, and much more easy to go ahead 

and have a proliferated constellation of capability. 

Mr. HARRISON. Thank you for the great question. 

You know, I think we are seeing our adversaries do several 

things. So first of all, they see the great advantage space provides 

us. And in some cases, they are trying to copy us and build similar 

space systems for themselves. We also see many of our adversaries 

trying to counter us and to blunt our advantage in space by developing counterspace weapons. 

And, you know, to build on what Mr. Loverro said, we shouldn’t 

just think about counterspace weapons as kinetic ASAT [anti-satellite] weapons, missiles that go up, blow up a satellite, create a 

bunch of debris. Those are troubling, but we can attribute those 

very quickly. We know where they come from. And it is an overt 

act of war if someone does that. 

So I think we are better able to deter those types of threats and 

respond to them. What I am concerned about are the non-kinetic 

types of threats that we face in space. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, and I look forward to identifying who nonstate actors are, too. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Larsen. 
13 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I don’t think anyone on the panel would say our space policy is 

a disaster and we don’t know what we are doing, and so on. But 

it seems like we are at an inflection point a little bit where we need 

to move faster than we are to change. Sort of like the guy on The 

Ed Sullivan Show. He is spinning 17 plates at the same time trying 

to keep them all up and unable to prioritize, because you can’t. You 

have to keep all of them up instead of running around trying to do 

this. And I feel that we are kind of at that inflection point in space 

policy, like we are moving around from plate to plate to keep them 

all up in order to move to that next step. 

And so I don’t know how timely my question is, because I think 

one of the plates that is getting spun here has to do with the workforce side of it and what kind of workforce do we need in the future. But if we don’t have an idea of policy, then we don’t know 

what kind of workforce we need in space and what kind of warfighter we need for space. 

But having said that, maybe you can help answer some of those 

questions, like the kind of capabilities and qualifications that are 

needed now, and whether it is test pilots or space acquisition professionals or satellite communications specialists. Who do we need 

in our military and civilian side of the world and the Pentagon to 

implement whatever we are moving towards? 

General, have you given some thought to that over the last 4 

years and—3 years in retirement or—— 

General KEHLER. It might surprise you to know that, yes, I have. 

And especially the last couple of days, before coming here. 

And, by the way, all the way back to 2001, when then the Space 

Commission reported out that developing what they called the 

space cadre was going to be one of the critical things that needed 

to happen as we went forward. So if we were looking at the kind 

of space talent that we need in the future, I would say it is mixed. 

We are going to need people in uniforms who understand the basics 

and fundamentals of joint warfighting, while at the same time having expertise in the space domain and the technical requirements 

that go along with it. Think about submariners and submarines 

and the underwater environment here as a model for what we 

need. Those are warfighters, but they operate in a unique domain 

with unique platforms that can do things by themselves as well as 

operate with task forces, et cetera, et cetera. I think it is a good 

model for us to think about. 

We need civilians who work in the Department of Defense and 

come to work every day with the deeper technical expertise and 

savvy in order to be thinking about how do we bring commercial 

opportunity in as well as do government development. We need 

good researchers and development kind of people. We need that as 

an instrument as well. And we need an industry that can support 

what is needed in the future, and we need to leverage the talents 

and skills and entrepreneurial spirit that we find in the commercial world. 

So it is a blend of all those things, sir. I think that uniform people have a specific job to do here, and a skill set that is required 

that is a little different than those others, because they are the 

ones that actually have to go employ forces in combat. But it is a 
14 

broader set of questions, and we need a team that covers this skill 

set. By the way, cyberspace is a huge part of all of this, and so we 

need people that are very smart there as well. 

Mr. LARSEN. Mr. Loverro. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Yes. Thank you. 

So I want to echo again what General Kehler said and expand 

it. 

So what he described—when I listen to what he described, that 

describes a space-smart force for the Nation, a force made of civilians and military and the industrial base that supports it. Let me 

not talk about the industrial base as much as the folks that are inside the DOD. 

Space is a different kind of domain than air in the same way 

that undersea is a different domain than surface combatants. The 

Navy actually allows its three fundamental mission areas to grow 

separately. The career path for a submariner is different than the 

career path for a surface warrior is different than the career path 

for a naval aviator, as it should be. Those domains are different. 

They require different skills, different training, different experience. 

The same is true for space. Space is a different kind of domain 

than air. We don’t need to move it out of the Air Force in order 

to go ahead and create the space-smart civilian and military force 

that we need. But we need to allow it to grow differently than the 

way we would grow air officers, because those are different skill 

sets, different domain experiences, different technical requirements, and different operational and tactical problems. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yeah. Thank you. 

I will send a few more questions for the record. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rogers. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate you 

all being here. Talking about this is very important, raise awareness of the concerns that we have, the threats that we face. It is 

unfortunate, as Mr. Harrison talked about, that we have over-classification of a lot of this information. The American people need to 

know it, the Congress needs to know, which is why I am glad you 

are here, about these threats, our vulnerabilities, and how we have 

to get after this. 

I was also pleased to see on social media a few minutes ago that 

Secretary Wilson, Heather Wilson, is testifying before the House 

Appropriations Defense Subcommittee this morning. The first question that Chairman Granger gave her was about President Trump’s 

call for a space force. She politely said, ‘‘We look forward to the 

conversation.’’ 

But I do look forward to this conversation. We are in my wheelhouse right now, and I appreciate all of you-all. You are all very 

sharp people. 

General Hyten at STRATCOM [U.S. Strategic Command] and 

General Harris at PACOM have told us that in just a relatively 

short period of time, both China and Russia have become our peers, 

not our near peers, our peers in space and, moreover, are on a trajectory to surpass our capabilities soon, because they are putting 
15 

a larger percentage of their defense assets against this capability. 

And they have organizationally restructured. 

Do you share that opinion? Is that your view as well, that unless 

we do something dramatically different, that we are going to be 

surpassed by China and Russia in that domain? 

General KEHLER. Yes. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Loverro. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Sir, I would hate to ever disagree with General 

Hyten; he is a good friend and I have known him a long time. I 

disagree that they are our peers. I do agree with him that they are 

on a path to surpass us if we don’t go ahead and get our act together. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Harrison. 

Mr. HARRISON. I think that Russia and China, we have to view 

them as differently, because they have different histories, so they 

are coming from different trajectories. Russia was a great space 

superpower back in the day under the Soviets. They degraded significantly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But in recent years they 

have made a lot of efforts to regain a lot of their space capabilities, 

and they can still draw on that technical heritage that they had in 

the past, especially in terms of counterspace weapons that they had 

developed during the Cold War. They have that know-how. They 

have that expertise. It is not that difficult for them to field it again, 

and understand how to use it operationally. 

China is a different situation. They were not a great space power 

in the past. They are catching up. But I would agree with the sentiment that if they are not a peer today, they will be in the near 

future if both countries continue on the trajectory they are now. 

Mr. ROGERS. And will surpass us if we don’t make some changes. 

Mr. HARRISON. If we don’t make some changes, it would not be 

hard at all for them to surpass us. 

Mr. ROGERS. And would you agree that we have become heavily 

dependent on space to fight and win wars? 

Mr. HARRISON. Absolutely. As I said in my oral and written testimony, we are heavily dependent on space across the full spectrum 

of combat. It is not just, you know, nuclear war. It is not just highend combat. It is—even peacetime presence activities, we would not 

be able to operate as effectively as we do today without space. 

Mr. ROGERS. So, again, leading questions. So would you agree 

that not making dramatic changes to get after this is not an option? 

Mr. HARRISON. I would agree it is not an option. We desperately 

need to make a change in course, and where we are headed today. 

Mr. ROGERS. When you look at the Air Force budget in the last 

decade for space programs, would you say it represents, or reflects, 

that the Air Force views space as a priority? 

Mr. Harrison. 

Mr. HARRISON. I think it reflects that we have stalled in our 

thinking. We have gotten frozen with fear, and we have not been 

able to make up our mind as an Air Force and as a nation on how 

we are going to move out to address these threats. So I think it 

has been stalled. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Loverro, same question. Does their budget reflect space being a priority? 
16 

Mr. LOVERRO. I don’t think so, sir. The DOD budget this last 

year went up by 16 percent. The space budget went up by 7 percent. 

Mr. ROGERS. Same question, General Kehler. 

General KEHLER. So I was part of that. And what I would tell 

you is you have to be careful here, because the Air Force went 

through a time where almost every single space asset was recapitalized, from missile warning to GPS [Global Positioning System] 

to communications to the infrastructure that supports it. And so 

there was an investment time in the Air Force where that consumed a significant part of the Air Force’s budget. 

Since then, no. And, again, I think acquisition problems, saving 

the programs of record has been a real problem. And, by the way, 

I would agree, to just put a finer point on it, yes, if we don’t act, 

there will be consequences for us in the future with Russia and 

China. But I also agree that—or I do not agree that they are necessarily our peers right now. 

Mr. ROGERS. Okay. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Cooper. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I will not let you off as easily as Chairman Rogers did. I would 

like each of you to answer two questions. Number one, what did 

the President mean yesterday when he said space force? And, number two, what should he have meant in his remarks? 

General KEHLER. I notice my good colleagues were looking in my 

direction, sir. 

Well, I don’t know what he meant, sir, to be honest with you. I 

am not an insider, and so I don’t have the benefit of knowing sort 

of what conversations have been held with the Commander in 

Chief on this. So I really don’t know. 

What should he have meant is really another question about 

what we should do. And I would tell you that while I think steps 

are necessary beyond what has been taken to date, to me, this is 

a matter of degree. If you are going to do something dramatic, then 

I think there is more than one model you could follow. And I would 

be urging that you carefully consider those, because there are pros 

and cons to each one of those models. 

When I commanded Air Force Space Command before I commanded U.S. Strategic Command, I thought I was commanding 

most of the Nation’s military space forces. And so I think you have 

choices you can make here about what needs to happen next, and 

I would just urge you to be sensitive and thoughtful to what those 

are and what the pros and cons are of each. 

Mr. LOVERRO. So, first of all, I don’t know what the President 

meant, although many people have blamed me for making him say 

it, so—but that is not the case. 

Let me tell you what I think he should have meant. We have a 

military service whose sole mission it is to prepare this Nation to 

go ahead and win in the sea. We have a military service whose sole 

purpose is to prepare this Nation to win on land. We have a military service in this Nation whose sole purpose is to win in the air, 

and to protect our interests in the air. And we now have at least 

a unified command whose sole purpose is to make sure we stay 

ahead and win in cyberspace. We lack that focus for space, one of 
17 

our major five warfighting domains. And I may be biased, but I 

think one of the most important. 

That focus is necessary to create the long-term dynamic to keep 

us in the lead. And so when I think about a space force, I think 

about not just what is in Air Force Space Command today. I think 

about what is in the Missile Defense Agency. I think about the 

Army Space and Missile Defense Center. I think about the Naval 

Research Laboratory. I think about all of the components that create the ability to protect U.S. interests in, from, and through space. 

That should be our focus. What is the right organizational structure to create a service whose sole responsibility is to protect U.S. 

interests in, from, and through space. And I don’t believe we have 

that today. 

Mr. HARRISON. You know, as my fellow panelists here said, I am 

not sure exactly what he meant. I saw the video, as I am sure you 

did as well. It appeared that he was thinking kind of off the cuff, 

and he had not looked into the history. I would not presume that 

the President had read things like the Allard Commission Report, 

or the Rumsfeld Commission Report, that looked at these issues in 

the past. 

This is something that has been an ongoing discussion for at 

least two decades. I think what he should have meant, and there 

is some hints of this in his remarks, is that given the increased emphasis we are placing on space, and the investments that are going 

into space, that we need to look at reorganizing our military 

around this domain, so we can operate more effectively in this domain. 

And, you know, as I was sitting here thinking about this, I 

looked right here in front of us is a little plaque with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. And as you read that, you know, it gives 

Congress the power to, you know, raise an Army and to maintain 

a Navy. It doesn’t mention air. Of course, there was no air domain 

at that time. And, you know, that is just proof that we have to 

evolve our organizations. We have to evolve our thinking over time. 

And I think that we have reached that point now with space as a 

fourth physical domain. And then thinking of cyber as well as a 

fifth virtual domain, and that it is time that we rethink some of 

our major organizational structures around that. 

So I think that is what he should have meant and, you know, 

should then lead to deeper discussion about how do we do that and 

how do we make this transition. 

The CHAIRMAN. That plaque also reminds us what our job is in 

this, and sometimes it is easy for us to just look to the Pentagon 

to give us the answers. But that is not what the Constitution says. 

Mr. Conaway. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thank you. As China and Russia get close to where 

we are now and/or exceed us, at what point is an opportunity for 

a Geneva Convention-like agreement as to how we would conduct 

ourselves in a fight like this, and then should that go forward, who 

starts it and how does that work? And then how would we try to 

leak in nonstate actors who could also have access to certain things 

that could be disruptive. 

So is there a Geneva Convention codicil in the works somewhere? 
18 

Mr. LOVERRO. Sir, I think the need for that is absolutely clear. 

Let me point back to January 2007 when the Chinese shot their 

own satellite and created thousands of pieces of debris in space. We 

all remember that date. 

When that happened, the entire world said that is unacceptable. 

Creating that much debris in space is unacceptable. And even the 

Chinese admitted it was unacceptable, because they have never 

done it again. 

I believe that we should be negotiating with our adversaries, that 

there is some kind of space weapons, just like chemical weapons on 

the land, or just like bombardment from the air. You know, these 

kind of weapons are not acceptable. We know you are going to attack our space stuff. Fine. Go for it. But let’s not go ahead and create indiscriminate harm to other actors and to the environment 

while we do it. 

I actually believe we could get that agreement with China, probably with Russia after China, and then with the international community. I think that that would be something that is in our national interest and their national interest to do. 

General KEHLER. And, sir, I agree that it is in our national interest, I think, to agree, in the international community, on some kind 

of, what we called for a long time, rules of the road. I think if you 

take other steps beyond that and start talking about formal arms 

control agreements and that sort of thing, those are very difficult. 

For a long time, we have struggled with just the concept of what 

constitutes a weapon in space. You can take almost anything that 

is in space today and use it as a weapon against something else 

that is in space if you have enough fuel to do it. 

So I think there are—it would certainly benefit. It would help 

our commanders and our policy makers understand things like 

what constitutes hostile intent? What constitutes a hostile act? 

How do you know if someone is threatening you or not? I think this 

is going to be even harder when commercial interests go to orbit 

to do close-proximity servicing, for example. Those are going to be 

difficult challenges for us, and there needs to be some structure 

around how we operate in space. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Harrison. 

Mr. HARRISON. I would just echo those comments, but also add 

that, you know, in the long-term, we do need something through 

United Nations, Geneva Convention. The things we need to, you 

know, get clarified are what is considered a combatant versus a 

noncombatant in space, when these are all, for military purposes, 

are unmanned platforms. What is a proportionate response to an 

attack in space? You know, we reserve the right to respond at the 

time, place, and domain of our choosing. If someone does something 

against a critical U.S. satellite, is it proportionate to do something 

on the ground that causes the direct loss of life. You know, I think 

those are questions we need to search through. 

In the near term, though, I think what we can do is have discussions with our allies and our partners about norms of conduct. You 

know, what are the rules of the road? What are the right ways to 

act? And if we set those and start following them ourselves, which 

I don’t think would be hard to do, and get our allies and partners 

on board as well, even if adversaries do not want to follow those, 
19 

we at least have some basis of comparison to look at their actions. 

And it is complicated in space because of orbital mechanics. But, 

you know, simple things like how close of an approach to another 

uncooperating satellite is too close. It can get very complicated. But 

I think we need to work down through those questions and try to 

come to some sort of a consensus, at least within the United States. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you. 

General, real quickly. The uniformed space corps, uniformed 

space fighter, warfighter, is that group big enough to provide career longevity, career advancement, career challenges that would 

allow that to not be a dead-end career path? 

General KEHLER. I don’t think so. I think that developing the 

uniformed piece of this is an important question as we go forward. 

I think that, you know, the services across the board have said 

they need to be bigger for lots of reasons. I think space falls into 

that category. I think that there are more uniformed people that 

are needed. And I think that, you know, the points here earlier 

about making sure that there is a career progression, I think that 

there are models out there that we can use and we can follow. And 

again, a lot of the pieces are in place; we just need to go do it. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Bordallo. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. General 

Kehler and Mr. Loverro and Mr. Harrison, thank you all for being 

here. 

General, the United States Strategic Command has identified an 

urgent need to rapidly reconstitute and replenish critical space capabilities to preserve continuity of operational capability. So can 

you please speak to some of the investments in low-cost responsive 

launch options that you would recommend the Department pursue 

to fulfill this need? 

General KEHLER. I would say, first of all, that, in general terms, 

the Department hasn’t invested enough in the entire concept of 

operationally responsive space. How much should be invested in 

each of the parts, I think, is getting a pretty thorough review right 

now. What encourages me the most now is the launch developments that have occurred in the commercial world, because I think 

that the commercial activity here promises to be a game changer 

and in many ways has been a game changer to this point. 

So I would be looking to leverage commercial opportunities and 

low-cost commercial opportunities, first, before I went down the 

pathway of investing a lot more government money in governmentsponsored kind of new launch capabilities, small launch capabilities. So that would be part one. 

Part two, what is done in operationally responsive space concepts 

needs to fit in with what my colleagues were talking about earlier 

with the new architecture approach to what we do on orbit. Things 

that are being talked about now inside the Department, inside the 

Air Force, inside U.S. Strategic Command, different architectural 

approaches, whether those are smaller payloads that are replenished sooner, whether it is ridesharing, whether it is leveraging 

commercial, all of those things that need to go into an overall architecture approach that I think then helps define where we need 

to invest, what we need to invest in. 
20 

In my experience in the past, one of the issues has been you can 

deploy and buy small satellites; it is what you put on them that 

turns out to be the long pole in the tent, the payloads that go on 

them. So I think there is investment that is required. I don’t know 

exactly where we should invest, but I would be careful about investing in small launch vehicles because I think commercial is 

going to get us there and in many cases has taken us there now. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. My second question is, today, nearly 

all U.S. national security satellites are launched from fixed coastal 

U.S. launch sites that could easily be disrupted. So these fixed sites 

also provide predictable locations from which adversaries could 

glean clues to discern U.S. capabilities and other gaps. DOE [Department of Energy] developed more diverse launch sites using new 

commercial capabilities to address these weaknesses and support 

rapid, responsive, and resilient polar launch capability. 

General KEHLER. There have been alternative launch sites in existence for quite some time. For lots of reasons, they haven’t really 

taken hold. I think this is another opportunity where I would like 

to see commercial enterprise take us there. But I agree with you, 

we ought to be more diversified in getting to orbit, whether that 

is leveraging allied activities as well or making sure that we are 

leveraging where commercial is going, to include alternative means 

of launching, maybe taking things aloft on aircraft, et cetera. And 

a lot of those are underway right now in various commercial settings. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Yes. Well, General, I represent Guam, and there 

have been interested individuals out there trying to launch—doing 

their launch operations and have visited our Air Force and also our 

commercial airport—our international Guam airport. 

General KEHLER. SpaceX was on Kwajalein for a little while as 

well. And, you know, we have done launches from other places. I 

think it is a matter of—I would like to see commercial take us 

there, and my colleagues have views on this as well, I know. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Would anyone like to add to that? 

Mr. LOVERRO. Let me go ahead and add to that, if I could, 

ma’am. So first of all, I absolutely agree we need more diversity in 

launch, although I always try to remind us that launch is part of 

getting the mission started, not the mission in and of itself. 

I am very excited by what I see in the commercial world in terms 

of small launch, whether that is Rocket Lab launching from New 

Zealand, Virgin Orbit with their plane that can launch from anywhere in the world, Stratolaunch trying to do the same kind of 

thing. These are commercial capabilities that we don’t need to invest in, but we need to embrace. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Right. 

Mr. LOVERRO. And that is the key that we have to understand. 

There is never going to be a time where we have the luxury of unlimited resources. We need to embrace these commercial and allied 

capabilities so that we can invest in the pointy end of the spear, 

not on the back end of the spear. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lamborn. 
21 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank all of you 

for the service that you give to our country in various ways. I sure 

appreciate it. I think we all do. 

Mr. Loverro, you said in your written testimony, quote, ‘‘a key 

element of any future space strategy is the ability to operationally 

test that strategy under real life conditions,’’ end quote. And you 

use an example that after losses in Vietnam, the Air Force created 

Red Flag, and that helped staunch the flow of losses. And we were 

talking about this yesterday. 

Could you follow on that? And because Representative Bordallo 

has mentioned her district, I will mention my district. We have had 

some Space Flag exercises in Colorado Springs, and I think that is 

a good precedent here for this kind of testing that we need to do. 

Could you elaborate on that, please? 

Mr. LOVERRO. Absolutely, sir, I would be pleased to. So, you 

know, when we talk about testing and training environments within the DOD, we can mean anything from what is called the tabletop exercise, where nothing is actually happening other than written pieces of paper going back and forth, to full Red Flag exercises 

where we have people who are simulating aggressor tactics and aggressor-like aircraft against our own forces and actually trying to 

win the fight. And everywhere in between: simulators, computerdriven exercises. 

In the air world, in the sea world, in the land world, we cover 

that entire gamut because we understand to actually become an expert in that kind of warfighting, you must cover that entire gamut. 

In space, we are limited to computer simulations and tabletop 

exercises. Those are important, but insufficient. We need an investment in on-orbit assets that our warfighters can use to simulate 

tactics in space, try out the plans they have developed. Did that 

work? Were we able to observe the adversary movement in the 

timeliness and thoroughness that we thought we would be able to? 

You can’t know that from a computer. 

The computer will always tell you, yes, you observed it, because 

it is programmed to do that. You have to try that in space with real 

assets. That is a critical investment area, we know it is a critical 

investment area, but we are not investing there because it is, quite 

frankly, expensive and we are spending money elsewhere. As Mr. 

Harrison has suggested and I suggested and I think General 

Kehler would agree, we can allow the commercial world to pay for 

a lot of the things that we are investing in ourselves so we can invest in things that the commercial world won’t invest in, like test 

assets that we are going to fight in space. Those are a peculiar 

military need that we should be focused on. 

Mr. LAMBORN. General Kehler or Mr. Harrison, can you add anything about the need for more space warfighting training? 

General KEHLER. You need to take a page from every other domain, every other military service. If you want to have an effective 

warfighting force, you have to train, educate, exercise, test, simulate, do all those things. And for lots—again, for lots of reasons, 

over the years, we have shortchanged space on many of those 

things. 

I will tell you that space is part of Red Flag. If you were to go 

to Red Flag, space is part of Red Flag. It is different to hold a space 
22 

Red Flag. It is a little bit different focus. We have done one of 

those, I am told, here fairly recently. The mechanisms are in place 

to do these things. I think it is a matter of focus and attention, and 

at some level, it is a matter of resources. If you want to have simulators and training and test assets and those kind of things, it 

costs money. 

Mr. HARRISON. I would add that one thing that we should try to 

do differently in space and do better than we do in the other domains is how we measure readiness. And, you know, our traditional approach to readiness is not serving us well because many 

of our measures are based on the inputs. Do we have enough people? Do we have enough people of the right training level? You 

know, how much training did we do in the past year? And it is 

more of a checkbox approach to get your swords ratings, then go 

into the readiness system, that then get aggregated and presented 

to Congress. That is not sufficient in the other domains; it is certainly not sufficient in space. 

If you want an adequate picture of readiness, you need to do 

these exercises, you need to do these tests, and you need to measure performance. So, for example, as I said in my testimony, the 

ability to quickly detect and attribute different types of attack is 

important. Let’s test that. Let’s use whatever resources we have. 

Let’s have a simulated attack. Let’s see how long it takes to detect 

it and to attribute it to the right source. Let’s measure those things 

and let’s report those as measures of readiness, not did we do the 

training or not or did we have, you know, the certain number of 

people. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Well, let’s all move forward together on better and 

more advanced space warfighting training. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Carbajal. 

Mr. CARBAJAL. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for being 

here today. 

The Department of Defense is conducting a study known as analysis of alternatives [AOA] on how to best meet the exponentially 

increasing demand for satellite communications connectivity for 

military and government users. Even if the DOD completes its 

study on time, the timeline for providing increased satellite capacity would be no earlier than the late 2020s, resulting in a gap of 

time where military demand for connectivity could exceed supply. 

This means our military could face diminished communications capability while they are executing critical missions if the DOD does 

not procure additional space craft or capability. 

The current threat calls for more anti-jam capable satellites to 

provide assured communications for the warfighter in contested 

space. How should the Air Force plan to meet this need now, to all 

three of you? 

General KEHLER. Sir, the very best architecture studies and the 

very best pathway to the future will continue to run headlong into 

an acquisition process that doesn’t allow you to get there before the 

late 2020s or the early 2030s, unless we add some rapid acquisition 

capabilities to space, which I think is an urgent need to have happen. 
23 

There needs to be an architecture that—an updated architecture 

was mentioned here by the panel before, that talks about communications that involves high-end protected communications that the 

government will need to do for itself, followed by the commercial 

communications that can be leveraged for government use, of 

which there are a lot of options out there and more coming every 

day. And then we need to change the model for how we go buy it. 

Your point about an analysis of alternatives that takes years to 

complete and posits answers way in the future is not going to be 

acceptable. It is going to put us way behind. And I think it is one 

of the urgent issues that needs to get addressed in terms of what 

have we got to do to help ourselves out of this problem we have 

with space. 

Mr. LOVERRO. So let me add two thoughts to what General 

Kehler said, and one that may surprise members of this committee. 

I actually, quite frankly, recoil when I hear the fact that the problem is the acquisition problem. I think that is a shorthand for saying the real problem is the decision process of which the acquisition 

process is part. 

We have to decide what to buy. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are 

slow at buying things using normal defense planning, and we 

should be faster at that. But we canceled the TSAT [Transformational Satellite Communications System] program, the anti-jam capable system that we intended to build in the early part of this 

century. We canceled it in 2009. We have yet to decide what to replace it with, much less begin the program. That is not an acquisition problem; that is a decision problem. And that decision problem 

exists because there are too many people who can have an opinion 

in that debate. 

Regardless of AOAs, regardless of all the thinking, the Air Force 

doesn’t get to make that decision themselves. I think if they did, 

the Air Force would have decided. I can’t tell you if they would 

have decided right or wrong, but I can tell you they would have decided, a program would be underway. We would all be worried 

about how long the program was taking, but the program would already be there. We have a decision process within DOD because we 

have not centralized thinking about space in the same way we centralize thinking about air, land, and sea. 

So the second question, how do we get there faster? You know, 

we have—there are 450 commercial communication satellites in the 

geosynchronous belt. There are going to be, in the next 10 years, 

upwards of 4,000 to 5,000 communication satellites in the Earth’s 

orbit belt. We should be actively investing in those capabilities 

today. 

In fact, the official Air Force plan is to not buy another communication satellite like the wideband global satellite but rather to invest in those commercial companies to have them field the capabilities we need in terms of anti-jam. And yet, that program has not 

been funded adequately since the Air Force first presented it over 

7 years ago. That program would have already yielded significant 

capability in space and we wouldn’t need an AOA to come to the 

conclusion that knowledgeable people already have that that is the 

best way to get that. 
24 

We should be investing today in cyber hardening of all of these 

LEO [low Earth orbit] constellations so that we can use them for 

our warfighters, because they are going to be up there in 4 or 5 

years and our warfighters will not be able to depend upon them because their ground systems will not have the cyber protections necessary that we could pay for by pennies on the dollar as these systems are developed. Those kind of decisions are decision problems—I don’t like to call them acquisition problems, because they 

are a decision to act. They will be an acquisition problem beyond 

that. Let’s decide to act first, and that is where we have really fallen down is in deciding to act. 

Mr. CARBAJAL. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Harrison, is there something briefly you 

want to add to this question? 

Mr. HARRISON. I would briefly add to that, that part of it is that 

we have built up institutions around certain mission areas and 

doing missions in a certain way. You know, we have a wide—we 

have had a wideband program office, the Space and Missile Systems Center. Their job has historically been to acquire wideband 

satellites. Now we are looking at an era where we don’t need to acquire them; we can buy it as a service. Well, buying SATCOM as 

a service has been the responsibility of DISA [Defense Information 

Systems Agency], an entirely different organization, an entirely different chain of command, and an entirely different budget. 

When your organization is fractured like that, it is hard to make 

a good decision and be able to make adequate tradeoffs. And so 

that is why I think we see the military struggling with this analysis of alternatives. It is just the institutions that we built aren’t 

fit for the needs that we have today. 

Mr. CARBAJAL. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chair, for the additional time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for 

being here. 

And, Mr. Loverro, I listened closely to what you said about canceling a mission that they were—or a platform they were about to 

purchase in 2009, and here they are, they still haven’t decided 

what they are going to use to replace the mission. The JSTARS 

[Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System] mission comes to 

mind as I listen to that. And as I look at us becoming more and 

more dependent on space, it seems to me that the acquisition process, the decision, if you will, becomes more complex and perhaps 

takes longer to actually field the items that we need than an airplane or a tank or something along those lines. 

But to read directly from your remarks, make no mistake in all 

three U.S.-based sectors, national security, civil, and commercial, 

the U.S. continues to lead the world. It talks about others catching 

us, but—so you say that we lead the world, but yet we are totally 

dependent upon the acquisition of Russian rockets to launch our 

space-based capabilities. And those two things seem to be in conflict with each other. 

How is it that we dominate, but we don’t have the ability to 

launch our own capabilities? And if you were sitting in the Rus-
25 

sians’ shoes, wouldn’t you simply take away that ability from the 

U.S. if you saw that they were about to launch a great system? 

Mr. LOVERRO. Sir, that is a very difficult question you have posed 

for me there. Number one, I don’t think we should be dependent 

upon Russian rockets, and we could have made decisions way in 

the past to change that. 

Mr. SCOTT. Absolutely. 

Mr. LOVERRO. In fact, there was direction from three successive 

acquisition chiefs in the Pentagon to make that not happen and it 

was ignored, unfortunately, every time, starting as far back as 

2004. That is a reliance that we should not have and we should 

correct that. And we are on the path to correct it, but we should 

have corrected it long ago. 

Number two, will the Russians go ahead and eliminate their provisions of those engines for strategic reasons? I don’t know what is 

in their mind. I find it hard to understand—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Do you agree that they could? 

Mr. LOVERRO. They could. And that is a vulnerability we can’t 

stand. 

Mr. SCOTT. Sure. 

Mr. LOVERRO. We know how to build rocket engines in the 

United States of America. We built the most powerful rocket engines ever developed in the world in the United States of America. 

And we have, not only through NASA [National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration] and through the Air Force, but also through 

commercial world we have the most robust launch infrastructure of 

any nation in any time in history today. I really do want to salute 

the DOD for changing their tune on things like SpaceX, and I want 

to salute ULA [United Launch Alliance] for making the changes 

they have made. 

Mr. SCOTT. I am down to about 2 minutes. If I may, one of the 

things that has been talked about is the difficulty of defending our 

space-based capabilities, the jamming of equipment that is available, which is of serious concern to me, and the ability to break our 

communications if we become too dependent on space and don’t 

have redundant communication systems. Where does that leave us? 

And how vulnerable do we become by becoming dependent with no 

redundant system to communicate without it? 

And it brings me to a question for you, General Kehler. If our 

space-based capabilities are attacked, can you speak to the ability 

to reconstitute those capabilities along with the anticipated timeline and what this would mean operationally for continued warfighting, assuming we have no redundancies? 

General KEHLER. Yes. Well, you nailed it, I think. This is an architectural question. We can’t be in a position where our forces 

can’t operate without space. And by the way, I don’t think we 

would be. What happens, though, is that it is like a time machine: 

The more space you take away, the farther back in time our forces 

go in terms of how they would operate. So I think we have some 

significant issues about connectivity for nuclear command and control and other things that rely very heavily on space. So we can’t 

find ourselves in that position. 
26 

Mr. SCOTT. As a general, if you are in a battle and you lose your 

space-based communications and you have no redundancy and you 

had to repair the space-based communications—— 

General KEHLER. We do not have the wherewithal today to 

quickly replenish in a significant way what we could lose in terms 

of a determined adversary attack on space. 

Mr. SCOTT. All right. My concern is that the battle would be over, 

and potentially the war, before we could ever get—I am out of time, 

Mr. Harrison. 

Mr. Chairman, I think he had a comment. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have something you want to add? I get 

more flexible as time goes on. 

Mr. HARRISON. I will take advantage of that then. 

I would just add that we may not want to focus too much on 

rapid reconstitution. That is one way to improve mission assurance. 

But it is really—you know, if you think through it in a war crisis 

type exercise, it is only good for a limited set of circumstances. So 

depending on the type of attack, you may not want to reconstitute 

right away, because you would just be launching another billion 

dollar satellite that will just get destroyed again. Also, if it is—you 

know, you may have created a lot of debris, you might not want 

to launch into that orbit. But also, if it is a nonkinetic attack, particularly a reversible attack, like jamming, they are just going to 

jam that one as well. 

So I think what we really ought to be looking at, first and foremost, is how to avoid getting in that situation where we would 

need to reconstitute. How do we develop systems that degrade 

more gracefully? How do we develop systems that are just harder 

to attack, so that someone, instead of attacking in space, they will 

choose to attack in another domain, through another vector? 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Norcross. 

Mr. NORCROSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Actually, I just want to expand on some of the discussion you 

just had. Over the last few years, our NATO [North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization] agreement started to address the cyber. It is not as 

clear; when soldier come at you, you know who it is. In space, you 

talked about the jamming issue. 

Let’s talk about kinetic strikes. What is our ability to track 

where that attack came from, A, from the physical standpoint, and 

then who is controlling what happened? Oh, I am sorry, General. 

General KEHLER. Sir, if I understand your question correctly, you 

are asking—— 

Mr. NORCROSS. If there was an attack, physical attack in space 

on one of our assets. 

General KEHLER. Right. Well, it is not nearly what it needs to 

be. We are very good at tracking rockets and missiles of certain 

classes and sizes that get launched from the face of the Earth. We 

are very good at that. Once things are on orbit, though, we have 

significant deficiencies in how quickly we can detect if something 

has maneuvered, how quickly we can detect that something might 

be approaching an asset of high value, and the list goes on. 

Mr. NORCROSS. In terms of tracking debris or satellites. 

General KEHLER. Yep. And it is true across the board with debris 

or hostile actors or other satellites that happen to be up there. And 
27 

this is why the—certainly, the military has been arguing for quite 

some time that we need to invest more in what they call space situational awareness. We need to get from a time where they are basically maintaining a catalog of what is up there and checking it periodically to see what changes, to real-time situational awareness 

like we would have in the air if we were in a conflict. 

Mr. NORCROSS. Funny you should mention that. We have an offthe-shelf piece that we have been discussing for a number of years. 

But that will show you where the asset is versus the other asset 

in terms of an actual attack. 

General KEHLER. Right. 

Mr. NORCROSS. How do you track that? 

General KEHLER. And then there is being able to track in sort 

of close proximity to one another and there is deciphering what actually happened to you, whether what happened is a technical 

problem or some hostile act. Those are all things that need to be 

worked, because we aren’t nearly where we need to be in all of 

those areas. 

Mr. NORCROSS. In terms of debris. Debris is a relative term. 

Some accidental, some very deliberate. If there was an intentional—and this is under the guise that we are going to have a 

very bad day, but debris is probably one of the easiest things to put 

up there to disrupt us. Maneuverability is short term for our assets 

to get out of the way. How would you rate our ability to do that 

today? 

Mr. LOVERRO. Sir, I am going to—let me address the question in 

two ways. First of all, if you want to attack something in a military 

effective way, debris isn’t a particularly good way to do it. Debris 

is a long-term problem, but not a short-term preferred method of 

attacking, because space—we don’t understand how big space really is. So we could move out of the way of debris, we do it all the 

time. The space station does it all the time. Air Force Space Command tracks the debris and the space station maneuvers if it believes it is going to be too close. And we can do that for most of 

our satellites that are in a debris area, which are our low Earth 

satellites. Some of our older satellites, no, but most of our satellites 

that have been launched in the last 20 years could do that. 

The big problem is we—what might look like debris may actually 

be a deliberate attack. That is the harder problem to deal with. 

And some CubeSat that has minimal propulsion could easily go 

ahead and impact into a multibillion dollar satellite and destroy it, 

and that might just—and it would be very difficult for us to detect 

that movement and very difficult for us to attribute who caused 

that to occur. 

Mr. HARRISON. I would add to that that part of the problem with 

debris is it has indiscriminate long-term effects, right? And so it is 

going to affect anyone in a similar orbital regime. You know, in 

terms of maneuverability, the real question is, you know, how feasible is it to maneuver out of the way of a homing warhead of some 

kind. So something that is not an unguided piece of debris, but 

something that is trying actively to steer its way into you. That is 

a very tough problem in physics because that warhead is small, the 

amount of propellant it needs to maneuver is exponentially smaller 

because of the weight. And it is willing to expend 100 percent of 
28 

its propellant to hit you, whereas your satellite, you are large, you 

are lumbering, you are slow moving, you have limited propellant 

reserves on board and you do not want to expend much of that propellant because that will ultimately shorten the life of your system. 

So maneuverability in many cases is just not a feasible option 

against any kind of homing warhead. 

Mr. NORCROSS. Thank you. I will yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Coffman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

To all the panelists, in fiscal year 2018, Congress authorized advanced procurement for SBIRS [Space-Based Infrared System], 

space vehicle 7 and 8. However, the Air Force is no longer interested in procuring SV 7 and 8. Instead, the Air Force would like 

to disaggregate strategic and tactical payloads from one another. 

However, the Air Force is still planning to use the same spacecraft 

buses, the same, quote/unquote, big, juicy targets, as General 

Hyten calls it. 

Does this approach initiate risk by cutting short the program of 

record, especially before it has reached full operational capability? 

Please explain why or why not. 

General, let’s start with you. 

General KEHLER. So, Congressman, here is where I would agree 

with them. I would agree that we should not continue to do business as usual. The alternative, though, I am not clear yet on 

whether the alternative is substantially a different approach. If it 

is, then I would support it. If it isn’t, then I would continue to have 

the same question that General Hyten has. 

And so I would listen very carefully to kind of where the combatant commander comes out on this to assess whether he thinks his 

warfighting capabilities are being materially improved by an action 

that the service is taking. So they should be in lockstep on this, 

and I don’t know if there is some issues about having to transition 

some way or I don’t know what the other factors are that they considered. But I do agree that business as usual is not the way to 

go forward on that and other constellations as well, and they need 

to come up with alternative ways to make themselves more resilient and defensible. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Loverro. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Yes, sir. I agree wholeheartedly with General 

Kehler. First of all, I don’t think we should build any more SBIRS. 

We have enough SBIRS and DSP [Defense Support Program] satellites to last us well to the end of the next decade. What we need 

to do is build a more resilient missile warning architecture than we 

have today. And as best I can tell from the budget documents, what 

has been specified is not any more resilient than what we have 

today. It may be new, but it is not more resilient because it is 

using the same bus, as you already stated. It still remains the big, 

juicy target that is going to still take 8 to 10 years to develop. That 

is unacceptable. 

We have alternatives today—they have been proven, they have 

been flown, they have been shown to be effective—that we could 

easily launch within 3 years, 5 years at the outside, given the 

budget process. And yet we sure have chosen not to do that because, as Mr. Harrison has said, culturally we don’t think about 
29 

the problem that way and they would be far more resilient than 

what we have today. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Harrison. 

Mr. HARRISON. I would agree that I am not sold on the new path 

forward on SBIRS. I think disaggregating the strategic and tactical 

missions onto different satellites that are basically the same as 

what we have today, I don’t think that that improves resilience or 

deterrence against an adversary because are they really going to 

believe what is on what satellite. 

I think we need to break up that mission, break it open, and look 

at it more broadly. And I think that there is a good case to be made 

for our tactical missile warning needs, that they could be better 

met in low Earth orbit with a large constellation of smaller satellites in low Earth orbit that are used not just for detection of a 

launch, but for tracking and target discrimination in midcourse. 

If you talk to folks in Missile Defense Agency, they will tell you 

that the single most important thing we could do to improve the 

effectiveness of our theater and national missile defense systems is 

better tracking and target discrimination in midcourse. That is 

what they need. We can do that with a constellation in low Earth 

orbit. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Would it be more prudent and responsible to incorporate a new start after seven and eight, to include the option 

of augmenting capabilities through a payload? I don’t have a lot of 

time, but, General? 

General KEHLER. It depends, I think, on how quickly and whether it is affordable and whether we have enough agility to actually 

make a big transition now. If you can, then I would transition. If 

you can’t, then this is the first rule of wing walking, don’t let go 

until you are holding on. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Okay. 

General KEHLER. So we just want to make sure we are cautious 

about how we did it. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Loverro. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Sir, I do not believe that we should buy seven and 

eight under any conditions. It is the wrong strategic tool for our 

warfighters, and that should drive our thinking, not our fear of 

something new. And we know how to apply things better if we 

want to. We have got to go ahead and overcome that fear. And I 

am fully confident we have enough time, given the six SBIR satellites we have already bought and the classified number of DSP 

satellites that are still in operation. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, may I finish? 

Mr. Harrison, can you respond, quickly? 

Mr. HARRISON. I would quickly add and say that I think in terms 

of the strategic missile warning mission, more payloads in more 

places is better. That will make us more resilient. So if we can take 

the payloads, similar to what is on our SBIR satellite, and put 

them just in more places, if we can host payloads, we have done 

the commercially hosted infrared payload experiment in the past, 

more of that will help make the system more resilient. So I think 

that would be a good use of funding. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bacon. 
30 

Mr. BACON. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. I appreciate 

all your expert testimony. And I used to work with General Kehler 

when I was the one-star at Offutt Air Force Base and he was the 

four-star STRATCOM commander. I have a funny memory I just 

have got to share real quick. My four-star boss was at Langley Air 

Force Base, Virginia, and I remember General Kehler saying, your 

dad may be at Langley, but I am your great uncle, and I talk to 

your dad all the time. 

General KEHLER. I remember that. 

Mr. BACON. So it is good to be with my great uncle here. 

So we look at having a new space force and having a debate. I 

think a couple of things we need to look at, one of them is acquisition and the decision-making process, as you say. I think Mike Rogers does a great job showing all the duplication that goes on there, 

a bunch of the services, and that there may be a—there has got 

to be a better way to do it. But the one that concerns me more is 

the culture and building of warfighting space culture. And when 

our space warfighter lieutenants come in and our airmen come in, 

I think we need to have that thought process that they are the very 

best. They can achieve service chief 35 years later. 

And I don’t know that we can say that today with the Air Force. 

I think we have to be honest, it is a fighter pilot oriented culture, 

80 percent anyway. I mean, we have bomber pilots and air lifters. 

But by and large, it is a fighter pilot culture. If you look at our 

service chiefs going back a couple decades, with maybe one exception, you know, it has been a fighter pilot. And I have got to tell 

you, General Goldfein is the best of the best. I think he is an outstanding leader. I think he is onto this problem too, how do we 

build a space warrior culture within the Air Force? The Navy has 

obviously done it. They have submariners, surface, aviators, all of 

them compete equally for that service chief’s job or the CNO [Chief 

of Naval Operations] position. 

So my question to you three today would be, how does the Air 

Force work to getting a culture where the space and the air domain, the fighter pilot culture becomes equal? How do we change 

that to become more like what the Navy has today? Is it doable? 

And I will say I know General Goldfein is committed to this, but 

I think it is a hard task. And I embrace his desire, but how does 

this happen? And I turn the floor over to you. 

General KEHLER. Congressman, I was really glad that this 

wasn’t some retribution for me commenting about being your uncle. 

So first, I think I would ask myself, is it feasible? Is it feasible 

for the United States Air Force to do what it is that needs to be 

done? I am a non-pilot in the United States Air Force for 39 years. 

I believe it is feasible for the United States Air Force to do what 

needs to be done here. And I think what needs to be done is there 

needs to be a conscious effort to over-nurture space for a time until 

it gains that kind of traction that we are talking about here. 

I think that—and that is a step, by the way. It may be that we 

need to go to a separate space corps or a separate space force or 

something in the future, but those are really, really big steps that 

bring with them other things that we ought to think about carefully, I believe. I do think that the pieces are in place there today 

in the Air Force. We haven’t sat there idly over the last 20 years. 
31 

As a matter of fact, since Desert Shield and Desert Storm, there 

is a lot that has been done inside the Air Force. 

But what has not happened, I think, is that it has not gotten the 

consistent priority treatment that it needs, to include a management of personnel that makes non-aviators warfighters through the 

processes that the warfighters go through, that the aviators go 

through as well, similar processes to that. I think it is doable. I 

think it requires a deliberate action on the part of the Air Force. 

And I think it involves helping this hybrid command called Air 

Force Space Command that has the pieces that it needs to grow up 

some more too with some acquisition authorities and other things. 

So I think it is feasible. I think it is possible. In the near term, 

my preference would be to see that, because we have urgent matters that need to be solved. I would hold the people in those jobs 

accountable for solving them, instead of coming up with something 

new that could be a distraction. So I am not opposed, but I would 

be careful about how we go forward here. 

Mr. BACON. Thank you, General Kehler. And I know General 

Goldfein is committed to that. I have talked to him personally. 

Mr. Loverro. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Yes, sir. So General Kehler and I have argued 

about this before, and it is a question of do you peel the Band-Aid 

off slowly or do you rip the Band-Aid off. I am ready to rip the 

Band-Aid off. The Air Force space corps needs an identifiable existence within the Air Force. Today, the Air Force space corps is made 

up of 2,000 individuals who are called space operators. They have 

a specific identification code. There are 2,000 of them, that is all 

there ever will be. You can’t build the corps out of that. 

There are another 3,000 who use space acquisition who are not 

identified as space warriors who should be because they have the 

skills there that are distributed between the NRO [National Reconnaissance Office] and the Space and Missile Systems Center. There 

are another several hundred who are in space intelligence officers, 

space maintainers, space thinkers, all of—none of these people are 

identified as space people and, therefore, we cannot get to the requisite number of space smart folks who have the variety of those 

experiences necessary to build that space warrior in the future. 

The path that leads to a pilot doesn’t include Wright-Patterson 

Air Force Base. The path that leads to a space warrior probably 

does include the NRO and the Space and Missile Systems Center. 

There are two different paths. There are different kind of career 

progressions, and the Air Force is unable to go ahead and manage 

that within their current personnel system. 

Mr. BACON. Thank you. I defer to the chairman if we get one 

more answer in. Thank you. 

Mr. HARRISON. I would add one more thing. I think it actually 

is a larger issue than just space within the Air Force. I think it 

is a broader issue that Congress needs to address of DOPMA [Defense Officer Personnel Management Act] reform. And the personnel system overall needs to be updated, quite frankly, that some 

parts of the career model that were built in decades ago are no 

longer working very well. Things like the up-or-out promotion system and all of the joint service requirements and all the educational requirements that we put on folks. I think that is contrib-
32 

uting to the pilot shortfall in the Air Force, quite frankly. I think 

it is also contributing to the lack of ability to create a viable space 

cadre within the Air Force. So I think this is a bigger personnel 

reform issue that I am hopeful Congress will tackle. 

Mr. BACON. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General KEHLER. Mr. Chairman, could I—I know that I am probably violating some terrible rule here. Could I just add one other 

thing? 

The CHAIRMAN. Of course. 

General KEHLER. Five of the last four-star commanders of Air 

Force Space Command have been non-pilots. The other one was a 

pilot, but he was also a three-time shuttle pilot. He qualifies, as far 

as I am concerned. Anybody who has been a satellite I think is 

okay to command Air Force Space Command. Three of those six 

have become the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, the combatant commander. In the last couple of times that the Air Force 

has considered senior officers to be the chief of staff, I know that 

some of those officers were actively considered to be the chief of 

staff. 

So I think that to suggest that somehow that there has been no 

progress here is not a good way to think about this. I do think 

there are problems that need to be addressed. And I think that 

there are issues for the Air Force to address that have been laid 

out for quite some time that can be addressed. But I just wanted 

to point out that there are some things here that I think you 

should take note of. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hice. 

Mr. HICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Harrison, I would like to follow up on a comment you made 

that you are more concerned with the nonkinetic threats in space 

right now. I would like to expand a little bit more on that, specifically in regard to, is the concern that it is harder to attribute the 

attacks? Is it that it is harder for us to counter the attacks? Is it 

a threat to our satellites? All of the above or whatever? If you could 

just go further with it. 

Mr. HARRISON. I am more concerned about the nonkinetic types 

of threats because I think they are harder to deter for a variety of 

reasons. And so when I say nonkinetic, I am talking about electronic forms of attack, like jamming or spoofing a signal where you 

fool a receiver into thinking, you know, what they are receiving is 

really from the satellite, when it is not. Also, nonkinetic forms of 

physical attack where you can do physical damage to the satellite 

without actually touching it, like lasing a satellite; lase an imagery 

satellite, you can potentially blind it or at least temporarily dazzle 

it. High-power microwave weapons can cause the electronics on a 

satellite to be disrupted, cause computers to reboot, or can actually 

fry the circuits in a satellite if it is a strong enough attack and they 

are not well protected. 

Then, of course, there are cyberattacks. Cyberattacks can be 

many different forms. At the lowest level, someone could just get 

into your network and be able to snoop on packets, who’s talking 

to whom. They may be able to crack into encryption and actually 

read the data and exploit that for military purposes. At the most 

extreme level of a cyberattack, they could get into your data 
33 

streams and manipulate the data. Worst attack you can imagine 

would be if someone gets into your command and control uplink 

and takes control of your satellite, then they can effectively destroy 

it, at least make it not usable to you. 

Now, our military satellites have protections against some of 

these, but not all of these, and it varies by the type of system. And 

so, you know, I am concerned about these threats because, one, an 

adversary may think that they could use an attack that they don’t 

think we can attribute to them and get away it. So they may use 

it even before a conflict on Earth begins. It may be part of their 

conditioning of us or trying to prepare the battlefield. Also, an adversary may use something like jamming that is a reversible form 

of attack. They may view it as being below threshold that they can 

do it and we will know that they can turn it off. And so they can 

just negotiate with us. 

We may not view it the same way. You know, our protected satellite communications systems, they are used for nuclear command 

and control as well as tactical missions. An adversary may miscalculate and they may think that we would, you know, view it as 

less below a threshold when we actually view it as being above a 

threshold. 

The other complication is that our allies and partners may not 

view the same type of attack the same way that we do. And so I 

know there are some ongoing discussions. I think there need to be 

more ongoing discussions, and it is at this lower end of spectrum 

of conflict where I think it gets very murky and that is when it concerns me. Not to discount the kinetic ASAT attacks; those, yes, 

have very devastating consequences, but I think we need more attention in the nonkinetic side. 

Mr. HICE. Mr. Loverro. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Yes. Mr. Hice, I want to add to what Mr. Harrison 

has said. And this is a critically important point. As we put together our policies and our thinking about resilience, one of the key 

goals was to force the—if the adversary wanted to take away your 

space capabilities, was to force him to a higher level of attack, i.e., 

kinetic attack, to take away the so-called cheap shot of a laser or 

a jamming attack, remove that from the thinking so that you would 

clearly have an act of war if he tried to attack your satellites. 

We know how to build jam-resistant satellites. We know how to 

build architectures of satellites that cannot be jammed individually 

or collectively. We know how to go ahead and build jam-resistant 

GPS. We know how to go ahead and build satellites that can’t be 

blinded by lasers from the ground. We know how to do all of these 

things. We need to be doing them so that the only option an adversary has is to go ahead and attack us kinetically. And then we 

need to build architectures where the loss of a single satellite attack kinetically doesn’t affect us militarily, but now gives the President the wherewithal to act. So these are critically important strategic, architectural questions that we have to address and we are 

not doing. 

Mr. HICE. So are there any policy decisions on our end that need 

to be implemented? 

Mr. LOVERRO. The policy that I just told you exists. It is written. 

It was delivered in 2014 to the White House as part of our overall 
34 

ability to resist these—or to contend with these problems. We are 

not—we are not building the capabilities. There is always more policy work to be done—don’t get me wrong there. You know, otherwise, I would be out of business. But the fact of the matter is the 

fundamental policies we need to understand what to do are there; 

we have to act on these policies. 

Mr. HICE. Okay. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Whose job is it to make those architectural decisions? 

Mr. LOVERRO. Sir, that is the key issue, and that is why I say 

it is not an acquisition issue; it is a decision issue. In the 20 years 

that spanned 1990 to 2010, we basically allowed that decision to 

be made by the acquisition chain in the AT&L [Acquisition, Technology and Logistics]. That was never that individual’s job, but 

since nobody else would make a decision, he or she did. Before 

that, back in the 1960s and the 1970s, it was the responsibility of 

the DDR&E, the Deputy Director for Research and Engineering. In 

the 1980s, late 1980s and 1990s, it was the responsibility for the 

Assistant Secretary of Defense [ASD] for C-Cubed-I [Command, 

Control, Communications, and Intelligence (3CI)]. They were the 

person in the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] staff who 

would listen to the services come in and say, we would like to seek 

to do this, and they would basically say yes or no. 

I often tell the tale that when I was running the GPS program 

and I didn’t believe we were on the right path, I walked into John 

Stenbit’s office, he was the ASD (3CI). I sat down with him for 3 

days and explained what we need—we needed. He said, yes, you 

are right. Let’s take it to the deputy. I was at the deputy’s office 

a week later. In less than 2 months we had changed the entire 

course of the GPS program. Today, I would have to go talk to 20 

different people in the Pentagon; none of them have the ability to 

go ahead and make that decision. That is the problem that we have 

to go ahead and solve. 

The Air Force, I believe, will come up with excellent ideas if we 

give them the responsibility to do that. And they should have the 

responsibility to do that, and then they should be responsible for 

bringing that to the individual in OSD who can say yes or no. And 

they either get a yes, or no, go back and work it again. But that 

will create the kind of pace of change that we need, rather than 

the current structure. 

Mr. HARRISON. I would add to that that, you know, I would 

choose to interpret some recent changes that Congress made in a 

way. And I don’t know that folks within the Pentagon would agree 

with this, but I think it was fiscal year 2017 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] that split up AT&L and gave more acquisition authority to the services. So the acquisition authority devolved to the services for many of these programs. And then in last 

year’s fiscal year 2018 NDAA, it clearly gave the commander of Air 

Force Space Command the sole authority for recruit, training, 

equipping space forces. 

I would then interpret that as the commander of Air Force Space 

Command should be the one who can make these decisions and 

move out on it. 
35 

General KEHLER. He doesn’t have all the authority he needs to 

do that. I mean, I take the point about the decision process and the 

acquisition process; to me it is kind of tomato, tomato. I think that 

there—this is all rolled together. What has happened with the fragmentation of acquisition in larger sense has impacted space as 

well. 

I agree. I think that the commander of Air Force Space Command has responsibility here to develop space architectures. I had 

that responsibility when I sat out there, and what I didn’t have 

was the responsibility to develop the Department’s communications 

architecture. I could do the space piece of it, but I didn’t have the 

wherewithal to do the rest. That was somebody else’s responsibility. And once I had what I thought I needed to do, my responsibility was to take it into the Air Force and get it programmed. 

So I think that channel is there. I think that channel is still 

there. Again, I think this is about priorities. If these are national 

priorities, then I think it gets looked at differently in the program 

process when we are trying to decide what to fund and what not 

to fund. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rogers. 

Mr. ROGERS. I just want to again thank the panel. This is a very 

important discussion for us to have. I hope that people take away 

from this hearing that the one thing that came out early and has 

recurred throughout it and that is we can’t keep doing what we 

have been doing. We have to do something dramatically different, 

better, more efficient, and more effective. 

As you all know, I believe that we have to segregate those 5,000 

people that Doug Loverro described into a separate service, the 

space force, in the Department of the Air Force in order to get that 

culture and educational system and career development that we 

need to make space a priority. And the point being, and one of the 

reasons why General Kehler and I kind of [diverge] on this, is I believe that in order for us to ever correct this, that the people that 

come to work every day and work on space have to know that it 

is their number one priority. It is the organization’s number one 

priority. And the Air Force will always have air dominance as its 

number one priority culturally. And it should; it is the Air Force. 

So we just have to recognize no organization can have two number one priorities. And I think that is going to be the—because 

General Kehler is right, it could possibly happen, but it is probably 

not going to happen. If it would have been likely, the Air Force 

would have done it by now. They are humans, and it is just hard 

to do what we are asking them to do in their current construct. 

And one evidence would be when you talked about the four-stars 

space professionals who were considered for chief, they didn’t get 

chief. 

But you did make a point that I agree with that in the interim, 

between now and when I think we are going to have a space force, 

like our Commander in Chief said yesterday—I like him even better today—but between now and then, I think General Kehler is 

exactly right, the Department of the Air Force should make space 

a high, very high priority, and fund it appropriately and give it inordinate attention. That means resources, a different acquisition 

construct, and maybe a space professional as the next chief of staff, 
36 

like John Hyten or somebody else. Those would be great signals to 

the Congress, they are finally getting it. 

But I still think we are going to have to make this evolution to 

a separate segregated service. And I think this hearing goes a long 

way to putting that information on the record, and I thank you all 

for being a part of it. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Last question, is there something that jumps to 

any of your minds that has been written in the last few years that, 

not technical, but would be helpful for Congress to read in thinking 

about space as a warfighting domain? I am just curious. 

Mr. LOVERRO. Sir, it is not the last few years, but it is 2001, 

written by the Rumsfeld Commission. We all were part of it, at 

least I guess—I know General Kehler and I were part of it. I am 

not sure about Todd. But I don’t think a more thorough description 

of the problem or the solution exists than that report. It is—it is 

prescient in its understanding of what was going to happen because everything it perceived to happen has happened. It spoke 

about the fact that we need to get on the path for a space corps 

then—now 19 years later, we are still not on that path—because 

it saw that the only way to go ahead and deal with this problem 

was to get on that path early. 

I still find it to be the bible for most of this thinking, and if you 

care to read all of the appendices, all of the details spring out at 

you. So I would heartily recommend a review of that report. 

General KEHLER. I would agree there, there have been a lot of 

studies done. I think that is the best one, if you were parachuting 

in to take a look at this. I think that one, it sets the conditions, 

and I think it lays out the issues in a very, very good way. 

I would say, though, that some things have changed between 

then and now. I think the threat that got talked about there has 

arrived. And I think that we just need to be cautious here that in 

going forward—and by the way, I do not disagree that somebody 

should come to work every day thinking about space as a full-time 

job. That was my job, as a matter of fact, in Air Force Space Command. And I think that that is necessary. I do believe that there 

are things that have to be done here just like we have been talking 

about. 

What I am concerned about, though, is how far you go and how 

fast you get there, because my experience with major organizational changes is that they always take longer and cost more than 

we think. And so I don’t think we have the luxury of a lot of time. 

I think we have people in place today who have organizations that 

can be responding and we need to make them do it. 

Mr. HARRISON. One book that comes to mind is Crowded Orbits 

by Clay Moltz. I think that is a good reading and it is a little more 

contemporaneous. I also agree, though, that the Rumsfeld Commission report is a great read, especially when it comes to the organizational aspects that we have discussed much today. And as someone who writes and publishes for a living, I can’t miss the opportunity to promote one of my own reports, but we published a report 

last fall called ‘‘Escalation and Deterrence in the Second Space 

Age.’’ So if you don’t have a copy, we will be glad to get you one. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that. 
37 

I think just like in cyber, there are elements of this—of space as 

a warfighting domain that are challenging for members to think 

about. Because while you can draw analogies to underwater and 

other things, there are differences. And so that is part of the reason I asked the question. 

I think this has been very helpful today. I thank each of you for 

being here. 

The hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:01 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

MARCH 14, 2018 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

MARCH 14, 2018 

(43) 

Statement of Chairman William M. "Mac" Thornberry 

House Armed Services Committee Hearing: 

Space Warfighting Readiness: Policies, Authorities, and Capabilities 

March 14, 2018 

Last month when Secretary Mattis testified on the new National Defense 

Strategy, he said "our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare 

air, land, sea, space, and cyber." 

That statement has two relevant points to today's hearing. First, space is a 

domain ofwarfare, not just an enabler. Second, we are falling behind where we 

should be when it comes to space. Today's hearing will discuss how we can catch 

up. 

As we refocus our defense efforts on strategic rivals, it is clear that they are 

putting significant effort into space. I believe that the American people still do not 

fully realize how dependent our country is on space, not just for military and 

intelligence purposes, but in our every day lives as well. That dependence creates 

a vulnerability, which, like in the other domains, we must count on the American 

military to protect. 

This Committee has focused a lot on readiness and rebuilding our military. 

When it comes to space, there are a number of questions that need answers. Where 

should we be making our investments? Are we attracting and then developing the 

right kind of space warfighters? Perhaps most crucially, are we putting the 

appropriate intellectual effort into space as a warfighting domain? We look 

forward to insights that our witnesses today can give us. 

Finally, I would point out that this committee has been very active in trying 

to prepare the military and the nation for the challenges of space. We have 

streamlined Air Force acquisition authorities, eliminated red tape, empowered a 

single accountable organization for space forces within the Air Force, and 

empowered the Deputy Secretary of Defense to oversee Air Force space reform 

efforts, among other things. But we will not relax our effort. This topic is just too 

important. 
44 

Statement of Ranking Member Adam Smith 

House Armed Services Committee Hearing: 

Space Warfighting Readiness: Policies, Authorities, and Capabilities 

March 14, 2018 

Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

General Kehler, Mr. Loverro, Mr. Harrison, welcome. I look forward to your 

insights on adapting to space as a contested domain and how we can protect our 

assets and deter a war in space. 

New threats in space are emerging rapidly and we must ensure that we are 

adequately postured to address this change. Our committee, under Chairman 

Rogers and Ranking Member Cooper's leadership in the Strategic Forces 

Subcommittee and in dialog with Deputy Secretary of Defense Shanahan, has 

spent a lot of time thinking about making changes to address this threat and 

ensuring that the Department of Defense has the focus, expertise and resources it 

needs to start addressing the threat effectively, and to prioritize space accordingly. 

I commend Chairman Thornberry for continuing this discussion and we are 

grateful for your views to inform how best to achieve effective results, and what 

policies, capabilities, authorities and organizational structure are needed. 

The National Defense Authorization for Fiscal year 2018 required changes 

within the Air Force to better align and consolidate responsibility for space under 

the Air Force Space Command, including the authority to organize, train and equip 

our forces to address new threats in space. 

DOD and AF particularly needed change in organization to elevate and 

coordinate space. Improvements to acquisition and research and development 

investments are also needed, particularly as Air Force investment in space had until 

recently bee at a 30-year low. 

As we look at reorganization and improving existing authorities, 

understanding deterrence as it applies to space must be one of our highest priorities 

in terms of policy considerations. A contlict in space would disproportionally 

affect US assets as we have relied on space for decades, not only for military 

capability but for everyday life. ATMs for example depend on the Global 

Positioning System (GPS). So we must develop and implement policies to enhance 

deterrence and reduce the risk of miscalculation. Making policy decisions about 

sending clear signals to our adversaries and engaging in dialog as this domain 

evolves to one where contlict may occur is a necessary and important element of 

reducing the risk of unintended escalation. 

We must also increase resilience of our space assets. This entails improving 

our systems, but also increasing cooperation with our allies, for example increasing 

the use of hosted payloads and relying on allied systems. This is also an 

opportunity to increase reliance on commercial capability and American ingenuity 
45 

and innovation to increase defense capacity, from improving automation and 

change-detection, to improving space situational awareness, to taking advantage of 

small satellites and lower-cost and rapid launch. 

Thank you for being here and I look forward to your insights. 
46 

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION UNTIL RELEASED BY 

THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

STATEMENT OF 

GENERAL C. ROBERT KEHLER 

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE (RETIRED) 

BEFORE THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

14 MARCH 2018 

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION UNTIL RELEASED BY 

THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 
47 

Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, and distinguished members of the 

committee, I am honored to join with you today to present my views on space warfighting 

readiness. I am especially pleased to be here with my two long-time colleagues and want to 

take this opportunity to thank the members of the committee for your leadership on these 

important matters. As I begin, I want to stress that the views I express today are mine and do 

not represent the Department of Defense, United States Strategic Command, or the United 

States Air Force. 

Mr. Chairman, the United States is perilously close to losing the significant advantages 

that come from being the world's leading spacefaring nation, and time is not on our side. 

Decades of dedicated investment in space have yielded important warfighting and intelligence 

collection benefits for the United States and our allies and partners. As I often said while in 

uniform, space is woven into the fabric of our scientific endeavors, information age economy, 

and national security. Space capabilities make it possible for US policymakers to know critical 

things about our world and adversaries that they would otherwise not know. Space capabilities 

enable the American way of warfare by making it possible for US military commanders and 

forces to see the battlespace more clearly, communicate with certainty, navigate with accuracy, 

and strike with precision. 

However, our adversaries and potential adversaries have noted these significant 

advantages and have moved aggressively to field forces that can challenge our space 

capabilities from the ground, through cyberspace, and in space. From simple (and widely 

available and affordable) GPS jammers in the hands of extremists to highly sophisticated antisatellite (ASAT) weapons in the hands of near-peer competitors like Russia and China, today's 

1 
48 

military commanders are facing serious threats in a domain that is increasingly congested, 

contested, and competitive. Our space advantages have eroded and will continue to do so if 

action is deferred or delayed. 

No one should be surprised. The threat that the intelligence community and military 

commanders have warned of for many years has arrived and is growing. It may have come a bit 

faster than some predicted, but it arrived nonetheless and, while there are many reasons for 

why we are seemingly behind in our response, our energy and resources must be focused on 

making the necessary improvements in a timely way. 

Deterrence is always the preferred outcome, and our ability to deter a conflict that 

begins in or extends into space is based on our readiness to fight such a conflict. While the US 

has never sought to wage war in space, deterrence credibility is diminished if adversaries 

believe they can gain an advantage by attacking US space assets. I believe classic deterrence 

theory applies to space; adversaries will be deterred if they believe they cannot achieve their 

objectives, will suffer unacceptable consequences if they try, or both. 

This is not the first time the US has had to consider challenges to our space capabilities. 

During the Cold War, we expected and planned for the Soviet Union to employ its significant 

capabilities (to include a direct ascent ASAT) to disrupt or destroy our space assets. Although 

there are lessons to be applied from that era, today's problem is far more complex and 

potentially far greater in impact. Given our dependence and that of our allies and partners on 

space, the loss of critical assets today could prove decisive to our ability to successfully 

prosecute a military campaign. It is also possible (perhaps highly likely) that hostilities might 

2 
49 

begin in space or against ground-based space assets in an ambiguous way, and as a precursor to 

terrestrial or conventional action. In any case, adversaries are developing counter-space 

capabilities as part of sophisticated strategies designed to degrade or deny US advantages in 

global awareness and power projection. 

As a result, the US must be prepared to plan and conduct complex operations in space 

that involve joint, interagency, and combined (allied) capabilities and forces in the context of 

broader commercial, non-governmental, and international actors and interests. While being 

mindful of the unique needs associated with space, space operations must integrate seamlessly 

into the multi-domain operations US military commanders will have to conduct to achieve their 

objectives. We should not be preparing to fight (and therefore, deter) an isolated "space war" 

as some headlines would suggest. Space is an integral component of our warfighting structure 

and challenges to our space capabilities must be addressed within the context of that structure. 

I think it's helpful to frame today's space challenges in non-space terms. For example, I 

believe we can find and adopt a conceptual way ahead for space If we examine past challenges 

to our air or maritime superiority. Broadly speaking, in those cases the US formed effective 

policies and strategies, assigned the problem to a responsible warfighting commander with 

appropriate authorities, and turned to the military departments to provide forces ready to fight 

and win in the face of the new threat. This formula for success is well known and understood 

and applicable to the threats we are facing for space. 

As the committee knows, there is a lot of positive work underway to address the 

shortfalls; much of it stimulated by your interest. I know many steps have been taken over the 

3 
50 

last several years and more are underway. What follows is my perspective with 

acknowledgement that many, perhaps all, of these steps are already in work at some level. 

Policy and Strategy: National leaders in the Executive and Legislative Branches must 

align on a cogent, comprehensive plan of action as well as the ends, ways, and means to 

implement that action plan. The national security space (NSS) enterprise exists within the 

overall national space enterprise and its success is linked to the viability and vitality of that 

enterprise. A focused, balanced (government and commercial), and energetic national program 

is the foundation to ensure the US retains its space leadership role and its ability to provide the 

cutting-edge capabilities needed for national security, scientific and technological 

advancement, and economic growth. 

Consistent with prior administrations of both political parties, the current National 

Security Strategy recognizes that unimpeded access to and use of space is a vital national 

interest and notes that the US will respond to threats to our vital national interests in space "at 

a time, place, manner, and domain of our choosing." While sound policy, to effectively deal 

with a conflict that begins or extends into space this general policy must be implemented in a 

manner that is helpful to commanders in operational planning and execution. 

Policymakers must work with commanders to develop strategic intentions and politicalmilitary objectives that drive space planning and course of action development, provide views 

on matters like hostile intent and actions, and concepts of collective self-defense and 

responsibility to protect. Further, policymakers and commanders must assess whether 

modifications are needed to the national and military planning and decision-making processes 

4 
51 

to enable operations with relevant speed and agility. Finally, given the interagency (and, 

increasingly, commercial) nature of the US national security space enterprise, policymakers 

must carefully identify and address barriers to effective planning and execution to include 

security policy, clearance processing, and information sharing. 

Authority and Responsibility: Typically, two categories of authorities are discussed 

related to space: operational and acquisition. Regarding operational authorities, given the 

multiplicity of actors involved in today's military operations (including space) it is important for 

commanders to achieve a common understanding of authorities vertically across organizations 

and horizontally across mission partner organizations to achieve unity of effort. It is also 

important to ensure space operational authorities are "normalized", so space forces are fully 

integrated into the joint force with appropriate rules of engagement. To ensure unity of effort, 

it is also important to clarify the relationships and responsibilities among the Commander, US 

Strategic Command and other US government space operators once hostilities in space are 

imminent or underway. Regarding acquisition authorities, it is important to align authorities 

with service responsibilities and to delegate those authorities to the lowest feasible level. 

Operational Concepts: Countering an adversary's efforts to deny our space capabilities 

within or even outside a conflict begins with an operational concept (CONOPS). Such a CONOPS 

would address the critical missions and tasks, the broad ways and means the force will use to 

accomplish them, organizational relationships, supporting and supported relationships 

(interagency, joint, multi-national), and information flow and exchange requirements. 

Ultimately, a CONOPS is the critical element in the planning process, is inextricably linked to 

planning, and drives the formulation of technical solutions, capability development, and 

5 
52 

resource allocation. Bringing the ongoing space CONOPS work to conclusion and updating joint 

force CONOPS to account for degraded or denied space capabilities are complementary, high 

priority activities. 

Organizational Structure for Warfighting: In my view, today's joint warfighting structure 

is appropriate and adequate to prepare for and fight a space-related conflict. It is in the 

combatant commands where all the pieces are brought together that form the nation's 

warfighting capability. As a Combatant Commander, the Commander US Strategic Command 

has the necessary responsibility and authority to organize his command for warfighting 

effectiveness, develop plans and courses of action, conduct exercises, exercise command 

authority over assigned forces and establish relationships with entities over which he doesn't 

have command authority (unity of effort). Most importantly, this is the same process used for 

land, air, and sea. Collaborative planning between Combatant Commands and among the 

relevant US government and commercial space organizations is a critical step that must be 

pursued with high priority. Updated plans can then be trained and exercised with realism; 

including allies and commercial entities. 

Capability Development and Acquisition: Forces must be equipped and trained to fulfill 

their mission responsibilities in the face of determined adversary action against space assets. 

Capability architectures (not just space architectures) must become more resilient and all forces 

must be prepared and equipped to operate in an environment that assumes some degradation 

of space assets (e.g., communications and GPS). Faster acquisition, leveraging commercial 

capabilities, better integration with allies and coalition partners all play a role in addressing 

today's shortfalls. 

6 
53 

In my view, we should move quickly to create a rapid acquisition process for space and 

continue to increase resources devoted to space situational awareness, C3, protection and 

resilience as a matter of national priority. The services must collaborate to develop and deploy 

resilient and defendable mission architectures and fully leverage commercial capabilities and 

opportunities. 

Mr. Chairman, you asked for my perspective on the current readiness of US forces to 

succeed and successfully operate in a conflict that begins in or extends to the space domain. In 

summary I think we are not yet where we need to be, but I am encouraged by the focus and 

commitment I see from the Congress and the Executive Branch, and by the sense of urgency I 

see from my uniformed colleagues. But getting to where we need to go requires a priority shift 

and a long-term commitment of energy and resources. 

Fortunately, we are not starting from scratch. As usual, I am most encouraged by the 

talent and commitment of the young men and women that make up our space forces and their 

leaders. They are the foundation we need to meet the challenge and increasing their readiness 

is a high priority. While the US Air Force and others have made great progress since Desert 

Storm in bringing space support to national leaders and the warfighters, the military services 

must now shift from a culture that presumed space superiority to a culture prepared to gain 

and maintain space superiority as a first condition of providing that support. From acquisition 

to education and training to operational planning and execution, the US needs to field a space 

force-and a joint force-that is ready for space conflict. 

Thank you for inviting me, and I look forward to working with you in this effort. 

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54 

General C. Robert Kehler, USAF (Ret.) 

General C. Robert Kehler, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), is the former commander, U.S. Strategic 

Command (USSTRATCOM). In this role, he was directly responsible to the President and 

Secretary of Defense for the plans and operations of all U.S. forces conducting strategic 

deterrence, nuclear alert, and Department of Defense space, cyberspace, and associated 

operations. Previously, as commander of Air Force Space Command, he was responsible for the 

development, acquisition, and operation of the Air Force's space and missile systems. He retired 

from the Air Force on Jan. I, 2014, after over 38 years of distinguished service. 

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel praised Gen. Kehler's uncompromising standards and tireless 

efforts to "build and maintain the space, cyber, and missile defense capabilities that 

USSTRATCOM needs for today's security environment" and dedication to maintaining a "safe, 

secure, ready, and effective nuclear deterrent force." 

Over his career, Gen. Kehler served in a variety of important operational and staff assignments 

and was among the few to command at the squadron, group, wing, major command, and 

combatant command level. As commander of USSTRA TCOM, his forces directly suppmied 

combat operations and participated in numerous global contingencies. He also directed the 

National Security Space Office where he integrated the activities of a number of space 

organizations on behalf of the Under Secretary of the Air Force and Director, National 

Reconnaissance Office. He was also assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force Office of 

Legislative Liaison, where he was point man on Capitol Hill for matters regarding the 

President's ICBM Modernization Program. 

His military career began in the R.O.T.C. program at Pennsylvania State University, where he 

earned a bachelor's degree in education. In addition to his command and management training, 

he holds master's degrees in national security and strategic studies trom the Naval War College 

and in public administration from the University of Oklahoma. Gen. Kehler completed the 

Program for Executives at Carnegie Mellon University, the National Security Leadership Course 

at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and the program 

for senior executives in National and International Security at the John F. Kennedy School of 

Government at Harvard University. 

Gen. Kehler's numerous awards and decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service 

Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Defense Superior Service 

Medal, the Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, 

the Meritorious Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters, the Air Force Commendation Medal 

and the French Legion of Honour. 
55 

DISCl.OSURE FORM FOR WITNESSES 

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U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

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NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION UNTIL RELEASED BY 

THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

Space Waifighting Readiness: Policies, Authorities, and Capabilities 

STATEMENT OF 

MR. DOUGLAS L. LOVERRO 

FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE 

FOR SPACE POLICY 

BEFORE THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

March 14,2018 

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION UNTIL RELEASED BY 

THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 
59 

Introduction 

Chainnan Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, Members of the Subcommittee, I am 

pleased to have been invited here today to join Gen Kehler, and Mr Harrison to talk to you about 

an issue that is critical for the Department of Defense and for our nation-DoD Space 

Wartighting Readiness. As you are keenly aware, space remains as vital today to our national 

security as ever. It continues to underpin DoD capabilities worldwide at every level of 

engagement, from humanitarian assistance, conventional conflict, and nuclear war. And as 

General Hyten stated in his testimony before the House Anned Services Strategic Forces 

Subcommittee last week, space capabilities are not just crucial for when we enter the fight, but 

are indeed a critical supporting element of US deterrent strategy to prevent that fight from 

starting. 

Further, space provides a lifeblood to US economic vitality, serving as an interconnected 

infrastructure which empowers the lives of our citizens worldwide, and increasingly represents a 

business area in which the US continues to hold and expand its unqualified advantage. Make no 

mistake, in all three US space sectors-national security, civil, and commercial-the US 

continues to lead the world. But, while our leadership in both civil and commercial space is 

secure, our leadership, and in fact our capabilities, in the national security sector are being 

actively and aggressively challenged. 

Our adversaries are aware that the US military relies on space to empower its operations 

and to wield an overwhelming military advantage-and they don't like it. That understanding 

was best summed up by the Chinese strategist Wang Hucheng nearly two decades ago when he 

wrote that, " ... for countries that can never win a war with the United States by using the method 

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of tanks and planes, attacking the U.S. space system 

may be an irresistible and most tempting choice." 1 

Unfortunately, Hucheng' s observation was not just 

idle speculation-rather, it became a tirm basis tor 

China's and Russia's anti-access, area denial 

strategy, one which they have been working ever 

since and which they will soon bring to fruition. As Director of National Intelligence Daniel 

Coats warned in his February 131

h Worldwide Threat Assessment, "Russian and Chinese 

destructive ASAT weapons probably will reach initial operational capability in the next few 

years." 2 He went on to observe that all US space capabilities are at risk and that both Russia and 

China would likely target those capabilities iffuture conflict were to occur. Understanding all 

this, the question posed in this hearing, "Are US Space Warfighting Forces Ready", becomes 

particularly pertinent to understand. 

US Space Warfighting Readiness 

Unfortunately, the answer is "No"-we are not ready, or more properly, we are not on a 

firm path to be ready. Before I explain why, let me first make two things perfectly clear: First 

and most critically, this is absolutely not an indictment of the incredible members of our military 

armed services and intelligence community charged with this responsibility-they stand ready to 

maintain US space capabilities in eve1y way humanly possible given the tools at their disposalit's the tools that are not up to the task. And second, no adversary should mistake that statement 

1 Wang Hucheng, 'The US Military's "Soft Ribs" and Strategic Weaknesses', Liaowang, val. 27, reprinted in Xinhua 

Hong Kong Service, 5 July 2000, in FBIS-CHI-2000-0705, 25 July 2000. 

2 Daniel R. Coats, Director of National Intelligence, "Statement for the Record, Worldwide Threat Assessment of 

the US Intelligence Community", February 13, 2018, pg 13 

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61 

as an invitation to attack. The fact of the matter is 

that US space capabilities are robust and, faced with 

any attack that could be mounted today, I am fully 

confident that they will continue to provide the US 

with sufficient warfighting edge to assure an 

adversary's defeat. But as we move into the future, 

as our adversaries begin to close the gap in other 

warfighting domains, and as they continue to field 

and expand their counterspace capabilities, that 

calculus could change. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that our current ability to withstand 

an adversary attack is based not so much on our space warfighting readiness, but rather their lack 

of a fully developed and operationalized threat. If that threat did exist; if their forces were at the 

state of capability and readiness they seek, then I fear the answer would be quite different. In 

some cases, such as satellite communications (SatCom) jamming, they are already there; and the 

unwelcome news is that they are working aggressively to make that the case for every mission 

area. Meanwhile, our dilemma is that we are failing to respond fast enough and robustly enough 

to prevent that from happening. So, while I am not worried today, I am worried about tomorrow; 

and I fear tomorrow is not all that far away. 

Elements of Readiness 

In your invitation to appear here today, you cited several elements that sum to assess our 

warfighting readiness and importantly, our ability to deter attacks on US space assets. Those 

elements include policies and authorities, current and future capabilities, integration of allied and 

commercial capabilities, our organizational structure, and the overall direction of our national 

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62 

security space enterprise. You also asked what additional policy considerations would be 

necessary to successfully signal our adversaries and deter conflict in space. You're your 

indulgence, I'll try to summarize my assessment of each of these elements in the paragraphs 

below. 

Space Deterrence 

Before I do, I would like to make sure that we understand a very important fact--deterring 

space attack cannot be considered in isolation any more than conflict in space can be viewed in 

isolation. As Gen Hyten, the commander of US Strategic Command, has repeatedly stated in 

speeches and in testimony, deterrence and war do not occur in isolated domains. Rather it is sum 

of all our capabilities and all our actions across all warfighting domains that lead to deterrence 

during peace, and victory during war. But the role that space plays in this equation is key 

because losing space degrades not only our space capability, but our capability in the three 

traditional terrestrial land, sea, and air domains as well. So, assuring that our space forces 

survive assures the ability of those terrestrial 

forces to succeed, and that then leads to the 

deterrence effect we seek. On the other hand, we 

must also realize that no capable adversary will 

hesitate to exercise their sovereign need to attempt 

to eliminate the US space advantage. Regardless 

of how ready our space forces are, that readiness 

cannot deter a determined attack; therefore, we 

must make certain that our space forces can 

withstand such an onslaught. 

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Policy and Authorities 

US National Space Policy is remarkably clear and is succinctly summed up in the 

President's most recent National Security Strategy: 

"The United States considers unfettered access to and freedom to operate in space 

to be a vital interest. Any harmlhl interference with or an attack upon critical 

components of our space architecture that directly affects this vital U.S. interest will 

be met with a deliberate response at a time, place, manner, and domain of our 

choosing." 3 

Perhaps surprising to some, this policy position has remained almost completely 

unchanged throughout the histmy of US space etTorts and through both Republican and 

Democratic administrations at least as far back as the 1960s. So, at the highest level there is no 

doubt about what the policy of the US is-we consider space to be our vital interest and we will 

choose to respond to attack should its usc be threatened. 

As a statement of overall policy, this is a good start. But it's insufficient to guide actions 

and outcomes that we expect from our space forces. To fill that void, the US's 2010 National 

Space Policy, and more recently updated 2016 Department of Defense Space Policy both clearly 

articulate that it is the policy of the US to "Increase [the] assurance and resilience of missionessential functions ... by developing the techniques, measures, relationships, and capabilities 

necessary to maintain continuity of services ... [including] enhancing the protection and resilience 

of selected spacecraft and supporting infrastructure."4 

3 "National Security Strategy of the United States of America", December 2017, pg 31 

4 "National Space Policy of The United States of America", June 2010, pgs 4, 9 

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64 

Taken together, the National Security 

Strategy's focus on response to attack, along 

with the National Space Policy's focus on 

being able to withstand an attack, create the 

policy essentials for deterrence and act as 

bookends to encompass each lower level of 

policy decision. While some ofthose lower 

levels are classified, and therefore prevent me 

from going into more detail, I find no 

li.mdamental elements missing from their pages. So, it is my opinion that our current policies 

fully support space warfighting readiness. 

There continue however to be some questions when it comes to authorities. Authority for 

US space forces is, in general, centered in the space warfighting combatant command, 

USSTRA TCOM. However, over the history of space activities, that authority has been seen to 

wax and wane when it comes to decisions to employ active space control measures and in the 

governance of US space intelligence forces, specifically those of the National Reconnaissance 

Office (NRO). The establishment of the National Space Defense Center is one notably positive 

response to this second authorities problem and speaks to the ability of leaders to act when 

necessary. 

So, while the absence of precise top-level decisions on authorities is troublesome, leaders 

both within and outside the Department have been able to work through these issues and US 

warfighting effectiveness has not sutlered. But that condition fundamentally represents the 

nature of yesterday's threats which were slow acting and therefore afforded time for 

7 
65 

bureaucracies to grind out an answer. In any future great power contest in which war has 

extended to space, the element of time is unlikely to be on our side and therefore, the questions 

of authorities become more critical. 

I do not want to overstate this concern-! do not see authorities as a fundamental 

constraint upon our space warfighting readiness-those constraints lie elsewhere as l will soon 

discuss. But, when and if we address those other issues, the lack of clear authorities could end 

up being deterministic to our success. 

should also hasten to add, that while 

internal US policy is clear and adequate to 

support our readiness, there are some 

international policy decisions that are less 

robust and would benefit from clear, 

unambiguous US leadership-·! will discuss some of those briefly in the concluding thoughts 

below. 

Current and Future Capabilities 

I stated earlier that the members of our space military and intelligence communities stand 

ready to make every eJTort that is humanly possible to maintain our space capabilities with the 

tools they have-the problem is that they just don't have the right tools. And that's not just my 

assessment. In a recent statement following another Chinese ASAT test, Gen Hyten said, "We 

have very old space capabilities too, very effective space capabilities, but they arc very old and 

not built for a contested environment," 5 This is not new news-it has been stated publicly by 

every Pentagon and National Security Space witness for the last 5 years. The real problem is, we 

5 Gertz, Bill, The Washington Free Beacon, "China Carries Out Flight Test of Anti-Satellite Missile", August 2, 2017 

8 
66 

are failing to address it adequately as we head to 

the future. Let me be clear--this is not an 

acquisition issue-it is a planning and strategy 

issue. It's not about how we will buy 

something, it's deciding what we need. 

More than anything else, it is this fact 

that concerns me. The chasm between what our 

warfighting space commanders will need to win the space war, and the capabilities that we 

intend to develop and deploy, continues to grow even as the threat becomes more robust and 

more urgent. Leaders like Gen Hyten and many before him have made it clear that they do not 

need, in fact they do not want, large, expensive, non-proliferated, non-diversified space 

architectures. From both the military and civilian defense leadership we continue to hear the 

same--that they intend to build the resilient and responsive space architectures called for in our 

National Space Policy and our DoD Space Policy. And yet, as I review the President's 2019 

Space Budget I continue to find descriptions that have little in common with those stated desires. 

For example, the Air Force has made it clear in this year's budget that they intend to replace the 

aging and non-resilient first-generation Space 

Based Infra-Red System (SBIRS) with a next 

generation Overhead Persistent Infra-red (OPIR) 

System. Yet, as we examine the budget 

justification document it becomes clear that 

while this new system may include some better 

on-board protections than the current system, it is 

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67 

still certain to be an expensive, large, and sparsely populated constellation of satellites, the loss 

of any single one of which would significantly impair US missile warning capabilities. And to 

be clear, strategically and practically, there is no way to protect a single satellite against the 

determined attack of an aggressive adversary, especially if that satellite is in a fixed 

geosynchronous orbit regardless of on-board or otT board defensive measures. To make matters 

worse, according to that same budget documentation, the earliest we're likely to sec this evolved 

system is somewhere in the latter half of the next decade, and this prediction is before the 

development even begins. 6 History would suggest it will be much later. 

Similarly, despite years of statements from defense space leaders espousing the virtues of 

disaggregation, we find that the 2019 President's budget continues to articulate its intent to field 

an aggregated Evolved Strategic SATCOM (ESS) System. And like its missile warning 

counterpart, the system is significantly delayed with Milestone B not occurring until 2022 at the 

earliest, a nearly 18-month delay from the same program schedule in 2018 7

• So, while China 

and Russia are driving through generations of 

ASA T systems every three to five years, it is taking 

us over a decade to even begin to field a system 

responsive to their first-generation threat. Stated 

more clearly, when it comes to strategic missile 

warning and nuclear command and control, the 

evolved US response to the ASA T threat we see 

being deployed today will be ready near the end of 

6 Air Force FY 19 RDT&E Justification Book, Vol II, pgs 1014- 1018 

7 Air Force FY 19 RDT&E Justification Book, Vol II, pg 442 versus Air Force FY 18 RDT&E Justification Book, Vol II, pg 

328 

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68 

the next decade; meanwhile the threat will have leapt forward two more generations, and likely 

made our response moot. 

This situation stands in stark contrast to the DoD's stated goals in their interim report in 

response to your Section 160 I direction in which they would aim to reduce development 

timelines for space systems from "typical eight-year development to three years" 8. The problem 

with that goal is that it is unattainable if the item being developed is a large, expensive, space 

system that is planned to be developed once and produced several times. On the other hand, 

there are many ways to accomplish that goal, and even more importantly to meet the stated 

warfighting and policy needs for resilient, defendable architectures, but not by following the 

normal space development methods that have characterized the last 30 years-and it is there 

where we find the greatest issues. 

These two examples are just the tip of the iceberg of what is lacking in our future space 

planning and budgeting. A key element of any future space strategy is the ability to 

operationally test that strategy under real life conditions. The Air Force knows this lobe true for 

Air Operations and is why they created the Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB following the 

failures of Vietnam Air Combat. Red Flag training was crucial to the development of air tactics 

and doctrine and has assured US air dominance ever since, honing not just current airpower 

skills, but testing future air combat tactics that drive next generation capability. We know that 

we need this same kind of training for space warfighters·---but once again, it is basically absent 

from the budget. We can blame some of that on the fact that there is not enough budget to go 

around-yet we fail to embrace elements of any sensible plan that would make that budget go 

much further. Such is the case for allied and commercial integration. 

8 DoD Interim Report on Organizational and Management Structure for the National Security Space Components of 

the Department of Defense; March 2018, pg 5 

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Integration of Allied and Commercial Capabilities 

The recently released National Defense Strategy Summary States that, 

"Mutually beneficial alliances and partnerships are crucial to our strategy, 

providing a durable, asymmetric strategic advantage that no competitor or rival can 

match .... By working together with allies and partners we amass the greatest possible 

strength for the long-term advancement of our interests, maintaining favorable 

balances of power that deter aggression and support the stability that generates 

economic growth."9 

Nowhere is this sentiment more apropos than for space. Of the top 21 space faring 

nations (by number of satellites), 15 are close US allies or partners, and, in general, they are also 

the most advanced. It has been a central element of our space resilience doctrinal thinking since 

the release ofthe 20 I 0 National Space Policy to aggressively pursue these space alliances to face 

the growing Russian and Chinese threat-and yet 

for over a decade we have failed to define any 

substantial allied contribution to our space 

architecture. Not only is this fiscally indefensible, 

it is strategically myopic. Today, adversaries need 

target solely US DoD or Intelligence space assets to 

effectively eliminate our space advantage, and the 

advantage those capabilities provide to our allies as well. The lack of integration of Allied space 

warfighting capabilities into our basic force structure is a serious and inexcusable oversight 

within the current DoD space budget--it conflicts with our National Defense Strategy, our 

National and DoD Space Policies, and frankly our approach to cooperative defense in every 

other domain-plus, it slows us down and costs us money. Similarly, as I mentioned in my 

9 Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, Jan 2018, pg 8 

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introduction, the commercial space revolution represents a singular American advantage for the 

US, and yet other than for launch, our defense space budgets and plans act as if they barely exist. 

To be fair, USSTRATCOM and the OSD Space Policy Office have been committed to 

combined space operations for nearly 6 years under the so called Combined Space Operations 

(CSpO) initiative and I want to congratulate them for continuing to expand that forum. But those 

efforts have failed to yield any true cooperation in future capability fielding, an activity under 

CSpO just as important as combined operations. 

None of this results from not understanding the problem-we do. Again, leaders across 

the space divide espouse in speech after speech the role of allied and commercial space-we just 

fail to fund it. Your committee has been clear on its desire to address both these issues pushing 

the DoD to pursue satellite communication pathfinders and multi-global navigation satellite 

system receivers-yet the DoD continues to drag its feet. As a result, it remains highly doubtful 

that the next generation ofGPS user equipment (GPS M-Code Increment 2) will incorporate the 

requirement to receive signals from the multitude of allied or foreign sources they could use; and 

it is also highly likely that the first generation oflarge low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite 

communication constellations from 

One Web, SpaceX, Telcsat, and the like 

will launch without any real input from 

DoD on our cybersecurity needs, much 

less our investment to make those needs a 

reality. And this is where I find our 

planning most lacking. Through the use 

of allied and commercial capabilities we 

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could dramatically hasten the pace and power of resilience plus significantly reduce the cost to 

get there, while in the process, greatly adding to the complexity of the technical and strategic 

problem our adversaries must face-we know this, but we are failing to do it. It is our policy, 

just not our plan. 

Organizational Structure 

Some will ask how much these problems have to do with organizational structure, a topic 

that this committee spent much time pursuing last year, versus just normal bureaucratic 

inefficiencies that we might find across the Department. From my perspective, they are 

intrinsically linked. The ability of our space leaders to understand the strategy of space 

deterrence and space warfighting and how to address those issues directly by understanding all 

the tools at their disposal results from our ability to grow space-smart leaders who can think and 

act in response to long-tem1 and short-term changes and challenges to the domain. 

It is not enough to have two or three senior leaders such as Gen Hyten or Gen Raymond 

or Gen Kehler who understand the issue. It must be understood at the Captain, Major, 

Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel level. It must be something the entire force comprehends as 

they go about their daily job of defining requirements for the next generation system, exercising 

those capabilities in flag-like exercises, conceiving ofthe next elements of a resilient 

architecture, or driving doctrinal alternatives that eventually change the way we fight. It is not 

something you can learn without committed long term focus on space force development. 

Unfortunately, that focus is still lacking. 

The Air Force continues to avoid defining a true space career path, separate and distinct 

from its Air-focused pattern, that is responsive to the peculiar needs of space leader 

development. It's a different path than the path for Air leaders due to the di1Terences inherent in 

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72 

the domain. For example, no space warrior will ever actually operate in space-rather he will 

act at a distance. That distance drives a differing level of domain understanding than if he was a 

pilot in the front seat of a fighter aircraft. You learn about Air doctrine from flying planes. But 

you do not learn about space doctrine by flying satellites-and yet the Air Force views them as 

the same. As long as that is so, we will fail to grow the space smart leaders we need in sufficient 

number to truly effect change. 

It is not a given that such career planning requires a separate service-I could argue 

either side of that issue. But it is clear that it requires a separate career path than that of its parent 

service. Whether that is under a separate service, a Marine Corps like structure, or an Army Air 

Corps structure is argumentative and beyond the scope of this particular hearing. But if we are to 

address the problems discussed above, if we are truly to embrace space warfighting readiness, we 

must address the personnel issue above all else. 

Concluding Thoughts 

The issues discussed above do not answer the full question of assuring US Space 

Warfighting Readiness, but they are a good start. There are hundreds of additional elements to 

address: The need for a separate Space Unified or sub-unified Command, International policy 

changes (such as whether the US should seek to ban debris causing weapons), civil space 

elements (the fate of space traffic management), and advanced technology elements. Each will 

need to be addressed fully to assure that tomorrow's warfighters are able to expect the same 

qualitative advantages they get from space, that allow them to dominate our adversaries, as they 

do today. As l view the current DoD glide slope, I do not find that we are on pace to address 

these issues and as such, our space capabilities are at risk. We do have time, but that time is 

quickly being spent. We can close the gap in the short term by embracing elements of the 

15 
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strategy that we have so far avoided-allied and commercial integration, smaller, proliferated, 

and disaggregated systems, and investment in exercise and training assets to truly support a 

Space Flag-like event. But in the long term we must face the fact that to remain ahead over the 

next half century, we're going to need to grow the kind of space leaders that can think 

doctrinally, technically, and operationally for space in the same way we grew them in the 1930s 

and 40s for the Air. That could not have occurred within the constraints of the pre-World War II 

Army personnel system-nor can it occur within the constraints of our pre-first space war Air 

Force personnel system. 

Today's budget and space planning strategy can be fixed to address the threats of the next 

decade and l would encourage the Congress and the Department to work to execute those 

changes by embracing the planning prescriptions discussed above. But for the long-term 

solution we must look beyond simple budgets and programs-we must look to the people. In 

1937, Gen Frank Andrews, a revered Air Force pioneer for whom Andrews Air Force base is 

named, wrote: 

"I don't believe any balanced plan to provide the nation with an adequate, effective 

Air Force ... can be obtained, within the limitations of the War Department budget, 

and without providing an organization, individual to the needs of such an Air Force. 

Legislation to establish such an organization ... will continue to appear until this 

turbulent and vital problem is satisfactorily solved" (emphasis added) 10 

By heeding Gen Andrew's call, and creating the United States Air Force, Congress and 

the President propelled changes in Air Power that moved the United States Air Force from the 

equal of its intemational counterparts, to a modern Air Force that is hands down, the best in the 

world. The same must be true for space. If we are to assure US space warfighting readiness far 

10 Walk, HermanS, Planning and Organizing the Post War Air Force 1943-1947. Office of Air Force History, USAF, 

Wash DC, 1984, pg 1 

16 
74 

into the future, against the rising threats we see today, we must establish, either within or outside 

the Air Force, an organization individual to those needs. 

17 
75 

Douglas L. Loverro 

• President, LovetTO Consulting, LLC: 2017- Present 

• Deputy A sst Secretary of Defense, Space Policy: 2013 ~ 2017 

• Executive Director, Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) and Deputy Program Executive 

Officer for Space: 2007 ~ 2013 

• Deputy Director for System Engineering, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO): 2006 ~ 2007 

• Program Director, Future Imagery Systems, NRO: 2002 ~ 2006 

• Program Director, GPS, SMC: 1999 ~ 2002 

• Program Director Advanced Systems, SMC: 1997 ~ 1999 

Mr. Douglas Loverro is a highly regarded senior DoD space thinker and leader. While on active 

duty, he led multiple programs within DoD and the NRO including the AF's GPS program, 

NRO's Future Imagery Program, and all AF Space Control programs. As a civilian he served as 

Deputy for System engineering at the NRO, Executive Director for the AF's Space and Missile 

System Center as well as the Deputy PEO for Space, and most recently, as DoD's Deputy 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. 

He holds a Master's Degrees in Physics from the University of New Mexico, a Master's of 

Political Science from Auburn University, and an MBA from the University of west Florida in 

addition to his BS in Chemistry from the US Air Force Academy. He was a distinguished 

graduate from the Air Force's Air Command and Staff College and Squadron Officer School, 

and was the #I graduate from DoD's Industrial College of the Armed Forces. 

He is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards including the Secretary of Defense's Medal for 

Outstanding Public Service, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Federation of Galaxy 

Explorers, the Society of Satellite Professional Engineers Stellar Award, and the AFCEA 

Benjamin Oliver Gold Medal for Engineering amongst many other civilian and military honors. 
76 

DISCLOSURE FORM FOR WITNESSES 

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77 

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79 

Statement Before the 

House Committee on Armed Services 

A Testimony by: 

Todd Harrison 

Director, Aerospace Security Project; Director, Defense Budget 

Analysis; and Senior Fellow, International Security Program 

CSIS 

March 14,2018 

2118 Rayburn House Office Building 
80 

Harrison: Written Testimony, HASC 3/14/2018 2 

Chainnan Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, and Members of the Committee, I want to begin 

by thanking you for the opportunity to testifY today on the important and timely topic of space 

security. Space security and understanding the dynamics of escalation and deterrence in space is 

an important part of our research program at CSIS. I want to thank my CSIS colleagues who 

have contributed to these efforts, especially Zack Cooper, Kaitlyn Johnson, and Thomas Roberts. 

While the thoughts and ideas I am sharing today draw from the work our team has done in this 

area, I am testifYing in my personal capacity and the opinions I express are not intended to 

represent those of my colleagues or CSIS. 

Much has changed in the space domain over the past thirty years, but it is important to remember 

that not everything is new. Space was a contested domain from the beginning. The first test of 

an anti-satellite weapon occurred in 1959, just two years after Sputnik. Throughout the Cold 

War, both the United States and the Soviet Union developed and tested a variety of anti-satellite 

weapons. Thankfully, none of these were used in anger, but the threat was ever-present. What 

has changed is our confidence in the ability to deter attacks against our space systems. 

Deterrence in space is not as clear today as it was during the Cold War. As Mr. Loverro and 

others have written eloquently about before, throughout much of the Cold War national security 

space systems were protected by the cloak of nuclear deterrence because these systems were 

primarily used to suppmi nuclear forces. But today our national security space systems are used 

across the full spectrum of conflict, from peacetime presence activities to counter-terrorism 

operations to high-end combat against a near-peer adversary. Space systems give the U.S. 

military global reach, power, and influence. 

Our dependence on space across the full spectrum of conflict creates a vulnerability because our 

space systems are not adequately protected across the full spectrum of threats. Conflict that 

begins or extends into space, particularly if it becomes kinetic, will not end well for anyone. Our 

primary focus should therefore be on deterring conflict in space, and I believe there are three 

main areas where we can do more to improve our deterrence posture and the readiness of our 

space forces. 

Clarifying Thresholds 

first, we need a clearer understanding and articulation of the thresholds for escalation in space. 

Based on my experience participating in and conducting space crisis simulations and war games, 

the escalation thresholds for conflict in space are often ambiguous, particularly at the lower end 

of the spectrum of conflict. As in other domains, thresholds depend on the broader context of a 

conflict, and each side can have differing views of their own thresholds and their perception of 

the other side's thresholds. What is different about the space domain is that we do not have much 

history to draw upon or widely accepted nonns of conduct. The United States should continue to 

lead in this area by working closely with international and commercial partners to establish 

sensible nonns of conduct and to abide by them. 

Another complicating factor is that adversaries can use forms of attack against our space systems 

that are difficult to detect, attribute, and deter. Some types of attack, such as jamming, are 
81 

Harrison: Written Testimony, HASC 3/14/2018 3 

temporary in nature, while other methods of attack, such as using a laser to blind a satellite's 

sensors, are not visible to others. And many methods of non-kinetic attack against space systems, 

including cyber attacks against ground stations, can be difficult to attribute in a timely manner. It 

is nearly impossible to deter an attack if you cannot attribute the source of the attack or know 

with confidence that the effects being experienced are in fact malicious in nature. We therefore 

need to improve our ability to detect and attribute these types of threats because this is where 

thresholds are most uncertain. 

This ambiguity and lack of common understanding about thresholds can lead to escalation by 

miscalculation. Miscalculation can occur when an adversary believes that its actions are below 

the threshold that will trigger a strong military response from the United States when in fact we 

may view those actions as crossing a major threshold. Ambiguous escalation thresholds can also 

invite grey zone aggression in space. We already see this occurring in other domains today, 

where adversaries are probing at the seams and tlnding ways to create problems for us or 

advance their own ambitions without triggering direct, overt conflict. 

Improving Capabilities 

A second area where we should be focusing more effort is the development of advanced and 

innovative space capabilities. We are in the midst of a renaissance in commercial space, with 

many firms making advances to do things that used to be the exclusive domain of governments. 

The surface of the Earth and the space environment itself m·e becoming more transparentwhether we like it or not. Overall, I believe this is a positive development for U.S. national 

security because the United States is at the center of this commercial space revolution. The 

challenge for the military is to stay attuned to advances in commercial space so that it can 

leverage the technology, systems, and services created by these companies when possible. 

It is difficult to be attuned to advances in space technology if acquisition officers are rotating into 

space programs with little if any prior space experience. One potential remedy is for the Air 

Force to create a dedicated cadre of space acquisition professionals, both civilians and uniformed 

military, that are managed separately from the rest of the Air Force acquisition workforce. This 

would allow for more specific training, a deeper level of technical knowledge, and more relevant 

career experiences. 

The speed of innovation is also a prime concern. DoD and this committee are rightly focusing 

efforts on how to improve the speed of defense acquisitions overall and space acquisitions in 

particulm·. But it is not just the speed of the acquisition process that is the problem-the slow 

pace of the budgeting process is also a major issue. The planning, programming, budgeting, and 

execution system used by DoD to develop its budget request and the authorization and 

appropriations process used by Congress to provide funding and oversight are too slow. Even 

when these processes work as intended and we are not under a continuing resolution for half the 

fiscal year, it takes about two years from having an innovative idea to having money available to 

put on a contract. In that amount of time, the commercial space industry will have already 

progressed to a new generation of technology. Moreover, the window of opportunity for some 

things, like hosting a military payload on a commercial satellite, may only last a few months. 

Innovation is not just about having great ideas and new technologies; it is also about being 

prepared to take advantage of opportunities when they materialize. 
82 

Harrison: Written Testimony, HASC 3/14/2018 4 

A potential solution I would encourage you to consider is creating something akin to a working 

capital fund for space innovation. This approach would not be appropriate for major defense 

acquisition programs, but it could be valuable for smaller prototyping and rapid response 

programs. The idea is to create a pot of funding with greater flexibility and authorities and to prefund the account so that money is available before needs arise. Congress could do this by 

appropriating a relatively steady rate of funding in each year's budget to replenish the working 

capital fund and by transferring unobligated funding from other accounts. DoD would be allowed 

to spend the funding within the constraints defined by Congress, including reporting 

requirements throughout the year as funding is obligated. 

Improving Communications 

A third and final area I believe needs more attention is the problem of communicating thresholds 

and capabilities. Communication is a critical part of deterrence and our ability to manage 

escalation in a crisis. We must be mindful that space is becoming more transparent by the day, 

and some of the capabilities and operations that we were able to keep secret in the past may not 

be secret any longer. 

Secrecy invites suspicion among our allies and partners and does little to deter our adversaries. 

While certain aspects of our national security space systems must remain secret to be effective, 

too often the U.S. military and intelligence community default to over-classification. I believe 

that this is a systemic and cultural problem that must be addressed immediately. It was an 

encouraging first step when DoD declassified the existence of the Geosynchronous Space 

Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) in 2014. I believe that this disclosure enhances our 

security and helps deter aggression in space because the world is now on notice that we are 

watching what others are doing in geosynchronous orbit. I would like to see us go a step further 

to name and shame bad actors in space-those who conduct irresponsible, aggressive, or hostile 

activities-and back it up with hard data. 

The over-classification of information also inhibits our ability to work with international partners 

and commercial firms, both of which can play an important role in improving the resilience of 

our space systems. Classification issues can make it difficult to even discuss escalation 

thresholds with other nations, even some of our closest treaty allies. Lowering classification 

levels, where appropriate, would ease the integration of more allies and partners into our space 

operations. Similarly, over-classification makes it difficult to work with many commercial firms, 

especially those that are new to working with the government and may not have cleared 

personnel. Over-classification effectively serves as an overhead tax on all our space activities 

because it more complexity and time to everything we do. 

Another way to improve the communication of thresholds is to be more explicit with commercial 

satellite service providers about how attacks on their systems will be treated. The National 

Security Strategy says that the United States will "consider extending national security 

protections to our private sector partners as needed." That is a step in the right direction, but 

more clarity is needed. The U.S. military is already dependent on commercial operators for 

satellite communications, imagery, and other capabilities. An adversary may seek to attack these 

commercial systems as a way of signaling intent or resolve, believing its actions are below the 

threshold for military conflict. Without clarity on how such attacks would be treated by the 
83 

Hanison: Written Testimony, HASC 3/14/2018 

United States, commercial space operators may not be willing to accept the risks of doing 

business with the govemmcnt in the event of a crisis. One approach I would urge the committee 

to consider is an indemnification program for commercial satellite operators that would cover 

losses incurred due to an act of war in exchange for a commitment by these firms to prioritize 

U.S. govemment customers in a crisis. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, much remains to be done to improve the readiness of our national security space 

forces for the wide range of threats we face today. I commend the committee for focusing 

attention on these issues and holding the Department of Defense accountable for making 

progress. I am hopeful that over the coming months and years the Congress and all the various 

departments and agencies that play a role in national security space will continue to work 

together to strengthen our deterrence posture in space. As I have noted in my testimony today, I 

believe these efforts should focus on three areas: clarifying our escalation thresholds in space, 

improving our space capabilities and the speed at which we innovate, and improving how we 

communicate our thresholds and capabilities to others. I look forward to answering your 

questions. 

5 
84 

Todd Harrison 

Todd Han·ison is the director of Defense Budget Analysis and the director of the Aerospace 

Security Project at CSIS. As a senior fellow in the International Security Program, he leads the 

Center's efforts to provide in-depth, nonpartisan research and analysis of defense funding, space 

security, and air power issues. He has authored publications on trends in the overall defense 

budget, military space systems, civil space exploration, defense acquisitions, military 

compensation, military readiness, nuclear forces, and the cost of overseas military operations. 

He frequently contributes to print and broadcast media and has appeared on CNN, CNBC, NPR, 

AI Jazeera English, C-SPAN, PBS, and Fox News. He teaches classes on military space systems 

and the defense budget at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is a 

member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Advisory Committee on 

Commercial Remote Sensing and a member of the Defense News Advisory Board. 

Mr. Harrison joined CSTS from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where he 

was a senior fellow for defense budget studies. He previously worked at Booz Allen Hamilton 

where he consulted for the U.S. Air Force on satellite communications systems and supported a 

variety of other clients evaluating the performance of acquisition programs. Prior to Booz Allen, 

he worked for a small startup (AeroAstro Inc.) developing advanced space technologies and as a 

management consultant at Diamond Cluster InternationaL Mr. Harrison served as a captain in the 

U.S. Air Force Reserves. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with both 

a B.S. and an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics. 
85 

DISCLOSURE FORM FOR WITNESSES 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

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3 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

MARCH 14, 2018 

(91) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ROGERS 

Mr. ROGERS. What structural changes would you recommend be made to how we 

organize for joint space warfighting in the future? 

General KEHLER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. ROGERS. As you know, we dissolved the PDSA last year and the Deputy Secretary of Defense has retained those authorities. I know we also have an OSD office 

that has space policy. But where is the broader space policy and budget oversight 

in the Department of Defense currently? And where should it be? 

Mr. LOVERRO. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. ROGERS. One of the issues that I have had with demonstrating how seriously 

we take space is that a significant portion of the budget for space is classified. 

Should we reconsider how much of that budget is unclassified to be more accountable and perhaps even to message our adversaries? 

Mr. LOVERRO. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. ROGERS. Which programs seem to be the most egregious in space acquisition 

failures? What is the common denominator in these programs? 

Mr. HARRISON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. ROGERS. What do you believe is the root cause for these space acquisition failures? GAO has repeatedly said it was fragmented leadership decision making? 

Mr. HARRISON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LARSEN 

Mr. LARSEN. What does the recruiting and training pipeline look like for space 

operators? 

General KEHLER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. LARSEN. What sort of personnel capabilities/qualifications are needed and how 

will they be acquired/reorganized? (E.g. test pilots, space acquisition professionals, 

satellite communications specialists.) 

Mr. LOVERRO. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. LARSEN. What does a career path look like for a space warfighter? 

Mr. HARRISON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. TURNER 

Mr. TURNER. Last year’s NDAA FY18 Conference Report terminated the position 

and office of the Principal Department of Defense Space Advisor (PDSA) and transferred duties, responsibilities, and personnel to a single official selected by the Deputy Secretary of Defense. How does this new change impact the Air Force, the Department, and our readiness in the space warfighting domain? 

General KEHLER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. TURNER. In the past year you’ve made statements stating that creating a new 

service, for space, would not fix but instead distract us from resolving issues with 

acquisition. Recently we have received the DSD’s Space Organization Interim Report which highlights acquisition as a major focus in order for us to move at the 

speed of relevance with incorporating innovation into the space acquisition process. 

How important do you think the final report will be in relation to deciding the direction of our space program and other relevant decision making? 

General KEHLER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. TURNER. As you have also noted in your publications, the NDAA FY18 conference report eliminates the PDSA, the Defense Space Council, and the newly created A11 and replaces them with a single official selected by the Deputy Secretary 

of Defense. Does that change reduce administrative burdens or increase them given 

the new change in direction? 

Mr. HARRISON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 
92 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. BANKS 

Mr. BANKS. The space launch industry is innovating in some pretty incredible 

ways that could increase capability and reduce costs. Reusability of rockets is one 

example, with all U.S. launch providers moving toward reusable launch vehicles in 

some way. SpaceX has already launched 9 previously flown rockets, including for 

NASA. How can the Air Force plan to integrate reusability into its launch program? 

General KEHLER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. BANKS. Our adversaries in space are aggressively pursuing technologies and 

capability to exceed U.S. capability. What steps is the Air Force taking to move 

more quickly to work with the private sector to win this contest? We hear that 

things are at the working level, like procurement timetables and certification activities in launch continue to be painfully slow. How can DOD best address this? 

General KEHLER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. BANKS. The space launch industry is innovating in some pretty incredible 

ways that could increase capability and reduce costs. Reusability of rockets is one 

example, with all U.S. launch providers moving toward reusable launch vehicles in 

some way. SpaceX has already launched 9 previously flown rockets, including for 

NASA. How can the Air Force plan to integrate reusability into its launch program? 

Mr. LOVERRO. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. BANKS. Our adversaries in space are aggressively pursuing technologies and 

capability to exceed U.S. capability. What steps is the Air Force taking to move 

more quickly to work with the private sector to win this contest? We hear that 

things are at the working level, like procurement timetables and certification activities in launch continue to be painfully slow. How can DOD best address this? 

Mr. LOVERRO. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Æ