INTRODUCTION
Thank you for the kind introduction and the warm welcome. It's an honor for me this morning to stand in front of this group of industry and government leaders in air and space. You are the people that make this nation the world's aerospace leader, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share with you my views on the future of space in the military.
I understand that you heard at lunch on Wednesday from the current Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman, my colleague Senator Wayne Allard, regarding his views on military space. I thank Senator Allard for his continued leadership on military space issues, and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the coming years on this key national security area.
My education in aerospace has been in Congress. I came to the House of Representatives in 1985, and served on the Space Subcommittee of the Science and Technology Committee until my election to the Senate in 1990. During my time in the House, President Reagan reinvigorated America's awareness of the possibilities of space with his Strategic Defense Initiative. I participated in the twists and turns of some very difficult issues: the Hubble telescope; expendable launch vehicles versus the space shuttle; the Challenger disaster; and the Space Station. I became a staunch supporter of space programs during those turbulent years, and my interest in space has deepened since.
In the Senate, I had the privilege of serving as the Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman. Last fall, Senator Allard took over that responsibility when I became the Chairman of the full Environment and Public Works Committee. Under Senate Republican rules, I cannot be chairman of both a full Committee and a Subcommittee. That change has not diminished my interest in space. Now, in fact, I have more time to focus as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee on the key military space issues that I feel are critical to national security.
My on-the-job education taught me three key things: 1) America's future security and prosperity depend on our constant supremacy in space; 2) While we are ahead of any potential rival in exploiting space, we are not unchallenged, and our future dominance is by no means assured; and 3) To achieve true dominance we must combine expansive thinking with a sustained and substantial commitment of resources, and vest them in a dedicated, politically powerful, independent advocate for spacepower.
Some papers call me "Spaceman Smith," but, as a United States Senator, I have a sworn responsibility to defend this nation. Space is absolutely critical to future war fighting! This increasing importance was demonstrated in the Gulf War and in the Balkans. I firmly believe that whoever controls space will win the next war. To those whose imaginations are firmly controlled by the ideas of yesterday, it is an insult. To the visionaries, it is a compliment. "Spaceman" is a name I will always be proud of.
STRATEGIC OVERVIEW
With our hardware and our brainpower, the United States has unchallenged mastery of air, sea, and land. Except for our government's failure to defend us from ballistic missiles -- a glaring, reprehensible exception -- no one can seriously threaten us with conventional forces.
Experts say we are in a period of "strategic pause," a rare opportunity to catch our breath and rethink our strategy and force structure. While I vigorously oppose those who would use this fortunate situation to justify reckless cuts in defense spending or to rationalize their refusal to support an effective ballistic missile defense, I do see an opportunity for us to exploit this period of unchallenged conventional superiority on Earth to shift substantial resources to space. I believe we can and must do this; and if we do, we will buy generations of security that all the ships, tanks, and airplanes in the world will not provide. This would be a real "peace dividend" -- it would actually help keep the peace.
With the technology that we have already developed and demonstrated, we have the opportunity today to move forward to the comprehensive missile defense architecture that President Reagan envisioned almost 20 years ago, more than the marginal defense this Administration has been struggling with for the past few months. We need to incorporate forward-deployed capabilities like the Navy Theater Wide program and the Air Force Airborne Laser and space-based missile-defense programs to ensure we can stop missiles in their boost phase, dropping the debris fallout over our adversary's homes, not ours. We also need to incorporate space sensors and integrate everything together with our theater defense systems to form a comprehensive architecture to defend this nation and our deployed troops.
None of us can truly imagine the opportunities that space may one day offer. For now, we can agree that space offers us the prospect of seeing and communicating throughout the world; of defending ourselves, our deployed forces, and our allies; and, if necessary, of inflicting violence -- all with great precision and nearly instantaneously, and often more cheaply. With credible offensive and defensive space control, we will deter our adversaries, reassure our allies, and guard our nation's growing reliance on global commerce. Without it, we will become vulnerable beyond our worst fears. At worst, we become rubble.
SHORTCHANGING SPACE
In their rhetoric, both the Department of Defense and the Air Force have acknowledged the importance and promise of spacepower. Secretary Cohen said to Congress in 1998 that "spacepower has become as important to the nation as land, sea, and air power." The Air Force said in Global Engagement that "the medium of space is one which cannot be ceded to our nation's adversaries. The Air Force must plan to prevail in the use of space." Unfortunately, so far, expanding and refining our ability to gather and transmit information has been the Defense Department's principal focus in space. The Air Force's space budget is dedicated almost entirely to the maintenance and improvement of information systems, as a means of increasing the effectiveness of existing forces here on Earth. But as important as early warning, intelligence, navigation, weather, and communications systems may be, today they are basically dedicated to supporting non-space forms of power projection.
This is not space warfare. It is using space to support air, sea, and land warfare. It is essentially the space component of "information superiority." If we limit our approach to space to just information superiority, we will not have fully utilized spacepower. And we will pay a high price as our adversaries move past us as they buy or steal our technology.
The Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff challenged the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board to "search the world for the most advanced aerospace ideas and project them into the future." Among the many valuable findings in the resulting New World Vistas report was the conclusion: "For the U.S. to sustain its superpower status, it will become necessary not only to show global awareness through space-based information, but also to be able to project power from space directly to the earth's surface or to airborne targets with kinetic or directed energy weapons."
However, as I look at the way it is organized, trained, and equipped, I do not see the Air Force building the material, cultural, and organizational foundations of a service dedicated to spacepower. Indeed, in some respects we are moving backward.
Where are the science and technology investments and the technology demonstrations that the Air Force is currently pursuing in order to build for a future spacepower projection capability? Where is the Air Force's space-based missile defense development program? (A space-based laser program that does not envision a technology demonstration for 15 years nor an operational capability for 35 years is not serious.) Where is the Air Force's military space plane program? The Air Force did nothing when it was line-item vetoed. Does the Air Force really want to stand idle while NASA develops a follow-on to the Space Shuttle that may contribute only marginally to meeting the requirements of military space power? Compared to the magnitude of the technical challenges involved -- and these programs' potential military value -- the investments being made by the Air Force in these areas are paltry. In some cases -- space plane, Kinetic Energy ASAT, and Clementine II programs -- I have had to personally put funds into the budget because the President does not, and I did that again this year. In fact, in 1998, the President singled out these three programs to test his line-item veto, and I ended up putting the money back in again.
Today, the Air Force is focused on becoming an "Expeditionary Aerospace Force." That requires a shift of our overall investment strategy to improve our ability to deploy rapidly anywhere on the planet. A key element of power projection today is our highly-capable B-2 bomber, which I have supported for years. But let me remind my Air Force friends that no plane on the drawing board has the ability to apply force quickly in any theater around the world as would a military space plane. And quite frankly, I am disappointed to hear that the Air Force has still not embraced the potential of this program in their future budget.
Personnel investments are also inadequate. Many of the institutions of spacepower have been established within the Defense Department, including joint and service space commands and the 14th Air Force. However, I still do not see the emergence of a war-fighting community within the Air Force that in any way rivals the parallel air and missile organizations. Having one or two space generals rise to the senior levels of Air Force leadership is not enough. There are far too few career space officers in leadership, and too many senior leaders who are serving for the first time in space jobs. To put this issue in context, consider: how many general officers at Air Combat Command are not command pilots?
Nor has the Air Force taken the steps to build a dedicated space warfare cadre of younger officers. The attempt to combine space and missile personnel and the tendency to assign non-space officers to lead space organizations undermines the development of a true spacepower culture. Although I strongly support flexibility in the career paths among different warfighting communities throughout our military, it has gone too far when most of the Air Force's space institutions and commands are led by officers who are not space specialists.
THE SPACE FORCE OPTION
We will need more than a better spacepower culture, and more than money, if we hope to dominate the space frontier. We must be willing dramatically to restructure our institutional approach to this ultimate strategic theater. Creating a new military service to exploit a new medium is not without precedent. At the close of World War I, the Army General Staff viewed military aviation as a servant of ground forces, and opposed the development of a new service that would conduct a new set of roles and missions. Senior officers with little or no operational experience were chosen to guide the development of the new aviation technologies, roles, and missions. Ground officers controlled promotion of aviation officers.
The General Staff refused to fund acquisition at levels needed by aviators. The vast majority of Army officers were ignorant of -- and indifferent to -- disparities between U.S. and foreign development of air power. The Army exiled or forced into retirement its internal critics. By any measure, aviation had an inferior status within the Army. And as a result, advocates of new roles and missions for aviation, like Billy Mitchell, sought organizational independence to implement their ideas. The result was the creation by Congress of the Army Air Corps in 1926 and later, the United States Air Force in 1947. The parallels between the early struggle for air power which led to the creation of the Air Force and the issues we face today in seeking spacepower are truly astounding. Line officers need to speak up!
As a conservative Republican, I am not interested in adding to the bureaucracy. But I am absolutely committed to defending this nation! If the Air Force cannot or will not embrace spacepower, we in Congress will have to drag them there, kicking and screaming if necessary, or perhaps establish an entirely new service. Drastic as that sounds, it is an increasingly real option that may be necessary to put this nation on a course toward spacepower.
To be fair, embracing spacepower is not just an Air Force problem either. For years now I have personally carried the Army Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite program, despite calls for this capability from our senior warfighters. The Defense Science Board concluded that the United States must develop the ability to destroy satellites as part of a deterrence strategy. General Estes, previous Commander of U.S. Space Command, wrote the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1998 saying, "KE-ASAT is the nearest-term space control answer with the least risk." This program is 90% complete, and still the Army fights my efforts to finish the job. General Costello, Director of the Army Space and Missile Defense Center, says publically he supports the program, but privately he guts it.
On the other hand, the Navy has been pro-active. Their recent letter to the Secretary of Defense shows that they clearly want to step up to National Missile Defense. It may be the Navy that gives us spacepower.
Frankly, I am less concerned with who delivers spacepower than I am committed to getting it done. This view is increasingly shared by my colleagues, and frankly all this foot-dragging is making the concept of a Space Force more likely.
WHY DO WE NEED A SPACE FORCE?
A "space force" would put the same muscle behind space missions that the Army, Navy, and Air Force flex in their missions today. A separate service would allow spacepower to compete for funding within the entire defense budget, lessening the somewhat unfair pressure on the Air Force to make most of the tradeoffs, and protecting spacepower programs from being raided by more popular and well-established programs. A separate service would create an incentive for people to develop needed new skills to operate in space and a promotion pathway to retain those people. And a separate service would rationalize the division of labor among the services -- and consolidate those tasks that require specialized knowledge, such as missilery and space -- so that this specialized knowledge could be applied more effectively.
THE SPACE COMMISSION
There are many possible ways forward, both near and far term, that the Defense Department could take to help move us along the path toward spacepower. Many of you have heard me talk previously about some of them. However, I simply don't have time today to address the spectrum of options, and frankly, I am not really the best person to articulate the costs and benefits of each of approach.
That is why last year, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, I wrote language that established the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, more commonly referred to as the "Space Commission." And I was overwhelmingly supported by my colleagues.
The Space Commission was initially tasked to assess five items: 1) the manner in which military space assets may be exploited to support military operations; 2) the current inter-agency process for operating these assets; 3) the relationship between intelligence and non-intelligence space activities and the potential costs and benefits of bringing these two activities completely or partially together; 4) the manner in which military space issues are addressed by professional military educational institutions; and 5) the potential costs and benefits of several significant space management reorganizations. These reorganizations include the possible creation of a Space Force that I mentioned earlier, as well as several others that I did not get into.
Earlier this week, again with the overwhelming support of my colleagues, I added a sixth task for the Space Commission to this year's Defense Authorization Bill. I specifically want the Commission to address the spacepower cultural issues that I spoke of earlier embedded at U.S. Space Command.
I am delighted to confirm Senator Allard's comment on Wednesday that the Space Commission that I wrote into law is finally rolling: the membership and chairmanship is finalized. As Senator Allard said, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld will be the Chairman of the Space Commission. He previously served as Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and as a U.S. Congressman. He chaired the 1998 U.S. Government Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States that highlighted the near-term threat to the U.S. mainland from missile attack. His good work finally got this Administration to take action on National Missile Defense. I am hopeful that Mr. Rumsfeld will also highlight the need and set the nation on a course toward spacepower. The collective experiences of the Chairman and the members gives the Commission instant credibility. I can't predict what the Commission will say about the need for a Space Force or any of the other items I tasked them to address. Honestly, I may not agree with every thing the Commission says. However, I look forward to reviewing their findings and recommendations before the end of this year.
CONCLUSION
Maybe the Air Force will preempt any dramatic changes I've suggested by truly becoming the "Space and Air Force." But space dominance is simply too important to allow any bureaucracy, military department, service mafia, or parochial concern to stand in the way. And I intend to muster all of the political support I can to take any step necessary to make true spacepower and space dominance a reality for the United States of America. And soon!
America has always been a nation of discoverers and explorers. People like you who have made this nation the great aerospace power it is today. It suits our national character to pursue the "permanent frontier" of space. Like Columbus, we must dare to move away from the "old world" -- old vision, old strategy, old institutions -- if we are to truly enter the "new world" of space.
We are at the end of mankind's bloodiest century. Through enormous sacrifice, America has preserved her own freedom and freed millions around the world. As leaders, we must seek an Apollo-like commitment from the American people. We must ask them to again reach into space with gusto -- for its science, for its mystery, and for the security it can offer us. Control of space is more than a new mission area -- it is our moral legacy, our next Manifest Destiny, our chance to create security for centuries to come.