It's just an awesome feeling, an awesome responsibility, but one that I welcome, and I'm excited about being here.

It's been pretty fast paced. I just got here and got the family back here. We settled in the end of June (and) took command. We've already had Guardian Challenge, the premier space and missile competition. That happened right off the "giddyup'. (I've tried) to get myself immersed and out to visit as many of the Wings as possible. That's worked out really well, and I've been just absolutely impressed by the quality of people and the great work that this Command is doing to support our country on so many different levels.

I mentioned this in my assumption (of command) speech -- I pondered this great force that we have, these great people we have, before I took command. What struck me is that they're kind of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind group, and I referred to them in my (assumption)-of-command remarks as an "invisible force," but an incredibly powerful force. When you think about it, a huge portion of our country's nuclear strategic deterrent is buried underground up in northern-tier states of North Dakota, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. The folks who operate (there), or a good bit of them, live underground. They're out of sight and out of mind -- incredibly powerful and incredibly, important to this nation's security.

Think about the capabilities that we deliver from space; you don't ever see satellites on parade on a Memorial Day weekend or Armed Forces Day weekend, but they're up there. And the folks who are taking care of them aren't in the headlines, you don't read a lot about them. But they're out there every day, 24/7/365, making sure that America has those capabilities delivered. The capabilities that they deliver -- those effects that they bring to the United States of America -- is not just to the military. It's not just to the Air Force, for that matter.

When you think about it, there's not a thing we do in this Command that is strictly for the United States Air Force. The things that we do in this command are for everybody in the armed forces -- Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. On top of that, some of the other capabilities we bring, Global Positioning System, for example, are for everybody. They're a huge and important part of this Nation's economy. They're a huge and important part of the global economy. And that's brought to you by this invisible force that is launched, operated and shepherded day-in and day-out by the men and women of Air Force Space Command. So I am just incredibly proud to be a part of this team that delivers that kind of capability.

Our Chief's (Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley) main focus areas for our Air Force, are first and foremost, to win the fight and stay focused on the war that we're in right now, (second) to take care of our people and (third), recapitalize our forces. When I look at how that applies to Air Force Space Command, this is a no-brainer, it lines right up. Again, as I mentioned, everything we do for the Department of Defense, (we're doing to help) our military men and women ... who are engaged in this war.

We bring them precision navigation and timing, so they can operate in the fields. We bring them weather forecasting so they can understand the environment better that they're going to operate in. We bring them communication satellites, we bring them missile warning, so they know when to duck and know how to prepare for attack. We are engaged around the world supporting the Global War on Terrorism every day. And on top of that, we have about a thousand folks from this command who are deployed forward and doing everything from civil engineering support, security forces support, driving convoy trucks up and down the roads in various parts of the world. You name it, the folks who help keep this command running day-in and day-out are also being tapped to go forward and help with the war effort in deployed locations around the world. And I'm incredibly proud of these folks. I'm proud of the folks who back fill for them back here in America while they're gone. So we are absolutely focused in this command on making sure we bring our capabilities to fight this Global War on Terrorism.

Taking care of our people: First of all we've just got some outstanding folks, some quality people, and they're the kind of folks you want to retain and motivate and keep on board with us. Nearly 40,000 people in the command, and it's a total-force command. We have active, Reserve, Guard, civil servants and contractors we count on to get our mission done day-in and day-out. We don't differentiate between our team members when it comes to that. They're all part of the team; we need them all to do the job. I tell the folks in this command that I don't care what you wear over your left pocket, I don't care what the badge says up here (he points to above his pocket). (I) care what you wear over here on the side that says you're part of Air Force Space Command. If you're part of Air Force Space Command, we need you. We need you to get the job done. I don't care what your job is, we don't get it done without you. So we have some great folks and we're focused on taking care of them. I'm also focused on looking ahead to the future and asking questions of ourselves. What kind of people do we need in the future in this Command to take us forward into the 21st century as we see what I believe will be an ever-increasing focus on a space domain and ever-increasing criticality of that domain?

When it comes to recapitalization, we have some tough challenges in our United States Air Force when you look at the air-breathing fleet that we (rely on) to provide security for this country. And General Moseley, most of his remarks, you'll hear him talk about that, and he's exactly right.

We've got tankers out there and B-52s that were bought when I was six or seven years old. That's when we bought those (aircraft). When our Chief (of staff) joined the Air Force, the average age of all of our airplanes in the Air Force was about eight and a half years. Now it's pushing toward an average age of twenty-five years. ... One of the things that separates our Air Force from the rest of the air forces in the world on the air-breathing side is our KC-135 tankers. We can deploy, but we don't have to land when we go. We go around the world non-stop because of our refueling capabilities. We have them with our cargo aircraft, our bomber aircraft and our fighter aircraft. That is a huge advantage.

Well, the majority of the airplanes that we rely on doing that, as I said, were built in 1960, 61 or 62. If we start replacing those airplanes tomorrow -- which, by the way, we're not starting tomorrow -- at a rate that we can afford would be about fifteen airplanes a year. By the time you retire the last one, if you do the math, it would be about eighty years old. I don't know about you all, but I can't imagine getting in an eighty-year-old car and counting on getting to the grocery store and back. And I don't (like) the idea of putting our young men and women in those kinds of airplanes in the future. So this is a tough challenge that our Air Force has to address with regard to our KC-135 fleet, our long-range bomber fleet and the helicopters we use for search and rescue. We're still flying helicopters today that were in the Mayaguez incident in 1975 that were shot full of holes. They were patched up, and we're still flying them today. These are serious issues.

Now, how does that all apply to space recapitalization? Well, the good news in space is we are recapitalizing every single satellite constellation we have right now. This country's investing quite a bit of money in making sure that we not only maintain the capabilities we have up there but that we advance them. It's not just our space-borne assets, but the same can be said for our intercontinental ballistic missiles in the missile fields. We are improving. We're making modernizations and improvements to every element of that ICBM fleet.

So we have a good news story in Space Command, (concerning) the Chief's focus area of recapitalization, in that we are doing it. What is our focus? Our focus is to make sure we do it on time, on cost, on schedule and deliver the capabilities the taxpayers expect of us to bring forward. And that's one of our big focus areas.

General Lord (retired Gen. Lance W. Lord, former AFSPC commander) started off prior to my watch in declaring that we will take our Space and Missile (Systems) Center and make it a premier acquisition center in the Department of Defense. So we're going to continue to focus on that to make sure we bring home the capabilities this Nation needs within budget and on time.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about my thoughts on where we are in general in this Nation and in this world situation with regard to the space domain and operations in space. I believe we're at a turning point in history. I don't mean just today, and I don't mean this year, but I mean during this time period, the time period we're living in and the time period we're going to inherit in the immediate future.

Why do I say that? Before the end of the Cold War there were really just two powers contesting the space domain. That would be the Soviet Union and the United States of America. Back before 1992 we put a lot of effort into developing a very robust intelligence community focused on the threat. We put a lot of effort into developing new systems to operate in that arena. It was a big focus area for us. Maybe not the biggest, but it was a very big focus area. When the Cold War ended, I think appropriately so, we decreased the focus in that area, because there was not the threat anymore. It was the early 1990s, and in that time period the major players in the space domain were still Russia and the United States of America.

Now if you look at the scorecard, at who's playing in that domain, it's increased dramatically. In fact, there are about ten nations who can and have put satellites in orbit around the Earth as opposed to just two (nations) that we were really worried about before ... and so that's an interesting dynamic that's changed.

Before 1991 the number of small satellites -- I'll characterize those as weighing less than a thousand pounds -- from 1985 to 1991 there were about 34 of those launched. Since the end of the Cold War, 373 have been launched. In the old days we used to be limited by our boosters, so you'd occasionally launch some of those small satellites because you couldn't boost anything up bigger than that. Nowadays we're not booster limited, but we're going back to small satellite technology. We're seeing that (technology) being proliferated around the world, because the technology's advanced to putting improved capability in smaller packages.

So you start seeing more players in space, you start seeing smaller things going up, more capable things going up. We are beginning to appreciate and at least clearly understand -- folks in this room clearly understand -- the importance of space not only to our military operations but to the fundamental economy of the United States. I think it's time we start turning that focus that we had before the end of the Cold War back up. I said I think (that focus) was appropriately tapered off, but now it's time to be turning it back around. Why do I say that? It's because space is so important to us. It is militarily. Clearly nobody else's phone is going to ring if someone starts to challenge our capabilities in space, whether that be Air Force capabilities, Department of Defense or others.

The phone that's going to ring is going to be here at Air Force Space Command. "What are you doing about it or why haven't you done something about it?" I don't want to ever answer that phone and not be in a position to say we know what's going on and this is what we think we need to do. The first steps in doing that -- and you'll find this in any domain that you operate in, whether it be land, sea or air -- is to understand the environment, understand what is up there, and what the capabilities are of the things that are up there. Ultimately what you want to get to is (to understand) what the intentions of the owners of those things are, and where everything is (in space) -- not only where it is today but where it's going to be tomorrow or a week from now. And that's something we can do pretty well thanks to (Johannes) Kepler, if we have the right data flowing in.

What we call this in military jargon is situational awareness. The land component commander needs situational awareness to know what's out on the battlefield. The air component commander needs situational awareness to understand what's in the air space that he's going to operate in. (It is the) same with the naval component. In space we need that situational awareness as well.

We have been really good in the past at counting what's up there and keeping track of what's up there -- cataloging, if you will. I maintain it's time that we move beyond cataloging and go to the level that I mentioned, which is to be able to identify what's up there and understand what it's mission is and then ultimately determine intent. So within this area I'm particularly focused on increasing our ability to develop space situational awareness for the commander who is going to execute space operations, and that's General Cartwright at STRATCOM (Gen. James E. Cartwright, commander, U.S. Strategic Command) through his functional component commander, General Willie Shelton, (Maj. Gen. William Shelton) who is my 14th Air Force commander. So that's also one of my big focus areas.

There's another area that I think will be important for us as we move to the future, and we've been taking a close look at it, and that is how responsively we can put things into orbit. What we're doing right now is we're working through and trying to understand what exactly the requirement is for being more responsive than we are today. And I'd argue we're a pretty responsive force today with the capabilities that we have, the flexibilities we have to adjust those forces. But we're looking at responsive launch capabilities and examining those and seeing where we can contribute to those requirements, understand those requirements and contribute to those capabilities. Because, when it comes to putting things off the planet, the pro for doing that is Air Force Space Command. That's what we do out at Vandenberg Air Force Base (Calif.) and out at Cape Canaveral (Fla.).

People don't leave the planet physically, or their satellites don't leave the planet without Air Force Space Command being involved in that operation. We're very proud of that. When it comes time to talk about future ways of doing it, we should be the leaders.

Let me segue a little bit there. I talked a little bit about us being an invisible force. One of my key vision areas for this command is that we become the acknowledged experts in space. I believe we are the experts in space. I believe we bring tremendous expertise to the field. But I want other people to recognize the fact that the expertise is here in this command. When you've got a question about (space), the phones ought to be ringing here in Colorado Springs at Air Force Space Command Headquarters. The analogy I use is, we can't imagine if someone had a question on how to use airplanes to do close air support that the phone wouldn't ring any place other than Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, at Air Combat Command. Or if somebody had a question about how to deliver cargo to the other side of the world the phone's going to ring at Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base (Ill.). If someone has a question about military space operations, the phone ought to be ringing here in Colorado Springs. That's the kind of vision I have for this command, that we become acknowledged as the leaders and experts in this area.

Let's talk a little bit about just living here in Colorado, the opportunities (here) and what I see in this eastern slope of the mountains here. First of all, I love it. It's great to be here. My family loves it. That goes without saying. We spent Saturday riding horses in the mountains, and what a gorgeous experience that was for the kids and me; although I just started walking straight today after last Saturday. (laughs)

When we look to the future and we start asking ourselves questions, what skill sets do we need in our people as we move forward? We start thinking about education in this country, which goes broader than Colorado of course, but we start thinking about it. Are we going to meet the engineering and scientific requirements in the workforce that we need in this country as we go into the future, particularly as space becomes more and more important to us? Are we going to have the engineers and scientists, program managers, cost estimators, you name it, that we need in our acquisition fields, whether in industry or in the military? Are we going to have the expertise and the background we need to operate the future systems that we're bringing on board like a SBIRS (space-based infrared system) satellite that will be taskable, or a space radar system that will be taskable? I think this is an area that's not just a concern of Air Force Space Command and the Department of Defense, it's the concern of the Nation.

One of the areas I really want to focus on is, I want to raise the bar on the opportunities for the folks in Air Force Space Command to further their technical education through teaming with universities here in Colorado. Los Angeles is another center of gravity for us where our acquisition force is. And then, of course the Air Force and the Navy have excellent higher education facilities that we can send our folks to and figure out ways that we can facilitate and make it easier for our people to continue on in technical degrees. At the same time we've got to start looking for accessions too. And I want to get the word out that Air Force Space Command, and this business in general, the space business, is a marvelous and exciting place to work in. And we've got to get that message out to the youth of America.

When I look at the great educational opportunities up and down the eastern slope here in Colorado and the great universities we have here, I see a pool and a resource not just for Air Force Space Command but for the country. And so part of our challenge is to get out there and make people understand that we need them. It's fun business, I've got to tell you. There's nothing more fun than banging rockets off the pad in California or Florida. Well, I can tell you one thing that's more fun, and that's being on top of one. But, it is an exciting business. And operating satellites remotely from the ground is incredibly exciting business. I'm for recruiting and attracting young folks into this area for the benefit not only, as I said, for this Command, but for the Nation.

I guess I'd close in saying that -- besides being the new commander and being excited about that and having lots of challenges on my plate that I enjoy waking up to every morning -- this is going to be an exciting year in and of itself for the United States Air Force as we celebrate its 60th anniversary. And also for Air Force Space Command. In 2007 we'll be celebrating our 25th, our diamond anniversary of the stand-up of this command back in 1982. It's a significant milestone. It will give us pause on many occasions in the coming year to reflect back on where we've been, where we are and where we're going. All of that is exciting to me.

I've talked enough. I'm sure you all have questions. I'm happy to take them and spend the rest of the time on your dime.

Q: Bill Scott, Aviation Week: You mentioned when the 9-1-1 calls come in from the White House or wherever, you want to have something more than, "I don't know," or, "I don't know what we're going to do about that." How do you see the state of national security space infrastructure vulnerabilities? Can you give us an idea of the assets or capabilities that you have available to: one, determine if someone is messing with our stuff, and two, can we do anything about it?

A: Bill, how do we prepare ourselves to answer that call? I know we're not as prepared as I'd like to be right now to answer that call. But you have to address it, broaden it to say, are we prepared to address the security of our national security space assets? It runs across a broad spectrum. I don't look at it just in the space domain or environment. I mean, there are key and critical nodes on the planet Earth we have to be concerned about, and you've got to be focused on making sure that you have redundancies in those nodes -- not only out of fear of attack but also out of fear of natural disaster. You've got to be thinking about how you defend those locations too and make sure their security is robust enough to deter anyone from messing with them. You've got to think about the spectrum we communicate through between those ground stations and our satellite constellations and how we protect that spectrum and counter those who would deny us that spectrum. Then you've got to also consider the assets that we have on orbit.

I talked a little bit about increasing our space situational awareness for the assets on orbit, because of all those areas, that would be the area I'd say we need to do the most work in.

I mentioned we're pretty good at keeping track of how many things are up there. But what those things are and what they can do, and, as we move to the future and in light of my points on satellite technology getting smaller and seeing smaller and smaller satellites up there, the difficulty of doing that mission is going to get harder and harder. Now is the time to be thinking about it and putting the focus on step one -- securing any domain, and that's being able to answer the question, "what's out there?"

There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a satellite. You can have a part wear out and have it express that failure in a certain way. You can have a natural phenomenon (such as a) sunspot or cosmic-ray interrupt in the software that can cause an effect. Or you can have someone maybe toying with you through the (radio frequency) spectrum or physically up there.

And that's what I mean by being able to answer the question. That's the first question you've got to answer, is this a natural phenomenon, or somebody causing harm to our systems up there?

The next question you'd sure like to (have an) answer for is attributability. Who's doing it? So you listen, you know who to (call) and say, "Knock it off." It just cascades down into the various levels of capabilities that you can debate about how far you want to field them or where you want to field them and address it. But that's the first order of business in my mind.

Q: Tom Roeder, The Gazette: You talk a lot about space situational awareness. One of the key tools for that is the 1st (Space Control Squadron currently) at Cheyenne Mountain. You're looking at kind of throwing them to the wolves or chaos a little bit by pulling them out and moving them to Vandenberg Air Force Base. How does that - the shift at the mountain - go about improving situational awareness?

A: You hit it exactly right, Tom. The 1st Space Control Squadron is a key element in developing space situational awareness, Tom. But I don't look at it as throwing chaos at them. We're actually doing them a big favor and doing our Nation a big favor by taking them and putting them in a position to do two things. One is to upgrade their systems and their capabilities and bring them into the 21st century. Right now they rely on a 1991 computer inside that squadron to do the work that they do. We can do better than that.

I should have mentioned this earlier. We had a great day for the United States Air Force and for (U.S.) STRATCOM a couple days ago, when we stood up the new Joint Functional Component Command for Space out at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The commander of that organization, General Willie Shelton, my 14th Air Force commander, wears two hats. He (also) works for General "Hoss" Cartwright at STRATCOM and is the operator responsible for supporting our combatant commanders all around the world, as well as General Cartwright in executing space operations.

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