    [House Hearing, 115 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    ,                        [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

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                   __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    29-461                     WASHINGTON : 2019

                          COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
                         One Hundred Fifteenth Congress

                 WILLIAM M. ``MAC'' THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman

    WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina      ADAM SMITH, Washington
    JOE WILSON, South Carolina           ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
    FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey        SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
    ROB BISHOP, Utah                     JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
    MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio              RICK LARSEN, Washington
    MIKE ROGERS, Alabama                 JIM COOPER, Tennessee
    BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania           MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
    K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas            JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
    DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado               NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
    ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia          JOHN GARAMENDI, California
    DUNCAN HUNTER, California            JACKIE SPEIER, California
    MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado               MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
    VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri             TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
    AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia                BETO O'ROURKE, Texas
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
    PAUL COOK, California                RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
    JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma            SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
    BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio               COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
    BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama               CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire
    SAM GRAVES, Missouri                 JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
    ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York          A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia
    MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona              SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California
    STEPHEN KNIGHT, California           ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland
    STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma              STEPHANIE N. MURPHY, Florida
    SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee          RO KHANNA, California
    RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana         TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona
    TRENT KELLY, Mississippi             THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York
    MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin            JIMMY PANETTA, California
    MATT GAETZ, Florida
    DON BACON, Nebraska
    JIM BANKS, Indiana
    LIZ CHENEY, Wyoming
    JODY B. HICE, Georgia

                          Jen Stewart, Staff Director
                    Sarah Mineiro, Professional Staff Member
                             Leonor Tomero, Counsel
                             Michael Gancio, Clerk

                                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

    .
      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.
        [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. 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 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 sector 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.
        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 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.
        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?
        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 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
    architectures. 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.
        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.
        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 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 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 high-end 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?
        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 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?
        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, 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
    government-sponsored 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.
        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.
        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, computer-driven 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 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.
        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.
        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
    Russians' 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.
        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 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
    off-the-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 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 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.
        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. 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 contributing 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 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 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.
        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, 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.
        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.]

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                                A P P E N D I X

                                 March 14, 2018

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                  PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                                 March 14, 2018

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                  QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

                                 March 14, 2018

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                       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.]
                                     ______

                        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.]

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