[Senate Hearing 116-513]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 116-513

               THE PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH A UNITED STATES 
                                 SPACE FORCE

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                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 11, 2019

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services

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                 Available via: http://www.govinfo.gov
                 
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                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
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                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
                      
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma, Chairman	JACK REED, Rhode Island
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi		JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska			KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas			RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota		MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JONI ERNST, Iowa			TIM KAINE, Virginia
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina		ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska			MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia			ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota		GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona			JOE MANCHIN, West Virginia
RICK SCOTT, Florida			TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee		DOUG JONES, Alabama
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri             
                                    
   		 John Bonsell, Staff Director
            Elizabeth L. King, Minority Staff Director


                                  (ii)

  
                            C O N T E N T S

_________________________________________________________________

                             April 11, 2019

                                                                   Page

The Proposal to Establish a United States Space Force............     1

                           Member Statements

Statement of Senator James M. Inhofe.............................     1

Statement of Senator Jack Reed...................................     2

                           Witness Statements

Dunford, General Joseph F., Jr., USMC, Chairman of the Joint          5
  Chiefs of Staff.

Shanahan, Honorable Patrick M., Acting Secretary of Defense......     6

Wilson, Honorable Heather A., Secretary of the Air Force.........    12

Hyten, General John E., USAF, Commander, United States Strategic     13
  Command.

Questions for the Record.........................................    54

                                 (iii)

 
         THE PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH A UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

                              United States Senate,
                               Committee on Armed Services,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in room 
SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator James M. Inhofe 
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
    Committee Members present: Senators Inhofe, Wicker, 
Fischer, Cotton, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis, Sullivan, Cramer, 
McSally, Blackburn, Hawley, Reed, Shaheen, Gillibrand, 
Blumenthal, Hirono, Kaine, King, Heinrich, Warren, Peters, 
Manchin, Duckworth, and Jones.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JAMES M. INHOFE

    Chairman Inhofe. The Committee meeting will come to order.
    We want to welcome our witnesses: Secretary Shanahan, 
Acting Secretary of Defense; Secretary Heather Wilson, 
Secretary of the Air Force; General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and General John Hyten, Commander of 
the U.S. Strategic Command.
    Before we begin today's hearing, I'd like to provide 
special recognition to Secretary Wilson. Today is likely her 
last appearance before this committee, as she's transitioning 
to her new position of president of the University of Texas--El 
Paso. I spent about 20 years of my life down there, so I know 
what you're in for. We'll miss you dearly. Your service to our 
country has been commendable--first serving in the United 
States Air Force from 1982 on, and as Congresswoman from 1998 
to 2009, and culminating as the 24th Secretary of the Air 
Force. We appreciate all of your service. We will miss you.
    I've got to applaud and thank both President Trump and Vice 
President Pence for their renewed focus and cohesive approach 
to America's resurgence in the space domain and the support to 
our National Defense Strategy, this document here, which is our 
blueprint.
    The reestablishment of the National Space Council, chaired 
by the Vice President, has provided multiple Space Policy 
Directives, including the establishment of the Unified 
Combatant Command and U.S. Space Command, as well as standing 
up the Space Development Agency and providing us with the 
United States Space Force proposal we are discussing today.
    Space is a warfighting domain, and future conflicts with 
Russia and China will invoke attacks from, in, and through 
space. This would profoundly disrupt our society, which is 
heavily dependent upon satellite communications, positioning, 
navigation, and timing, and other vital space-based technology. 
We must restore our margin of dominance in space over our 
adversaries. The President's leadership and continued attention 
to this space domain protects the freedom of action these 
great-power competitors would like to disturb. The unwavering 
presidential support we have received ensures our warfighters 
we have the technology and ability to bring America back to 
greatness in space.
    Today's hearing will provide us with an opportunity to 
continue to gather facts, to fully explore the proposal, as 
presented to us. It was only 4 weeks ago, if you remember. That 
was right after our budget discussion. And talking with Members 
of the Committee and their Military Legislative Assistants 
(MLAs), we're all openminded on the plan, but are wrestling 
with different aspects of it. And this is one of those rare 
times when we're having a hearing where people haven't already 
made up their minds. So, we look forward to that.
    When we first heard about the proposal, I asked two simple 
questions. What will the organization fix? And how much will it 
cost? Now, I was going to say, I have yet to get satisfactory 
answers on either one of these, but it's come out of the 
Administration that this is going to be a $2 billion program. 
So, for my purposes, I'm going to assume that's right, but I'm 
still waiting for the answer for the first question. So, I look 
forward to talking about the options, the considerations. 
Another option could be making the National Reconnaissance 
Office, the NRO, the space office. I consider that would be a 
viable alternative. We'll be discussing these alternatives in 
the time to come.
    Senator Reed and I have concluded that, since this is such 
a high visibility and that there's so much interest in this, 
instead of 5-minute rounds, we're going to have 6-minute 
rounds. And we look forward to dealing with our Committee 
Members.
    Senator Reed.

                 STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED

    Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for 
holding this hearing to discuss the Department's proposal to 
establish a United States Space Force.
    Again, I think that the timing is appropriate. The 
Administration understands the different challenging demands in 
space that have evolved very quickly over the last 2 years, and 
their proposal gives us something to work with. And I thank 
them for that.
    Let me welcome our distinguished witnesses and join the 
Chairman in saluting and thanking Secretary Wilson for her 
distinguished service. Thank you, Madam Secretary.
    All of us would agree that space is essential to the 
security and progress of the United States. It is a critical 
component of almost every aspect of everyday life, from 
communications, financial transactions, and navigation, to the 
weather. For decades, the United States enjoyed unfettered 
access to space. However, as near-peer competitors increase 
their space presence, space is becoming contested. Eventually, 
it could be a warfighting domain, and we must prepare 
accordingly. The question is how.
    There are legitimate concerns that the Department of 
Defense (DOD) is not effectively organized to address the 
threats posed by our near-peer adversaries in space. Congress 
has grappled with how to address these concerns. In fact, in 
2017, we debated a House proposal on whether or not to create a 
Space Corps. Ultimately, due to strong opposition in the Senate 
and questions from senior officials within the Department of 
Defense, Congress did not create a Space Corps. But, we did 
strengthen the space cadre and space acquisition authorities 
within the Air Force, and specifically within the Air Force 
Space Command. Last year, Congress took an additional step and 
created a sub-unified command for space reporting to the U.S. 
Strategic Command. This year, the Administration has proposed 
to establish the U.S. Space Force as a new military service 
within the Air Force responsible for organizing, training, and 
equipping all forces who will fight in the space domain.
    The proposal is essentially the same House proposal we 
debated in 2017. I fully agree that the threat is real and that 
changes need to be made to better address the threat. However, 
creating a new branch of the Armed Forces for the first time in 
70 years is not a decision Congress should make lightly. Such a 
major reorganization would have long-lasting consequences, both 
intended and unintended, for how our forces will fight, the 
decades into the future.
    While the Department's proposal appears comprehensive, 
there are areas where I have questions and concerns that I hope 
we can discuss during today's hearing.
    My first area of concern is the creation of what seems to 
be a very topheavy bureaucracy. According to initial estimates, 
the Space Force will be a military service of approximately 
16,500 people. Roughly 1,000 personnel will serve in 
headquarters positions. Presently, the smallest force is the 
Marine Corps, with a total force of 246,000 military and 
civilian personnel, and a headquarters staff of 1,200. This 
Space Force would be in the Department of the Air Force, 
similar to the Navy/Marine Corps model. However, this proposal 
creates an Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space; whereas, 
the Marine Corps does not have a separate Under Secretary.
    The proposal also creates two new four-star general 
officers in Space Force, one for the Chief of Staff and the 
other for the Vice Chief of Staff of the Space Force. The Chief 
of Staff of the Space Force would be a member of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff. I hope our witnesses will explain why the 
Space Force requires a separate and dedicated Under Secretary, 
unlike the Marine Corps, and whether such a topheavy 
bureaucracy is necessary for such a small fighting force.
    The Department states that a new military service will 
significantly increase focus in leadership, expertise, 
personnel, and culture. With regard to the personnel actions 
requested, I have some concerns that this proposal may actually 
have the opposite effect. Of the 16,500 members of this force, 
10,500 would be Active Duty servicemembers almost exclusively 
from the Air Force, and a significant number of Space Force 
general officers would be drawn largely from the Air Force. 
Therefore, the future pool of officers from which the Space 
Force would grow field-grade and general officers would be 
small compared to other Services, and predominantly from one 
Service. This raises question about the depth, breadth, 
diversity, and long-term quality of the officer corps.
    While predominantly made up of Air Force personnel, the 
proposal seeks to consolidate much of the space activities of 
the other services into Space Force. The Department is 
specifically requesting authority for the Secretary of Defense 
to transfer military and civilian personnel, both voluntarily 
and involuntarily, and their associated budgets and billets to 
the Space Force. While it's possible all these transfers could 
be done voluntarily, I believe that scenario is highly 
unlikely. The connection a servicemember has to their 
individual military branch is often deeply rooted and a part of 
their identity. Furthermore, the Department has not yet decided 
on what role the Guard and Reserve will play in this new 
service.
    This proposal would authorize a new civilian personnel 
system exclusive to the Space Force that would be exempted from 
the statutory rules and protections applicable to most other 
Federal employees, including antidiscrimination laws and 
whistleblower protections. Most notably, the proposal would 
create a statutory exemption from collective bargaining rights 
for this workforce and would authorize the Department to 
involuntarily transfer civilian employees, stripping him of 
their collective bargaining rights in the process.
    The Department's initial cost estimate for Space Force in 
fiscal year 2020 is $72 million. However, the Department has 
provided only notional budget numbers for out-of-year budgets, 
with an estimate that Space Force will require approximately 
$1.6 billion over the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), 
based on a flat $500 million recurring cost for personnel. It 
is highly unlikely that the bureaucracy of the Space Force will 
remain flat over time. I think providing the DOD with wide 
legislative authority to create a new bureaucracy without more 
robust budget details is risky.
    On a final point, the National Reconnaissance Office is 
responsible for our Nation's intelligence collection in space. 
It is a joint organization between DOD and the intelligence 
community. Clearly, it will play a critical role in space as a 
warfighting domain, yet it is not yet part of this proposal in 
any way. I understand there are difficult issues to address in 
both the Administration and Congress on any changes to the 
status quo, but I'm interested why this obvious seam in the 
organization of space was not addressed. And I'm interested in 
hearing from the witnesses on this issue.
    Again, the threats we face in space are real and clear; 
they require action. I commend the Administration and the 
Department for taking such action. We will consider this issue 
very, very carefully.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Reed.
    Well, we have four witnesses. All four will have opening 
statements. And we will ask you to try to keep your opening 
statement down around 5 minutes, because we have a lot of 
members here, and we're going to have 6-minute rounds, so it's 
going to take awhile.
    So, we'll start with you, General Dunford. You are 
recognized.

STATEMENT OF GENERAL JOSEPH F. DUNFORD, JR., USMC, CHAIRMAN OF 
                   THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

    General Dunford. Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member Reed, 
distinguished Members of the Committee, thanks for the 
opportunity to join Secretary Shanahan, Secretary Wilson, and 
General Hyten here today.
    Last month, I testified before you that China and Russia 
have developed capabilities to contest our ability to operate 
across all domains. This includes space, which is now a fully 
contested warfighting domain, along with sea, air, land, and 
cyberspace.
    As you know, we have conducted joint military net 
assessments, each in the last 2 years, to determine our 
readiness to execute the National Defense and Military 
Strategies. At the unclassified level, our assessment includes 
several observations that are relevant to our discussion this 
morning and highlight that our competitive advantage in space 
has eroded.
    China and Russia have taken significant steps to challenge 
our traditional dominance in space. They have reorganized their 
armed forces and developed robust space capabilities, to 
include space-based intelligence, surveillance, and 
reconnaissance. These steps provide the ability to more 
effectively target United States and allied forces. China and 
Russia are also capable of searching, tracking, and 
characterizing satellites in all Earth orbits in support of 
space and counterspace operations. Their counterspace 
capabilities include jamming, cyberoperations, directed-energy 
weapons, on-orbit capabilities, and ground-based anti-satellite 
missiles. China and Russia clearly recognize the implications 
of space from both an economic and a warfighting perspective, 
and, as a result, they are adapting.
    As Secretary Shanahan has in his written statement, 
Secretary Wilson has addressed, and both the Chairman and the 
Ranking Member have mentioned, space is no longer a sanctuary. 
Traditionally, the Air Force has been the principal driver of 
our efforts in space. And, because of airmen like John Hyten, 
who joins us here today, our capabilities today are second to 
none. But, our current organizational construct was developed 
before space was a contested domain. As a result of our 
analysis over the last few years, I have become convinced that 
we need change to maintain our competitive edge.
    In the past, we have often effected change in the wake of 
failure. Today, we have an opportunity and, I would argue, an 
imperative, to change based on our ability to anticipate. We 
have an opportunity to look to the future and posture ourselves 
to seize and hold the high ground of space. We've already acted 
to establish United States Space Command, which will ensure we 
can most effectively operate in and from space. Taking a next 
step to create a Space Force will allow us to develop and 
maintain a singular focus on developing the people, the 
capabilities, the doctrine, and the culture we'll need to 
maintain our competitive advantage in space. Together, I 
believe these steps will accelerate our efforts to develop, 
field, and operate the capabilities we'll need for joint 
warfighting in the future.
    Thank you, Chairman. And I look forward to taking 
questions.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, General.
    Secretary Shanahan.

STATEMENT OF HONORABLE PATRICK M. SHANAHAN, ACTING SECRETARY OF 
                            DEFENSE

    Secretary Shanahan. Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member Reed, 
Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to 
testify in support of the Department of Defense's U.S. Space 
Force proposal.
    Before we begin, let me pay my respects to the families of 
the United States marines we lost this week in Afghanistan. 
While we will discuss elements of national security here today, 
we know it is America's young men and women who ultimately 
deliver that security for us and our families each and every 
day.
    Let me open my comments on the Space Force by expressing my 
admiration for our U.S. Air Force. Because of our airmen, and 
Secretary Wilson's leadership, in particular, we are the best 
in space. This proposal is about maintaining the margin of 
dominance they have given us and accelerating the capabilities 
we need in this increasingly competitive domain. Establishing 
the Space Force within the Air Force lets us do just that.
    It is all the more vital now, because our $19 trillion 
economy, our American way of life, and our American way of war 
all depend on space. Sixteen months ago, at your direction, in 
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 
2018 , I began a review to, quote, ``identify and--a 
recommended organizational and management structure for the 
national security space components,'' end quote. We are here to 
respond to that direction, to address the problems Congress, 
multiple bipartisan commissions, the Government Accountability 
Office (GAO), and others have all characterized. DOD's space 
efforts are disaggregated, resulting in a slow bureaucratic 
approach. Today, DOD has five Senate-confirmed officials who 
are responsible for more than ten organizations developing 
bespoke space capabilities in a very federated fashion, failing 
to integrate across DOD and to capture the cost synergies of 
standards. The current approach has served its purpose. We are 
at an inflection point. Threats are increasing, and the 
importance of and the opportunities in space are growing.
    Both China and Russia have weaponized space, with the 
intent to hold American capabilities at risk. Every member of 
this committee has access to the classified threat picture, but 
the bottom line is, the next major conflict may be won or lost 
in space. At the same time, an explosion in commercial space 
innovation is adding thousands of satellites and a new range of 
capabilities, unlocking a trillion dollars in economic 
opportunity.
    There is widespread agreement the status quo is not 
sufficient. Change is required to stay ahead. Approached 
correctly, this is an opportunity for a generational 
improvement. Future space capabilities should be system-
engineered from the start, to include launch, commercial 
innovation, the network, the satellite, the ground segment, 
user equipment, and cybersecurity. Our military is organized 
around physical domains--Army on land, Navy on sea, Air Force 
in the air. Given the significant change confronting us, we now 
need a military service dedicated to space. Instead of 
coordinating across more than ten organizations, we will 
consolidate and concentrate into the Space Force so that we 
have clear lines of accountability and responsibility.
    Two elements of the Space Force organize, train, and equip 
mission are worth elaborating on:
    First, today's space personnel go through a professional 
military education system focused on air, land, or sea. Space 
is an add-on. The Space Force will build a professional 
development system that recruits technical talent, educating 
our people in space from the beginning to produce the quantity 
and quality of leaders we need.
    Second, organizing and equipping includes force design and 
force development. This means understanding the domain, the 
technology, and warfare deeply enough to design and deliver 
future capabilities, ensuring space power today and in the 
future.
    The Space Force has two related components. First, a 
Unified Combatant Command for space, with a full-time commander 
focused on space operations. Second, the Space Development 
Agency will develop and deliver the next generation of space-
based communications and Earth observation while existing 
organizations continue current efforts.
    The status quo is not sufficient. We need to outpace 
threats in space, not simply keep up with them. Because our 
current system isn't organized to move fast enough, the Space 
Force will consolidate, elevate, and focus our efforts for 
results. Our partnership with Congress is critical. Our 
proposal responds to your Fiscal Year 2018 NDAA direction. And 
we stand ready to work with you and resolve any questions or 
details. We ask your support in making the strategic initiative 
to establish the U.S. Space Force in fiscal year 2020 NDAA. 
America has enduring interests in space. And, just as the U.S. 
Navy ensures freedom of navigation of the seas, America's Space 
Force must now ensure the freedom to navigate the stars.
    Thank you. I look forward to our discussion.
    [The prepared statement of Secretary Shanahan and General 
Dunford follows:]

 Joint Prepared Statement by Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan and General 
                           Joseph F. Dunford
                              introduction
    Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member Reed, Members of the Committee: 
thank you for this opportunity to testify in support of the 
Department's U.S. Space Force proposal. Aligned within the National 
Security Strategy (NSS) and our National Defense Strategy (NDS), this 
is our roadmap to expand our margin of dominance in space to protect 
the American people, our $19 trillion economy, and the systems our 
military operates to keep our Nation safe. This mission is no different 
than that of our U.S. Navy which as early as 1801 served to protect 
U.S. trade and commerce, and also took action against Barbary pirates. 
Since our nation's earliest days, America's economy has always relied 
on freedom of navigation--whether on sea, land, air and now, space. In 
short, economic security is national security.
    Through the centuries, we have successfully guarded that freedom 
and security from the malign intent of global adversaries, regional 
hegemons, and the occasional non-state actor. However, as highlighted 
in the NSS and NDS, we have reached a strategic inflection point in an 
era of renewed great power competition. We have retained much of our 
mercantile roots, and as such we are now fully dependent on space for 
our economic well-being and national security. Having carefully 
observed our dependencies on space, China and Russia have developed new 
technologies, strategies, tactics, and asymmetric capabilities 
specifically intended to deny our freedom of operation in space. While 
we would prefer space remain free from conflict, they have made space a 
warfighting domain. In 2007, the Chinese tested an anti-satellite 
missile by kinetically destroying a Fengyun series polar orbit 
satellite. Furthermore, since 2014, Moscow has been experimenting with 
the orbital maneuvering of military spacecraft. We currently maintain 
an advantage relative to these competitors, but our space enterprise 
was built for a strategic environment that no longer exists and our 
margin of dominance is quickly shrinking.
    We are in another interwar innovation period, and we can either 
remain stagnant or evolve to the changing operating environment. We 
have unmatched human capital and resources; our challenge now is to get 
the systems engineering right and accelerate transformation of our 
posture to space as a warfighting domain. The Department's Space Force 
proposal is one of our proposed reorganizations to achieve greater 
integration, overcome paralysis of risk aversion, leverage our new 
technology base, and ultimately align our diverse space elements within 
the Department around strategic outcomes.
    This is a complex and enduring undertaking; the transformation 
required to achieve it is a significant, multi-faceted endeavor. As 
unfettered access to and freedom to operate in space is a vital 
national interest, it demands a corresponding level of priority and 
focus.
    Establishing the U.S. Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed 
Forces will fundamentally transform our approach to space from a combat 
support function to a warfighting domain of competition and potential 
conflict. This action will institutionally elevate space relative to 
its role in national security; unify space missions, capabilities, and 
forces with clear responsibilities and authorities; and focus on the 
development and fielding of the personnel, culture, doctrine, and 
capabilities for a distinct, yet integrated, domain. The proposed U.S. 
Space Force within the Department of the Air Force, along with the 
associated elements of U.S. Space Command and the Space Development 
Agency, allows us to work on these challenges at speed, maximizing 
warfighting effectiveness while minimizing bureaucracy and additional 
costs.
                         strategic environment
    Space is essential to the American way of life; it also underpins 
the American way of war. From global communications networks to the 
physical movement of people and materials, space-based capabilities 
have allowed our economy to thrive and our military to project force 
with significant competitive advantage. Today, commercial entities 
worldwide are delivering new space technologies and capabilities at 
speeds never before seen. This rapid innovation also lowers the cost of 
accessing space and enables new services.
    Strategic competitors China and Russia have observed the 
asymmetrical advantages afforded us by space over the last two decades. 
They now perceive space as a viable target to nullify our asymmetric 
advantages in other domains and gain a strategic foothold for future 
competition. Following this perception, they have adjusted their 
military strategies and organizations to neutralize the Joint Force's 
ability to project power: China and Russia have developed, tested, and 
fielded counterspace capabilities to deny U.S. and Allied use of space-
based systems during crises and conflicts. As a result, the United 
States cannot afford to develop or leverage space systems today without 
addressing vulnerabilities from our competitors' counterspace 
capabilities. As a recent Defense Intelligence Agency report notes:

        Chinese and Russian military doctrines indicate that they view 
        space as important to modern warfare and view counterspace 
        capabilities as a means to reduce United States and allied 
        military effectiveness . . . Both states are developing jamming 
        and cyberspace capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit 
        capabilities, and ground-based anti-satellite missiles that can 
        achieve a range of reversible to nonreversible effects. \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Challenges to Security in Space, Defense Intelligence Agency, 
February 2019.

    This new environment highlights the critical role of space in the 
changing character of warfare and presents new challenges and 
opportunities for our military forces.
    Space systems do not simply support terrestrial forces--actions in 
space can also directly affect the outcome of future crises or 
conflicts. Space is also the connective tissue holding the other 
domains (land, air, sea) together in an era of multi-domain warfare. 
Therefore, the Department of Defense (DOD) must also be prepared to 
assure freedom of operation in space to deter attacks, and, when 
necessary, to decisively defeat space and counterspace threats.
                               challenges
    The United States currently possesses a competitive advantage in 
space, but our existing Defense architecture is not designed to do so 
in a contested space environment. China and Russia are actively seeking 
to exploit our perceived vulnerabilities and are directly challenging 
us in areas of long-held strength. We must adapt our approach from one 
that views space principally as a support function to one optimized for 
a distinct warfighting domain.
    The DOD space enterprise largely reflects strategic conditions 
created after 1991, when Operation Desert Storm demonstrated the 
asymmetrical advantages of space capabilities applied to conventional 
warfare and the Soviet Union's collapse halted the only credible threat 
to United States space systems. Space missions, capabilities, and units 
proliferated across the Joint Force as each Military Service sought to 
enhance its core missions through space. Absent an extant threat, 
advances in mission performance of space systems were prioritized over 
defensive capabilities or warfighting doctrine to protect them. 
Consequently, few DOD space forces--across all Military Services--were 
designed or intended to gain and maintain space superiority in a 
contested environment. A U.S. Space Force would prioritize development 
of appropriate defensive and offensive capabilities and doctrine to 
match the current and future military threats in space, as well as 
enhancing resilience of our space capabilities.
    Today, organizing, training, and equipping of space forces is 
spread across the Military Services as they enhance and enable 
operations for their respective domains. In short, the current 
organization of forces lacks sufficient unity of command, a fundamental 
principle of military organization and warfighting. If we do not 
correct this organizational fragmentation, nascent warfighting 
capacity, and insufficient doctrine now, America's post-Cold War 
complacency in space will become the catalyst for our possible defeat 
in a future conflict with a peer competitor.
    The post-Cold War environment also gave rise to certain 
assumptions, which shaped the DOD space enterprise: space was a 
sanctuary; space superiority was assumed; gaining and maintaining space 
dominance was a logistical rather than a warfighting function; space 
capabilities and operations were strictly in support of the terrestrial 
fight; and space-based enablement and airpower were inextricably linked 
and could therefore be integrated under one doctrinal construct. These 
assumptions no longer reflect reality.
    The erroneous assumption that space would remain uncontested 
resulted in processes and structures that have propagated multiple 
problems in the space enterprise. These problems have been documented 
for years. \2\ While some corrective action has been taken, the lack of 
institutionalized and centralized advocacy for the space domain has 
resulted in fragmented responsibilities within DOD; nascent space 
warfighting doctrine, expertise, and culture; and undue risk aversion 
resulting in laborious decision cycles in system acquisitions and 
operations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Notably--Report of the Commission to Assess United States 
National Security Space Management and Organization, January 2001; 
Report to Congress of the Independent Assessment Panel on the 
Organization and Management of National Security Space, July 2008; 
Defense Space Acquisitions: Too Early to Determine If Recent Changes 
Will Resolve Persistent Fragmentation in Management and Oversight 
(Government Accountability Office Publication GAO-16-592R), July 2016.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rather than attempt to address each issue in isolation, DOD 
recognizes the need for a paradigm shift based on a new set of 
assumptions that more closely reflect today's realities: space is not a 
sanctuary--it is now a warfighting domain, similar to the air, land, 
and sea domains; space superiority is a condition that must be gained 
and maintained via a range of options, including resilient 
architectures, offensive and defensive operations; space doctrine, 
capabilities, and expertise must be designed to gain and maintain space 
superiority, and support operations in other domains; and spacepower 
and airpower doctrine and operating concepts are as distinct from one 
another as the air domain is from the land, and as the land domain is 
from the sea.
    Separating spacepower from airpower and elevating this new 
warfighting domain allows for the independent development and 
advancement of strategies and doctrine for two physically and 
strategically distinct domains. In no uncertain terms, the U.S. Air 
Force (USAF)--and its current leadership in particular--have driven 
America's efforts in space and delivered capabilities second to none. 
The USAF is the best in the world at organizing, training, and 
equipping for the air domain and advancing airpower for the Nation. DOD 
needs the USAF to retain that primacy to ensure the United States is 
postured to project airpower while deterring and defeating threats to 
the air domain posed by other great powers. The U.S. Space Force will 
do the same for space.
                        solution--a new approach
    Our challenges in space require dedicated leadership, advocacy, 
doctrine, equipment, and expertise. While our Military Departments and 
Services develop domain-centric doctrine, equipment, personnel and 
infrastructure necessary to attend to unique warfighting elements, no 
existing Military Service treats space as its number one priority.
    Our reorganization will ensure the U.S. Space Force provides the 
dedicated leadership and advocacy that develops space forces capable of 
addressing our emerging security challenges. These forces will be 
presented to U.S. Space Command, which will bring day-to-day 
operational focus to competition and conflict in space, as well as to 
regional combatant commands. As these entities are established, the 
Space Development Agency will accelerate development and fielding of 
distinct space capabilities.
The United States Space Force
    The U.S. Space Force would develop and field doctrine, equipment, 
and personnel with the responsibilities and authorities commensurate to 
the space domain's needs, rather than conforming to another domain's 
structures and processes. This will institutionally elevate space 
advocacy commensurate with its role in national security; unify DOD 
space forces to vest authority, accountability, and responsibility for 
organizing, training, and equipping in a single service; and focus on 
the development of doctrine, expertise, capabilities and culture for 
space as a distinct warfighting domain. A Military Service focused on 
generating and developing forces for the future is the right and 
necessary organizational construct to organize, train, and equip space 
forces.
    To maximize warfighting effectiveness while minimizing cost and 
bureaucracy, the proposal establishes U.S. Space Force as a separate 
armed force within the Department of the Air Force, similar to how the 
U.S. Marine Corps is housed within the Department of the Navy. We 
assess this will enable the U.S. Space Force to focus on building space 
warfighting capacity without having to divest resources for non-space 
centric support functions. The U.S. Space Force will leverage existing 
support functions resident in the Air Force that are not directly 
related to the space domain (e.g., medical corps, chaplaincy, staff 
judge advocates, etc.), effectively minimizing overhead and cost. This 
will allow the new Service to prioritize limited resources and develop 
a lean and focused infrastructure.
    DOD envisions consolidating the preponderance of existing military 
space missions and authorities under the U.S. Space Force, with those 
space capabilities, forces, and units that do not uniquely and 
exclusively support a single Military Service's core domain-specific 
mission transitioning to the new Military Service. Current Service-
specific entities that provide global space capabilities would become 
part of the U.S. Space Force. For example, the Air Force Space and 
Missile Systems Center, the Navy Mobile User Objective System, and the 
Army's operations of wide and narrow band global satellite 
communications would all become part of the Space Force. As necessary, 
DOD Components would retain organic space capabilities uniquely 
required to support the core mission of that Military Service or 
Defense Agency.
    Senior leadership is required to ensure that space is adequately 
prioritized within the Department. Establishing an Under Secretary of 
the Air Force for Space will ensure focused civilian oversight, 
advocacy for space resources, and alignment and integration of space 
program investments. A 4-star Chief of Staff of the Space Force, with 
full membership on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will elevate the mission, 
strengthen the requirements process and drive spacepower advocacy and 
coordination with the Joint Force.
    The Department is postured such that, should Congress grant its 
approval, the 200-member Initial Space Force Staff can be stood up 
within 90 days of enactment. The transition as a whole will take about 
five years. As the U.S. Space Force is established, the Department 
intends to build a lean headquarters with responsibility for 
developing, presenting, and advocating for space budgeting in the 
planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) process. 
Additional organizations to deliberately build and advance space 
warfighting capacity and enhance professional development would also be 
required to focus on areas such as space education and training; 
operational testing and evaluation, tactics development, and threat 
replication; and space doctrine development; and promotions and 
assignments. The vast majority of initial Space Force resources--
personnel and budget authority--would be transferred from the existing 
Military Services. We anticipate the standing up of U.S. Space Force 
would be phased over five years--fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2024--
and would require $72 million in fiscal year 2020 to establish the 
headquarters.
    As missions are transferred, existing personnel and budget 
authority for the aforementioned missions and forces would transfer 
into the Space Force from the existing Military Services. Here it is 
critical to note: this transfer does not necessarily mean physical 
movement of personnel and capabilities to a different geographic 
location. Rather, it means changing reporting, identifying clear roles 
and responsibilities, and establishing avenues for greater 
accountability for space missions.
    At the conclusion of the transition period, more than 95 percent of 
the Space Force annual budget is estimated to consist of resources that 
will have been transferred from existing DOD budget accounts, along 
with an estimated 15,000 personnel. Additional resources will be 
dedicated to developing the Space Force headquarters and establishing 
and maintaining new support elements such as education, training, 
doctrine, and personnel management centers.
    Once fully established, additive costs for U.S. Space Force are 
estimated to be $500 million annually. Approximately $300 million would 
be applied toward the military space staff and civilian personnel at 
headquarters responsible for organizing, training, and equipping; $200 
million would be directed for developing space-specific education, 
training, doctrine and distinct space personnel management of the 
force. These costs come to approximately 0.07 percent of DOD's annual 
budget. Total additional cost growth over the next five years is 
estimated to be less than $2 billion, or approximately 0.05 percent of 
DOD's budget for the same period. Lean implementation costs mean the 
Future Years Defense Program topline is sufficient to fully fund the 
U.S. Space Force.
U.S. Space Command and Space Development Agency
    Establishing a unified combatant command dedicated to space will 
focus joint warfighting on this vital domain. U.S. Space Command will 
plan and conduct space operations and employ space forces to deter, and 
if necessary, defeat threats to secure U.S. national interests. 
Establishing U.S. Space Command will bring full-time operational focus 
to securing the space domain and streamline command and control for 
operationally relevant timelines. While basing decisions have not yet 
been made, it is anticipated that initial personnel will be drawn from 
existing combatant commands and services that focus on space.
    To fulfill its mission, U.S. Space Command will require doctrine 
and forces optimized to operate in a contested environment. The role of 
U.S. Space Force in developing and presenting that doctrine, equipment, 
and trained personnel is essential to the ultimate success of U.S. 
Space Command.
    The Department is also establishing the Space Development Agency 
(SDA) to outpace our potential adversaries by streamlining development 
and fielding of advanced space systems and architectures that meet the 
demands of a dynamic warfighting domain. The new agency will be 
complimentary to ongoing space efforts within the Department and, where 
applicable, leverage emerging commercial technologies to field enhanced 
space capabilities on an accelerated timeline. SDA will deliver the 
advanced systems integration essential for activities such as 
artificial intelligence, which will enable low-latency data movement to 
connect sensor-to-shooter and otherwise enhance exquisite capabilities. 
The SDA will ultimately transition to the U.S. Space Force in support 
of its ``equip'' function.
    Given the roughly 2,500 active satellites in orbit today, the 
thousands more projected, and the fact that potential adversaries have 
nearly doubled their space presence in recent years--China's ISR and 
remote sensing fleet alone contains more than 120 systems, second only 
to the United States--the imperative for an agency that can outpace the 
threat and leverage the astounding advances of the private sector is 
obvious. Absent the SDA, our departmental inertia will perpetuate 
development of bespoke space-based capabilities and architecture by 
multiple DOD organizations. That resulting complexity expands our cyber 
vulnerabilities along the seams of those capabilities; it also drives 
up costs unnecessarily. The SDA is our opportunity to recapitalize our 
Department's space architecture and integrate new solutions at scale.
                               conclusion
    The threat posed by China and Russia in space demands department-
level action. For years, careful observers of our processes--including 
Congress, independent commissions, and even our peer competitors--have 
pointed out the limitations of our current approach. We must not wait 
until we experience conflict in space to adapt our posture. As other 
great powers become more competent and capable in space, America 
burdens increased risk because we will not have sufficient time to 
``hammer out'' what will be needed and how to do it if contingencies 
arise. Rather than react to their disruptive behavior, we should seize 
the initiative now to anticipate and influence changes in the character 
of warfare and deter potential adversaries' aggression by establishing 
a Space Force that operates on doctrine created by fully trained space 
cadre members and equipped with resources and capability to defend the 
American way of life and U.S. national security.
    Thanks to President Trump's leadership and Vice President Pence's 
consistent advocacy, this Department has identified a plan to maintain 
U.S. leadership in this key domain of competition and potential 
warfare. The Department's partnership with Congress is and will remain 
absolutely critical to our success. We ask for your support in 
authorizing the establishment of the United States Space Force in the 
Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act so we can move out 
in this critical domain. As we proceed, we remain committed to the 
efficient and cost-effective enactment of our proposals in close 
partnership with this committee and Congress as a whole.
    America has enduring interests in space. So does humankind. The 
world has benefitted from American leadership in space these past 
decades far more than it can expect to benefit from coercive Chinese or 
Russian disturbance of the domain. Just as the U.S. Navy ensures 
freedom of navigation of the seas, America must now ensure the freedom 
to navigate the stars.
    To that end, we encourage this committee's strong support for this 
proposal to ensure our Nation's military remains the most advanced and 
lethal in the world and above it.

    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    Secretary Wilson.

STATEMENT OF HONORABLE HEATHER A. WILSON, SECRETARY OF THE AIR 
                             FORCE

    Secretary Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you 
and Ranking Member Reed and this committee for this hearing and 
for your service.
    I would just highlight a couple of points very briefly, in 
addition to what's already been said.
    The United States is the best in the world at space. And 
our adversaries know it. And they are seeking to develop the 
capability to deny us the use of space in crisis or in war. Our 
responsibility is to make sure that doesn't happen.
    Second, I would say that it is absolutely imperative that 
we change the system of acquisition that is modeled more for 
the Cold War. We have to buy things faster and smarter. The 
authorities that you have given to the Air Force and to the 
other Services and to the Department of Defense over the last 3 
years are in the midst of being implemented, and we are 
stripping time out of programs, and increasing the performance 
of those programs. In respect to that, the on-time budget this 
year was absolutely critical, and the fiscal year 2020 budget 
proposal will be the third consecutive year of double-digit 
percentage increases proposed by the President and, I hope, 
supported by the Congress.
    The third thing I would say is that the Air Force has stood 
up a planning cell underneath the Air Force that includes all 
of the Services and the relevant Defense Department agencies to 
do the detailed planning necessary so that, within 90 days of 
legislation, we would stand up the initial element of a Space 
Force. That planning cell is led by a two-star general and, as 
I mentioned, includes all members of the different Services. We 
want to be able to move out smartly when legislation is passed.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to answering your 
questions.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Madam Secretary.
    General Hyten.

  STATEMENT OF GENERAL JOHN E. HYTEN, USAF, COMMANDER, UNITED 
                    STATES STRATEGIC COMMAND

    General Hyten. Thank you very much, Chairman Inhofe, 
Ranking Member Reed, distinguished Committee Members. It is an 
honor to be here today, and a continuing privilege to represent 
the 162,000 Americans accomplishing the mission of U.S. 
Strategic Command.
    I want to begin by thanking the committee for, rightly, 
approaching space as a warfighting challenge. And I very much 
appreciate the President weighing in, confirming space as a 
warfighting domain. Now we have to make sure we're ready for 
that challenge.
    U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) is a global warfighting 
command. Success in all our missions require us to maintain 
freedom of operations in space. And today, as the Secretary 
just said, I sit here fully confident in our Nation's 
superiority in space. Although we have a distinct advantage 
today, I fear that this will not continue unless we take action 
immediately, before our superiority begins to erode.
    Space is fundamental to our economic vitality and the 
American way of life, including how we conduct warfare. 
Certainly, our adversaries understand this, and they're 
actively building and deploying weapons to threaten us in 
space. We must take these actions seriously.
    As the Commander of us USSTRATCOM, I am responsible for 
space operations in our military today, and I have been in 
space my entire career. It is my passion. And, as much as I'd 
like to focus on space, my priorities are, first, strategic 
deterrent; second, nuclear command and control. And space can 
never be higher than my third priority. So, the most important 
thing we can do in the near term is create a lean, new unified 
command, U.S. Space Command, separate from my command, 
STRATCOM, focused solely on warfighting in space. And we need a 
four-star commander to do that. It's that important. The 
Department's already taken a step, as well as the President, to 
nominate General ``Jay'' Raymond for this position. He is the 
right person for that job, and I encourage the Senate to take 
up his nomination as soon as possible.
    The second piece is to stand up a new Space Force inside 
the Air Force, focusing on organizing, training, and equipping 
forces for this Space Command and for the Joint Forces at 
large. This is the pathway that best gets us there. The 
President said we need a structure inside the Pentagon focused 
on space all the time, inside the Air Force, and I support this 
model. The force needs to be streamlined from inception. I 
understand your concerns about inefficiencies. I believe the 
creation of Space Force within the Air Force is the best way to 
reduce redundancies and bureaucracies by focusing on the most 
essential tasks. So, I pledge to continue to work with the 
Congress to develop the most efficient warfighting 
organizational structure possible.
    So, thank you, again, for allowing me to be here today. I 
look forward to your questions, as well.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, General Hyten.
    Now, we are going to have 6-minute rounds, and we're going 
to try to stay within that timeframe, I tell my fellow 
Senators. In my opening statement, I talked about a couple of 
questions that never have been answered to my satisfaction. 
Forgetting about the cost thing, because we've pretty much 
established at least an opinion as to what it's going to cost, 
I have, essentially, the same question, worded a little bit 
differently, to have each one of our witness answer. So, I'd 
like to ask you to respond to this question.
    First of all, Secretary Shanahan, I agree with when you 
often say the United States' margin of dominance in space is 
diminishing. But, my question to you is, how will establishing 
a Space Force help the United States reassert its warfighting 
dominance? Yes, sir.
    Secretary Shanahan. Sure. Thank you, Chairman.
    The fix you're really speaking to is, you know, How do we 
expand that margin? Our proposal addresses all of the changes 
that are occurring simultaneously in space. And maybe just to 
set up the answer, these are the significant changes we have to 
address. The environment is contested. We are about to, for the 
first time in about 30 years, modernize the Department. So, how 
do we incorporate all the modernization and address this very 
different environment, which is a binary change from the past? 
And as we broke down the problem, we said the fastest way to do 
this--and it's all about speed to expand our margin--is to 
compartmentalize the problem into three areas. The first was, 
make sure we have warfighting operations so that we can operate 
in a contested environment.
    Chairman Inhofe. Yeah, quickly, now.
    Secretary Shanahan. The second was, make sure that we have 
the doctrine and the training so that we can equip our forces 
with the right space cadre.
    Chairman Inhofe. Okay.
    Secretary Shanahan. And lastly, how do we acquire and 
develop the right system?
    Chairman Inhofe. So, you assume that we're going to do a 
better job with a Space Force than we're doing right now in 
those three areas.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yes.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you very much.
    Secretary Wilson, given your experience--which is vast--can 
you provide your assessment as to how the proposal will better 
organize, train, and equip space forces, compared to the 
present mission of the Air Force Command today?
    Secretary Wilson. Mr. Chairman, I agree with General Hyten, 
that the most important step that Congress has already taken 
and the President has put into action, is a Unified Combatant 
Command for warfighting. But, I do think that there is an 
opportunity to align defense space programs in a Space Force 
underneath the Air Force, including acquisition. And I think 
that that alignment will help.
    Chairman Inhofe. Okay. That's a good answer.
    General Hyten, through your role as Commander of the U.S. 
Strategic Command, you are currently the Nation's most 
qualified expert in space warfighting. Can you differentiate 
between the mission of the U.S. Space Command, a Unified Combat 
Command--and the service mission, as proposed in the hearing 
today?
    General Hyten. Yes, Chairman. The structure is, basically, 
built around the same structure we have in all our combatant 
commands. The way our military is organized is, we have 
combatant commands that fight our forces. They fight our 
battles, they win our wars, they conduct strategic deterrence. 
All the missions are executed through our combatant commands. 
The new U.S. Space Command will execute the space mission 
through the combatant command of U.S. Space Command. But, the 
Services organize, train, and equip forces for those commands. 
So, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines builds, organize, 
trains, and equip forces for the unified combatant commanders. 
The Space Force will do that for the Space Command and for the 
Joint Force at large.
    Chairman Inhofe. I see.
    General Hyten. That's the difference between the two.
    Chairman Inhofe. All right. Well, that's a very good, 
specific answer.
    General Dunford, you're a warfighting marine, so you have a 
different perspective than some of the rest of them do on this 
panel. Do you believe establishing a Space Force will 
contribute to the development of a space warfighting ethos and 
culture that does not exist already today?
    General Dunford. Chairman, first, I'd say I think we do 
have a good culture in the Air Force. And again, we are the 
best at space. But, I also believe that an organization that 
has a leadership team and people that are singularly focused on 
a single core competency--that being space--will contribute to 
culture, but, more importantly, will contribute to a focus in 
those areas that Secretary Shanahan, Secretary Wilson, and 
General Hyten highlighted.
    Chairman Inhofe. That's good.
    Thank you very much.
    Senator Reed.
    Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank the witnesses.
    Secretary Shanahan, as I mentioned in my opening statement, 
basically the Space Corps is roughly 16,500 personnel. What you 
will create is a 1,000-person, sort of, overhead. That is the 
highest overhead-to-operation ratio within the Military 
Services, by a great deal. For example, the Air Force has 2,300 
personnel in its headquarters, and 320,000 airmen and airwomen. 
How do we avoid that? Why didn't we think harder about coming 
with a leaner structure?
    Secretary Shanahan. Sir, let me start with--
philosophically, as we consolidate, there should be a reduction 
in cost. That's how I'm approaching this. The basic proposal 
has been formulated from an Air Force estimate based on 
traditional constructs. And what I'd like to do is ask 
Secretary Wilson to speak to how that proposal was derived.
    Senator Reed. Madam Secretary?
    Secretary Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    When the Department went through this whole evaluation, we 
looked at a whole range of options, everything from a kind of 
Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps/medical corps model to a 
completely independent, standalone department, and a lot of 
things in between. Where we landed was a Space Force underneath 
the Air Force so that you don't have to duplicate all the 
acquisition, budgeting, finance, personnel kinds of functions, 
but with a member of the Joint Chiefs.
    Now, if somebody's going to be a Joint Chief, and they're 
going to have the credibility in the building and be able to 
operate, they need to have the support of a member of the Joint 
Chiefs. Of the additional personnel, which I think is about 
1,200, half of those are in the headquarters, which makes for a 
quite small headquarters for a member of the Joint Chiefs. The 
other half was proposed to be what is a professional 
development element to get after the business of developing 
people. So, it is recruitment, professional development, 
doctrine center kinds of things, which is not really a 
headquarters element. We did that costing, and that would be 
the concept.
    Senator Reed. Well, thank you, Madam Secretary.
    And, Madam Secretary, your thinking about this proposal has 
matured over the last couple of years. In 2017, I think you 
raised some opposition to a Space Force. One of the points you 
made, which I thought was compelling, was you need a joint 
warfighting team, and this Space Force would, in your terms, be 
counterproductive in that respect. It would be, not a joint 
enterprise, but, essentially, an Air Force enterprise, given 
the distribution of officers and the fact it would be placed 
under the Air Force. I see a value to the jointness in 
everything we do. And are you concerned that we might lose 
that, that this might be more siloed out than a joint 
enterprise?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, each of our Services has our own 
identity, but we contribute to a joint team. I think that one 
of the most important things in standing up a separate Space 
Force will be to establish a warfighting culture within that 
organization that's part of a Joint Force.
    One of the things that really has surprised me when I came 
back to the Service, having been away--having served as a young 
officer, is just how much more joint operations really are 
today than they were 20 years ago, when I was a young officer. 
And it's a real tribute to the decisions made under Goldwater-
Nichols.
    Senator Reed. Again, I think--this is an issue that we'll 
return to again and again, but there is this tension between 
creating a separate service, separate identity, and this notion 
of jointness, which I think you correctly stated emanated from 
Goldwater-Nichols and has been, I think, a very effective way 
to organize our military efforts.
    One of the issues that has been mentioned several times, 
Secretary Shanahan, is the sense that, well, now we're unifying 
our entire effort in space under the Space Corps, but actually 
we have the National Reconnaissance Office, which has a great 
role in space, and we also have military intelligence programs 
that have roles in space, and they're outside this proposal, 
and there is no, at this point, explicit linkage to them, other 
than informal communications. So, are we missing something, 
here? I think, again, the intent that we suggested in setting 
up the unified command was it would be an agency that had all 
services focused on space and with active participation with 
the civilian agencies that are in that realm, too. Can you 
comment?
    Maybe one good analogy would be U.S. Cyber Command.
    Secretary Shanahan. Sure. The bias in the proposal is 
toward speed. The proposal we submit really represents the 
stakeholders that we have control of. Early discussions were 
with the NRO. I continue to have discussions with Sue Gordon, 
principally at the technical level as we start to evolve these 
new architectures so that we can provision, at one point in 
time, to do the integration that, technically, I think, will be 
aligned from the start. The challenge, organizationally, is 
that when we look at the many stakeholders, there's real work 
to be done there to negotiate. So, we thought of it as a multi-
step process, that eventually there would be more alignment and 
integration, but not in the first phase.
    Senator Reed. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Reed.
    Senator Fischer.
    Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Secretary Shanahan, if I could just follow up on the NRO a 
little bit. Are you saying that, at the onset, now, of the 
Space Force, you didn't feel a need to have that included, but, 
possibly down the line, you would? Did I understand that 
correctly?
    Secretary Shanahan. There is a need. It was an issue of 
timing. So, if we could do it all concurrently, that would be 
ideal. I don't think we can move that quickly. So, rather than 
delay, we said, ``This is what we can do immediately, provision 
for that integration and realignment in time.''
    Senator Fischer. Will that affect the need to unify the 
national security space activities? Do you see that as possibly 
a detriment in trying to unify? We keep hearing about 
unification. Obviously, you don't think of that will be a 
detriment.
    Secretary Shanahan. Well, I'd rather do more, sooner. I 
mean, this is really about, How do we move out quick--the 
proposal we've put together is really a threat-driven proposal, 
so as quickly as we can get after the threat, we want to move. 
If we could do more, we'd like to do that. I think this is 
really more about how to organize the equities of stakeholders. 
If we could resolve some of those more quickly, we would 
incorporate more.
    Senator Fischer. Okay, thank you.
    Secretary Wilson and General Hyten, can you offer your 
views on the NRO and Space Force?
    Madam Secretary, if we could start with you, please.
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, the National Reconnaissance 
Office was a secret program established between the Air Force 
and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) a long time ago. In 
1992, its existence was acknowledged. But, while it was a black 
program, it was headed by the Under Secretary of the Air Force, 
who was simultaneously the head of the NRO. That ended in 1992, 
and the NRO had its own director, who was not the Under 
Secretary of the Air Force. There remains a very deep 
connection between the Air Force and the NRO. About 40 percent 
of the people in the NRO are airmen. The rest are civilians or 
CIA employees. So, there is a deep organic connection there. 
And we have deepened the already close connection between 
military space and space elements of the intelligence community 
over the last several years. And that's because many of the 
things we'll have to protect are actually NRO assets. So, 
deepening that connection is important. It may not require 
actual structural change in the organizational chart. And we'd 
be happy to work with you on kinds of things that might 
continue to deepen that already very close connection between 
the Air Force and the NRO.
    Senator Fischer. Thank you.
    General Hyten, do you have anything to add?
    General Hyten. Yes, ma'am, just a couple of things.
    I think, first of all, we should recognize that right now 
the partnership between the National Reconnaissance Office and 
the Air Force is as strong as it's ever been. And I've been 
working with the National Reconnaissance Office for well over 
30 years. And it's very strong.
    The second piece is that there's no doubt that the Space 
Force of the future will have to have a very strong 
relationship with the National Reconnaissance Office. The 
administration recognized this in Space Policy Directive 4 that 
gave us 180 days, which I think is out to the middle of August, 
to come back with a report that said this is how we would 
partner with the National Reconnaissance Office and the broader 
intelligence community in the future. I hope we can do that 
faster than August, because that partnership is very important 
to the future.
    Senator Fischer. Okay, thank you.
    General Dunford, there's a tension between the desire for a 
streamlined effort unified under one roof and the desire for a 
joint integrated approach, here. This was Admiral Rogers' 
concern and the reason he actually opposed the creation of a 
separate force for cyber. In our attempt to unify space 
activities, are we running the risk of creating another silo, 
here? We're going to surround it with a silo, and we're going 
to distance it from other services? How do we make sure that 
space is going to remain integrated?
    General Dunford. Thanks, Senator.
    You know, Senator, in my assignment, what I've kind of come 
to learn is that the real strength of jointness is actually 
diversity of perspective brought by different Services and 
organizations. But, what's key is to leverage that diversity of 
perspective in processes that make sure we have coherent force 
development, force design, command and control, and planning. I 
think those three areas are how we bring the joint team 
together.
    But, I'm not at all concerned about a silo of space. The 
key is to have individuals that are singly focused on space, 
and make sure we incorporate that perspective, that very 
healthy perspective, into the outcome, which is a Joint Force 
that can fight.
    Senator Fischer. Okay. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Fischer.
    Senator King.
    Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thanks, to all of you.
    In Maine, there are certain basic principles of life. One 
is, you don't drive on the ice after April 15th. Second is, you 
hate the Yankees. Third is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. My 
impression is, you all are doing a good job. We are getting the 
data that we need, we're getting the support from the Air 
Force, we're working together with the NRO and other agencies, 
and, as I think many of you, or all of you, have testified, 
we're dominant in space right now. I understand the threat, and 
I understand our adversaries are moving forward, but I don't 
understand how adding a box to an organizational chart is going 
to give us some kind of qualitative military edge, to use a 
term that we've heard in this committee.
    General Hyten, I'm like the Chairman, I'm genuinely 
undecided, although, as you can tell, I'm skeptical. I don't 
think it's broken. I think you're doing a good job. Why are we 
going to fix it?
    General Hyten. So, Senator, I think we have been doing a 
good job, but we've been doing a good job in an environment 
where space has not been contested. What is changing is, we 
have adversaries that are building significant capabilities 
that can challenge us in space.
    Senator King. I understand that, but I don't understand how 
putting a new box in an organizational chart is going to help 
us to respond to the new challenge that we face.
    General Hyten. Well, there's two problems we have to fix. 
One, we have to have a commander focused on it all the time 
from an operational perspective. That's the Space Command issue 
we talked about.
    Senator King. I agree, I think that's the answer, frankly.
    General Hyten. The second piece, Senator, is, we have to 
have somebody in the Pentagon that focuses their total 
attention on space all the time. I've known every Chief of 
Staff of the Air Force for the last 20 or 30 years, and they've 
all carried space effectively into the tank. They've all cared 
about space. But, it is a secondary issue. As they've cared 
about space in the tank, the Pentagon has built a structure 
around them with dozens and dozens of people and organizations 
that are all in charge of space in many ways. I had one Chief 
of Staff tell me--well, I won't share the exact words that he 
told me, but----
    [Laughter.]
    General Hyten.--it was very difficult to walk around the 
Pentagon and not bump into somebody who said they were in 
charge of space. So, the goal is to put one person in charge of 
space, a four-star Chief of Staff----
    Senator King. And I understand that, too, but one of the 
problems with this proposal is, it doesn't put one person in 
charge of space, because we've got NRO, we've got the National 
Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), we've got the 
private sector, which is very active in space--and, by the way, 
I am not suggesting that NRO and those other agencies--the 
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)--should be 
absorbed into this. That's the last thing I want to propose. 
But, again, if the argument is, we need a centralized 
authority, we don't have it here.
    The other piece that I don't understand is, you talk about 
a Space Force. That implies people. Nobody's going to go up and 
fight in space. We're not talking about soldiers, here. We're 
talking about acquisition, design, and placement of hardware. 
That's an important function, but I just don't understand why 
this has to be in a particular special box. I think Space 
Command makes sense. I understand that. But, to create a new 
bureaucracy that's going to cost us half-a-billion dollars a 
year, I've got to be convinced that there's some incremental 
value there.
    Mr. Secretary, you want to tackle that?
    Secretary Shanahan. I'd love to, thank you.
    If the environment we're going to be in is the same as it 
is today, going forward, I'd say don't fix it. I've studied 
this problem for 18 months, so it's not as though someone 
passed me a report. I've spent a lot of time on this subject. 
And the focus has been, what is changing? Do we have the 
capacity and the ability to make that change? When I break the 
problem down, the first is, How do we set up Space Command so 
we have operations that now can compete in a contested 
environment? So, that was one problem, and you need a dedicated 
leader whose attention is that.
    Senator King. But, isn't that the combatant commander of 
the Space Command?
    Secretary Shanahan. Correct. So, that's one.
    Then the second piece--and this is where I think you were 
headed--is, Why does that new box, called the Space Force, 
create a lot of value? There's two major changes that we have 
to get after. One is, How do we professionalize the generation 
of this cadre of space specialists? Today, it isn't a formal 
training and development program, a recruiting program----
    Senator King. But, again, couldn't that take place in the 
context of the Space Command? It's a combatant command. It's 
going not have personnel and a mission.
    Secretary Shanahan. It could. It could. This is what the 
Space Force is intended to do--man, train, and equip, like the 
other Services. The equipping part is the other major 
component, here. So, as we look to modernize across the 
Department--and this is an area where the Department has 
struggled over time, and this is the most significant 
modernization in 30 years--do we have the bandwidth and 
capacity, the focus, and the accountability to drive that? 
That's what this really gets after, so that, when we do 
modernize, we execute to the schedule, we execute to the 
budget, but, more importantly, we deliver the technical 
capability at a department whole, not by Service.
    Senator King. I appreciate that. Thank you.
    Thank you all. Thank you for your testimony.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator King.
    Senator Cotton.
    Senator Cotton. Thank you for your appearance today and for 
your work on this very important problem.
    I want to share the sentiments of several Members of this 
Committee who say that space is, unfortunately, now a contested 
domain, and our enemies are putting weapons in space and 
they're targeting our assets in space, and that we don't really 
get a choice to whether we want to fight in space. We only get 
a choice of whether we want to win or lose in space. I know 
you've all put a lot of effort into thinking through that 
problem. As to the Members of this Committee, I think you'll 
see it's not really a partisan matter, either. But, it's a 
major question, and I think we're all committed to getting it 
right, not getting it fast.
    I do want to continue on the line of questioning that 
Senator King started. And I want to start with your perspective 
on this, General Hyten, as a combatant commander. You said, 
rightly so, that space can never be more than your third 
priority, given your priorities of our nuclear strategic 
forces. You can imagine a world in which those nuclear 
strategic forces would have been their own service, you know, 
where we would have put our missiles and our ballistic missile 
submarines and our strategic bombers, in addition to our 
command-and-control functions, into a separate nuclear forces, 
if you will. We didn't do that. We have Strategic Command to do 
that. Can you explain why we need to put all space assets, 
space forces, into a separate service, as opposed to a 
combatant command?
    General Hyten. Yes, sir. Thank you, Senator.
    When you look back at the history of our nuclear forces, 
the three basic capabilities are the submarine-launch ballistic 
missiles, the Intercontinental-Range Ballistic Missiles 
(ICBMs), and the bombers. If you look at how those systems 
operate, the submarine clearly operates in the maritime domain. 
The bombers and the ICBMs operate in the air domain. So, the 
expertise you need to operate those weapon systems come from 
the domain expertise you achieve from the Air Force and from 
the Navy. When you look at the space capabilities that we 
operate--satellites, rockets to get us into space--the 
capabilities there require expertise in the space domain. 
That's the difference between the legacy of Strategic Command, 
which then took domain-focused capabilities and put it together 
into one unified command, and a Space Force that will take 
another domain capability together and put it into another 
unified command.
    Senator Cotton. Those capabilities, though do seem pretty 
Air Force-centric. I understand that the Marine Corps and the 
Army use space assets a lot to fight. It's critical to our way 
of fighting. But, unless, as Senator King said, we're going to 
have a large number of actual soldiers in space fighting, and 
they need a different set of skills, this is primarily going to 
be about technology and acquisitions and so forth. So, I think 
what a lot of us on the committee are trying to figure out is, 
What's the incremental advantage of having a separate Space 
Force, like the Marine Corps is to the Navy, within the Air 
Force, as opposed to, say, the Air Force having the training 
and equipping function that the five services have for a 
combatant command like yours, for the geographical commands, 
and the Central Command or European Command or so forth?
    Secretary Wilson, that may be a question for you to take.
    Secretary Wilson. Thank you, Senator.
    I would just add one thing to what General Hyten mentioned, 
which is the importance of the development of space 
professionals. I think that that's an important thing for the 
committee to consider, particularly the potential advantage of 
separating out promotions for Space Force members, and 
particularly Space Force operators, that that would be a 
benefit, and to be able to promote to need rather than just 
take the chance that you will get the right numbers of people. 
That's particularly important for small career fields.
    I also think that continuing to strengthen professional 
development around space and space warfighting is important. 
Obviously, we're moving forward with this, irrespective of what 
decision is made by the Congress and the Administration on 
formal structures. But, the shift to warfighting, things like 
we've established the Schriever Scholars this year, which is a 
specific area of professional military education on space, 
opening undergraduate space training to allies, going to 4 
months on the floor operating systems to 4 months of training 
in combat operations for a space operator. So, that shift of a 
culture to warfighting and professional development is actually 
an important element for your consideration.
    Senator Cotton. Secretary Shanahan, I see you're reaching 
for your button. You can respond, if you'd like. I had one 
question for General Dunford before the Chairman gavels me 
down. But, if you'd like to respond----
    Secretary Shanahan. Five years from now is going to look 
much different. I think sometimes we look through the lens of 
today, and we extrapolate going forward. But, there's going to 
be, literally, an explosion of thousands of satellites. You 
think of just the growth in space. You think about this 
contested environment, and then how quickly we need to be able 
to adapt commercial innovation, and then, the Army's going to 
modernize its command and control (C2) system, the Navy's going 
to modernize its C2 system. We have all this modernization 
going on concurrently. So, how do we organize ourselves to be 
able to accomplish this amount of change in an environment 
that's getting increasingly dangerous? That's really what we've 
tried to do, here, so we could dedicate the skill and the 
resources to be able to move quickly instead of 
bureaucratically trying to organize ourselves across so many 
different organizations.
    Senator Cotton. General Dunford, you look like you're about 
to push your button.
    General Dunford. I was waiting for you.
    Senator Cotton. Well, I think the Chairman's going to gavel 
me down.
    I will say this, though, before my time expires. Bob Gates, 
who I think is one of the finest Secretaries of Defense that 
we've had, wrote, in his most recent book, ``Passion for 
Leadership,'' that normally when you face a bureaucratic 
challenge, moving boxes around is not the right solution. That 
doesn't mean it's the wrong solution here, but he said that 
normally what you need is a cultural change from your 
leadership. Whatever happens in this year's National Defense 
Authorization Act, I want to commend you, Secretary Shanahan, 
General Dunford, Secretary Wilson, General Hyten, for the 
cultural change you've driven inside the Department to 
recognize that we need to significantly increase the level of 
our capabilities in space, given what we face in Russia and 
China, because your leadership on this has been very strong.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Cotton.
    Senator Peters.
    Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you for all of your testimony today.
    I just want to concur with what I'm hearing from my 
colleagues. I don't think there's any disagreement from folks 
on this committee that space is something that we need to focus 
a great deal on, that it is now a contested domain in ways that 
simply didn't exist in the past, and we need to do a better job 
of coordinating and integrating space into our overall defense 
strategy. But, I think our question is that this approach that 
we're looking at is just going add a whole lot more cost. At a 
time when the Department of Defense needs to be a whole lot 
more nimble, has to be a whole lot more innovative, and has to 
be able to do more with less, because we can't just keep 
throwing money after dollars after dollars, when there are so 
many other needs that we have in our economy, here. But, I 
would like to have folks coming to the committee, saying, ``We 
can do this, and we can do it more efficiently, and we can have 
more lethality, and we'll be able to defend American interests, 
and do it in a cost-effective way.'' And I'm not hearing that.
    Secretary Wilson, I hate doing this, but I think it's 
important, because I think you said this best of anyone. In 
2017, after a meeting with the Senate Appropriations 
Subcommittee talking about the Space Force you said, ``The 
Pentagon is complicated enough. This will make it more complex, 
add more boxes to the organization chart, and cost more money. 
If I had more money, I would put it into lethality, not 
bureaucracy.'' Secretary Wilson, I think that's profound. I 
agree.
    The Air Force Chief of Staff went a step further and 
stated, ``If you're saying the word 'separate' and 'space' in 
the same sentence, I would offer you're moving in the wrong 
direction. That's why the Secretary and I are focused on how we 
integrate space. Every mission that we perform in the U.S. 
military is dependent on space. Now is not the time to build 
seams and segregate and separate. It's time to integrate.''
    I couldn't agree more with those statements. I haven't 
heard any kind of refuting of those very strong statements.
    If I think about growth of bureaucracy, all we have to do 
is look at the past of agencies. Inevitably, folks come and 
say, ``We're going to do this efficiently, and it's going to be 
different this time.'' I'm the Ranking Member on the Homeland 
Security and Government Affairs Committee, which, of course 
oversees the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and when we 
stood up that Department--I mean, just look at what has 
happened in that Department over the years. Since 2005, the 
DHS's department management operations staff responsible for 
functions, including legislative affairs, public affairs, 
general counsel, has grown at a very large rate. What started 
at 723 employees now is close to 2,600 employees. Bureaucratic 
organizations always grow. I've never seen a bureaucratic 
organization that actually shrinks. And this one is 
particularly rank-heavy, which usually has its own bureaucracy 
that comes as ranks increase. Essentially, the proposal would 
have two 4-star generals and an Under Secretary in charge of 
the organization the size of a marine expeditionary brigade, 
which is usually commanded, as you know, General Dunford, by a 
brigadier general who is conducting operations in both the air 
and land domains, very complex, contested environments. And 
we're going to be adding an incredible number of folks in what 
is being done officially in other places around the Department 
of Defense now.
    So, my question is, What would happen to the end strength 
of the existing Services if personnel are transferred to the 
Space Force? Would the Air Force, Navy, and Army backfill those 
positions, or are we looking to reduce the end strengths of 
those forces as we create this new bureaucracy?
    Secretary Shanahan?
    Secretary Shanahan. We would not backfill the end strength.
    It would be net zero.
    Senator Peters. So, we would see a reduction.
    In those other areas, because we're removing them.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yes.
    Senator Peters. We've talked about--and Senator Reed 
brought it up, which I think is important--the jointness 
factor. That certainly was one of the important and, I think, 
paramount achievements of Goldwater-Nichols, to make sure that 
we're fighting jointly. That's why I concur with some of the 
comments I've heard from my colleagues on having the joint 
command structure. But, if the creation of the Space Force is 
approved and we consolidate all of the Service space equities 
into one branch, the unified U.S. Space Command will only have 
one Service as a force provider, is my understanding.
    General Dunford, how does this proposal fit into Goldwater-
Nichols? How do you propose senior officers in the Space Force 
would broaden and gain joint experience if we're consolidating 
all space equities into a single Service providing force for a 
single functional combatant command?
    General Dunford. No, Senator, I think it's a great 
question. For clarity, I would envision that each of the 
Services would still have expertise at the staff planning level 
to employ space capabilities, and then also the necessary tools 
to take advantage of space. So, ground systems, staff planners, 
and those kind of things would be in the other Services. But, 
Senator, from where I sit now, particularly as a former Joint 
Force commander, operational, and as the Chairman, I mentioned, 
a minute ago, the diversity of perspective actually brings 
strengths to the Joint Force. So, I don't have concerns about 
Space Command being a cylinder of excellence, if you will, 
because it's largely a single Service. I think it's imperative, 
on the Joint Force, to make sure that, in force development, 
force design, in command and control, and on our planning, we 
leverage that diversity that each of the Services brings.
    My perspective is--and I was probably where many Members of 
the Committee are today, 2 years ago: skeptical that we're 
moving in the right direction. At the end of the day, I asked 
the question--we have a space domain now. It is a warfighting 
domain. What is the optimal organizational construct to make 
sure that we're positioned to fight in space? And that's where 
I've landed now on the Space Force. So, I do believe that the 
framework within which we develop joint capabilities will allow 
us to leverage both Space Command, the operational element 
here, as well as Space Force, the train, organize, and equip 
organization.
    Senator Peters. Thank you.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Peters.
    Senator Rounds.
    Senator Rounds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    First of all, let me just say, to all of you, thank you for 
your service to our country. I most certainly appreciate all of 
the expertise that you provide.
    Once again, Secretary Wilson, it has been truly an honor 
and a privilege to be able to work with you, and we're going to 
miss you.
    I have to share with you all. I guess I'm openminded as to 
whether or not this is a good idea. But, at the same time, I 
think all of us have an obligation to come in, in a sense, to 
be skeptical, because as you've all indicated, we have the best 
with regards to our approach right now to space, compared to 
our near-peer competitors. What we're trying to do is to make 
improvements for the long term based upon the issues that we 
see that we're not able to do as well as we would like to. 
Having learned a lot from previous projects and so forth, the 
Air Force, right now, has a B-21 project which is not only on 
time, it's on budget. It would appear to me that there are 
acquisition processes within the Air Force right now that are 
showing improvement, that we're actually seeing that work its 
way through. I'm wondering what it is within the space 
processes that would be different, and why it is that space is 
a challenge.
    I'm also trying to figure out what happens when we start 
talking about this new bureaucracy. We've actually considered 
the fact that we would actually have a general officer, a Chief 
of Staff, who would be a four-star, responsible for the Space 
Force, but we would also have another individual who would 
serve as commander of the U.S. Space Command.
    Let me just start with this. Any possibility that we could 
follow the same guidelines as we found within U.S. Cyber 
Command (CYBERCOM), where we have a dual-hatted position? Has 
that been considered as one way to perhaps promote some 
efficiencies in this proposal?
    I'll start with Secretary Shanahan, and if you'd like to 
pass that off, you're welcome to, sir.
    Secretary Shanahan. No, let me start there, and add on to 
your comments about the B-21.
    The first is, let's say we did have the dual hat, and you 
just look at the work that that individual would be accountable 
to deliver. It's too much work. If it were General Raymond, it 
would be too much work, given what's taking place across the 
Department. So, it's just a bandwidth issue. If we were to 
compare acquisition processes to the B-21, in our situation we 
have the opportunity to take advantage of innovation that's 
taking place in the commercial sector. The B-21 is really 
indigenous. We're going to have to make changes to our 
acquisition processes in order to be able to take advantage of 
all of this new technology and innovation.
    Senator Rounds. Would not a Space Force have the same 
unfortunate bureaucratic problems that the Air Force has to 
deal with today?
    Secretary Shanahan. That was the nature of the Space 
Development Agency. Carve the development portion out so that 
we can address the bureaucratic red tape of acquisition so we 
can really leverage the commercial innovation and the fact that 
how we design is going to be fundamentally different because 
it's now a contested environment.
    Senator Rounds. You know, this wouldn't be the first time 
that we've made a change like this. I mean, this has gone 
through processes in the past. There is no such thing as a 
perfect layout. The one we have today is clearly not perfect. 
It could be improved upon.
    And, General Dunford, I see that you were looking over as 
though you may have something to add to that particular 
thought.
    General Dunford. Senator, do you mind if I address the 
dual-hat issue?
    Senator Rounds. Yes, sir.
    Go ahead.
    General Dunford. When I look at General Nakasone, the 
benefit of the dual-hat arrangement up there is, he's able to 
combine intelligence with cyber capabilities to quickly execute 
operations. We saw, combined with authorities, the benefit and 
the power of that last fall in protecting our democracy.
    In the case of Space Command and Space Force, Space Command 
will be singularly focused on integrating the Joint Force for 
operations, so integrating capabilities and integrating across 
capabilities to conduct operations. The four-star which Space 
Force really is, in a train, organize, and equip world--and I 
see the benefit of having somebody singularly focused on 
developing the human capital, the doctrine, the capabilities, 
and the culture of a Space Force. But, that same individual, I 
don't believe, can also be the one we count on day-to-day to 
conduct operations.
    Senator Rounds. Let me just ask a couple of real quick 
questions. General Hyten, I'm going to come right to you with 
this, because clearly you have a number of these items under 
your responsibility right now, but let me just run this by.
    Satellites are going to be separate right now, in terms of 
maintaining the NRO separate, number one. Number two, what 
about hypersonics? Whose role is this going to play, and how 
does that fit into this whole process? Are we going to find 
that under a Space Force or a Space Command, or is that going 
to remain separated out?
    General Hyten. Well, you'll organize the structure of the 
weapons that we're building and the capabilities that we're 
building based on the organization with the best expertise. I 
think the Space Force structure will likely build the sensors 
that will see hypersonics. But, I think the other Services will 
more likely build the hypersonic capabilities, because they 
will operate in their domains. The hypersonic capabilities 
we're talking about right now are not space capabilities, they 
operate from the sea, from the land, from the air, through the 
air. That structure makes sense to go through there.
    If I could just build on a little bit to the previous 
discussion, though, because I think it's important for the 
committee to understand that--well, just look at the uniform 
I'm wearing. I am an airman at heart. When I bleed, I bleed 
blue. I love my Air Force, and I love the history of the Air 
Force in space. I mean, the term aerospace was created at this 
committee in 1958 by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force to 
talk about the integration of air and space. I love that 
background. But, every physical domain we have, when it becomes 
contested, we create a military service to deal with that.
    So, we're going to have a Space Force someday. I think what 
the committee has to decide is, When is that going to happen? I 
think now is the time to go to what the Chairman said, Do you 
want to get ahead of the problem, not trail it, not come in the 
response to a catastrophe, but get ahead of the problem?
    But, I hope everybody understands, I love the uniform that 
I wear.
    Senator Rounds. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Rounds.
    Senator Jones.
    Senator Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for being here today.
    I hope you can understand that, while this committee seems 
to be open to this idea, we're still seeing a lot of 
generalities after being studied for awhile, and we're having a 
hard time grasping. Candidly, unlike some colleagues, my needle 
may be a little bit more inclined to create a Space Force, but 
I still got questions.
    For instance, Secretary Shanahan and General Dunford, there 
was a statement that you issued that said, ``Current service-
specific entities that provide global space capabilities would 
become part of the U.S. Space Force. For example, the Air Force 
Space and Missile Systems Center, the Navy Mobile User 
Objective System, and the Army's Operations of Wide and Narrow 
Band Global Satellite Communications all become part of the 
Space Force.'' But, then you go on to say, ``As necessary, DOD 
components would retain organic space capabilities uniquely 
required to support the core mission of that military service 
or defense agency.''
    So, what, exactly, would and wouldn't become part of the 
Space Force? Do you have a list of the entities that would 
have, and do we have that list, or can you get that list to us?
    Go ahead, General.
    General Dunford. Senator, I can start, and just give you an 
example. In my own Service, the Marine Corps, we don't have 
space capabilities in the Marine Corps. We do have personnel 
that are trained in capabilities to take advantage of space. 
Where I see us going is that the preponderance of space 
capabilities would be in that single Service, the Space Force, 
but each of the Services, because space is integral to their 
warfighting capability, is going to have to have expertise 
inside those Services to make sure that space is properly 
integrated into their warfighting capability, and then they're 
going to have to have some capabilities to take advantage of 
ground systems and so forth. But, this would move on order of 
95 percent-plus of the capabilities in the department of space 
into a single force. So, what would be residual in the other 
Services would be minimal, and it would be designed 
specifically and only to make sure they can take advantage of 
space.
    Senator Jones. Okay.
    Secretary, you want to add anything?
    Secretary Shanahan. Oh, absolutely. Senator, we can come 
brief you. We've done the architectural and programmatic 
analysis, service and agency, for over the Future Years Defense 
Program. So, I could show you where, today, we have ten 
different organizations working on similar architectures. This 
is really not about the systems that we have in place. 
Wholesale, they stay in place. But, the Department is about to 
embark on new command and control for all the Services. We have 
an opportunity here to have all domain command and control at 
the Department of Defense level. That's never been an 
opportunity. And why that's such a big deal--and that's what 
the Space Development Agency represents--is, we're going to 
have common ground stations, common terminals. The 
infrastructure that's necessary to really be able to strip out 
cost and be able to upgrade capability will finally have a 
baseline that'll allow us to do it. I think this is where 
Senator Peters was. Where does this come from? Ten efforts to 
one. There's real cost, real schedule, real capability that 
gets delivered in a much more effective fashion. That's what 
this proposal is about.
    I'd trade 500 people, in a heartbeat, to implement this 
proposal. If that's where the negotiation is, I think we have a 
winner, here. The real benefit is delivering capability at a 
much lower cost, and those dollars are in the billions.
    Senator Jones. All right. Just to bring it home to Alabama, 
is the Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) at 
Redstone Arsenal going to be part of the Space Force? Do you 
know, or do you want to get back to me?
    Secretary Shanahan. No, actually, it depends which part, 
because when we think of some of the critical roles in the 
SMDC, some of that will be aligned with the Space Force as we 
do Army modernization. Some of the existing resources that 
support ongoing, I'll call them, legacy Army operations, 
they'll stay in their current capacity and in their current 
alignment.
    Senator Jones. All right.
    Secretary Wilson, I'm just going to ask it in a different 
way, this question about the need for this. Because I've read 
statements of yours in the past, where you have talked about 
the need for a Space Command versus Space Force, maybe not 
both. I get it about acquisition. But, I sometimes think that 
that could be done within the Air Force. Let me just put it 
this way. Had the President of the United States not issued an 
order about creating this--and you have been the Secretary now 
for a couple of years--would this be something that you would 
be coming to the Senate Armed Services Committee, recommending, 
after having served 2 years as Secretary of the Air Force?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, I think the President of the 
United States has done us a service by elevating this 
conversation and making the challenge we face in space a 
kitchen-table conversation. When I came here to be confirmed in 
front of you 2 years ago, I was told, by a holdover from the 
folks who were still kind of in the previous Administration or 
holding over or whatnot--that I had to take out the words 
``space'' and ``warfighting'' in the same sentence. And look at 
where we are today. The President has proposed, and you all 
have supported, 2 consecutive years of double-digit percentage 
increases in the space budget, and there's another one before 
you today in the fiscal year 2020 budget. We're having a 
hearing on how America needs to dominate in space. And I think 
we need to give him credit for that.
    Senator Jones. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you for that answer Secretary Wilson.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator. Senator Ernst.
    Senator Ernst. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    And thanks, to all of our witnesses today, for being here.
    This is obviously very important to all of us, but making 
sure that the structure is right is also very important. I 
think we've determined that it's a necessity. It's just how we 
establish the forces.
    So, I hope we can get this sorted out. I know we've talked 
about this so many times over, in so many different ways. We've 
given a lot of different examples of different types of 
structures of organizations within our military. I guess we 
need some convincing that there is a necessity for a sixth 
branch within our armed services.
    We do have the United States Special Operations Command, 
SOCOM, and its components. They were stood up to organize, 
train, and equip our Nation's special operators, and they were 
established to address a gap in our warfighting construct 
without standing up a separate branch of service. So, with 
that, we have Naval Special Warfare, we have U.S. Marine Corps 
Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), we have U.S. Army 
Special Operations Command (USASOC), and we've got U.S. Air 
Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), all of our branches 
represented within SOCOM. So, why is that not a great example, 
then, of what we could do for a Space Command instead of a 
Space Force? Could somebody address that?
    Secretary Shanahan. I'd be happy to do that. In my previous 
life, I did weapon system development for SOCOM, and I've done 
weapon systems development for space, and then also the Missile 
Defense Agency. So, a full spectrum of different classes of 
engineering and different levels of complexity. The SOCOM model 
is very much different than what we're proposing. And that's 
what you're recognizing.
    In the SOCOM model, the very advanced engineering is 
actually done by the Service. In this model, it would be the 
same. The advanced capability would be done by the Space Force. 
So, there's similarity. The actual research and development 
that's done by SOCOM today, if we just looked at the budget, is 
about $600 million. If we look at what's in the Air Force 
today, it's about $11 billion in acquisition. It's about $8 
billion in research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E). 
It's a different scale, and the complexity of the engineering 
and the complication is just a different class. So, I would 
just argue, it's different missions and different scales. I 
think it would be much more difficult to manage in that 
environment, given the amount of acquisition we're going to do 
as a Department, going forward.
    Senator Ernst. I understand the acquisition challenges. I 
would say that right now, as well, we also have challenges with 
personnel, simply, to move into a Space Force, and what those 
requirements might be.
    Secretary, I know we had spoken, just several weeks ago, 
about maybe some of the challenges. Because anytime we do stand 
up--even if it's a brand-new unit, whether it's a company or a 
battalion, you're trying to field new positions. Could you 
address for me the challenges with pulling a lot of talent, 
primarily from our Air Force, but also from some of our other 
service branches, and the implications of what that might do to 
hollow out some of the other forces with that talent, and just 
some of the challenges we'll face in filling some of those 
topheavy slots?
    Secretary, can you address that, maybe?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, with respect to the people, I 
think part of this has to do with at what timescale. How do we 
develop our people, and then how do we gradually promote them 
and get them ready to take on positions of responsibility? I 
think you've identified one of the issues that will be one of 
the hard parts we're dealing with in the working group, the 
task force that's been set up under a two-star general to look 
at how do we make sure we have the right expertise, and on what 
timescale could that Space Force grow into a fully robust 
support for a member of the Joint Chiefs?
    Senator Ernst. Again, understanding that these are 
decisions that will be made along the way--but, what kind of 
timeline will it take to fully establish a Space Force rather 
than a Space Command?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, the concept that is in the draft 
working group paper that was finished by the end of March and 
is currently being refined is that, within 90 days of passage 
of legislation, we would stand up the cell of a Space Force 
staff inside the Air Force, and then it will move on to two 
other phases, one to initial operating capability, and then 
full operating capability. Each of those phases are conditions-
based, but the concept is that it would be fully operational in 
the window of 2023-2024 timeframe.
    Senator Ernst. Okay. That sounds very fast, actually, to 
stand up a whole separate branch of service, but it is 
something that we'll continue to look at, as Congress.
    I appreciate the input that you've all provided here today.
    Thank you very much.
    Chairman Inhofe. Senator Kaine.
    Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    And thanks, to the witnesses.
    I have appreciated my colleagues' questioning. I think 
they've addressed a lot of the questions I have. And I want to 
take it in a different direction--I would say, take it to 
30,000 feet, but we're talking about a Space Force, so I should 
probably call it a low-Earth orbit--and talk about problems in 
space and how we're going to deal with them. And maybe if we 
talk about problems, then we could work backward to structure.
    So, here's a recent one that I was interested in. Just in 
the last couple of weeks, March 27th, India announced that it 
had successfully conducted a test of an anti-satellite weapon 
(ASAT), so they had something in low-Earth orbit that used an 
anti-satellite weapon to knock it down. And it resulted in, the 
estimates right now, 400 pieces of debris, 24 of which are 
large enough to potentially pose a threat to the International 
Space Station. There have been other instances like this. There 
was a Chinese similar effort in 2007 that led to 100,000 
cataloged pieces of debris, many of which we are still 
observing in debris fields that pose danger to other assets in 
space. There was a collision in 2009 between a working U.S. 
satellite and a sort of defunct Soviet-era satellite--a kind of 
a fender bender that produced debris. Then this debris causes 
challenges.
    If we think that space is going to be more of a traffic 
jam, more satellites for all kinds of purposes up there, what 
should we be thinking about, as a Senate, in this committee or 
in Foreign Relations, about the rules? What should the rules 
environment be, and what should we be doing to try to promote 
rules? India's an ally. We're not talking about an adversary 
doing something. We're talking about them testing some 
capacity. But, then that creates challenges for all kinds of 
uses of space. How should we be solving problems like that?
    General Hyten, you looked like you wanted to jump in.
    General Hyten. So, Senator Kaine, the first lesson from the 
Indian ASAT is just the simple question of, Why did they do 
that? The answer should be simple, I think, to all the 
committee looking at it, is that they did that because they're 
concerned about threats to their nation from space. Therefore, 
they feel they have to have the capability to defend themself 
in space.
    Senator Kaine. Can I just interrupt for a second? I think 
they have a second concern, as well, that there's no rules 
right now; there may one day be rules, and, often, when we 
write rules about this, we benefit those who already have the 
technology and say, ``Okay, you already have it, we'll 
establish rules for you,'' but then we usually establish 
nonproliferation for rules for everybody who doesn't. So, if 
they're concerned about the weaponization of space, they want 
to be able to get in there first so that, if the rules are 
created, they're sort of grandfathered in. I think that's part 
of the issue.
    General Hyten. Well, the second issue, from my perspective, 
is that--I've advocated, for a long time, for the development 
of some kind of international norms of behavior in space. And 
where those norms of behavior should begin, from my opinion, is 
with debris. Because as the combatant commander responsible for 
space today, I don't want more debris.
    Senator Kaine. Yeah.
    General Hyten. But, we don't have any international 
conditions that say that that's not a good thing.
    Senator Kaine. And you would think that even our 
adversaries would have the same concern about the debris effect 
on their programs. So, that should be something where there 
could be some international common ground and ability to find 
rules of the road.
    General Hyten. I think that's how it should be worked, in 
an international perspective, to start walking down that path 
to make sure that space can be used for future generations. 
Because if we keep creating debris in space, eventually we're 
going to get to the point where it's very difficult to find a 
place to launch, very difficult to find a place to put a 
satellite, to operate a satellite without having to maneuver 
all the time to keep it away from debris. All those kind of 
things are very complicated. But, it has to be worked in an 
international perspective. And I hope we get there----
    Senator Kaine. What is the international forum, or what is 
the international group that could do something like this?
    General Hyten. The place where that's debated now is in the 
United Nations in a Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. 
That's where that is debated, mostly. And the United Nations is 
a good place. But, I would like to think the United States 
could take a leadership role in that, working with our allies 
to define what we believe are the proper norms of behavior in 
space, and then bring that into the broader international 
community. It's very difficult, if you try to work something 
like this in the broad context. And that's clearly a State 
Department-led function. Others in the government will lead 
that. But, from a military perspective, it's important that we 
have those structures.
    Senator Kaine. I mean, there is some concern that 
adversaries create debris intentionally, too. If they create 
debris fields, that can then prohibit access to portions of 
space. One of the most scintillating Federal publications is 
NASA's Debris Quarterly NASA has an office whose job is to 
monitor debris so that those of us putting up satellites so we 
can get Sirius in our car are not going to be affected by that. 
So this is an issue that really needs some rules.
    I think, Secretary Shanahan, you were about to say 
something.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yeah, I was just going to add on to 
your comment when you said, ``What are some of the areas that 
we should be spending more time as a committee or a body?'' 
Space is clearly one. Cyber is another one of those domains 
that needs a better rule set. Artificial intelligence (AI) and 
autonomy, all these new technologies are going to unlock 
enormous, very positive capabilities, but there's also a 
downside, and we need to really be investing time to think 
about those so we can, to the earlier point, set some rules or 
establish some norms so that someone doesn't take an advantage 
or leverage----
    Senator Kaine. I hope we will play a leadership role in 
that. I think treaties have kind of gone out of fashion in the 
Senate. We don't ratify treaties much anymore. But, treaties 
are necessary. I mean, the notion that we could just have our 
own set of rules, and a treaty is a bad thing because it 
involves some incursion into sovereignty--if we don't have some 
rules about space, it's going to affect our ability--we create 
a Space Force like that, and it's perfect, but we find a lot of 
the domain is a domain that we really can't adequately invest 
in because of debris fields or other things, it's going to be 
to our detriment.
    Very helpful. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Kaine.
    Senator Sullivan.
    Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I appreciate the witnesses testifying today.
    I also appreciate, from the President and Secretary and 
Chairman, the $750 billion DOD request. I hope we can move on 
that, and appreciate the President putting this idea forward. 
You can tell that we're all wrestling with it. We're kind of 
struggling with it, to be honest. It's pretty clear that, 
watching some of your evolutions, that you've struggled with 
it, as well, and wrestled with it. And I think that's okay. 
That's what this committee's supposed to be trying to address.
    General Dunford, your statement on the fact that reform 
usually comes after some kind of disaster, that we can try to 
be preemptive or in front of this, actually, I think, is a very 
powerful one.
    And, General Hyten, I think what you're talking about, 
saying, ``This is going to happen at some time in the future,'' 
I think you're probably right about that.
    My questions actually relate to this issue of timing. And 
let me give you a concern that I have. It relates to readiness 
of the entire force. So, I commend all of you and everybody 
else at the Pentagon for working on this readiness. A lot of 
people forget, 2010 to 2016, the Department of Defense budget 
was cut by 25 percent, an amount that was almost close to $540 
billion, which is an entire DOD budget here. We all know that 
readiness plummeted. I chair the Subcommittee on Readiness, and 
I've held numerous hearings and readiness in the force 
plummeted, period. What we've all been trying to do--and I 
commend you and the President and everybody else in this 
committee, and the Chairman, Ranking Member--is get the 
readiness of our five current Services back up to the level 
that the American people expect from all of us and from all of 
you. That is a hugely important mission.
    And here's been one of my overriding concerns with regard 
to the Space Force. Not that it is not important, not that it 
might not even be a good idea, but I'm concerned that--is it 
prudent to take on what would be a fairly disruptive element of 
a new aspect of the Services in the United States military, 
when the current five Services, let's face it, are not up to 
the level of readiness that they need to be? Do any of you 
think that we are at the level of readiness that we should be 
right now?
    General Dunford?
    General Dunford. Senator, I'll start. No. And, as you 
know----
    Senator Sullivan. So, isn't that a concern, then? I mean, I 
know you'd think we can walk and chew gum, but shouldn't we try 
to get to the level of readiness that we all really think we 
need and then turn to this?
    General Dunford.Sir--let me tell you how I think about 
this. I don't look at it as, ``it's either space or 
readiness.'' I actually look at making sure that we have a 
singular focus on the interdependencies of the Joint Force on 
space as a readiness issue. We can generate all the squadron 
and battalion readiness we want, and, if we're not capable of 
defending ourselves in space and taking full advantage of space 
from a command-and-control and intelligence-surveillance-
reconnaissance perspective, precision munitions, timing of our 
systems--if we can't take full advantage of that and we can't 
protect ourselves in space, battalion or squadron readiness 
will amount to naught. I view this issue, actually, from my 
perspective, which is why my evolution on the issue has taken 
the direction it has, I actually now have come to much better 
appreciate, as a result of our analytic work, the 
interdependencies on space and the fact that this whole issue 
of Space Force really is, in my judgment, related to readiness.
    Senator Sullivan. So, in your professional judgment, which 
I respect immensely, you do not think this is going to take 
away what I believe is the most important mission everybody 
here should be doing, is getting our five current Services back 
up to the readiness that are demanded by the American people.
    General Dunford. Whatever direction the committee decides 
to go, this should be addressed as a joint warfighting 
readiness issue. That's what it is. It's not an organizational 
issue. It's a joint warfighting readiness issue.
    Senator Sullivan. Let me be a little bit more specific as 
it relates to a readiness concern. This committee, and all of 
you, have made, all of us, together, significant progress with 
regard to building up our Nation's missile defense. And, Mr. 
Secretary, you recently said, in testimony, that was vital. I 
agree with that. I think the whole committee does. It's been 
very bipartisan. One of the elements, General Hyten, you have 
mentioned that's actually critical to our Nation's missile 
defense, is having and deploying as soon as possible space-
based sensors that can look at both hypersonics and the 
ballistic missile threats coming to our Nation. I think it's 
your number-one unfunded requirement. Again, I think the 
committee agrees that that's critical. My understanding is that 
the space sensor layer system is being shifted from MDA, the 
Missile Defense Agency, to the Space Development Agency, which 
hasn't even been stood up yet.
    General Hyten, doesn't something like that almost 
automatically, in your mind, indicate that we're going to have 
a delay in deploying a space-based sensor system, which you and 
others and we all agree is critical to missile defense, when 
you're taking it out of the Missile Defense Agency into a new 
agency that hasn't even been stood up yet? How can that help 
with regard to readiness on missile defense? I'm very concerned 
about that topic.
    General Hyten. So, I think there's a number of interesting 
observations. I would say that the Secretaries to my right will 
probably have an interesting perspective on where they live. 
Where I live, as the combatant commander, I have a requirement 
for a space-sensor layer that will see the threats that will 
enable our deterrent and enable our defense.
    Senator Sullivan. How quickly can we deploy that?
    General Hyten. That's the question. We need that by the 
mid-2020s. That's what the threat requirements are showing us. 
Therefore, we have to go fast in order to do that. I've 
testified in front of this committee before for that issue. 
We've pushed that. There are so many people that are involved 
in space now, it makes it difficult. So, it was going to be the 
Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), then the Missile 
Defense Agency. The Space Development Agency is focused on 
that. The Space Development Agency is supposed to look at 
revolutionary, not evolutionary, concepts. This is a good place 
for them to do that. They have the right ability to go fast. 
But, the key, from a combatant commander perspective, is, 
that's my requirement. I need that requirement, and we need it 
filled by the middle of the next decade.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Sullivan.
    Senator Duckworth.
    Senator Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    As I understand it, under its current organization, the Air 
Force does not have a good track record of being able to 
effectively manage the prioritization of its missions in both 
air and space. Space frequently falls to a lower priority or 
lacks a consistent seat at the table. I contrast this with the 
U.S. Navy, which has successfully managed to prioritize its own 
air, surface, and submarine missions, to include the 
establishment of separate training, acquisitions, and doctrinal 
development centers across these very different domains. Why 
has this been such a problem for the Air Force under its 
current structure? And what role does a new U.S. Space Command 
play in helping prioritize space across departments? And how 
does that differ or duplicate the intent of the proposed Space 
Force?
    Madam Secretary or General, do you want to address that?
    Secretary Wilson. Happy to. Senator, the biggest shift that 
we are seeing is the shift from an uncontested domain to a 
contested domain. Over the last 3 years, including the budget 
that you have before you, the President's budget includes 
double-digit-percentage increases in the budget that are driven 
by an analysis of the threat, the strategy to meet that threat, 
the concepts of operations, and the programs to support it. I 
think what you're seeing in the difference between what you 
described with the Navy is that the Navy has been operating in 
a contested domain for hundreds of years. The Air Force, in 
space, has been operating in a contested domain for a much 
shorter period of time. We have set up the National Space 
Defense Center. We have schoolhouses and specific focus on 
space, most of which have been set up in the last decade. 
You're seeing, in the Air Force, that focus.
    I would also say that, for the missions and the 
requirements of the combatant commander, the United States Air 
Force has provided what the combatant commanders needed in an 
uncontested environment. The Air Force built a glass house 
before the invention of stones. We now have the invention of 
stones, and, as ``Jay'' Raymond said just yesterday to a very 
large audience, a year ago, the Air Force was in a 9G turn 
toward space superiority, and he was wrong. It's a 12G turn. 
I'm proud of the force that we're presenting.
    Senator Duckworth. So, how will the U.S. Space Command help 
prioritize across departments? And will it? And how does that 
differ from intent or duplication, in terms of the proposed 
Space Force? I mean, that is a very complex system. You're 
saying you're standing up new training and--do you think you 
will be just as capable, in the Air Force, to do multiple 
things at once, the way the Navy can do it? How does this 
differ between Space Command and Space Force?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, I was trying to explain why I 
thought the Navy structures were different from the way the Air 
Force evolved with respect to space. But, in the proposal 
that's before you, there's the additive personnel. Some of it 
is to support the four-star who will be a member of the Joint 
Chiefs. The other large number of people is to set up a 
Training and Doctrine Center specifically focused on the 
challenges of space as a contested domain.
    Senator Duckworth. So, then the Air Force will send your 
people to their training programs? Is that what you're saying? 
Or how does that work?
    Secretary Wilson. That Training and Doctrine Center would 
be primarily for members of the Space Force and other officers 
to get joint experience, and, honestly, also our allied 
officers. The Air Force has already opened up its Space 100, 
200, and 300 programs to our allied officers, and we have 
opened up and created a Combined Space Operations Center, this 
last year, that includes our allies, in California.
    Senator Duckworth. Okay. Thank you.
    I also serve in the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
Transportation, so I want to talk a bit about the intersection 
of military and commercial space assets. As you're all aware, 
this is an area where we don't yet widely have accepted norms. 
And we've had that discussion here today already. The multipart 
proposal we have here would likely increase complications even 
further. In the realm of great-power competition, we see 
countries like China, who are rapidly expanding their space 
presence, but they don't have issues of deconfliction, because 
their military and commercial assets are intermingled, and they 
operate almost as a single unit. So, how does DOD and the 
proposed Space Force plan to work with other Federal agencies 
and our commercial sector to deconflict with these issues 
before and while they're arising?
    Secretary Shanahan. Senator, let me take that one on.
    The Space Development Agency, in its design, is intended to 
undertake four different activities. The first is 
consolidation, so that we can take all the requirements of the 
Department, and then to do fundamental systems engineering, so 
that we can take advantage of a space ecosystem, so everything 
from launch to sustainment, and then, by design, tap into the 
commercial space industry, where significant innovation has 
occurred. But, for us to actually be able to incorporate that 
technology, we have to accommodate or make corrections to our 
acquisition system. Our rules and regulations won't allow us to 
leverage that new innovation. And the Space Development Agency, 
which is modeled after the Missile Defense Agency, allows us to 
be able to take advantage of all those things. I think that's 
what'll allow us to be able to develop capability more quickly, 
and at a lower cost.
    Senator Duckworth. But, I'm also concerned about security, 
and how do you force the civilians to work closely with you in 
security and share information? You've got people selling 
tickets for tourism into space for crying out loud.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yeah.
    Senator Duckworth. How do you deconflict that? Whereas, the 
Chinese don't have these problems, because they have total 
control over their commercial sector.
    Secretary Shanahan. I mean we have procedures, protocols. 
We have worked with commercial segments. You know, we have a 
long, long history of doing that. That's really the intent of 
standing up an organization like this, so we can really 
leverage that commercial space.
    Senator Duckworth. I'd love to explore this further, but 
I'm out of time.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you.
    Senator Tillis.
    Senator Tillis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for being here.
    I want to talk more about organizational transition. I 
think the President was right to make this a target that we 
need to achieve. So, to me, it's not a matter of whether we 
should do it, it's how we should do it and when we should do 
it.
    Secretary Shanahan or Secretary Wilson, when you stand up 
the force, a part of what you're doing is realigning current 
operations into a more cohesive unit. So, if you're looking at 
the end state of a Space Force, have you done the analysis to 
determine how much of that is just realigning existing 
commands, Training and Doctrine Center? In other words, if I'm 
building a new enterprise, how much of the current enterprise 
is simply being realigned, and then what is the net new? What 
I'm specifically talking about is the underlying cost 
associated with that. Because, in reality, you're not going to 
get a whole lot more money. So, you're going to have to create 
this force within current spending run rates, for the most 
part. I'm trying to figure out, when General Hyten rightly 
suggests that there's a capability he needs by the mid-2020s, 
what potentially shifts to the right after we've already 
quantified that net incremental cost, just for the overall 
structure of a separate force?
    Secretary Shanahan. Sir, the way we've been looking at this 
is, how quickly can we respond to the threat? Then, behind all 
this, how do we do it more effectively? Standing up the Space 
Command is not an incrementally large change in cost, so I 
would argue it's not really moving lines of boxes, it's 
eliminating overhead and competing priorities so, 100 percent 
of the time, the Space Command Commander can focus on the new 
mission. It's not about just getting separation from STRATCOM, 
it's 100-percent focused on the new mission, which is contested 
space, and the authorities, the rules of engagement, and the 
tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and the technology 
to support that.
    The other piece of this was--and this is where the real 
value is created--in the Space Development Agency, for 
incremental capability that we're going to deploy and I'll use 
Secretary Wilson's metaphor--given that we've been designing 
glass houses, how do we quickly transition so we're no longer 
building glass houses? That's the race. It's really not about 
reorganizing for people and professional development. We can 
pace that, based on how much change and cost we want to absorb. 
But, the race to get out of building glass houses is where 
we've looked at consolidation. How do we go from ten people 
attempting to get out of that operation to one, and then 
leveraging the infrastructure? Because we duplicate.
    Senator Tillis. Right. I think this could represent an 
opportunity for driving out efficiencies and coming to find out 
that maybe there's a way to do this without any net incremental 
cost. But, if you don't get that right, then you say, ``The 
good news is, we have a very clear vision for a Space Force. 
The bad news is, we need net incremental money that we don't 
have today.'' And then the bad news we're likely to give you 
is, ``We don't have anymore money, so what are you not going to 
do?'' So, that's really my focus.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yeah.
    Senator Tillis. Secretary Wilson?
    Secretary Wilson. If I can--just to add on, here. Ninety 
percent of the forces that we're talking about are currently in 
the Air Force, in the design phase that we're in, with the task 
force that we have stood up that includes all of the Services, 
but is led by the Air Force, by a two-star general. We are in 
the design phase now. One of the tasks in that design phase is 
to recommend the preliminary macro-organizational design of 
U.S. Space Force field units as well as subordinate 
headquarters. So, that planning work is underway.
    Senator Tillis. General Hyten, do you have anything to add 
to that?
    General Hyten. I think it's just important to emphasize 
that the Space Force that is in our proposed legislation is 
under the Air Force.
    Senator Tillis. Right.
    General Hyten. So, if the Space Force existed today, I 
would be sitting next to the Service Secretary responsible for 
space. That decision by the President and the Vice President to 
put the Space Force under the Air Force was the big driver for 
me, because that will allow us to drive efficiencies and fix 
problems, and not focus on what is the song, what is the 
recruiting structure, what is the personnel structure, what is 
the basing structure?
    Senator Tillis. When I saw that proposal, I felt a lot more 
comfortable with the organizational concept. So, that's why I 
said, to the points that General Dunford made in his opening 
comments, I don't think it's a matter of whether or not we need 
this focus, it's just the organizational construct. And I think 
that what's been laid out, to this point, is a good one.
    The last thing I'll leave you with, because I want to end 
on time, in deference to my colleagues, is that while we're 
taking a look at this organization evolution, I still think 
that we need a lot of work done on the overall organizational 
evolution of these operations that are now embedded within the 
service lines that we should really take a look at to drive 
efficiencies. Has nothing to do with the Space Command, but 
there's one best practice for acquisition, there's one best 
practice for a lot of these operations that are now siloed. And 
my guess is, if you did that, you'd free up a lot of resources 
within the current spending levels that could actually be made 
to accelerate a lot of the things that I know are your top 
priorities. So, that's something I'll look forward to speaking 
with y'all about when we can do it in a more meaningful basis, 
back over at the Pentagon.
    So, thank you all for being here. Thank you for your 
service.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Tillis.
    Senator Manchin's recognized.
    Senator Reed, presiding.
    Senator Manchin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all again for being here. I'm sorry, I've been 
running back and forth to committee meetings.
    I do have a few. This could be to anybody that would want 
to answer--in the proposal delivered to Congress, there was 
little reference to the Reserve component, other than to say 
that it will be part of other 15,000 people in the Space Force. 
What staff was told last week at a briefing was that the 
Department was not really sure what the Reserve component's 
role would be until we stood up the Active component, and that 
it would take additional legislation to make clear what the 
role of Space Force Guard and Reserve look like. If we vote on 
this Space Force later this year--or in spring or early summer, 
whenever--I'm being asked by the Department to vote on a 
proposal that does not have a real plan for our National Guard 
or Reserve, which is a big constituency base of mine. So, my 
question would be, if total force is going to be as important 
to the Space Force as it is to other branches, isn't it 
important that we think critically about the Reserve 
components?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, it's impossible for me to 
imagine a Space Force without a Reserve component.
    Senator Manchin. Because there's no plans I'm seeing. 
You're moving without that in part of your plan right now, as 
we see it.
    Secretary Wilson. Well, I am very happy to work with you to 
make that more specific.
    Senator Manchin. You all do have it? You can get more 
specific with that?
    Secretary Wilson. We're happy to work with you on that. 
There are, within the Air Force, some, particularly, Guard 
units that have----
    Senator Manchin. Very much so. I know that. But, I'm 
saying, if you have something, we haven't seen it yet. I'm 
sorry. But, if you could share that with us, it would be very 
helpful. It can relieve a lot of tension.
    Yes, sir, General.
    General Dunford. Senator, if I could just talk about where 
I think we are. So, there's a number of issues--and I've looked 
through this and had some of the same concerns you have--
there's a number of issues unresolved. The real question before 
the committee is, Do we stand up the organization and get that 
four-star leader singularly focused on what the right 
organizational construct is, or do we wait for the perfect 
organizational construct to stand it up? Where I fell was to 
move out and refine as we go. The committee will have plenty of 
time to provide oversight. So, the initial first step to take 
in this next fiscal year would be, stand up the organization, 
get the leadership in place, and then begin to address these 
very important issues, one of which you raised.
    Senator Manchin. Okay.
    Let me go a little bit further. You talk about the culture. 
This whole new Space Force is a culture, right? And you want to 
diversify it. Well, I can tell you, the Army has a certain 
culture. The Marines definitely have a certain culture--they're 
in first, they're going with their guns in blazing. The Air 
Force, basically, the culture has always been the same. This is 
where the space professionals have come from. This has 
basically been your bailiwick. How are you going to change that 
culture, when everyone's still going to come from the Air 
Force?
    Or what culture do you think to diversify?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, our focus on changing culture is 
to shift from providing a service to the combatant commanders, 
with almost like a utility, to a warfighting ethos. We're doing 
that within the space cadre of the Air Force today in the way 
in which we train our people, the way in which we assign them. 
Just as one example, we have people who operate satellite 
systems at Schriever Air Force Base, in Colorado Springs. They 
spend 4 months on the floor, operating their satellite systems 
in a peacetime environment, and then 4 months in training for a 
contested environment and how they would operate----
    Senator Manchin. Secretary, I'm just having a real hard 
time understanding why we need this other agency. You've got 
everything at your disposal right now. It just doesn't make 
any--I mean, I'm just having a hard time with it. I'm trying to 
understand it, and Secretary was very patient with me, trying 
to explain it. But, if I had everything you all have at your 
disposal right now, and the Air Force has that expertise, and 
there's some flaws in it, and you want more attention to it, 
we'll give you what you need. Just doesn't make any sense to me 
at all. I'm sorry.
    Secretary, I know you want to take another shot at me?
    Secretary Shanahan. No, I'm happy to take another shot at 
it. I----
    [Laughter.]
    Secretary Shanahan. That's why I'm here.
    Senator Manchin. I know.
    Go ahead and give me your spiel again, because they might 
want to hear why you think we need this other agency.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yeah. The very short story is the 
amount of change that's taking place in this environment, we're 
not prepared to address.
    Senator Manchin. The way you're set up now.
    Secretary Shanahan. The way we're set up now.
    Senator Manchin. But, can't you redirect what you have 
within the Air Force right now, which is where most of the 
culture is going to stay? It's not going to go over to the 
Marines. It's not going to the Army.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yeah.
    Senator Manchin. It's staying right over there.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yeah. Yeah. So, most of this is really 
within the Air Force, and, as Senator Tillis was talking about, 
restructuring. This is a fundamental shift that now treats 
space as a domain. So, the culture is changed because the 
mission has changed.
    Senator Manchin. Okay.
    Secretary Shanahan. The leadership will change. The 
prioritization of the resources will change. Then our approach 
to developing capability will change.
    Senator Manchin. I gotcha.
    If I can lead into this back to Secretary Wilson.
    Secretary Shanahan. Sure.
    Senator Manchin. Secretary, you've also publicly stated 
that you didn't think the Space Development Agency is a good 
use of resources, citing the Air Force's own Space Rapid 
Capabilities Office as an effective acquisition body. Can you 
elaborate on why you think our money and effort is better 
invested in processes and organizations that already exist, 
which is the point I'm trying to make?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, the Space Development Agency is 
not part of the President's proposal or the legislation in 
front of you. The first project that this agency is apparently 
going to take on is actually funded by the Air Force and is in 
our budget. It's, How do we use low-Earth orbit commercially-
based satellite constellations? It's in our budget at $140 
million over 5 years, and is intended to----
    Senator Manchin. It's in your purview also. I mean, that's 
part of your bailiwick.
    Secretary Wilson. That is. And we propose to do it with the 
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Question is 
how best to buy them and whether we need a new agency to do so.
    Senator Manchin. Do we need a new agency just to get into 
lower orbit?
    Are we justifying a new agency just to get into lower 
orbit?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, what I'm saying here is not new. 
My memorandum to the Secretary on this subject has been 
reported on publicly.
    Senator Manchin. Okay.
    Secretary Wilson. And I did not support it.
    Senator Manchin. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Senator Reed [presiding]. On behalf of Senator Inhofe, 
Senator Cramer.
    Senator Cramer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thanks, to all of you, for being here. I've only been in 
the Senate for, well, less than 4 months, but this is the most 
fascinating 2 hours so far. So, thank you all for being as 
prepared as you are.
    I'm going to summarize a few things I've heard this morning 
before I run out of time to do that, and then ask some 
questions.
    General Dunford, you said space is no longer a sanctuary. I 
think, Secretary Wilson, you both said it's now contested. 
Great points. Important points.
    General Hyten, you said there will be a Space Force one 
day. I'm going to hone in on that, because we hear a lot of 
reluctance and a lot of questions about efficiencies, business 
model. You've answered them all brilliantly--not necessarily 
convincingly, maybe, to some, but I think you've answered those 
questions very well.
    Secretary Shanahan, you said something interesting. I want 
to go through, maybe, a little history. You said the existing 
forces are based on that place, on geography. I think it's an 
important point that sometimes we're missing when we draw 
parallels between this and other efforts and missions. As you 
said that, I started thinking about the Air Force itself, that 
the Air Force wasn't always the Air Force--it was once the Army 
Air Force; and prior to that, it was the Army Air Corps; and 
prior to that, there weren't airplanes--that, as new domains 
became contested, we had to lead.
    I was also thinking about some other proverbs, including 
proverbs where it says that, without vision, the people perish. 
I'm pretty sure it was a Minnesota Viking fan that said, ``The 
logical conclusion of defense is defeat.'' Being second is not 
a great place to be. I know we're first, but I just feel so 
strongly that, if we're going to have a Space Force one day, 
why wouldn't we start sooner rather than later? Why would we 
let somebody else get there?
    So, from a strategic standpoint--and I guess I'd ask the 
Generals first about this--how important is it to have this 
public kitchen-table-level discussion? I appreciate your 
terminology, Secretary Wilson, when you said, ``The President 
has elevated this topic to a kitchen-table level.'' I think 
that's exactly right. But, our adversaries are watching. 
They're probably watching this hearing right now. How did China 
and Russia roll out their space forces or their space activity? 
Did they do it in a real outward way, or did they try to do it 
under the radar?
    Maybe the Generals could answer that for me. Is it 
important, by the way, that we send a message?
    General Dunford. Senator, I don't mean to be flippant, but 
the Russian military and the Chinese military are not typically 
afforded the opportunity we have been afforded this morning, in 
full transparency with initiatives like this.
    General Hyten. And, Senator, the Chinese and the Russians 
both look at space as a critical element of their defensive 
capabilities, as their military. They've also organized 
differently about space. The Chinese are integrating a lot of 
their capabilities into a single command--space, counterspace--
those into a single command. They have an officer responsible 
for space, an officer responsible for counterspace. I'll be 
glad to talk to you, in a different setting, about what I think 
they're doing, and what the strengths of what they're doing, 
and the weaknesses, are. But, I really don't want to talk about 
that in a public forum.
    Senator Cramer. I appreciate both answers very much.
    We've had a lot of discussion about cost and benefit. I 
understand the concerns of a couple of years--or several years 
of cutbacks that now have us in catchup mode on readiness and 
lethalness and all those things that are important. I 
appreciate the answer, Chairman Dunford, that this is probably 
essential to readiness. But, maybe, Secretary Shanahan, is a 
cost-benefit analysis, a literal cost-benefit analysis, is that 
a possibility, here?
    Secretary Shanahan. No, it is. And implicit in the Space 
Development Agency is a cost-benefit analysis. It's a twofer. 
More capability, sooner, at a lower cost. This is about moving 
more quickly. This is a threat-driven response, and I think 
what the Chairman's been highlighting here is, How do we get 
ahead of things?
    The other piece, here, and we've touched on it briefly, is, 
we're about to usher in a new age of technology. We're on the 
dawn of some major changes. If we adapt properly, we'll be able 
to take advantage of it and, again, increase our dominance in 
space.
    Senator Cramer. Maybe just the last question, for Secretary 
Wilson. With that in mind, are the increments important? I 
appreciate what my colleagues are saying about why isn't this 
in the plan, or why isn't that part of the proposal, and 
whether it's the Guard or the Reserves or other things. Yet, 
aren't the increments sort of an important part of the rollout? 
In other words, we're not going from here to here, we're going 
incrementally. Is that not an important part of the strategy?
    Secretary Wilson. I'm not sure it's incremental. I do think 
that what we have now is a set of programs that support a 
strategy to dominate in space. We all prefer that space remains 
peaceful, because everyone loses if war extends into space. 
But, we are developing the capabilities to deter, and, if 
necessary, to fight and win in the space domain, as we do in 
all other domains, so that our adversaries will choose wisely 
to deal with our diplomats and not with our warfighters. And 
that's what this is about.
    Senator Cramer. Beautifully said.
    Thanks, to all of you. And I might just wrap up my comments 
by saying, I just don't want to be sitting here 4 years from 
now and have four people look at me and go, ``I wish we would 
have started this 4 years ago.''
    With that, I yield.
    Senator Reed. On behalf of Chairman Inhofe, Senator 
Shaheen.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all very much for being here, and for your 
responses.
    I totally agree with everything that you all have said in 
your opening statements about the importance of space, the 
competition for space that we have entered into. Space is the 
next potential battleground. I may even be convinced, in the 
future, that we need a new Space Command. I do appreciate 
President Trump's focusing on space. I just have questions, 
based on what I've heard and what I understand--and maybe I 
need to know more--that we have not gotten there, in terms of 
the planning and the commitment, and that, rather than spending 
a lot of time debating and questioning which direction we're 
going to go, we'd be better to continue to work on that and 
focus on what we need to immediately do to address the 
challenges that we're facing.
    So, let me begin with that and ask--I share Senator 
Manchin's concern about the failure to address Guard and 
Reserve as part of any planning for a new Space Command. It's a 
question, as you all alluded to--I guess it was you, General 
Dunford or, Secretary Wilson--that many of our National Guard 
folks are already doing work in space. So, I think they have a 
question about what their future role might be in any new Space 
Command. I think answering those questions is going to be very 
important in order to ensure that there's support from States 
who control the Guard.
    But, I want to go on to the whole civilian side of this 
question, because, as I understand, as space activity 
increases, as our ability to detect debris improves--and right 
now, my understanding is that DOD tracks more than 20,000 
objects in space, and that number continues to grow, and that 
we are making investments in situational awareness in space--I 
had the opportunity to see some of that recently--to try and 
track some of that space debris, and that the Space Policy 
Directive of this Administration contemplates a larger role for 
the Department of Commerce in space situational awareness and 
space traffic management. We just had a hearing with the 
Commerce Committee last week, where they were talking about 
reorganizing all of the space elements in the Department of 
Commerce into the Office of the Secretary. So, I'm trying to 
figure out which functions would actually go to Commerce, and 
which would stay in DOD, and how that responsibility gets 
sorted out.
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, I think I can take that one.
    The Air Force has, really, since the late 1950s, taken on 
the responsibility of warning people when a piece of debris 
might hit their satellite. We do that out of Vandenberg Air 
Force Base, in California. You're right that we currently track 
about 24,000 pieces of debris that are larger than 10 
centimeters, and we provide that information to every country 
in the world.
    We are also expanding our ability to know what is going on 
in space. This year, we will go operational with something 
called the Space Fence, out of Kwajalein, which is a space-
facing radar, and we will increase the number of pieces of 
debris that we're tracking to probably over 100,000 with that 
Space Fence, and it'll go out to geosynchronous orbit.
    This shift to the Commerce Department is that they will 
take over the responsibility of telling commercial companies 
and deconfliction and those things. We're working very closely 
with them. We're happy to transition that responsibility of 
working on the commercial space, on space traffic management, 
to the Commerce Department. They have had people out, working 
alongside our folks at Vandenberg on how that would probably 
work. As the military service, obviously, we would continue to 
have to have space situational awareness and collect the data. 
We would feed that over, likely, to the Commerce Department, 
who would combine it with other sources of data and work with 
industry.
    Senator Shaheen. Would that be the plan in any new Space 
Command that's operational?
    Secretary Wilson. The concept is that Vandenberg would be 
part of the Space Force, and the Combined Space Operations 
Center is where we have all of the services, as well as our 
allies and partners, that track space debris.
    Senator Shaheen. But, we would continue to shift the 
collection of that information to the Department of Commerce?
    Secretary Wilson. Yes, ma'am.
    Senator Shaheen. General Hyten?
    General Hyten. So, that mission today is accomplished by 
airmen in the United States Air Force, but it's under my 
command, U.S. Strategic Command. We provide that data, and we 
have, today, 98 space situational awareness sharing agreements 
with others. We have to do that, because we want to be able to 
operate safely in space. But, it's not a military mission. 
That's a civil mission. And the Department of Commerce is just 
taking over that civil responsibility so we can focus on the 
warfighting part.
    But, I met with Secretary Ross this week. He is not going 
to try to build all of the data and the sensors that we have in 
order to do that. He'll take our sensors and our data, and he 
will just become the face to the commercial sector and the face 
to the world so the military doesn't have to do that. But, that 
function that's in STRATCOM will transition to the U.S. Space 
Command (SPACECOM).
    Senator Shaheen. Will the personnel who are currently 
working at STRATCOM transition to the Department of Commerce? 
Is that the plan?
    General Hyten. No, ma'am, the Department of Commerce will 
have that front-facing piece. The airmen of the United States 
Air Force today that would be in the Space Force in the future, 
working for the Space Command, they still have to do that 
mission so we can do our defense of mission and our space 
control missions in the future. That's why we just fell into 
the space traffic management business. We do it for defense.
    Senator Shaheen. No, I'm just concerned about the expertise 
that might be required in the Department of Commerce. And are 
they going to have to hire that new? Are they going to take it 
from the Air Force?
    General Hyten. We're working very close with them to 
understand what kind of personnel requirements they would have 
to have, how they would do that. In the conversations I had 
with Secretary Ross this week, what I pointed out is that, if 
we do it right, most of the capabilities they need can actually 
be automated and acquired through commercial agreements. They 
wouldn't have to have this army of people doing that. They 
could do it a whole lot better if we do it right from the 
beginning, and we're working closely with them to make sure we 
do it as efficiently as possible.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Reed. On behalf of Chairman Inhofe, Senator 
Blackburn, please.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to thank each of you for being here today. I want to 
thank you for the time that you've spent individually with us.
    I may be the outlier on this panel, but I totally 
appreciate why you need to have a Space Force. I get it. You 
know, when you look at technological advancement, when you look 
at 5G that is coming on, you look at the cyber pressures, you 
look at that lower-orbit component, when you look at the 
integration that is taking place in the new space economy, I 
fully understand why you need to make this a priority, and why 
you need to focus on this, why we, as a Nation, need to focus 
on this, because 21st-century warfare is most likely, from what 
I understand, going to be a good bit different than what we 
have seen in times past. So, I appreciate that we are putting 
an emphasis on this so that we're not left and caught 
flatfooted at some point when we need to respond.
    Secretary Wilson, I want to say all good wishes as you 
leave. It truly is an honor to have you here, and we appreciate 
the work you've done, whether you were wearing the uniform or 
in the House or here. Of course, I thoroughly enjoyed serving 
in the House and on Energy and Commerce with the Secretary. And 
I know, because of that expertise, you do have an understanding 
of the commercial side and also of the military side. It is a 
unique perspective.
    One of the things I do want to come to--and Secretary 
Shanahan and I discussed this a little bit--as you look at this 
new space economy that is growing--and Senator Duckworth talked 
a little bit about the Chinese, and, of course, we've discussed 
this. You don't know where their commercial sector and their 
military sector end and begin, because they're one in the same. 
That is a great-power competition. We want to make certain that 
we are focused on what that means. So, are we doing enough to 
encourage and leverage the dynamism of the commercial space 
industry so that we are going to be able, as we conduct this 
transition, to meet our national security needs? Secretary 
Shanahan, I want to hear from you briefly on that.
    Then, since we are near the end of this hearing, I would 
like to just go down the dais, anything that you all want to 
add that you haven't had the opportunity to add.
    Secretary, to you first.
    Secretary Shanahan. Sure. Thank you.
    I think we're in a unique opportunity, given that now we 
have to design and deliver capability that's more resilient, 
that we can draw in the advances the commercial space industry 
has developed. I mean, I think that's this unique point in 
time. That's why it's so important that, when we do the 
development and the acquisition, we start at a different place 
than where we are today with our acquisition system.
    There are two big opportunities. One is, we systems-
engineer the ecosystem to draw in launch, to draw in the ground 
segment, to draw in 5G. It's not about, How do we procure a 
microsatellite or a CubeSat? It's, How do we design the system 
so we can ingest large volumes of data that we're going to----
    Senator Blackburn. With a focus on interoperability and 
cross-platform and integration of all the different agencies 
that come under DOD.
    Secretary Shanahan. No, absolutely.
    Senator Blackburn. I think that is a very important point.
    Secretary Shanahan. Thank you.
    Senator Blackburn. Yes.
    Secretary Wilson, anything to add?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, with respect to architectural 
design, the Air Force has just finished a 90-day study looking 
at the threat, looking at the phases of conflict, looking at 
all of our missions, and calculating and doing about--several 
thousand iterations of wargames to figure out, What are the 
best architectures, and how do we get there fastest to 
defendable space? There are a few conclusions from that. One is 
that different missions require different solutions, that an 
increase in number of satellites, particularly large number of 
commercial satellites, helps, but numbers alone are not enough 
to prevail. We also found that the congressional direction to 
consolidate all of space communications under the Air Force is 
actually a tremendous step forward, and I can explain, in 
classified session, why that would be. Then, the space missions 
that are not well aligned with commercial low-Earth orbit 
satellite systems should probably stay where they are, possibly 
with changes in protection, but that using only commercial 
space, so putting hundreds of small, cheap satellites into 
orbit, does not work as a strategy. And it would mean that, in 
combat, that low-Earth orbit system would be quite vulnerable 
and would fail.
    So, this is a complex problem. We've done some pretty good 
wargaming, and we will be happy to come up and brief the 
committee, at their convenience.
    Senator Blackburn. Appreciate it.
    General Hyten, anything to add?
    General Hyten. Senator, I'll just say it's all about the 
threat. How do we stay ahead of the threat? The threat right 
now, especially in China, is going much faster than we are. We 
have a significant advantage over them, but that's the 
advantage of history and what we've built over the last few 
years. We have to stay ahead of them. And I just thank this 
committee, thank the Congress, for taking on the threat. When 
it comes right down to it, that's what it's all about.
    Senator Blackburn. General Dunford?
    General Dunford. Senator, the only thing I'd say, in the 
interest of time, would be that, we really have two choices, 
either have a bias for action now and move out and establish an 
organization, knowing that there's many questions to be 
answered, or wait until we have all the questions answered 
before we stand up the organization. My best military advice, 
given the importance of space and the consequences of not doing 
all we can to optimize the Department to move forward in space, 
would be move out now, with what might be the 80-percent 
solution, refine as we go, and the committee will have an 
opportunity to provide oversight to address some of the issues 
that have been raised this morning.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you for the service.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    On behalf of Chairman Inhofe, Senator Heinrich, please.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Ranking Member Reed.
    I guess, first, I just want to say, as somebody who's 
Ranking Member right now on Strategic Forces and sits on Intel 
and obviously sits on this committee, and as somebody who has 
oftentimes fought the Pentagon, over the last decade, about the 
value of disaggregated space architecture and rapid 
capabilities, I really appreciate the focus we have on space 
right now. I think it is welcome. There are disagreements on--
or at least some skepticism about this construct at this point, 
but I think all of us can agree that this is a conversation 
that's been coming for a long time, and we need to have it.
    I want to pivot from Space Force, real quick, to Space 
Development Agency for a minute, and just ask Secretary 
Shanahan and General Dunford--one of my concerns there is that 
we aren't simply shifting money and missions around to do what 
we're already doing at places like Space Rapid Capabilities 
Office, Air Force Research Labs, SMC, and some of the things 
that are working under the current construct. So, just what 
assurances can you provide that we're not reinventing the 
wheel, but we're adding value?
    Secretary Shanahan. You know, I think there are two 
domains, or two capabilities that the Department is going to 
invest in, in its modernization, and it has to do with command-
and-control communications, and then Earth observation. Each of 
the Services has its own plan. So, it's really more about the 
systems engineering and the architecture, rather than the 
technology that's being developed at the Space Rapid 
Capabilities Office (RCO).
    We do need to, when we look across all of the labs, start 
to make decisions on what are the standards we want to employ--
not necessarily direct technology development, but, how do we 
develop standards so integration becomes more seamless and less 
costly?
    Senator Heinrich. Yeah. I would not disagree. As we're 
looking at this, I think there's some real value in looking at 
colocating the new Space Development Agency (SDA) with some of 
the existing ecosystem so that we get those economies of scale.
    General Dunford, do you have anything to add to the 
Secretary's comments there?
    General Dunford. The only thing I'd say, Senator, is--I 
mean, this makes sense to me as an initial step, and I think 
the broader question you're asking about is, How do we make 
sure that all the processes in the Department are aligned?
    Senator Heinrich. Right.
    General Dunford. And that's going to be the responsibility 
of all of us, to ruthlessly drive alignment over time, 
ruthlessly drive efficiencies over time, and get this thing 
moving, and make the refinements that I know are going to come. 
There's probably only one thing I'm 100 percent confident of as 
I sit here this morning, and that is, 5 years from now, it's 
going to look slightly different than it does today--or what we 
propose today.
    Senator Heinrich. Great.
    Secretary, I want to talk a little bit about NRO. 
Obviously, a lot of exposure to that on one of my other 
committee assignments. They have a pretty unique role right 
now, both under title 50 and under title 10. I think they're 
working well. Is NRO in or out of the White House legislative 
proposal right now? And what's the logic?
    Secretary Shanahan. It's out.
    Senator Heinrich. Good.
    Secretary Shanahan. It's not out because there aren't 
enormous synergies. It's really out because of organization and 
agreement on timing and alignment. There are a lot of details. 
This is General Dunford's point about how quickly can you move? 
We can move out on the things we can control. It doesn't mean 
that we couldn't move out in the integration with NRO.
    To your earlier point around architectures and technology, 
as we build out the future, we need to be provisioning with the 
NRO, because that integration is going to take place in the 
future. And if we do that, it makes the integration that much 
easier in the future.
    Senator Heinrich. I think that's probably the right answer. 
I know there are some questions on this committee about where 
that belongs, but I think that's the right approach.
    Secretary Wilson, General Hyten, I wanted to ask you. I 
know we talked, before, about the importance of leveraging 
small space in commercial assets. Last week, you spoke about 
Blackjack. But, I'm more interested in the issue around giving 
small launch providers an opportunity to put some of these 
small sats in place. Does this space proposal do anything more 
to leverage that emerging industry to meet our national 
security objectives? Is that one place where SDA might also 
play a role?
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, the Air Force is responsible for 
launch, but, as you know, we don't build rockets, we buy 
launches.
    Senator Heinrich. Right.
    Secretary Wilson. The biggest challenge is on the heavy 
end. But, on the light end, we have a variety of things that 
we're doing. General Hyten may be able to add to this some. 
But, we have contracted, for example, with Virgin Galactic to 
launch under the wing of a 747. We are working with a number of 
very small, very innovative companies on different ways to 
launch. And launch flexibility and reconstitution from 
unexpected places is one of the ways in which we keep our 
adversaries guessing.
    Senator Heinrich. General.
    General Hyten. Senator, we've made a lot of progress, in 
the last few years, of taking advantage of that. I think one of 
the strengths of the proposal that's before you, though, is, 
the structure we're proposing will allow us to better leverage 
all of industry that this country has to offer. We've struggled 
a little bit with the commercial sector, in particular. We've 
struggled with the smaller companies, figuring out how to do 
that.
    Senator Heinrich. Right.
    General Hyten. The Air Force recently has made huge 
progress in walking down that path. I think the Space 
Development Agency can walk down to real commercial leverage. 
So, I think the total of this proposal really gets after a lot 
of the things you're talking about.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    On behalf of Chairman Inhofe, Senator Hawley, please.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you to the witnesses, for being here. Thank you for 
your diligent work on this important proposal and this 
important topic. You've nearly made it to the end, here. So--
just 6 minutes to go.
    I want to ask you about a few specific challenges. We've 
talked a lot this morning about the space domain, the 
importance of the space domain, in general. Let me ask you 
about some of the challenges, as I understand them, that make 
the space domain important. And you can tell me if my 
understanding needs revision.
    One of the major issues, as I understand it, that makes 
space so important is our global Command, Control, 
Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and 
Reconnaissance (C4ISR) architecture that runs through space, 
sort of the central nervous system of the Joint Force. We were 
able to build that central nervous system in and through space 
in years past because it was largely uncontested space. But, 
now, as you've said over and over today, it's contested, it's 
congested, it's competitive. And so, our C4ISR and precision, 
navigation, timing networks are at risk.
    So, what I want to ask you is, What are we doing to make 
our global C4ISR networks and our positioning, navigation, and 
timing (PNT) networks more resilient and survivable? And how 
will a Space Force contribute to that?
    Absolutely, go ahead, General.
    General Hyten. So, Senator, I think you described the space 
challenge quite well. I think we have a significant element of 
everything that we do that goes through space. There's not a 
single military operation that exists on this planet that 
doesn't involve space some way. And the C4 network that we 
operate leverages space, especially because we operate away 
from our homeland. We operate overseas. And when you do that, 
you need to bring your communications, bring your ISR, bring 
all those capabilities with you. And a significant amount of 
those capabilities today come from space.
    And so, as we look to the future, we have to make sure we 
protect that and we defend that, and we can still provide those 
capabilities. And our adversaries are seeing that, too. As 
they've seen that, they are developing capabilities to counter 
those. So, we have to adjust. We have to be able to build 
different architectures that we can fight with more 
effectively, that can guarantee that capability is always 
there. We have to build the ability to defend ourselves and an 
ability to deny an adversary the use of space, at a time and 
place of our choosing, if we have to.
    As the Secretary discussed earlier, we don't want conflict 
to go into space, but, if it does, we have to----
    Senator Hawley. And, in this setting, General, can you give 
us some idea about what are some of the steps that we are 
taking now, or that need to be taken, to make that 
infrastructure, that C4 infrastructure, architecture, and our 
PNT architecture, more resilient? What I'm driving at, as I 
think you can see, is, What are the specific things we need to 
be doing to meet this very pressing challenge? Then, how does 
that tie into this large structural change that you've been 
proposing here today?
    General Hyten. So, the Secretary described, one of the big 
challenges is the integration of satellite communications in 
one place. As we move to a Space Command and a Space Force, the 
benefits that we'll get from that unity of effort will be, 
we'll have one command focused on operating satellite 
communications, and we'll have one force looking at acquiring 
the capabilities we need to. The integration of those two 
capabilities will allow us to better defend ourselves and 
operate in the future. You can apply that to positioning, 
navigation, and timing. You can apply that to overhead weather, 
missile warning. All the capabilities we have, you apply that 
same concept. And we can talk, in a classified session, about 
the specifics of what we're doing, but, in broad terms, that's 
the structure.
    Senator Hawley. Madam Secretary, you wanted to add to this.
    Secretary Wilson. Senator, before the fiscal year 2019 
budget that we brought up before your election, we did some 
work on, What should our strategies be, and how do we shift our 
programs to implement those strategies? We did a tabletop 
exercise with many of the Members of the Committee to show what 
the strategies were in the program shifts.
    Those strategies really kind of revolve around five things, 
in general:
    The first is to protect and defend. So, defend our 
satellites, think chaff and flares, but other kinds of things. 
And it's different, mission by mission.
    Second, be able to stop an attack. It's not good enough to 
stand in the ring and dodge and weave and take punches. You 
need to be able to swing back.
    Third, proliferate. Now, proliferation, alone, does not 
solve the problem, but it does complicate the problem for an 
adversary.
    Fourth, undermine the confidence of the adversary that they 
really understand what's going on around them.
    And fifth, all of this rests on a foundation of excellence 
in our people.
    So, those are the five lines of effort, and they're all 
supported by programs and programmatic change that was 
supported by the committee in the fiscal year 2019 budget.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you. That's very helpful.
    My set of questions around your proposal for this major 
structural change, for the standing up of a Space Force, 
relates to this line of questioning. What are the specific 
pressing challenges we face in that domain? Will this new 
structure help us meet those specific challenges? Or is there a 
danger that we are too focused on the domain as a domain, and 
we're not focusing enough on the specific challenges?
    Mr. Secretary, before my time expires, let me just ask you 
a somewhat related question: the relevance of AI and new 
technologies. You touched on this briefly, I think, with 
Senator Cramer, but tell us something about how Space Force may 
help the whole Joint Force continue to develop the new 
technologies, whether it's AI or otherwise, that we need to be 
leaders, here, in the 21st century.
    Secretary Shanahan. Right. So, the Space Development 
Agency, in our modernization for the National Defense Strategy, 
addresses building an integrated transport layer for the 
Department of Defense so that we can ingest and move 
significant volumes of data that facilitate artificial 
intelligence. It's this buildout of the broader infrastructure. 
It also includes the ground network that'll connect sensor and 
shooter, and then all other decisionmakers. It's not just about 
closing the fire-control loop, but we're trying to scale and 
address latency. This is why we need fundamental systems 
engineering as we approach this problem set.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you very much.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    On behalf of Chairman Inhofe, Senator Blumenthal, please.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thank you, Senator Reed.
    Thank you all for being here today, and thank you for your 
service.
    You know, I've been in and out as I've attended other 
committee hearings, and I sort of feel like the most important 
facts for us and the American people to understand are the 
facts that haven't been said today. The reason why they haven't 
been said is that they are largely classified. The reason 
that's important is that the American people have no idea--
really no idea--about the immensity of the threat in space. 
I've made this comment in a classified setting, that I wish the 
American people could be present in this room--not this room, 
but the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF)--
because our adversaries know what they are doing, we know what 
they are doing, they know we know what they are doing, but the 
American people have no idea. So, this discussion and debate 
will have very little interest in the American public. It's 
carried on in a level of, forgive me, bureaucratic language 
that most Americans would have trouble seeing an immediacy in 
their daily lives. But, if they were privy to what we hear--and 
you know it much better than we do, because you live it--I 
think they'd be pretty alarmed. And this is not by way of 
criticism of you, because you're living with the strictures of 
what is classified, and not. But, I think we have a real 
obligation to explain to the American people why space is a 
domain that matters, why the threats there are real and urgent, 
why they are growing in importance.
    So, I think we all agree here that space is an important 
domain. Undersea warfare is an important domain, but we don't 
have a separate command for it. Cyber is an important domain, 
as my colleague and friend, the late John McCain, used to say.
    I found very persuasive, Secretary Wilson, what you said in 
July of 2017--I know it's been quoted to you before this 
morning--and others of you, the reasons for your opposition to 
that separate domain, or the separate Command for the space 
domain. But, I would like to ask, in terms of the personnel 
issues that I think are of immediate concern to a lot of folks. 
This proposal would exempt Space Force civilian personnel from 
title 5 rules and protections. It would create a new, excepted 
service that is separate from the Federal Government 
competitive service or senior executive service. It would 
create an alarming precedent, I think, that potentially could 
erode the merit-based civil service within the Pentagon and 
eliminate the rights of Space Force employees to participate in 
collective bargaining, for example. There's currently no 
civilian workforce that is statutorily exempt from collective 
bargaining rights. Can you tell me, Secretary Shanahan, why 
that is a part of your proposal?
    Secretary Shanahan. The title 5 that you were referencing 
was based on the discussion we were having earlier around 
integration with the NRO. That's the model that they employ 
there. And, as we think about the talent management practices 
that we'll need in the future, we wanted a provision for that. 
Much like in your reference to the undersea domain, our 
approach to systems engineering is the same as the Navy's 
undertaken. So, there are a lot of examples that we're trying 
to draw from that have been successful. That was the nature of 
that insertion.
    Senator Blumenthal. Would there be protection for 
whistleblowers in the same way there is throughout the rest of 
the government?
    Secretary Shanahan. The baseline that we're coming off of 
is the existing personnel system. This was to incorporate the 
ability to integrate with the NRO. So, I'd have to go back and 
confirm that for you.
    Senator Blumenthal. If you would, that would be 
appreciated.
    Secretary Shanahan. You bet.
    Senator Blumenthal. Because, based on this proposal, the 
Secretary of Defense could terminate any Space Force employee, 
``in the interests of the United States,'', and, as drafted, it 
says, ``notwithstanding any other law,'' which leads me to 
think that they would be exempted from a lot of other 
protections of law, and could simply be dismissed whenever you 
determine it's in the interest of the United States.
    Secretary Shanahan. Yeah. Let me go back and confirm that 
that's not our interpretation.
    Senator Blumenthal. My time is expired.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    But, I have a lot more, and I'm going to submit them for 
the record--a lot more questions than answers, here. And, as 
others have remarked, each of you has raised objections or 
reservations or questions in the past--the very recent past--
about this idea, which I'm not sure have been fully addressed 
here.
    Thank you.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    On behalf of Chairman Inhofe, Senator Warren, please.
    Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    So, we're here today to examine a proposal to set up a 
Space Force within the Air Force. And, before we haul off and 
authorize spending billions of dollars on this, I just want to 
ask a couple of questions about what problem this Space Force 
is supposed to solve.
    So, let me start with you, Chairman Dunford. Is it correct 
to say the Department of Defense has proposed a Space Force 
because the United States is at risk of losing its competitive 
advantage in space, and our space assets, including critical 
satellites, are becoming increasingly vulnerable? Is that a 
fair statement?
    General Dunford. That is a fair statement, Senator. And 
just a quick caveat, based on your opening comment. In the 
organization that we have today is an organization that we 
built when space was----
    Senator Warren. No, I understand that. I understand that.
    So, I want to think about, though, what the basis of the 
problem is, then. A 2016 GAO report that examined our existing 
space acquisition programs noted, ``We and others have 
reported, for over two decades, that fragmentation and overlap 
have contributed to program delays and cancellations, cost 
increases, and inefficient operations.''
    Secretary Shanahan, is it the DOD's view that unifying 
space programs under a single service will address these 
problems?
    Secretary Shanahan. Senator, unifying and aligning certain 
programs under the Space Development Agency will address that 
problem that you spoke to.
    Senator Warren. So, you say the problems of delays and 
cancellations, cost increases, and inefficient operations will 
be solved if there is a separate branch of the military, but 
still under the command of the Air Force. You know, this is 
particularly surprising to me, since the proposal to leave the 
Space Force headquartered under the Air Force would still leave 
exactly one person responsible for acquiring hardware for both 
the Space Force and the Air Force. So, it's not clear to me how 
this solves anything. In fact, it's hard to see how that person 
would be able to balance the competing needs of both Services 
without a massive increase in overall spending.
    So, Secretary Shanahan, let me ask. Obviously, DOD has not 
been able to solve the problems identified by the GAO over the 
last 20 years. Why do you think another layer of bureaucracy 
will suddenly solve this problem?
    Secretary Shanahan. Well, I think the Department solved a 
lot of problems. I think we can point to a lot of programs, 
where inefficiencies, delays in decisions, redundancies, 
overlaps have been corrected. I think there's a----
    Senator Warren. Well, I'm sorry, the report is from 2016, 
from the GAO, saying you have not solved these problems.
    Secretary Shanahan. And all I'm arguing is, we've made lots 
of improvements, and we can point to----
    Senator Warren. And how is having one person, as you have 
now, in charge of the acquisitions for these two programs--
space program and the Air Force--how's that going to solve the 
problems that were identified by the GAO?
    Secretary Shanahan. Well, specifically, there are a set of 
fragmented programs today that will be consolidated, and 
they'll allow us to get at many of the issues identified in the 
GAO report.
    Senator Warren. There's just one person in charge right now 
and you still haven't fixed this problem.
    Secretary Shanahan. No, this isn't about one person. This 
is about an organization, an organization that has certain 
capabilities and decision rights.
    Senator Warren. Well, look, I understand that DOD says that 
unifying space acquisitions is going to help improve outcomes. 
But, I'm concerned that it won't, because program delays and 
cancellations, cost increases, and inefficient operations are 
the rule, not the exception. And the entire defense acquisition 
system already has this problem, and nothing in this proposal 
makes it any better.
    You know, none of the ideas I've heard today clearly spell 
out how a Space Force leads to improved security in space. 
Instead, all I see is how a new Space Force will create one 
more organization to ask Congress for money. And there's no 
reason to believe that adding an entirely new Space Force 
bureaucracy, and pouring buckets more money into it, is going 
to reduce our overall vulnerability in space. I just think the 
taxpayers deserve better than this.
    I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Reed. Thank you, Senator Warner.
    On behalf of Chairman Inhofe, let me thank the witnesses 
for their testimony and declare that the hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:08 p.m., the committee adjourned.]

    [Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:]

            Questions Submitted by Senator M. Michael Rounds
                           reserve component
    1. Senator Rounds. Secretary Wilson, you stated that it is 
``impossible for me to imagine a Space Force without a reserve 
component.'' What roles do you see the National Guard and Reserve 
performing in the Space Force and how, very generally, do you envision 
current Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units transitioning 
into the new Space Force?
    Secretary Wilson. Today, both Reserve and National Guard units 
provide strategic depth for U.S. space operations. They also recruit 
and retain personnel with unique civilian experience across the space 
enterprise. The Reserve and National Guard role in space will continue. 
The DOD is currently conducting the detailed planning to determine how 
this role will be implemented for the Space Force. The Space Force 
Reserve Components will be shaped around the Active Component of the 
Space Force. The Secretary of Defense, with advice from the Chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of the Air Force, and Chief, 
National Guard Bureau, will determine the best organizational structure 
for the Space Force Total Force and provide a legislative proposal for 
consideration in a future National Defense Authorization Act.
                               __________
                               
               Questions Submitted by Senator Joni Ernst
                        cooperation with allies
    2. Senator Ernst. Secretary Shanahan, Secretary Wilson, General 
Dunford, and General Hyten, one area that distinguishes our armed 
forces from competitors is our network of strong military relationships 
with our partners and allies. Given the variability of counterspace 
weapons, it could be in our advantage to work with our allies to ensure 
the integrity of the space ecosystem. Can you assess our current 
engagement with allies regarding space operations, and discuss any 
future goals?
    Secretary Shanahan. The United States maintains strong and 
burgeoning relationships, conducts close coordination and cooperates 
with allies to compete, deter and win in space. U.S. allies directly 
contribute to and support space surveillance operations as well as 
conduct operational level command and control of coalition space forces 
at the Combined Space Operations Center. U.S. Strategic Command manages 
space situational awareness sharing agreements with international and 
commercial partners and coordinates allied intelligence support to 
space operations.
    As allied space strategies and programs develop and mature, the 
United States will seek opportunities for deeper integration, including 
enhanced joint and coalition planning for space defense. A military 
service dedicated to the space domain--with a separate 4-star Chief of 
Staff as an equal member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--will ensure we 
enhance a holistic approach to engagement with our allies regarding 
space operations.
    Secretary Wilson. I defer to the Secretary of Defense on this 
question.
    General Dunford. I defer to OUSD(P) to provide the appropriate 
response to this question.
    General Hyten. Our engagement with our Allies in space has never 
been higher, and it enhances our national security objectives. We have 
a rich history of cooperating with our closest Allies in space which 
predates U.S. Strategic Command assuming responsibilities for Joint 
space operations. For example, through our North American Aerospace 
Defense Command (NORAD) partnership with Canada, we have partnered 
together in the missile warning and space situational awareness mission 
areas for decades. Similar relationships with Australia and the United 
Kingdom have also seen decades-long partnerships in these same mission 
areas. In July 2018, in recognition of these partnerships and the fact 
that Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom have contributed 
capability into our Joint space enterprise, and had sent exchange 
personnel to the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg 
AFB, California, we renamed the JSpOC into the Combined Space 
Operations Center (CSpOC). Not only did this renaming highlight the 
international partnerships we leverage every day in space, but it also 
drove us to a higher level of integration through the assignment of 
additional Allied personnel at the CSpOC (to include a Canadian officer 
serving as the CSpOC Deputy Director), daily integration between the 
CSpOC and the national space operations centers of the other three 
countries, and the incremental improvement in the information sharing 
systems we use to pass information in real time. In addition to the 
formal designation of a CSpOC, we have also created the Multi-National 
Space Collaboration (MSC) Office at Vandenberg AFB. This office allows 
space-faring, like-minded Allies such as Germany and France, to send 
liaison officers to work alongside our experts at Vandenberg AFB to 
improve and enhance how we cooperate in space. To date, the MSC Office 
has full-time liaison officers from Germany, France, and the United 
Kingdom (even through the UK has personnel assigned to the CSpOC, they 
also wanted to send a liaison office to explore even deeper space 
relationships with the U.S.). Several other countries, such as Japan, 
Italy, and South Korea, have also expressed an interest in sending 
liaison officers to the MSC Office, and we are actively working the 
necessary international agreements to do so. Over the past year, we 
have evolved our space situational awareness (SSA) cooperation to a 
daily activity. Our lead unit for SSA, the 18th Space Control Squadron, 
holds daily engagements with a number of Allied nations to maintain 
shared awareness of what is happening in space, and to use significant 
space activities (such as last year's reentry into the Earth's 
atmosphere of a Chinese space station) as practice opportunities to 
improve our tactics, techniques, and procedures for cooperating in the 
SSA mission area. Building on the success of the CSpOC, this fall we 
plan to stand up a Combined Technical Operations Cell (CTOC) at 
Vandenberg AFB. The CTOC, which was conceived at the most recent 
Schriever Wargame, will allow Australia, Canada, UK, and the U.S. to 
make available Special Technical Operations capabilities for use by our 
Joint Space Enterprise. Planning to standup this capability is ongoing 
at the CSpOC and within the Combined Space Operations (CSpO) working 
groups today. Finally, we are moving toward executing a multi-national 
named operations in space in the near future. Today, the U.S. Strategic 
Command operation for conducting Joint space operations is known as 
Operation OLYMPIC DEFENDER (OOD). In late 2018, OOD was re-written to 
be releasable to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, and 
the UK. Additionally, these countries have been invited to join the 
multi-national force which will execute OOD with the U.S. as the lead 
nation and Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, as the Multi-National 
Force Commander (which will be delegable to the Joint Force Space 
Component Commander). Australia, Canada, and the UK have all expressed 
that they plan to join OOD in the near future, and all three are in the 
midst of securing their national-level approvals to do so. In summary, 
space operations are inherently Joint and Combined. Simply put, we 
couldn't execute many of our space mission without the important 
contributions of our Allies. We are stronger together, and soon we will 
be executing daily operations together under the collective banner of 
the multi-national OOD.
                               __________
                               
           Questions Submitted by Senator Richard Blumenthal
                civilian personnel and excepted service
    3. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, why are you eliminating 
the rights of Space Force employees to unionize?
    Secretary Shanahan. The Space Force mission is similar to, and 
interchangeable with, organizations with missions that are largely 
exempt from collective bargaining by Executive Order for reasons of 
national security. Many of the workforce authorities envisioned for the 
Space Force are modeled on authorities currently used by the National 
Reconnaissance Office. Due to the classified nature of the mission and 
the work that would be performed by the Department of the Air Force 
employees supporting the Space Force (also known as ``Space Force 
employees''), the unionization of employees and collective bargaining 
for the Space Force workforce would not be consistent with national 
security considerations.
    The Department proposes to exempt the Space Force workforce from 
collective bargaining rights because the non-standard pay system the 
Department envisions for the Space Force would require lengthy and 
costly collective bargaining without such exemption. The Department has 
determined workforce pay flexibility is a national security imperative 
for the Space Force in order to maintain U.S. advantages in the space 
warfighting domain. Since the Space Force would be competing for talent 
in cutting edge fields, the Department has determined it is willing to 
pay to meet market demands where needed.
    Based upon planning assumptions and initial estimates, the 
Department anticipates that the large majority (approximately two-
thirds) of current civilian employees who would be part of the Space 
Force workforce are not in a union or are ineligible for union 
representation.

    4. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, are you concerned that 
this proposal would establish an employment system where ideology and 
political affiliation--rather than merit and qualifications--would 
influence hiring, compensation, and termination decisions?
    Secretary Shanahan. No. Merit system principles would apply to the 
Space Force. In addition, Space Force employees would be protected 
against unlawful discrimination and prohibited personnel practices. 
Space Force employees could file complaints alleging unlawful 
discrimination with appropriate Equal Employment Opportunity offices 
and could raise allegations of prohibited personnel practices to the 
Air Force or Inspector General or the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. 
Additionally, civilian employees who currently serve in title 5 
competitive service positions and who become Space Force employees 
would retain the right to appeal adverse actions to the Merit Systems 
Protection Board. Civilian employees newly appointed to title 10 Space 
Force positions may appeal within DOD.

    5. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, unions play an important 
role in providing employee protections and sharing feedback on policy 
changes throughout the implementation process. Why should the Space 
Force be exempt from this kind of union input?
    Secretary Shanahan. Union representation would not be consistent 
with national security considerations due to the classified nature of 
the Space Force mission and the work performed. Collective bargaining 
would subject management decision making to review by arbitrators who 
can overturn decisions and inject their own opinions on what is best 
for mission accomplishment and national security. The Department would 
establish regulations to ensure that Space Force employees have the 
right to present administrative grievances or other concerns to the 
appropriate Department of Defense authority for prompt and equitable 
consideration. Space Force employees could present concerns to the 
Office of Special Counsel as well. In addition, advance notice and 
bargaining with labor unions over changes to conditions of employment 
likely would delay implementation of changes needed to carry out the 
Department's mission. An exemption from collective bargaining is 
proposed because the non-standard pay system the Department envisions 
for the Space Force would require lengthy and costly bargaining without 
such exemption. U.S. Space Force implementation must be accomplished 
without delay, including with regard to establishing a competitive pay 
system.
          culture of retaliation and whistleblower protections
    6. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, the proposal as drafted 
requests these authorities ``notwithstanding any other law.'' Do you 
intend to exempt the Space Force workforce from the American with 
Disabilities Act, or other employment discrimination laws?
    Secretary Shanahan. No. Space Force employees would not be exempted 
from the Rehabilitation Act, the American with Disabilities Act, or 
other employment discrimination laws applicable to Federal employees. 
Space Force employees would be able to file complaints alleging 
unlawful discrimination with relevant Equal Employment Opportunity 
offices.

    7. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, are you concerned that 
this proposal does not appropriately protect whistleblowers and all 
employees from unjust termination? How would you suggest amending the 
proposal to better protect all employees, including whistleblowers?
    Secretary Shanahan. The appeal authorities included in the Space 
Force legislative proposal are modeled after existing authorities for 
the Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System (DCIPS). The 
Department has found that DCIPS employees are adequately protected, and 
we do not believe the proposal needs to be amended. The same statutory 
whistleblower protections afforded most Federal employees would apply 
to Space Force employees. Space Force employees would be able to raise 
concerns regarding alleged prohibited personnel practices, including 
violations of law, rule, or regulation, or other gross mismanagement, 
waste of funds, abuse of authority, or danger to public health or 
safety, to the Air Force or Department of Defense Inspectors General or 
the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Employees would be protected from 
retaliatory action for disclosure of alleged prohibited personnel 
practices.
    Space Force employees would also be protected from unjust 
termination. Employees would have the right to appeal adverse and 
performance-based actions and would be protected from prohibited 
personnel practices, including unjust termination. The Department 
anticipates that the need for the focused special termination 
procedures exercised in the interest of the U.S. described in what 
would be section 9384 of title 10, U.S.C., if the proposal is enacted 
into law would be used sparingly and only to protect the Department 
from serious national security breaches. This proposal is based upon 
section 1609 of title 10, U.S.C., that governs DCIPS.
                                  cost
    8. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, are you confident that 
the budget requests includes all of the additional staff and annual 
recurring costs?
    Secretary Shanahan. Yes. The Department invested significant time 
and effort in developing the personnel and cost estimates for the Space 
Force. The additional recurring costs reflect what is required for the 
Space Force headquarters, as well as additional resources to build a 
space-specific expertise, culture, and ethos, such as education and 
training, a warfare center for space, a space personnel center, and a 
doctrine development center.

    9. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, can you commit to 
providing documentation to support this cost estimate?
    Secretary Shanahan. Yes. The Air Force submitted the President's 
Budget Operation and Maintenance, Space Force Volume 1 justification 
exhibit with the President's Budget. This includes the 0-1, OP-32, and 
PB-31R summary exhibits. In addition, the Department developed detailed 
cost estimates of the additive costs of the Space Force over the Future 
Years Defense Program (FYDP) and at full operational capability. A 
Department-wide team led by the Air Force is currently refining those 
estimates as they conduct the detailed planning to establish the Space 
Force, if authorized by Congress. The Department is prepared to brief 
you on the details of these estimates and planning to date.

    10. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Wilson, last fall, you signed a 
memo that estimated the cost of starting a Space Force Department and 
U.S. Space Command would be about $13 billion over five years. I 
understand that the current proposal differs from the original, but can 
you explain why the cost estimate is drastically different now?
    Secretary Wilson. In September 2018, the Air Force provided the 
Deputy Secretary of Defense with a proposal for a Space Development 
Agency and transition to a Department of the Space Force. Our previous 
proposal included standing up a Service and a new Department, rather 
than a Force within an existing Department. The previous approach would 
be unable to leverage the staff of the existing Department of the Air 
Force. The original AF cost estimate included additive costs of a 
Department and U.S. Space Command that totaled $12.9B over five years. 
The proposal did not include additive costs for a Space Development 
Agency:
      Establishing a fully independent Military Department for 
Space ($4 billion over the FYDP)
      Establishing U.S. Space Command ($1.6 billion over the 
FYDP)
      Additive manpower for the transition to operations in a 
warfighting domain, as well as operational support activities for the 
new department ($7.3 billion over the FYDP). The current DOD proposal 
for the Space Force estimates the cost of a new Military Service within 
the Department of the Air Force as 8$2 billion over the first five 
years, with a steady-state cost of 8$500 million per year following 
declaration of Full Operational Capability, projected in fiscal year 
2024. This total does not include the cost of establishing U.S. Space 
Command. It also does not include additive manpower for the transition 
to operations in a warfighting domain, nor operational support 
activities for the new Service consistent with the September 2018 
proposal, the current estimate does not include additive costs for a 
Space Development Agency.
                        organizational structure
    11. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, after you identified 
the need for ``institutionalized and centralized advocacy'' for the 
space warfighting domain, what other courses of action were considered?
    Secretary Shanahan. The Department considered multiple models to 
address the need, including: a combatant command-only model, a Space 
Corps consisting of Air Force space only, a Space Force consolidating 
space forces from all existing Military Services, and a Department of 
the Space Force. When examining these organizational options, the 
Department sought to address two interdependent issues: 1) the need to 
focus the joint force on space defense and 2) the need to organize, 
train, equip, and present space forces in a manner consistent with a 
distinct warfighting domain.
    The combatant command-only model was not the right solution because 
it did not provide the complete structure necessary for a distinct 
warfighting domain. Although the new combatant command would enhance 
focus and prioritization on space for the joint force, the 
organization, training, equipping, and presentation of space forces 
would remain fragmented across DOD. Furthermore, there would continue 
to be no independent advocate for space on the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
(JCS). An Air Force-only Space Corps would be less optimal than the 
proposed solution. By being composed of existing Air Force space forces 
only, it would not unify space doctrine, organization, training, 
materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities (DOTMLPF) 
across the Department. A Department of the Space Force could be most 
effective in addressing the problem, but is significantly more resource 
intensive than the proposed solution.
    The Space Force within the Department of the Air Force is the right 
solution now. It elevates space on par with the other warfighting 
domains; creates dedicated advocacy for space with a 4-star Chief of 
Staff who is a full member of the JCS; and unifies organize, train, and 
equip functions for all space forces. By leveraging existing 
infrastructure in the Department of the Air Force where appropriate 
(e.g. General Counsel, Service Acquisition Executive, Installations, 
Energy & Environment, etc.), the Space Force will be a lean 
organization, focused on space combat and combat support. This solution 
maximizes space warfighting capacity while minimizing bureaucracy.

    12. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, what criteria were 
evaluated in deciding on this particular proposal?
    Secretary Shanahan. The Department had three priorities when 
analyzing the options: maximum effectiveness to stay ahead of the 
growing threat to space systems and operations, low risk to current 
missions and ability to execute changes, and affordability of the 
overall solution. The Department's proposal represents the optimal 
balance between warfighting effectiveness, risk, and affordability.

    13. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, did you talk to 
President Trump about this proposal? If so, what did you advise him?
    Secretary Shanahan. Yes, I spoke to the President numerous times 
about the options the Department was considering. I advised him that 
creating the Space Force within the Department of the Air Force would 
be the most effective and affordable solution for our armed forces.

    14. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Shanahan, do you think that your 
feedback was appropriately considered in policy discussions?
    Secretary Shanahan. Yes. I presented the President multiple options 
to address the problem, recommending a Space Force within the 
Department of the Air Force. He agreed that it was the right solution 
to maximize our warfighting capacity while minimizing bureaucracy.
                          national guard role
    15. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Wilson, with the current proposal 
of a separate Space Force service within the Department of the Air 
Force, how do you plan on organizing the Air National Guard to serve 
the new Organization of the Department of the Air Force?
    Secretary Wilson. Today, both Reserve and National Guard units 
provide strategic depth for U.S. space operations. They also recruit 
and retain personnel with unique civilian experience across the space 
enterprise. The Reserve and National Guard role in space will continue. 
The DOD is currently conducting the detailed planning to determine how 
this role will be implemented for the Space Force. The Space Force 
Reserve Components will be shaped around the Active Component of the 
Space Force. The Secretary of Defense, with advice from the Chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of the Air Force, and Chief, 
National Guard Bureau, will determine the best organizational structure 
for the Space Total Force and provide a legislative proposal for 
consideration in a future National Defense Authorization Act.

    16. Senator Blumenthal. Secretary Wilson, do you envision a 
separate Space National Guard to provide reserve support to the Space 
Force?
    Secretary Wilson. The Department envisions that the National Guard 
role in space will continue. The DOD is currently conducting the 
detailed planning to determine how this role will be implemented for 
the Space Force.
                               __________
                               
            Questions Submitted by Senator Elizabeth Warren
                          university research
    17. Senator Warren. Secretary Shanahan, what role will university 
research programs and partnerships with universities play in the 
activities of the Space Development Agency (SDA)?
    Secretary Shanahan. The university research community will play a 
potentially significant role in the activities of the Space Development 
Agency (SDA). I established SDA with the explicit scope of 
``foster[ing] growth in the U.S. space industrial base'' as part of an 
overall approach to developing and fielding space capabilities much 
faster and much more affordably. I have also given the Director, SDA 
explicit authority to enter into transactions other than contracts, 
cooperative agreements, and grants. These mechanisms will carry out 
basic, applied, and advanced research projects as well as certain 
prototype projects and activities authorized by 10 U.S.C. 2371b to 
rapidly access the capabilities of the university research community, 
including our national University Affiliated Research Centers.

    18. Senator Warren. Secretary Shanahan, what are the key technical 
areas that the university research community should be funded to work 
on that will support the future space capability needs of the 
Department of Defense?
    Secretary Shanahan. The Space Development Agency (SDA) defined 
architecture will be a major driver for future research. SDA is 
refining its architecture, and its plans for acquiring those 
capabilities, so it can move quickly once the Department receives its 
Fiscal Year 2020 appropriation. As those efforts mature, SDA will 
detail specific technical focus areas. Those research topics and others 
will continually be proffered by the Deputy Director of Research & 
Engineering for Research and Technology and the Undersecretary of 
Defense for Research & Engineering Assistant Director for Space. I 
recommend the university research community consider key technical 
areas that support the eight capabilities described in the Department's 
August 2018 Report on Organizational and Management Structure for the 
National Security Space Components of the Department of Defense (the 
``DOD Space Vision''). These capabilities include:

    1.  Persistent global surveillance for advanced missile targeting;
    2.  Indications, warning, targeting, and tracking for defense 
against advanced missile threats;
    3.  Alternate positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) for a GPS-
denied environment;
    4.  Global and near-real time space situational awareness;
    5.  Development of deterrent capability;
    6.  Responsive, resilient, common ground-based space support 
infrastructure (e.g., ground stations and launch capability);
    7.  Cross-domain, networked, node-independent battle management 
command, control, and communications (BMC3), including nuclear command, 
control, and communications (NC3), and;
    8.  Highly-scaled, low-latency, persistent, artificial-
intelligence-enabled global surveillance.
                               __________
                               
               Questions Submitted by Senator Gary Peters
 organization of space science and technology and testing capabilities
    19. Senator Peters. Secretary Shanahan, in your written testimony 
you indicated that the Space Development Agency will ``will be 
complimentary to ongoing space efforts within the Department and, where 
applicable, leverage emerging commercial technologies to field enhanced 
space capabilities on an accelerated timeline.'' The Department already 
has significant activities in science and technology and test and 
evaluation in the development of space capabilities, both in government 
labs and test ranges, and through grants and contracts with 
universities and industry. Do you plan to reorganize or realign any of 
the current in-house or extramural space science and technology or test 
and evaluation activities currently being executed by the Services, 
DARPA, or other agencies, and if so what are the specific 
reorganizations or realignments being considered, and what criteria are 
being used to evaluate the benefits and costs of such changes?
    Secretary Shanahan. No. I do not plan to realign those types of 
activities into the Space Development Agency (SDA). SDA will address 
emerging threats, allowing legacy organizations to focus on continuing 
to acquire and deliver highly reliable space systems for enduring 
missions, and aggressively pursue capability and efficiency 
improvements to these systems. This approach will ensure SDA remains 
complementary to legacy space acquisition organizations as well as 
balance risk across the Department. Where appropriate, space science 
and technology or test and evaluation activities currently being 
executed by the Military Services will be realigned to the Space Force.
            role of space development agency in s&t and t&e
    20. Senator Peters. Secretary Shanahan, will the Space Development 
Agency be responsible to ensure that space, science, and technology and 
test and evaluation activities and infrastructure are adequately funded 
by the Services and agencies to meet the needs of the Department of 
Defense?
    Secretary Shanahan. No. The USD(R&E) Assistant Director for Space 
has overall responsibility for those activities across the Department 
of Defense. The Space Development Agency (SDA) is charged with a subset 
of those activities related to rapidly developing and deploying next-
generation space capabilities including rethinking how we do rapid 
experimentation, prototyping, and innovating for space. SDA will work 
with other agencies and the Military Services, to include the U.S. 
Space Force when approved by Congress, to ensure the next generation 
capability needs are met across the entire spectrum of the national 
space community.
                               __________
                               
               Questions Submitted by Senator Joe Manchin
                          space force manning
    21. Senator Manchin. Secretary Shanahan, Secretary Wilson, General 
Dunford and General Hyten, the estimates for personnel requirements in 
the U.S. Space Force from the last information I received are 
approximately 16,500 people. Approximately 14,550 of these will be 
transfers from the Services. On top of this, there will be a 
requirement for hundreds if not thousands eventually at the U.S. Space 
Command headquarters once fully established. Many of the uniformed 
Services already struggle to meet recruiting goals, especially in more 
technical areas like space and cyber. The majority of these individuals 
will have to come from the Services. Can you provide a more detailed 
structure of where you are planning to move these personnel and the 
predicted costs of doing so to the services?
    Secretary Shanahan. Our goal is to create a lean Space Force with 
minimal bureaucratic overhead. Almost all of the military and civilian 
personnel who would be transferred to the Space Force are performing 
space missions today in the existing military services. Unifying those 
personnel into a single branch of the armed forces dedicated to space 
would allow the current, limited space personnel to focus on building 
the space doctrine, expertise, and capabilities we need for a 
warfighting domain.
    Secretary Wilson. I defer to the Secretary of Defense for this 
answer.
    General Dunford. I defer to OUSD(P) to provide the appropriate 
response to this question.
    General Hyten. I have to defer to the Services. I have not been 
involved in these discussions.
                 ensuring quality control of personnel
    22. Senator Manchin. Secretary Shanahan and General Dunford, the 
Space Force proposal is very heavy at the top of the organization in 
both numbers and rank. The required staff for the Space Force 
headquarters reaches almost 7 percent of the total personnel. This is 
contrasted with the current Air Force staff which is only about 0.7 
percent of the total personnel. The number of general officers created 
is also concerning. The Space Force will have two four-star generals at 
the top. The Space force staff will also presumably have its own staff 
directorates to accomplish the goals of truly focusing on space away 
from the Air Force. Many of these directorates will be led by three-
star generals with two and one-star generals working underneath them. 
Additionally, the U.S. Space Command will also have a similar command 
and directorate structure as every other combatant command. This is a 
significant requirement for a force that is less than 10 percent the 
size of the U.S. Marine Corps to continuously populate with high 
quality, qualified individuals. After the initial standup, where the 
officers already exist and can be transferred, how do you plan on 
developing your Space Force officers from the start to ensure that we 
have quality officers at the top of the organization and don't end up 
relying on a ``next in line'' mentality?
    Secretary Shanahan. The Department of Defense is committed to 
ensuring the Space Force maximizes warfighting efficiency while 
minimizing bureaucracy. We recognize the Space Force will be small in 
comparison to other Services. However, it will require seasoned, well-
trained, and educated leadership, with the technical and operational 
expertise to acquire and operate complex warfighting capabilities in 
the space domain. As such, the leadership structure will not mirror the 
other manpower intensive branches of the military.
    Creating the Space Force within the Department of the Air Force 
leverages existing capability and expertise in the areas of logistics, 
support, and acquisition to limit duplication and unnecessary growth. 
As part of the on-going detailed planning for the Space Force, the 
Department has estimated that the steady state Space Force would cost 
$500M per year. To ensure we are recruiting, developing and training 
the most qualified people for this challenging domain of operations, 
$200M per year of this funding would support centers fully focused on 
the unique demands for space education and training, personnel 
management, doctrine, and space warfare. This will ensure the Space 
Force develops the expertise, culture and ethos needed for the complex 
warfighting domain of space.
    General Dunford. I defer to the Secretary of the Air Force to 
provide the appropriate response to this question.
                         acquisition alignment
    23. Senator Manchin. Secretary Wilson and General Hyten, the need 
to speed up acquisitions and unify a number of fractured development 
and acquisition organizations has been cited multiple times as 
rationale for establishing the Space Force. Already though there is the 
example of the Space Sensor Layer being delayed due to its transfer 
from the Missile Defense Agency to the Space Development Agency. While 
I understand that the Space Development Agency is not a part of this 
legislative proposal, this suggests that we could see more delays in 
programs as we start to move around programs and responsibilities. Can 
you explain in more detail what problems the current disaggregated 
system presents and why it is not currently possible to better align 
those practices within the established services and Department of 
Defense constructs?
    Secretary Wilson. The disaggregation of space program 
responsibilities falls into two categories: disaggregation of space 
program execution; and the disaggregation of authority and oversight 
responsibility within the DOD. From a program execution perspective, 
the Air Force is actively working to ensure space programs are aligned 
under structures which most appropriately prioritize the integration of 
ground, user, and space segments while accelerating defendable space 
capabilities. These program execution structures are unified under Air 
Force Space Command, and the Air Force is actively exploring ways to 
further unify programs which are part of the space communications 
architecture. From an authority and oversight perspective, the Air 
Force stood up the Space Rapid Capabilities Office, as directed by 
Congress, with streamlined authorities for rapid acquisition and 
fielding of new space capabilities across the Department of Defense 
(NDAA 2019, Section 1602). The Air Force has assigned three classified 
projects to this new office. The Space and Missile Systems Center has 
just completed a major reorganization to streamline program oversight 
and approval, to speed-up space acquisitions. This reorganization 
stripped out three layers of bureaucracy. It has also established the 
Space Enterprise Consortium, which has over 200 companies engaged, many 
of them nontraditional companies which have never done business with 
the Air Force. In the Consortium, the Air Force is averaging 90 days 
between requests for proposal and contract award. The Air Force has 
used the milestone delegation authority granted by Congress to remove 
years from acquisition schedules. In May 2019, we surpassed 100 years 
that the Air Force has taken out of acquisition; 21 years came out of 
space programs alone.
    General Hyten. The current disaggregated system has driven a 
construct with dozens of stakeholders whose primary role is synergizing 
the nation's space capabilities because there isn't a single 
responsible organization. The result is layers of bureaucracy that can 
tell a program manager ``no'' and stop a potentially innovative idea to 
meet critical requirements before it has a chance to begin. It is 
important to streamline the decision making process to ensure innovate 
ideas have a better chance to be vetted and ultimately approved at the 
appropriate level. Over the last few years, with the support of 
Congress and Department leadership, a lot of work has been done to 
delegate programmatic decisions down to lowest practical level for all 
acquisition programs, to include national security space. A few 
examples of this include the delegation of Milestone Decision Authority 
to the Service Acquisition Executives from the Department of defense 
level, the designation of middle tier acquisition authority in Section 
804 of the FY16 NDAA, and broader use of alternative contracting to 
include Other Transaction Authorities. So far, the Air Force Space and 
Missile Systems Center has saved an estimated 16 years in acquisition 
timelines on seven programs by utilizing Section 804 authorities. 
Standing up SDA, initially under USD(R&E), allows for the proper 
integration and streamlining of research, development, and acquisitions 
across DOD. SDA is designed to move fast, cut red tape and focus on 
rapid prototyping and experimentation and spearhead efforts to 
accelerate the development and fielding of new military space 
capabilities. SDA will also explore innovative concepts and alternative 
architectures to provide a more robust and resilient space enterprise. 
With the evolution of the space domain from a permissive to a contested 
environment, it is imperative that the U.S. adjust to meet the peer-
level threat by having strong space leadership within the Department. 
The creation of a Space Force, if supported by Congress, will allow for 
a unified and singular focus on space as a warfighting domain that is 
difficult to achieve without that unified, sole responsibility.
                               __________
                               
               Questions Submitted by Senator Doug Jones
                   space-based organization movements
    24. Senator Jones. Secretary Shanahan and General Dunford, please 
provide a listing of all current space-based organizations and indicate 
the following: 1) which of these would immediately become part of the 
Space Force, 2) which you would plan to move to the Space Force later, 
and 3) which would be split, with an explanation of the split; and 4) 
which would remain as they currently are.
    Secretary Shanahan. I envision consolidating the preponderance of 
existing military space capability under the Space Force. Other 
Department of Defense components may retain organic space capabilities 
uniquely required to support their core mission (e.g., terminals and 
localized electronic warfare equipment).
    The Department has set up a planning task force within the 
Department of the Air Force that includes all of the Military Services 
and relevant Defense Department agencies. The Department is currently 
conducting detailed planning to determine the specific transfers to the 
Space Force. I will make decisions on specific transfers in 
consultation with affected Military Services.
    General Dunford. I defer to OUSD (P) to provide the appropriate 
response to this question.
                       spacecom location criteria
    25. Senator Jones. Secretary Wilson and General Dunford, please 
provide the criteria you will use to select the permanent home of U.S. 
Space Command, as well as the timeline for your decision.
    Secretary Wilson. The Air Force through their Strategic Basing 
process will be responsible for selecting the permanent location for 
U.S. Space Command. Site survey criteria include mission (alignment 
with critical space force expertise, co-location with a United States 
Space Command component or center, access to a C-17 capable airfield), 
capacity (administrative building requirements, communications 
connectivity, base operating support), environmental (air quality, 
biological and cultural resources), and costs (one-time and recurring). 
The Air Force anticipates having a final basing decision in late 
summer/early fall 2019 timeframe.
    General Dunford. I defer to the Secretary of the Air Force to 
provide the appropriate response to this question.

                                 [all]