 Call to order the meeting of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Our hearing today is on the subject of the Space Force. I want to thank General Salsman for being with us today before this committee. And the purpose of the hearing is to understand your vision and priorities for the Space Force as its second chief of space operations. While the budget for the Department of Defense and the Space Force has just been released, we plan to have a space budget hearing, which includes the Space Force later in May after we've had time to understand and detail the President's budget request. There are many uncomplicated topics such as missile warning and launch that will take time to understand and are not really ripe for this hearing today, but we will take up in May. Instead, the hearing will focus on you, General Salsman. This is your opportunity to explain to the subcommittee and to the public how you will train and equip the Space Force as a Department of Defense separate military service and be a presenter of forces to the combatant commanders in order to accomplish their missions as assigned by the President. My understanding is that today you will explain to us your three lines of effort for our Space Force guardians, as I understand that they are to first field a combat-ready force, second amplify the guardian spirit, and third partner with the interagency allies and industry to win. I look forward to having you explain in detail what each of these lines of effort are and give us examples and simple ones that we can take with us and explain to our constituents and the public the importance of the work that you're doing. Let me conclude that General Highton said it best. There is no such thing as a conflict in space by itself. Any conflict will involve all domains, although I believe it will start in space, the land, the sea, the air, and space all together at once. I hope that today you will explain to us how your vision for the Space Force will meet General Highton's astute observation and enable our combatant commanders to accomplish the mission that the President has directed them to perform if called upon. After your opening statement, we will have questions at five minutes each. Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Salzman, thank you for being here today and for sharing your perspective with this subcommittee and thank you, sir, for your many, many years of service. You are only the second-ever chief of space operations in a unique position to leave your mark on what is still essentially a brand-new military service. An opportunity like this comes around less than once in a generation, and I'm sure you feel the gravity and the expectation of this every single day. I look forward to hearing more of your vision for this newest service branch, specifically how you are forming it into a fighting force that is ready to prosecute war as part of the United States military. I would also like to understand how you are shaping the space acquisition enterprise to that vision enabling the joint force. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Salzman. Chairman King, Ranking Member Fischer, distinguished member of the subcommittee. Thank you for your continued support and for the opportunity to discuss my vision and priorities for the United States Space Force. I've been in listening mode since becoming the second chief of space operations just four months ago. One of my first phone calls as the CSO was to the commander of US European Command, General Cavoli. My first trip as the CSO was to Colorado Springs to meet in person with the commander of US Space Command, General Dickinson. My first overseas trip was to Hawaii where I met with the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Aquilino. And during these last four months, I have also prioritized visiting with guardians performing vital missions around the world for the Space Force, for the Joint Force and for the nation. In December, I met in person with military space chiefs from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In all these engagements, my goal was to better understand how the Space Force should focus its near and midterm efforts as we integrate our capabilities to address the threats and challenges. The themes from these engagements should surprise no one. Each combatant commander emphasized the vital role space plays in strategic competition and integrated deterrence. The guardians of the Space Force make this possible and are without a doubt the brightest and boldest America has to offer. Because of these advantages and our shared interests in the domain, US allies and international partners are eager for expanded collaboration with the Space Force, especially in areas that strengthen the effectiveness of coalition space operations and reinforce norms of responsible behavior. In short, our mission forces, people and partnerships make the Space Force the most formidable space organization on the planet. China and Russia know this and are accelerating their efforts to undermine US advantages in the domain. To meet this challenge, the Space Force will prioritize three lines of effort, as Senator King has already stated, fielding combat-ready forces, amplifying the guardian spirit and partnering to win. These lines of efforts are designed to deliver the forces, personnel and partnerships required for the Space Force to preserve US advantages in space. Before I expand on the Space Force lines of effort, I'd like to update the subcommittee on the emerging threats Space Forces face. As the handout I've provided indicates, space is undeniably a contested and congested warfighting domain. When describing space threats, it's important to account for two kinds of threats. First, threats from space assets, and second, threats to space assets. Threats from space present a growing danger to the Joint Force. Both China and Russia have robust space-based capabilities that allow them to find, target and attack US military forces on land, at sea and in the air. Equally alarming are the threats that endanger the satellites the nation relies on for prosperity and security. Both China and Russia continue to develop, field and deploy a range of weapons aimed at US space capabilities. The spectrum of threats to US space capabilities include cyber warfare activities, electronic attack platforms, directed energy lasers designed to blind or damage satellite sensors, ground to orbit missiles to destroy satellites, and space to space orbital engagement systems that can attack US satellites in space. The contested space domain shapes the enduring purpose of the United States Space Force. Congress established the Space Force to protect US interests in space. This means protecting US space capabilities and defending the Joint Force and the nation from space-enabled attack. My lines of effort are designed to achieve this vision by providing the forces' personnel and partnerships required for the Space Force to preserve US space superiority for the foreseeable future. My first priority is to build resilient, ready, combat-credible space forces. To do this, we are accelerating the pivot towards resilient satellite constellations, ground stations, networks, and data links. The Space Development Agency's proliferated warfighter space architecture provides a prime example of these efforts. We are also emphasizing cybersecurity and preparing guardians to detect and defeat cyber attacks against our networks, systems, ground stations, data links, and satellites. We are developing an operational test and training infrastructure that will be the backbone of Space Force readiness as guardians prepare for a high-intensity fight. This infrastructure will allow guardians to execute realistic training against simulated adversaries to validate their tactics. Space Training and Readiness Command executed one such exercise last September with its inaugural Black Skies exercise focused on space electromagnetic warfare. Through these events, we are continuously enhancing tactics and operational concepts, thereby creating a force ready for emerging threats. My second priority is to amplify the guardian spirit by embracing a modern talent management process that recruits the best talent, develops and retains an elite workforce, and empowers guardians to succeed. One example is our Constructive Service Credit Program that allows experienced professionals from key fields to directly commission into the Space Force at ranks appropriate to their civilian experience. The first Constructive Credit Board served as a pilot program in 2022 and recruited seven cyber professionals to become guardians, one of which was onboarded as a Lieutenant Colonel. The second board will incorporate intelligence professionals and assess 20 additional personnel. Over the last year, we have also deployed space-centric curriculum for basic military training, the Reserve Officer Training Corps, and Officer Training School. In addition, our partnership with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies for Professional Military Education begins this summer. With congressional support, we will improve our modern talent management system by integrating the Air Force Reserve space element into the Space Force as a single component. This will allow guardians to transition between full-time and part-time duty to pursue opportunities outside of full-time military service and subsequently return to full-time duty without barriers to reentry or detriment to their career. We will ensure that such experience is utilized in strict and careful compliance with federal acquisition and ethics regulations and appropriate conflict of interest statutes. The single-service personnel management system will make retaining highly qualified guardians easier by facilitating flexible career paths, and we look forward to working with this subcommittee on that important initiative. My third and final priority is to strengthen partnerships the Space Force relies on to accomplish its mission. The Space Force will strive to eliminate barriers to collaboration, including overclassification, so we can build enduring advantages with our partners. To date, personnel from over 50 countries have participated in training, education, and exercise events hosted by the Space Force. We are also leveraging allies and partners to expand our warfighting capability. Recent examples include deploying U.S. payloads on Norwegian and Japanese satellites and establishing a partnership with Luxembourg for satellite communication services. In total, we have more than 200 foreign military sales cases with over 60 countries for a broad spectrum of space capabilities. Commercial partners will be key as we pursue emerging technologies like advanced power, propulsion technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and in-space servicing assembly and manufacturing. Space Systems Command's Commercial Services Office is building these partnerships to improve our ability to leverage more commercial off-the-shelf capabilities. In conclusion, thank you for the opportunity to share these priorities with you today. The Space Force is the preeminent military space organization in the world. Our adversaries seek to surpass the United States and challenge our advantage. We cannot and will not allow this to happen. Our guardians will outwork, out-innovate, and out-compete our adversaries to ensure that we succeed. They will do everything they can to deter conflict and maintain stability in space. I very much look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, General. I want to jump on the comments you made about recruiting and particularly bringing people in mid-career and having more flexibility about leaving and coming back. That's a creative idea. Flesh that out a bit for me. It strikes me that that's really going to be necessary in today's environment, particularly in the technology field. Yes, sir. We currently don't have the ability because our reserves in the Guard are in the Air Force. They're in the Air Force reserves in the Air National Guard. So we don't have an option to, if you leave full-time active service from the Space Force, we lose your expertise. And so we're looking for anything that can allow us to retain those people who might have priorities that shift but are still willing to contribute to the service. Do we need a Space National Guard? So I need the capabilities that are currently in the Air National Guard. I can assure you of that. I think there's a couple of different ways to do it. We assessed three different options. We could leave things as they are, which I think is the worst solution because, as General Brown points out, as the chief of the Air Force, he doesn't have organized training to equip responsibilities for space missions, yet he has those space capabilities in the Air National Guard. So it creates a little bit of a conundrum when I'm trying to figure out how to train forces that are aligned under the Air National Guard. So I think the status quo is the most untenable position, but there are other options and we're going through a series of cost estimates to figure out what a preferred option might be. Is one of them simply to sort of partner with the Air National Guard and have different units, have different functions? Is that one of the possibilities rather than set up an entirely new Space National Guard structure? Well, we are currently partnered with the current status, so we are currently partnered to make sure we can rely on the capabilities that are in the Air National Guard. It just creates a long-term sustainment problem with the difference in organized training to equip responsibilities between the Air Force and the Space Force. Let me back up a minute again on recruiting. How are you doing on recruiting, both in terms of quality and quantity? Some of our other services are having real problems with recruiting in this economy. How's Space Force doing? I'm almost embarrassed in front of my peers to say it, but we're doing very well. Mostly associated with the fact that we have much smaller numbers to recruit and we have the ability to handpick those that decide they want to join the Space Force. So right now we're doing okay. The problem is going to be sustainment over time in the quality of the applicants that we can pull in, and then retaining them for long enough to really benefit from their experience. Turning to, you mentioned several times in your testimony, commercial assets, commercial space assets. We know that Russia is trying to jam or otherwise damage the Starlink network, which is assisting in Ukraine. Is that precedent making it more difficult to partner with commercial satellite users? One of the strategies is proliferation and using commercial satellites. What's been the reaction to what's been going on with Starlink in Ukraine? So commercial augmentation is important to the Space Force for the reasons you mentioned. Resiliency, diversification of our portfolio across a broader number of participants, if you will. The commercial augmentation space reserve, we're trying to establish what is kind of like a craft like, if you know the civilian reserve air fleet that uses commercial capabilities, we're exploring options to use something along those lines. I think the key with commercial industry is to make sure that the expectations are managed up front. So we're going through a series of plans. We're going through a series of industry days, if you will, to clarify what are the policy, what are the contractual, what are the legal responsibilities and hurdles that we have to clear in order to establish this, so that the expectations are clear across all spectrums of conflict, crisis, etc. So this is an evolving kind of capability? It is, but I will tell you that we had significant interest. We hosted an industry day along these lines and there were 84 participants from commercial industry. So there is interest in doing this. Now in my 45 seconds left I'm going to ask you a question that I get asked at home. What's the difference between Space Force and Space Command? I get asked that at home too sometimes, so I appreciate it. It's as simple as any of the combatant commands with the other services. If you were to think about US Central Command and the US Air Force, or Indo-Pacific Command and the US Navy, for the US Space Command and US Space Force, we simply have different responsibilities. As the Chief of the Space Force I have responsibility to organize, train, equip, and operate the forces that are then presented to US Space Command, who has the authorities from the President and the Secretary of Defense to direct those operations. So your organized training equip, Space Command is operate or fight? They have the authority from the President to conduct those missions and they would direct our forces that are presented to them to conduct the operations. Thank you. Thank you, General. Senator Fisher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, as we discussed last year, the NextGen OPIR satellite program, it's one of the key components of our future missile warning architecture, along with proliferated constellations of smaller satellites operating in the lower orbits. During your nomination hearing, you stated that having no gaps in coverage for missile warning was a high priority. The missile warning mission is the cornerstone of our strategic deterrent. If we can't effectively respond, if we can't detect when our adversaries are launching nuclear weapons, we're in trouble. And so it is very important that we continue to fund this NextGen OPIR. I'm concerned to see that the Space Force's fiscal year 2024 by-quest appears to propose cutting the third Geo NextGen OPIR satellite. Does the Space Force intend to complete that architecture as planned and if not, how are you going to mitigate it? That's a huge loss. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. The real architecture that we need is the one that is under that... Yes, it is. Can you hear me? So the architecture that we really need is one that's survivable in a contested domain. That's the proliferated LEO and multiple orbits to include mid-Earth orbit orbits as well. So that's what the Space Development Agency and the SWAC analysis that we did is progressing towards. And that's the investment we made in FY24 to make that pivot. Because that's a pretty big technical shift, we wanted to make sure that we, for this no-fail mission, had some hedges to make sure that we didn't miss anything. So NextGen OPIR, we are committed to putting that on orbit. And we felt like a two-by-two was sufficient to ensure, one, that the mission did not have any gaps. It's a no-fail mission. Two, that it was a hedge against any technical risk associated with the pivot to the more survivable missile warning, missile track architecture. You're saying that with this pivot to the two lower orbits, you have no plans then to look at the GEO now? We have the plans with NextGen OPIR for two GEO and two HEO. That constellation we are still supporting in the FY24 budget has those four satellites in it. That's the long-term transition to the proliferated missile warning. But GEO satellites are too much of a target. So having them in low-Earth and mid-Earth orbit creates a targeting problem for an adversary which actually lowers the threshold for attack on orbit. It's more resilient and it creates a level of deterrence because they can't attack the satellites. It seems like on the major acquisition programs that are executed by Space Force have been late. They have cost overruns or both. Does the Space Force acquisition community, I guess I would say to you, how do you plan to address that? And do you agree with my assessment? Well, I've been doing them in this business a long time and so I've certainly seen the same things that you're noting there. So I can't argue with the facts about cost overrun and schedules. What I will say is I've been very impressed with the way Frank Calvelli has reorganized how we're doing space acquisition. With his appointment as the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition Integration, he's focused on several different things. Buying small satellites, having shorter-term contracts, going with well-developed technology so that we don't have as many non-recurring engineering costs. When you say, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when you say well-developed technology, is that you want to make sure things are proven? Would you say you're risk adverse then? I would say we want to make sure before we commit to putting something on orbit if there is well-developed technology, we want to leverage it to the max extent. Otherwise you have to build everything from scratch and it delays things and there's requirement shifts and it can get in that spiral where you spend more money and delay the timelines. So where there is well-developed technology, we should take advantage of those. And I think in satellite production, that's exactly where Mr. Calvelli's head is on that. And so while, again, I can't speak to all the programs that have existed since we've been putting satellites on orbit, I can certainly tell you that the acquisition community has shifted to a different mindset for how it acquires systems. And I think the space development agency's acquisition strategy for the missile warning missile tracking and space data transport layer is an example where it's going in about four years from order to orbit, which is substantially better than we've seen in other programs. Thank you. Now I'd like to call on our only subcommittee member who's been in space, Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had a couple detailed questions and then the chairman asked both of them. So I'm going to go a little bit different approach here. So to the ranking members question, you talked about that there's a little bit of a deterrent by putting something at a lower orbit, I think you said. Why is that? Why is it more likely that an adversary goes after something at Geo than it is if they are at a lower orbit? If this sounds at all like I'm lecturing an astronaut, I promise I'm not. So it's more than just the orbital regime. In low earth orbit to provide the coverage, you have to have a vast, the greater number of satellites. Dozens, instead of from Geo, you can have a single orbit that would look at a third of the earth. So by going to the lower earth orbit, we're buying smaller satellites and more of them. More satellites creates a targeting problem. Which one do you want to shoot down that you think is going to be the problem for the mission? It's more targeted. They got to shoot more rounds. Take out the capability. So much more that I think the escalatory threshold is raised to the point that I wouldn't do it. Okay, that's helpful. General, of the NRO Air Force Space Force satellites that we put into orbit, what percentage of those is Space Force responsible for the contracting, the management of the operations to get these to their targeted orbit? Compared to the NRO? Yeah, like what percentage do you have? Sir, let me get back to you. But the NRO has a number of constellations for its mission set. I'm trying to think of if there's any examples. We have the vast majority of Department of Defense satellites that have now migrated those missions. But not all of the Department of Defense satellites. I always hesitate to say all, but I'm struggling to think of an example. How many launch providers do you have that you contract with currently to get those satellites into orbit? Two. And those are? ULA and SpaceX. And actually for demos and other things, we've contracted other providers as well. I can get you the full number. And to date, while you've been involved with this, are we seeing typical kind of success rates and safety records from both companies? Absolutely. And no identifiable problems that you feel puts our satellites at risk? I mean, it's been a while since we've had an accident. I saw one a long time ago, an NRO satellite actually that happened to be down at the Kennedy Space Center. It didn't blow up right after liftoff. I was on console out in California. I just walked out of crew quarters, wasn't even expecting it. Saw this rocket launch and then explode about 15 seconds later. Something you never want to see. Yeah, so it's great that we've gotten better at this. And SpaceX has a pretty remarkable record of success. ULA as well. We just need to keep that going. I think it's important to be just constantly trying to look ahead and seeing what that next failure mode is. And make sure you have the workforce that is really tracking this stuff closely because some of these assets are in the billions of dollars, as you know, General. So I've got another question. Well, actually, I do have about 50 seconds. So Space Force has been around now for a couple of years. I think maybe three years, is that right? A little over three years. And some of the guardians incurred about a two year commitment when they transferred from the Air Force or from another service. They're coming up on the end of that time. Are you seeing a good, you know, re-enlistment rate for the enlisted ranks and officers that are going to stay on? Yeah, I think the date, the final assessment is still out a little bit because I want to see it all play out, the full cycle play out before I really commit to this. But I'm encouraged so far. And I think we're providing the kind of challenges that the workforce is looking for. And so I'm still hopeful that we're going to be at good retention numbers, but we probably need to let this full summer cycle play out before we judge. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Tuberville. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, you've been in your position now, what, less than a year? Right. Four months, Senator. Four months. Give us your number one priority for Space Force. I need to make sure that the guardians are ready to meet the threat. I've said this from day one. The systems that we're buying are exquisite. I want to make sure that the guardians have the training and the ability to practice their tradecraft reps and sets, I call it. We've got to get those into the guardians so that they validate their tactics and they are trained to meet any adversarial challenges thrown at them. So it's more training and people than it is anything. There's a lot of challenges. That's what I'm focused on right now because I think it was the biggest gap from converting. I like to use the example that we're trying to turn a merchant marine into the U.S. Navy. Yeah. Right. We have to convert this Space Force that we had for a benign environment into one that's contesting the domain. Is this a slow process? Sometimes it's slower than I'd like, but I like our progress. So I need to buy them the simulators, the virtual ranges. That takes a little bit of time, but we're already building a new force generation model so that we've established the time to do the training. We've established the new training requirements and now we just have to get after it. So SpaceCom has an RDT and E-budget of $19.2 billion and a proposed procurement budget of only $4.7 billion. What's driving that difference? And you see that change in the next few years? Sir, this is just a way the Space Force has to do its business because so much of our effort is spent in developing the satellites and we don't have to put a lot of satellites on orbit traditionally. So there's less procurement than there is RDT and E. And so I think it's just the nature of the space business that we are front-loaded a little bit in terms of procurement to RDT and E balance relative to what you might see and some of the other services that buy so many versions of that thing that they do RDT and E for, fighters or tanks or the like. And so even when we go to a proliferated constellation, our numbers will be so much smaller than what the other services have to buy. Yeah, in your mind, what cybersecurity standards minimum do you think new commercial satellites should have? I'm worried about the ground infrastructure and how the links are protected to make sure that we have access to those capabilities that are put on orbit. So in commercial terms, I'm a little less worried about the on-orbit cyber protections as much as I am the ground network. And I think those cyber protection standards are well understood and we can hold the commercial providers accountable for putting cyber defense capabilities onto the ground networks. I've had several private companies come by my office saying they have a great idea how to take space debris down. Have you talked to quite a few of those? I have. What do you think? I think... Will we privatize it at the end of the day? I think there's a lot of different ways to go after that sort of problem. I haven't seen demonstrated capabilities and I'm always thinking in terms of, you know, it's one thing to have a pitch that says we can do something, it's another to have a demonstrated capability. I'll be honest, we do a lot of serious effort making sure we understand what's on orbit and preventing debris from hitting each other or things that we care about. Right now, I would say this isn't my number one challenge, but if somebody feels like they can demonstrate a capability, cleaning up debris is an important concept as well. It's going to get worse and worse, right? It's not going to clean itself up. Yeah. A lot of people believe that conflict with China could very well start in space. What might that look like one day? The Chinese and the Russians have gone to school on us over the last 20 years and they know that we've built a joint force structure that relies heavily on the assumption that space capabilities will be there. So our precision navigation and timing, whether it's satellite communications, the missile warning that we rely on, and the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance persistence that we have with space capabilities, they know we rely on that. And so if they can blind us, if they can interfere with those capabilities or God forbid destroy them completely, they know that that will diminish our advantages and put the joint force at risk. So I can see interfering with, I can see blinding, I can see some of those gray area kinds of attacks on our capabilities to try to put us behind the eight ball. That balloon wasn't in your purview, was it? No, sir. 60,000 feet. Well, they call it near space, but I like to call it far air. Senator Rosen. Well, thank you, Chairman King and ranking member Fisher. Good to be here today and holding this hearing and General Salzman. Thank you so much for everything you're doing. And I know everyone's been talking about workforce is key. We need a pipeline of qualified individuals going forward. You're just young, three years old trying to get this workforce. And especially, like you said, research and development critical to protect our country and our families from the threat we feel from space. So STEM education, I talk about it an awful lot, but I really believe that investing in STEM education is just essential to matching our adversaries' increasing capabilities as you have alluded to and also to addressing all of our tech work for shortages. So, General Salzman, during your confirmation hearing in September, you highlighted that Space Force has established a university partnership program partnering with universities across the country to provide STEM students with research opportunities and increased guardian retention. And so how has Space Force growth and retention benefited from this program? I'm real excited to hear about that. And what can Congress, what can we do better to support this program specifically? And maybe some national security focused STEM education initiatives at American universities generally. Thank you for that because any opportunity I get to talk about how great our guardians are, I'll take full advantage of it. You would be really impressed with the quality of the people that are joining the Space Force. The average age of our enlisted members is 22. That's a relatively high number, you know, considering the other services. We have an educated workforce, very educated. We have the luxury of handpicking the best and brightest of a large applicant pool that wants to join the Space Force. And so we're really benefiting one from the fact that we are kind of small and we can take the cream of the crop, if you will. We're looking for diversity, we're looking for high quality STEM education and going to the areas that maybe you don't have a chance to get to in some of the other services. A remarkable set of opportunities that we've taken full advantage of. Every time I go out in the field, I'm just impressed with the quality and capabilities of the guardians that I see doing the job. So we should help expand these programs to make your job a little better. Well, as long as you expand the number of people that helped me select, I think there were 42,000 hits of interest to join the Space Force and we have about 1,000 slots. So culling that down to who's eligible, who can meet the requirements. There's a lot of effort there too. I'm real happy with the way the recruiting team is done. I'm real happy with the standards that we've set. I'm really happy with the quality of guardians that we're getting in. That's great because as Senator Tuberville talked about cyber attacks in space. So we're fighting domain and cyber is really probably more effective there or as effective there as it would be anywhere else. And last week we discussed with General Dickinson during Space Command's posture hearing that both Russia and China are developing rapidly investing in, developing and fielding these technologies that will provide timely and that will threaten us. And so we need to be sure that we're stopping that. So these sophisticated cyber attacks are going to include the threat of stealing data, jamming satellite signals, hacking satellites, disrupting internet services. I know the proliferation concept is really good because there's just so many. It makes it not worth their while. So that resilience space architecture particularly in low earth orbit as you've alluded to really important. And so what other kinds of things besides what you mentioned to Senator Kelly and Senator Tuberville, how are you keeping our most advanced space assets safe from cyber attack by Russia, China and others and increasing their resiliency? I like to talk about two particular areas that we're doing. First is I want to avoid operational surprise. That's a tenet in my theory of success if you will for the Space Force's primary missions. And by avoiding operational surprise what I mean is do we have all the sensors and all the right places to see what's going on and that's cyber and space. Do we recognize hostile activities, aggressive activities, irresponsible activities the minute they occur? Can we attribute them to the bad actors? That's the kind of avoidance of operational surprise that I'm talking about. And then secondly we have to establish norms of responsible behavior. What are the norms of behavior that are acceptable? And developing a coalition of like-minded space nations that supports those norms of behavior is a powerful motivator to do the right things and call out irresponsible behavior. All of that I think protects our capabilities as well. Well that's great. I know my time's up but my next question was on international partnerships and how this potentiates that. We'll take it off the record. This hunt forward operations to avoid operational surprise with our allies and partners around the globe. We will submit that for the record but you were leading me right there. So thank you very much. I yield back. General there's one member of this subcommittee who probably had more to do with the founding of the Space Force early and vocal supporter and that's Senator Kramer. Senator Kramer. Thank you Mr. Chairman and ranking member. General good to see you again. I don't think you were lecturing Senator Kelly at all. He asked you the easiest question he could and you answered it brilliantly. And I think the issue of redundancy as a tool that sort of answers Senator Rosen's question in terms of how you secure them as well as how well they work as a kill web if you will versus a kill chain. So I didn't think you were I thought it was it was brilliant. I also think you're too humble. You brag about the Guardians but let's face it. You seem to be the employer of choice in the service. You have that luxury and it's because I think of the mission. I think because it's an important mission that particularly younger people realize and they're attracted to it and it gets to stretch them. And so my hope Jackie is that the Air Force the Space Force is so cool it just automatically creates more STEM students because they all want to be part of the next big thing. I want to get into some issues. Senator Fisher asked you about the gap issue with with regard to eyes in the sky and whatnot. We did see a little bit of a gap in defense when we learned that our radars couldn't see everything. They could only see what they were tuned to see. And so in terms of like parks radar as an example and we see some money coming for for that would presume that means it'll be upgraded. It'll be modernized as you know it's a high priority for for me since we have one that's that you're the landlord of up in North Dakota. Maybe maybe speak a little bit to the role of the parks radar and modernization and how that will help you and the other the joint force in terms of particularly early warning. Well it's a two part answer because you know I don't want to be too distracted by the balloon issue because that's not where those radars are looking. It's you could you could easily build radars that would look in that area but that's not our mission. The mission that's being done North Dakota and the other ground based radars is two fold. It's missile warning and its space surveillance primarily and and those radars are really good at those those jobs. So the real the real challenge is how do I go to a rapid assessment and decision quality information of the data that those radars are pulling in. And so that's that's my responsibility is to figure out how to take all that massive amount of data in and quickly turn it into decision making information. So we've got some work to do there but it's it's more associated with the latency of the data. Then it you know I can tell you where something was but I can't tell you where it is precisely at that moment and we're getting better and better at that. With regard to some of the things the issues we've already talked about the partnerships that you started out talking about. Senator Rosen asked about academic partnerships alliances obviously commercial partnerships. One of the things when we stood up the Space Force and we had this discussion many times and your predecessor certainly grabbed on to it and that is making sure it's lean agile fast. How many times we hear General Ramsey lean agile fast. Do you feel like you're still lean agile and fast. Is the budget help you be more lean agile and fast and I don't mean cheap. I mean agile and fast those again those relationships are so important. How how valuable is that and difficult is that balance to make sure you maintain those characteristics. Well there's no question we're still lean and there's no question we're going as fast as we can. You know that's a tough standard for me to say we're fast. I'm always looking to go faster. I'm always looking to be more agile and so I'm going to be probably our toughest critic going forward trying to ensure that we stay as fast as possible. Being small does offer some advantages. We can move rapidly through a smaller bureaucracy than than maybe some of the other organizations can. But it also comes with you know that means there's fewer eyes on ideas that means there's fewer opportunities to catch mistakes that means there's fewer opportunities. And so we've got to have good solid processes we have to have good innovative technology that supports us. And so there's no question we're still lean and now we're trying to become optimized based on that size to make sure that we're still producing high quality capabilities for a high quality workforce. That's a great point because the bureaucracy can gobble you up and slow you down as well. So we like oversight. We're all about that but we want you to be as agile as you need to be to to keep up with the speed of China as I like to say which is really important. One last thing just I just want to make sure that you're you're getting the type of the right policies that that don't restrict your offensive abilities. We've heard a lot about that. You've spoken to it at some points again whether it's the budget or the administration or you know up chain of command. Do you feel like you you have the right policies in place to both protect and attack if necessary. I can assure you there are no policies that prevent us from exploring a full spectrum of operations. It's just about doing the work establishing the what I would call understanding of what the capabilities can and can't do. And then we test and we we learn from our experiences. Thank you. Well done. Thank you. Thank you Senator Cameron. Your lean agile fast reminds me of my high school football coach who said he wanted us to be mobile agile and hostile. I'm not going to go into our record. But our team motto was we're small but we're slow. That was our problem. Senator Gillibrand. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Your budget request this year includes a goal of increasing the number of Space Force launches as you look to maintain and modernize launch ranges and facilities in support of our space launch needs. Can you speak to how the ability to leverage commercial funding sources to grow space transportation infrastructure and service capacity would impact the Space Forces Space Launch efforts. Yes ma'am. Thank you. As we've talked before the we've grown our capacity on our national launch ranges national space launch ranges from what I remember to be 10 12 launches to where we're going to hit getting close to 100 launches a year now. And most of that is commercial launches. And so the infrastructure that we're providing is being used and it's it's it needs to be refurbished on a on a more regular basis than it did what I'd call the old days. And so the I think the commercial industry understands this and they're trying to figure out the best ways to to help support. And now we just have to look for the contractual and legal mechanisms to make sure that that we can maintain that infrastructure. Our investments in the range of the future start us down that path. But we've still got a lot of work to do over the fight up I think to make sure we maintain the kind of infrastructure we need to support the commercial industry. As you've said your mission is very technical ensuring guardians are properly trained and able to execute their missions requires access to advanced ranges. Do you currently have the training resources you need to provide fully trained guardians to combat and commanders. And are any additional resources required to ensure we have a space force fully capable of operating in the space domain. I the FY 24 budget submission includes about three hundred and forty million dollars dedicated to operational tests and training infrastructure. I think that's sufficient for this year because we've got a lot of study to do to make sure we're building the right kind of ranges the right kind of simulators and we're learning as we go a little bit. So I'm really comfortable with the level of investment we're at this year for FY 24. Last week you spoke about the concept of competitive endurance from reporting it appears to center on space domain awareness resilience to deter attack and responsible counter space activities. Can you speak to how the space forces budget proposal will help to achieve competitive endurance through each of these three core tenants for avoiding operational surprise. That's the space domain awareness tenant and we are investing heavily in new sensors. We're investing in capabilities with our allies and partners to also increase the data set associated with space domain awareness. And perhaps most importantly we're investing in space command and control capabilities which is kind of military talk for how do you take that data in and rapidly turn it into operational decisions. And so I think we have good software investments to make sure that we're doing the decision support tools that go with that space domain awareness. And go ahead. Well the resiliency piece is also important and this this budget definitely invests in shifting to a more resilient space architecture. We've started that pivot now in earnest. So looking on your documents you have this contested space document about what China is doing. The PRC has developed counter space and anti-satellite weapons including demonstrations of anti-satellite missiles which you say are launching orbit to ground. And the ability to move a defunct satellite. Can you speak to our ability to defend against these counter space assets and exercise space superiority. The transition to a proliferated Leo missile warning missile tracking architecture includes the capacity to fine fix and track hypersonic capabilities. So that's why that's such an important transition that we're making with regards to grappling satellites and pulling them out of orbit. Much tougher to deal with when you have less than maneuverable older legacy satellites. So again shifting to a proliferated Leo constellation where you don't have the what General Highton called the big juicy target sitting there in Geo makes that a much tougher proposition for them to execute against. That makes sense. What lessons are you learning from the war in Ukraine about the role of a space domain in large scale military operations. Well the most important observation is that space is critical to modern warfare. We've seen the Russians attack sally communications we've seen cyber attacks trying to dismantle we've seen GPS jamming they recognize that space is a force multiplier and they're willing to attack it. The fact that we have to defend cyber we have to defend against cyber attacks in the ground networks reminds us that ground is also a part of space and that those networks are critical assets. But I think we're also seeing the power of commercial augmentation that there is a viable path for commercial augmentation to provide capabilities. And then I've been kind of harping on it through the testimony here but proliferated Leo. That's what we're seeing used in to support Ukraine and it's turning out to be a much tougher target for the Russians to take apart. Great. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Madam Ranking Member. Senator Rowland. Thank you Mr. Chairman. General thank you for your service. There have been efforts general driven by political decisions regarding the shared use of the 3.1 to 3.45 gigahertz or S-band portions of the spectrum. Can you confirm that you have systems critical to our national security that reside on this portion of the spectrum? Yes Senator we have a space surveillance radar that's currently in development that does occupy that portion of the spectrum. Would it be not just radar but perhaps communications that are in that portion as well? As it turns out I think the key emergency kinds of communications live just outside of that band. So as long as we manage very narrowly that strip we would avoid those particular. Okay so it's primarily radar. It's primarily radar. Further space force. Okay so the communications portion is not the part. Well I wouldn't want to talk to the other services capability so from a space force perspective. Okay thank you. Can you provide your professional military advice on how detrimental it would be to your mission and the security of our nation if you lost the use of this portion of the spectrum? I think the most important thing I can say is I'm not exactly sure because we haven't done the technical analysis of exactly what vacating or sharing any of that spectrum. Would look like in terms of cost and technical performance. But we do have a study ongoing and so we would hope that any legislative decisions or decisions along these lines would wait for that study to come out later this fall so that we could make the decision with data informed analysis. Have you been given the opportunity to provide your professional military advice on the DOD's use of this portion of the spectrum? Yes. Thank you. I presume you've expressed your concern with regard to the sale prior to the September study being completed. I have described my concern as not knowing exactly what the impacts will be until I receive that study. Thank you. I'd also like to go on record saying that I'm concerned about the DOD's approach to providing space based ground moving target indication capabilities. The GBMTI to war fighters following the divestment of the JSTAR's platform. It's my understanding that this capability is being moved under the funding authorities of the intelligence community. We do not have really to get into the fine details here but can you share with me how you are assuming that the JROC validated requirements are captured in the acquisitions process of a platform owned by the IC community? Because of the way the funding has been moved we are focusing on two areas where we think we can provide some detailed level of collaboration. The first is in milestone decision authority which still there are some decisions which reside at the OSD level and could be delegated to Secretary Calvally. We're looking into what those options are what the possibilities might be. That's for program management acquisition purposes. The other side is the operational concepts. This is still a DOD mission the space force mission to do this for the joint force. And so we have the responsibility to provide the operational concept for how this would work and we will have to work closely with the program managers and sensor developers to make that happen. With JSTAR's the tactical capabilities to track these moving targets was available to our soldiers in the ground. We just want to make sure that that same capability is still found in a space based system and that's what we're really talking about here isn't it? Yes sir and the beauty of the sensors that are being developed is they're more survivable relative to the current threats we're facing and we're going to do it at a global scale as opposed to a very small AOR the way the JSTAR. We just don't want to get it lost in that this needs to be made available for Title 10 operations. These are direct operational support activities. The mission falls to the space force and the Department of Defense. Thank you. I understand that there is a legislative proposal in the works to integrate the reserve elements of the space force. This seems like a logical move as your service matures and embraces its organized trained and equipped roles. It's also my understanding that the space forces residing within the guard element still reside within the Air National Guard and is organized trained and equipped by the Air Force. From your perspective as the chief of space operations what should the subcommittee consider to provide the most seamless oversight of these forces as the space force matures? First let me describe the reserve integration. I think this is a very important legislative proposal that I hope you'll give due consideration to. It gives us the flexibility to have both part time and full time guardians in the space force which is going to give incredible career flexibility and hopefully serve as an innovative way to retain the kind of expertise that we know we're going to need moving forward. I think we've done a much better job of capturing kind of the key details that are needed in legislation to make that proposal work and I hope that we can continue to work with this committee and others to make that happen. From the guard standpoint I've been clear from the beginning that the critical capabilities that are living in the Air National Guard for space are must haves for the space force. That's the most important thing. I don't believe because of the way organized trained equipped authorities reside with the chief of staff of the Air Force and my responsibilities that General Brown feels like he can organize trained equipped space capabilities inside the Air National Guard. It creates a little bit of a disconnect and so the current status quo is the toughest to figure out how to do properly. Other than that I think there might be some options that are worth exploring that are based on cost estimates and the like. Thank you. And Mr. Chairman I would just like to commend the general. He has taken a very direct and strong approach with regard to advocating for our airmen and guardians on the subject of the missile community cancer study. This is a case of where they're finding cancers in areas where these guys that are basically working underground for extended periods of time and General has taken a very direct and personal interest in seeing that this be pursued and that anybody that's out there any one of these airmen or guardians that they get help they find out and they keep track of and I just want to commend him and I would hope that the committee would make available time for him to be able to share with us. Moving forward just exactly what he has found with regard to any health concerns surrounding the cancers that seem to be more prevalent with these folks that are working underground in these missile silos. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you General. General a couple of follow up questions. Several times you've mentioned the possibility of norms developing international norms expand on that. Is that a realistic possibility? Will the Chinese and the Russians talk about international norms in space? Unfortunately the norms that they talk about are not ones that we would support and they've kind of shown a propensity to not support the ones we want to support. This is a battle of narratives over international norms. What I can tell you is when I talk to my counterparts in the other nations they are interested in this. The Secretary of Defense issued his tenants for responsible behavior and US Space Command followed up with even some more details. Those are all widely viewed from my peers as helpful in establishing what it means in a like-minded set of nations with responsible behaviors in space. We have an initiative called the Coalition Space Operations Initiative which is seven countries that have also detailed what responsible behaviors in space means very consistent with the Secretary of Defense's tenants. And so I think this is kind of a widespread understanding that we have to behave a certain way in order to maintain a safe, secure, sustainable space domain. And I believe there's widespread agreement for that. Is the State Department engaged in this discussion as well? They are. I think that would be an important aspect of moving this forward. Very important initiative. They are. Just a comment you mentioned cyber protection several times. It seems to be the experience that most major cyber attacks start with a sub, not the general contractor, but some small company, smaller firm that's working for a general contractor and then they get into the system. I hope that's something when you're talking about the protection of your assets and very rightfully you've talked about ground and space. That you worry as well about those small companies that might act as a gateway for a cyber attack. Yes, sir. I've talked to my cyber defenders at length. I'm not really a cyber professional myself. I don't understand all the technical details. But one of the most important things that they start with is mapping the cyber terrain. In other words, understanding exactly what the network looks like, where it might be vulnerable and how they might best censor it to rapidly detect any kind of intrusions. And so to your point, understanding how all the companies fit together in the cyber terrain is an important foundational aspect of cyber defense. Final question. Is Space Force in charge of defense, defensive? You've talked a lot about proliferated Leo. Are you also in charge of developing the capability of maneuver and otherwise defending our space assets? Is that part of Space Force's mission? I would say it's important that as we develop our DOD capabilities through the Space Force that we make sure we're applying all of the right concepts for active and passive defense to meet the requirements so that we have a survivable architecture on the U.S.'s worst day. Of course, this is a relatively new concern. We own space for a long time. But the Russians and the Chinese have been very active in anti-satellite technology, so we need to be developing counters to that in order to maintain a credible deterrent. Is that correct? Absolutely. And I think it's about how fast can we go. Again, my weak analogy is converting the merchant marine in the U.S. Navy. We've got a little bit of ways to go before we can take our legacy platforms that we've got so much utility out of and so much capability from, but convert them to providing the same or better capabilities while being able to perform in a contested domain. And we'll have to make that transition as rapidly as possible. Thank you. Other questions? Thank you very much, General. This has been a very illuminating hearing. I appreciate your forthright responsive to our question and your leadership and your long career of service to the United States. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hearing is adjourned.