has 49 delegates and 50 republicans and in virginia's are ouse district, two tied at 11,608 votes each. so the board of elections this morning will decide the winner by picking a name which is called a stone wear bowl fashioned by a virginia artist. that's scheduled at 11:00 a.m. eastern. when it gets under way we will bring it to you live here on c-span. later today, a discussion on the protest in iran and what they might mean for the future of the country. that's at 12:30 eastern at the washington institute for near east policy live on c-span. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television countries and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider.

>> the air force general in cargestarge of the u.s. strategic command as well as air force secretary heather wilson and congressman mike rogers were part of a discussion of national security in space from the reagan national defense forum and the reagan library in simi valley. this was moderated by cbs pentagon correspondent david martin. mr. martin: the breakfast panel which was moderated by our cbs colleague margaret brennan, there you saw the future of cbs news. i'm what the militarywould call the legacy ystem. [laughter] the cold war ring and repurposed for the 21st century. a couple years ago, i did a story called the battle above

for "60 minutes." it was about u.s. space command. at the time, the commander was general hyten and he was one of the main characters in our story. to get ready for this panel, i went back and reread the transcript online of that story. i made the mistake of continuing on and reading some of the comments. one of the first comments i came across said, "shame on you for putting those you interviewed in awkward positions with the questions you asked them. my time is too valuable to waste with people who have no respect." i won't read you the comments on my appearance and iq. i also want read the one that said general hyten ran circles around me. now, i get a second shot at him. e has been promoted.

he is now the commander of u.s. strategic command. which includes in its awesome responsibilities the deterrence of war in space and fighting of war in space. f it ever comes to that. heather wilson in the center there is the 24th secretary of the air force, a job which requires her to become intimately involved in space. she says she spends about a third of her time on space. kari bingen, fourth from the end there, is the acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence with a portfolio that includes the national security agency, national reconnaissance office, national geospatial agency all of which live and die by space.

leanne caret is the vice president of boeing company and here we have congressman mike rogers, republican from alabama but more importantly for purposes of this panel, he's the proponent of a plan to create a separate space corps, an entirely new branch of the military service. we'd have army, navy, air force, marine and space corps. put another way, it would take away from the air force and needless to say, that is a controversial proposal. i am going to start with questions, but the audience gets to submit questions too. if you go to the rndf app.

www.rndf2017.org. the last few minutes we will be taking your questions. i want to ask general hyten, when you were lieutenant colonel, you wrote that war in space is just a matter of time. now that you've grown all those stars on your shoulders, do you still believe that to be the case? commander hyten: it's good to see you again, david. i never expected to grow stars on your shoulders. one thing you think, you don't think you will grow up to be colonel. i still believe any domain that humans move into will be

subject to conflict. and when i looked at it 20 years ago it seemed obvious to me and the chinese i was studying at the time conflict was going to move into space. if conflict is going to move into space then our job will be the same as it is in every other domain, to deter that conflict, to make sure that conflicts never happens but if it happens to figure out how to fight it and when. it's just another war fighting problem. but it's basically the same way i looked at it 20 years ago. mr. martin: is the u.s. prepared to fight today in space? general hyten: it's prepared to fight but not prepared to fight in the future. the strength we have today is based on the mass and the sheer number of capabilities we put up over the years. it dwarfs any adversary that we face, and because of that it makes it very difficult for an adversary to deny capabilities of the united states. we don't have war fighting capabilities built onto those systems and our adversaries,

and you heard it talk this morning, they have been watching us ever since the first gulf war. they watched the enormous conventional power that was enabled by space and when you see that enormous capability, you have to decide, am i going to just ignore that huge advantage or am i going to try to do something about it? the chinese and russians in particular for the last 20-plus years have been watching what we're doing and developing capabilities and not secret about it. they have been building weapons, testing weapons, building weapons to operate from space, jamming weapons, and they have not kept it secret. they are building those capabilities to challenge the united states of america, to challenge our allies and to change the balance of power in the world. we cannot allow that to happen. mr. martin: so we would win today but not necessarily in the future? general hyten: i'm worried about the future because i don't know how it happened but somehow this country just lost the ability to go fast.

we have adversaries that are going fast. we don't go fast anymore. we take four years to study a problem before we even do anything. we do four years of risk reduction for technologies that we built 50 years ago. why do we take that much time? we take that much time because we've been able to because the advantage we had over adversaries. when you look at the threat and you deal with the threat, we don't have that much time anymore. we have to move right now and we have to move fast and we have to change the way we do business. so we are at a significant advantage today but five years from now that advantage, if we don't do something different, will be gone. 10 years from now we could be behind. that is unacceptable. mr. martin: congressman rogers, are we about to lose our advantage? mr. rogers: certainly. one of the things that has really given our committee a sense of urgency when -- and general hyten has enormous influence over our committee. particularly me and the ranking member. and the picture he paints to us in both classified and

unclassified settings is scary. the chinese and the russians have both put a much larger percentage of their defense spending into this capability than we have. and they have restructured to become able to go faster just like he's talking about. and when you look at the trajectory that they are on with capabilities, they are going to surpass us in the immediate future. not the near future. not the distant future. the immediate future. if we don't get after this and self-correct. it was interesting. about a year ago was having a conversation with general hyten and he was telling me and few of my committee members that those two particular adversaries were -- are near peers or maybe even our peers and literally within 12 months was saying, along with admiral harris, they are now our peers.

that is unacceptable. in my 15 years in the house, we always had as a guiding principle that we did not want was a fair en and w i where te fight. we are about to be in that situation when it comes to that war fighting domain. i think it's unacceptable. i think it's imperative we have he a sense of urgency, not only as a congress but as a nation that we get after this in a serious way and make sure we regain and maintain the degree of superiority in that theater. mr. martin: how would a space corps solve that problem? mr. rogers: well, a host of ways. one is it would segregate the space professionals. let me back up. when you look at national security space, 90% of it is in air force. the navy has one weather system. they handle very well.

the army has communications but 90% is in the air force. so what we have found is that it has not been able to get the attention that it needed culturally or resource-wise to address these problems. and it has not had the ability to go fast in the acquisition process. this technology is so rapidly evolving and developing that i think it needs a unique and lean and agile acquisition system. and we felt like after looking at all the options available that by segregating those space professionals in the air force -- again, where 90% of them all -- into a separate organizational construct in the department of the air force. that's one of the things i want to emphasize when you talk about it taking it away from the air force. we were going to keep it in the department but segregate those space professionals, segregate the resources dedicated to

national security space, and segregate an educational system for those space professionals and develop a culture that's focused on the number one mission for those professionals who come to work every day is space dominance. because the problem that we found as we studied this is that just like we found when -- with the air function in the army 70 years ago, it was never going to be properly resourced. our cultured developed around it. in the army when the number one mission was terrestrial. in the air force the number one mission is culturally indoctrine ated -- indoctrinated in them. it should be. they're the air force. one of the other 11 missions they have is space. it's a subordinate mission. as we have just heard from

general hyten and many others who are just as smart of him on this particular issue and much smarter than us, that's no longer acceptable. have to have a cadre of space professionals who are given the mission that your number one job every day when you come to work is to become superior in space and properly resource them and educate them and value them. we were also -- and, again, money is fungible. we had to segregate that money. we think the space corps could have done that. but, you know, and the final piece. i felt this was going to be particularly important. we were going to -- our legislation that came out of the house we designated the secretary of the air force had a clean slate to design the space corps from scratch. it looked like what ever she wanted to look like but most importantly the acquisition

system would be unique to her and her organization. she could design it to be as lean and agile as she wanted it to be. and we took milestone decision authority away from the secretary of defense and gave it to the secretary of the air force. that's a lot of power. that's a lot of agility. that's the ability to go fast. we felt like that was the ideal way to get after this in a very urgent fashion but what we also knew going into this is human beings don't like change. it's just natural and bureaucracies -- that's why it took 26 years for the air force to evolve out of the army. we don't have 26 years for this. it's going to happen. it's inevitable. it's got to happen. we think what we did this year demonstrated that sense of urgency presented what we think is the idea but we are not married to that being the only

solution but whatever we are going to do we need to do it soon. mr. martin: secretary wilson, this would change your life dramatically. what do you think of the idea of a space corps? secretary wilson: well, i wanted to thank the congressman for the national defense authorization act for the 20% increase for funding in space. that's what the president requested for this budget. the united states needs a shurd access to space which means the ability to launch and i completely agree with general hyten that we need to move quickly. we need to accelerate acquisition. one of the things that the space and missile command has done this last month is let a $100 million contract with space consortium to prototype faster. milestone decisional authority has moved -- last year's defense authorization act we milestoned authority out of the secretary's office down to the air force. i moved it to the service acquisition authority or assistant secretary and we pushed it down and said we need to go fast. we need to prototype, innovate

and with our next steps with respect to replacing space-based infrared with respect to indications in warning, we are -- general hyten and i are absolutely determined, stop studying things to death and get capability on orbit for the war fighter. but that's not all we need to do. so it's a short access. we need to -- the united states builds a glass house at a time before the invention of stones. so the shifting of space being a benign environment to a war fighting environment requires different capabilities. first of all, we need near real-time space situational awareness. we need to know not just what's in the catalog but what's going on and what's going on near real time. the second thing we need to be able to do is command and control. which means it's not good enough to see what's happening on the traffic cam. you need to be able to do something about it and move forward with near real-time

command and control. and the third thing is we need to be able to create effects both offensive and defensive. both in this year's budgets but in the budgets that are being worked now, you will see significant movement in all of those areas. but i absolutely agree with general hyten and mr. rogers there the area where we need the most focus is how do we continue to reform defensewide acquisition processes in order to move quickly to take advantage of the experimentation and prototyping, to push authority down to the lowest level and to tighten up these schedules so that we can move faster than the adversary? i think the other thing i would say, until the 20th of january of this year, it was not possible to say space and war fighting in the same sentence. that's changed. we need to deter and prevail in space as we do in every other domain of warfare in the

future. mr. martin: would space corps help you or hurt you in those every devers? secretary wilson: i can't think of a military mission that we have that is not enabled by or dependent on space. we need to integrate space and elevate space as part of a joint war fighting force. to me anything that separates space from the joint fight is moving us in the wrong direction. i agree completely with mr. rogers that the focus has to be on how to move fast, how to innovate and how to get capability to the war fighter. i don't think that creating more seams between a space corps and other services helps in that regard. mr. martin: kari bingen, what are the major threats to all those u.s. intelligence satellites up there? ms. bingen: well, if i could go back a step and just reiterate what some of my colleagues on the panel said, space is

absolutely vital to providing intelligence to our war fighters, to our policymakers and our weapons developers. we think about what happened earlier this week, we witnessed another north korea ballistic missile launch. it's a denied area. it's tough to our area,. space provides a unique way for us to provide access that we currently can't get. it's the intelligence imagery satellites that we take pictures of the launchers. missile satellites to detect those launches. it's the analysts on the ground who process and report on that data and the communications satellites that relay that data to the users in the field to take action. when i look at that and i pair it with the threat and the threat over the last 10 years in particular, 2007 when the chinese tested that anti-satellite, that was a watershed moment for us and they have not sat still over the last 10 years. they have rapidly moved forward in all areas of anti-satellite capabilities to reduce our

advantage in space. everything from kinetic energy missiles from both the ground and the air, laser weapons, satellite jammers, cyber. we also have to remember threats are not just satellites on orbit but to the communication links, to the ground stations, to the user equipment. they have taken a full spectrum approach to degrading our capabilities. and i think the difference now versus where we were 10 or 15 years ago, we've been focused on iraq and on afghanistan. incredibly important missions. china, it's a very different game. contested environment operations. space is critical to that and it's forcing us to really think hard in the intelligence community how we effectively protect those assets, how we get greater speed he at scale to provide intelligence to our policymakers who don't have the luxury of time and so we're focusing across the board not only on resilient measures on

architectures but measures on the ground of the speed of processing deluge of data we're getting off our imagery satellites and we're focusing on scale as well. mr. martin: so how full nerble today are all -- vulnerable today are we to those satellites that provide intelligence? ms. bingen: one of the challenges here is physics. satellites go in pretty predictable orbit. any potential adversary with a science or engineering degree will know where those satellites will be and there are many avenues for them to pursue them. they are fragile. they move in predictable orbit. there are -- there is nothing we can do to protect that. we're leveraging our allies and partners to provide greater intelligence sharing. we're also looking at other nonspace alternatives. so we're doing things across the board to try to address some of those vulnerabilities.

mr. martin: general hyten has said he would not support buying any more big satellites hich make juicy targets. leanne, how do you make smaller tellites without giving up capability? ms. caret: i want to say thank you for allowing industry to have a role on this panel. it's an extremely important topic. as much as we understand this, i think there are a lot of folks don't understand space is part of the core what we do every day, from the mundane task to national security. this conversation is larger than any one program or one contract or one company. this is about ensuring we have the assuredness of space to gain access. boeing is very fortunate that we have a strong partnership with the u.s. government. both through the air force as well as our missile defense

agency. and it isn't about a large satellite or a small satellite. this is about providing the capability that's needed for the fight that's at hand and for predicting the fight in the future. so our job is to collaborate. our job is to innovate. our job is to provide capability faster without having to be told to go faster as well as make sure it's affordable because the rate of change in this domain is moving so quickly. mr. martin: general hyten, you want to -- general hyten: let me put it in a blunt set of observations. so if you went to boeing and you wanted to buy a large -- oh, by the way, size is not the and sh -- issue, speed defensibility is an issue. if you go to boeing and want to buy a commercial -- large commercial communication satellite, very complex communication satellite, they went into a fixed price

agreement and sell it to you and deliver it to you in 36 months. i was in a meeting in the pentagon -- i will keep the names out of it and programs out of it -- but i am at a meeting in the pentagon and we were discussing whether we hould buy a functional equivalent of one of our current orbit satellites and somebody who i respect very much made the following statement. it will be very risky if we can et that delivered by 2029. [laughter] general hyten: that was this year. think about it. 2029, that's 12 years from now. boeing will go through four generations of commercial satellites. if they can't build in three years they will be out of business because another will build it in three years. that's the commercial sector. what do we want the next satellite to be? i tell you what i want it to be. i want it to be basically a

commercial bus that we can buy from anybody. i don't care. i want it to fit in a current ground system. i want to invest a lot of money into a very good sensor that will do strategic missile and i want to put the sensor on the satellite. boeing can do that. lockheed can do that. any of the nation's industry can do that. why does our process say it takes 12 years and they will be risky once we get it here? it will be risky. commander hyten: and the great thing is general -- secretary wilson: and the great thing is general hyten is making sure we won't let that happen. [applause] general hyten: this country can do it a different way. we do it a different way all the time. all we have to do sem power the people that can make the right decisions, put the responsibilities and authorities in the right place. allow them to go fast, and we've done it time and time again. we can do it -- we can do it once again. mr. martin: it sounds you were talking about space infrared

system? general hyten: well, i was talking about infrared spatial system on the second space. i wasn't talking about that piece in the generic conversation i was giving to the pentagon but think about comm. think about wide band communications. when we built our current wide band communications satellites they were designed in the 1990's. what was the commercial communications satellite industry in the 1990's? neofite at best, invincible, not even really there. somehow we think we still have to buy wide band communication satellites this way when we have boeing that builds huge satellites all the time. loral builds huge satellites. lockheed. it's a commodity. why don't we buy it as a commodity? we'll spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to do strategic missile warning and all those. it's sitting there right in

front of us. it's right in front of us and it's not that hard, but we still try to make it hard. secretary wilson: and it's not just the acquisition piece and we all know this up here. there is a requirement process that is in the pentagon and then there's an analysis of alternatives when in a case this is not revolutionary technology. we are not pushing the bounds of human knowledge on some of those things. we're just trying to build something that is largely well-developed and known. so just get after it and get the bureaucracy out of the way. general hyten: i got to jump in congressman. sorry. every time when we have this discussion, the congressman, the secretary and i, it always sounds like we're criticizing the acquisition community. that's not the case. we're criticizing everybody in this room. everybody in this room. so let's go through the five pieces that have to be fixed in order to get this done. number one, you got to have a

budget. if you don't have a budget, if rickover, know why the biggest advantage to go fast, first year they had a budget and they knew what to do to get done. budgets that are sufficient -- that's a critical enabler. the requirements process. why would it take three years to have a requirements process? i can sit down with a piece of paper, not in this room because it has to be classified, a warning satellite and next generation communication satellite. i already know what they are. i don't need three years of analysis to do that. then the acquisition process. the acquisition process is broken because our program managers spend all their time in the pentagon. they run to the pentagon for approval. they don't actually execute their programs. we have to give them the authority. they should spend time in the factories. number four, we have to have a test process that's sufficient and tied to the need for speed and that means we have to understand how to take risks and test and that sometimes failure will be ok and then

number five, the operators have to understand how to take operational risks when we come in. all five of those things have to be fixed, and if we only address one, we'll not solve the problem. -- we address each one of >> let me talk about acquisition authority. of thewo years ago, 2/3 major programs where we had to make decisions on major acquisition programs were managed within the office of the secretary of defense. that is completely reversed now so that 2/3 of those programs are at the service level, and we requested delegation of the rest of the. of those at the service level, i am not the authority for any of them. i have given them to our assistant secretary, and we pushed everything else down. so program managers no longer have to come to the secretary to get approval to move on.

out of thismonths process, and we are going to continue to move forward in that direction. there were other things that we need to think about, stepping up and back a little bit. strategic things. how do we determine and prevail? we have never really had to talk about that in four. how do we hold that risk, things that other countries value, how do we create doubt in the mind of an adversary that if they were to take at our space capabilities, the consequences -- take out our space capabilities, the consequences for them would be unacceptable. that is the nature of deterrence. and then how do we restore and operate through in the space domain the same way we do in every other roaming of conflict? those are the kinds of strategic decisions that we are trying to set up in the national defense strategy in which the air force

and others are focused on developing those capabilities, demonstrating this capabilities, and sending a message to adversaries that the last thing they want to do is mess with the united states of america. >> covers and? representative rogers: i want to reemphasize that if anybody believes you are going to see dramatic change in the way national security space meets its challenges without organizational change, you are fully yourself. the first study that came out on this that set alarm bells off was in 2001, the rumsfeld commission. that was the first group that suggested a space corps as one of four options. since then there have been three studies and also an commission, all of whom said the same thing. this is no reflection on secretary wilson, who is a personal friend of mine.

she got here. she did not cause this problem. the defense department let this problem languish. the air force will not be able to self correct as long as 60 offices can say no to an acquisition process, and nobody owns it and nobody says yes. that is going to have to change. arere going to put -- we going to have to put up a new system that has acquisition but culture around dominance, that thou it. one of the things i talked about is to emphasize the cultural concern is this past year there olonels c nominated for generals. how many were shuttles? 0 that is unacceptable. if you are a bright professional

who wants to career in space in the air force, but you would like to grow some stars like this gentleman did, you are not going to choose 's you are not going to be valued. these are make sure people who would like to have a career in space know they will be valued, educated, and nurtured and can grow some stars. that is the way we will have superiority in space. >> i have to take issue with that. i think we have exceptional airmen who are wearing the badge is that general hyten is wearing, and i have met a lot. they are providing the first global utility to the world. they put that blue dot on your phone. of is operated by a squadron 40 chairman in colorado springs, colorado. and they provide it free to a billion people every day. it is an exciting time to be in space in the united states

military. and while one of 37 laster became predicted or generals -- became critical or -- brigadier generals, there was a tremendous opportunity. but not just those who come up within space. goldsteinen general walks into a meeting of the joint chiefs of staff or when he was the commander of the air war, central command, general mattis said you are myspace control authority. they do not know what the stuff means on their left shoulders. they know they look at that new uniform and no you are supposed to be in charge of space. an airlift, and the nuclear deterrent. we are the air force, for this, and we own it. and i am really proud of the

airmen that are part of this. [applause] >> just on the question of advancement in the air force and is aace, general hyten self-described space nerd. general hyten: geek. >> i insulted you. he did all right. he was dedicated and decided to pursue that path despite those challenges. what i am saying is most young professionals are going to see fewer opportunities to get to where he got. that are people like him are just wonderful examples. i want to see more of them. i personally think the space corps that we suggested was going to create more opportunities. wether example that illustrated, the professional military space required in the air force.

450 hours of education. do you know how many hours that was dedicated to national security in space? 2. you do not value national security in you do not put more in the curriculum for your officers. it is a cultural thing that i do not think will ever be properly addressed until you have this segregation we are talking about. it is my view, the view of the house armed services committee, and we are going to continue promoting this because we are not willing to allow china and russia to surpass our capabilities in space, because we have become too reliant on it, not just in our daily lives commercially, domestically, but militarily, it is absolutely are intertwined in -- absolutely intertwined in everything we do. >> secretary wilson, you raise the issue of how you hold another country's space assets at risk. you really did not answer your own question. and i saw a recent speech that

you gave when you asked another really basic question, what is the policy of the united states if another country destroys one of our satellites? and you did not provide the answer to that. is there an answer to that question? ms. wilson: united states here ttofor has not had a respective policy for but it is time for us to talk about it, that if one of our satellites, particularly satellites that provide indication of warning of a missile launch or provide command and control for our national authority, that i if another country temperatures with that's a lie, we will consider that a hostile act and respond. not necessarily in the same domain. we respond across domains. you think about it, when cornwallis was defeated at it was not because we

defeated him by bombardment on the land. it was because he was cut off by the french. you respond across domains as a nation. but by demonstrating that can be ability and eating open about it in a time of peace, we reduce the possibility of miscalculation in crisis, so that our adversaries know that he will respond -- we will respond if they seek to disrupt control ournd forces. by the declaratory policy upfront, we reduce the likelihood that someone will actually destroy those satellites in time of war. we have never had a declaratory policy before, but we had been in a glass house, we do not need one. and i think it is time for the united states to decide if we

need that kind of declaratory policy. >> it seems like a time is well past since we needed a declaratory policy if these countries already have the ability to take out our son lights. ms. wilson: as i said, january this year, you could not say space and more fighting in the same sentence. there was a holdover appointee in another department who thought to strike it out. and i said you will have to get somebody of higher rank in order for me to do that. [laughter] >> general hyten, airmen probably do not care that much about the clear toward policy, what rules of engagement. what do i do if such and such happens? are there rules of engagement were operating in space? general hyten: no, and it is the only domain -- even cyber, we

have domains when we operate in cyber. when a soldier or airman or sailor goes to operate a space system, in critical support of operations around the world, they go into that mission without any rules of engagement. we do not have any international norms of behavior to start from. it has not been a contested environment to sit down and walk through that. it is a significant issue -- and that is one of the reasons why i support to the limit of international norms, and we are going to figure out the rules of engagement, and we are doing it. that is not the right answer in the overall scheme. the command that operates and defends and uses space should not be the one that defines our rules of engagement. but without that kind of guidance from above, we have to figure out how to do that. yesterday was a significant way in the operationalization of space. yesterday vandenberg north of

here, we stood down the joint functional component command for space, a. put it. and we stood up a joint force commander, that went from a three-star to a four-star. the general is now my component commander. sounds like the same thing, doesn't it, but it is not. different,y because if you go into any combatant command around the world and you walk in, what you find is an air, land, and maritime components. into strata, you will find 18 fungible components, who cleared task force, structures. about this time mixture, for sure, when you walk in you will have an air components, a space component, a land components, maritime component. i will put a four-star in charge because as much of my love -- i

love it is not my top priority. my top priority is the nuclear enterprise and will always and should be the commander abstract come's number one vermont -- commander of strength comes's 'smber one -- stratcom number one priority. today for the last 12 hours, he is also my space component commander. ms. wilson: one of the things i give him credit for, the vice president stood him up for the national space council. commercial space, where we are seeing plummeting cost of launch making space a common domain, but also the groups that are starting to look at these norms of behavior.

we think about who is in charge in space. on the national security side, it is for us, it is general hyten, but that is not the question they are asking. when you fly to tokyo, you fly through an uncovered area, but there are norms of behavior for how that happens over the pacific ocean. so the development of norms of behavior in space is one of the things that has to be done government to government and with the private sector. we have issues on launch, with respect to the creating debris. the united states since the 1950's, the air force has been keeping a catalog of options -- object in space, and that was an ironic situation where we tell the chinese, where they put about 3000 pieces of debris on orbit when they did the launch in 2007 and destroyed one of their old weather satellites.

3000 pieces of debris in orbit, when now the ironic situation is with when the united states air force is telling the chinese that one of their pieces of debris is interfering with one of their satellites. one of the norms of the hader is minimizing debris. there is a lot of nation to nation kind of things that the vice president national space council will help facilitate. >> for an outsider, it is next to impossible to follow and oferstand the organization all those commands in space, the joint functional commands. was something called the joint interagency combined operations center, which had the worst acronym in military history. then somebody with a sense of that thema change

national space defense center. so what is the national space defense center? important.e so when we labeled a place the joint interagency combined space operations center, which is basically every word associated with space in one acronym come and we said that is the place, it does not matter if it was you ,r our allies or the secretary you can never explain what it was. so i decided into judgment with the intelligence community that maybe we ought to call it what is,s, and that is what it the national space defense , allr, a place where we go national security space, intelligence community, department of defense, army, navy, air force, marines, and we put everybody in and figure out

how to fight that fight. there are two marines that work in the national space defense center, and you wonder what the marines are going to do. general dunford came in to visit. he put his eye on those two young marines, and makes a beeline right for them, ignoring everybody else. two young captains. and he just has a great time. how are you doing, how is it going? and after five minutes he realized, maybe i should go and learn what this place is about, leaving those, two marines, and i walked up to them, you tell me the truth. how are you guys doing? well, sir, there are 70 people in the center, 68 of them are smarter than we are. [laughter] general hyten: and i said when it comes to space, that is probably true.

but when it comes to war fighting, as a captain in the marine corps, you probably know better than anybody else, and future what problem that comes to you as a war fighting problem, you will be the most valuable person, because why do you maneuver to avoid -- maneuver? to avoid conflict. how do you defend yourselves? they know how to do that. treated as a war-fighting problem, the focus on space the fence, that is why it is called the national space defense center joint and interagency. >> it sounds like a battle then. general hyten: if you're going to have a war-fighting domain, you have to have a place to fight it. there is no such thing as war in space. it does not exist. there's just more. you do not fight a place. you have conflict with an adversary. the adversary uses all domains to try to gain advantages over us. now is why stratcom is

focused on those domains because we want to provide integrated responses to a problem. when i have a problem and it happens to be in space, i will give it to my air, space, missile defense, and maritime components for the right response. we will work with the geographic combatant commander and figure out the response. it is not that hard. it is a straightforward military problem, and war is a horrible thing. i never want to fight a war that goes into space, if we do, we better figure out how to do it without ruining the environment, and that is the difficulty. >> the national defense center, there are two bank things we need to do now that our --to protect our glass house. the real-time situation, the picture of what is going on in toce, and effect the ability change.

the national space dispensed center is intended to bring those together with an open architecture, and we have told contractors and people who build things that there is going to be no more exquisite sides experiment controls of specific things in space. if it does not integrate and does not share, will not buy it doesn't have to be command and control integrated. fencetional i space center is moving from -- space defense center is moving from an experiment joint operational war fighting center, where elements with space interests have been operating picture and command and control of what is going on in space to create effects, to protect our high-value affects, and hold at risk others. >> operational war fighting center is operational? ms. wilson: it looks like any

other ops center you would see anywhere around the world. >> the question is what happened to the joint space operations center at vandenberg? let's look back at the words. the national space defense center, it is national. our allies will not be there because we're bringing in all the most sensitive information to that place and we will not share that. the block at vandenberg will change, and i have directed that to be a coalition operation center i the end of next year. we are all coalition partners, and the commissioner partners -- commercial partners will come in, and we can provide that command and control that we need. involving allies, the commercial sector, the intelligence community, that is the community of effort that we have built and

the construct we have now. >> what difference has it made to bring the intelligence satellites in to the other military satellites? >> i talked earlier about speed and skill, and for the intelligence community to affect the war fighting operations, we have to be a factor, and that is one of the things you're hearing today. secretary wilson mention all the debris we have in orbit today. in 2007 i wrote about 100,000 objects, debris are in orbit. 10 years later, 180,000 objects, an 80% increase. we do not have all the analysts to sit and watch 180,000 objects move and figure out what is maneuvering to threaten one of our select. we live in an intelligence community that needs to bring additional tools to identify and

isdict what that debris doing. maybe it is not debris, it is something else. there are things we're working word's the buzz artificial intelligence machine learning, and area that is a no-brainer. we have to be moving out. theirhas made aiml one of mega projects. by 2030, they wanted be investing $150 billion in this arena. the private sector investment in the u.s., almost $40 billion in this arena. fy 2017, we put $30 billion into this. there is an opportunity for the intelligence community to do more in this arena. >> one of my favorite facts about the u.s. military is the surveillance wing at langley air force base had the highest cavity rate in the united states

air force from drinking all the red bowl they needed to keep awake looking at the monitor -- red bull needed to keep awake looking at all of those monitors. the general will say if all the imaging satellites that are planned to go in orbit in the next day kate get up there, that the u.s. would need something toe a million analysts handle all that data. it in the same way, and that is one of the areas where we think there is tremendous opportunity for machine learning and for analytic tools and outdoor rhythms to help us -- and gorhythmshythms -- al to help us. it is a good example of one of the challenges the air force has faced over the last decade, there is no doubt the most devastating impact of the air

force across our missions has not been from our adversaries, it has been from sequester, and we have still not recovered from the sequester in 2013. most important thing that can begun for a national security missions is to lift the budget control act as it is currently structured. so the financial issues have been there, but i think there are structural issues and structural changes. when you think about this, the entire military is focused about winning the fight in the middle east. at the same time, the united states air force developed a gps3satellite and a satellite, so it is advancing gps. it came up with a new infrared satellite that is being put in orbit, developed the x-37 space plane, which is revolutionary. i would be rather us than them, but now we needed for the

throttles forward to become faster, more innovative, or machine learning to get ahead and say ahead of the adversary. >> heard last night at dinner that the air force was looking at using a.i. to navigate acquisition process. a lot more applicability than intelligence. one of the things that people do not remember, if i can have a moment to remind ourselves, the national reconnaissance office, response will for imagery, is a joint venture he between the air force and the cia -- venture between the air force and the cia. half of the employees there are air force. the air force has been involved in all aspects of this space business for a long time, and they are good at it. they need to change it for war fighting domain. technicalf capability, there are things

there to be proud of. guyss came up, and you make gps. i looked at a gps satellite, not to buy it, -- >> do you want to buy one? we have lots of payment plans. >> it looked like a juicy target to me. a gps you defend satellite? >> i am not going to get into the specific technologies or tactics, clearly. i think the point being as technology continues to evolve, what is the requirements, the -- how do we do that in the most effective way, how do we have it in the capacity that can maneuver and can avoid and have situational awareness and bring in the artificial intelligence in a way that doesn't take 12 years?

the most exciting point of the conversation we've been having since january is we are having a conversation out loud and in public where we are focused on such an important domain, that historically we have looked at as inspirational, but we know it is part of the fiber for how we live our lives. as industry, we have an obligation to bring forward our best people in talent in a way that is economical and meets the needs of this nation. david: i'm about to go to questions from the audience. congressman rogers, did you have something? representative rogers: listening to general hyten talk about those marines, just a -- just the fundamentals he was emphasizing. it reminded me of a conversation he had with my subcommittee that helped us understand why china and russia have stepped up their

activity. i thought i would share it with you because it was illuminating. when he was telling us initially how much more china had put in a percentage of their defense spending into national security r and d, as well as russia, he emphasized, like i talked earlier our domestic society has become reliant on space, they realize that. they also realize tactically they can't defeat us in a head-on had battle. they can't. but if they can take our eyes and ears out, they may have a fair fight on their hands. as i told you earlier, we do not ever want to let these folks have a fair fight. but also they can't compete with us financially.

so if they want to buy a lot of weapons systems or other capabilities, they aren't as wealthy as we are as a nation. this is an area where they sense a vulnerability. they actually can put the resources against it to make us vulnerable. it helped us understand why we need a sense of urgency about this and why we need to have a greater appreciation about this concern. because it grows across all aspects of our national security. the north korean threat we've got right now that has had a lot of people rapt in attention, most folks aren't thinking about the fact our first way of detecting a launch by north korea so that we can turn the radars to track it and aim our interceptors to get it in time is a satellite waiting for that heat signature.

we can't let that satellite be dazzled for 10 or 15 minutes. it would be too late. that is how volatile the situation is. it is a very important topic for this body to be talking about today. this gentleman has been doing great work in that area. i appreciate what he is done for our committee and nation. david: i'm going to start with some questions from the audience. i am going to ask the first one, and then i'm going to run for cover. is the lack of a rapid acquisition program a military or congressional problem? representative rogers: both. the thing i also want to emphasize about that this is not , unique to the air force. this is across all the services, this bureaucratic, lethargic acquisition process. what i was hopeful about with that --ce for oma,

forum,orps, -- space when it is implemented, and it will be, we will hopefully have this pilot program we can take a blank slate and create an agile, non-bureaucratic system and prove it works so we can replicate it in the other services. and the fact is as we've talked about in the earlier panel, congress is as guilty as it can be for being negligent in properly resourcing the military and allowing this sequester to continue. it was one of the stupidest things in my 15 years in congress. we should own it and fix it. [applause] >> i think it is both as well. i'm testifying on acquisition and i'm going to bring forward five additional suggestions on changes to the acquisition rules ll