Command of Space
The following is the keynote presentation I delivered recently to the National Security Space Center’s Space Education Symposium:
A couple of months ago, I accompanied most of my colleagues at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies on a tour of Air Force Space Command at Peterson and Schriever Air Force Bases in beautiful Colorado Springs.
We were taken to a dozen venues and briefed on the importance of space and our critical vulnerabilities there. The exemplar—repeated at least a half dozen times—was that without space we would have difficulty using our ATM cards, particularly if we relied on them to operate the gas pumps that fuel our cars. While this apparently horrifying specter looms over AF Space, it left me rather nonplussed.
Why is it that military space professionals have difficulty articulating a future without space support more foreboding than that? To be sure, real-world experience from a decade ago shows that ATM connectivity is indeed connected to space support, and so this example has the distinct advantage of historical accuracy. But I didn’t sense any of my colleagues chafing to get home and demand action from their congressional representatives to address the vulnerabilities and dependencies of space. Is there not a more compelling case to be made that space is America’s most vital enterprise?
As we trundled through PowerPoint brief after PowerPoint Brief, satellite Command Operations Center to Satellite Command Operation Center, we saw hundreds of young, physically fit airmen sitting or standing beside their computer consoles, gazing at monitors as lists of numbers slowly scrolled by, occasionally interrupted by a diagram.
In turn, one after another stood and described their job as “watching a satellite, to determine if it was working within parameters.”
“Ah,” I said to the first, “I see.”
“What do you do if the parameters are breached,” a young professor of comparative military studies asked alertly.
“We send a message to the satellite to verify the information,” came the reply, then rather conspicuously, “that’s the equivalent of flying a sortie in an air unit.”
“Oh,” said my comrade.
“Actually,” said another airman, “we count it as two sorties since the return message is a sortie from the satellite. We actually fly dozens of sorties every day, unlike most operational air units that only fly one or two.”
“Uh huh,” said my associate, “Neat.”
Why is it that the next generation is not surging to space opportunities and space applications in the numbers we need? In the words of another of my dear colleagues, upon completion of our tour … “I have seen the future, and it is boring.”
Without a vision for space, a purpose for all the effort and investment we have made, without a future to capture the imagination, the space professionals we so desperately seek will never come. We need to speak plainly of our roles, of what space means to us, and be prepared to accept the directions that our common sense tells us we are heading.
We need a mission statement that does not have to be explained or explained away. If we say, as warriors, that it is our mission to “fight and win in space,” then we cannot satisfy ourselves with tortured rationales that argue the best fight is the one we avoid by not going there.
Current space operations are not only boring; they are currently unworthy of the warrior spirit. A text message from a Schriever CPU to a GPS satellite is not a sortie equivalent, no matter how many times it is repeated as fact. It belittles the overwhelming importance of space, such grandiose claims for these menial tasks. If you want more and better aspirants to the space cause, make the cause worth caring about. Make it challenging. Make it demanding and fearsome, worthy of the efforts of the best and brightest … and then stand aside as the next generation floods into space.
Lao Tsu said, when describing a ceramic storage jar, it is the clay that gives the jar its shape, but it is the hole that is its purpose. Therefore, he insisted, utility is determined from what there is, but value and meaning derive from what there is not.
And so it is in the distinction between training and education. The former concerns itself with reality, in determining what is. From this comes utility. Students are provided information so that they may achieve a satisfactory level of competence. They are guided to a set of solutions. They are tested on their knowledge of set answers.
Education is instead a search for what there is not, for what there could be. It is not from what we know that learning derives, but from that which we don’t. It is our search for the unknown that defines true education. Training seeks solutions, the end-state of thought. An answer is sufficient in itself. Education seeks questions, the beginning of thinking. An answer is a debarkation point for a better question. Training requires facts, education seeks truth. Just as the one is meaningless without the other, both are vital to our view of the world, but we are here at this symposium to discuss graduate space education, and so I hope you will indulge me in my oratory on the search for meaningful holes filled with a vast nothing of value.
The theme of this gathering is our shared dependence on space. Critical to our deliberation is the sure knowledge that we are truly dependent on space applications and effects in both the military and civilian realms. Without space, were it suddenly and catastrophically to go away, international trade and finance markets would collapse. A global depression would ensue. Shipping and re-supply would be snarled and chaotic. Overseas military deployments would be isolated, and our men and women in uniform would be forced to hunker down in defensive crouch awaiting orders. No new or expanded missions could be considered. Any ability to collect data and forecast threats would be severely restricted. This is the state of our dependence today.
Worse, we are vulnerable. We have no defense and very little deterrent to actions intent on disabling or denying our growing dependency. Except in theory.
There are two essential paths open to us when faced with such a dilemma of vulnerability. One is to accept the higher costs involved and protect those assets; the other is to wean ourselves from such dependence. For the latter, we must seek alternative means of completing current space missions so that in the event space support is lost we can fight on. This is the view expressed by those who oppose weapons in space.
How can we counter the latter, seductive view, and replace it with one that is potentially confrontational, reliant on ingenuity and technology still in development, and on military forces already stretched thin? How can we convince others that our dependence on space is a good thing, worth continuing and even growing, fragile though it is? The asymmetric military advantage from space is extraordinary. Space applications represent the forward edge of the technology wave, and such a place is always desirable, always fragile, and always costly. It takes faith and resolve to ride such a wave.
I am concerned as much as all of you with our common cause, with the shared function of that dependence, as I am with the terrible consequences of our failure to receive space support. Military action in space will immensely influence civilian activities there, just as civilian activities shape and constrain military options in space. We need to work together, and we need to share a common vision.
But we cannot turn back the clock. We have dictated to our armed forces that they undergo transformation. They must integrate space in order to do more with less, to be increasing lethal with smaller expenditures of armaments, and to do so in all terrains, weather conditions, and operating mediums. In other words, we have ordered our armed forces to rely on space support and enablement. Anything less than their complete acceptance and reliance would have meant diminishing the return value for our investments there. Having taken the leap of faith, cut military personnel and atrophied legacy equipment and capabilities, our forces are no longer structured to operate effectively without that support. They are smaller, less heavily armed, faster, lighter, and deadlier. They simply are not the same the same forces.
We must understand that the new environment requires us to protect those capabilities or to find alternative (primarily air and cyber) redundancies to compensate for the potential loss. And we should do so. We owe it to our fighting men and women. The weight of that effort, however, must go to protection, for I guarantee the moment our military forces are capable of fighting without space support, funding for military space will evaporate. The best and the brightest we so desperately need will see the writing on the wall and move on to other career paths.
Compatible with the very ambivalent and contradictory signals we are sending out, space education is today too focused heavily on training and utility. Of course, we must establish a baseline of knowledge to ensure that current capabilities remain functional, that a core of technicians and engineers is available to service our great space enterprise, and develop the tools of tomorrow. But training is not enough. It focuses on utility, on maximizing the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses of existing technology and infrastructure. It is concentrated on the now and the very near tomorrow. Our space expertise is so intent on the bits and bytes of its particular sub-mission that it is no wonder our people cannot articulate a compelling vision for the future, or an even persuasive case for their own importance in the grander scheme of military and government spending.
While there are those who will tell me space (and air) have a long history of promising more than it can deliver, and one can only be publicly chastised and have one’s budgets questioned so often before a careful husbanding of opinions and hopes becomes the norm, I suspect the paucity of vision is more directly tied to the dominance of training over education in our PME. Worse, I assert that public support (particularly for military but broadly) for all space operations has been dramatically cut because neither the military nor the civilian sectors reallyvalues education. I know this is true because in today’s corporate military you will never have to explain why you followed the rules (be they company policy or military doctrine), only why you didn’t.
Ask yourselves if we learn more from failures or from successes? We can learn from both, but most often we are forced to think anew when we fail. And yet, in space, in the military today, failure is not an option. If the single most heuristic educational tool is not acceptable, and rewards accrue to those who successfully complete their routine tasks or keep their noses clean, while punishments are reserved for those who challenge paradigms and offer fresh solutions that may or may not work, then thinking is not valued. We must be prepared to take risk, indeed to value the risk-taker, for the future is about knowledge and learning.
I am too harsh. But, I am a theorist, so I will go on.
In Lao Tzu’s jar, the hole is purpose; it is potential. It is described as value because of the infinite number of things that can be stored, and to a strategist or an educator, for the follow-on value that comes from doing so. The hole presents the possibility for storage and transportation of goods; foods that won’t rot and can be held to winter or traded for things unavailable. The hole is what allows society to settle in one place; to develop permanent agriculture—indeed, the hole preordained civilization. The utility of the jar is increased incrementally—stronger composites to make a lighter shell or increase volume, special glazing to prevent seepage or make liquids potable—but its value is scalable.
Without utility, there is no value. But without value, utility has no direction, no focus, and no purpose. Purpose, then, is the crux of value, and the point of education.
I challenge all of you, when you leave this symposium, to go and determine, in your own way: what is the purpose of spacepower? From this search and discovery, which is not for facts and equations, measurements and metrics, but rather a knowing through reason, the value of space education should emerge.
As an educator I would ask you to do nothing I am not willing or able to do myself. As a military strategist, I have found my own definition. I draw it from a study of classical theory and long-standing principles of war. With no fear of corrupting your own search, and in the hope of instilling in you a desire to better my definition—or at least prove me wrong—I am happy to share it with you now.
Following the logic of Clausewitz, I am convinced that war is an extension of politics by violent means. The purpose of military power in this schema is to maximize violence at the time and place of the civilian (political) authorities’ direction. Note that just as war is limited in aim and scope, military power is limited by political discretion. If it were not, then any time military power is not actively engaged it would be failing in its purpose. Such notions spawn brutal Vietnam-era “body-count” metrics of success. From this proposition one deduces that the best use of military power is to be fully prepared to exert violence, efficiently and effectively, but that because of its high state of readiness, military power does not have to be called upon to act except in the most extreme situations. In this manner, military power under girds and enhances diplomatic, economic, and other forms of power.
Military power is subordinate to political power. It must conform to and fit within that logic, but it has logic of its own (unlike war), stated throughout history from Vegetius to Sun Tsu—let him who desires peace, prepare for war. So, too, must the various medium-defined roles of land, sea, air, space, and now cyber power nest within the scope of military power, but each must also have a unique role.
Connecting strategic purpose to tactical victory is the operational art of war. At this level, the purpose of land power is to take and hold territory (when directed by proper authority). It is, in other words, command of the ground. It is further unique in that it is required of all states, as the political entity is in part defined by the territory it controls, and in the fact that no unclaimed territory remains. There is no great commons left on land as there still is at sea and in the air, and most assuredly in space. The purpose of seapower for any state that relies on the sea for its well-being is to command at least those regions necessary for its security, and if command is not possible then it must at least have the capacity to contest that command by others. The same is true in turn for air, space, and cyber power. The ways and means of doing so are not identical, and a separate strategy is valuable for each, but the purpose is compatible.
To command space. That is the purpose of space power for the space faring state. To command space.
Whatever advantages derive from the free and full use of space are merely effects or spoils of command of space, be it shared, disputed, or uncontested: first one, then the other. For the state that relies on space less than its competitor, command is not necessary, but contestation may be. Unencumbered use of the space medium by my enemy over my territory is not desirable. The ability to take space effects away from the space dominant state is therefore vital to the challenger in order to even the battle space below.
A critical commonality of command of any medium is that robust and assured command cannot be exercised solely from outside that medium. Contestation, to be sure, is possible and usually exercised from one medium into another. But command is only possible from within the medium.
To command space one must operate and exercise influence in and from space. From a military perspective, this requires weaponization. In my long-held view, rapid and comprehensive space weaponization.
The Air Force is a martial organization. It exists to maximize violence in a specific place at a specific time at the discretion of civilian authority. It has developed and controlled the most powerful military force ever known. It has command of the skies in the same manner that our navy has command of the seas.
In addition, our Air Force has been charged with guaranteeing access to space for all nations in time of peace and conflict, and denying access to its enemies in times of conflict and war. And yet, our Air Force cannot place weapons there; it is discouraged even from planning to do so. It must fulfill its space mission without the one vital component necessary to martial command of any medium—it is not allowed to operate weapons in or from space, and is distinctly limited in the weapons it may use into space.
How absurd.
Imagine the navy being told it must retain its traditional seapower roles, but to do so without weapons, without even the threat of force? I suspect admirals would resign in mass, and they would be right to do so. It is an untenable mission, void of the purpose of seapower—to command the sea when and where needed, and short of that to guarantee that no hostile force can command it.
The latter mission is properly contestation of the medium, and is a fall back position for any state that relies on sea support for its well-being. Just as the air is contested from the sea and ground with surface-to-air missiles and flak by states wishing to operate without undue disruption from the air, it is quite obvious that control or command of the skies, the guarantee that one’s friendly air assets can operate there, requires the ability to operate in the air so to cause effects and generate support from the air. The same is true for land, sea, and now cyber power. And yet, somehow, this is seen as improper for spacepower.
American military weaponized presence in space should not be feared, most especially not by Americans. There is no evidence that the weaponization of land, sea, or air by American forces has hindered economic progress or freedom of movement in those realms by genuinely peaceful entities. Indeed, wherever the American military dominates the medium, travel is safer, cargoes are more secure, and associated economic and political freedoms enhanced. Command of space should not deviate from this trend.
Dwell not, as space educators, on the bothersome inconveniences of a loss of specific space-based capabilities. Think about but do not obsess on the specific capabilities of this satellite or that technology. Focus instead on the value of space, what can be done as much as on what is being done.
America is the reluctant sheriff of a New World Order. We will be blamed for any ill that befalls the world, regardless of our actions. Should we decide to abrogate our responsibilities, forego a common vision, and choose not to act—to wait until a clear and present (and perhaps undefeatable) space challenge is a reality, then we will deserve to be condemned in history.
In answering the infamous question (reintroduced to a generation of Tony Soprano fans) whether it is better to be loved or feared, Niccoló Machiavelli said that it is best to be both, but if only one was possible it is better to be feared. Love is tenuous and fickle, fear is strong and lasting. A superior saying for those of us contemplating America’s role in space and in the world comes from Periander of Kypselos who became Tyrant of Corinth. Despite the general attitude of both the times and of history, that Periander distinguished himself by leniency, justice toward the lowly, and wisdom among people of understanding, he stated that “It is better to be feared than lamented.” Periander surrounded himself with bodyguards and was ever-prepared for war—for as he said, “It is just as dangerous for a tyrant to lay down his command as to be deprived of it.”
America is the world’s preeminent power, and the foundation of that power is its strength in diversity, its tolerance of success in all sectors of achievement, and its position at the crest of the innovation wave. Space is inextricably tied to these strengths, and increasingly it supports the maintenance of our preeminent position.
Thank you for your time and I welcome your questions and comments.