The new head of Air Force Space Command (APSPC) will continue his predecessor’s efforts toward resiliency and responsiveness.
“If that didn’t come out loud and clear in my speech, then I’ve failed,” AFSPC chief Gen. John Raymond said Friday at a Peter Huessy breakfast series even on Capitol Hill. The presentation was Raymond’s first in Washington since taking over as head of AFSPC.
Commercial space advocate and industry consultant Rand Simberg said Friday resiliency is the ability to either be able to take a blow and maintain operational capability or to restore it rapidly. Disaggregated architectures, he said, could be one way of achieving resiliency while another approach could be self-defense. The Air Force is looking to improve its resiliency as space is becoming more contested and congested, though Air Force leadership maintains the best way to win a war in space is to avoid one.
Simberg said responsiveness is how fast the service can do something. He said, for example, if a satellite is shot down, responsiveness would be replacing the satellite in rapid fashion. Simberg said one way toward responsiveness could be having a spare satellite above geostationary orbit (GEO) that could be moved into a certain orbital slot. Another way, he said, could be storing satellites on the ground. Former AFSPC commander and current U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) chief Air Force Gen. John Hyten sees a role for reusable rocketry in preventing a Space Pearl Harbor, or a debilitating attack against the United States in space. The idea is that rapid reusable rocketry could either deter an attack or quickly replace a space asset if an attack does take place (Defense Daily, Sept. 30).
The Air Force developed a Space Enterprise Vision (SEV), the result of a AFSPC-commissioned study that looked into how to make the nation’s military space enterprise more resilient. The SEV accounts for the increasing threat to space systems, and provides a vision for how the Air Force should build a force responsive to that threat, according to a service statement. The SEV is a joint effort with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).