An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
Official websites use .mil
A
.mil
website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
Secure .mil websites use HTTPS
A
lock (
lock
)
or
https://
means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Skip to main content (Press Enter).
Toggle navigation
U.S. Strategic Command
U.S. Strategic Command
Search
Search U.S. Strategic Command:
Search
Search U.S. Strategic Command:
Search
Home
2024 Posture Statement
Commander's Leadership Library
About
Leadership
About Us
Vision & Intent
History
Command Video
Command Emblem
Employment at USSTRATCOM
Newsroom
News
Speeches & Transcripts
Images
Flickr
Contact
Contact us
Inspector General
Confidentiality
Whistleblower Protection
Submit Complaint
Freedom of Information Act
FOIA Requests
FOIA FAQ
Reading Room
Newcomers
Newcomer information
Checking In
Welcome Letters
Academic Alliance
USSTRATCOM Academic Alliance
Keyword
Year
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
Recent
Oldest
Title A > Z
Title Z > A
Speeches
SPEECH
| Nov. 20, 2009
Air Force Association2009 Air Force Association "Global Warfare Symposium"
General Chilton:
Mike, thanks for that warm introduction. That was a while ago, [inaudible] in Afghanistan. [Inaudible] working for him at the time and he was in the top five of people who knew about it, I guess, and I might have been in the top ten. [Laughter]. So thanks, Mike, for the introduction.
It's great to be with you all today. Joe, it's great to be part of this AFA function. It's a historic gathering out here in Los Angeles. Going back, as you all know, Hap Arnold's vision and Jimmy Doolittle, another Los Angelino like myself. Although maybe that's where the similarities end. We both grew up in Los Angeles. He went to Manual Arts High School. I'm not sure what Jimmy learned at Manual Arts that set him on the brilliant career path that he had, in aviation and he's grown up to be a senior leader in our Air Force.
My high school, St. Bernard High School, I know launched me in coming into the Air Force because it's located about 100 yards north of the northern-most runway of LA International Airport, right at the departure end. So if nothing else, when things kind of slowed down a little bit in Spanish class or math, you could look out the window and watch airplanes take off all day.
The other skill I learned there, though, was lip reading, because you couldn't hear the teachers. [Laughter]. But that inspired me.
So when it came time to choose surfer, beach bum, joining the Air Force -- I had the right shaping and molding by growing up near the airport.
We're not in LA, are we? We're in Beverly Hills. [Laughter]. That's where I want to be. [Laughter]. I listen to my kids' music.
[Inaudible] I mean, the Hilton is just classy and we're really fortunate to have this as the venue to be at.
I'm reminded too, growing up in LA, we had some friends of ours, two friends that were firemen. In fact one was a captain at the station right here in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills Fire Department. As a young boy I remember going out to the fire department and visiting with them. They are very proud, as you can imagine, first class equipment at this firehouse. First class accommodations. Just a really top of the line fire department. And what they were most proud of, though, was the fact that they were so exclusive that they were the only fire department in the United States of America with an unlisted phone number. [Laughter]. That's what living in Beverly Hills can do for you. [Laughter].
No, it's great to be back. It's great to join you here.
I'll tell you what also is really special is to have the opportunity to join you after having heard three of my key component commanders up here on stage earlier in the day. It's really a pleasure to be able to follow General James and General Klotz and General Webber, and fully appreciate, as I do, all that they are doing to support the U.S. Strategic Command and all our mission areas.
I know these three gentlemen are incredibly busy. You can bet we've been a little bit busy at STRATCOM this past year with just a few acronyms keeping our attention. QDR, NPR, SPR, START FO, BMDR. So every one of these major reviews that the President has to do in his first year, the new administration has to do in its first year, we've been plugged into in a big way. I think a good portion of the staff at STRATCOM has spent more time in D.C. this year than they have back in Omaha. They have to have their mail all forwarded back there, and they're probably going to pay taxes back in that side of the country.
One thing interesting when you look at these studies, you know, Quadrennial Defense Review, Nuclear Posture Review, Space Posture Review, Ballistic Missile Defense Review, START Follow-On Treaty negotiations...you can run a thread through just about all of them that kind of leads you to why do you pick STRATCOM to be uniquely involved in every single one of those, because they are all major contributors to STRATCOM's primary missions, our three lines of operations. And in particular, I think the thread that runs through all of them is the strategic deterrence mission that United States Strategic Command has.
The other two big mission areas we have, of course, are operations in space and operations in cyber space. So provide the strategic deterrence for the nation, cyber space operations, and space operations.
Let me talk to you a little bit about them. Since I'm a COCOM and I don't have a checkbook and I don't have a budget, all I have is ""wants"". And I want them now -- [Laughter] -- like every other COCOM. Let me talk just a little bit about the things that STRATCOM needs to do these mission areas. Let me begin with strategic deterrence.
It's pretty simple. You need capability and you need will to deter someone. The will is provided by our political leadership. What we worry about in the military, in STRATCOM, is the capabilities that are required. So let me tell you what capabilities we need to deter as warfighters.
First of all, you need early warning. You need to know when the bad guys do something. You need to know early warning of an attack on the United States, and this transcends the other domains as well. We need early warning of potential attack in space or against space assets or cyber space assets.
Just as importantly as having the early warning capability, your adversary, our potential adversaries, must know that they may surprise us but they will not surprise us so much that we will not be able to take a decision and take action should they attack us. That is why ""early"" warning, not just warning, is so important to us. Early warning.
Another attribute of warning is attribution. The warning system not only has to tell you in time to make decisions so that you can posture forces for defense or counterattack should that be required; they also have to provide you attribution of the source of the attack. This is number one, in my view, of the capability that you need to build a foundation of capabilities for deterrence.
The next thing that's vital is command and control. Once you're warned, you have to be able to do something with your forces. You need to be able to make them change their posture to a more defensive position. Maybe flush the fleet at the airfield. Maybe adjust the way you're flying the satellites that you're operating and point them in a different direction, maybe power them down. Maybe adjust the bandwidth in your cyber domain to prepare for the attack that your early warning system has told you about.
Command and control of the forces you must protect and you're chartered to operate and protect, as well as assure command and control of your retaliatory forces that the President may select and choose to bring to bear.
The unbroken chain of that command and control, that assured command and control, that runs from the President of the United States to the fielded forces, in particular in the nuclear domain, in the nuclear deterrent, is absolutely vital. The adversary must know that we will be able to direct our forces in all circumstances, whether it's before an attack, in the middle of an attack, or in the post-attack phase of a conflict.
So early warning, command and control. Next you need delivery systems. You need the delivery systems to reach out and touch the adversary. On top of those delivery systems or in the bomb bays of those delivery systems you need weapons, and you need weapons that the adversary fears and respects.
When you put this equation together, these four things, you fulfill the capability requirements and you add those to political will, and now you're postured to provide strategic deterrence for the United States of America.
Look at what our Air Force's role is in these areas. It's charged with providing many of the elements that I've just described.
For defense of the homeland, though, I think it's interesting to note, that the defense of the homeland against a ballistic missile attack, the Air Force uniquely bears the sole burden of providing warning required by the President and by the U.S. Strategic Command to provide the deterrent force. The uninterrupted, timely, and accurate warning systems that the Air Force operates in space and in ground-based radars are absolutely fundamental to the strategic deterrence posture of the United States. And they're not just critical to the homeland. They're also absolutely critical to our fielded forces around the world. Nobody says duck for incoming SCUDs or whatever missiles except the United States Air Force. Except because of the United States Air Force's capability. That global capability that the Air Force provides the United States Strategic Command to do our mission of deterrence and missile warning is absolutely essential not only to the homeland, but to every Soldier, Sailor, Airman and Marine deployed anywhere on the planet. And to our allies, many of our allies depend on us. Uninterrupted and assured missile warning.
It's a heavy burden to bear, but it's a burden that the Air Force has born for many years in a very fine fashion.
In the command and control area there's multiple players for multiple services, but the United States Air Force is a major player. Again, part of that assured line of command and control assurance that we have for the President flows through key satellite systems that the United States Air Force operates.
Of course in the strategic delivery system area, the Air Force provides two out of the three big ones for me. They provide a responsive and difficult to target ICBM force, and our most credible and flexible leg of the triad, the bomber force.
The Navy, of course, provides us what I would argue is the most survivable and assured response element of the triad.
These are all essential to our strategic deterrence posture as well. Deterrence can go beyond nuclear capability, but nuclear deterrence is fundamental, it is the absolute building-blocks foundation to our strategic deterrence posture for the protection of the United States of America and indeed our way of life.
This triad of forces I don't see going away any time in the near future, nor do I want them to go away any time in the near future. I think a balance of the capabilities that these forces provide are exactly what we need today and exactly what we will need in the near future. In fact in the foreseeable future in my view.
These forces, though, need to be sustained and as we look to the future, they need to be modernized. All the services have done an exceptional job in sustaining the current forces, making modernization improvements to sustain what we have today. The Navy's just finishing a refueling, in the process of refueling all the Trident submarines to extend their life, double their life essentially. The [SGN] fleet has been refurbished and there have been countless modifications made to the B-52 and B-2 to keep that as a viable weapon system.
The Navy is already working on the requirements for and the preliminary design required for the follow-on to the Ohio Class Trident submarine. They're already doing that work. I'm already writing a requirement study on what that needs to look like as we go to the future. We're taking a close look at that on staff right now. Key meetings will happen this December with the Navy staff. The first one of those boats doesn't come out until 2027. That's how far ahead you need to be thinking about these things.
The Navy's got a plan. The Air Force needs to have a plan for land-based strategic deterrent replacement and for sustainment of the air leg of the nuclear deterrent force as well. It's not too early to start thinking about these things.
Finally, let me go to the weapons that any adversary will truly fear.
I'll quote President Obama who said, ""As long as these weapons,"" and he's referring to nuclear weapons, ""exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary and guarantee that defense to our allies.""
What does this combatant commander need to fulfill that statement?
First, we need to fix the infrastructure that supports our nuclear stockpile. To have a nuclear weapons program you need a plutonium program and a uranium program. And if you're going to have a good nuclear weapons program you have a first class plutonium and uranium program. You have first class facilities for your scientists and engineers to work in. And you give them first class work to do to maintain the cutting edge expertise they need.
To quote the recent bipartisan committee that was formed to examine the nuclear weapons stockpile, their assessment of our current facilities was, in a word, quote, ""decrepit"", unquote. That is unsatisfactory. We owe our people better than that. We owe the nation better than that.
We need it not only for the sustainment of the stockpile, we need it also for the recruitment and retention of the types of scientists and engineers that we want in the laboratories to make sure that this deterrent, these weapon systems, are available for the protection of our children and our children's children.
There's been another program that was put in place that was very important in the 1990s when we unilaterally make a decision outside the [CTBT] to stop testing. We withdrew from testing without having ratified the treaty, but we did it anyway. We stopped testing.
There was a prescient understanding that without testing we needed to do some serious examination of the stockpile on a regular basis. And so a program, called the stockpile surveillance program was started. Top scientists who had a lot of nuclear testing and design expertise examine the stockpile every year and certify its capability, its safety and its security.
If it was not for this program, I think we could argue successfully that some weapons in the inventory today would have been removed from deployment in the active inventory, or we may have had to go back to the President and ask for testing. Because of this program we have not had to do that. A very significant program that must be sustained and funded as we go forward. But we need to do more.
We can't just continue to sustain the Cold War era weapons that we have in our inventory. They were designed for Cold War purposes; they were designed with Cold War specifications; it's a new world in the 21st Century. We need weapons that are designed for and support the needs of the warfighter in the 21st Century. To move out on a comprehensive stockpile management program that will provide just what the President asked for -- high reliability in our weapon systems and 21st Century safety and security capabilities that we know how to put in those weapons today. We need to move out and make that happen.
There's another thing in the strategic deterrent area that became apparent to me in the last year. As we started to prepare STRATCOM for the Nuclear Posture Review and support to START Follow-On negotiations, what I found was we had these meetings and I kept seeing the same faces over and over again at the meetings. About half a dozen people. So I started to query, where's the rest of the corpus of expertise in this area in STRATCOM? It wasn't very deep, folks. In fact it is so shallow today that the Joint Staff had to come to STRATCOM to get expertise to do some of the work that they needed to do to support START Follow-on negotiations. Can you imagine that? Ten, fifteen years ago, that the Pentagon would have to go out to the field to get expertise?
Now I'm proud of what we have at STRATCOM, but the ""ah-ha"" moment was through no individual's fault, we have skipped a generation of focus on the very concepts that are essential to understand and question and study when it comes to the concepts of deterrence, whether they be nuclear or otherwise. We skipped a generation. So we had this ""ah-ha"" moment about, a little over a year ago at STRATCOM and said we've got to do something about this.
So this last summer we had our first ever Strategic Deterrence Symposium in Omaha, Nebraska. We had about 500 people attend. It was actually a phenomenal event. You could tell there's a hunger out there by the communities who used to do this stuff for a living in the ""90s and the ""80s, to come out and start educating the next group of folks. We had the best from academia, from policy, top notch scientists, warfighters, all on stage running panels, talking about things that haven't been talked about in 15 years -- in open forum and discussed. The most brilliant panel I thought, or at least certainly one that held everyone's attention was the international panel. Where on-stage at this symposium we had a panel moderated by someone from the United Kingdom's Defense Department; the Ambassador from Russia; a senior colonel from China; the head of French Nuclear Air Forces; a retired Indian naval admiral; and a retired brigadier from the Pakistani Army. All talking about nuclear deterrence, why they have it, why it's important to their countries, how they look at the United States. It was absolutely phenomenal. And if you didn't have a chance to come, I'm going to jump into my children's 21st Century now, go on line to the STRATCOM web page and click on Strategic Deterrence Symposium and the videos from all those panels are there. And I encourage every active duty military member to do that. And get the benefit from what these folks brought to the debate. And they were some good debates. They were wonderful. We're going to do it again next year. We need to continue this dialogue and we need to continue to educate. Deterrence is the most noble calling of all of us in uniform. It's not fighting our country's wars, it's preventing wars upon our country.
Let me switch gears here a little bit from my early warning command and control forces and weapons and expertise discussion for cyber and jump into this COCOM's wish list in the space domain.
Now this will come as no surprise to you. Space situational awareness, how long have we been beating the drum on this one? Quite a few years. It's not all bad news. We're starting to see the dollars come in and programs actually be funded, and I'm actually encouraged by that.
But let's take a look at some of the components that we need for improved space situational awareness.
Focused intelligence. Space situational awareness starts before something is launched into space. It starts with intelligence focusing on other nations' capabilities and development programs. In the perfect world we know what gets into orbit before it launches so we don't have to do the hard job of trying to figure out what it is once it's up there.
Certainly we are compelled, given the Chinese ASAT test and the irresponsible debris that was created by that, by the unfortunate collision by the Iridium and Cosmos satellites, and the growing amount of debris that is chronicled in space. Certainly we are compelled to improve situational awareness for safety purposes, if nothing else.
That's going to require increased numbers of sensors on the ground to surveil space better, so we have better understandings of where the objects in space that we're trying to track are. We have a dearth of that capability in the Southern Hemisphere. We need to move out and improve our funding for sensors that support space situational awareness.
There's opportunity here, by the way, to include friends and allies in this effort. Geography matters, and we don't have Southern Hemisphere geography. So the opportunity to partner with other allies and friends is certainly important.
One's and zero's don't hack it though, completely. We also need to turn those one's and zero's into useable information in a fused fashion for my component commander General James. He needs to have the tools and information in his operation center so that he can make decisions. He doesn't need for his own brain to be the fusion cell. He needs other machines to fuse data for him and present him with the information he needs to make the decisions that any combatant would make in his domain -- what do I need to protect my forces, what do I need to direct my forces to continue to do their operations, et cetera.
He not only needs the decision tools, he needs the command and control capabilities to link to his forces in the field to make sure that he can conduct them. We need all of these things and we need them yesterday. It's past time to be operating with 1991 computer technologies in the SPADOC system. We need to move on, develop an architecture that will be supportable by not only our own sensors that we have, Cold War sensors, but will also take feeds from commercial entities, from allies, et cetera to create the situational awareness picture that General James needs.
Now there's an organized [threat con] from General James as well. We've got to clearly understand our concepts of operations and requirements. Once those are clearly articulated, we need to move out with the fielding of the capabilities that we need to do this mission area.
The second thing is something that might not come to mind right away in the space domain that I think we're seriously lacking in and is important to me as a combatant commander. That is to have the modeling and simulation tools to conduct training, systems development and to conduct exercises. We have this in other domains. I thought of this as a young captain flying F-15s. I remember going to St. Louis and getting in simulators in 1982 with another F-15 pilot, two different simulators, half a dozen aggressor pilots in their simulators, fighting them, imagining that we had AMRAAMs before they were fielded, imagining we had track wall stand radars before they were fielded, imagining we had radar warning systems before they were fielded, how we could fuse that data. We developed new tactics, techniques and procedures, we made corrections and gave insights to the engineers who were developing these systems and how they ought to go. Concepts of operations that later were used in Desert Storm were developed with these types of things. And today, if you look at our Air Force, we use modeling and simulation to do distributive training around the world. AWACS in particular. The guys don't get in an airplane all the time. Sometimes they go on a simulator and they lead fighters out of Shaw Air Force Base, conducting operations with fighters out of Langley, and tankers someplace else, and jammers out of Offutt Air Force Base. All in the virtual world.
It supports training, it can support me for exercises. I would love to put a red force against General James and say give them this problem, and let's not just write it on a piece of paper and say what would you do. Manifest that problem for him on the centers and screens that he sees in his Ops Center or his training Ops Center that will require him to make decisions and give orders to his forces. Then see if it works. See if it works. Modeling and Sim. We need this capability in the space domain.
Lastly, in the space area we need to stop managing our constellation programs in a term that I've coined/called in a ""gap management"" fashion, if you will.
There was a day when we had robust architectures and we had robust development programs and satellites in the barn ready to go up should a problem develop on orbit. There's no fingerpointing here. We all understand and know about the development and acquisition issues that we've had over the last ten years, not just in space. It's happening in air, it's happening in naval forces, it's happening in land force acquisition as well, across the Department of Defense. But it's contributed to the fact that we've had problems in fielding systems on time when we expect them and when we anticipate we would need them. Budget constraints are going to make this even tougher as we go forward.
We've gotten to the point in some cases where this combatant commander has to count on 100 percent launch success. Now we're good. I was part of an organization back in the 1970s believed they could achieve 100 percent launch success. They didn't...and it costs us seven lives. But this is more important. This is national security, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about here -- as dear as those lives of the Challenge astronauts were to each and every one of us. I'm talking about counting on 100 percent launch success for national security. We should not be in this position. We're not there yet. We're approaching that. We need to do better.
So, space situational awareness, modeling and sims, a more robust position to sustain the constellations that are important to us.
Let me shift gears now slightly to cyber. We had a wakeup call a couple of years ago in the nuclear business. It's referred to now as the Minot incident. Nobody died, thankfully. No weapons were lost. Nobody lost control of them. But we had a wakeup call, and thank goodness for it because without that cheap lesson we could have paid some very expensive lessons later without that call.
We also had a wakeup call in the space domain -- two of them. The ASAT test by the Chinese and the Iridium/Cosmos. It's got us all paying attention to this growing amount of debris that we have and the conduct of people operating under ,with regard to operations in this domain.
A year ago this month we had our wakeup call in cyber space. It didn't get a lot of press, but we all know some of the consequences of it – we saw the messages, no more thumb drives, et cetera. We had serious intrusion into our DoD networks a year ago. I think it's why I didn't come to this conference a year ago, as a matter of fact. We were working that problem pretty hard at STRATCOM. It was our wakeup call.
It has changed the way people are thinking about cyber space, and I think that is good. Except this time it's not just the nuke guys' problem to worry about the Minot incident, and it's not just the guys who wear space badge's problem to worry about debris in space. This time it's everybody's problem. Every Airman, every Soldier, every Sailor, every Marine. It's everybody's problem because we're all on the net and every one of us is depending on those networks to conduct operations.
So what do I want? Three things; and these are pretty high level. We need to change the culture, the very culture of the way we think about networks; we need to change our conduct, how we conduct ourselves on those networks; and we need to improve our capabilities to operate and defend those networks.
We all grew up with the internet. It just kind of started to appear on our desks, kind of ubiquitous. I can remember when some of the first computer tools came out we had a guy in my squadron who said hey, we can computerize the squadron scheduling and automate this. I said yeah, but I'm doing it just fine with this grease board and grease pencil. And that's going to take a lot of work to load all that data in that computer, I don't have time to do that. Look at all the data that's in computers today. I don't even tell my children to look it up in the encyclopedia any more. It's ""Google it.' It's all out there. It's become part of everything that we do.
But we were looking at it and we were raised with it as a convenience. It's a convenience for my children. It's a convenience for me. Banking on-line, registering your car, sending letters to folks, throw away that pen, throw away that quill and nice writing pen and just take care of it all on-line. It's a convenience.
It's not a convenience for us in the military. It's a necessity. We cannot conduct warfighting operations without it. It is not the business of the J6. It is not the business of the adjutant clerk in your office who's the IA specialist. It is commanders' business. It's commanders' business to pay attention to making sure that that network is configured properly, the men and women who use that network are trained properly to conduct operations on that network, and that network is postured to support their warfighting needs. That's the culture change that has to change. That's probably the toughest of the three, adjusting that mindset, making this commanders' business.
In the conduct area, we need to do a better job training our people. General Webber gave a great vision I think on how to assess and train cyber experts, but every one of us touches a computer.
Every one of us is like a gate guard on the base. Through our inappropriate action or inaction, we each have the potential to allow an adversary into our networks. Once they're in, today what we see them doing is espionage. Tomorrow what we will see them do is denial of service attacks, manipulation of data, cutting off supplies that you need to do your operations. That's all within the realm of the possible. So everybody needs to be trained. A once-a-year pop-up screen on your computer to get you your annual cyber training is not adequate when an adversary is out there today changing their TTPs hourly. Certainly daily.
Training and inspection. We know how to do this in the military. We train our people and we inspect them. When the ORI comes to an Air Force base they not only have to inspect the equipment and the maintenance and the logistics to make sure the airplanes can turn the wheel on the ramp and be cocked and ready to fly, or the ICBMs can be postured to do their mission. They need to test the crews to make sure they know their job, what they're supposed to be doing. And if they fly airplanes, they need to make sure they can launch them and get to their targets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But they also need to inspect the network, because that base, that wing, that organization, cannot operate without it. You can have perfect logistics, perfect maintenance, best trained crews in the world -- you can be shut down if you don't have your networks.
They need to be trained and inspected, and lastly, we need to hold our people accountable. If you had somebody that walked out of the office with a zipped up bag with some classified in it and they went to the commissary and they left it on the counter, accidentally, and went home, do you think they might be called in front of the commander the next day? I think so. In white gloves under arms they'd be called in front of the commander the next day. Yet, people do wrong things, things they shouldn't be doing on networks, that allow adversaries into our networks to steal sensitive data, important data, and are we holding them accountable? Are commanders even aware of it? If they are, are they holding them accountable?
Culture, conduct, capabilities. We need to continue to invest in the capabilities our commanders need in this business, what General Webber needs as a component to network warfare and as chief of the future Cyber Command. The capabilities he needs to be able to do his job, to operate and defend those networks. There's technologies out there that can make this easier, that can allow him to quickly configure his networks when directed by JTF-GNO, to send out a patch or to close off some ports. A lot of times today it's done manually by people walking around. There's technologies we need today that allows that to be done centrally and at the speed of light.
We need to be able to react at the speed of light to the threats that we will face in the future in these networks.
STRATCOM is tightening up our organizations. We're merging JTF-GNO and JFCC-NW into U.S. Cyber Command. This is the right thing to do. Unity of command, unity of effort will be achieved. We're raising the bar on inspections, and I'm grateful seeing that, through DISA and JTF-GNO. And I'm happy to report that this wakeup call from a year ago really did get folks' attention. There's little or no pushback from anything I have just said when you talk to commanders. A year ago there would have been a lot of pushback. Now people are getting it. So I applaud the Air Force, and particularly the Air Force in its leadership in this area. I think standing up 24th Air Force is a good move. It's going to give us focused attention and a great clear link into U.S. Strategic Command for the missions we do in cyber space.
Strategic deterrence, space operations, cyber space operations. These are our three main lines of operations in this great global command we call U.S. Strategic Command of which I am so pleased and proud to lead. Tremendous people. A tremendous joint force. Today I hope you have a little better understanding of how important the Air Force contribution is to that joint force and to the success of this command charged with the security of the United States in each of these areas.
I've kind of run on and on here about COCOM wants. Mike's looking at his watch. But I'm reminded, if I can tell a story, about the Marines -- this is several years ago. Back when I was in the programming business, which included going to Capitol Hill and trying to convince Members of Congress that we really did need certain amounts of money for our big programs. And of course the Navy would go in there and describe why they needed money for aircraft carriers and submarines and big giant programs. In the Air Force we'd be in there arguing -- not arguing, but suggesting that really, the right place to invest would be in fighter and bombers that would be very expensive, new satellites, big programs. Our Army, FCS, big giant program, lots of money to do that. And the story goes the Marines would walk in and they'd sit there with a Congressman. Of course they'd pick someone who probably was a Marine in the past or had done their research and knew they had a relative in the Marines. They would go in there and say, Congressman, we really don't need much of anything. We're great Marines who fought from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli and the beaches of Iwo Jima, and they're out there today doing their job. We don't have a lot of wants. Really, all they really need is enough bullets to do their job, boots, and maybe if you can find in your heart new shoe laces for their boots. Well by this time, the guy or gal would be in tears, you know. Surely you need something more than just bullets, boots and new shoe laces. The Marine would say well, since you brought it up, Congressman, you know, three wings of F-18s and 150 new main battle tanks would go a long way to supporting getting those shoe laces for our troops on the front line. [Laughter].
They had it down pat. The Marines always seemed to make out pretty well on Capitol Hill. They had the list of wants and they knew how to work the Hill to get their wants.
I've presented my humble list today for strategic deterrence, warning, command and control, forces, weapons, expertise. In space, situational awareness, modeling and sim capabilities for my commanders and my components, uninterrupted constellations to support our mission sets across the joint fight. And in cyber, a change in culture, conduct and capability.
I have a longer list than that, but I think I'm out of time.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
[Applause].
Moderator:
The first thing I'm going to do when I get back to AFA Headquarters is I'm going to change the password of my computer from ""password"". [Laughter]. Just joking. [Laughter].
General Chilton:
Remember that movie Catch-22? Take this guy out and have him killed. [Laughter].
Moderator:
I'm going to ask you, you covered this a little bit, General Chilton, on the new U.S. Cyber Command. Are you happy with, I know there's been some consolidation. We may not have enough experience in dealing with it yet, but have we got enough focus in the right area? Are we organized right? Are there things that you'd change on the margins? How's it working?
General Chilton:
Well, we haven't stood up the new Cyber Command yet. We have completed the I Plan. The SecDef directed we go out and do this, combine JTF-GNO and JFCC-NW, and we worked really hard, I'm really proud of the team. We worked all summer, wrote an I Plan, 400 pages thick, and it's incredibly detailed. I think it's a good plan. We briefed that out to the Secretary. He had a couple more modifications he wanted to go work, a little more work he wanted us to do on it. We've completed that work and resubmitted to the Secretary for his consideration. I'm hoping he'll have a chance to get back to it, through the staffing process and back up to me before the end of the year. Also General Alexander has been nominated by the White House to go forward as the first commander. So, we're making progress toward standing up the new sub-unified command in STRATCOM, and I'm anxious to proceed to IOC as soon as we can. That's step one, because there's a lot of work to be done in the next year on --
Moderator:
When is IOC?
General Chilton:
It won't occur until we have a commander and an approved I Plan by the Security Council.
Moderator:
I know last year you were going to make a trip to talk to your Russian counterparts and the Chinese were going to come to visit you in the last month. What kind of questions did they ask you? What kind of points did they make to you?
General Chilton:
First of all, I've not had any talks with my Russian counterparts. Although the Chairman, President Obama and President Medvedev met the Chairman and General [inaudible], his counterpart met. I think they outlined a construct for beginning those mil dialogues. So I'm encouraged by that. I think it's appropriate that we have this transparent dialogue with the Strategic Rocket Forces, for example, their nuclear forces, their space forces, et cetera. Not to take away from the dialogues that are established already by the regional combatant commanders, but the UCP allows STRATCOM in coordination with the regional combatant commanders to talk about these subjects that are our three main lines of operations, and it makes sense. If you want to talk nuclear, you probably ought to talk to STRATCOM. If you want to talk space, you probably ought to talk to STRATCOM, et cetera. So I'm looking forward to those opportunities and we're preparing ourselves for those engagements.
With the Chinese, we're fortunate to have them send, a very high level delegation came to meet the Secretary of Defense and they requested to come to STRATCOM, so we hosted them out there, two four star generals, a couple of three stars, two stars, a bevy of one stars. And the purpose of the first meeting was for us to explain to them what we do at STRATCOM. So we gave them a solid mission briefing, answered all their questions. Then we had private meetings to exchange our various positions.
But my goal and objective from that was to, and I think it was theirs as well, was to open the door for further dialogue. It was not to do any big problem solving on the first meeting. That's not what happens on first meetings. It's, are you interested? Yes, we're interested. Back and forth. So I'm encouraged by that. I think the door's been opened again with President Obama's visit to China this week. I'm hopeful that we'll see increased dialogue between STRATCOM and the Chinese on our specific lines of operations in concert with Admiral Willard.
I commented right after the Chinese visited us, my J5, General Helms, was invited to participate in [Track 1.5] talks over in China. So another step forward in the dialogue.
Moderator:
I've got a lot of questions, but sadly we're out of time. On behalf of all of us, thank you, Gen Chilton.
# # # #
SHARE
PRINT