2015 Space and Missile Defense Symposium

Adm. Cecil Haney: Well, good morning and thanks to Bill for that kind introduction.  At least he didn’t say I was a Redskins fan because it’s not going so well for me at the moment but we’ll see how the season appears.

It’s an honor to be here and to be here in person this time.  Last year I appeared virtually and that didn’t work so well for me so I managed to do better with my scheduling this time to be here in person.  And I can’t thank you all for what you do in support of our joint military force and particularly in support of those Sailors, Airmen, Soldiers, and Marines and Civilians that work for me as part of U.S. Strategic Command, at large.

And in addition to Bill, I also want to salute Terry Tipton and thank the entire team for putting this together.  This very important theme and how these areas are so linked to my mission areas as well as my priorities.

I look at the strategic and security environment today, Integrated Air, Space and Missile Defense are clearly important areas now and they will be, well into the future.

So, I am pleased to see the broad spectrum of professionals that are gathered together here.  I just want to thank everyone for being here.  You got to see the Honorable Heidi Shyu earlier this morning and my comrade from multiple jobs, Admiral Bill Gortney, call sign “Shortney” earlier here, which I get to follow up on.  But I also want to salute what was done yesterday and I think Joe Fitzgerald isn’t here, oh there you are, and just with what you did with all those WWII veterans, you know, having seen them throughout the country and in many ways, hearing the commitment and investment of time and energy here, I think we can’t do enough for our WWII veterans as well as for our veterans at large today. 

I’m not sure if the mayors are still here, if so we’ll see if they want to hear about U.S. Strategic Command, but maybe not.  I want to thank them for at least being here for part of this.  And you know, I really want to salute the efforts here of seeing education as part of the program, particularly the STEM piece here the science, technology, engineering and math – something I fundamentally believe that the education of our nation’s populace is so vitally important as we look at these mission areas as well as in the future at large so I’m really happy to see that as part of the agenda.

So, those of you who are serving in uniform, thanks for what you do for our country at large, raising your right hand to support and defend. And those who are in government service, I also want to salute what you do for us, as well as our industry partners and the allies and partners who are also represented here today.

Now, I’ve been asked to specifically address the topic of “Preparing Space, Cyberspace and Missile Defense in an Uncertain World,” so I thought I would do this by providing you some of my thoughts on the Global Security Environment; the congruency with respect to the assigned topic and missions of U.S. Strategic Command; and how we are working to address challenges across the spectrum of conflict and some of my thoughts on the future, what we together must achieve with the combined efforts of this audience.

As you are aware, we are challenged with a number of concerning strategic trends around the globe.  Nation states continue to develop and modernize their nuclear weapons capabilities. Nuclear and non-nuclear nation states aspire to or have demonstrated their ability to employ not just a variety of missile capabilities, but also cyber, counter-space and other asymmetric capabilities – often through surrogates to preclude direct attribution – below the threshold of our international community intolerance levels.

These advanced capabilities are being developed or procured by our adversaries, or potential adversaries.  And yes, their capabilities are becoming increasingly more mobile, hardened, and underground. This is further compounded by a lack of transparency with respect to intentions.

Looking more closely at ballistic missile threats, not only has the number of systems and payloads grown substantially over the past 20 years, so too has speed, accuracy, mobility, reliability, survivability, and range.

Flight profiles are challenging our sensor architecture and our engagement mechanism, decreasing warning times and ultimately leadership decision space.  Technological and operational measures to defeat missile defenses are improving and are increasing as the number of missiles are being put on mobile platforms, for example.  Both at sea, on land and in the air. 

Additionally, cruise missile advances, as was talked about earlier today. Also, hyperglide vehicles, research and development, and I would argue, unmanned aerial systems technology, are also challenging our planning calculus. 

For example, in the ability to find and fix, track and hold at risk is becoming increasingly more difficult. Hyperglide vehicle technology complicates our sensing and defensive approaches and even the unmanned aerial systems technology is cheap, rapidly available to the open market, and anyone can operate them.

Shifting to the other end of the spectrum here, Russia and China have, and continue to develop, both nuclear and non-nuclear ballistic missiles. In fact, President Putin recently announced that Russia will add more than 40 new Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles to its inventory that he claims are capable of piercing missile defenses. China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads. While North Korea fields hundreds of Scuds and No Dong missiles that can reach key allies and can reach U.S. forces forward deployed to the Republic of Korea and Japan. At the same time, North Korea continues to increase global tensions with advances in its strategic capabilities, parades around its KN-08 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, threatens to conduct more nuclear tests, claims nuclear miniaturization of its warheads, a recent underwater ballistic missile test, and developments of both a new road-mobile and sub-launched ballistic missile. That’s a mouthful.

We are all aware also, of the Iranian nuclear issue since it is front and center today.  Its ballistic missile program is advancing, and earlier this year it unveiled a new Long Range Cruise Missile, increasing concerns in the Middle East.

Of course it’s not just nation states that are cause for concern. Adding to these is an operational environment flanked with violent non state actors, including some who have expressed a desire to acquire weapons of mass destruction and terrorist groups who demonstrate through barbaric behaviors that they understand no boundaries and lack respect for international norms.

Last year, ISIS for example, paraded a scud missile in Syria. Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel.

Missiles and missile technology are increasingly easy to proliferate and could rapidly present threats in previously quiet areas such as Central and South America and sub-Saharan Africa with little warning, especially from mobile platforms such as ships – as a Russian arms exporter video demonstrated in a 2011 You Tube video.

Integral to this discussion are the threats posed in space and cyber-space, both of which are vital to an effective, layered missile defense.

Assured access to space is essential yet no longer guaranteed. Critical Command and Control and Communications as well as Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance can be threatened by adversary deployments and developments in electronic warfare and cyber capabilities. 

Effective missile defense requires space and ground-based sensors for indications and warnings; surveillance and reconnaissance to detect and assess threats; precision, navigation and timing, imaging and signals to conduct operations, and Command and Control and Communications.

Today and tomorrow, we must deal with cyber activities that continue to grow in volume, complexity, and severity. We have to deal with jamming and laser capabilities in addition to terrestrial-based or on-orbit anti-satellite capabilities.

This is more than the familiar high-profile events that have been in the news.  Such as SONY Productions and Entertainment, or the OPM breach, and most recently the cyber-attack on the Joint Staff e-mail system.  Or in space, more than the various Chinese anti-satellite tests we’ve been seeing - whether generating debris or not - that we are also monitoring.

While I won’t elaborate further, we can’t look at these threats in isolation or risk giving our adversaries the potential to pollute our missile defense picture, common operational pictures, and ultimately, decreasing our decision space, freedom of maneuver. 

So given all of this, what is our Joint Military Forces, and of course, U.S. Strategic Command, doing to defend the homeland, to deter regional aggression and military conflict?

As the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, I am charged with providing and maintaining a credible and responsive 21st Century Strategic Deterrent capability.  And it is my number one priority, to detect and deter strategic attack against the United States and our allies.

Although I am in Huntsville, Alabama, I have to ask this one question.  How many in the audience today have been out to visit my headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base?  Can I see a show of hands?  Okay so, that was just to frame how I talk a little more about the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command.  So, thank you for that.

So given all of this, what is our Joint Military Forces and of course U.S. Strategic Command, as I said, doing?  Well, given the educational level of this particular crowd, I won’t spend too much time on it, but I will elaborate a little more to what was mentioned here in the introduction.

Hopefully you are aware that U.S. Strategic Command provides an array of global strategic capabilities to our joint military force through nine assigned Unified Command Plan missions, including: strategic deterrence; space operations; cyber space operations; joint electronic warfare; global strike; missile defense; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; combatting weapons of mass destruction; and analysis and targeting.

These assigned missions are strategic in nature, global in scope, and intertwined with capabilities of our joint military force and in the interagency as well as our whole of government. This requires increased linkages and synergies at all levels to bring integrated capabilities to bear through synchronized planning, simultaneous execution of plans, and coherent strategic communications.

While some might view these missions as disconnected, it is their totality that makes them complementary and allows us to address 21st Century Deterrence in a very connected and holistic manner.

We manage this diverse and challenging activity by actively executing a tailored deterrence and assurance campaign plan, and by executing my command priorities.

Now, clearly, if you were to look at these priorities, you would expect that at the top of that list, what I said earlier is to deter strategic attack against the United States and to provide assurance to our allies.  But also included there, is to provide the Nation with a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent force.  And to do deterrence right, I have to build enduring relationships with partner organizations to confront the broad range of global challenges.

Priority 4 includes addressing challenges in space.  Five is to build cyberspace capability and capacity. And 6 is anticipating change and confronting uncertainty with agility and innovation.

It is my Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines and Civilians who are essential to getting this done.

While our foundational nuclear capabilities underpin strategic deterrence and assurance at large, it is more than the platforms and warheads that compose our visible triad.

To have a safe, secure and effective and credible nuclear deterrent, we must also have the appropriate sensing capabilities, to give indications and warnings of missile launches and bomber threats. We must also maintain the ability to communicate with survivable communications and provide options to the President and leaders should deterrence fail, including ballistic missile defense options.

So, missile defense then, is an essential component of deterrence to address threats from nations like Iran and, of course, North Korea.  Lt. Gen. Dave Mann, my component commander for integrated missile defense, supports this strategic mission by synchronizing operational plans; integrating missile defense and training and exercises; and providing integrated missile defense capabilities to deter and defend against hostile nations.

Similarly for space, I have Lt. Gen. Jay Raymond, who today is my component commander.  And I have Adm. Mike Rogers, as my sub-unified commander for Cyber-space.

Yes, these commanders work very closely together to support my headquarters team in our overall efforts.

Given the potential strategic effects of attacks in space and cyber-space, we must also be ready to address a conflict that extends into these domains with cross-domain solutions that deny our adversaries the benefits they so seek.  

Our adversaries must, must understand they cannot escalate their way out of a failed conflict; that they will not reap the benefits they so seek; and that our nation is prepared to manage escalation using all of its instruments and elements of national power; and that restraint is always the better option.

As you can see, deterrence is complex and requires a whole of government approach.  There are increasingly a number of discussions at the very senior levels of government, across our combatant commands and our inter-agencies, as well as with our allies and partners on how to address the range of adversarial challenges across this spectrum of conflict.

Now, this slide is simplistic – and I repeat it’s simplistic illustration – because we cannot look at conflicts linearly -- it does attempt though to show how conflict can occur…at any point…at varying degrees of intensity…but we must understand that this is a multi-dimensional problem that must be considered for multiple actors in a region, or in some case, globally.

This can start with friction, tension and misperceptions that can result in a conventional conflict, that may include asymmetric or hybrid warfare, counter-space or cyber-space attacks.  An adversary like North Korea might also threaten the use of a nuclear weapon – you haven’t heard that before – and it might include a nuclear test, or a space launch, or missile test, or something bigger.

As mentioned, we must take a whole of government approach using all of our instruments of power which we simplify to this thing we call the DIME.  Such that the adversary understands they can’t escalate their way out of a failed conflict, or it will be costly to them, and they won’t get the benefits they seek.

If deterrence fails, we must be able to provide relevant options to de-escalate the conflict in our favor.

Now, as depicted on the right side of this slide to you (or starboard as we learned in the earlier discussions) once a conflict starts, it generally gets messier.   So, hopefully, you can see how complex and non-linear escalation and de-escalation is…and thus how we must garner not just capabilities but critical, critical thinking to address opportunist perceptions effectively. Especially as we consider the adversary’s plan versus our desire to stay in Phase 0.

So how do we develop the appropriate off-ramps to deter further violent, egregious activity by influencing the adversary’s decision making so that we de-escalate in our favor?  How do we avoid extreme circumstances?

Well first, we must have a deeper understanding of our adversaries and potential adversaries and know the range of strategic threats that each pose; we need to know how they think, how they perceive our actions and our messages…so that we can better anticipate and address developing situations. We do this a lot in war games and table-top exercises, etcetera…and, of course, it’s all based on foundational intelligence and we can’t short change our investments in that area.

It requires us to work closely with our whole of government, our allies and partners, and the international community at large, so that we can better understand the strategic and the regional environment and successfully develop these off-ramps.

We must ask ourselves, how do we deter one without provoking another? Are we thinking about our actions from the perception of our adversaries; and how would we know, how do they know our intent, how do they know our resolve, how do they know our stake, and is that really understood?

Second, we must address the threat environment holistically and take a tailored approach.  Now missile defense is a part of our overall deterrence strategy, facilitates those off-ramps. Not only by assuring our allies of our extended deterrence commitments, but by showing U.S. resolve and our ability to integrate with our allies and control escalation, denying benefit to the adversary by decreasing any chance of successful aggression, increasing the benefits of restraint, and imposing costs by complicating an adversary’s targeting calculus and by increasing an adversary’s financial burden.

Third, our actions must ensure that our adversaries and potential adversaries do not doubt our readiness and our resolve. As stated in multiple strategic documents, to include the 2015 National Military Strategy, 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, and 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review; the United States is committed to maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent as well as a credible and robust missile defense capability that will defend the homeland against limited ballistic missile attacks, defend against regional missile threats to our U.S. forces, our allies and partners, and continue to be flexible enough to adapt to new threats.

So U.S. Strategic Command is working hard with the Geographical Combatant Commands, such as the one you just heard from; the Missile Defense Agency; and of course my component commander for Integrated Missile Defense, are identifying and working to address warfighter shortfalls. The Long-Range Discriminating Radar is just one example of that effort.

The U.S. also remains committed to our allies. We have deployed appropriate sensors world-wide to willing allies and partners, to include most recently that second AN/TPY-2 radar in Japan that will augment the existing radar and enhance our ability to defend Japan, our forward deployed forces, and our own homeland.  We’ve had Patriot batteries in Turkey since 2012 for Operation ACTIVE FENCE and the European Phased Adaptive Approach with Aegis Ashore is moving, per plan.

Fourth, the U.S. must continue to work hard and hand-in-hand with its allies and partners to deter mutual adversaries while focusing on our collective capabilities more efficiently and effectively to provide a mutual defense, including Sensors and Command and Control; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance capabilities; cyber capabilities; basing rights; and the simple act of allowing overflight rights in transit.

There is no stronger deterrent message than partnerships and international cooperation. As we see this during our NIMBLE TITAN series of exercises, where NIMBLE TITAN 2016 has 23 partner nations that gather together to share information; to experiment with missile defense solutions; and examine a range of political and military issues; and determine how to leverage one another’s capabilities.

Maintaining such a robust and diverse strategic deterrent, however, isn’t without its challenges. Some of those you heard earlier today.

You know the United States has had an advantage in guided munitions for the last 40 years…but as technology advances continue to increase in such unprecedented rates, weapons capabilities continue to proliferate across the globe, and our defense budget continues to shrink. We don’t have enough interceptors to address all threats – so how do we stay ahead in this complex and rapidly changing environment? One of the questions that was asked earlier.

First, we must have military requirements and our acquisition strategy such that we have an affordable, flexible, and achievable solution while allowing for innovation. As Bill Gortney has said – We MUST get on the right side of the cost curve and address the entire kill chain. 

We must maximize effects, increasing accuracy, and improving the capability to identify and engage targets with improved sensing and discrimination -- our end result being increased battle-space awareness, more integrated coverage, and the ability to manage our weapons inventory more effectively and from the longer ranges. This requires seamless data integration from a variety of sensors – back to those arrows that were talked about.

We must expedite our efforts to ensure mission success by preventing critical warfighting systems from being victims of cyber-attacks. 

And, as many of you are aware, the President’s Budget 16 works to address resiliency in space. As part of that my Command has established a Joint Space Doctrine and Tactics Forum and is working to enhance our Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) concept to doing more than just managing the space catalog.  We are using every opportunity to improve space situational awareness and responsiveness. And working very, very close with our Intelligence Community so that we can be very linked in this particular domain.

Per the Chairman’s Joint Missile Defense Vision for 2020, we are shifting our thinking in our ballistic missile related activities to this mindset of the harder problem of Integrated Air and Missile Defense.

As you can imagine, I was thrilled with the recent successful test of the SM-6 and its demonstration in both Air Defense and Ballistic Missile Defense, and showing increasing multi-mission capability.

As the synchronizer for missile defense planning, we continue with Dave Mann’s team’s help improving our global missile defense concept of operations which integrate efforts across the Combatant Commands on how best to employ these limited operational assets…and how best to mitigate gaps. We have obviously much more work to do in that regard.  But we must be able to do this while we’re thinking about execution of multiple plans simultaneously.

We must address concerns with deliberate design and vigorous testing; and we must maximize opportunities with large-scale exercises, appropriate research and development, and Tactics, Techniques and Procedures development.

We must get relief from sequestration to ensure our military as a whole is able to address these kinds of threats holistically.  And I ask those congressional members or staff members that are present here today for their support.  For a significant portion of my time as a flag officer, we have had Continuous Resolution after Continuous Resolution after Continuous Resolution. This, of course, will limit our ability to address the future complex strategic and security environment in a more efficient and effective manner.

Well, I have quite a few industry partners here in this audience.  So I thought I would give you a few of my thoughts and what I would ask you to think about.  First on my list is I need you to work on cyber security.  This is not just a concern for operational networks but of all our critical and sensitive technological data contained on contractor networks.  Recognize that you are a target and require increased focus on cybersecurity and associated protection.

Help us by developing ways to produce things better in our production strategies and concepts...and of course, how do we drive down both production and sustainment costs.  Quality control is essential to ensuring reliability involving critical sub-systems and components and effective system integration.

Help us with future systems that reduce cost per kill and innovation to drive technological superiority as we explore things such as directed energy alternatives and multi-object kill methodologies.

Ultimately, our future is dependent on those who provide meaningful thought to some of these challenging issues.  Missile defense as a deterrent is an essential part of our National Security Strategy and it is incumbent upon us to look ahead at the capabilities we will need to defend against future threats.

It’s wonderful that we have such an incredible industry…coupled with academia, military, government, allies, and friends…and we must continue working together to anticipate change and confront uncertainty.

I salute the positive trends that I’ve seen here in recent critical flight tests and some of the tests associated with laser capability and some of the stuff I can’t talk about in this room.  Let’s keep that trend going.

I recognize many of you don’t wear military uniforms, but you also serve our nation in this very valuable mission.  Your work is essential to enhancing the warfighter capabilities of tomorrow, keeping America and her allies free and strong.

So, I’ll leave you with a quote from George Washington who said:  “To prepare for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”

Thank you for what you do each God given day, your commitment and what you provide our Nation and our nations at large.