Space Force Gen. Jay Raymond predicted Tuesday that future warfighters will deploy to the space domain to provide “enhanced security” of America’s vital space architecture.
“Space underpins every bit of our national power,” he said in a virtual conversation sponsored by the National Defense University Foundation.
“I really believe there’s going to be a role for enhanced security in that domain, and the role of the Space Force is to provide that stability across the domain,” he said in response to a question from the Washington Examiner. “I see a role for Space Force folks in the future in the domain.”
Raymond explained that the majority of the assets of the 10-month-old force are deployed in place, but the capabilities do exist for space deployment. He also foreshadowed the possible swearing-in of a Space Force member while in orbit on the one-year anniversary of the nation’s newest service, Dec. 20.
“We’re looking to swear him in to the Space Force from the International Space Station,” he said.
In recent comments to the Washington Examiner, Raymond cited 1991’s Operation Desert Storm as the first “space war.”
“It was the first war where we integrated space capabilities into joint and coalition operations,” he told the Washington Examiner during an interview at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs last week.
“We have taken that to a new level, and it has provided our nation great advantage,” he continued. “The challenge has been that potential adversaries have had a front-row seat and have been watching the advantage that it gives us, and they don’t like what they see.”
The Heritage Foundation space security expert Dean Cheng explained to the Washington Examiner that the United States has become reliant on satellites to defend against threats. Meanwhile, adversaries Russia and China are geographically closer to the countries they most threaten. In some cases, the U.S. is obligated to defend those same countries.
“We play away games, whereas Russia and China are playing home games,” explained Cheng. “If we want to operate in the Western Pacific, if we want to operate in the Baltics, we can’t rely nearly as much on what is available in the United States. So, we need satellites.”
Satellites are used for military reconnaissance and communication halfway around the world.
“If you’re China, and you’re looking at Taiwan, I can blanket Taiwan with airplanes, drones, fishing boats, human spies, merchant ships, radar, radio direction finding. I can communicate by laser. I can communicate by fiber optic. I can communicate by cellphone,” he said.
Likewise, a Russian invasion of the NATO countries in the Baltics would require the U.S. to operate far from home.
In the case of Taiwan, in a war without satellites, China has a clear advantage.
“If the Chinese and us both lost all of our satellites, China can still invade Taiwan,” he said. “It would be a lot harder for us to mount a defense.”
Raymond said Tuesday that in the next year, the Space Force will be developing a force design to protect those vital warfighting satellites.
Right now, replacing them would take five to six years, he said.
“We are strongest when that space domain is stable, secure for our nation to fuel capabilities that fuel our American way of life and capabilities that fuel our American way of war,” he said.
Raymond described Russia and China’s space development as a twofold effort to match America’s integrated space warfighting capabilities and develop threats to limit U.S. access to its own capabilities.
“The reason why the Space Force and U.S. Space Command was established was because competitors were moving fast,” he said. “Our job is to make sure we don’t get overtaken, to stay ahead of that threat.”
Raymond indicated that proliferated LEO constellations are one way the U.S. will protect its space assets. In that scenario, large, clunky satellites that take decades to build and deploy are replaced by numerous satellites doing the same job in low-earth orbit.
Still, Raymond warned that if a key U.S. satellite is shot down, as China proved it could do in 2007, it could take years for America to build and replace it.
“We are moving too slow if you look at how long it takes us to build a clone of a capability,” he said. “We want to get a force design that meets the needs of the joint and coalition warfighters that we support and that also is defendable, and that’s the hard work that we have going forward this next year.”
That will mean building smaller satellites and placing them at different orbits depending on their mission.
“That’s all part of this force design, that’s all work that has to be done,” he said. “We have to build a service that does what it needs to do today but also has the vision of where it might go.”
