Thank you, Pete, for that kind introduction, and thanks to SES and the

Space foundation for inviting me here today to talk at the government

affairs breakfast. This is the second time I have spoken to this breakfast
gathering. The first time was in 2015 and back then I was focused on
driving the DoD forward in space by embracing risks in how they went
about the space business. I challenged all of us to take risks to try new
solutions to old problems such as adopting an innovative view towards
commercial imaging or to more aggressively pursue coalition space
operations. I’m glad to see that many of those concepts are being put
into practice, although there is still a way to go.

Today I’d like to take up a separate topic— which is, how should the
DoD and the AF best develop its people in order to organize, train, and
equip for the challenges we’ll face in space.

Last year, in this same forum, HASC Strategic Subcommittee Chairman

Mike Rogers pressed the AF and the DoD to think about how to
reorganize the management of space operations and acquisition
activities and personnel within DoD in order to assure continued US
space leadership against growing threats. His viewpoint was captured
in headlines as the creation of a new space force, the Space Corps, and
that idea served as the basis for substantial debate between the
Congress and the DoD, both in private and in the press, until the 2018
NDAA settled the question—at least for a while. My experience is that
we’ve settled this question at least four or five times since the mid-
1990’s and will probably do so again until we get it right.

I have no intention of trying to reopen that specific debate. But I would

like to look at the problem from a slightly different perspective which
might help to inform our future path. I wanted to examine the rise and
fall of the original Air Force Space Corps.

Now at this point you might be saying to yourself, “I didn’t know the Air
Force had a Space Corps.” Well it did. The reason you don’t know that
was because it was sort of, kind of, a secret. Not the kind of secret you
get thrown in jail for by exposing—but the kind of secret that involves a
group of individuals who form a common informal structure to get
done what needs to get done irrespective of the formal process that
surrounds it and without asking permission—a sort of secret society
within the Air Force enabled and supported by those in the know, but
not the part of any official policy.

I realized that folks had forgotten this part of AF space history during a
recent hearing in front of the full HASC that I had the “privilege” of
testifying before. A question was asked to Gen Kehler of whether or
not we would ever develop the culture and stature within the AF of
space people to the point that one of them could ever rise to the level
of Chief of Staff. Gen Kehler shared that while we had come close
several times during the last decade, it had not happened yet—but he
was confident that it would someday.

What Gen Kehler forgot to mention, what many AF and non-AF folks
forget, is that we did have a space officer rise to be Chief of Staff. In
1978 Gen Lew Allen became the AF’s 10th Chief of Staff—Gen Allen was
a lot of things during his career, but what distinguishes his career most,
at least in my eyes, is that he was a space officer. A careful study of his
career explains why.

Gen Allen entered the AF in 1946 as a pilot flying B-29s and B-36s. But
after four years of flying, he went to get his master’s degree in nuclear
physics and then quickly followed in 1954 with a PhD in high energy
photonuclear reactions after which he never returned to flying duties.

Now I know it is still early and some of you haven’t finished your first
cup of coffee so let me repeat that again—the future AF chief of Staff
flew for the first four years of his career, never flew again, and got a
PHD in High Energy Nuclear Physics.

Between 1954 and 1961 he had two assignments in the nuclear

research and development career field at Los Alamos and Kirtland AFB.
Then, in 1961, he entered space. He was assigned to the old DDR&E in
the space technology office, then from 1965 till 1973 he was assigned
to the Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects office—which today
we’d call the NRO—initially in Los Angeles and then to the Pentagon,
and then in 1970, back to Los Angeles where he eventually rose to the
Director of Special Projects with additional duty as the Space and
Missile Systems Office—SAMSO then, now SMC—deputy commander
for satellite programs. From there he went to become the Chief of Staff
at Air Force Systems Command, then Director of NSA, back to Andrews
AFB as the Systems Command Commander, and then finally to Chief of
Staff—while those last four assignments were not solely about space, a
large portion of those jobs were focused on AF and IC space programs.
Oh, and by the way, after his Retirement from the Air Force, he became
director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he served for 8 years.

So, if you examine Gen Allen’s career, you can see that of all the
occupations he undertook, the one he spent the most time doing was
the twelve years he spent leading AF space efforts and the next 5 years
overseeing them from a higher position. Gen Allen was a space officer
and he became chief of staff.

Now Gen Allen’s career was unique, but it was not singular. He had
many contemporaries whose careers may not have started in space,
but that’s where they peaked. These folks, and the folks that worked
under them, were the AF Space corps. It’s useful to understand some
of the specifics so we can understand how they became a space
corps—and more importantly, how we lost it.

One of those gentlemen was Gen Don Kutyna, who would eventually
become the commander of US space command. Gen Kutyna began his
career as a B-47 pilot but after his first 5 years flying, he went to MIT to
get a Master’s in aeronautics and astronautics. From there he went to
Aerospace Research Pilot School—today we’d call that test pilot
school—and then he served there as an instructor training test pilots
and astronauts. After a combat tour in Vietnam, he returned stateside
to serve as a development planner in the Chief of Staff for Research and
Development. Then onto the AF Scientific Advisory Board and then as
executive officer to the undersecretary of the Air Force—who just
happened to also be the director of the NRO. After a brief stint working
in the AWACS program, he became the program director for what
today we’d call the space surveillance and missile warning network.
After that he was deputy commander for launch systems in Los
Angeles, which by then was Space Systems Division. That job involved
preparations for DoD space shuttle flights, the development of the
Titan IV heavy lift vehicle, and the acquisition of space shuttle upper
stage booster. For the next several years Gen Kutyna moved back and
forth to the Pentagon and then back to LAAFB eventually becoming the
vice commander. Then, in 1987, he became commander of the recently
formed Air Force Space Command. In 1990 he became the Commander
of NORAD and US Space Command. Gen Kutyna was a member of the
Space Corps.

I could literally go on for hours recounting the careers of these space

leaders and pioneers most of whom you’ve all heard of—Gen James
Abramson who similarly started his career as a pilot, but then got a
technical master’s degree and got swept up into space. Many of you
here know him for the time he spent leading the fledgling SDIO office
but did you also know that he served on the early 1970’s version of the
National Space Council and then in 1981 he became the Associate
Administrator for the Space Shuttle program—that’s right—an Air Force
General, not a NASA civilian, led the space shuttle program to first
flight.

Gen Abramson was not the only AF Space Corps Gen to lead at NASA.
Gen Samuel Phillips, for whom Phillips lab is named, served in NASA as
director of the Apollo Manned Lunar Landing Program—he did that
right before he became commander of SAMSO aka SMC. Or there was
Gen Tom Morgan, who led the Apollo/Skylab Programs Office right
before he became the SAMSO vice commander and then the SAMSO
commander. And finally, there was Gen Richard Henry who served at
NASA from 1962 to 1966 eventually leading the Gemini program. By
1974 he too was commanding SAMSO which changed to Space Division
under his watch.

The point here is not that NASA made these folks members of this
unacknowledged space corps, but rather, their experience and
knowledge of space, their unspoken membership in the AF space corps
made them not only competitive in Air Force space programs, but
ranked them among the top in the nation for space.

Similarly, Air Force generals led at the National Reconnaissance Office.

From the early days of the formation of the NRO till about 10 years ago,
at least one major office or tower at the NRO was led by an AF
General—both before the dissolution of Program A, B, and C, and after.
AF officers were the space experts and competed toe to toe with their
Intelligence agency counterparts to lead in that rarified technical space
environment. And while I have focused on the generals, there were so
many, many more. The depth of AF expertise in space was absolutely
unmatched across the DoD and those skills spanned the waterfront of
space activities from planning, to development, to operations and
across all the major space and missile agencies from AF HQs, Space
Division, the Ballistic Missile Office, NASA, and the NRO. The AF led in
space.
Between 1960 and 1984 every major space mission area that exists
today—navigation, nuclear C2, missile warning, weather, radar and
optical reconnaissance, manned space flight, space command and
control, space surveillance, and ever secretive space control was
pioneered by this corps of space professionals. No one questioned AF
space leadership nor AF space expertise—all brought to you by way of
the virtual Air Force Space Corps.

Why do I call it virtual—well simply because it did not exist on paper.

There was no AF Space specialty code for much of that period, no AF
space professional management office, and for most of that time,
barely even an acknowledged mission area called space. Instead there
was a cohort of individuals who moved from Los Angeles doing AF
space development, to Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral doing AF space
launch, to Strategic Air Command doing Air Force space nuclear
missions, to Air Force Systems Command overseeing AF space efforts to
Air Force special programs office running the Air Force side of the NRO,
to Sunnyvale AFS flying AF and NRO satellites, and to the Pentagon
serving in either AF or OSD space jobs. Most of these folks’ careers
were managed out of Air Force Systems Command or Strategic Air
Command by Air Force space corps members who knew all the other
Air Force space corps members and knew all the Air Force space corps
jobs. It was a system that worked without formal recognition or policy,
and that produced a bench strength of Air Force space expertise that
was without equal.

In 2001 several of us got together to review the careers and

backgrounds of some of the most prominent space leaders—at the
time any space officer who had reached the 1, 2, 3, or 4 star level.
Here’s what we found. Of 58 space corps general officers between
1965 and 2001, 83 percent had technical undergraduate degrees, 62
percent had technical Masters, and 36 percent had either multiple
technical masters or PhDs. 97 percent of them had served as a
program director for a major space program but at the same time, 88
percent had served an AF space operational tour. Let me repeat that—
96 percent served as program directors doing space acquisition and 88
percent served a space ops tour—now I’m no math major, but that
means that at least 84% served in both capacities. Many of the rest
had aircraft and missile ops tours as well. And that’s how we built the
space corps that carried AF space to the forefront.

But here’s another statistic for you—and I don’t want to swamp you
with numbers, but they are critical to understand. In CY 2000, when
the Rumsfeld space commission was examining the state of Air Force
space they found that of 150 personnel in key space operations jobs,
over 80% came from non-space backgrounds and as a group on average
they had spent less than 8% of their careers in space related jobs.
Think about it—leading up to 2000, from a historical perspective, what I
have called space corps officers had spent the majority of their career
in space and had deep space expertise that rivaled members of NASA
and the NRO. But a look at current space operators showed that they
lacked, in large measure, any true space background or expertise. So,
what happened?

Well, as the title of the famous children’s series goes, it’s a long and
disconnected series of unfortunate events. It actually began in 1970
when the Air Force created a new Space Operations Career field, then
called 20XX. (Note: Begin Building Wall Block 1) It reflected the
contention that space was becoming operational and that we needed
individuals with specific operational background to be part of it. So, we
began to separate space system tinkerers, developers, planners, and
creators from space system operators. Then, in 1982 we created space
command. (Block 2) Now, before I’m misquoted I want to make this
clear. I’m not saying that the creation of space command was the end
of the space corps—it was not. But it fits into a series of steps that you
will soon see led to its end. When we created space command we gave
them authority over those folks in the space ops career field that I just
mentioned. But that meant that we now had two tribes—space
operators being managed by Air Force Space Command and space
acquirers being managed by Air Force Systems Command—our once
secretive monolithic community begins to fracture. (Block 3)

As in any organizational change this new command begins to search for

relevant missions to run. The first two of these is the transfer of
satellite control operations and space launch operations from Air Force
Systems command to Air Force Space Command—after all, these
activities look operational—there are flames and small wings, and
satellite control is all about “flying”. In order to take on these new
missions, the two zero career field needs to grow. (Block 4) Meanwhile,
as Kevin McLaughlin writes in his excellent history of the process, the
folks on the acquisition side suddenly find themselves on the outside
looking in. Cross flow between Air Force Space Acquisition and Air
Force Space Operations, which had been a central characteristic of
space corps development in the early days, begins to fade.

Then, in the 1990s, further changes ensue. In quick succession, from

1991 through 1995 major shifts that impact space corps personnel
occur. Air Force Systems Command, which had husbanded space corps
development from the very start of the space race is disbanded and
merged with Air Force logistics command to become Material
command. In the process, management of all AF engineers and
scientists is moved from AF Systems Command back to the Pentagon to
folks who have no specific space background—and, more importantly,
no knowledge of the secret cult that allowed these engineers to
become experts in space. (Block 5) The NRO moves all its functions
back to Washington DC, separating Air Force Space from AF NRO
activities by a continent; The traditional role of the vice commander of
SAMSO or Space Division being dual hatted as the Director of AF NRO
programs ends. (Block 6) And the Ballistic Missile Office, which had
served as an important waypoint in the career of many space corps
officers is closed down. (Block 7) By 1995 there are fewer and fewer
places left for Air Force acquisition officers to go if they want to remain
space officers, forcing them to branch out into other non-space fields.
(Block 8)

Finally, in the early and mid-90s the death blow sounds on two fronts.
The dissolution of Strategic Air Command means that the AF needs to
find a new home for their missile officers. After a brief stint in Air
Combat Command, responsibility is shifted to Air Force Space
command and the two career fields—space and missiles are mixed.
(Block 9) Meanwhile, on the acquisition side of the fence, there is a
shortage of engineers to fill the many requirements for Air Force
program managers. After having failed at fixing that problem in the
1980s with engineering scholarships and engineer retention bonuses,
the Air Force comes up with a new strategy—eliminate the
requirement for program managers to have technical degrees—voila,
no more engineering shortage. (Block 10—wall complete)

So, by the end of the 1990s we have basically killed all the features of
an Air Force Space career that created the space corps. Most of these
steps had nothing to do with space—they were simply a series of
decisions that seemed right at the time. No one in the Air Force set out
to kill the space corps—but we did.

Now, I’ve told a nice story, but at this point you should be asking, “OK
Doug, prove it—prove to me that these steps killed the space corps.”
So, some facts—in the 1970’s and 1980s if you looked at promotion
rates to Gen officer you would note that in every year we promoted 2
to 3 folks from space acquisition backgrounds to General officer usually
one from the NRO, one from either SMC or BMO, and one from the
Pentagon. But by the end of FY 2000, the space acquirer promotion
rates stalls to a trickle. Between 2000 and 2004 not a single space
acquirer gets promoted to General officer and since then it’s about one
every other year. Equally, on the operational side we used to see one
or two space officers promoted every year, from NORAD, or US SPACE
Command, or SAC, or HQs AF. But those too slow down since many of
those organizations simply no longer exist. And it’s not just promotion
to General officer. The impact is felt all the way down the promotion
chain. Today, the single lowest promotion rate to every grade for the
Air Force is in the grouping called non-rated ops of which the largest
single element is space operations.

There are other measures. Historically at the NRO, leadership for each
mission area and program was traditionally decided on a “best athlete”
basis—we chose the best person regardless of whether they were from
the AF, the Navy, or the Intelligence community to lead each program
and each mission tower. When there was an Air Force Space Corps
there were always several AF officers leading these efforts and there
was never a time when at least one or two majors programs was not
led by an AF Colonel, and at least one and sometimes two of the major
mission areas or towers was led by an AF General. But that’s no longer
the case. Today, we are lucky to have a single major NRO program led
by an AF colonel and since 2009, as the tail end of the space corps
retires, not a single major NRO mission area is run by an AF General—
the AF can no longer compete as a “best athlete”. And if you’d rather
hear it from an authoritative source, let me quote from the 2001
Rumsfeld study:

“Each of the changes discussed above brought a new emphasis on what

skills were required, what functions would be performed, what the
priorities would be, which organizations within the Air Force were
responsible, what the career progressions would be, and what senior
leader experience was required. Each of the changes may have made
sense at the time, but snapshots of the current military space
community indicate that the career field is not where it must be to
support space operations in the future. The unintended consequences
of the changes that have occurred over the past 40 years within the Air
Force space community have increased instability, caused serious
reductions in depth of experience, fostered inadequate technical
education and training, and increased isolation between various
aspects of the space community. These shortfalls must be remedied
through aggressive pursuit of improvements across all aspects of the
space career field.”

So where are we. By the end of the 1990s, through a series of

disconnected, and unintended decisions we’ve built a wall that
prevents space officers on either side of the divide from becoming the
equals of their earlier space corps brethren. And here’s where I think I
need to say something dramatic—perhaps if the Secretary were here
with us this morning it would be something like, “Madam Secretary,
tear down this wall.”

Actually, that did get said—sort of. You see, none of what I’ve told you
today is a secret or a mystery. It was well understood as I’ve suggested
by the leaders on the Rumsfeld commission and it formed the basis of
some of their most important recommendations. Three in particular
stand out. First was the direction to reintegrate Air Force Space
command and the Space and Missile Systems center to try to bring
space operation and space acquisition back into alignment. And that
did get done—so we removed a brick from the wall. (Pull down one
brick)

But the space commission also asked for two other things along these
lines. They also told the Air Force to create a cadre of space
professionals and to husband and nurture them as had been done in
the past—not informally, but now formally. When Gen Roger DeKok,
one of our great space generals, put together the plan a year later to
carry out that tasking, he counted 11,000 space professionals that
would be captured under that rubric. And for a while it looked as if the
AF really would create a space professional cadre that would be
managed as such—but it was not to be. Today, we can only count 2300
individuals who are labelled space officers and in 2014 the Air Force
formally decreed that unless you were a space operator, you could no
longer qualify to wear the space badge. Contrast this if you would with
what the Army did. They embraced the concept of a space cadre and
created a new designation, called FA 40, to track and manage their
space professionals. Today, there are 4169 members of the Army space
professional corps. Let me review that again. In the service that owns
90% of everything the DOD does in space, we count 2300 space
personnel. But in the Army, which has barely 5% of the total space
budget, they count 4169. Is it any wonder that when the DoD studied
the space organization problem a year ago in response to the 2017
NDAA they found that the Air Force was only meeting 61% of their
requirements for Joint Space officers while the Army was meeting it’s
fill rate at an astounding 111%! Oh, by the way, that report was never
submitted to Congress.

But back to our story—so while the space commission told us to

remove that brick from the wall, we instead since then have cemented
it into place even more strongly.

And finally, the commission told us to not only break down the
organizational boundary between space acquisition and space
operations by combining Air Force Space Command and the Space and
Missile Systems Center, but to also break down the career
boundaries—to allow folks to move seamlessly like they used to
between space ops and space acquisition. And for a few years that
happened, and another brick fell (remove a second brick). But after
those few years, it all ended. As the gaze of Congress and the DOD
moved elsewhere we put that brick back into place and cross flow
between space Ops and Space Acquisition ended again (Put brick back).

By the way, I do have to give credit where credit is due. In 2014 Gen
Shelton recognized that at least two of the characteristics that created
great space officers was their need for a technical education and the
need to separate missile and space operations. So, as the leader for the
space operations career field, he rewrote those rules and now all new
space ops officers must have a technical degree and missile officers
have a separate career field (Remove another brick). Unfortunately, he
didn’t own the space acquirers—so they still don’t need a technical
degree??

Now as I get ready to close, it is important to put this all into context.
Because here is where the future steps become clear. The real
question this history lesson seeks to answer is what are the career
steps and experiences that create a great space officer. History
instructs that it comprises several things but perhaps most important
are two—first, space officers of all stripes, not solely operations, need
an in-depth technical background. You could probably conclude the
same things for acquisition officers of all types, but I’ll confine it to the
space side of things. If we’re going to have good performing space
programs, we need space officers who are technical experts.
And second, to become a truly great space officers, we need to allow
there to be a mix between space operations and space acquisition.
Unfortunately, this last one runs head long into Air Force career
orthodoxy. Because you see, in the rest of the Air Force this wall that
separates flyers and non-flyers—well, that’s a feature of the service. It
is a core principle that allows the Air Force to create the best pilots the
world has ever seen. And it does.

Look, if I asked any of you who understands Air combat, tactics,

doctrine, and air systems better—the guy or gal who designed the
plane, or the person flying it, hands down the answer is the person
flying it. They are intimately connected to their weapon systems and
they understand how to practice the art of war with it better than
anyone else. But if I asked you the same question about space—about
who understand space combat, tactics, doctrine, strategy, and systems
better—the person who designed the satellites or the person flying
them, we’d have an argument. Back in the days of the space corps
there was no question—because there was no difference. But today,
it’s uncertain. In fact, as I pointed out in a recent discussion, the person
in Air Force Space Command HQs who is most defining how we are
preparing for a space war and what we need to do so, is not a space
operator, but rather he’s a space acquirer—Andrew Cox as head of the
Space Security Defense Program comes from the acquisition side not
the operations side—and even worse, he was from the Navy.

So back to Air Force orthodoxy—the wall that separates pilots and non-
pilots in the AF allows us to build the best air domain warfighters, but
that same wall prevents us from building the best space warfighters—
the ones who can conceive of, imagine, prepare for, and think
doctrinally, operationally, and technically about space. But those are
precisely the people we need today.

For space, we need to tear down this wall. And since that will create a
very different career management system and qualification system for
space officers, it really calls for its own corps of folks. Not a Marine
Corps type space corps, but more a “biomedical corps space corps”. A
personnel system in the Air Force that treats space differently than it
treats non-space. That allows space expertise to grow the way it
naturally grows, without trying to force it into Air Force career
orthodoxy.

At its foundation, this was the same issue faced by aviators in the Army
in the 20s and the 30s. An aviator career path was different than their
land-locked brethren. Air Officers fought for and won the right to be
different and developed their own cadre with their own career paths
and eventually, their own corps. That was easier in the Army which
already had a healthy multi-corps structure. Today we need the same
thing in the Air Force. If we are to rebuild the space corps we once had,
if we are to truly assure future Air Force and American space
leadership, and if we are to truly recreate the space giants of the past,
we need to tear down this wall and let an Air Force space corps
reemerge.