SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ASH CARTER: Good afternoon. Are you all going to be able to hear me up here?
OK. I'm here with General Johnson, my host here at the Air Force Academy, a terrific leader of this wonderful institution. The second stop I made today.
Let me just describe my day here in Colorado Springs. We're very grateful, not only for the weather, but the wonderful hospitality of this community to the military.
This morning, let me start with this morning. This morning over at Schriever Air Force Base I spent the morning at an operations center that was but a gleam in my eye five years ago, and am now extremely pleased to see up and functioning, and doing exactly what we need it do. It's called JICSpOC and the purpose of JiCSpOC is to integrate space operations with the rest of our military operations across all the kinds of operations we do, be they high-end threat to counter-terrorism.
And, I say integrate because traditionally space was considered, first of all, a place that was a sanctuary from which military systems could operate, and second of all, really the province of engineers and not warfighters.
It is now clear from the behavior of many actual and potential antagonists, and enemies of the United States, space isn't a sanctuary, and secondly, accordingly, it has to be the province of warfighters and not just engineers. The JICSpOC is about combining the operators with the space community. Both the DOD space community, and the intelligence community which, as you know, operates very important space systems.
That was something we hadn't really started to do as a nation years ago, and I'm very glad to see it now up and operating, the JICSpOC. It means that a constellation like the GPS constellations, which you guys have visited the operations center, and watched its day-to-day operations. What the JICSpOC is doing is asking itself is how would we change the way that operated if the GPS constellation came under threat, or attack, electromagnetic, or physical attack.
So, this is something that we need to do, and I was extremely pleased with progress made there, and I'm happy to answer any questions about it. Then, here at the Air Force Academy, where you see the future in so many ways. You see the future in these bright, bright, exceptionally dedicated, exceptionally disciplined young cadets here at the Air Force Academy. They are the force of the future. I talk about that all the time, that I'm blessed as Secretary of Defense to have the finest fighting force the world has ever known.
My job is to use that appropriately, and carefully on behalf of the nation, and behalf of the president's strategy -- strategic priorities, but it's also to leave to my successors a force as fine. That means we got to be thinking about the future. You saw it here.
I talked to a number of the cadets about how they were recruited, how they got here in the first place. I talked to them today about our need constantly to push ourselves to make sure we're reaching all of the population of the United States that can potentially make contributions to our military. Because we're an all-volunteer force. We're in a free labor market, we have to compete for talent, and we have to compete well because we have to remain the best.
I had an opportunity to talk to a number of the cadets here who are responsible for leading other cadets on the subject of building character. I was really impressed with the insights they had. It's extremely important because the profession of arms is built on honor and trust, and so without character they can't do what they need to do to be the professionals who defend us. I was just extremely impressed with them.
A whole other dimension of the future was going to the cyber laboratory. That's a relatively new thing in all of our military academies, and to see a new generation for which cyber is going to be an integral part of the curriculum. These folks are learning about all the ways that cyber can be used against American society, and how to participate in the defense of it, and military systems as well, which is our highest priority in cyber and defense.
It gives me a lot of confidence. These folks are going to be on top of it. We're going to be in a very competitive world; we're going to remain the best in all these domains, including space and cyber, which are new domains in the field of warfare. I'm very pleased to see the Air Force, and especially the Academy, under General Johnson's leadership, making sure that we're on top of those frontiers.
It's been a terrific day, and I'm happy to answer your questions about any of those matters. Peter is the impresario here.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, since we're at the Air Force Academy, I thought I'd go ahead and ask you a question about an Air Force platform. As you know, some people on Capitol Hill -- excuse me, Capitol Hill, are proposing restarting the F-22 production line. Is that something you would support, or are you concerned that would take money away from other high priority...
SEC. CARTER: I'm concerned that restarting the F-22, that's an inefficient way to proceed. It's not something the Air Force has recommended to me. We value the F-22's we have. We're busy upgrading them, and making sure that their avionics, and so forth, are state of the art, but we don't need to restart the F-22 line.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, there's been debate over the last year and a half about whether there needs to be changes to the chain of command between the intelligence community and the Title 10 folks concerning satellites. As you begin to see what you're getting out of the JICSpOC exercises, do you see those two worlds still remaining separate, commanding their own assets, or do you know yet?
SEC. CARTER: Well, I know what the right answer is, and I know what is happening in JICSpOC, which is we need to work side by side. I work extremely well with Jimmy Clapper, who's the Director of National Intelligence, I see him all the time. We can't live in a world -- and we don't anymore, in which those two are separated. You see that in everything we do.
You see it in cyber, you see it in remotely-piloted vehicles, as you well know. And, you're going to see it, and are seeing it, in space. And, one of the things that I was very intent upon when we first had the vision of JICSpOC was precisely that. Aligning intelligence and defense space efforts because, after all, we in defense depend on intelligence from those space assets, and they're going to depend on us to make sure that they can operate in an environment where others are trying to disrupt our capabilities.
So, that's where the partnership arises, and the way you can know that's true is this. The Director of the National Reconnaissance Office was there today, along with our military space and STRATCOM leaders doing the briefing. That's one sign.
On the operations floor were people from all the intelligence community, as well as all the armed services of the Defense Department. One room, one floor. Where there had once upon a time been a separate intelligence room, the door had been taken off. There wasn't even a door any longer. So, that's the way it has to be in this case, that's the way it is, and that's an essential ingredient in JICSpOC.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you took a question inside from one of the cadets on transgender policy.
SEC. CARTER: Yes.
QUESTION: It's no secret at this point that the working group has stretched on much longer than you had initially planned. Can you give us some sense for where the hang-ups are at this point?
SEC. CARTER: There aren't any hang-ups, we know exactly where we're going. I established the direction some time ago. The implementation is working on implementation, they're doing the usual job which is going to be careful and thorough, and I have great confidence in the results, and I expect them to wrap up soon.
QUESTION: You've reached the JICSpOC, and one question that comes up here locally a lot is there's a lot of capability out there in Schriever for war gaming, are you looking at taking the JICSpOC concept into other areas like cyber, like missile defense, and bringing that kind of war gaming into other areas?
SEC. CARTER: Yes. It's a very good question, and they're doing very well at the war gaming -- however, I'll say in addition to war gaming they're doing real world, minute by minute, no-kidding operations now. I can't go into what they are, but it -- yes, they do some gaming in simulation which is intended to hone their operational concepts, and their tactics, and to explore what the future might be like, but they are working on it. We need them to work right now on problems of space's role in conflict first of all because we are in conflicts today.
I'll just remind you on the counter-ISIL fight, and I have instructed our space community to join the fight. Figure out what we can do to contribute, can't explain what they can do, but they can do some things. But, secondly, every single day as we stand here, we need to stand watch, and situations which where we don't want to see conflict, nevertheless, can develop. Deterrence requires that our opponents know that we will be successful in our operations, and that we'll prevail in any domain that we enter, and that's an important part of deterrence.
When it comes to deterrence, let's say for instance, North Korea, and so forth, it is a here and now issues, and not just a matter of war gaming.
QUESTION: Thanks, today you talked a little bit about RPAs and the importance that they play for operations and their growing importance. Mica Endsley, former Air Force Chief Scientists was talking a little bit about the interface and how actually steering the drone is a little bit difficult. You discussed today some of the staffing challenges. When you look ahead to ten years from now, how do you see RPAs, both the operation of them changing, and what's the most important change you want to see in actual platforms themselves?
SEC. CARTER: Well, let's see, I'll start with the last part, which is platforms. We are looking at new, different, and I will say surprising platforms. I want them to be a surprise, so we won't go any further in that regard.
But, RPAs are here to stay, and the way that they are operated, I think, is only going to get more complex. It's not just a matter of launch and recovery, and we're flying. The complexity comes with the mission planning, and the mission execution, and the very careful rules that our RPA operators operate under because they, like all of our forces, operate in such a way as to respect the civilized rules of armed conflict -- which are proportionality and discrimination. They're extremely well trained to do that, they're extremely skilled to do that.
Both, in regard to the complexity of the missions, the complexity of the command and control, the number of different sensors that will be feeding into their operations, their only getting more and more complex. I think the Air Force very specifically is working itself out of a manpower deficit with the MQ-1s and MQ-9s that we put them in. The Departments leader deliberately did that in order to surge RPA use a few years ago, especially in Afghanistan.
That was the right decision to make. We knew what the consequences would be, and now we're trying to make up with that, and make sure we are able to operate 90 orbits, which is the number we need given the tempo of operations all around the world are RPAs.
It was great to talk to some of the cadets who have chosen that field. They know that that's going to be a very rewarding, very militarily demanding field. You know, I'm sure if I talked to cadets 20 years ago, General Johnson may want to comment on this, they may have been -- they may not have even anticipated it, let alone been as convinced as these young cadets were of the importance of the field that they were joining.
LT. GEN. MICHELLE D. JOHNSON: That's exactly right, sir. It's a growth industry, and they need to understand that that's a possibility. The see how it's so interwoven with the other platforms. No platform goes it alone, so they understand that better. They're enthusiastic about it, and they're going it make it better because they'll be clever, innovative leaders and find applications that we haven't thought of.
SEC. CARTER: Alright, thank you.
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