During a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) questioned General B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations at the USSF, about weapons of our adversaries in space.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, gentlemen, for being here, and congratulations, Dr. Mink, on finally getting the job for good.
00:10I hope you're sleeping occasionally.
00:12We'll try to take it easy on you.
00:14Although I have to say, after listening to Senator Ernst and Senator Peters get after you guys, I feel like I've been a little easy on you, General, but I don't know.
00:23I'll try to keep my cheerful demeanor here.
00:28But I want to get right to something important, General Saltzman, because I've noticed they've been leaving you out a little bit.
00:33I was reading about Golden Dome.
00:35I do a lot of that these days.
00:37And notice that two of our least favorite dictators in the world, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, had put out a joint statement worrying about the Golden Dome being a, quote, destabilizing, having a destabilizing effect.
00:52And suggesting that the United States might be leading toward weaponizing space, which is rich, coming from those two guys.
01:04Do our enemies have weapons in space that you know of, General?
01:09Yes, Senator, they do.
01:12Over the last few years, we've observed, for instance, the Russians have performed some very aggressive on-orbit capabilities in terms of plane matching, getting very close to some of our most sensitive satellites in aggressive ways.
01:25They've released what could be presumed to be kinetic kill vehicles that we've watched on-orbit.
01:33The PRC has demonstrated the ability to use a grappling arm to grab a satellite and pull it out of its operational orbit, return it.
01:41All of these are demonstrated capabilities that could be used as anti-satellite technology.
01:46So, as is often the case, I find myself following Senator King and agreeing with him with regard to your budget.
01:58And maybe this is a redundant question, but are you adequately funded to meet this kind of a threat in space as well as, obviously, the rest of the world that you have to protect?
02:11It's just about scale, sir.
02:12I've often used the analogy that it's like transforming the Merchant Marine into the U.S. Navy or United Airlines into the U.S. Air Force.
02:20There's a lot of new equipment.
02:21There's new training.
02:22There's new people.
02:24We can't just take what we had and presume that we can gain space superiority with that equipment.
02:30That new equipment requires new resources.
02:33And so that's where the disconnect comes, I think, in full funding.
02:36I think your answer to that is that we are not adequately funded.
02:45Is that correct, John?
02:46We are not adequately funded for the new missions that I've been given in space superiority.
02:51Yeah.
02:51Thank you for that, Mr. Chairman, because scale matters, right?
02:54I mean, if we have the world's greatest weapons but not enough of them to defeat the enemy, then we're not adequately funded.
03:01You're all, by the way, thank you for being so open about the issue, the shortcomings, because we're here to help.
03:08And we can't help if we don't know where we're short.
03:12And you've all been great this morning.
03:14So I thank you for that.
03:15I think I'm going to skip over the Sentinel stuff, because I think he handled that very well, Dr. Mink, with Senator Fisher.
03:24Although I will say I've been concerned about some of the rumors.
03:26I've been hearing about a billion-dollar cut, maybe, priorities.
03:30I think she referenced something to that effect.
03:32And I'm just going to not even ask you to – we just need to do more.
03:38I guess the bottom line is my commitment is we need to do more to make sure we're not falling backwards anywhere
03:43and that we're projecting forward everywhere that we can.
03:46So, General Olivan, I'll just simply go to MQ-9s.
03:50ISR, my favorite topic, as you know.
03:51My concern with the Air Force, you know, sort of both retiring and in the case of MQ-9s, you know, treating some of our ISR capability.
04:03Do you have enough MQ-9s – I'm quite familiar with the aircraft, as you know –
04:07MQ-9s to sort of meet the current demand?
04:09And I know there's never enough, but are you concerned?
04:13Should I be concerned about the MQ-9 population?
04:17Well, as it stands right now, as you mentioned, Senator, that we have lost several in combat and operations.
04:24As it exists today, we do the – our A3 is working with the Joint Staff and understanding how to alter the force offering.
04:34But as we continue to attract more, it becomes more and more critical.
04:39I can probably give you a little bit more at a higher level.
04:41But it is getting to the point where we need to ensure that every one of them is more – as survivable as possible.
04:47And that – some of the areas where we're hoping to improve, as you're well aware,
04:51some of the things we're looking to improve on are putting sort of the capability for the enhanced proliferated LEO architecture,
04:58to be able to put that on the MQ-9, this is where I might make my pitch for more funding flexibility.
05:04Because right now, it's a $17 million ask.
05:08And because that is above the below-threshold reprogramming,
05:12we're having to go through a longer process with us in Congress to get that approved.
05:16But the more we can have that flexibility to be able to make – accelerate the fielding of those proliferated LEO architecture on those MQ-9s,
05:23it'll make them more survivable.
05:24Well, just as scale matters, so does speed, right?
05:27So we've got a lot of things to figure out.
05:29And we're grateful, Mr. Secretary, you're there to help us do that.
05:32Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
05:32Thank you, Senator Kramer.
05:34Senator Warren, you made it by a matter of seconds.
05:38It counts.
05:39You are recognized.
05:40Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
05:43So, look, we all want the Air Force to have the money it needs to keep us safe.
05:47And we all want those funds to be –