Space Order of Battle
This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of Schneider Electric
Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. Good morning everyone.
Well, I'm an old retired guy now, but I can tell you I keep track of what's going on in space and things
have changed dramatically since I retired in 2011. The biggest change is our adversaries. China, Russia
have increased their counter space capabilities, both with direct-descent anti-satellite weapons, on-orbit
capabilities, ground-based capabilities to include jammers and ground-based lasers that both may
someday migrate to space. But all of these things have compelled us to do things differently, not only to
stand up the Space Force, but to start thinking about how we're going to counter defensively and
offensively these capabilities that our adversaries present and also demands that we update our order
of battle. And that's what our panel is about today. How we train, how we conduct operations, what
hardware and capabilities we need to buy to be successful in the domain. And so I'm honored to be
joined by a great panel today of space experts and great space leaders.
Next to me is General Greg Gagnon, the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence for the entire
Space Force. Welcome. Next to General Gagnon. Yeah, let's hear it. No small job. No small job.
The next individual is, I think, one of the busiest people in the Pentagon because of the number of jobs
she has. Lieutenant General DeAnna Burt, the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations, Cyber
and Nuclear. Welcome.
And last but not least, we have Lieutenant Colonel Doug Schiess. And now he's the one smiling up here
because everyone else is doing staff work, he's a commander. Not of just one command, two
commands. So General Schiess is the commander of U.S., I'm sorry. Commander of U.S. Space Forces
Space and Commander of U.S. Space Command's Combined Joint Force Space Component.
So welcome to you all and let's just jump into what compels us. So General Gagnan, I want to start with
you with your Intel expertise. What's going on that's got us so worried in space these days?
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Well, it's great to have the opportunity to talk to such a large group of folks both here and online. And
let me re-emphasize a few points. China, China, China, our Space Force is four years old. Their Space
Force is older. Their Space force is in third grade. When they started their Space force was about
December 2015. Where were you in 2015. And from 2015 to today, they've increased their on-orbit
assets 500%. They now have over 900 satellites in outer space.
And you might say that 900 is a big number. You may say 900 is not a big number because you look at
SpaceX and you see the things that our commercial industry are doing. But in the United States, for the
9,000 satellites that the US has up there, 70% of them are communication satellites or broadband
satellites. We put satellites in outer space to connect the world. Over half of the CCP's satellites in outer
space are remote sensing for the last two years. They've put over 200 satellites on orbit each year and in
each year over 100 of those were remote sensing satellites. Those remote sensing satellites are
designed to find fix and track joint forces in the Western Pacific. In just my time in the Space Force,
which is only three years, they have moved from good enough to almost just as good with their
surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in the Western Pacific. That is an important fact for all of us
to understand. We have often deployed with space superiority because we could move to the A-Pod, we
