[Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder of MDAA]
“This is our 71st Congressional Roundtable. It’s a lot of them. And we are very honored to have General Mike Guetlein with us. He is the vice chief of space operations for the United States Space Force. Just a tremendous honor. And I wanted to say, Mike, from my 40 years of experience, that in the uniformed officers today, you are the most qualified and most experienced in the missile defense and space arena. And that there’s second to none.
But I just want to, I’m excited about that, to have a conversation with you. And I think we got to, you know, words are words. We’re going to back it up a little bit, but I do want to read your bio to everyone, if I can, just a little bit. First off, he’s an Oklahoma State Cowboy. So, I just, that’s a great credit to him. His acquisition experience spans air and space capabilities and systems across special operations, global power projection, missile warning and detection, and counter space mission areas. General Guetlein has commanded and led at the flight squadron, division, directorate program, executive office and field man levels notable assignments, including serving as the commander, the space systems command. That’s the material command for space force, the deputy director of the national reconnaissance office and commander of the air and space force element, the program executive for programs and integration at the missile defense agency. That’s probably about 10 years ago. And that’s when I first met you, I believe maybe earlier on that, the director of remote sensing systems, the commander of rapid reaction squadron, the military assistant to the assistant secretary of the air force for acquisition. So he is amply qualified with experience in the real world on this.
You know, I’m, I come from a generation, an old generation that the Apollo and Neil Armstrong fascinated me and captured the imagination of the world and the American public and what we did on an engineering marvel to create that ability to get to the moon and back. When we look at today and even going all the way back in the sixties and seventies, the pillar, the foundation of our missile defense, of our deterrence is sensors in space going all the way back to DSP that are able to identify early warn and give our decision makers that ample time to be able to, to deter and keep this world a safer place. That’s the fundamental piece of missile defense for, for, for coverage of our continent, for coverage of the homeland, for coverage of our allies across the world, to be able to have that capabilities up there and be able to move that data correctly, fast to the decision makers.
That remains even stronger today, from our perspective, we’re seeing advanced threats that hypersonic glide, FOB, advanced ICBMs, that this becomes even more critical to be able to deter that. And we’ve seen that there is a policy change to be able to enable space to be able to defend itself and defend our nation with that. So that’s where we’re at with this discussion moving forward on that.”
[Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder of MDAA]
“And Mike, I’m going to ask you one last question. Well, what keeps you awake at night and what’s your biggest challenge?”
[General Michael Guetlein, Vice Chief of Space Operations]
“It’s easy. The threat keeps me awake at night. We are seeing the threat mature every single day like we’ve never seen before. We’re seeing nesting dolls in space. We are seeing satellites collaborating together. If you heard me talk about dogfighting in space, we see five satellites operating together in synchronicity, orbiting around each other in ways we hadn’t seen before. We are seeing robots capable of towing other robots into space.
But the thing that really keeps me awake is there used to be a gentleman’s agreement in space. We did not mess with each other’s space systems. We just didn’t do that today. That is no longer the case. The new norms of behavior are jamming, spoofing, blazing, cyber hacking. We are under attack every single day in very unsafe and unprofessional manners. And we have got to counter those new norms of behavior or we’re going to find ourselves in conflict. That’s really what keeps me awake at night. And then the ability of the Space Force to rapidly be able to adapt technology, rapidly adapt capabilities and rapidly adapt our culture to get after that emergency.”
Click here to watch the virtual event
Speakers:
General Michael Guetlein, Vice Chief of Space Operations
Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Audience Q/A Moderator:
JD Gainey, MDAA Board of Directors
