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Space CO foresees smooth move to cyberspace

The next several months will bring massive changes to Air Force Space Command, stripping it of nuclear weapons and missiles, adding the emerging mission of defending cyberspace and shifting some 21,500 airmen and civilians into or out of the command.

But Gen. Bob Kehler, commander of AFSPC, said the changes are not as earthshaking as some might imagine.

The space, missile and cyberspace missions are closely intertwined, Kehler said. Therefore, many missileers will continue to spend parts of their careers in Space Command, and integrating the cybermission into the command won’t be all that difficult.

“I think that the fundamental focus and direction of Space Command will not change,” he said in an interview with Air Force Times. “This makes a lot of sense ... for us.”

The Air Force announced Oct. 24 that Air Combat Command’s nuclear-capable B-52s and B-2s, along with AFSPC’s intercontinental ballistic missile forces, will transfer to the new Global Strike Command, and Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) will be renamed 24th Air Force and move from ACC to AFSPC.

Global Strike Command will stand up by September 2009, and Cyber Command is expected to move to AFSPC next spring or summer.

The shake-up, prompted by two nuclear incidents that cost former Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael W. Wynne their jobs, is the largest reorganization in the service since Strategic Air Command disbanded in the early 1990s.

Kehler said the transition will be gradual. His team is working on road maps for how to move the ICBM forces to Global Strike Command and how to integrate the cybermission into AFSPC.

“This will have to be a phased transition,” Kehler said. “You can’t move everyone at once even if you wanted to. This transition will take several years to complete.”

But the move of the cyber mission into AFSPC is already well underway, said Maj. Gen. William Lord, commander of Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional). The command’s leadership team has been working with AFSPC’s personnel, plans and operations directorates, and Kehler and Lord are working together closely to draft a new Program Action Directive, which will outline a plan for merging the organizations. The document is due to the Air Staff at the Pentagon by Dec. 1.

But the third major shake-up of Air Force Space Command since it was created in 1982 means more than musical chairs. It changes the command’s focus.

For starters, AFSPC will not have a kinetic war-fighting role for the first time since ICBMs were placed under the command in 1993. The loss of those ICBMs and the addition of 24th Air Force means AFSPC likely will be about 18 percent larger. The command has about 25,000 active-duty and civilian personnel, according to an official fact sheet.

20th Air Force and its three missile wings — the 90th at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.; the 91st at Minot Air Force Base, N.D.; and the 341st at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont. — will move to Global Strike Command and take with them about 8,500 people. But 24th Air Force, the new unit in charge of cyberspace, will have two to four wings and bring about 13,000 airmen (including reservists) back under the AFSPC umbrella. So the net gain to the command likely will be about 4,500 personnel.

Kehler also said AFSPC will have to rely on Global Strike Command to provide many of its young space officers, indicating that the separation between the two major commands might not be as absolute as it is between most major commands.

Missile units require a large number of lieutenants, he said, whereas space units require a proportionally larger number of captains and majors.

“We will have to take a number of people out of Global Strike Command who are lieutenants and brand-new captains and bring them to Space Command,” he said. “You need to pull them from somewhere. The logical marriage of ICBMs and space has been very helpful in that regard. That’s going to have to continue.”

Defending cyberspace

Both Kehler and Lord said they believe Space Command is the most appropriate to take charge of the cyberspace mission.

“There’s great synergy between the space business and cyberbusiness, and even ... some similar kinds of expertise revolving around both disciplines,” Lord said. “It’s not nearly as [difficult] as you read in all the media.”

For example, Lord said, communications airmen are needed in both areas.

“We have space units and tactical deployable communications units that use equipment that is basically the same thing,” he said. “One has been modernized pretty well, the other has not been. If we [can] harmonize some of that work, we now have some synergies inside our own maintenance organizations.”

In terms of career development, Kehler said the cyberspace career plans released last summer were modeled after the Space Professional Development Program, so it will be easy to combine the two.

The cyber and space missions also are similarly dependent on technology, he said, and Space Command’s focus on more quickly developing and fielding technology is equally important to cyberspace missions.

But there are skeptics. Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, rejects the idea that the cyber and space mission draw on similar technical skills.

“Cyber is a completely different world,” he said. “This is a metaphor for what is wrong with the way the Air Force approaches future missions. They try to fit new missions into old ... frameworks.”

And Wynne, the former Air Force secretary who first conceived of a cyberspace command, said in early October that placing such an organization under Air Force Space Command, which reports to U.S. Strategic Command, could make the new organization too strategic and not tactical enough in its focus.

But Kehler disagrees, noting that AFSPC, though it reports to StratCom, focuses on both strategic and tactical uses of space.

“Space is inherently strategic and tactical,” he said. “Its effects are everywhere from global to local. ... We’ve spent more time in the last 10 years bringing space to the tactical level.”

And Lord said 24th Air Force will continue to work closely with Air Combat Command on its tactical cyberspace needs.