Space integrates air forces to win wars Published Feb. 17, 2004 By Staff Sgt. Melanie Streeter Air Force Print News WASHINGTON -- Integrating space into all operations -- air, land and sea –- is the future of Air Force Space Command, said Gen. Lance Lord during a symposium Feb. 12.“We feel good about how things have gone, and we want to talk about the future,” said General Lord, speaking at the 2004 Air Force Association Warfare Symposium, in lake Buena Vista, Fla. “I want to talk about the integration of air and space, land and space, and sea and space. We see it coming together now in ways we never thought.”New space systems were an integral part of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, General Lord said.“As a command, we’re more relevant to the fight than ever before,” he said. “We are better able to sustain and deter. In the words of [retired] General Tommy Franks, ‘pieces of this operation that were successful wouldn’t have been without space-based assets’.”But OEF and OIF were the last wars, General Lord said. The question now is, how does AFSPACE press on into the future?“We need to change the culture,” General Lord said. “It’s not about the platform or the service or the respective agency’s contributions. We’re coming together to integrate air forces to win the war.”During OIF airmen used satellite feeds from outside the area of responsibility to identify and strike the broadcast capabilities of Iraqi state-run television, the general said. Predator unmanned aerial vehicles fired Hellfire missiles in an attempt to shut down the key source of Saddam Hussein’s propaganda.“(Technology) shortened the kill chain,” General Lord said. “Despite that, Iraq kept the signal on with redundant systems. Redundancy made the ground segment of space capabilities difficult to destroy.”This event showed that precision is important, but space forces need to focus on the overall effect, he said, and three new systems on the horizon for AFSPC aim to make that focus possible.The first will allow low-cost launch of micro-satellites. Another facilitates machine-to-machine communications. The third is Blue Force Tracking.“We call it Blue Magic,” General Lord said. “It is a wireless net that we can use in theater, making space more responsive.”In the long term, it will be important for AFSPC to make sure its advantages do not become vulnerabilities, the general said.“In the past, each time we sought upward growth, our adversaries attempted to counter,” General Lord said. “It’s time to move forward; we can’t wait and react. Space is an indispensable partner in the American way of waging war.”