Name: U.S. Air Force Secretary explains the reasoning behind creation of U.S. Space Force
Uploaded: 2020-10-01
Duration: 3 min 57 s
Description: Barbara M. Barrett says its primary reason is defensive: 'it's as if we built a glass house before we knew about stones.'

 BARBARA BARRETT: You ask about the Space Force, what is it? It's a brand new military service like the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines, and the Coast Guard. This is the sixth major service of the United States, the sixth military service, and why would you need the Space Force? It's sensible to ask but when we think about how much of America's way of life today depends upon space, it's huge. I've often said that when you think about it before your first cup of coffee in the morning, you've probably used space, but you may not know about it. You may not have seen the connection, because often your alarm clock may be linked to GPS system. You may look at the traffic. You may look at the weather. All of those are going to be space assets. Probably your power water are probably connected through space control. Here, if you use an ATM or if you take a look at traffic, farmers monitor their crops, we're looking at the wildfires through space lenses. Much of what we do today from ATMs to missile warning systems. It's all happening because of space assets, but our space assets were built at a time when we thought it was a benevolent environment as my predecessor, Heather Wilson said, "It's as though we built a glass house before we knew about stones." So we now have assets upon which we depend, but they are vulnerable. They aren't protected. So we are looking at ways to protect them, to replace them with things that are more easily protected and jam proofed, and then if we are also need to be attentive to the fact that we can be something other than a victim in space. We cannot be so vulnerable that we can't-- PATTIE SELLER: Secretary Barrett to that point, I'd like to bring up on Tuesday, bipartisan house panel issued a report called Future of Defense Task Force, and noted that the Pentagon is behind on real innovation and called on the Department of Defense to speed up investments in artificial intelligence among other new technologies and actually proposed using the Manhattan project as a model that is convening America's best minds to advance innovation at the Department of Defense. What's your view of that? BARBARA BARRETT: I think that's great it's just what we need. We absolutely are consumers of technology. Are we behind? Well, a lot of what we talk about may not be the most technology, but a lot of things that we aren't publicizing, as you would hope we would. But we're constantly engaging new technologies. Artificial intelligence, of course, augmented reality, virtual reality, we're working on Hypersonics. We're leading in many technologies, but we are not leading in some and we have to be constantly moving forward and working to be in the lead on all of these processes. So we're retooling a lot of what we do to find new ways of getting faster, more agile and being bold. We're doing lots of fun things and acquisitions to have the United States Air Force, AF works. Our Innovation Center was just rated 1 of the 100 most innovative places to work, that's the only government entity on that list. The Air Force is innovating and engaging a lot of those new technologies that you describe. 

Barbara M. Barrett says its primary reason is defensive: "it's as if we built a glass house before we knew about stones."

U.S. Air Force Secretary explains the reasoning behind creation of U.S. Space Force

Barbara M. Barrett says its primary reason is defensive.