“Sustained space integration with integrated air and missile defense, in particular, will make US Space Command more efficient, more combat effective and more capable of providing viable options to the National Command Authority.”ĭickinson’s remarks echo those made by Gen.

“Understanding integration in the context of strategic relevance will help us close seams and narrow gaps, eliminate stovepipes and maximize resources,” he went on. “I want to emphasize the point of integration, both technologically, as well as also philosophically, amongst military units, and that point is to promote agility in warfighting operations by creating and expanding decision space so that we can best posture the joint and combined force for the new strategic environment,” he said.

The end goal, Dickinson said, isn’t just integration, but using that as a tool to revamp the US military’s approach to warfare to face peer adversaries China and Russia. “That’s where we start to achieve greater synergy, greater integration between the space and air and missile defense mission sets.” “SCUD hunting in the first Gulf War taught us about those opportunities, and so did last January’s attack on the Al Saud airbase in Iraq,” he elaborated. The Joint Force, he said, “should,” and “will” in the future “use space strategic warning assets to meet tactical level ground requirements. “It’s critical to helping us discern adversary intent.”ĭickinson explained that his goal is to integrate space support operations into air and missile defense operations, and, crucially vice versa, as he sees air and missile defense support as critical to being able to protect US space assets. “Space domain awareness is critical not just to our understanding of what is happening in space, but why it’s happening,” he stressed. (The dinner speech was not formally broadcast, but Breaking Defense obtained an unofficial transcript of the remarks.) “Can we use missile warning radars … to meet space domain awareness requirements, too? Can we find the best balance and using those assets for both missile warning and space domain awareness? I think we have to,” Dickinson, who formerly commanded Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told the annual Space and Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville, Ala. Jim Dickinson, Space Command head, is pressing to ensure that space operations are inextricably linked to both air and missile defense operations via multifunctional sensor networks. James Dickinson, SPACECOM commander, addresses the virtual Space Symposium from his headquarters at Peterson AFB, Colo., Nov.

Missile commander chair