When Rotarians asked Col. Seth Graham to speak to their club about the newly launched Space Force, Graham — whose specialty as commander of the 14th Flying Training Wing at Columbus Air Force Base is training pilots how to fly airplanes — decided he had some research to do.
So he jokingly opened his presentation to the Columbus club at Lion Hills Center Tuesday with a clip from a “documentary” he said, which turned out to be the trailer for Netflix’s comedy “Space Force.”
Despite the light-hearted start to the program, Graham said the Space Force and its mission is something to be taken seriously in an era of increasing reliance on space — not just for the Air Force and other military branches, but for almost every aspect of American society.
“If you’ve ever used an automatic teller machine, that relies upon space,” he said. “The weather, when you pull up on your phone and look at your weather app, it relies on space. I navigated here today on my phone reliant on space. Amazon, Facebook, Apple, all are reliant upon space. … Our prosperity and economic security are increasingly reliant on the peaceful use of space. So our ability to defend ourselves in space becomes more and more important every day.”
He showed an image of the earth showing a red cloud of debris orbiting it — a depiction of the debris caused when China fired a missile at and destroyed one of its own satellites.
“(They were) testing a technology that could destroy satellites,” Graham said. “That debris today has made that particular orbit almost unusable from all that’s left from that one satellite. But it was an eye opener I think to us about the technology that was out there and a recognition that our adversaries around the world have seen how reliant we are as a society and as a military upon space.”
Moreover, he said, if China, Russia or another country obtained the capability to destroy one of the United States’ GPS satellites, it would affect far more than navigation. It would affect computer systems throughout the country and possibly throw computer timetables out of sync.
“‘The GPS (system), we think of it as giving us the ability to navigate, but what it’s really doing is it’s synchronizing, across the world, time,” Graham said. “We all work off of one time reference. And when we don’t work off that time reference, or that disappears, our ability to navigate goes away, our ability to use an ATM goes away.
“I would argue that we’ve gotten to the point where we are so reliant on computer networks, it may break apart the very fabric of our society because we’ve lost the capability to do some of those things that we now rely upon computers and handheld devices to do,” he added. “So I would argue that to lose GPS is maybe one of the most critical things that could happen, not only from a military standpoint but from a whole society standpoint.”
The Space Force was created in December 2019, and in May, Gen. Jay Raymond, first chief of Space Operations, swore in the first class of 86 Air Force graduates going straight to the Space Force. Additionally, the force took applications from all across the Department of Defense, filling more than 6,000 positions so far.
That’s still a “relatively small” operation compared to other military branches, Graham said. The Space Force will operate under the Air Force’s administration, answering to the secretary of the Air Force the same way the Marines Corps answers to the secretary of the Navy.
Space Force’s responsibility will be to ensure the United States has the freedom to interact in space, to defend satellites and other national assets in space and provide the military with protocols and options for what to do if those assets are threatened or attacked. It will require service members with expertise in everything from orbital or electromagnetic warfare to cyber operations and engineering.
Graham stressed he is not an expert in the Space Force, but he has done research and heard Raymond speak. He said the Space Force likely won’t affect CAFB — at least not at first.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Space Force won’t grow into a massive organizational force like something out of “Star Trek,” he said. He pointed out the Air Force just celebrated its 73rd birthday on Friday.
“I’m sure that in 1947, those airmen didn’t envision where the Air Force is today,” he said. “So I wonder in 73 years where these pioneers of the Space Force may envision us being.”
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