Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather “Lucky” Penney. Here on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DOD industry and other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy, operational concepts, technology and policy when it comes to error and space power.

Over the next three weeks, we’re gonna explore one of the hottest and most important topics in national security, air and missile defense of the Homeland. President Trump highlighted this in a big way with the launch of his Golden Dome program, but the reality is that the need for an improved set of homeland defense capabilities has been brewing for a long time.

Whether we’re looking at the news from the war between Russian and Ukraine, Israel under attack by Iran, or vessels bombarded by drones and missiles in the Red Sea, it’s clear that we’re facing a new era of threats.

This is a back to the future moment in many ways because the United States had to get real about air and missile defense in a big way. During the opening years of the Cold War Air [00:01:00] Defense Command, ADC, and NORAD, North American Air Defense were some of the biggest investment areas for the nation.

A nuclear armed long range strike equipped Soviet Union was no joke. The threat really was existential and leaders acted accordingly. Today we’re seeing a new range of threat dynamics cause extreme concern. We talk about it all the time here on aerospace advantage.

China and Russia are on the rise and they’re pushing aggressively around the globe. They have the means and they’ve demonstrated their intent. Countries like Iran and North Korea also pose risks and added to that, there are proxies and non-state actors that can project offensive power into our homeland.

So with that, we’ve assembled two of our nation’s most senior experts to help explain what’s at stake and why we need to take action. First and foremost, we have General Glenn Van Herck. Sir, thank you for joining us.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Well, it’s great to be with you, Heather, and it’s great to be with General Chilton, a great friend and mentor.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you, General Van Herck is former commander of [00:02:00] Northcom, the combatant command charged with the Homeland Defense Mission and the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Sir, thanks again. And we’ve also got General Kevin Chilton, Chile?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Great to join you, Heather, as ever. And Glenn, great to see you in retirement now.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Sir, it’s always wonderful to have you here.

And for the listeners who haven’t, been with Chile before, he served as a commander of Stratcom and he now holds the Explorer chair with the Mitchell Institute. So General Van Herck, let’s kick things off with you. You were responsible for the nation’s homeland defense and the defense of North America.

So did I lay things out accurately in the opener? And how do you see the air and missile threat facing North America and the homeland today?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Well, Heather, I think you certainly, laid things out correctly, but I would say as I look at the environment, it even expands beyond, where you laid it out today.

Certainly we have threats from seabed to space and all domains in between, including the information space you’re specifically [00:03:00] focusing on the air and missile domains or threats. What I would like to talk about is a little bit different today. And I think General Chilton would agree that, you know, in the past we focused on the Soviet Union, that threat has grown beyond the Soviet Union to Russia a nuclear threat.

And clearly was the existential threat China as an individual threat now partnering with Russia. Along with the North Korea and Iran and other authoritarian regimes around the globe, all with the intent to hold us at risk here in our homeland, delay and disrupt force flow and destroy the will of the people.

The threats are vastly different. I’ll point at the existential threat for Russia, which has been there for decades. But now China is greatly expanding their nuclear capability beyond a few hundred into the thousands, just as Russia has had for decade. That creates some really [00:04:00] unique challenges for us here in the homeland, both from a deterrence and a defense perspective.

North Korea is gonna gain a lot. From their support to Russia in Ukraine, missile technology, satellite technology, cyber, certainly nuclear and ICBM capabilities, those are vastly different than the past. And with Iran providing drones to Ukraine, I’m certain that Iran’s gonna get capabilities. These are all gonna be challenges for us here in the homeland.

I’ll just add more, one more thing, and try not to be too long-winded here, but when I talked about, all domains, the threats today can emanate from space. And so we saw the fractional orbital bombardment system call that a missile threat, call it a space threat, what you want, but it erodes strategic stability and increases the risk of strategic deterrence failure.

Also today, the threats, they’re blurring the lines between conventional threats to our homeland and nuclear, which [00:05:00] increases the risk of deterrence failure as well if you can’t detect the difference Of which of those threats it may be. So certainly it’s, the same and you, elaborated on that, but I would say it’s expanded well beyond where we were a few decades ago.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Sir, I think you outlayed that, perfectly because as you mentioned, it’s not a, just a single threat that we have today. It’s not just a Soviet Union, it is a multiple threats. So we’ve got China, Russia together, China’s having that nuclear breakout. They’re partnering with North Korea, they’re partnering with Iran and other.

Authoritarian regimes to complicate our problem set with a variety of different types of threats, not just bombers and not just ICBMs. You mentioned the fobs as well, general Chilton. You’ve also thought a lot about homeland defense given your role at Stratcom. And, we had General Van Herck just mentioned deterrence, credible, effective deterrence based on our nuclear triad stands and enduring foundational defense imperative.

And we mentioned, [00:06:00] China’s nuclear breakout. Russia’s also modernizing their nuclear arsenals. And, again, also General Van Herck mentioned that North Korea has a set of capabilities and is Iran is pursuing theirs. How does this affect our calculus?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): I think General Van Hurt laid it out very well.

The increase in the threat, and you’ve highlighted as well, Heather, what strikes me about this is that it’s a dramatic change in The threat basis toward the United States of America and, this rapid increase, particularly in China and the expansion into North Korea of their capability and the sustained belligerence of Russia.

Suggests to me that we have to change. We have to do something different. In the Cold War, we relied not only on our offensive strike capability to deter, but we had a very robust defensive capability for the homeland. I recall right across the street from my high school in Los Angeles, [00:07:00] which boarded the Los Angeles International Airport, was a Nike missile battery.

When I was in grammar school in high school, there were Nike missile batteries on the Pals Verdes Peninsula, some on top of the Malibu Mountains. And. General Van Herck can go on, I’m sure, on and on about how many fighters we had in defending the borders of the United States, the DEW line across Canada, et cetera, et cetera.

We believe that to adequately deter our adversaries, not only included in offenses strike capability to retaliate, threat retaliation, but also it required and bolstered deterrence to have a defensive capability. And we walked away from that completely at the end of the Cold War. And I think these new threats that we’re seeing, are gonna demand that we make adjustments both in our offensive capability, but also to begin to reconstitute some of our defensive capabilities that we had [00:08:00] in the Cold War because they do indeed enhance deterrence and put doubt in an adversary’s mind and their ability to successfully strike the United States in a limited or large fashion.

The world has changed and, we need to wake up to that and be willing to make the investments necessary to adjust our posture.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So I really appreciate how you emphasize the need to defend as part of deterrence, Because that ability to be able to defeat an adversary’s attack really affects their risk calculus they’re doing their decisions of, are we going to create an attack on the United States, on the homeland, especially if it’s a nuclear attack, if they’re not going to achieve their objectives, and they also risk being retaliated against.

I think that has an incredible impact on deterrence. And you know, as you said, we took. We really, we took a break from thinking about Homeland Defense after the end of the Soviet Union, and not only did we completely do away with Air Defense Command and we stood [00:09:00] down all of those units, we also cut the Air Force completely in half.

So that offensive capability went away. We are too slow in getting sentinel the ground-based, strategic deterrence up and running, but we’ve also, I think, lost the intellectual capital when it comes to understanding deterrence, especially nuclear deterrence combined with conventional deterrence.

So this question is for both of you. About the interplay between nuclear and non-nuclear threats facing our homeland. are they two separate issues, two separate entities, or do you see those threats as being integrated? I mean, understanding the weapons themselves, right? China has both conventional and nuclear, Russia has both conventional and nuclear, but how do you see those nations integrating those capabilities when they’re in this new world?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Well, I’ll begin and you know, oftentimes we focus I think, a little too much on nuclear weapons and conventional weapons. We say conventional, we think conventional [00:10:00] TNT, explosives.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, non radiological.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, but there’s another weapon out there today too that we didn’t have to deal with in the nineties that we have to deal with every day now. And that’s the cyber threat.

And there’s also the threat to our space assets, which can be done with non-exclusive means to take them out where there’d be directed energy jamming or kinetic effects. And so it was interesting in the nuclear posture review under the Bush administration, recognizing that there’s more than just nuclear threats to the homeland that could have significant impact on the homeland.

We changed the wording in the nuclear a posture review to say that one of the principle reasons for having our nuclear deterrent was to defend against strategic attack. On the homeland, not just nuclear attack. And so strategic attack broadens the idea that, we get to determine what’s strategic.

And a massive cyber [00:11:00] attack can be strategic, a conventional attack, targeted strategic resources like such as nuclear weapon storage areas, our national labs, et cetera, with an attempt to make us unable to support our nuclear deterrent could also be considered strategic. So, I think we have to broaden our as that document did, broaden our understanding and make sure our adversaries understand that, we don’t have this deterrent just to against nuclear attack anymore. And we have to be paying attention to these other threats.

And we don’t always wanna put the president in a position to have to respond with a nuclear weapon to a strategic attack. So we need to be thinking about how we might respond in the cyber domain. Respond conventionally to achieve strategic objectives, how we might wanna respond in the space domain.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Sir, I really like how you flipped the script there with strategic attack because in the past I think we’ve [00:12:00] reduced strategic attack or strategic forces and we’ve used that really as a synonym for nuclear. But in this case, you’re really talking about the consequences. If we had, there’s a cyber attack against SCADA systems.

All the electricity goes out, cyber attack against our water systems, a conventional attack or a terrorist attack, as you mentioned against, our nuclear, Forces that strategic effect would then demand a response. And I also really appreciate the notion of providing the president alternatives that are not always just nuclear responses.

General Van Herck, what’s your thought on this?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): I think General Chilton did a great job laying it out. To answer your question directly, I think the answer is yes and no. So do you think about ’em separately? Yeah. They’re vastly different Weapons, nuclear versus conventional and the power of the destruction of nuclear.

Has to be given consideration. But as senior leaders, we can’t bifurcate nuclear and conventional deterrence or [00:13:00] activities. I think we owe it to the National Command Authority to talk across a range of options and risk and that spectrum before you start down a path in an escalation ladder with any country with nuclear weapons, or a country with an umbrella from a country with nuclear weapons. We need to have a discussion about the risk of strategic deterrence, failure in an attack on our homeland across the spectrum of weapons, not just one or the other. And you can’t step on that ladder without having that discussion.

It’s not like you can wait till halfway into a conflict and start thinking about nuclear deterrence and activities. That should be a daily discussion. Overall, I think General Chilton did a fantastic job laying it out. I want to just convey one more thing about deterrence, and we were talking about deterrence by denial with our ability to defeat and that questions their success.

But I think [00:14:00] also in deterrence by denial, especially in our homeland. Is our ability to withstand that attack. Not just defeat it through resilience, through the ability to ensure command and control, survival from cyber capability, defense and resilience to take a punch in the nose, as I said last week, and get up and be able to swing.

And this creates doubt in any potential adversary’s mind about being successful. And that is strategic deterrence.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I really appreciate how you laid that out. That take a punch of the nose and get back up swinging is perfect. and both of you had mentioned that our adversaries are now contesting the space domain, right?

So let’s broaden this out from, we’ve talked about the retrial, we’ve talked about the homeland, but the space domain adversaries, are they’ve got weapons up there. I mean, we talked about, China testing FOBS, Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, dropping weapons from space onto the earth.

This kind of stuff [00:15:00] isn’t what we wanted to happen, but our adversary’s actions, they’ve taken the initiative now demand that we respond. And what does this mean from an air missile perspective?

What does that mean for how we should begin to plan, not only again about survivability, resilience and defeat, but we can’t just simply allow our adversaries to give them and seed to them space as a weaponized domain.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Well, I’ll defer to General Chilton as a space expert, but I’ll let him go first. Lemme just say a couple things up. Yeah, please do. So absolutely. Space is contested but there’s much more ongoing in space today, than fractional orbital bombardment systems. And potential attacks on our homeland terrestrial attacks.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Space to space right?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, so space the most strategic mission I did as the NORAD commander in my mind, was threat warning and attack assessment. That was to enable and assure continuity of government survival of nuclear forces and the nuclear, command and control and [00:16:00] force posture that is largely driven by space attacks on that space, infrastructure that poke our eyes out to be able to have that threat warning and attack assessment is a significant strategic event that erodes strategic ability. Much of our nuclear command and control architecture is space-based architecture, and the ability to have that survive, the ability to detect attacks on that is crucial for surviving forces in the homeland, continuity of government, et cetera.

There’s much more. So I think deterrence overall has to factor into their decision calculus, whether that’s an attack in space, on space, assets, supporting terrain based capabilities or space-based weapons and threats attacking terrestrially, whether they’re conventional or nuclear. And we need to create enough deterrence and resilience.

From both the space [00:17:00] architecture and the terrain that we defend and the architecture and critical infrastructure to create a doubt in their mind about being able to achieve their objectives. And if they did attack, fearing the punishment that they know will come back ’cause we’re so resilient.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you, sir.

General Chilton, how would you add to this?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Heather, I couldn’t add much more to that at all. And space is absolutely essential to our deterrence posture particularly our nuclear command and control capability, which is a broad statement that includes both missile warning, the ability to communicate with our strategic forces.

Our radar systems that are ground-based today and may in the future be space-based. These are all absolutely essential elements of our deterrence posture. And I think, general Van Hurt laid it out exactly as it should be discussed. Now you brought up FOBS. FOBS first of all in the Space [00:18:00] Treaty, there’s only one treaty that’s been signed, about space.

And in it says we’re not gonna put nuclear weapons in space. It’s, that’s about the only extent of it or on another planet. And so both the Soviets and the United States agreed not to do that during the Cold War.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: But that was just the Soviets in the United States, right?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Right. That’s correct. And China’s threat to do this requires a response.

And, we need to be in a position to know when they put one in orbit and then we need through space superiority to be able to hold that thing at risk. And certainly be able to track it and be able to warn and defend against it should they execute it. And so this is a new wrinkle because, that type of capability.

And our current posture could be an unworn attack and, don’t want that. We want to be able to make sure we understand the risk and have the time and capability to make decisions to defend against [00:19:00] it. So it’s a very dangerous weapon and very dangerous approach. but there are things that can be done to address it.

they have not deployed one yet, but we need to consider what posture we would want to be in, what capabilities we want to have to defend. Should they do that?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And Sir, I’m just gonna take this moment and make a plug for the Space Force. Because the Space Force has not received the budget and the resourcing that they need to be able to execute the incredible growing number of mission sets that they need to be able to do a lot of the responsibilities.

That we require of them, whether or not that is, the missile warning, whether or not that’s defensive capabilities, what you’re talking about, being able to actively defend space from space or maybe even prevent, Chinese from using this, the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System.

But, I really appreciate General Van Herck, how you mentioned that one of the most important missions that you executed was that missile mourning. Being able to detect [00:20:00] launches, characterize them, understand them, because without that ability it’s ultimately very destabilizing.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): I love what you were saying about,

if you don’t have the warning, I mean, because if it’s been taken away from you, very destabilizing. And if you, and the warning means you, you’ve gotta have the, situational awareness, what’s going on and where I, I would want to take this discussion and Glenn, I kind of defer to you on this, but I’ll give you a quick anecdote.

One of my first exercises at Stratcom, the scenario had a couple of bear bombers take off and head toward the, a DZ over the north. and they got within cruise missile range in the continental United States and turned around and went back home, or turned around and started going back away.

I turned to my two and said, did they launch a cruise missile? And the answer was, we don’t know. I said, when will we know? And they said, when the time of flight expand ends up, whether it detonates or not ’cause we had no [00:21:00] way to detect a launch or track it, track the missiles across Canada, toward the United States.

And I think, we’re so focused on the space part of Golden Dome today, there’s another part of it, which is the air airside defense that we dismantled after the Cold War. And so, Glenn, is that something that would make sense to talk about here?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, certainly that would make sense.

What I could expand this to is the need to adapt our tactics techniques and procedures in the homeland to, rather than having fixed sites that are there 24/ 7 is the need to have the ability to rapidly deploy, move based on. Policy designating specific critical infrastructure, whether those be air assets, surface to air assets, naval assets with capabilities, and keep any potential adversary [00:22:00] questioning their targeting success.

Now, if they go with nuclear weapons, that, that’s a different story, but certainly on a conventional basis, that would. Factor into the deterrence equation if they don’t know where the deterrence by denial assets are. But I do agree with your comment and it still exists today, that you know, if we don’t have domain awareness, You still have very limited capability to do anything against the threat attacking the homeland from a cruise missile or hypersonic that, Heather, you didn’t talk about, hypersonics. And their destabilizing capability because we do not have the ability to provide the threat warning and attack assessment fidelity we do for ballistic missiles.

That’s another aspect we could go down and I’ll pause there.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, I think this is a great conversation. I think we should also continue down it because, you know, general Chilton, as you mentioned, not every square inch of the earth is covered 24 7 by satellite and especially [00:23:00] around the poles. And we’ve recently completed a report on Arctic domain awareness which is the shortest path from them to us.

We just don’t have those sensors anymore. And so General V an Herck, what you mentioned about having the flexibility to be able to move assets, both those sensors and the responders, and surge those forces where necessary, I think is really important as well because when I think when the public hears the word Golden dome.

They think that it’s a missile shield that goes from sea to shining sea and from north to south. And anything that begins to trespass that bubble just instantaneously vaporizes. And I just don’t think that’s realistically, something that’s technologically feasible and certainly wouldn’t be affordable.

So we need to think about how do we protect the critical infrastructure, do so on a surge capacity, but all of this requires a domain awareness. The ability to anticipate and execute. So we still have this major gaps. Sir, as you mentioned, regarding hypersonics, [00:24:00] those kinds of cruise missiles. How do we solve for that problem?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): I think Golden Dome has to look at not only the effectors kinetic whether it be laser based in space. But also it has to provide the threat, warning and attack assessment capability necessary to make the strategic decisions that are gonna be need to make in a time of crisis or conflict.

And that starts with that domain is awareness. You talked about today we’re. Challenge from Hypersonics, being able to provide that domain awareness, the space architecture that the Space Force is working on should narrow that gap that we have today to give us that. But that’s not a sole option to help us with cruise missiles, for example, there where there’s significant gaps, especially.

In terrain to the south, the east and the west. So I do think there’s some work to be done, but all of these need to be stitched together. You [00:25:00] can’t look at space domain awareness. Terrestrial de domain awareness and geographically, separate, they all need to be fused with a data layer, as well as I think Golden Dome.

And that way, this common data layer, the C2 centers can pull down the data they need to make their decisions. Whether those are domain awareness and continuity decisions, or those are effector decisions, whether it’s a space-based effector, a terrain, a terrestrial, a naval vessel, et cetera.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: So that really becomes a thorny problem set that I think, as you mentioned, having that data layer that gives you that fused, common situational awareness to allow commanders, whether or not that’s, you at Northcom or elevating that up to the National Command Authority to be able to respond appropriately.

And you mentioned a little bit about the policy piece, so I’d like to do a quick little pivot and discuss that because, General Van Herck you commanded both NORAD and Northcom. Can you talk to us about what those commands entailed [00:26:00] and the interplay between the two? So how do they function together to pr to provide that defense for the continent?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, Heather, so great question. Two separate commands, two separate chains of command, if you will. But I like to say they’re inseparable and I can give you examples by that. So, for example, in my NORAD hat, as I said, the strategic mission we did of threat warning and attack assessment, for continuity of government for North America and also for survival of forces would apply to all in of North America.

With that said, if it was a threat, I would put on my NORTHCOM hat if it was a ballistic missile and utilize ballistic missile capabilities. To render an effect against potential threat. If it’s a cruise missile, I would keep my NORAD hat on and go after it with airborne assets.

And if I was giving surface assets, then the question [00:27:00] becomes, are we gonna give those surface to air assets to me in a nor Norad or Northcom hat? Let me give you another example why they’re separate, but inseparable. The missions of NORAD were aerospace warning, aerospace based control and maritime warning.

And so I would be tracking out of various submarines on a routine basis globally, but as certainly they entered, the nor. Com and NORAD, AORs and Regions and provide maritime warning for that to the government of Canada, to the government of the United States. If I was gonna prosecute that submarine though, I would do that with my Northcom hat on, through Maritime Homeland Defense.

If that submarine launched a ballistic missile I would put my. Northcom had on to go after it with the ballistic missile systems that we have. But if it launched a cruise missile, I would likely put my NORAD hat back on and go after that cruise missile with [00:28:00] the air assets that we had or the. Integrated air and missile defense system that we had in the National Capital Region.

So, those examples should convey it separate, but inseparable commands.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, you’ve got me fully convinced there. But what’s the difference when you’re talking about NORAD or northcom, how do you factor in allied contributions? I mean, are they also part of that separate but inseparable, element of both NORAD and Northcom or just one but not the other?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Well today, Canada provides, assets in their norad. Terms of referenced and agreement to the NORAD mission. And they funded 40% historically of the NORAD mission to include the North Warning System and much more. They had made a policy decision not to be involved with ballistic missile defense and so on the ballistic missile side, that has been funded solely by the Department of Defense now changing to the Department of [00:29:00] War.

And under the Northcom hat, Canada is reconsidering that policy and has expressed interest under Golden Dome, the auspices of getting more involved, including the ballistic missile and hypersonic defense. So we’ll see where that goes. They have continued to fund and provide great funding the relationship, by the way, the military relationship is exceptional despite some of the stresses we’ve seen in recent years.

And I would articulate to you that defending our own soil and our own homeland would be a much greater risk and challenge without Canada, without access to the regions that Canada holds in the Arctic, where we have domain awareness sensors and much more.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: As you said, separate but inseparable and the contributions that Canada provides, is crucial to defending the American homeland as well.

General Chilton bringing you back into the conversation with Stratcom, because when you commanded it included the [00:30:00] nuclear deterrence mission as well as space, but those are now split. So you’ve got STRATCOM and Space Command. So could you talk to us about the responsibilities and how they fit into the Homeland Defense equation?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): They’re mutually interdependent. And certainly I think our greatest dependence is on space. And we talked about that earlier and we, for too many years did not treat space as a domain that. Warfare or battle could possibly take place.

And now it clearly is a domain where it not only can take place, our adversaries will likely go there and wage war against our assets in space because they realize our dependency on them, which emphasizes the point, that as in any other domain, the United States of America needs to be able to gain and maintain superiority in the space domain.

And as you pointed out earlier, Heather, that’s gonna call for increased [00:31:00] manpower, increased technology, increased funding across the spectrum that you’d see in any other domain, whether it be in training, acquisition of capabilities, exercise testing, flexing your muscle, and actually having true capabilities to that.

Not only are based in space, but can affect adversary space capabilities and defend ours from the other domains, air, land, and sea. So we have a big hill to climb there, to be in a position where we convince our adversaries that this is not a good idea to attack us in space and be in a position to deter that type of attack.

It’s essential that we move out in that direction.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, I think, when it comes to space command, because there, there are so many dependencies that we have on space assets that as we begin to move forward, we’ll need to develop not just the capabilities, but also the tactics, techniques and procedures to provide terrestrial support to [00:32:00] space to ensure that those assets are available so that whether it’s stratcom, norad, or Northcom, that we’re able, that we have those space assets available.

So General Van Herck back to Norad Northcom you were the commander for the Notorious Chinese balloon incident, and you were also in the seat for the Langley drone incident. So what did those experiences, teach us about our organizational structures, capabilities and the overarching homeland defense?

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, so great question. The first thing I would tell you is the challenges we face today are global and all domain. And the lines that we’ve placed on a map that create geographic combatant commands and the stove pipes we have functionally are gaps and seams that create vulnerabilities for us.

So we have to think globally and relationships have never mattered more than they do today to be able to pick up the phone across not only DOD with fellow combatant commanders. ’cause homeland defense does not start in the [00:33:00] homeland. It starts forward fellow combatant commanders and allies and partners.

So I think that’s critical. The ability to pick up the phone or somebody pick up the phone and call me and tell me, here comes a spy balloon. Certainly less than 24 hours ahead would’ve been, much appreciated. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. And Homeland Defense is not only DOD, it’s Department of Homeland Security.

It’s our neighbors to the north, it’s our neighbors to the south. And those relationships matter. But an interagency look and the relationships across, whether it be Homeland Security, FEMA, Transportation, Energy to create the resiliency that we need to defend our homeland are critical.

Now, I think we’re lacking policy, significantly on what to defend from who in what capacity. When I think about Golden Dome, Heather, you know, there there’s a challenge on going after [00:34:00] 4,000 ballistic missiles. I don’t think it’s affordable and achievable. So what is the right number to decree to actually create that deterrence by denial effect that we need?

Without going beyond and potentially as some people would say, creating a stability challenge, by having too much capability and capacity. So that’s something that we can talk about later on as well. But if you don’t know what to defend from what threats and how much. Then it’s hard to budget and plan for that.

I found this on the Langley drone incident is we really don’t have an overarching governance and strategy for how to deal with the UAS threat. Or the drone threat in our homeland that’s being worked. But policy is a challenge both for Golden Dome and the Counter UAS threat. Then once you know the policy, you gotta develop capabilities within the ability to operate in our homeland.

So I can tell you the Department of Transportation and FAA won’t be [00:35:00] appreciative of us firing missiles and capabilities around that create safety challenges. Those are, again, policy decisions. So what capabilities can you operate in our homeland, who’s has the authority to do that? And that forces us down a different effector line than most overseas engagements would be.

So let’s go back to policy. There will be some critical infrastructure that will be so important that we’re gonna risk the safety of our citizens to go after it because it’s an existential threat to our nation, but it’s not all. And we should have those discussions and we should have ’em with a sense of urgency.

We’re not moving fast enough.

Let me add one more thing to that. I think that, Homeland Defense is a whole of nation, not a whole of government, a whole of nation. Challenge forces, especially the UAS threat, and I expect to see that some commercial entities within the defense industrial base the energy sector, transportation and beyond [00:36:00] will likely be defending themselves, not relying on DOD or DHS, but they’re gonna have to reach out just like they do in the cyber domain today.

They’re probably gonna have to be able to defend themselves. And again, that’s a policy decision and what that looks like for our government.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Can I add a couple thoughts here on this?

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yes you bet.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): So drones are one thing, and drones aren’t gonna fly over here from the Soviet Union or Russia or China.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No. They’re gonna, they’re gonna be launch, locally Right.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Okay so that’s an internal problem. My and none of the points that were brought up were incorrect with regard to how you think about those.

But, I’m gonna bring the conversation a little bit back to threats from

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Golden dome.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Well, No, well threats from China threats from Russia and North Korea. I wanna start with, a discussion on stability and defense. First of all, as I said earlier, defense does help deter. I mean, that’s why we have patriot missiles to deter the adversary air to coming into a particular [00:37:00] area.

Are they gonna be a hundred percent effective? No. Do they work as a deterrent and do they work to mitigate the results of attack? Absolutely. And that’s what we’re talking about here in, I think in Golden Dome, is the ability to enhance deterrence and to mitigate effects. And it goes beyond that, I believe.

I think, you know, we have to ask ourselves why is China building up so rapidly? Why did they go from feeling secure to have a guaranteed response where they were attacked and felt that was enough to deter to suddenly they want to build a first strike capability with their nuclear arsenal. And I come to one conclusion and that is there is no translation for the word deterrence into Chinese other than as the word coercion.

They want to have a coercive. Posture in the world where they can deter us or course us not to engage in support of our allies in the Western Pacific and not to do other things that are [00:38:00] important to our national interests. And we can’t allow them to do that. And they know our center of gravity. It’s our American populace.

That’s what we value. They don’t value their people like we value our people. And I think we have a moral responsibility to defend. Not a hundred percent. I don’t agree it can’t ever be done completely, but to defend enough to put doubt in their mind that they can coerce us to not meet our obligations, to not meet our responsibilities, to maintain freedom around the world ’cause that’s what they want to take away.

They’ve said it. By 2050, they want to be the world’s superpower and they want to set the rules of the world order, disrupt everything that the United States and freedom loving people have put in place since 1945. And they want to do that through coercion and defense is part of that to allow her to inhibit them from being able to [00:39:00] coerce us.

And I also want to touch on this notion of stability. First, I’m gonna define it. Strategic stability and another stability arms race stability. First, strategic stability. I define that as a posture where neither side is tempted to strike first ‘ cause they don’t see it to their advantage either. They can’t stand the pain of doing that, or they don’t think they’ll be successful in whatever their objective is. And the best way to ruin strategic stability is to be weak.

Cause then you invite a first strike, you invite the thought in the adversary’s mind that perhaps they can succeed. Okay, so fielding and missile defense system is not destabilizing, even if it’s a hundred percent. If you have a thousand weapons and I have a thousand weapons and we’re [00:40:00] adversaries, and I put up a hundred missile defense systems that are guaranteed to shoot down a hundred of your missiles, are you gonna attack me?

No, because I still have a thousand that can destroy you. If I put up 300 missiles, are you gonna attack me? No. ’cause I still have a thousand that can destroy you. If I put up a thousand missiles that can defeat your thousand offensive systems, are you gonna attack me? No. It’s suicide. So it is not destabilizing to have an effective missile defense system.

It may lead to an arms race. But we get to decide whether or not we want to race. We don’t have to. We, all we have to do is field a deterrent with offensive and defensive capabilities that through that we determine will be adequate to either strike fear in the heart of our adversaries over something they value, or create enough doubt in their mind that they would not [00:41:00] believe that they could achieve their objective.

I think we forget this and so I don’t like to hear, and this is a classic Russian argument in the arms talks, oh, missile defense is destabilizing. It is not. And in fact, I would go as far as to say there’s a moral obligation when you have the technology to defend your populace, you should. The other question, I think that’s a raise and it was brought up about, on the drone side that I think is really important is what do you want to defend?

What is your critical infrastructure? maybe the most important thing to defend is your ability to respond. So maybe it’s your missile fields, maybe it’s your cities. Maybe it’s your command and control capability. These are important discussions to have as Golden Dome was developed, and let’s not forget our forward deployed forces, okay?

That’s where we prefer to fight.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you for bringing us back to the notion of defense and then [00:42:00] talking about the strategic stability. You know, the other piece of it too is, ’cause you mentioned China is looking to be coercive. And they’re doing this breakout. It’s not just simply so they can be coercive if they can force us because we don’t, you know, if they can force us into a homeland defense holdback, then they have free reign across the entire Pacific.

And we know that China has an active defense policy where they’re willing to take a first strike and they will view that as a defensive action. Even if the United States has not taken any kind of offensive action against them, that active defense in their mind justifies us as a defensive capability aggressively moving forward in taking that first strike.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, heather, I want to weigh in just a second. I think

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Please do.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): We got a PhD level articulation from, general Chilton, and I agree with everything he said.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yes.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): He alluded to this, and I think it’s important that I’m gonna emphasize it. Is actually the [00:43:00] inability to defend yourself, the inability to detect threats. The lack of resilience is actually destabilizing and invites a potential attack as well. And I think that’s crucial. That’s why we need to plug these gaps, whether that’s a conventional attack, a cyber attack, or a nuclear attack. And I would argue that. China believes that through cyber means they could delay and disrupt our force flow.

So that we have a fait accompli because we can’t get to a fight in time. We have to prevent that from happening. That’s the strategic stability. Other side of the argument I would be interested to hear if General Chilton agrees with that.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Oh, I certainly do, certainly do, Glenn.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, we need to be resilient enough that we can withstand those asymmetric kinds of attacks.

Sir, you mentioned, the cyber attacks on our electrical infrastructure and other critical subsystems preventing us from [00:44:00] being able to move. That kind of weakness, is something we also need to defend against, not just sort of in the traditional, shot per shot, but ensuring that our infrastructure is able to withstand those attacks.

We can continue to flow those forces forward.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Let me add one more thing, Heather, when we talk about, I think it’s important that we. Articulate what we’re really talking about. I talk about UAS or small, UAS is the DJI, the things you can buy little helicopters. Today we’re seeing drones in Ukraine, Russia, that have the ability, should they be deployed in the Western hemisphere, such as at Venezuela.

To reach our homeland. Those are drones that a golden dome is gonna have to account for in the Western Hemisphere and other places. And they can certainly reach our homeland from Eastern Russia into North America and likely portions of our homeland elsewhere. So we need to articulate [00:45:00] clearly what threat we’re talking about when we say the word drones.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: I think you’re absolutely correct, sir, because here at Mitchell we’ve been talking about those kinds of drones, if you will, as really cruise missiles. They’re just autonomous maneuverable cruise missiles. They might not look, taste and smell like what we traditionally think a cruise missile looks like, but that’s essentially what they are.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Yes, I agree with you 100%.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: If you think back at the end of the Cold War, right? So the Soviet Union falls, you know, the East Berlin wall comes down and woo, you know, it’s the end of history. The nation cuts the Air Force in half. Just decimates, the Air Defense Command. So all those alert sites, all of that used to protect us, whether or not that was in response to, for deterrence or our offensive capabilities.

Just comes plummeting down and today we struggle to field enough capacity to handle what the COCOMs are demanding abroad. I mean much less being able to simultaneously address the [00:46:00] homeland threat. So what we do right now is you’ve got a handful of jets and a handful of guys that come hold back and they sit alert and everyone else flows forward.

But in an actual peer contest, in order to be able to protect the homeland, There’s a homeland hold back. It almost becomes an either or scenario. Do you keep forces at home to be able to protect the homeland and respond, or do you push those forces forward and leave the homeland uncovered?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): And the thing, the biggest vulnerability, and we would talk about this years ago, is look if you’re gonna actually put the bomber force on alert. You’re gonna put a bunch of tankers on alert. And if you’re gonna, and if, and simultaneously the reason you’re doing that is ’cause you’re worried about a threat to the homeland.

Norad Northcom is gonna need a bunch of tankers on alert and oh, by the way, the fight’s gonna be happening on the other side of the Pacific. You’re gonna need a bunch of tankers. ’cause we have not built strike capability with any kind of substantial range at all. That can move forward [00:47:00] in, in the air domain without tankers.

Kinda me. It’s tankers, tankers.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, that’s a…

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): But Glenn, I, you know, I defer to you on a lot of this, but we always, we had, and it got back to the point you made earlier about individual plans and not integrating ’em, you know, the Norad Northcom had a plan about how many tankers they needed.

Stratcom had a plan about how many tankers they needed, and INDOPACOM got a plan about how many tankers they needed.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And we only have enough tankers for maybe half of any of those plans.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Probably one.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, just a couple of thoughts on that. And General Chilton’s right on. Fir first of all, it starts with policy.

Combatant commanders ask for what policy tells them to do. And I felt my job was to give a range of options and convey the risk across that spectrum of options over time. Maybe it’s time you go look at policy, but if we’re gonna have policy that exceeds joint force capacity, then we need to figure out how to build a bigger joint force to achieve that, and that is gonna be defense, industrial base [00:48:00] moving forward, et cetera.

What we can’t do is have combatant commanders not ask for what they need to achieve the policy because now we’re masking the risk to our nation’s leaders. And so we’ve gotta figure that out. But it starts with global plans, global resourcing, global risk, and where the secretary and our National Command authority is willing to accept risk and where they’re not.

And then you apportion forces to plan for the force you have today. Or else we’ll find ourselves adjudicating forces in crisis, in conflict and o plans that are no longer executable, because that’s what we’re doing. We are starting to move in that path. We’re just not moving fast enough Heather.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Thank you gentlemen. We’ve talked about the plans, we’ve talked about the resources, we’ve talked about deterrence. We’ve really covered, I think a lot when it comes to considering what will it take to secure the homeland against the air and missile defense.

What last thoughts would you like to leave with our [00:49:00] listeners?

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Well, I’ll tell you what, I kinda liked the way General Van Herck did a ribbon around it here at the end. I mean, I thought that was a great summary and, we need to do the hard work to figure out what resourcing we need to achieve these objectives. And we need to move out quickly in this area because our adversaries.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, they’re not waiting for us. Gentlemen, thank you so much. This has been an incredible conversation. we really appreciate you both making the time and appreciate your wisdom and perspective.

Gen. Glen Van Herck, USAF (Ret.): Thanks, Heather.

Gen. Kevin “Chili” Chilton, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, thanks. Hey, Glen. Great. I love that last piece. Super. Thanks Heather.

Heather “Lucky” Penney: And with that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guest for joining in today’s conversation.

I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued support and for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard today, don’t forget to hit that like button or follow or subscribe to the Aerospace Advantage. You can also leave a comment to let us know what you think about our show or areas that you would like us to [00:50:00] explore further.

As always, you can join in on the conversation by following the Mitchell Institute on X, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and you can always find us at mitchellaerospacepower.org. Thanks again for joining us and have a great aerospace power kind of day. See you next time.