DOCUMENTS & RESOURCES
Biography: Army Gen. James H. Dickinson
TRANSCRIPT: House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces Holds Hearing on Strategic Forces Posture - Mar. 8, 2023
TRANSCRIPT: Senate Armed Services Committee Testimony on United States Strategic Command and United States Space Command - Mar. 9, 2023
HASC Opening Remarks by Gen. James Dickinson Mar. 8, 2023
SASC Opening Remarks by Gen. James Dickinson Mar. 9, 2023
EXCERPTS FROM HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE TESTIMONY Mar. 8-9, 2023
U.S. Space Command commander Gen. James Dickinson on readiness: “Within two years we achieved initial operational capability … we are on a very solid path to achieve full operational capability very soon … when I look at what we've done over the last three and a half years, in terms of identifying requirements to the to the Department, it has gone very well. We have deliberately and thoughtfully provided requirements to the Department and the Department is in fact, giving us those resources … I look very hard at space domain awareness… The second part of that is leveraging commercial companies that want to participate with capabilities that they build themselves and provide that data to us. So through integration of non-traditional sensors as well as commercial sensors we are getting better at space domain awareness. But as the congestion in space continues to grow, we will need better capabilities.”
U.S. Space Command commander Gen. James Dickinson on the threat posed by China in space: “If you just look at the sheer number of launches, space launches that they do in a year. That is a statistic that most people don't know. So I'll give you a statistic there. So in 2022, last year, there were 186 space launches of those 64 were Chinese. The US was 87. They were at 64. So just putting things on orbit, whatever they may be, they have they have rounded out their equivalent of our GPS satellite network. So they have accurate position navigation and timing capabilities worldwide. If you look at the number, just the sheer number of satellites that are in orbit and what their what their intent, what their intended use is everything from ISR satellites, to communication satellites to PNT satellites, so they are moving in a direction where they want to be appear to US in terms of capabilities in space. But, we are still the best in space. What we need is to make sure the gap does not close and that we continue to keep the gap or increase it.”
U.S. Space Command commander Gen. James Dickinson on an over-classification: “So over classification is a challenge within the within the Department right now the one that we are aggressively working in looking at refining, if you will, to make sure that we can start bringing systems and capabilities to a lower classification level so that we can optimize their employment as well as training of the operators and the forces that they support. So, in other words, the classification we look across those and are revisiting those, those documents those capabilities to see whether or not we can pull them down to a lower classification level. This also allows us to do more integration, better integration with our allies and partners.”
U.S. Space Command commander Gen. James Dickinson on mega-constellations: “As we go to the future, the Department is looking very closely at doing mega constellations, if you will, similar to what we've seen with some of the commercial companies here in the United States where we have 1000s of satellites on orbit, the resiliency there is very good in terms of 1000s of satellites, not knowing which satellite does necessarily what function or the ability of that network to self-heal itself. If you lose two or three or four of them. This this type of resiliency actually causes some of our adversaries to pause because it's very difficult to defeat something like that or even degrade it. So that's where we're going in the future. And that's exactly what we need to be doing.”