kendall_symposiumSPACE SYMPOSIUM: Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall used a Tuesday speech to send up a smoke signal to the Space Force about where the new service should be putting its focus: supporting the Joint Force and US allies, rather than “independent warfighting.”

Ever since the creation of the Space Force was proposed, the military space community has been broken into competing philosophical camps about whether the Space Force’s raison d’etre should be projecting power in the heavens — all the way out to cislunar space, the Moon and beyond — including with offensive weapons, or the traditional support functions that were the hallmark of military space until now.

Kendall’s remarks at the Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium — which came as a surprise to many, including several Space Force officers here — makes it clear that he comes down in the latter camp.

“Space is a warfighting domain,” Kendall told the Symposium audience. At the same time, he stressed that the role of space “derives from the value of the services to the rest of the joint and combined force that are provided from space, and the devastating effect that loss of control of space would have on terrestrial forces, their ability to survive and perform their missions.”

“Ultimately, the success of the Space Force will be determined by how our contribution to the joint and combined team fight is valued by other members of the team,” he elaborated. “They need us; we need to help them understand that fact. We won’t achieve that goal if we focus too much on the separateness and independence of space as independent warfighting domain.”

After his speech, Kendall told reporters that his comments have to be taken with “nuance,” including stressing that the Space Force does have an important mission in providing capabilities to protect US satellites. But he also did not shy away from the position he travelled to the heart of the military space community to deliver: he told reporters bluntly that he was “trying to send a message to the Space Force” about its future role.

Space is “the great enabler,” he told reporters, because “without space nothing happens operationally.”

“The fundamental idea is that the rest of the joint force and the combined force with our allies depends upon our capability to do what we need to do from a mission perspective in space,” he elaborated. “And half of that is giving services — surveillance, missile warning, communications, position, navigation and timing, etc. — to our forces, and also denying, in particular targeting by [adversary] forces, by their space assets.”

Asked by Breaking Defense how his direction-setting might affect future investment, Kendall listed off a handful of mission sets that largely already are in the crosshairs of the Space Warfighting Analysis Center (SWAC) in its effort to develop new “force designs” to drive acquisition, starting with missile warning/tracking and satellite communications.

“We’ve talked a lot about our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, particularly operationally responsive capability in that regard, but that would be very high on the priority list,” he added. Also high on the list is assured PNT [positioning, navigation and timing] so that we have those services that support our operational forces.”

Lastly, Kendall added space domain awareness to the list, after Space Force chief Gen. Raymond piped up to prompt him. (By contrast, US Space Command head Gen. Jim Dickinson in his media briefing here placed space domain awareness at the top of his list of priorities, including for new commercial capabilities.)