Lt. Gen. Jay Raymond, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for operations, is direct when asked what an increasingly contested environment means for nationals security satellites.

“When aircraft started shooting down other aircraft, we didn’t stop flying planes,” he said. “The same is true for the space domain. We have got to be able to operate.”

In a wide-ranging interview with SpaceNews, Raymond, the former commander of the 14th Air Force, discussed how the Air Force is using space in its day-to-day operations, how the use of space is evolving with emerging threats from China and Russia, and how the 2014 Schriever War Game convinced him the “void was loud and clear” and led him to make a series of changes at the Joint Space Operations Center.

This video presentation was made possible through support from AGI.ComSpOC_Logo

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Mike Gruss covers military space issues, including the U.S. Air Force and Missile Defense Agency, for SpaceNews. He is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.