Gen. Paul Selva, head of Air Mobility Command, offered reporters an apt analogy to the current sequester crisis during his press conference on Thursday at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla. Likening the situation to the recent Super Bowl, Selva said: “In 34 seconds, the lights are going to go out. And 34 minutes from now, the lights are going to come back on. But the two teams that came back on the field, while they were wearing the same uniforms, had the same names, were running the same plays, were not the same players. The momentum in that game shifted. And it took nearly a quarter for the momentum to return to where it was when the half started. So, as we negotiate the next several months, if the fiscal uncertainty becomes fiscal reality, and I have to make decisions like grounding parts of the fleet . . . curtailing training . . . furloughing civilians to save money, those all induce a level of uncertainty that changes the momentum of who we are.”
The White House announced its United States Space Priorities Framework in a document released concurrently with Vice President Kamala Harris' first National Space Council meeting. Listed among five U.S. priorities is to “defend its national security interests from the growing scope and scale of space and counterspace threats.”