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Space Forces Indo-Pacific commander highlights importance of challenging space threats
Feb. 21, 2024
Commander of U.S. Space Forces Indo-Pacific Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, participated in an international senior-leader panel during the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Feb. 13.
The four-person panel, with more than 4,000 attendees, focused on the imperative of thwarting present and evolving air and space threats in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Space Force Guardians are there to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific, to uphold the rules-based international order,” Mastalir said. “Rules-based international order has underscored nearly 80 years of prosperity for every nation that chooses to participate.
Speaking on denying competitors’ space malign operations and campaigning for counterspace operations, Mastalir emphasized the need to work closely alongside U.S. allies and partners.
Mastalir was joined by U.S. Air Force Col. David J. Berkland, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces chief of staff; Japan Air Self Defense Force Col. Sugiyama Kimitoshi, Space Operations Group commander; and Republic of Korea Air Force Col. Jongseo Park, Air and Space attaché.
“I strongly believe that multilateral cooperation is really important and very effective, especially in the Indo-Pacific,” Kimitoshi said. “That’s how to get three countries to work together.”
Mastalir highlighted the importance of partner nations training together on a regular basis. He spoke about the recently completed exercise Keen Edge, an annual multi-national event in the Indo-Pacific emphasizing enhanced interoperability across all spectrums of warfare. He underpinned the value space superiority yields in a conflict and the ability to practice space operations in a major training exercise.
“The value of having these three nations represented here, exercising together, can’t be overstated,” Mastalir said. “When you actually go through the exercise, you start to understand where you are like-minded and what’s important to each sovereign nation and their respective defense forces.”
Mastalir also shed light on why the rules-based international order is essential to ensuring peace and stability and spotlighted how a free and open Indo-Pacific is not possible without the Space Force's efforts.
“Space superiority not only ensures the combined force has access to space capabilities, but also gives us the ability to deny the adversary the use of space capabilities to protect the combined force from space-enabled attack,” Mastalir said.
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3682011/space-forces-indo-pacific-commander-highlights-importance-of-challenging-space/
Remarks by Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman during the AFA Air Warfare Symposium’s Great Power Competition Senior Leader Panel
Feb. 20, 2024
[Applause]
Afternoon how’s everyone doing?
Batting fourth in this lineup is terrible. Like home run, home run, home run. Now the pressure on standing or the plate…sweating.
Orville thanks for everything. Thanks for all you've done for the Air and Space Forces. And for this Association - its tremendous.
I went to my first Air Force Association conference when I was a cadet in college.
And, I have no idea what was said on any of the stages even though I was in a lot of those sessions.
What I remember is the after parties the hospitality suites.
[Laughter]
So, just to tell you how long ago it was. I got adopted by the command chiefs of SAC, TAC, MAC, ATC, and they shepherded me around to all of the hospitality suites and I think I learned more about the Air Force in those evening events with them than I did in the three and a half years in ROTC.
But like I said, I don't remember much of what happened on the stage.
So, I'm a little daunted here by addressing seems like 6,000 people knowing that they're more excited about getting to the after parties then maybe listening to me as their last speaker today.
cont.
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3680973/remarks-by-chief-of-space-operations-general-chance-saltzman-during-the-afa-air/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13105301/anna-paulina-luna-believes-UFOs-not-human-origin.html
https://youtu.be/klP13AJz4_E?si=XNHLgn7bzea7jkW4
Florida Congresswoman says she 'absolutely believes' UFOs are 'not of human origin' - after private briefings by military
UPDATED: 16:15 EST, 20 February 2024
A Florida Congresswoman says she believes that some of the UFO sightings that have made headlines in recent years are 'of non-human origin' and possibly 'inter-dimensional beings.'
Rep Anna Paulina Luna is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has been investigating claims about UFOs and carrying out historic hearings with military whistleblowers.
She revealed to The Grant Mitt Podcast this week that after a classified meeting with Air Force whistleblowers, she 'absolutely believes' that the aircrafts they and others have described are 'of non-human origin.'
Luna also claimed that at that same meeting she was 'men-in-blacked,' first by officials from the Pentagon who attempted to cancel the visit, and then by CIA agents who were inexplicably shadowing her meeting with the Air Force personnel.
Her phrase referred to the pop-culture conspiracy-theory image of government agents in black suits, who are sent to keep people quiet about UFO sightings.
'Being a member of Oversight, we follow up with whistleblowers, and we also can conduct our own investigations,' she told Mitterlehner.
In the course of one of these investigations, she said, Luna and two other US representatives went to Eglin Air Force Base, on the Florida panhandle, where they met with one such whistleblower.
The other two representatives who came along on the visit were Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who is also a member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
She came away from that visit with strong conclusions:
'I can tell you, based on my investigations, not in a classified setting, that I absolutely believe that there is things that are advanced technologies not of human origin,' she told Mitterlehner.
Her view is increasingly shared among lawmakers and the American public, as a series of high-profile disclosures and hearings in the last few years have brought UFOs out of the conspiracy theory realm and into the arena of political debate.
Luna, Gaetz, and others have pressed the Pentagon to declassify material related to UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena).
Pilots at Eglin had come forward to Representative Gaetz's office to say that the Air Force was covering up UAP activity, and that Congress needed to look into it.
'We coordinated the meeting,' Luna said. 'The Pentagon tried to initially cancel the first one. We got it back on the books. We show up there, and we get in, and the base commander tried to basically tell us that we didn't have authorized clearance to look into and speak to some of the witnesses.
'You don't tell Congress that we don't have the authorized clearance,' she said, 'especially members of House Armed Services, Oversight, and Judiciary.'
So she had it out with the base commander, Luna said. And in the middle of the meeting, he took off on leave, 'Which never happens with a delegation going to a military base,' she added.
There were also attendees at the meeting who Luna was 'pretty sure' were from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), an unusual occurrence.
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'Why would a intelligence agency need to be there on a meeting for whistleblowers?' she asked.
Luna also spoke about the congressional hearing from July 2023, where whistleblower David Grusch outlined under oath how the US government has been aware of UFOs for nearly a century and has been misinforming the public about them.
That hearing, which followed Luna's visit to Eglin, contained information she found 'particularly alarming,' because of the allegations that people may have been murdered to keep the UFO story secret.
'Have you received classified information?' Mitterlehner asked Luna.
'Yeah, but I can't talk about that,' she replied
When asked about whether she had believed in aliens before she became a member of congress, Luna corrected the record.
'I wouldn't call them aliens,' she said. 'I really like what Grusch calls them: He says that they're inter-dimensional beings, and he's very specific about that.'
What this means, Luna clarified, was that 'they're not necessarily a biological entity from another planet per se.'
The case she alluded to was likely the one from last year, in which Gaetz had described seeing footage of 'an orb' hanging over the Gulf of Mexico, moving in a way that was 'not of any human capability.'
He saw the footage during a visit to Eglin AFB, where Air Force pilots described a diamond formation of aircrafts that they saw on radar.
'One of the pilots goes to check out that diamond formation and sees a large, floating, what I can only describe as an orb,' he said at the time. 'Again, like I said, not of any human capability that I'm aware of.'
She talked, too, about what a huge change the country has experienced in recent years, away from the stigma that used to be attached to talking about extraterrestrial beings or UFOs.
'When I was stationed at Portland Air Guard unit a number of years ago, I remember there was a incident that occurred, and the pilots kind of back and I asked one of them what he thought it was, and he couldn't really talk about it,' she recounted. 'He didn't want to because the stigma that the military has is that you're crazy.
'But we're seeing that with, especially technology that we have, even your iPhone for example, you can record things and it's not going to be classified.'
'We hope that more people come forward,' she added.
Luna also noted how she is heartened by the bipartisan push for transparency on the topic, which makes it ironic that other government officials or offices seem to be blocking her and her colleagues' efforts to learn what is happening with UAPs.
'If congress is writing the bills to fund these programs, yet we don't have authorized access and oversight into it, then that's not necessarily something that happens in a free country, right?' she said. 'So we continue to push.'
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