Acknowledging that melding military organizations to create a more unified aerospace force is a tough assignment, DeKok said "this is not a hostile takeover. This is a merger of the willing".

"We are mindful of the fact that people are going to judge us not by what we say, but what we do in this process," DeKok said. This new organization will allow the U.S. Air Force to be a better steward of all of the services’ requirements, along with the needs of the National Reconnaissance Office, in establishing a more coherent and better focused national security space program, he said.

Retired General, R. Fogleman, former Air Force Chief of Staff, likened the growth of military space power today to the evolution of air power that began in the early 1920s. He urged that senior leaders need to step up to new ideas, even though money to fund such projects is currently in short supply.

Retired General Thomas Moorman, now Vice President of Booz-Allen & Hamilton in McLean, Virginia, underscored the worrisome trend in America’s aerospace industrial base. That base has been "financially stressed" and somewhat crippled by mergers and too much of a focus, for the most part, on evolutionary, rather than revolutionary technology development, he said.

Government investment is required to maintain a future technology supply and to spur innovation, Moorman said. For the government’s part, being a more reliable customer of space products is critical. Moreover, the government should increase space research and development and focus on those critical technologies unique to national security, he said.

Moorman said that there is good news to report in the last year. Numbers of steps are underway to develop a new relationship between government, academia and the commercial industry.

At the Bush White House level, Moorman said that space issues are being handled through a policy coordinating committee for space. "This is to improve the overall government awareness and coordination of space issues, by a standing policy body rather than dealing with them on an ad hoc basis" as was done under the Clinton Administration, he said.

This White House committee is made up of 10 subcommittees that deal with such topics as space transportation, export controls, as well as the health of the nation’s space industrial base. It is this group that will likely hammer out the first drafts of the Bush national space policy, Moorman said.

Moorman said that the United States must address how best to keep the technological edge in space for security purposes. Maintaining an edge over foreign commercial competitors, as well as America’s military competitors, is exceedingly important, he said.