2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Guardian Development: Officer, Enlisted, and Civilians
September 18, 2024
The “Guardian Development: Officer, Enlisted, and Civilians” panel at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Katharine Kelley, deputy chief of space operations for human capital at the U.S. Space Force; Brett Funck, director of force development, USSF; Brig. Gen. Matthew Cantore, deputy commander of Space Training and Readiness Command; Chief Master Sgt. Karmann-Monique Pogue, senior enlisted leader of Space Training and Readiness Command; and Christina Parrett, director of civilian policy and programs at the U.S. Space Force. The panel, held on September 18, was moderated by Charles Galbreath, senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence. Watch the video below:
Galbreath:
All right. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’m Charles Charles Galbreath, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute’s Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence. Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon on a very important panel on Guardian development, and congratulations to you all for surviving airspace and cyber day three after lunch. You picked a good one to attend.
The Space Force is approaching its fifth birthday, and of course, having a skilled, adaptable, and mission-ready workforce is essential to the success of the Space Force. That came across loud and clear yesterday with General Saltzman’s comments as well as Chief Bentivegna. The officers, enlisted, and civilians are the backbone of our space capabilities. Their development is crucial to maintaining our edge of the war-fighting domain, and I know as a former Guardian, although you’re always a Guardian.
Karmann-Monique Pogue, Senior Enlisted Leader, Space Training and Readiness Command:
Always a Guardian.
Galbreath:
Always a Guardian. As a former uniform-wearing Guardian, I know that we ask a lot of our men and women who are still doing it. Whether they wear a suit or an enlisted uniform or an officer uniform, we ask a lot of them, and that pace has only picked up since I retired.
How do we make sure that we integrate the development of those Guardians into their already busy schedule? Well, today to help us work through some of those issues and the way that the Space Force is getting after the development of Guardians, we have a very distinguished panel to guide us through this discussion.
First, we have Brigadier General Matthew Cantore. He’s the deputy commander of Space Training and Readiness Command or STARCOM. Brigadier General Cantore is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy. He has a master’s degree. He graduated in space operations. He’s a master space operations officer and has commanded the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron, 21st Operations Group, and Space Delta II.
We’re also glad to be joined by Chief Master Sergeant Karmann-Monique Pogue. Thanks for stacking the audience. Chief Pogue’s background includes numerous space operations positions providing space-based theater missile warning, space electronic warfare, ground-based missile warning, and space domain awareness operations.
Next, we’re pleased at the end there to be joined by Chris Parrett, director of civilian personnel. All right. Director of civilian policy and programs for the US Space Force. Chris joined the Space Force in July of 2020. Same time I did. OG. As the first director of civilian policy and programs.
In this role, she was responsible for civilian human resource policies and programs for the Space Force. As a career civilian, Chris has the unique distinction of also having worked with the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and OSD, so she’s got the good, the bad, and the ugly of all that and can help make the Space Force be the best possible.
Speaking of helping to make the Space Force best possible, we’re also pleased to have with us Brett Funck, the director of space force development for US Space Force. Brett is a retired brigadier general in the Army who served in various leadership and staff positions, including combat. Since transitioning to civilian service, he has been focusing on coaching and talent management to help others achieve their full potential.
Thank you all for joining us today for this discussion. Let’s dive in. The space domain is rapidly changing. New threats and technologies are emerging every day. Brett, for you, what strategies are being considered to adapt the roles and responsibilities of our enlisted officer and civilians to the emerging threats and technologies that are available?
Funck:
Yeah. Thanks very much. I appreciate the question and appreciate being here. I would first start with, and I’m going to try and weave in some of the conversation and comments that both the CSO and the CMS have said yesterday. First I would say in terms of how we’re looking at this from a strategy standpoint and also how we’re looking at this from a concept standpoint, start in my own words, start with the red pen.
Look at what the threat would dictate that where we need to be. Understand that the operational environment has changed. What are they doing? What are their actions that could be used, that they could be, if you will, testing out today in the GPC environment? What is that and are we able to see that? Are we able to react to that? Are we developed for that?
Then I would take the next step, which is look at ourselves. How are we shaped? How are we formed? If we heard what the CSO was mentioning was what we were is not necessarily what we need to be. Again, there’s some deep thought going into that to figure out what are the gaps? What were we purpose built for back in the day? What do we need to be purpose built for today for GPC?
When you look at that, I would take it to the next step and say the CSO has provided that guidance, and he’s provided that guidance for officers, enlisted, and civilians really in his OEC memo, which outlines roles and responsibilities, but also expectations of officers, enlisted, and civilians. My lead planners, my commanders, really the ones that are thinking through the hard decisions, the resourcing actions, how to plan operations, how to operate in a joint environment.
That’s my officers. My deep technical experts that have the ability to think long and be actually my weapons operators. That’s my enlisted. Then you think through my civilians. There’s those that have expert education, but there’s also those that have what I would call sustainability in positions.
They have experience, but they’re also able to be able there to be continuity through multiple moves of other Guardians that could potentially be there through multiple PCS cycles. It’s in concert. Each one of those has to be developed to meet what the red pen is dictating at this point in time.
Galbreath:
Really, it’s a threat driven approach and leveraging the skills and unique attributes of each of the categories of Guardians.
Funck:
Yes.
Galbreath:
Great. Thank you very much. In a domain that is as demanding as space, continuous education is critical. General Cantore, how does the Space Force ensure that all Guardians, officer, enlisted, and civilian receive the necessary training and professional development to maintain their technical and leadership skills?
Cantore:
Well, thanks, Charles. I want to thank AFA as well for hosting this forum. This is great to see so many Guardians, but this is more than just Guardians. This is the entire family, the Guardians and the airmen together as well as all the contractors, the industry, academia, and our allies that are all here today.
We’re building something really special and something that I think is worthy of the service that we’re developing. I wanted to talk first about Guardians and even the definition of Guardians. The fact that we refer to Guardians as being inclusive of officers, enlisted, and civilians should be absolutely something we pay attention to.
We think of our Guardian civilians just as much a member of the family as we do those in uniform, and I think that goes into all the ways we’re designing our ways going forward for training and education. Certainly as we bring in members into the Guardian family, we have to think about how do we get them baselined. How do we get them so that they also believe the core values as well as the Guardian spirit and those things that we want to instill and embody as a service going forward?
For our officers, we certainly are working together with our different accession sources, whether it’s the Air Force Academy, ROTC, as well as OTS. Those organizations together are working to ensure that we have a common set of requirements so that when we have graduated second lieutenants, they’re part of the Guardian family and they understand those values.
We’re working with our enlisted members that go through the basic military training, and I want to thank AETC. We have a tremendous partnership going with AETC and Second Air Force for basic military training. We’re going to continue to evolve and adapt that so it adds more aspects of a Guardian focused experience, but that partnership has been successful and will be successful into the future.
Then beyond that, our civilians as well. We realize that we don’t just bring in civilians through the hiring systems. We have to then find a way to baseline them as well. We’re looking at ways to acclimate them as part of this one family. As we bring our members into the family, we then have to get them the necessary skills and education throughout their careers.
We want to weave those in throughout an officer, enlisted, and a civilian’s career so that they get a comprehensive experience and grow throughout their time in the service. One of the things I’d like to think about is who are we developing? Today, those folks that are coming in today, they’re going to be the squadron commanders in 15 years.
They’re going to be the SELs of our combat detachments and our combat squadrons that will be warfighting in 15 years. Our civilians now that come in, many of them will be the senior future SESs or NH-04s of the service leading and directing activities for the service.
We certainly are thinking about today and how we mold today’s new members of the Guardian family into those future leaders, and we’re doing that via a variety of means. The officer training course, which we’ll talk more about in a little bit, is one of our initiatives for the officers. Bringing them in with a common experience and then a common outflow into operations, which will then set a baseline.
Our enlisted skills training is going through a study and determining how we’re going to adapt that to get after the principles in the officer, enlisted, and civilian memo, and then our civilians as well. Again, I mentioned that civilian acclamation course. We have a pilot about to kick off here at the end of October, which is then going to give us back valuable insight into the information, the skills, the training. What do we need to really hone our team?
Then even beyond that, we know we have to bring in opportunities for advanced academic degrees. We need to bring in certificate opportunities, internships, opportunities to focus with industry and academia. We’re working on the ways that we’re going to weave those together throughout a Guardian’s career so they’re able to have access to those experiences.
Galbreath:
That’s great. Very forward looking. As opposed to what do I need today, you’re thinking about what am I going to need in 15, 20 years.
Cantore:
Absolutely. There’s no way you can focus on the now. You have to think about the service we’re building, and even as the threat is here, we have to be aware of that while thinking about the service that we’re building long term.
Galbreath:
Excellent. Thank you. Chief Pogue, thanks for being digitally dominant, first of all.
Pogue:
I’m an iPad kid.
Galbreath:
Yeah. Excellent.
Pogue:
I bring it everywhere I go.
Galbreath:
Each service places unique requirements on its enlisted force, and as we heard yesterday, really the Space Force is looking for the enlisted corps to be the front line warfighters for the Space Force. It sounds like you also need to have incredible technical depth as an enlisted member as well. The technical demands that we’re asking for the enlisted Guardians is going to be immense. How does the Space Force prepare its enlisted personnel to ensure that these challenges are met through training and education?
Pogue:
Thanks for that question, Charles. Right. That’s something in STARCOM we’re trying to figure out. I want to take a minute to thank you and to thank AFA for putting this panel together to give us a platform to talk about what we’re doing in the Space Force and how we’re getting after it.
For the representation of what the Space Force collectively is made up of, General Cantore hit the nail on the head. Our officer, our civilian, and our enlisted Guardian teammates. We don’t go after this in stovepipes or in silos. This panel really is about developing people, and STARCOM has the ultimate responsibility to ensure the technical and the space mastery of every Guardian, because the Space Force starts with STARCOM.
It’s irrefutable, teammates in this room. It starts with our command from those accession sources to basic military training. One of the ways we start with that is in a connection point. I saw a teammate here in the audience. I had the unique opportunity a couple of weeks ago, we have a patching ceremony, to deliver a patch to Master Sergeant Select Karen in here, who is going to be joining a Space Force organization here shortly. He’s currently in an awesome Air Force organization, but right now we connect.
It’s just a symbol of that connection point and it’s a reminder of what we’re asking our Guardians to get after. But as far as the development in that technical mastery for our enlisted corps into being the primary warfighter, we got to relook at how, from my experiences over the last 25 years, how we build the force of the future.
It’s not an easy lift and we have to think outside the box in that. For now, we cannot get after that alone. We own those spaces right now, the 533rd, and where we’re training our five sierras, our space systems operators, and in partnership with Second Air Force where we can get after technical training transformation with our cyber operators and our intel, our intelligence operations professionals.
What does it mean? Because the threat is the same for the DAF. It’s the same for all of us. The Secretary of the Air Force talked about that. It is the PRC. How do we get after that in a technical realm that’s going to suit the needs of not only the Air Force, but our service? Where do we delve off into two different forms to then come back together? Because we’re not going to go into the fight alone, so we need to be thinking about that.
We also need to be thinking about how can we leverage new ways, new methodologies, new taxonomies of learning, and the experiences our Guardians need to prepare, because there’s a countdown clock going on right now. As much as we want to put the new hotness, the new Gucci widgets into those formations, we’re still going to go to war today, teammates, with what we have at hand.
To have you better prepared for what you have in your formations right now to defeat and deter the enemy, that’s what I need you to be thinking about right now. That’s how STARCOM is going to continue to help prepare you through Flashpoint as we get after those SPAFORGEN requirements.
It is in the partnerships that we have with Space Operations Command and working together to prepare the force. I think that’s how our enlisted force is going to own that, not only in the technical mastery, but in leadership. Our junior enlisted, our technical sergeants and our master sergeants are going to be asked to do things I was never asked to do, and that makes me excited for the future force.
Galbreath:
That sounds wonderful and it resonates with what General Saltzman said yesterday. We can’t win the future fight by doing what we’ve done in the past.
Pogue:
No. Our experiences of yesterday will not shape the force of the future, and we need to be cognizant of that. For those of us that have had experience in what we’ve done, we need to be asking the most junior Guardians in our formation how they’re thinking, what they need and how they feel we can influence and shape their experience in our service.
Galbreath:
Thank you. Chris, it’s natural as a military service for us to be focusing a lot on officers and enlisted, but the Space Force is unique in that over a third of its total personnel are civilians. How is the Space Force leveraging this expertise? That’s higher. Over a third. It’s higher than the one quarter average for the DOD, just to put that in some perspective. What is the Space Force doing to ensure civilians receive the professional development that they need when there’s so many of them?
Parrett:
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. That’s not going to work. Well, okay then. You hit on that with over a third, and I think that is a thing that we really need to key in on is that we’re not only a third of the workforce, that we’re a third of the smallest of the services.
You heard General Cantore, you heard chief talking about how we look at the workforce and figuring out what the workforce requirements are first, and then making sure that the civilians are included in that as well. It gets easy to talk about the future, but we have to remember that we have a workforce now that still needs that training, that still needs to be able to plug into what we have available to us.
Honestly, that can get a little overwhelming, because there is quite a bit out there. What do we need to actually do? Right now, the Air Force has been a really great partner for the last couple of years in having us participate in the civilian development education process.
It’s an annual requirement or an annual application process to different trainings, whether it be for a master’s degree or for leadership training to take one of the PME slots as well. We can compete in that, but that is Air Force and DAF focused and it doesn’t necessarily meet the civilian requirements and needs for the service to develop a space-centric mindset and leadership.
I’d say we continue to plug into the CDE process while we figure out what we need for space, but there’s three things that we’re doing right now that I think are pretty neat for civilians that we’ve just started now testing out. The first one is enlisted PME offered civilian slots this year to bring them in so that we’re educating and acclimating from the enlisted level.
We’re having conversations about how we increase allocations for space-specific civilians at JHU, at Johns Hopkins for our ILE and SLE. Then our third one, which I think just is really great that we’ve already, we started last year with a cohort and sending space-specific cohort to the executive leadership seminar down at UNC.
The CDE process is fantastic. It also offers that course, but there would maybe be one Guardian down there in that course filled with airmen working by themselves to figure out space problems. Then what we did last year, STARCOM sent a cohort, and then this year in August, we got to send a space-wide cohort.
I got to be part of that and to watch 25 civilian Guardians working on civilian problems together and bringing that leadership, that connection. That is what we need to be doing for ourselves to help create that unity, that cohort for space. Then STARCOM this month went ahead and sent both an officer, I’m sorry, a military and a civilian cohort to be able to mix training there as well.
I really like how we’re taking space focus and making sure our folks are getting trained. The important thing is that our leadership is telling us that we need to go do this and signaling that we need to make that time to go do it and that opportunity there.
Galbreath:
Yeah, absolutely. Support from the top is crucial for the success. Awesome. The space Force is charting new territories. We talked about the need to do things a little differently. Brett, can you give us a snapshot of some of the emerging career paths and progression milestones to look for for Guardians, officer Guardians in particular?
Funck:
Yeah, sure. I’m just going to kind of riff on a couple different things here quick and I’m going to get to that as well. Even talking with what Chris just highlighted in there, it’s the aspect of what can our civilian Guardians do to complement our uniformed Guardians?
There’s roles and capacity so that we focus those in uniform specifically on that skillset, because obviously there’s certain roles that can be done, but also that civilian position, that civilian Guardian can handle and can be that continuity. The other part that I would say on the enlisted side is really defining what is deep technical expertise and really understanding what that is and where that is over time, because that takes time.
Charles, to your one question really kind of upfront, a lot of this is going to take patience. It’s going to have to evolve over time. Really, we’re going to have to study the output of our own education and development programs longitudinally over years to figure out this is the adjustment we made and this was good, this was bad, because probably it’s safe to assume that we won’t get everything right and we’re going to have to make adjustments.
When we make an adjustment on the officer side, it may have an impact on the enlisted side and it may have an impact on the civilian side and we may have to teach them different principles and leadership in there. All these things are interconnected and we have to look at it that way as to if I turn one dial, it may have an impact and I’ve got to understand that and we have to have a little bit of patience in time.
To the question where I’d go on this is it’s a very different approach and it’s new. It’s novel. It’s the aspect of bringing all of our officers in and not having a separate stovepipe and going,” Hey, we’re going to do this thing called the officer training course where we’re going to learn about being a Guardian first and then a specialist second.”
Let me understand the Space force. Let me understand the capabilities that talk cyber, that talk space operations, that talk intelligence, that talk force modernization. But then what we really expect the officer to understand is this is how this whole thing comes together.
This is the ability to weave these things and say, “Yes. I’m trained as a space officer, but I’m serving in an intelligence billet.” How does that impact an ops, because ops and intel last time I checked are usually pretty tied. Sometimes your best intel officers tend to have a background in operations as well.
Why not educate and train that way? The last piece I’d say on this really is kind of three things. When we’re looking at this development, there’s the education aspect. You educate. Educate for uncertainty, and if we have a common assumption in terms of what the GPC threat is, there will be uncertainty, so we educate for that so it can be recognized.
Then you train for the certainty, because we know that certain things are going to happen. We know that we have to be able to react to this action based off of this, so it’s an action, reaction, counteraction. That’s a training thing. That’s repetition. That’s something that can turn into some muscle memory.
Then the last one I’d say is experience. Experience. What does it give us? It gives us exposure. It gives us expertise. It allows us to then take that next level of this and say, “Now integrate all those three things between our education, our training, and our exposure to get to that experience and expertise.”
Now you’re ready to move to the next level of really putting it all together at maybe the joint level. But that’s an approach that is very different as to how that would be handled. From a career path standpoint, the officer will graduate out of OTC and will go into an operational assignment, and it doesn’t mandate that that officer has to serve in that next path.
Let’s just say they’re in intel. They don’t necessarily have to go down that path. There’s options. There’s, I would call either permeability or fluidity where you could move between based off of what the threat would dictate, but also based off of what the space force needs, what the officer wants to do, and what potentially the officer is good at doing.
That same approach can be looked at on the enlisted side as well as on the civilian Guardian side, because there can be more expertise path down the enlisted and civilian side depending on what they’re doing. But that same approach can be seen across all three paths.
Galbreath:
It sounds like a common, not to use an old term, but AFSC. A common specialty code for officers now is what you’re describing.
Funck:
There could be on that. What we’re doing right now is we’re studying, we’re analyzing, and we’re coming back to say, “This is a way to get to a common SFSC.” When we go to the common, back to senior leaders making decisions, here’s what you get, here’s what you don’t get.
Risks. Puts and takes, risks, calculations, vulnerabilities, whatever those may be so that it goes back to a fully informed data delivered decision that we understand how we do that. Obviously, take some changes and some things in there to do that.
Pogue:
Mr. Funck, I think that balances the approach we’ve taken, and something CMSSF said yesterday. The Guardians have a voice, and that goes back to the approaches we have and the deliberate talent management. The repeated questions we ask at our E7, E8, and E9 boards.
What has the Guardian done and what can the Guardian do? What are the needs of the Guardian and their loved ones? Then what are the needs of the space force? Taking that approach to the experiences, the skillsets and the opportunities that the Guardian has been challenged with and now committed to, to then placing that right Guardian at the right time to get after the right problem set.
Whether it’s a problem, whether it’s leading Guardians or taking on a new challenge in a force as small as we have to have the flexibility to be able to reiterate, pivot, and get it right. We’re not stuck to approach this in a way. It’s pretty incredible to know that the future of the force has this and this is the approach we’re taking. Y’all don’t know. It’s pretty incredible. I’m excited.
Galbreath:
It is exciting. Exciting. General Cantore, Brett laid out some of the officer training course. Of course, we heard a little bit about that yesterday. How does this fit into the overall training pipeline, and can you illuminate a little bit more on some of the enlisted or civilian options that might be coming down the pipe?
Cantore:
Sure. We’re in the midst of a new start. On September the 3rd, we started a new era where we had the officer training course commence out at Peterson. That was the first time we changed the way we had been doing the course where it had been at Vandenberg, and previously we would have separate tracks for space operations, intelligence operations, and cyber operations.
Now, as we go forward, we realize that for great power competition, we want to re-baseline and reset the experience all Guardian officers have going forward. We think that’s going to help us. Again, you have those different accession sources, but also as we look to the future and we work to establish our culture, we want to have a culture where operations and warfighting is at the core of everything we do.
With that, we executed this new course. We have the first 82 second lieutenants out there at Peterson. We took the 319th Combat Training Squadron and their reserve associate partner, and we transformed them. They’re now the host of that course and we’re executing it out of the Mormon building or the space education training complex there at Peterson.
Why did we choose that facility and that unit? It made sense largely from a location standpoint. The preponderance of ops units to give folks an opportunity to see space ops, intel, and cyber ops in action is in the Colorado Springs area. This was a chance for us to move them closer to that and then we wanted to leverage that opportunity throughout.
As we embark upon this new course, we’re starting with the three different disciplines all integrated together. We’re doing space ops first, followed by intel ops, followed by cyber ops third. In between each one we’re going to do what was called an internship, but really it’s an ops experience where the young lieutenants will have a chance to go out into the field to interact with operators and Guardians that are doing those missions and come back with a great appreciation for how those missions are, what it’s like to be on those crews, and then ask harder questions.
We’re also taking all of the advanced space ops material as well as advanced tradecraft for both intel and cyber and weaving that into the course. Things that you used to not be exposed to until your time as an NCO or as a CGO, we’re bringing that early into the Guardian’s experience.
Then as we go forward, we’re also bringing in an opportunity to talk about force modernization and then joint planning and the introduction to those two very important concepts. But graduating from the course, we want to have a common baseline. We want our young Guardian officers who are going to be the lead planners and leaders for the Space force, we want them to be able to have that opportunity.
Much like a Marine Corps, every member of the Marine Corps is a rifleman first. Every member of the Space Force is going to be a warfighter first and have an ops experience at the core of their time before they then branch and then move into other areas, whether that’s in engineering, force modernization, or in one of the other ops disciplines.
We want to make sure that that becomes the core of what we do with our officer corps. It’s a shift. As said, we’re fully aware that this is version 1.0. You may say it’s version 0.1, but we’re starting here and then we’re going to continue to iterate. We’re going to watch this cohort as they continue throughout their career, and then we will iterate and make adjustments as time.
There’s certainly other ways you could do this force, but this was the one that made the most sense at the timing needed. Then as we go forward, we’ll continue with things such as the revamp to enlisted skills training, and then continue to look at what do we need for our civilian courses so that we can take those Guardians that are enlisted as well as civilians, give them the skillset going forward. We have not forgotten of those. That’s just an order and sequencing of priority at this time as we go forward.
Galbreath:
Yeah. As you said, you’re going to constantly evolve and learn from the process, because if you don’t continually adapt, you’ll become obsolete pretty quick.
Brig. Gen. Matthew Cantore:
Absolutely.
Galbreath:
Thanks for that. Chris, I’m going to double up a couple of questions for you. Circling back on the civilian professional development, you talked about a couple of opportunities, but can you elaborate a little bit more on some of the opportunities to maintain and enhance technical expertise, and what sort of skills is the Space Force looking for in its civilian? What does that mean for resource allocation?
Parrett:
Yeah. Thanks for that question. For the technical development, this gets a little bit more interesting as well, because again, we go back to that. It’s almost overwhelming, so it’s almost paralysis by too many choices. We have the opportunity to be able to do some technical training through self initiatives like digital university.
You can go online, do this for yourselves. There’s local and unit training, too. As your organization realizes what you need to do, I need to send you to this training, we have the flexibility to fill out an SF182 and get that funded and send individuals or groups to those trainings.
What I get more excited about as we do and flow from OTC and we figure out the enlisted and the civilian path is to then be able to get a little bit more directive and prescriptive on what those technical trainings are. We’ve got some tools that are available to us now, but that are in the pipeline to be able to be a little bit more directive.
I say that because right now there’s a common misconception that we just say that, “Oh, it’s all voluntary for the civilians.” What that’s translated to is the onus becomes onto the civilian to figure out the training. What we really need to start doing is getting more hands-on management for our civilians, that care and feeding of the civilians to be able to say, “Hey, we care about your career.”
That investment translates to job satisfaction. That job satisfaction translates to higher retention for us. You asked about the skills. Now, the skills, it’s interesting, because we talked about Guardian first, and General Cantore mentioned about this. We’re working on the name, but the space acclimation course that we’re doing for civilians.
We don’t bring in all of our civilians at an entry level. A lot of our civilians are recruited at a higher journeyman technical senior level, but they don’t come in necessarily with a space background. How do we get them spaced first so that they have that Guardian baseline to be able to come into an organization and understand the mission that they’re supporting?
This course that has been referenced is not just a day or two. This is a couple of weeks before you come into the organization so that you’re going to come in with an understanding of what the Space Force does. What we’re looking for quality wise, and I know CSO has mentioned it before and we’ve been talking about this.
We’re looking for leadership. We’re looking for those that are taking initiative. Those critical thinking skills and those communication skills. Those are the qualities that we’re looking for to go on top of the technical skills. It gets exciting, because we have a very finite pot. This is a very technical service, and so we’ve got a very finite pot of talent that we’re competing for with a lot of people. This helps us get really crystal clear on who we’re looking for when we’re both developing and recruiting.
Galbreath:
Great. Thank you very much. Chief, we talked earlier about the need for technical depth within our enlisted corps. As the enlisted grows in rank, the responsibilities shift a little bit, particularly for NCOs and senior NCOs. How do you balance the roles of technical specialists with leader and advisor within the Space force?
Pogue:
We build world-class enlisted Guardians. We’ve been challenged with that, and CMSSF highlighted this yesterday during his vision. In the officer, enlisted, and civilian roles and responsibilities, it states that NCOs need to have technical mastery of their mission area while senior NCOs need to be generalists.
That goes back into that operational relevancy for those of us that have those top rockers on here. It’s not just the HR things and pushing the decorations and doing those functions. It’s about being relevant, to be an advisor back to our senior leaders.
I got to highlight one of the ways we’ve gotten after that is with the Vosler Academy. We have reshaped the experience for our enlisted NCOs and senior NCOs. I’m looking at my notes, because I do not want to get wrong what our team has built. They stood down for about five months to reshape the curriculum, the training, and the experience that our enlisted Guardians are going to be challenged with.
They’ve instilled the critical analysis of information in shaping that for our NCOs to understand that. Ensuring we understand ethical leadership, conflict management, team motivation, and mission command. All the things that our NCOs have been asked to employ and operationalize in their SPAFORGEN model.
The things that I inherently didn’t do when I was a young NCO, this is what they’re being charged with right now. Under the fellowship model, they’re learning in Vosler, too. Those intermediate skills, decision making, the critical thinking skills, the leadership, being a space-minded warfighter.
Dovetailing what they’re learning and experiencing in SPOC to what we’re going to ask them to do as they continue in this ecosystem that we call the Space Force, and in their journey as they continue to earn more stripes and larger responsibilities. For our senior NCOs, it’s high level executive competencies.
We have such a small force, so our world-class E7s are going to be asked to do things that in other services some E8s and E9s are doing. We have to better prepare not only our enlisted force to be technically competent, but as well to be operationally and strategically relevant in what they’re saying, how they present themselves, and how we represent the Space Force.
Our Vosler Academy is getting after that, and here hopefully within the coming year, we’ll start that with our most junior Guardians, with our specialists and our sergeants. Infusing these principles that we have started with our NCO corps back to our most junior teammates, and I’m excited for what that means for our future force.
Galbreath:
That’s great. Thank you very much. You mentioned a countdown clock earlier. There’s a countdown clock I’m looking at as well here. Before we run out of time, I wanted to just ask everybody kind of a rapid-fire question. Chris, we’ll start with you and work our away and give General Cantore the last chance. But what do you see as the most critical aspect for Guardian development to ensure the Space Force’s continued success in the coming decades? A microphone that works.
The batteries are dying.
Galbreath:
The batteries are dying. There we go.
Parrett:
Batteries are alive. Two things. One thing I’m going to say is as a workforce, we really need to take a look at each other. We talk about being the smallest service, but you’ve just listened to all four of us talk about how OEC gets blended. Taking that back into the workplace and how are we talking and engaging with each other?
That is a development piece that we see and we will know that we’re stronger as a workforce when we’re doing that. For the civilian side of the house, I said this earlier, is that we need more hands-on management from leadership on where we’re sending our folks and making that time to take that training, to take that opportunity. We don’t bat an eye if our office or our enlisted folks are going to training for months at a time. We need to be investing the same whether it’s weeks or months for our civilians and making that time allocated.
Galbreath:
Awesome. Thank you. Brett?
Funck:
Yeah. I would just follow up on a very similar theme. People are more important than equipment. If we take again the assumption of I go to war or we go to war with what we have, focus on your people. If you get the what, meaning the people right, the why and the solution and everything else tends to work itself out.
Pogue:
Identity and understanding why we raised our right hand to be a part of this. Why we chose to be a part of this family. I say we wear two name tags on our uniform, a family name and a family name, and I’m so honored to share that family name with each and every one of my Guardian teammates in here. Trust me, if you don’t wear the uniform, I’m looking out for those Delta pins and those Guardian pins that you wear every single day, because it is an identity thing. I think if we understand who we are, we can solve the hard problems.
Cantore:
Before we finish, I did want to mention, STARCOM has two very important roles, and today we’ve been talking about the Guardian development role. Just as important is the warfighting readiness role. Those advanced tactics and training, the ranges and the aggressors, as well as the testing.
Those things are just as important to help us take our Guardians of all flavors and have them ready to be able to perform the mission. Certainly we need to pair the two mission sets. Not only do we need to develop our Guardians. We need to prepare them and ready them as warfighters.
Just because we didn’t talk a lot about that, that’s still very important. But I do want to answer your direct question. What is the most important? In my view, it’s culture. We need to establish a culture across the entire service. You can’t instill it on day one. You need to grow that, and we’re doing it from the beginning by going for our core values and as well as amplifying the Guardian spirit.
Galbreath:
Excellent. Thank you.
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