2024 Air, Space & Cyber: ‘Manning the Space Force’: A New Model

The “Manning the Space Force: A New Model” panel at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Katharine Kelley, deputy chief of space operations for human capital; Brig. Gen. Nathan D. Yates, mobilization assistant to the deputy chief of space operations for operations, cyber, and nuclear; and Chief Master Sgt. Todd Scott, senior advisor to the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force. The panel, held on September 18, was moderated by Jennifer Reeves, senior resident fellow for space studies at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves, Senior Resident Fellow for Space Studies, AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this Mitchell Institute panel on manning the Space Force. Before the stand-up of the Space Force as a service, US space professionals follow the same manning and service requirements as their respective parent service. Space professionals were either full-time active-duty service members, or full-time or part-time National Guard or Reserve members. In 2024, the Space Force Personnel Management Act became law as part of the broader NDAA. The passage of this act is a huge win for the Space Force since it gives the new service additional flexibility to not only better retain highly skilled service members, but also provide individuals working in the private sector additional ways to serve in the Space Force part-time. To discuss the broader implication of the Personnel Management Act and how the Space Force is looking to make the most of it, we have with us today, a great panel. First, we have Katharine Kelley, the Space Force’s Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital. Welcome, ma’am.

We are also pleased to welcome Brigadier General Nathan Yates. General Yates is the Mobilization assistant to the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations Cyber and Nuclear at the Pentagon. Welcome, sir. Finally, we are happy to have Chief Master Sergeant Todd Scott, senior advisor to the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force. Welcome, Chief. So welcome to everyone and thank you for being here. Before we jump into questions, I have a quick public service announcement. If, in the course of this panel, your questions do not get answered, there is help, please email Ms. Kelley’s team at sf.pma.questions@spaceforce.mil. And don’t worry if you didn’t catch that. Grab a pen and be ready to write at the end of the session. I’ll put it out there again. So, let’s get to the questions. So, ma’am, let’s start with you and the basics. The Space Force is embarking on a significant change with the Personnel Management Act in how it manages its personnel. General Saltzman emphasized this yesterday in his remarks. Can you walk us through the Space Force Personnel Management Act and how it’s reshaping the concept of service for our guardians.

Katharine Kelley, Dep. Chief of Space Ops, Human Capital, U.S. Space Force:

Jen, thanks so much for having us today. First, I will say thank you for saying email Ms. Kelley’s team.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Yes. Yes, ma’am. Her team, not her.

Katharine Kelley:

Certainly, appreciate that very much. Good morning. Thanks so much for being here on day three at eight o’clock in the morning in the rain in D.C. You all get badges and stars of honor for doing that. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. I know the three of us have been looking forward to this conversation all week. Certainly, it’s near and dear to all of our hearts, so thanks for your interest in the topic, and we’re delighted to be here to talk with everybody. Jen, thanks for pulling this panel together with us. Really appreciate it very much. So, a couple of thoughts that I thought I’d start with on this particular question, and I know you heard General Saltzman, or many of you hopefully did, heard his remarks yesterday on the importance of this. First, I want to just make one point. This legislation is super impactful for the Space Force, undoubtedly, and we’ll talk a lot this morning about why that is.

But I want to make another perhaps larger point. This legislation is actually impactful for the entire Department of Defense, and the Space Force is going to be a pathfinder on how to rethink the concept of full and part-time work roles. And it is going to be a case study and an execution study in how to do it, which may inform the way that the Department of Defense chooses to use full and part-time work in the future. So it’s a really exciting place to be right now because we get to define what makes sense for the space missions, but we also are doing that within the constructs that we have in place, and we’re also thinking about how we do this smartly so that the entire department can benefit someday in the future. So the concept is not new. It’s several years in the making, and it did pass in the 24 NDAA.

And if I had to distill it down to the fundamental nuance, in today’s constructs are full and part-time, meaning full and reserve or guard types of functions, are really independent lanes. And for those of you who have experienced the challenges of moving from one status to another, how administratively burdensome, how challenging that is from points, contributions, time, complexity, administrative nature, paperwork, the whole thing. Basically, you know how painful it is. This legislation basically breaks down those barriers and allows that type of serving in a or a part-time work role, but inside of the service in one service that has no separate components, and it allows us the flexibility to build paths to do that in a much more seamless and streamlined way. And that is really probably the fundamentally groundbreaking nature of this legislation. Although I will tell you it’s 238 pages long, so I won’t summarize all of it, but it really is about trying to create a more agile way for people to serve in the space force, and to do it in a way that doesn’t force difficult choice decisions that are basically binary.

And what do I mean by that? Today, and I think you heard a little bit about this from General Saltzman yesterday, today, if you run into a choice of, say a real interest in wanting to work in the private sector and have some experience there, if you’re a full-time guardian today, you basically have to say, “I’m done and I’m going to go do that.” And you leave and you go. And if you ever want to come back, you have to kind of go through the reentry plan. Conceptually in the future, you don’t have to do that, right? The idea of this legislation is that we may be able to more cleanly and expeditiously allow you to go do that without having to actually depart the service per se, and certainly being able to pull you back in a much more agile way. And so that’s one example, but that’s the fundamental concept behind the legislation.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

That’s great. Very exciting stuff. So, we’ve heard a lot about the need for agility in space operations. That’s what you’re talking about. How does this new personnel model aim to modernize force development and create a more adaptable force? General, can we start with you on this one?

Brig. Gen. Nathan D. Yates:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So, what I see as the real benefit of this for force development is the ability for a guardian to sequence their career over their entire career, leveraging the skills, the abilities they gain on the military side, and potentially skills and abilities that they might gain outside of the military and be able to bring that back. And to some extent, that’s possible today, but in terms of hard coding that into an assignment and really what a guardian brings back to the force, we’re only really able to scratch the surface of that today. And this is something I think we’ll really explore in the new model of how do we value a guardian, how do we manage their career with those skills that they have in a full-time work role and a part-time work role, and then the sequencing of those as they go.

So that’s important for guardians and their career options as well, providing flexibility for what they might want to do, where they might want to serve, how they might want to serve. But it’s, I think, also really important for the space force because the whole problem set is evolving. It’s been evolving. And we need to be very cutting edge. We need to be very quick to respond to threats in space. And we might not even know what skills we need now, and it takes time to turn the entire ship. So, this gives the Space Force the ability to build in its own risk reduction by saying, “All right guardians, what do you got for me? What can you bring to the table?” and leveraging that to the maximum extent possible. So, I’m really excited to explore, again, not just what this will do for guardians in their career management, but how the force will leverage this model going forward.

Katharine Kelley:

Jen, can I just jump in there real quick?

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Yes, ma’am.

Katharine Kelley:

I just want to make one point here that General Yates just mentioned. He used the phrase work role. And this is really an important thing to think about. The way that we are structuring the planning and the policy and process development for this new legislation really centers on a different shift in your mind. Traditionally we think about a status of a person really tied to the person themselves. Are you a full-time guardian? Are you a part-time reservist? Are you a reservist serving on full-time orders? In this new construct where we legislatively we have to assign the nuance of full and part-time to the work role, not to the human. And it’s a really significant mind shift that you have to make as you think about this new legislation. It’s about the type of work and the amount of work that is being performed.

It’s not a label on the individual because the legislation is for the Space Force, and it is all guardians, military guardians in this sense, that are in the Space Force. And you can be a guardian serving in a full-time work role or a part-time work role, but you’re still a guardian just in the normal use of the term. And that’s a really interesting and important distinction because very often, you can find yourself thinking about today’s constructs where you have an individual path of part-time or an individual career path of full-time. And what we’re really talking about in this new legislation is one collection of guardians, but the jobs themselves will be identified as full or part-time work. And that’s a really important point that we’re working through in terms of policy development.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Absolutely. So Chief, we haven’t heard from you yet. Would you like to offer your thoughts about the impact of the act?

CMSgt Todd Scott:

Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, we’ll put the nail in this question. So, the Space Force Personnel Management Act, it doesn’t actually just integrate reserve forces into the Space Force. The PMA gives the Space Force the flexibility to modernize their force generation, their force employment. It gives them the opportunity to retain talent, adapting to guardians’ life situations to be able to be a little bit out of the box. If you think about the way the current reserve component was conceived and constructed, it’s based on army soldiers that would, one weekend a month, go in and do their training requirements culminating in a two-week exercise every year to prepare them really for battle, for going down range. And this might work for the Army and the Marine Corps, perhaps even the Air Force and the Navy without adaptation, but it doesn’t necessarily work for how this Space Force wants to employ their guardians.

So basically, this new construct gives them the flexibility they need to utilize forces in the way that they see fit based on their requirements, executing these PMA authorities, and it basically gives us the ability to tailor the part-time force and the full-time force to better benefit the guardian experience.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

That is so awesome and actually leads into a question about operational benefits. So General Saltzman has said that this new PMA model will fundamentally change how the Space Force does business, and we all agree with that. So, what are some of the key operational benefits that we anticipate from this unified approach to service? And general, sir, I’d love to start with you on this one.

Brig. Gen. Nathan D. Yates:

Great. Yeah, I’d love to answer this. So, I think what’s key to this is that the Personnel Management Act authorities are only one synergistic piece of a number of efforts that Space Force has going on to redesign how they employ their operational force. So of course, the Space force generation model and the presentation of forces is the biggest piece of that. And some of the changes that we are implementing under PMA, I think that we would’ve seen even without it based on how the Space Force generation was going to have to happen, because what goes on in an employed-in-place Space Operations Unit when they are on crew, obviously very important, but what goes on when they’re in the prepare phase doing advanced training is almost as important, maybe even more important because that’s where we perceive the threats and build the tactics, techniques, and procedures to get after them.

And the same guardians need that operational foundation, and operations broadly. Whether that’s space, cyber, or intelligence operations, it’s all the same in terms of building that foundation and developing that expertise early on in your career. So that is something that was going to happen anyway, and the Space Force generation leads into that, and the PMA leads into that as well. And then another area where we see that will be in the career development for our officer and enlisted members in the Space Force and related effort for civilians, but of course, PMA focused on the military members. So again, developing those skill sets over your career. So, we want to use the right guardian at the right place at the right time, and PMA frees us up to look systematically across the full-time force and the part-time force to do that. I think Chief Scott raised a really good point that this is as much about the full-time force as the part-time force as we implement these authorities.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Oh, that’s great. Chief, did you have anything to add to that?

CMSgt Todd Scott:

Yeah, so basically this gives the authority. So, PMA is law, so it gives the Space Force the authority to enact this new innovative approach. One of the age-old problems in the military is the training, education, and experience that we invest in our military members makes them very valuable to other organizations. If you think about that, industry, government service, the civilian and education sector all see military members as ripe for recruitment. So perhaps life changes happen with military members, and they see an opportunity, and they end up leaving service. And what we have to look at is how do we retain that talent? What can we do to make sure all that investment that goes into those members isn’t walking out the door and benefiting another segment? So, PMA gives us the opportunity to continue to adjust based on what folks’ life needs are and to retain that talent and use them in a different role perhaps than they’re being used today. It basically takes that career-long investment and makes sure it doesn’t walk out the door.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Yeah, I like that. Certainly, I’ve had years of experience of losing outstanding young space operators because they were so talented and there were no other options for them inside the service, and that’s really wonderful. Why don’t we go back to the thought on the work roles, and I’d like to hear from the general and the chief. So as the Space Force implements PMA, the part-time work roles will be different from previously established Air Force Reserve part-time work roles. For instance, guardians probably won’t maintain mission-ready status in 24 by even employed positions. So General Yates, where and how does the Space Force plan to use the part-time work roles? We’d like to hear more about this. Ms. Kelley brought it up, and we want to hear more about it. What are your thoughts?

Brig. Gen. Nathan D. Yates:

I would actually love to hear from Ms. Kelley on this, but I’ll set the stage. So, when we’re looking at the part-time work roles and the full-time work roles, again, we’re looking at them comprehensively and what’s the best use of guardians? So, with few exceptions, there’s no work role on the Space force that’s off the table for a part-time participation schedule. And I really think about it in terms of, what’s the participation requirement, because every job, every position in the Space Force has some requirements, whether that is rank or specialty, development of expertise in that specialty, or certain other exquisite factors, certain academic credentials, if you will, or other things. This is another dimension which is, what is the participation requirement? So, I can identify some roles in the Space Force that there are 365-day participation requirement and singular, which means really one person needs to do that job.

I think the chief of space operations probably needs to be one person participating full time. Call me crazy. And I can think of a few others as well, but that’s really my only constraint. If the role and the mission makes sense for the guardian and they have the skill and ability, and I can define a participation schedule that’s less than 365 that makes sense, then I want to put that Guardian in that job, they’re going to have the best return on investment for the Space Force, and they’re going to continue to develop their career in that role. So that’s how I’m looking at it across the force, across all the different missions that we do.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Yeah, that’s great. So Chief, what do you think?

CMSgt Todd Scott:

So as general Yates mentioned, most of the Space Force missions are employed in place, with the exception of space electronic warfare, so they may be a little bit different. But as we look at what a part-time force might be utilized for, of course, as the Space Force matures, we’re going to continue to evaluate what roles might be used for part-time work. But I think General Saltzman has been very clear, in some of his talks that he’s done about PMA, that the institutional requirements that the Space Force has is probably a good place to start looking for actual tasks that a part-timer might be able to be assigned to. And we think of education, training, doctrine development, maybe test and evaluation, perhaps recruiting, he even mentioned. As we continue to evolve that, there are a lot of areas around the country that we’re not able to touch.

So perhaps we might look at a part-time role for recruiters. If you look at a recruiting station, they might be open on Saturday and Sunday in a mall in the middle of America, and there might not be a Space Force base near there. So, there are roles that a part-timer can be utilized for. And that’s not a list. That’s just some ideas that have been thought about. It’ll be up to the leadership in the Space Force to determine what those roles might be. And it doesn’t have to be a permanent position. I think we’re a good example here. I’m a part-timer assigned to the Office of the Chief Mass Sergeant of Space Force. I know that this task that I’m working for Chief Bentivegna will eventually be completed and I will go back to do some other role, or perhaps it might be time that my career is coming to an end, and I can enjoy retirement. So, there are part-time roles.

It may be a project that a part-timer would do. And depending on where they are in their career, it’s not a full-time thing. So, it’ll find the best ways to utilize a part-timer.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

That’s great. And with the flexibility for who knows what’s coming in the Space Force in the future, right? Ma’am, did you have anything that you wanted to button this one up with?

Katharine Kelley:

Yeah, I’ll just add a few additional thoughts. And agree with my panel members here, certainly, but I’ll also be… Two very critical points. One, no final decisions have been yet on this particular question, and it’s probably of the top two questions that we get all the time. The number one question is, when are you going to have part-time in the Space Force? The second one is, what are they going to do? Right? So, this is the fundamental, philosophical, and policy decisions that we’re working on right now. But I will tell you, right now, the thinking is that if you are in, let’s just say a command function, that is probably a full-time function for the Space Force. If you are in a staff function and there is a need for something that could be done legitimately in a part-time capacity, and the way that Chief Scott just described that institutional piece of the Space Force, I think it is absolutely completely wide open, and that’s what the team that is working on the policy development is considering right now, that those part-time work roles are probably prolific across the service.

They are most likely in the institutional support functions of the service. If you are employed in place 24/7, that’s probably a full-time work role. If you’re a commander of a unit, that’s probably a full-time work role. And that’s as far as the conversations have gone. And I’ll just touch on the other salient point here, which is when, right? When will this happen? So, the legislation itself gave us a five-year implementation window, and that was very intentional on our part to ask for time because we recognize the complexity of not only defining what this new construct looks like, but really, it’s in the context of everything that the Space Force is also trying to do in standing up this new service. So, if you think about a lot of the themes that you’ve heard from this Space Force this week, these are all things that, to General Yates’s point, we were having to do already, and now the Personal Management Act legislation lays on top of that.

And so it’s going to take us a little bit of time to really solidify how the work role distinctions lay out, but we really want to make sure we get it right, and we also want to make sure that it’s in the context of how our new officer career paths look like, our new enlisted technical depth and development tracks look like because we’ve got to pull the whole piece together and weave it together in a way that is going to be functional for the service and functional for the guardian.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Yes, ma’am. That’s great. So, let’s talk about career flexibility, and this is a question for you. One of the exciting aspects, as we’ve been discussing, is the potential for increased career flexibility. So how do you envision the guardians being able to move between, and this is a future thing, being able to move between full-time and part-time roles throughout their careers? And do you see any guidelines or limitations being put in place? What are your thoughts as we’re developing this construct?

Katharine Kelley:

Yeah, thanks. It’s a great question, and it kind of ties to a little bit of what I was discussing earlier. First, everything we do in this new legislation, to where I started earlier this morning talking about the importance of this law and how this is going to enable the Space Force uniquely, but also how this could become a foundational aspect for the Department of Defense. Ultimately, when all is settled and we kind of move out on the full execution of this, it has to actually work for the service, right? You have to have a viable Space Force delivering capability to the joint war fighter. If we don’t get that right, none of this matters, right? And so fundamentally, we have to think about full and part-time work roles in a way that actually delivers the capability the Space Force is expected to deliver, especially to the joint community.

And so that is underpinning all of what we’re thinking about. What that means in macro terms is the career flexibility has to make sense for the individual and the service. They are not mutually exclusive. They are not skewed one way or the other. Both conditions have to be met in order for this new construct to actually work. And that means the decision for the service to make to say yes, this is a part-time work role, meaning it’s the type of work that is going to get the return the service needs, has to be a viable decision, and the guardian has to want to do that work and be qualified to do that work. If those conditions are met, then you have a very nice lash-up of the goodness of this legislation.

The flexibility piece comes in to play in the sense that that person should be able to move into that work role in a very internal space force process, as opposed to, for example, having to scroll between a reserve component and a full-time component, having to have your package go all the way to the Senate confirmation level almost to actually get these things done in some cases today. So, we’re looking for flexibility in the sense that we can control it within the Space Force as the policies are developed. The other thing I would say is this is all in the context of what’s happening in this country from a technology evolution perspective, and the speed in which tech is moving, especially for the Space Force is so critical.

So what we’re envisioning, is the agility inside the service to move, and also the ability for people to garner credentialing or certifications that maybe you’re getting from a private sector organization or academia, as an example, the ability to get that, and then come back in without a huge barrier to re-entry should allow not only the service to gain, but the individual to gain as well. And ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to achieve here, is this mutually, I’ll say symbiotic relationship between the service needs and what is an ability for a guardian to actually meet their own needs. And some people have also asked a lot about these personal life choices that people get faced with just in general. A scenario that comes up quite often is care of an aging parent or somebody in a medical situation. Ideally, this allows you to perhaps give that care for a period of time. And when that issue resolves, then you’re right back to work as a guardian in a full or a part-time work role, depending on what you left or what you want to do when you come back.

And so ideally, that flexibility is one of the additional gains that we believe is going to be very helpful for the Space Force, and quite frankly was also compelling to Congress when we talked many, many years with them over this legislation. We’re trying to create an ecosystem that people want to join, want to serve their country and are able to stay doing so without having to make binary choices to leave or stay. And that we think that in today’s constructs with multi-generational families, with dual income spouses, with people caring for aging parents and children at the same time, we think that these flexible nature of this legislation is going to have a huge impact.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think they’re right. Absolutely. But I am going to ask chief a question which is maybe a bit of a downer, and that is with this large sweeping change revolutionary, no services ever seen this before, there are bound to be hurdles as we implement this. So, what do you foresee the largest challenges are in rolling out this new personnel model?

CMSgt Todd Scott:

Well, thanks for tossing me the softball question. Colonel Reeves. No. Honestly, this is a monumental lift. The Personnel Management Ac, as we’ve stated, doesn’t just integrate the part-time forces into the Space Force. It creates several categories. Active duty will have full-time and part-time status. It also creates the Inactive Ready Guardian program. And if you’re familiar with the Air Force, the IRR, the Individual Ready Reserve, perhaps somebody has a hardship, and they have to go inactive for a period of time. There’s a pool of folks that sit in the IRR in the Air Force that are subject to coming back and finishing out their commitment. So, in the Space Force, we get the IRG. And then we also get the retired category, which is so important to go back and fix something that didn’t occur when we first stood up the Space Force.

So, it is a monumental lift, and what we’re trying to do is mitigate any challenges and how they might an airman or guardian’s careers. I will say that I am thoroughly impressed with how diligent the PMA board members were at our first board that we just had reviewing reserve records. They really put a lot of thought into the second and third order effects, not only of how it would affect the ecosystem for the guardians that are currently serving, but how it might impact the careers, the enlisted development, the promotion of the airmen that are applying for these positions. We just concluded, last week, the first PMA board, and those results will come out in the next couple weeks. But that board was very diligent and thoughtful in this process. So, change does come with challenges or hurdles, as you mentioned, and I think that they’re doing a fantastic job of trying to mitigate those and ensure that we try to mitigate those changes. Because on the surface, this is a transfer of not so much billets, but MILPER’s funding behind those billets.

But there are people that are attached to this, and they are taking that into account and ensuring that they mitigate any challenges that might impact those folks’ careers and their lives.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

That’s awesome. I’m really glad that you’re thinking in those terms because it is about the people, even though they’re underlying constructs, of course, that have to be addressed, and law, et cetera.

Brig. Gen. Nathan D. Yates:

Jen, if I can weigh in on that too.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

Yeah, please.

Brig. Gen. Nathan D. Yates:

There’s countless things to do, but I don’t think of them as challenges, nothing that keeps me up at night. If you permit me an analogy, I kind of think about it… I know a lot of folks here in the Air Force and Space Force have spent time in Colorado Springs and have maybe climbed the incline. You look up from the bottom, it seems pretty challenging. And halfway up, you’re out of breath, your quads are burning, and your calves are seized up, but you keep going. And once you’re at the top, you’re like, well, that was worth it. And it’s kind of the same thing. There are things we’re going to have to do that it’s brand new and we’ve never done it before, and that’s challenging. But as far as challenges go, we’ve got the roadmap out in front of us. We just need to execute it.

So certainly, concerned about doing the right thing for guardians and for airmen that might come over, as concerned about making sure we set up the space force for success. But the hardest change, the hardest challenge I think we would’ve faced would be on the culture side. Culture will make anything fail if they’re not on board. But all that I’m seeing is guardians are excited about this, airmen are excited about this, and the opportunity to transfer over the Space Force is excited about this. The Department of Defense is interested, Congress is interested, the executive branch is interested. So, all those stars aligned. With that behind us, I think we can make this happen.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

I think you’re right. It’s such a groundbreaking paradigm, and everyone can see, people can see what the upsides of it are. So, it’s really exciting. I’m so glad that you said all that. So, ma’am, it sounds like though, right now, because this is a process, that the emphasis is being placed on transferring reservists. So, can you explain why just reservists now and that it’s reservists, and then just a little bit into what the overall transition plan looks like?

Katharine Kelley:

Sure. Yeah. It’s a great question. Thank you for that. So, there’s a couple of things at play right now. One we’ve touched on a lot this morning, and that is the complexity of part-time. And we don’t have that completely laid flat yet, which is why this first opportunity that we opened up a few months ago is for those space professionals in the reserve who want to join the Space Force as a full-time guardian today. And I’m emphasizing full-time guardian today, meaning the new legislation is a section in the law that we affectionately refer to as subtitle F. That’s the 238-page reference that I made earlier. And right now, today, the Space Force itself is not in that subtitle. In fact, we have not taken today’s Space Force and moved it into this new legislation yet. Why? Because we don’t have all the policies in place to do so.

But what we do have is a way to bring reserve professionals into today’s Space Force. Why do I know that? Because we’ve been doing it for the past four to five years with Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, right? So, we’ve been doing inter-service transfers all along. That’s essentially what this first opportunity is, is bringing people with the right skills and interest into the Space Force as a guardian today. And that’s why the first opening was for people who are interested in serving in a full-time capacity because that’s what today’s Space Force is, while we work through the complexities and the challenges and the policy decisions that we’ve been talking about here today. And that’s really this first tranche that we talked about. We’ve got another two to three selection boards that’ll be meeting throughout the fall and into the January timeframe. And I’ll just say that right off the bat, I’m very pleased we have more applications than we anticipated we would get. And I really am excited about the interest, and quite frankly, the quality and caliber of what we’re seeing in the applicants who are interested in joining.

So, it’s a really exciting time for the Space Force and for this ecosystem of space professionals that is beyond the Space Force, right? There’s many in the reserves, obviously, to join and start to coalesce in a really consolidated and powerful way.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

That’s really awesome. Well, we’re coming towards the end of our time here, and so I wanted to give the opportunity for each of you to just say a minute or two of thoughts that you’d like to leave the audience with. And chief, let’s start with you. What do you want these folks to walk away with?

CMSgt Todd Scott:

All right, thank you, ma’am. I do appreciate it. I think the most important thing to take into account here is the fact that this task has never been done before. It’s just like when we stood up the Space Force, going back to 2019, this is something that hasn’t been done before. It has a lot of attention to detail. As Ms. Kelley mentioned, there’s a whole new subtitle in US code, and what we have to do as an organization is to adopt a new human capital management system, which does not exist today. And keep in mind the systems that we’re using right now have years of legacy, and then add-ons and things built in and integrated with it. So, the Air Force systems that the Space Force has inherited have become quite cumbersome. So, the Space Force is small and agile and able to move fast and develop something. So, while there is a five-year transition, we’re one year into it right now, and they’re working diligently behind the scenes to get these processes in place that’ll make PMA successful.

And so, from our part-timers out there, because we frequently get communication asking why the part-time piece of this is so hard, it’s because we’re creating something totally new. And we will try to get it right. And as general Saltzman said many times, we may not always get it right on the first try, but we will get it right. So, we’re working really hard to do that. So, the part-timers, a little more patience. We’re moving down the road. We’re working on the full-time piece right now because that is something that has been done, as Ms. Kelley said, and it’s known how to do that. And we’ll get to the part-time role in the future. And there’ll be opportunities, and I think everybody will be very satisfied with the results in the end.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

That’s great. And good problem to have, right? People are excited to want to do this, and we’re just working to get ready for it to happen. Good problem to have. All right, General, Sir, any closing thoughts from you?

Brig. Gen. Nathan D. Yates:

Yeah, thanks. I’m a researcher by trade, and in the course of developing the Personal Management Act and now implementing it, we looked at every regular component service, every reserve component service model, Army, Navy, Air Force, et cetera, and they all have pros and cons of what they offer their service members and how they’re employed. So, what I’ll say is that PMA is designed to optimize employment for the Space Force. I think it is a great model for other services perhaps, and they will have to look at what’s their problem set, what are their pain points, and how are they resolved? So, for the Space Force, this really makes a lot of sense to be able to enable that agility to give commander the ability to dynamically employ the force of full-time and part-time to get after their missions. I’m really excited to see how it plays out, and really glad to be a part of it. So, thank you very much.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

That’s awesome. We’re happy you’re a part of it too. And ma’am, we leave the closing thoughts with you.

Katharine Kelley:

Well, thanks for the opportunity. First, again, I saw a lot of people start to join as we went through this panel, so really appreciate everybody’s interest in this topic, and certainly thanks to my panel members for illuminating more of it for you. I think I would just also add a couple of other enablers. So, we’ve talked a lot about the challenges, the opportunities this morning. I want to just acknowledge the entities that are really enabling success here. First, obviously, the authority that Congress gave us is unbelievably powerful, and so we really work hard to make sure we don’t lose sight of how powerful and how extending of some level of confidence in the Space Force Congress has seen fit to be with us, and that’s huge.

The other thing is the partnership between the Air Force and specifically the reserves as well, we would not even be close to where we are as a Space Force, let alone with our first offering for reserve professionals to join the Space Force without the Air Force support structures, the systems that Chief Scott mentioned that are challenging, for sure, but literally the Space Force does not have those. And so, the partnership between the Air Force and the Reserves themselves has been critical to get us where we are today, which is really exciting. And the other thing I would say is remember that all of this is in the context of standing up a new service. All of this is happening at once. It is unbelievably challenging to stand up a new service, then to do it inside of what I call one of the greatest bureaucracies in the world, which is the Department of Defense. And I use that term affectionately because we’re really good at establishing process. And when you do different things in the DOD, your kind of bucking against the uphill battle of the established norms.

It becomes even more complex to now completely reshape the legislative landscape. And so, all of what we’re going to achieve with this legislation is going to be complementary to what the service is working to build for the unique space mission that we have, and then also be able to coalesce the most powerful collection of space professionals that we’ve seen across the military in many years. And that, to me, is what’s most exciting about this.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Reeves:

And it is exciting. Really, thank you all so much for this great discussion. Remember team out there, that if you still have questions, and even questions about your personal situation, please send them to Ms. Kelley’s team at sf, like Space Force, .pma, like Personnel Management Act, questions@spaceforce.mil. Also, I was reminded, don’t forget about the guardian channel out there on Teams. So, everyone, please join me in giving a big thank you to our guests.

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This transcript was auto-generated and may not be 100 percent accurate. The source audio and video can be accessed above.