The Space Force We Need: Delivering a Combat-Ready Force in an Evolving Operational Environment
February 25, 2026
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Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Not a lot of people, but you’re really loud, so thank you very much. Hey, it’s fantastic to be here on day three for Doug and I, and it’s great to have you all here with us today. Our key messages this week have really been about thinking about the Space Force we need so that we can deliver not just for the Department of War, but so that we can deliver. And actually most of you in uniform can deliver for the nation. Two days ago, Doug was on this very stage with the Undersecretary and with Basket, and we were talking about readiness today and readiness tomorrow. I get to build forces that employ today, so my purpose is pretty focused. Doug has a tougher job. Doug has to think about the readiness of the force today, as well as how to build a ready force in the future. So with that discussion you had about two days ago, what themes would you drag into our discussion here this morning?
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
Hey, Greg, thanks. It’s always great to be on the stage with you. Appreciate what you’re doing for our combat forces down at Peterson. And I just want to say thanks to Burt and the team for putting on the Air & Space Force Association symposium here. It’s always great to see some guardians out there. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for hanging tough to the last day. Appreciate it. And so General Gagnon just asked me about what I spoke about two days ago, but you guys were all there, right? So I really don’t need to do it. You weren’t there? What’s going on? But no, all seriously, just to talk about that. At the Pentagon, one of my jobs is to make sure, along with the other deputy chiefs of space operations, to make sure that we give the resources to the field commands and the component field commands to do the mission.
And so it’s a daily slog in there to continue to advocate for the resources that we need to be able to perform the missions that we have to perform for our nation. I would say I haven’t ever done this job before, but I was a major in the A3 staff a while ago. And I remember those days working for the almighty A3 and trying to get things through the process. I would say back then, the other services really understood that they needed the Air Force to be able to do their mission. And I will tell you right now, the other services, they’re some of our biggest advocates right now. When we’re in the op steps, that’s the operation deputies, all the threes, meeting in there with the director of the joint staff and we’re getting prepped for the chiefs or the vices to be in the tank.
The other services are doing my briefing for me. They’re saying, “Hey, I need the Space Force. I need MTI. I need a moving target indicator. I need enhanced GPS. I need better SATCOM.” And so I just get to go, “Hey, did you hear the Navy? They said they need that. Hey, the Army said they need that.” And so it is a tough job, but it is getting easier. But what I would say to bring forward from the talk with the A3 and the Under is we have to continue to build our forces. And so for decades in the Air Force of the past, we were building enablers, we were building things that the other services need. We still have to do that and we have to do it in a contested environment. We have to make sure that we can get that to them.
We have to be able to close our blue kill chains so that our war fighters and our shooters, which maybe us someday can get those, they can find the targets, they can fix it, they can execute against them. We also have to protect blue kill. We also have to kill the red kill chain. We have to be able to deny, destroy, degrade, damage, and to destroy their kill chain so that they cannot target our war fighters. And then of course, as you heard, we have to be able to protect and defend our assets. So it’s an honor to be at the Pentagon. Not too many people say that to get after what we need to be able to do to provide these war fighters. But Greg, you’re the guy. You’re the one responsible for generating these war fighters. So what is the guardian we need today and maybe tomorrow look like to you?
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
So Doug, since he’s in the Pentagon is really at the macro level of things and he thinks about the Space Force we need, which probably needs to be twice as large as it is today in manpower and also needs to grow in infrastructure and a kit. But to talk at the micro level, what is it I need from you, the Lieutenant Colonel Guardian today? What I need is I need you to be fit because what most people don’t know is not every guardian employs in Colorado. In fact, we have sensors in place on every continent of the planet except Antarctica. We have squadrons dispersed around the world. We have guardians deployed in every joint combat formation that goes forward.
You will go forward in mission areas such as intelligence and you’ll be running vans with barbed wire fences around them with satellite dishes. That visual print that’s in your head right now, it looks the same if you’re going forward and you’re doing missile warning in JTAG because you’ll do that forward. You’ll do intelligence forward. You’ll do electronic warfare forward. So what I tell that individual specialist when I show up at Unit PT with Rosnick is, “I need you to be fit. And you need to be fit so that you can’t dig out of three feet of snow in Colorado. You need to be fit because you may be in 110 Fahrenheit.”
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
I do want to say, I think DC’s had more snow this year than…
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
And after you’re fit, I need to make sure that your unit of employment makes sure that you’re motivated because what you’re doing and the reason you’re doing it is one of the reasons you’re better than the adversary. You’re going forward, you’re protecting your joint teammates from fire, you’re giving them alerts and warning when they’re under fire, and that’s critically important to the joint force. You’re also disrupting the adversary’s ability to track aircraft, to track ships, and to track those things that they live on and employ in, and that is your sacred bond. The third thing I need you to do, and this is at the specialist at NCO level, I need you to be the most proficient operator on the planet in what you do. You need to go to work every day, train so that you are more effective than the PLA’s Aerospace Force, so that you’re more effective than an Iranian operator, so that you know more about your combat skills and your combat formation than the adversary you’re going to face.
And that tactical proficiency is your value proposition inside the joint force. Everyone always says, “What does the combat Space Force look like? ” Well, I’m going to tell you, the combat Space Force probably has the highest IQ of any part of the joint force. We have a smart force. We have a fit force. We have a force that goes forward when that’s needed, but often because we’re smart, we’re already deployed around the world. That’s the force we have today. That’s the force that must grow because as Doug talks about, “Hey, the other services say, I need you. I need you. I need you.” And I agree with that.
We need enough people to meet that need. I generate forces not just for Dennis out at Space For Space who supports General Whiting. My command has to generate forces for INDOPACOM. My command has to generate forces we give to EUCOM, to AFRCOM, to CENTCOM. So there are lots of asks. We currently can’t say yes to all the asks because we’re not large enough. That’s something we really need because the Space Force we need isn’t the Space Force we are saying we need. It’s the Space Force the Department of War is saying they need.
I was very long-winded. I’m sorry. So we talked a little bit earlier about the discussions inside the op steps. So for some of you in the front row, you’ve sat in that room. For those of you past the second row, you have no idea what we’re talking about. So to set a little bit of context, the joint chiefs meet, and of course that’s General Saltzman’s with his peers, but before they meet, they make their deputies kind of huddle about operational issues. And they do that in a meeting called the Ops Steps. So Doug goes in with his peers and they hash it out. And like all good organizations, they speak their mind, they work through their differences, and then they bring their recommendation to their bosses, but they also bring their disagreement to their bosses.
One of the key things that are decided in that format is whether forces deploy forward. And when we make that decision, it’s not about what the national objective it is, it’s about whether the national objective is a high enough priority for us to decide we’re going to burn future readiness. Future readiness is what’s burned every time you go into combat, because that particular event that you’re doing in combat may not cover all your combat tasks. That’s a challenge you face in the tank. How is that decision kind of made at your level and what are the decision factors sort of in your peer group as they talk about that?
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
Yeah. Thanks, Greg. So appreciate that. One of the things we do talk about in there is how do we make sure that the joint force is going to be lethal, that they’re going to accomplish the mission. And I think Greg’s going to talk a little bit later about Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Absolute Resolve. And so getting ready for those, there was what kind of forces can we flow into the theater? We haven’t done a lot of theater operations in South America. And so what are we going to do there? Where are we going to put stuff? How does that affect what’s going on in the central command area? What does that mean for the risk of those combatant commanders or in Europe or Africa or even INDOPACOM? What happens if something kicks off in there? So we are always looking at how do we do that right?
And all of our component field commanders are like, “Hey, I need this.” And Greg’s got to be able to give them what they need, but we just don’t have enough. And so one of the things that we do on the Space Force staff is what does the future force look like and how are we doing that lethal? And so I want to talk a little bit about how we make the future force of the Space Force more lethal within the joint force. And so you got a little taste from the CSO about the objective force 2040 that we’re going to go came from the future operating environment to the objective force. We’re going to get that out pretty soon. That’s looking at three fight ups, 15 years out and trying to go, “Hey, what kind of things do we need to do? What kind of things does General Grant and General Panzenhagen need to do to get us to be in the right spot in 2040?” That’s 15 years a long time.
Think about what capabilities we had 15 years ago and did we have different, I’ll call them technological surprises that maybe took us to there. So we’re thinking about how we do that. I said this in the panel the other day, but I’ll say it again. It’d be great if the President’s budget was out so we could talk a little bit more about that in this, but it’s not. But I can tell you, if things are going the way that we think they are, the Space Force is going to have a significant increase because of what we talked about, that the other services know that we have to be able to do the things that we have to do to help them do their job. And so a lot of it is kit. How much kit do we need? When do we need it? What kind of things do we need to enhance from legacy systems?
And so we’re building that force. So those are all kind of conversations that I have in the op steps. General Miller has in the JROC and how we’re kind of working through what that process looks like, but he’s in there also as the eight doing the budget battles with the folks there. And so we’re looking at it. But the other thing, and you’ve started to hear about this, is we have been very thankful to the administration and to Congress that has really given us significant budget growth since we stood up. What was it B9? How long ago did we stand up? Six or seven years ago. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
I don’t get it.
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
But we’ve had a lot of increase… I don’t get it either, but B9 trying to get me to do it. So we’ve had a lot of increases and we’re going to have continued increases. One of the things that I know that General Grant and others probably think about, we have to be able to execute that. So we’ve got to build this. You’ve heard about acquisition reform. We’ve got to be able to do those things so that we can take that, we can show to our board of directors, the Congress and to the administration that we’ll be able to execute it.
The other thing we got to do, and you’ve started to hear a little bit about this, is we have to grow our force. We’re thankful for the addition of budget, but we started out, and I see the first vice chief over here, General Thompson, we started out, we were lean, agile, which really kind of meant we’re small and we don’t have enough people. And we did that and that’s great. And we’re doing great things with that, but we got to increase the number of folks that we have because we’re continuing to do what we’ve been doing for decades and we’re adding onto that.
We’re bringing new capability into those legacy systems and we’re trying, we’re bringing on technology, AI and things to do that to make the crew force smaller. We have incredible enlisted guardians that are taking on more responsibilities, but it’s still a people problem. And then throw on that the space superiority type assets that we’re going to get. And so we need more people. And so you’ll start to see that as we talk about that. What does that mean? I need more infrastructure. Can I train the number of folks… We don’t have an ascension problem, but can I train the number of folks that we are going to need?
And so how do we do that? How do we do that smarter? How do we do STARCOM when they do the officer training course and the enlisted training? How do we get more people through the pipeline? Because it’s coming and we’ve got to… So those are the kind of the things that we talk about in there and we have to get after it. And so we’ll need your help because you’re going to be on the front lines. You’re going to be training the new folks, you’re going to get them ready to go, and then you’re going to be operating these incredible systems. So we didn’t practice this very well. Sorry.
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll just pull on the-
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
You know what my question’s going to be and I’m going to ask you.
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
I do. We’re so lean and agile that unfortunately I think we’re anemic. So we’re so thin that we’re not healthy. In order to do what we need to do for the nation, we have to go from being born out of sort of capabilities that were based on efficiency and a benign space environment and we have to kind of transform from our herbivore to a carnivore. And for our command, our motto is always a hunter. And hunters eat, right? We seek to provide the ability to control our domain so that we can unlock the greatness of the Air Force, the greatness of the Navy and the Marine Corps, and the greatness of our coalition partners as well. Because they don’t understand that the war of yesterday was one of air superiority, where that was the high ground. The war of tomorrow is one where the high ground is space, and we cannot cede space to a very aggressive meat eating PLA Aerospace Force. Okay?
Inside our doctrine, we have a taxonomy about what we do. The taxonomy is these are the three things your Space Force does for you. We do Space Access, right? And I ask you, this is a rhetorical question for Clint who really wants to stand up and give me the answer. I could see him in the second row. Have we changed how we do Space Access? Well, let me tell you. Clint’s my age. So when we were about 40, which was a little bit ago, right? Or even let’s just say when I hit 45, you were told, “Don’t plan a vacation to the Cape around a launch. If you want to see a rocket launch, don’t spend your money going down there because it may move. There’s only one every 10 days.” Well, that’s no longer true. Plan any vacation you want to the Cape because this week they’re launching four times and on the average week, they’re launching three times.
So I don’t know in other parts of the Defense industry where we’ve had exponential gain like we have seen in Space Access. And I’m here to say, because no one says this to you, thank you, Space Force, thank you. You’ve tripled launch in six years, okay? That’s important. That’s important. The second part of the taxonomy is what we call global operations, global operations. Global operations are those things we do from outer space as part of the joint force to make sure we’re more lethal, more precise and more protected. The most recent thing that we’re starting is space-based MTI, which falls under our taxonomy of global operations for space-based sensing and tracking. But you and the audience know what space-based sensing and tracking is because we have been providing that since before we were the Space Force.
We’ve been providing that since we were the United States Air Force and that’s the ability to sense rocket launches that bust the cloud deck and warn anyone on the planet. We’re so good at it that nobody even questions it anymore. Now our question is, not only did the general know about the launch, not only did the president know about the launch, but did the four guys in the armored personnel carrier know about the launch because it popped a red dot on their situational awareness display. We’re that good. That happens in seconds. And some of our tactical proficiency we talk about, there’s a young lady who works 10 miles from here. Her name’s Captain Lane. And about two years ago, she might be in the back.
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
She here? Stand up.
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Stand up. All right. All right. This little warrior was forward when we did the launch against the nuclear program in Iran. Okay? And she was in the KOC with her fellow battle buddies, which included a sailor who was working for her in the missile warning center and all the airmen that work in the KOC. Okay? That was a night that was not just the attack, but was also the Iranian relaunch back. She was critical in the warning that took place. Okay? She was also intimately involved with the mass volley previously that had gone against Israel. So if you don’t remember that, that was a lot of missiles in one night for those of us who were in the missile business, and it was pretty significant. And one of our challenges was the scope and scale of that attack. And one of the things we worried about was we were not as fast as we needed to be.
So with her team, which on a normal day in the KOC, nobody’s paying attention to her because if you’re in the floor, it’s in the back corner, but on that day, everyone rushed to her and they rushed to her Canadian counterpart who was working with her, who was from the Navy, and they were delivering missile warning to all the forces there, but she knew that they could do better. So when she redeployed home back here to Buckley, she started working at TTP with the systems engineers to help improve the speed and accuracy of alerts during mass volleys. So 81 to 82% faster in delivering that to people. And she worked that in peace time before the next volley. The next time there’s the volley, and she’s in a training function in the squadron helping training our operators on the floor and incredibly tactically proficient, she happens to be on shift.
They call her in and she gets to watch the fruits of her labor from that crew. That crew performs great. They’ve been trained appropriately. They’re tactically proficient. I’ve met her. She’s fit. She’ll outrun me, out-push up me. That’s the guardian I need. And that’s what we started with. And then there’s the third part of this, okay? We talked about Space Access launch, right? We talked about global operations and we used her as an example, but we only get to do global operations if we don’t lose the high ground. We must have the ability to do what we need to do for the joint force in space. And in our taxonomy, we call that space control. Space control must be resourced to win the next war. We don’t want the next war, so maybe if we resource it appropriately, it’ll give our adversary pause.
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
All right. That was pretty cool. Is it Lieutenant Lane, Captain Lane?
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
It’s Captain now.
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
Captain. Awesome. Thanks for all your hard work over there.
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Do you remember the pay raise between first lieutenant and captain? She’s living that dream right now.
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
Coffee on her after the break.
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
So Doug, preventing the next war, very important. It’s actually what we all seek to do, right? Because no one hates war more than those who have to go execute it. General Saltzman published Competitive Endurance as a strategy for the service to think through the piece and transition to war if necessary. What are your thoughts on competitive endurance?
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
Yeah, it is something that we are trying to get after by how we bring on new kit, how we train our forces. I think maybe you’ll talk about a little bit about SPAFORGEN here in a minute, but the idea is one, we have to avoid operational surprise. And so what does that mean? We have to have the eyes and the ears across the whole joint force to be able to say, “Hey, this is happening. What are we going to do to this? Or how has this affected us?” I used to say in my last job, “I want as much space domain awareness as there is. Just give me more. If you gave me more, I want more than that.” Because we want to get to the point where we know exactly what our potential adversaries, China, Russia, or other countries are doing. And then we also maybe get into, as we have our intel professionals with us, what’s the content behind that?
Why would they be doing that? And so we want to just make sure that they know that we can see what they’re doing and that we’re not going to be surprised by that because then that takes away their ability to do a Pearl Harbor or something like that. So that’s key. We’re doing that not only in our domain, but as we talked about earlier about MTI, we’re doing that in other domains to be able to get after getting what the joint force needs. Secondly, is deny that first mover advantage. And so there’s multiple ways we do that. One is our proliferated low earth orbit. And so it’s not the same if you take out this one satellite, we are now in a position where we can’t do what we need to do. And so you’ve taken an advantage by taking that first shot. And so we have to be able to continue to do that proliferated low earth orbit, but maybe also proliferated orbits.
We’re not going to be like, “Hey, this mission area has always been in geosynchronous orbit.” Well, maybe we’re going to put some of it in low earth orbit, maybe in our medium north orbit. We’re going to do that across different systems so that we just become not as big of a target for them to do that. The other part of that is, and it gets into the third, which is doing campaigning, doing our operational and our campaigning and the space control areas. One of the ways we need to do that is we need to make sure that we have the capability that we can do significant damage to their capability and take away their war fighting and we need to do that in the campaign phase. So what does that mean?
While we’re doing stuff right now, we have to do the things that they start to go, “I don’t know that I have enough space domain awareness. I don’t know why they’re moving over here. Why did they do that over there?” And then it causes them to think about their calculation that today maybe is not the day to attack the United States in space. And so those are kind of the three areas that we’re working on. I would say the other thing that we have done since when I deployed to the KOC a while ago, it was a different environment. There would have not been a mass volley. Now we were there and we were like, “Hey, if Iran wanted to attack us, we know that there’s more missiles than we have, but it just wasn’t today today that that was going to happen.” That is now reality there. You think about the missiles across the world, as you’ve heard from both the CSO and General Whiting, we see every missile launch everywhere.
And the folks that have to do that, it has drastically increased the number of things that they have to do. And so we have to be able to do that. One of the things is put Guardians out into our component field commands so that we have space expertise right there with the combatant commander. And we’ve done some great work in that. We’ve stood up a couple just recently. We stood up Space Forces Southern, pretty timely, as then we did Operation Absolute Resolve. And then we also, just recently and a couple of weeks ago, stood up Space Forces Northern and now getting after General Guillot’s requirements there. And then we will continue to do that.
As we work through, as we get to the other combatant commands, we’ll do that. But that puts guardians out there with the combatant commands, gives them the expertise that they need so that we can get after that competitive endurance. And so it’s pretty good, the things that we’re doing. Hey, Greg, you talked about your motto, always the hunter, and you talked a little bit about that. Tell me a little bit more. How are you making sure that combat forces command and the combat deltas and detachments and the things that you present, they’re ready to go?
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Yep. They need to be ready to go against an advancing threat. So if you try to take measure of the world in 2024 and then you prepare for that, you are behind. We talked about missile warning a little bit earlier. Missile warning continues to grow in mission importance, but also in technical complexity. Why? Are radars more technical than they were before? No, but missiles, both ballistic, hyperglyide, fobs, things that come out from outer space, they continue to become more dynamic, less predictable. Why is that? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because in Moscow and Beijing, they’re deciding to buy weapons that can defeat our defenses. So we must continue to advance all of our global operations while we try to build the ability to see space control. So I bring that up just as an example because people always say, “Hey, I gave you enough money. Make some trades.”
I can’t make trades in the investment bank unless you don’t want missile warning and there’s not a single person in our government that doesn’t want missile warning. And in fact, you can’t live off the dollar you gave me 15 years ago against the ballistic missile because I need to be able to warn, track and give you a targeting solution for a hypersonic glide vehicle, right? Because the adversary has decided that that’s how they’re moving. So we continue to move with the threat. We’re in February, right? I’ve been real busy. So in January, I was up in Clear, Alaska and I had this wonderful opportunity to see old right next to new. Okay? There was me on the left and there was a specialist on the right. Okay, that’s not what I’m saying. There’s two big radars up there, okay? One is an upgraded early warning radar that is literally my age, okay? My age.
It’s been there for a long time. It’s a UEWR. It helps look over Northern Russia and Northern Asia and warns America when missiles launch in Russia, in North Korea, or from any part of that area of the world. About eight miles from there on the same post is the long range discrimination radar, America’s newest radar. It just got ops accepted in December by Combat Forces Command, and we have put that into operations. What can that radar do that the other radar couldn’t do? Well, first thing, General Thompson, there’s no vacuum tubes in that radar. That was the first inspection check, sir. Okay? Yeah, it’s new. It’s new, new. It can discriminate when a ballistic missile opens up and sends out its warheads. Sometimes there’s decoy, sometimes there’s real. We now know that. That’s important if you have an economy of force in the interceptor world.
You need to figure out what to hit. That is a massive advancement. Took six years to build that radar, took about $6 billion, which is a lot of money, but it’s spread out over six years. But more importantly, it has made the foundational technological advancements we need for a number of new radars as we upgrade from the old to the new. That’s very important. Our command at Combat Forces Command, ops accepted that last year. That was one of 50 ops acceptances we did in 2025. 50. So that’s upgrades of old as well as purchasing new. About half of those upgrades or ops acceptances were in space domain awareness. One that’s currently undergoing kind of like reevaluation and test is going on in Hawaii right now. It’s our big telescope in Maui. That telescope today now has double the field of view so it can see a bigger part of the sky.
It has double the speed to move to different parts in the sky, which is important for moving targets and multiple targets for throughput. And then its ability, its sensitivity… We call it vis-mag. Okay? Its sensitivity to low light conditions is three times better. Why is that important? It’s important because you need to see the space to know what’s going on. It’s also important because our adversaries don’t want to be seen. So those type of investments which are about to scale across to our entire GBOSs around the world is critically essential. That’s just the second example. So 10 of the 50 were missile warning missile track upgrades. 25 of them were space domain awareness, our ability to sense the environment.
The remaining were in our other mission areas. 2026 will be just as busy. In fact, we just put a test article up at the beginning of the month. I think it was the second week of the month, it was US Space Force Launch 87, if I remember correctly. This satellite is a demo that my orbital warfare delta will use to practice maneuvers in TTPs. It’s much more precise. It’s like taking us from flying a commercial 737 to kind of flying more of a military aircraft. So very important part of how we move forward in the Space Force. Ops acceptance, training of individuals and sir, since you’re in the Pentagon, I want you to show me the money.
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
We’ll see what we can do. We’ll do that. Hey, I’m going to try to wrap us up a little bit, bring us on in home, and then I’ll let you have the last comments. So hey, if you have heard, the two of us are pretty excited about what’s coming up and what’s going on, but we’re also pretty old. And so it’s great to see the excitement out there that’s coming on. And so one of the things I would say to you, you joined a startup organization, you joined a change organization and we need you. We need you to be the best guardian you can be.
So I had the pleasure a couple nights ago, there was these five lieutenants that were kind of lurking around and they had swag, they had bags and they just looked happy. And then I was like, “All right, I’m going to go talk to these lieutenants.” And so they had…. Most of them. I think one of them had not got their first assignments. And so I talked to them about officer training course and they were like, “Sure, it is so awesome that we get a little bit of space, a little bit of cyber, a little bit of intel, a little bit of acquisitions and program management.”
And they are super excited to go to their new bases. One’s going to Germany, pretty exciting. A couple are going to Vandenberg and they’re going all over the place. But to see their excitement, that’s what I need from all of you. I need that from the enlisted core as you go to your training. We’re giving you more responsibility than probably Lieutenant Schiess had when he was doing things as a youngin too. And Chief B9 and I had the pleasure yesterday talking to ROTC cadets and just seeing the questions that they were asking us, I would have never stood up in a room as a cadet and asked a three star general and the chief master on the Space Force that questions. And so we are super excited what you are going to do for our Space Force and thanks for what you’re doing there. So Greg, I’ll let you bring us home.
Lt. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Okay. Hey, I just want you to kind of have the right mental picture in your head. We are in a race. We are not in a race against our old self. We are in a race against the CCP’s Space Force. It’s called the Aerospace Force. And just to be very clear, it’s more than double the size of your United States Space Force. And I know we have more proficient, more motivated and more effective guardians than they have. I also know that what we have our specialists do, they have to have their officers do. I also know that we serve because we are willing. I also know that they are conscripted.
Recognize that when we talk about our past and we talk about maybe going from herbivore to carnivore, that’s interesting but not yet compelling, okay? Because there’s a carnivore already on the track and we need to outrun that carnivore on every lap, on every year, and also in the long, long game of what this is. Our job is to be so effective at what we do that they never choose that today is the day that they want to do what they want to do. You need to be that good, not just good enough. Thanks for your time.
Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you.