Guardians in Space
February 24, 2026
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Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
All right, there’s some good-looking fellows up there on screen. All right, good afternoon, Warfare Symposium. I’m Kyle “Puma” Pumroy, Senior Resident Fellow at the Mitchell Institute’s Space Power Advantage Center of Excellence. It’s my pleasure to moderate this panel on Guardians in Space.
So let me hit on why we’re here today. Since China first began forming their human space flight goals in the early 1990s, they successfully achieved objectives ranging from putting Taikonauts on orbit, putting up a space station on orbit, and then subsequently maintaining continuous space presence, and done so and done all that within their objective timelines. On their current trajectory, we should anticipate them successfully landing on the moon by 2030 and establishing an international lunar research station by 2035. China’s human space flight objectives serve a larger strategic goal of dominating the space domain and all its economic potential. Also, unlike the United States separation of civil and military space efforts, China’s human space flight missions are conducted solely by active duty service members under the purview of the PLA. With this in mind, a future long-term presence of Chinese military members operating from low earth orbit to the moon will likely become a reality.
Now, we don’t know the implications if China experiences further successes in human space flight, leveraging dual use, military, civil programs, but if they choose to act as belligerence in space to control logistical lines and key locations from LEO to Cislunar to the moon, the US will need an ability to counter those actions. Otherwise, China will have freehand and precedent setting and determining norms for future space exploration. This drives substantial interest, national interest in the future role, if any, that Space Force Guardians might have beyond Earth’s orbit to conduct missions in the 21st century space age.
So with that as the scene setter and to discuss this topic in a fun and grounded way of what guardian roles might be in space, I’m joined today by Major General Robert Claude, Director Task Force Future Space Force. You can applaud. Yeah. Greater General Matt Beaker Cantore, Deputy Commander Space Training and Readiness Command. Brigadier General Nick Hague, Assistant Deputy Chief of Space Operations, United States Space Force. We also have Drew Feustel, lead astronaut at Vast. Finally, Tom Ayres, General Council Starlab Space. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. I do want to acknowledge there are 50% dominators on stage, Class ’98 Air Force Academy, if we have any other fellow classmates in the room. Thank you for being here.
All right. So let’s start with you, General Claude. The first question is I want to talk about earlier this year, General Saltzman stated that he doesn’t need Guardians on orbit at the moment, but such a capability may very well be required as the domain becomes more mature. So how can the Space Force align that strategic vision to ensure we have capability when needed and that we aren’t late or early to the game?
Maj. Gen. Robert W. Claude:
Yeah, thank you, Puma. I want to start by saying when I got the invitation to sit on this panel and then saw the roster and saw that General Hague and Drew were on the panel with me, I think, “This is going to be a piece of cake. The easiest panel ever for myself, and Tom, and General Cantore, we’ll be stage props. We’ll nod and smile every once in a while and we’ll walk out of here.” But given the topic, it sure seemed like the case. But since you teed a question up for me right away, you’re going to make us work for the next 40 minutes.
I can’t sit here today and tell you that we will or we won’t have Guardians in Space at any point in the future, but what I’m going to try and do is illustrate to you that in terms of making or establishing a strategic vision, should that ever become a priority for the Space Force, we have those mechanisms in place and those processes in place. If you had the opportunity to sit in the classified session yesterday morning or sat through the CSO’s keynote address yesterday, you saw a pretty heavy emphasis on the future operating environment at 2040 as well as the objective force design 2040.
If you start with the FOE, the future operating environment, that’s really kind of our future forecast document that looks at what is the landscape going to look like between the next five to 15 years? It takes into account the threat, what is it going to be? What are those disruptive technologies that we’re going to have to account for? What’s the geopolitical landscape look like? It kind of lays out what the, I’ll use the term the battlefield is going to look like in that timeframe. From there, we work with developing concepts and theories to either counter the gaps or the threats that we see in that future forecast or ways that we can leverage opportunities within that. Then we pivot then to validate those concepts and theories through war gaming and simulations.
That all feeds into a very data oriented, robust mission analysis process that’s ultimately summarized in the objective force design. Within that design, we look at all of the various mission areas that the Space Force has identified and we’ve got that, again, that 15 year, what does the force look like or what should it look like?
Now today, like I said, it does not include manned space flight. But my point in going through all that is, should it become a missionary in the future, that being manned space flight, we have the ability in place to forecast with plenty of time to lay in what that fully burdened architecture looks like to support demand space flight in the future, again, should we go to that place.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
All right. Thanks for that answer. That makes sense. Within the objective force, now you have that ability to adapt to what’s happening in real world and lay it in if it needs to be, and then pull it back out if it’s early to meet. It’s good to know.
All right, Tom, next question’s for you. As humans expand our presence on orbit and the moon, what sort of operational scenarios do you foresee that would be most likely to require Guardians in Space?
Tom Ayres:
Yeah, thanks, Kyle. Thanks for AFA for putting this on. Thanks for inviting me. It’s a really interesting panel. You should never give a microphone to a lawyer though, because none of you guys may get to speak again. But no, I gave 33 years in uniform and then I was general counsel of the Air Force. I’ve been watching these things. What I see is, and the reason I’m involved in Starlab now is because the future is space, the commercial future, and if you win the economy, you win the war. So that is where commerce is going.
So from the macro piece, what I say is, in my view, anytime you have commerce, the military always falls commerce. Whether it’s to the Black Hills of North Dakota or to the Philippines, to coaling stations to protect Pacific trade, the military has to be there. When you talk about new worlds, right? We’re in a new world, and in this new world, you saw explorers, people. There’s a difference between a robot, and a person, and a place, a difference morally, and in terms of the moral argument you have about being at a place. So once you have that person there, then it’s about the economic resources and putting a stake on those economic resources.
You saw in the United States where you had two competing powers that didn’t like each other very much, France and Britain, fighting across places like Detroit and other French named places now in the United States. So the military is always going to follow the economy. We’re moving there quickly. In my mind, just real quick, everyone’s heard about Manhattan, right? We look at Manhattan in 1910, every building was six floors high because there wasn’t a thing called an elevator. You couldn’t go up. Well, we now have an elevator to space. As the price of the up mass and down mass goes down, we can get the space more cheaply. So the change that happened in Manhattan, that is the change that’s happening to our economy.
So we at Starlab, when we launched because of an eight meter fairing, we were just talking about this because of eight meter fairing, we have a very large space station that adds 100% of the laboratory capacity of the current ISS, the full ISS that was built over years and assembled. We’re going to launch in one eight meter fairing and be ready from day one to do experiments. The commercial market is there, whether you’re talking about bio life sciences, growing retinas in space that you can do based on someone’s DNA, you can perfectly symmetrically grow and without gravity, they can grow without collapsing on each other.
Then you look at what the Chinese are doing, Niobium, right? I don’t know if you’ve read about Niobium, but they made an alloy of Niobium. They said they worked on it for over three years and is now key to their hypersonics jet engine because of the way that they’ve manufactured and the crystallization of that metal formulation.
So the Chinese are there. The Chinese are moving forward. I think your intro comments were spot on. If we don’t move forward, we’re going to be left behind in what is going to be not only our research now in LEO, but a extraction of resources from asteroids, moon, and Mars, and then eventually manufacturing. So we can make this planet a more pristine planet and all that dirty manufacturing can happen in outer space.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Well, thank you for that. Drew, anything to add on a vision where we might foresee Guardians or Department of War in space?
Dr. Andrew Feustel:
Yeah. So I would say clearly a company like ours isn’t the decision makers, but we intend to be the service provider. I think what’s unique about what’s happening now, and we talked about the long-term needs for Guardian Space. I don’t know that we can envision actually what this scenario is, but I think what’s important to realize is that we can create the opportunity now. I think folks make the mistake of assuming that what we’re doing now in human space flight is what we did in the past in human space flight, and it’s what we’ll do in the future, but it’s not really true.
This is an inflection point where we have much greater access, much greater investment, much greater capability than we’ve ever had to put humans in space. As other nations put humans in space and organizations put humans in space, as the US puts assets in space, we should consider that there’s an opportunity now, which never existed before with a civil space program and a civil space station to actually put hardware in space that can support war fighters there as well.
We have a slightly different architecture than Tom. I would be remiss since you pitched yours, not to pitch ours, to say that we’re planning to … Our initial launch is planned for next year. It’s a smaller module. It’s basically a single port docking port. There’s a concept that you could put multiple objects like this in space and have multiple stations for people to operate out of, separate from a civil space program.
So a lot of great opportunity. Tom reflected on all of the great science and technological advancements that can be made in space and operating there. So as we put those critical assets in space and invest in that infrastructure, it’s going to be important for us to be there protecting that as well. I think these space stations, these low earth orbit platforms offer a unique operating space that we really haven’t been able to take advantage of in the last three decades because of the way our space program has been structured.
So it’s a new era, great access now. So I think this is not going to happen overnight. None of us have launched a module into space yet, but we’re all on a solid path to make that happen. So now’s the time to start thinking about that and start realizing that this is an opportunity that is presenting itself that we’ve never had before. Thanks.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
It’s a new era and it’s an exciting era when you really think about the world changing and the environment changing. All right, General Hague, we’d like to hear from you. Now, from 1992 to today, as we mentioned, China appears to have maintained consistency in their objectives in their human space flight goals and hit them on time. The same can’t necessarily be said for the US.
Case in point in 2004, President Bush set the moon landing goal for 2020, and this has kind of slipped for the past 20 years. My script says, hopefully we’ll see Artemis II launch next month. My script needed to get changed. It was the last minute. Now it’s going to be April we’re hopeful for. So sir, how concerned should we be about China’s strategic consistency given their goal of becoming the dominant space fairing nation? What’s at stake over the coming decades if they keep meeting their goals on time and the United States struggles to do so?
Brig. Gen. Nick Hague:
Yeah. Thanks, Puma. Appreciate the opportunity to be up here with this panel and to talk about Guardians in Space. I think you point to NASA milestones and accomplishments. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to just say the things that NASA has been able to accomplish through the Civil Space Program, a human space value program, amazing, from landing someone on the moon to operating a space station on orbit for 25 years continuously.
So as someone that’s been fortunate to be part of that, Drew’s had that opportunity as well to call the station home, just I wanted to say thank you to Guardians that I know are here in the room that participated in supporting that mission through the things that you do on a daily basis, whether it’s assured access to space, or it’s conjunction analysis or it’s P&T, you name it, you’re there supporting it, making that civil space mission happen. So key to NASA accomplishing getting someone back to the moon is going to be Guardians doing the mission that they do right now every day and continuing to do it. So thank you for what you do every day.
If I think about the example of what we’ve been able to accomplish, the Space Station, for example, if I look at that, our nation has been able to pull together countries from across the world, 15 plank holder nations as part of the International Space Station program. We’ve been able to bring astronauts from more than two dozen different countries up to the space station. So we use the peaceful exploration of space as a nation as a way to draw the world closer together, to be inclusive, to connect everyone. That is the legacy of our civil space program. That’s what our nation does with space. If we’re not present, then we lose the ability to do that. So that’s what’s at risk.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Right. Appreciate that. Anyone else on the panel want to follow up with that? We’ll move on. Okay.
All right, General Cantore, thank you for being here. In addition to astronauts that take part in the NASA Space Light Program like General Hague, there is currently a Guardian Liaison program with NASA where Guardians learn the planning and ground operations side of human space flight. So can you talk to us why this program’s important? What are the objectives? How does it benefit the Guardian and the Space Force to have that relationship? Anything else you want to talk to in terms of Space Force’s contributions to Space Flight, much like General Hague had mentioned earlier?
Brig. Gen. Matthew Cantore:
Great. Hey, thanks Puma. I want to thank AFA for the invitation. Greatly appreciate it. Same with the Mitchell Institute for putting us on this panel. I remember reading Guardians in Space, and I assumed that we were going to talk about what Guardians did in space operations and then realized that we were talking about something a bit more lofty.
Quite frankly, if you think back to the beginning of the Space Force, many of us had these same thoughts. If you go back to some of the original commercials, the recruiting commercial, think the tagline was, “Maybe your place on this planet isn’t on this planet.” Then there’s another one that talks about maybe, “The sky is not the limit.” Certainly we are thinking beyond, and the service has been thinking beyond for the beginning. But that runs in contrast with the challenges we face in the geopolitical space today.
We are a service custom-built for space superiority. I don’t think the two are completely disconnected though. At some point, they are going to come together. It’s a question of when. As I look to the future, there will be a need for Guardians in Space when there’s one of two things that happens. One, either there’s a need to control critical terrain or the character of war shifts to the point where new technology requires that we go there to be able to maintain a military advantage. That’s where I see us going long term.
From a Starcom standpoint, our job is to prepare Guardians, prepare systems, and we like to say win the domain. But in reality, we’re there to make sure that we can do any mission called upon by the national leadership and execute it with precision. That’s our challenge. So in Starcom, our job is to prepare the people, the systems, and we do that first and foremost by culture. We are trying to set the foundation for getting the right culture spread throughout the force. It is great to see so many Guardians here at AFA this week and to see them out in the field doing the mission that they’ve been asked to do.
As I think about that, this NASA operating location as we have it is a piece of that. We want to get after the hardest challenges that our nation has. An example of solving those wicked hard problems is this partnership with NASA. It is small. We only have a few personnel that are there today, but they’re involved every day with the same missions that the NASA astronauts deal with. Their goal is to take the same test mindset and the ability and culture to get after those problems and to solve them. They are there to become those ambassadors.
We also know that should we need to go into the domain, you can’t do that on the drop of a hat. It all depends upon relationships. We have the initial starter seed, if you will, of that relationship, and we can scale that as needed. Starcom is committed to this operating location. We’ll continue to see where it goes. Again, right now it’s small, and I think that’s consistent with where we are as a service, the focus on space superiority, but we want to get after those technologies as needed going forward. We are certainly there and we appreciate our partnership with NASA going forward and commercial industry. I see that growing likely as well.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Right. Thank you, sir. I’m very excited about how Starcom builds that space-mindedness in war fighters. I think that goes to whenever the need is there, the brains that you’ve built in Starcom are the right brains that are thinking about space in the right way, can adapt to the character, and then adapt to the mission. So thanks for what you do at Starcom.
All right, Drew, I want to get an industry perspective here. During the inner war years, commercial aviation laid the foundation for the eventual expansion of the United States Army Air Corps and the United States Air Force, and something commercial space is in a similar position today for the future of human space flight. So what’s your perspective on the role of commercial industry in shaping Space Force crude options in space one day?
Dr. Andrew Feustel:
That’s a great question. I mean, I think it’s the direction we have to go in. NASA, for the time that I was there, for the two decades I was there, spoke constantly about the need to get out from under the burden of supporting the civil space program and the ideas that, we’ve heard the term low earth orbit economy. I don’t know if it’s the right way to talk about it, but the reality is that just like I’ve heard in other forums today, that commercial providers and service providers are the way we need to go in the future. Instead of NASA trying to be vertically integrated in and of itself, and build its own spacecraft, and then operate that spacecraft in orbit, that’s been quite a burden. So we’re sort of operating with the idea that we can be service providers, that we can do that at lower cost, still maintaining great safety margins, but operate it more efficiently so that NASA can focus on the next great things in exploration.
So we’re happy to be part of that economy. I think Tom would agree, I mean, that’s the market we’re going after is to establish ourselves in low earth orbit so that there’s a platform there to operate from and do, not only the things that we did on ISS, but whatever we want to do in the future, whether it’s manufacturing, continued research, those things are all important. We’ve shown with the work that’s happened on ISS, that there are very specific activities and products that we can make in space that we can’t make on Earth that are beneficial to Earth.
So we’ll continue to do that. The better we get at operating in space, the better we will be at operating on the surface of the moon as we go after in situ resources that are there. Clearly those things are in place and we should go after them, but we haven’t really, I think, formed our full expertise and experience and operational capabilities to be there. That’s all changing now as Artemis is the start. We still need a good lander. We still need some good suits and this is a slow process, but at least we’re investing in that.
I think commercial service providers, the Clips program is a good example of organizations landing hardware on the moon in support of eventual Artemis, government-based missions. So we want to do that in low earth orbit. I think that’s the role we play and it makes a lot of sense. ISS is not going to stay up there forever, but we need a LEO platform.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Tom, anything to add on that?
Tom Ayres:
Yeah, I just agree with that completely. The commercial market is there. It’s happening. One thing I would say about General Cantore’s comment though, key terrain is already being occupied by the Chinese and we have to think about that. So they are thinking about their commercial market, but they also have PLA officers occupying that space. I think there’s a real moral difference, as I said before, and a difference when you talk about debris, potential of creating debris, if you’re the only person in a given place, and then what is an active war, and what’s the red line, and everything else.
So I think that in addition to the commercial market, I think the Space Force should think about what missions can we do in LEO? There’s a whole command and control communications, thinking about latency that you might be able to … You can’t leave everything to AI and robots if you’re going to have dazzled communications or graded communications, and you might want a human agent making some decisions. Then the whole military medicine, because I think if you think 10 years from now or even 12 or 15, God forbid not, you’re going to have Guardians on the moon to Mars. Well, probably five years from now to have them in LEO is probably not soon enough when you think about military medicine. And communications. And space situational awareness and all those things that the Space Force can do that are really in many ways mirroring what the commercial market is thinking about as well.
So I think there’s a lot there. Just real quickly, when we created Space Force, going back to the commercials and everything else, as I went across the hill to advocate for it, I didn’t look at the 1947 creation of the Air Force because when we did that, it was called the Department of War, which was really the Department of the Army, creating the Department of the Army, creating the Department of Defense, creating the joint staff. But we looked at the creation of the Royal Air Force because the Royal Air Force, they had had 4,000 casualties in London, and then they made some really, because they had somebody focused upon the domain, they made some really good acquisition decisions, radar, which helped them win the Battle of Britain, Spitfire.
Meanwhile, you had an Army group, and I’m ex Army, but I throw some shade on the Army, an Army group, if you look at the fortress, what? It’s Army guys throwing a squad into a plane and putting .50 cals everywhere, right? It could be kind of funny, but it was a terrible acquisition decision because it was people who weren’t focused on that domain. It led to the Air Force having more casualties than the entire Marine Corps and the whole rest of every theater of war, just in the 8th Air Force. So a terrible decision. So I continue to see a space force that is focused on earth-based effects and not space-based effects. I think there’s a lot of reason to focus on space and space-based potential effects.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Right. That’s helpful to … Always got to look back at the history of air and how we adapt in other domains gives us kind of a pre-look at what may happen in space in the future. So I appreciate that, Tom.
General Claude, let’s come back to you. What we haven’t really talked about is we know the Space Force has a lot on its plate right now, right? But if we expect to have manned military emissions in space sometime between 2030 and 2050, as General Bratton had maybe referenced, from your vantage point, what initiatives or programs should the Space Force prioritize now, which will enable that future human space flight opportunities while not interfering with the services critical space priority requirements today?
Maj. Gen. Robert W. Claude:
Yeah, thanks, Puma. I mean, you kind of hit the essential strategic challenge there. How do we balance today’s resources with tomorrow’s needs? I think the key here is that it shouldn’t be necessarily a choice to fund separate and costly type programs that divert resources from one or the other. Instead, we should be looking at dual use capabilities and functions that address the lethality and the resilience that we need today in today’s systems, while also kind of charting the path for should we ever reach a point where we put Guardians in Space. So I think that’s kind of a key point I think to kind of keep in mind. I think I’d like to offer three areas where we’re doing that now today and we’ll certainly look for other areas.
But one of those is today we have a very close relationship with NASA in commercial industry and in the launch business where our crews work closely in launch activities, whether it be integrated crew exercises, dress rehearsals, day of launch operations. That’s really about establishing kind of that muscle memory that is needed for command and control of any kind of a launch, whether it’s a crewed or uncrewed. What that is doing for us in the Space Force is building a core cadre of competency and excellence and expertise to be able to expand on that mission and surge if need be.
Another area that I think we need to invest in and that we are is space domain awareness. Whether it be for safety or for security, we’ve got to have a better ability to see what’s going on in space so that we understand what we need to do in terms of reaction or response in order to secure our assets and whether they be civilian personnel or just spacecraft on orbit. That goes from earth to geo and geo out to Cislunar. We’ve got to do a better job and have better capability to know what’s going on in space.
Then finally, the third is kind of the partnership programs that General Cantore talked about that we have with NASA, whether it’s the astronaut program or the Guardian Liaison program. Those are, I think, high value return type propositions for relatively low human capital costs that I think we need to continue to grow and potentially expand upon.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Right. Thank you, sir. General Cantore, we’ll come back to you quickly. As I mentioned, Vice Chief Bratton made those comments about, I don’t know if it’s 2030 or 2050, but it’s on our to do list. If it’s on our to do list, I’m curious, not that it’s necessarily in the plan or the fight up, but if you have a crystal ball, put you on the spot as a Starcom leader, but what might Starcom do one day if we want to project into the future? Would they have their own astronaut training? Would they have some sort of training that would get Guardians ready to do these types of things? What do you think that will be like when some of these lieutenants in the crowd are ’06s and ’07s?
Brig. Gen. Matthew Cantore:
Yeah. Without that crystal ball, it’s way hard to tell the timing and exactly what’s needed. But speaking of crystal balls, I realized that it’s not just this group of Guardians that doesn’t know about the past as it pertains to the future when it comes to space play. I realize it was my own kids. Last week, I actually put on Apollo 13 and I showed that movie and watched it with them. We were doing that in prep for and talking about the Artemis II missions. So certainly even in my own family, trying to inspire the future. But I love that movie. I realize it’s a movie. There’s some fictional elements there. But I love it because it is human ingenuity and innovation overcoming the most harsh and unexpected odds. I love it. It’s a great story.
I think in many ways, the reason why the personnel, the real people that were able to do that was because they had all of the right training, the right education, the right culture, and they were able to make it happen. In Starcom, that is a huge part of what we do. It starts with recruiting. We are thinking now about how does Space Force continue to recruit the best talent across the nation? How do we bring it together? The smartest minds, the right backgrounds, the right attitudes, and bring it all in one to become part of our team. Whether it’s officer, enlisted, or civilian, we need those Guardians, and it’s our job to forge them from the beginning.
Beyond recruiting, we’re thinking about totally different ways about how we prepare our officers, enlisted and civilians. For example, this last year has been monumental as we’ve done the new officer training course, OTC. Now we bring together a far more academically rigorous and grounded background for space ops, cyber ops, and intel than we ever did before. We’re already seeing the dividends pay off. If you were in any of the Polaris discussions this morning, you probably heard the discussion. It’s great to see folks that have maybe only been in the service a couple of years already reaping the benefits and talking about the fusion of those disciplines working together going forward. Then you add in engineering and acquisitions. That’s what we are going for.
The enlisted force is no different. We are focusing on getting after Guardian enlisted training at a whole new level. You’re going to see us continue to work and refine that over the year ahead, as well as civilian education. Beyond that, we look to educate the force beyond its number of years in.
So there is a tremendous effort going into revitalize how we prepare Guardians. Why are we doing that? Because we want them to be ready to be able to take on those tough challenges going forward. I’m not going to speculate on astronaut training programs or whatnot, but if the need comes, we will be there. It’s just a question of when.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Awesome. Well, we’ll keep hope alive that someday our kids can go to Starcom Astronaut training, whether it happens or not. Nick, you’ve got the unique experience on the stage, both Guardian and astronaut. Could you share your insights into the value of having Guardians trained as astronauts, both from a NASA perspective and from a Space Force perspective? What do both ends get at it?
Brig. Gen. Nick Hague:
So I know we’re coming up on the end of our time, so I’ll try to bring the conversation back down to earth a little bit.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Appreciate it.
Brig. Gen. Nick Hague:
You got to throw one space pun in. Come on. So General Claude, at the beginning, you mentioned it’s a question of when and if we’re going to need Guardians in Space. So I can tell you that we have had Guardians in Space and we will have Guardians in Space. That pathway exists today. It’s applying to NASA as part of the civil space program and competing.
So when I think about the value of that perspective, we’re going to need that going forward to understand both worlds. We’ve got an executive order that says, “Hey, the Department of War and NASA need to work together and collaborate in order to make sure we can get those big things accomplished.” So I need Guardians to apply. I need Guardians to be part of that program. So the focus is really on, so how do I give them opportunities to do that?
One of those things that we’ve built up over the past five years is a year long test pilot school program out at the Air Force Test Pilot School, a space test course. There’s an air flight test course. There’s a space test course. They’re both a year long. The Deputy Commandant for Space is sitting here in the front row. It’s a year long Master’s program. So when you think about, if you look back at everybody that NASA selected, you see this tendency to pick test pilots. I think Drew would back up the statement and you can chime in. It’s not that I need a test pilot, but it’s the skillset that you get ingrained in you as part of the test community that makes you really adaptable to hard problems, and managing risk, and bringing complicated things together, and working on small teams and in pressure situations. That’s the skillset that you learn in the crucible going through a test pilot school, whether that’s the Air Force Test Pilot School or Navy Test Pilot School. There’s other ways to get those skills.
Dr. Andrew Feustel:
Yeah, I would agree, but I would say that applies to geologists. Geologists get that same training and show up at NASA. But to Nick’s point, it’s that operator skillset that you don’t get everywhere and then it’s that test skillset that you don’t get anywhere. Nick’s right. I mean, almost exclusively from the military, we select from test pilot graduates across all branches, and it’s even more important here.
Brig. Gen. Nick Hague:
I say that because I want to highlight that opportunity exists today. You don’t have to wait for us to stand up an astronaut training pipeline for Guardians alone. You can pursue your dreams and make that a reality today. We didn’t create that course at Test Pilot School because we needed Guardians to be astronauts. We need Guardians to be high-performing testers and contribute to helping us field capability quickly. It just so happens that you can get a twofer if you go there.
Brig. Gen. Matthew Cantore:
Yeah. Just to add to what Nick said there, we need people to apply to that program, officer and enlisted. There are opportunities. We are trying to develop that test program beyond where it is today, and we’re putting a lot of investment into that. We were just talking about the NASA parabolic flights for some of the experimentation in a zero G environment. That’s going to be part of the program going forward. There are other opportunities and that partnership with the Air Force has been an amazing one that we’re going to see continue to prove value as we go forward. So if you were thinking or even remotely, when one of the Polaris winners is going through the course right now, it’s worth it. Consider it.
Dr. Andrew Feustel:
I would just like to add, and Tom might echo this as well, that as commercial providers, we are also interested in partnering and offering opportunities to train and work at our facilities. You’ve got a full mission control center. It’s operations 24/7 with spacecraft, and orbit, and facilities, design, test, engineering, manufacturing. It’s all there. That’s also a great opportunity to partner with commercial organization, which is, I think, one of the goals across the military as well. So we can offer those services and that training.
Tom Ayres:
Absolutely. Yeah. From day one, we’ll be able to take on any Guardians that want to come and they can work on any of those missions I talked about, space situation awareness, communications, command and control, whatever.
Brig. Gen. Nick Hague:
Yeah. So Guardians are going to space.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
We really got this panel cook … That’s right. We really got this panel cooking here in the lasts. So we’re down the last three minutes. So unfortunately we’re running out of time, but I want to give each you probably 30 seconds for closing comments or anything you want to say to the group or the panel. General Claude, we’ll start with you, sir.
Maj. Gen. Robert W. Claude:
Yeah. So when I say if, it’s in a major mission area from a Space Force perspective, not the program that currently exists. So completely track and did not mean to discount down. But hey, thanks for the opportunity, Kyle, and AFA, and panelists. This has been great. It’s been a fun discussion.
I’d just leave you with, today, US is in a new space race and we’ve got a lot in front of us. As we look to where we need to go in the future, I think it’s important that we continue to have these discussions and continue to think outside the box because I’ll say China’s not going to wait for us. So I think it’s essential between the Department of War, between industry, between our civil partners, we’ve got to make sure that we get this right. So with that, I’ll leave it. Thanks.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Tom?
Tom Ayres:
Yeah, thanks. I’m not an astronaut, but I have a good friend who’s one and he was an army test pilot, but then Tim Copra, but he had to take a Russian rocket to the ISS. We had a gap and we can’t allow a gap with China on many things to include LEO destinations. It’s a less safe world if the PLA Taikonauts are the only persons in Leo, or if they’re the only persons at a Lagrange Point, or on the moon, or wherever. So we need, some places, we need humans in space and it would be great to have Guardians in Space because as Tolstay said, you may not be interested in war, but war’s interested in you, but you can put off that interest with strength, peace through strength. So that’d be my closing comments.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Drew, about 20 seconds.
Dr. Andrew Feustel:
Sure. Thanks for the time with the great leadership here on stage. It was really a pleasure. I just want to say that Vast is here and we’ll be in space when you’re ready. So come knocking and we’ll provide the services.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
General Cantore.
Brig. Gen. Matthew Cantore:
Yeah. I just want to leave with, so Starcom is there to make sure that we set the conditions today so that when we need to go to space, we’re ready and we’re going to continue down that path. Thank you.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
General Hague, 30 seconds for you.
Brig. Gen. Nick Hague:
I’m just going to hit, the guy for TPS is right down here in the front row. Thank you for the opportunity.
Col. Kyle Pumroy, USSF (Ret.):
Yeah. As you can tell, we’re very excited at the Space Test Course and what it brings to the future for the Space Force. So thanks for what you’re all doing. All right. Thanks gentlemen for a great discussion.