2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Gen. B. Chance Saltzman Keynote: State of the Space Force

On Sept. 17, 2024, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman delivered the keynote address on the state of the Space Force at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Watch the video below:

General Chance Saltzman:

Good morning. Awesome, day two. It’s such a pleasure to be back here with all of you. It is a little bit like a family reunion, the kind of family reunion where you invite 19,000 of your closest family and friends back together to talk about old times. So this is just a tremendous opportunity. Thanks Bernie for that kind introduction and thanks to all of the AFA team to help make this such an incredible event. For a speech titled “The State of the Space Force,” I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to thank some of the people who’ve done so much to get us where we are today.

First, thank you Secretary Kendall for your steadfast leadership, your constant support of the Space Force and above all, your passion for preparing our department for great power competition. We’re off to a very fast start, but the changes we’re making are significant and will take time to fully implement. So let me just say publicly that I’m fully committed to the Space Force’s transformation into a warfighting service, purpose-built for space superiority, assured access to space and global mission operations to meet the challenges of great power competition. Thanks to your direction, Secretary Kendall, I’m confident that we are on the right path and we’ll be for years to come.

General Alvin and the US Air Force, thank you, sir. We could not be where we are today as a Space Force without the incredible teamwork of the US Air Force and the critical support that it provides for our mission’s success. So thank you. Let me also say thanks to Chief Bentivegna, my partner in crime. Is B-9 out there? He’s probably back getting ready for his speech. There he is over there. All right, he’s keeping us laser focused on the needs of our guardians. B-9, your dedication to the force is inspiring. I’m grateful to have you by my side. Speaking of partners. Jennifer, we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary.

And of course I appreciate all you do for me, but on behalf of the entire Space Force, thanks for all you’ve done for the guardians and their families. Tremendous. Ladies and gentlemen, today is an auspicious day. 237 years ago on September 17th, 1787, the Constitutional Convention signed the US Constitution into existence. This seminal document became the blueprint for American democracy as we understand it today. It marked a turning point in our country’s history, a transformation from a loose federation of states into a unified nation bound by common purpose, shared governance.

And I cannot overstate the scale of this change which continues to shape so much of what it means to be an American today. And though difficult, the transformation was essential because post-revolution America was not yet postured to overcome the challenges it faced as a new country and it might’ve even crumbled had the Convention failed to reach agreement. In fact, as the last names were being signed onto the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin observed that George Washington’s chair was marked by the emblem of half a sun. And he was heard to reflect, “I have often in the course of this session looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.

But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” America was rising as a new nation and the world would soon take notice. Today we find ourselves in a time of more change as we approach our fifth birthday as a service. The concept of change, of transformation is foremost in my mind. Because to some degree the Space Force was established in recognition of the need to transform our military space capabilities for great power competition. In the same way that the Constitution built upon the experiences under the articles of Confederation, the Space Force inherited a legacy of operations not quite suited to our new demands.

And like the Colonials of the 18th century America, we must maintain some of our processes and practices but be willing to fundamentally change others. And since its ratification, the Constitution been amended 27 times. It turns out when you’re trying to build and transform one thing into another, build something fundamentally new. It’s unlikely you’ll get everything correct and exactly right from the beginning. It’s important that you learn, you adapt and you have a willingness to change to make things better. Now, building a Space Force is a very different task from building a country, but the nature of our transformation is not so different.

If you’ve heard me speak in recent years, and you’ve heard this story before, but I do love telling it. So if you’ll indulge me. Once upon a time in a galaxy right here around us, the space domain was a benign environment. It was a place of exploration, innovation, and strategic advantage for the few nations who could afford to access it. But as technology’s advanced, the domain became economically lucrative. Participation in space expanded and national interest grew. And from this growth there arose a collection of competitors’ intent on challenging the advantages that peaceful nations derived from the benign space domain and they invested heavily to develop the means to contest these advantages.

Perhaps even more concerning, these competitors developed space-enabled targeting capabilities that threaten our joint force in all domains and anti-satellite weapons that would destabilize the space domain and deny it to everyone. But in the face of these significant challenges, your United States Space Force was established and is now rising to meet them. And while the ending to this story has not been written, there are a few things that are becoming clear. The peaceful use of space may no longer be assumed, and yet our nation depends on space every day, both for national security and for our prosperity.

So it was no surprise that Secretary Kendall named resilient and effective space order of battle as one of his operational imperatives and this operational imperative and the optimization of the Space Force for great power competition are how we are rising to meet these challenges. When it was once only necessary to access and use the domain for national benefit, now an essential job of the Space Force is, excuse me, to control the domain. And that means achieving space superiority so that we can continue to access and exploit the domain. Also, denying our adversaries the use of space capabilities against us. The Space Force secures our nation’s interests in, from and into space.

That’s our mission. And now that mission must be accomplished in an era of great power competition, which means we face new requirements, new expectations, new threats. We are required to field new organizations, new training, new equipment, new operational concepts. What we were is not what we must become. And so our only choice is to transform ourselves, to thrive in this new environment optimized for great power competition. The task is daunting, but you know what? None of that worries me. None of that worries me because we have the most dedicated and capable space professionals anywhere in the world. And I mean that. Time and again, guardians have risen to the challenge.

Furthermore, we have the world’s greatest space companies underpinning our advancements. You all have worked hard to make our transformation a reality over the last five years. And while I know that we have more change to come in the years ahead, so long as we have you, I’m confident that we’ll accomplish our critical missions. This morning, I’d like to share with you how the Space Force is already implementing the challenges, the changes that we need to make and highlight how we are gaining steam in fielding a purpose-built service.

So much goodness going on. It’s just an exciting time to be in the space business. Now I’ve shared a version of this slide before, but I think the message is worth repeating. The work of our transformation requires a lot of different but related efforts. A collection of tactical activities, however, does not equal a strategy. We only have so much time and so many resources. So we need to be disciplined in how we approach our transformation. Change is necessary, but that doesn’t mean we just change for change’s sake. All the pieces have to fit for any of them to make sense, for the whole to become greater than the sum of the parts.

For me, everything we do traces back to our foundational service responsibilities, our building blocks. And for a military service to execute its mission, it needs to do four things. Force design, force development, force generation and force employment. The Space Force is overhauling each of these, aligning our form with our function to become what we need to be. A service purpose built for great power competition. So I’d like to spend some time bringing you up to speed on all the GPC initiatives and where we’re headed. So let’s start with force design. At the 2024 Warfare Symposium in February, I announced our intention to stand up a new institutional field command, dedicated to force design.

Space Futures Command will be responsible for ensuring our long-term technical advantage in space. Our plan is for Futures Command to incorporate three centers working in tandem to forecast the future operating environment, define our service’s operational concepts, and ultimately document the objective force. The force we need for future success. And while all that sounds well and good, standing up a new field command is no small task, but we’ve made significant progress since February. Since then we’ve established Task Force Futures to stitch together pockets of excellence across our service into something new, something better. We’ve identified a team to get us to initial operating capability and they’re going to make it happen.

If not by the end of this year, I guarantee within a year, but we’re not going to stop there. What we’re talking about here is nothing less than re-baselining the way we identify, mature and develop concepts that will shape the service for years to come. This is critical because there’s so many things that we need to get right. So how do we take in new ideas? How do we test them? How do we align them with the art of the possible, then resource them according to the science of the practical? Just last month, Task Force Futures completed a tabletop exercise to start answering these questions and more. Form must follow function and the lessons we’re learning will be built into our foundation from the outset.

Ensuring the robust force design is integrated into every aspect of a Space Force by design. And fortunately, we have wonderful partners who are committed to helping us move forward. And although I don’t have anything to announce quite yet, I can tell you we’re working with a number of universities, educational institutions to ensure we have access to the best and brightest. Just like we did with Johns Hopkins in the development of our leadership education, we intend to leverage everything that academia has to offer. And as I’ve often said, allies and partners are critical to our success and nowhere is this truer than in force design.

How can you work effectively with teammates if they don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, if they don’t understand the heights that you aspire to? Defining our objective force will be one piece of the solution of this, but another is deepening the ties with those that share our values. Now back in December of 2023, I had some preliminary discussions with our leadership team as well as the Royal Air Force on a groundbreaking idea. I wanted to embed a foreign officer at the very highest levels of our service. I want our force design. I want that process to account for everything our partners are bringing to the table.

I want to make certain we were taking full advantage of one of our greatest strengths by ensuring that Space Force is integrated by design with our allies from the generation of concepts all the way through to its execution. Six months later after monumental staffing efforts by international affairs and legal, security, manpower, public affairs on both sides of the pond as they say, I’m happy to formally announce here on the stage that Air Marshal Paul Godfrey is the first foreign exchange assistant chief of Space Operations and we stood up the Office of Future Concepts and Partnerships around him.

Air Marshal Godfrey has hit the ground running, is already driving the Space Force to think through the integration of allies and partners, industry into every capability, every operation, every mission. Godders, will you stand up and give us a little wave? It’s a great uniform and I know something about great uniforms. Thanks Godders.

While force design frames the problem we face, force development prepares our service to confront it. Earlier this year I told you we had to do a better job of developing leaders for modern warfare in the space domain. We have to grow guardians that could meet the high-tech demands of our operations. For me, that’s what Space Force development is all about.

Step one frankly, is ensuring that guardians understand exactly what the service demands of them. That’s why we published the guidance for the roles, responsibilities and duties of our officer enlisted and civilian guardians. Put simply, we expect officers to be our leaders and planners with breadth and understanding in all disciplines of space power. We expect our enlisted to be our primary war fighters, weapon system experts with deep technical knowledge and we expect civilians to support every aspect of the service, providing stability, vital specialization and expertise and the corporate knowledge to ensure continuity of operations.

With this as our foundation, we’re redesigning the career paths of all guardians, laying the groundwork for the development opportunities to match. For example, for the officers, we have implemented a new initial skills training. An officers training course that every new lieutenant will attend. Over the course of 12 months, these new officers will receive education across the full spectrum of Space Force operations. This includes satellite operations, intelligence operations and cyber warfare operations, as well as exposure to force modernization, joint planning processes.

And when they graduate this training course, our new officers will serve in the operational force, building the understanding that will serve them well as they move forward in their career as Space Force leaders. OTC is just one small piece of the process, but it’s a critical step towards developing multidisciplinary officer corps that we need. This is not just a good idea anymore. We’ve started it. Two weeks ago, STARCOM welcomed to the first class of OTC students and they’re already off and running. This effort will not be limited to officers, of course. We’re already turning our attention to how to train, develop, or enlist civilian guardians.

STARCOM is working to stand up a space acclamation course for new civilians that work similarly to this OTC. Establishing a firm foundation for these guardians. I’m hoping we can start the first course next month. Similarly, for our enlisted force, we’re planning a tailorable pipeline in our schoolhouses that build the depth and technical expertise we need in our space-minded warfighters as Chief B-9 likes to call them. These are concrete steps towards transforming the way we develop our force, but it’ll take time. It’s critical because the guardians that attend these courses are the future of the Space Force.

And the Space Force future will require new, different, uniquely developed leaders to drive our success in the era of great power competition. And speaking of new and different and force development, let’s talk about the Space Force Personnel Management Act. For some time now, we’ve talked about building the need for a modern personnel management system. One that can retain crucial skill sets of our guardians without forcing them to make permanent career choices when life gets complicated. With the help of Congress and the administration, the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act gave us the authority we need to do exactly that.

The short version is that the Space Force is not going to have an active duty and a reserve component. We’re going to have one component, a single component, composed of guardians, serving in both full-time and part-time billets with the capacity to move between the two. Such a simple idea, the benefits are tremendous. We strip away the bureaucracy, we break down the barriers. What you’re left with is career flexibility, the ability to continue your military service while pursuing an advanced degree, while supporting a sick family member or experiencing life in the private sector. You see, once upon a time you had to choose. These were hard choices.

We lost a lot of talented people because they were forced to make that choice. Now we have a better option. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce the first five Air Force reservists who’ve raised their hands to transfer into the Space Force as fully-fledged guardians. Where are you? Stand up for me please. Thank you. We’re thrilled to welcome you to the Space Force team. We’re excited to welcome the many others who will follow in your wake. And these airmen volunteered to be part of our first transfer board back in July, and they’ll complete their transfer as soon as they conclude their reservist duties.

And the lesson we’ll learn from you guys is going to shape our efforts moving forward. So we’ve talked about design and objective force, how we develop ourselves to achieve it. So what do we do with the forces we have today? Our fielded forces and the process by which we present combat ready forces is the work of force generation. And I’ve spoken at length about the need to enhance the way we approach this. Every military service has a process by which they generate forces, and that’s important because the joint force needs to know what to expect from the forces they’re going to receive. Then our job is to present force elements to combatant commands, delivering repeatable, predictable, consistent effects from space at scale.

Space Forces pose a unique challenge because the majority of them are employed in place. And in the past, all of our forces were 100% committed, always in operations, which was a very efficient way to do the job, but just not effective when it came to maintaining the readiness necessary for our pacing threat. You see, the reality is that day-to-day operations simply do not build the readiness required for the high-intensity fight. It’s one thing to sit on crew and operate a payload under normal conditions. It’s something else entirely when you have to figure out how to operate through adversary action, balancing your contribution to the joint force against the threat to your mission.

That’s where SPAFORGEN comes in. Our Space Force generation model. The whole point of SPAFORGEN is to carve out dedicated periods where the procedural currencies for the weapon systems are kept in place. But we also do advanced training and when ready, conduct combatant command operations. We’ve been working to implement SPAFORGEN for a few years now, but I gave Lieutenant General Miller direction to get that done this year. It was a huge lift and I know it put tremendous strain on the crews in the field, but General Miller and the SpOC team at every echelon have delivered.

As of July 1st, they’re executing the new model and collecting lessons learned that will continue to improve overall readiness with each force generation cycle. Each cycle will give guardians the time they need to train. You need the reps, you need the sets, the muscle memory to carry you through when everything is going crazy around you. Now hopefully we can deter war, but we don’t have the final say on that. And when called upon, guardians will be ready because you have invested the time and energy into your readiness. So we’re designing an objective force, we’re developing an effective workforce, we’re generating combat credible force elements. So what’s left?

For the Space Force, force employment is all about normalizing space power and effectively integrating it into the joint force. The mechanism for doing that is component field commands. Service organizations that integrate into combatant commands to deliver timely relevant space effects in support of joint operations. For example, we stood up Space Force’s Space last January to better manage our contribution to US Space Command. Just a month ago, we elevated Space Force’s EURAF to a one-star command, reaffirming our commitment to support those two critical AORs. Likewise, we’ve elevated Space Force’s Korea to an O-6 command, and we’re considering how to further expand our support in the Indo-Pacific, but we’re not stopping there.

In May, I gave direction to finalize a plan to resource our existing service components and activate new ones in every combatant command. Missionary teams are already working hard and I expect to see a comprehensive plan in the next 12 months. The end result will be that in our service, we are better postured to present combatant commanders with the forces they need to deter conflict and win a war if it comes to that. And if you want a good example of effective force employment in action, let’s talk about the work that Space Force’s EURAF has done with our TacSRT initiative. Last February I told you we were kicking off a pilot program for Tactical, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking or TacSRT.

This $40 million effort was intended to support AFRICOM requirements by leveraging commercial analytics and data fusion. The goal was to complement the exquisite work done by the intelligence community with unclassified operational planning products delivered on tactically relevant timelines. It was a pathfinder. With the idea being that we could expand the program if it proved to be value added, and that’s exactly what it did. To date, through Space Force European Command and AFRICOM, the Tactical SRT program has provided over 50 operational planning products to AFRICOM. It delivered timely analysis of suspicious activities by violent extremists along the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It offered visual insights to the US Defense Attaché office in Kenya to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief during major flooding in May. But the thing that stands out most to me was the Space Force EURAF used TacSRT to support US forces as they completed their withdrawal from Airbase 201 in Niger last August. Throughout the withdrawal, the team maintained overwatch of everything within five kilometers of the base. On average, the timeline from collection on orbit to delivery into the hands of security forces was about three and a half hours. But the team got it down to as little as one and a half hours from collection to the security forces by the end of the event.

This is just proof positive that space makes a difference and makes the joint force better. It’s the Space Force’s job to fully exploit that domain for our security and benefits of the warfighters that are in harm’s way each and every day. What we just walked through is a handful of initiatives we’re pursuing, the culmination of thousands of hours of work to make the changes we need. And I know this change is hard, but it’s vital because the domain is changing around us so quickly. Our choices are either to keep moving or get left behind. And I don’t imagine there’s anyone in this room who prefers option B.

If we’re going to see this transformation through, it will be because of you, because of the guardian spirit we all share. I see it every day. The character to not just do things right but do the right things. The commitment to overcome challenges and see our work through to the end. The connection to build partnerships and grow our coalitions. And the courage to ask the hard questions, especially when we might not like the answers, even the question. Our efforts will succeed because of your drive, your desire, your dedication to complete our transformation, and to execute our mission. So I’d like to wrap up today by expressing my gratitude to all of you.

We have asked our guardians to shoulder a heavy burden. It’s not going to get any lighter in the years ahead, but what I can tell you is that your efforts will build the foundation and are building the foundation of tomorrow’s joint force. Space is only going to become more important and the pace of competition will increase along with it. What you do matters. Maybe it’s not always obvious, maybe it’s not always fun, but it absolutely matters. And I know you don’t have to be here. You chose to raise your hand and swear an oath and I thank you for it. And for continuing to show up day after day because what we do matters.

One step at a time, we are transforming the Space Force into what our nation needs. In doing so, we uphold the legacy of change and growth inspired by our Constitution, signed 237 years ago today. And we ensure that our own sun is always on the rise, never setting on the future of the Space Force. And today, as we approach our fifth birthday, we too are making history. Thank you. Semper Supra.

Brigadier General Bernie Skoch:

Thank you, General Saltzman.