SPEAKER_02 0:00

Recognizing that on the service side, you know, not the secretariat side where acquisition occurs, on the service side, if I don't get the requirements right, uh it's never it's never going to be fielded effectively, efficiently, on time, on budget, etc. So we've really gone back and rescrubbed our process. How is it we develop requirements? What does a good requirement look like? And we found that at a minimum there's three levels of requirements.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Hello, I'm Copeline Stover. I'm with the Center for Space Policy and Strategy, part of the Aerospace Corporation. Welcome to the Space Policy Show. For people that are not watching the YouTube video right now, you're missing something. We're actually in the walls of the Pentagon in the executive office. So this is part of our leadership series. It's a series of shows that are featuring chiefs. I resisted calling it the chief series. Um, but we have the chief executive officers of Voyager and Vardom talking about enabling the space economy, and they're also with the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director of Office of Space Commerce. Um, we've got the US Space Force Chief Scientist talking about advanced technology. We've got the NASA medical officer, chief medical officer, talking about living on the moon. So today I am very pleased to feature Chief of Space Operations for the US Space Force, General Chance Salzmann. He has been assigned to the Space Force since um 2022 in this role as CSO, and he is the senior uniformed officer. Um he's only the second one in history. Um the Space Force was established in December 2019. So he's getting ready to kind of end his tenure later in the year, and we've asked him to come onto the space policy show to reflect about how the service has matured and developed over his time. And we've got Jamie Moran leading the conversation. He is with Aerospace Corporation. He's the executive director of the Center for Space Policy and Strategy, and he's also the vice president of Defense Strategic Space at the company. So I'm just gonna go right over to them. Thank you everyone for joining. We're gonna be showing you some more stuff from inside the Pentagon after the show. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Well, it is great to be back on the uh Space Policy Show with General Chance Saltzman. Salty, uh Chief, wonderful to have you back again.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

It's been five years since we last had you on the side.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Seems like yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

You uh you've been up to a fair bit ever since. So um first let me just say uh thank you to you to you and to Jennifer for everything you guys have done in your tenure as Chief of Space Operations. It's a it's a significant undertaking for the the whole family. And obviously the nation owes you guys a debt of gratitude. Not done quite yet, but uh we thought it would be great to get your thoughts as part of this series we're doing on chiefs of all sorts across the space community and kind of how they're approaching their roles and leadership in the rapidly changing environment that we live in right now in the space community. Um so this would be a great coda to that. And we are um we're appreciative of your time as well for today. So l let me just start by asking you a little bit about uh the people of the Space Force. So uh when we talked, I guess it's five years ago now, we uh talked a lot about uh building the guardians the nation needs in the rapidly changing space domain, uh the technical foundation they needed to understand their domain and their mission. You've now grown significantly in terms of uniformed and civilian guardians. You've grown in terms of the industrial base that's supporting you. Um have we made the right steps to build the people we need for the nation's interests in space? What are the next steps to ensure we've got that human capital?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Well, I first I appreciate you starting there because nothing makes me more proud of the Space Force than the guardians uh that make it up. Um it's an amazing group of people, it is. And I mean officer enlisted, civilians alike. Um and and one of the first things we tackled was trying to make sure we had clear definitions of the roles and responsibilities that we generally wanted to ascribe to the civilians, to the officers, and to the enlisted. Thought it was important that we say, how do we want to use our workforce? Um and then you have to say, what's the right size of the workforce? And then you say, what are the individual kinds of training and education and experiences? So you start to think about career paths and and we tackled all of that. Uh we didn't say, well, we'll get to that later, uh, because it's it's too important to set aside. Uh so I'm really proud of where we are. Um if you say, have we taken all the right steps? I I would say it's a work in progress. I think that uh um my initial thought was if I can build the right processes and foundation to build on, then the steps will have to unfold over time because we'll learn as we go. This worked, this didn't work. I'm really proud of the professional military education courses that we've established. Start with BMT. We inherited an Air Force BMT, uh, which trained airmen, and we still use the Air Force BMT, uh basic military training, but we've built our own curriculum. So inside the Air Force BMT is this guardian experience that sets them on a path towards being an effective guardian. Proud of that. Uh we we took the SOS Squadron Officer School from the Air Force and we created our own captain's leadership course. Uh we we partnered with the private institution, uh, you know, Johns Hopkins to uh to do our version of uh of Air Command and Staff College and Air War College. So we have our own uh professional military education there. We've rebuilt uh enlisted tech training. Uh just ever at every step we said it's time to build a guardian from the ground up. We need our own organic and independent training, education and experience. Um now I think we're in a position where we need to learn and we need to stay a learning organization, uh, evaluate what we're doing, uh, get feedback from the field. Is it the kind of training, education, and experience that's helpful? Are there some tweaks we need to make? Um, and are there other opportunities we need to take advantage of? And I'll just give you one example. Um we're really trying to change our relationship with industry. So I really want to start deploying guardians into industry and literally think about it like that, in the same way that, you know, when I was an airman, we would I would deploy forward into uh into the Expeditionary Air Force and gain experience there. Uh this, we want to actually deploy them four, six months at a time, go learn what industry is doing, contribute to that uh industry and learn something, and then bring it back in. Uh that that kind of experience, that kind of education we think will be valuable to keep us on the leading edge of technology and and what industry is trying to accomplish. So foundations are established, and now we just need to stay a learning organization uh collectively and improve our guardians as we go forward.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

You know, we're interestingly exploring a similar model at uh aerospace where we're uh which we're use we're calling government-furnished talent, where government program offices deploy our folks out to their industry partners that are working on the programs. Perfect when they're struggling with specific hard problems or you know, trying to understand the user perspective and things like that that you know we can bring in. It's a uh it's an interesting model, and we're seeing some uh really good uptake already.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

The the the benefits of being embedded, being there every single day. So it's not episodic, it's not, hey, come into this conference and we'll all have a pleasant conversation. No, no, you get to see the trouble, you get to see the challenges, you get to see the opportunities, and it's that day-to-day routine interaction, I think, which both enhances the educational opportunity, but also it it starts to build this collaborative trust uh between the organizations. It's not the mystery of industry or the mystery of government. You're you were there working together, and I think that's value-added.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

In the act of doing that matters a lot. Yeah. Do you um we we have this really kind of diverse and interesting audience for the space policy show, and one of the subsets of that audience is students. We get um we hear a lot from students who are watching. Thanks for watching. Uh they that's part of your recruiting base, whether it's military or civilian guardians. Are there specific attributes you're looking for, you know, besides the learn the continuous learning and the willingness to engage with a emerging military domain, are there other attributes that you would say, hey, you should come join us?

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Yeah, I you know, yes. Uh but I think it's it's I I want to caveat it by saying right now, because we're we're at a very specific stage of our development as a service. Uh we need critical thinkers and we need people with high initiative. If you need process and procedure and be told precisely how to do something, that may not be the best fit right now. Because we're, like I said, we're learning. We're we're trying to adapt uh other services' processes for uniqueness to the Space Force. And so we need people that that can test assumptions, evaluate courses of action, think critically about what's the best step forward, think of uh aspirationally about what the vision of the future could look like or should look like, uh, and then have high initiative, not waiting to be told what to do about that, whatever they find out, but actually taking the initiative and and and doing something. That's a different kind of person. And so it's not you need an engineering degree or you need a you know a math degree or computer science degree. Uh interesting, to be technically savvy has probably got some benefits, but I'll take a critical thinker with high initiative and and we'll train them on the rest. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

So let me shift more to uh military operations, the geopolitical world. Uh we're in an environment right now with ongoing conflicts, both in Europe and uh hopefully coming to an end in the in the Middle East. Uh you, I'm sure, are carefully watching day-to-day operations to draw lessons to build the future force. Um space has been a major player in both of those conflicts. Uh recognizing this is a a public event, what what can you talk about as far as lessons that you're learning and that you're passing on to the force uh as you look at the operations we're taking in right now?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

A couple things because I'd start by saying we've got to be careful as these operations unfold that we quickly declare that we've learned a lesson. Um my experience is sometimes it takes some perspective before you can really learn the lessons. You have to you can't be in the mix. You can't be in the fray and be objective about what you're seeing or learning. I I just I'd throw that out as a caveat, because collect all the observations, but you know, back to Boyd's theory about observe, then orient before you decide and act. Uh we're in the observation phase, I think. Uh, and and maybe over time we're we're orienting about what well, what does this mean and what does it mean for us in the long term? So I'm very careful that we don't jump to conclusions. Do you do you have a formal center for lessons learned? I'm can I confess I don't know that. Well, we we've given it almost as an additional duty to our doctrine center. Okay. Um, that you know, that while whatever our collective lessons learned are should end up in doctrine, they're the ones that are capturing our lessons, uh, observations for the purpose of evaluating them to be doctrine. And we've recently established on the staff an S9 function, which helps with force design, but it has the operational analysis function. So they'll also be involved in our lessons learned. So we don't have a lessons learned center, but we have people who have that as a part of their responsibility. Um yes, you you have to observe intently and actively uh with what's going on. Nothing, I say this all the time, nothing's more clarifying than combat feedback. So we were watching very close what's going on in the Middle East, obviously, what's going on in Ukraine. And from a space perspective, a couple of things jump out. One is let's not argue anymore about how critical space is to national security, military operations, the economies of the world. Space is a vital contributor to all those facets. I see that looking at adversary targeting. I see that with how we're using it and integrating it across the joint force. And so we've crossed the threshold where it can ever be debated again that space is critical. Um, the the bad analogy that I've used before, you know, it where space used to be kind of icing on the cake. We made things a little better. We are truly the eggs and the batter of that cake now. You can't possibly extract space out and expect the same outcome uh anymore. It is just fully baked in. Phil, let me continue with the pun. Um, cyber networks are integral to space operations. There's as much about ground operations with space as there is about on orbit. And we we see cyber attacks with the Russians in Ukraine uh that had that were intended to have a space effect. Right. Um, so we have to be uh very clear-eyed about how we use our networks and how we protect those networks. And I think we've we've seen, at least we've observed, what happens when you don't pay attention to those things. Uh the other one that jumps out at me that I think is interesting is commercial space integration into military operations. Uh with the Viasat attack in Ukraine, uh suddenly the Ukrainians are looking for a way to use telecommunications to command and control forces. And very publicly, Starlink was there uh to help contribute to that. So a couple of things. One is commercial capabilities can be integrated effectively into military operations, and then maybe not so much of a lesser impact is proliferated. LEO is very resilient uh in a way that maybe geosynchronous sally communications aren't as resilient uh in the current EW electromagnetic warfare environment. So we're we're observing those things and and again trying to not be uh too bold about drawing quick conclusions, but those are some things that jump out at me.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yeah, that that's a good pivot to this broader question of uh of commercial exploitation. And we've we've talked about this many times, but uh you're making some pretty big bets uh in the 2027 budget pitch and in recent contracts that have been awarded to really large contracts, multi-billion dollar contracts for commercial or commercially derived uh proliferated low Earth orbit services or hardware. The as you look at that and you look at this uh tightening relationship between commercial capabilities and the military, um, how do you think through the pros and the cons? You talked about rapidly moving overhead proliferated LEO assets being harder to jam in certain circumstances, either at that kind of implementation level or at the higher operational and strategic levels, how do you think through those pros and cons?

SPEAKER_02 15:49

It's a great question. It's a multifaceted question. So I I I like to think in terms of these frictions, and leadership has to balance these frictions. Right. Um, I could clearly say that to be more effective requires you to use all the orbital regimes. If I can use LEO and GEO and HEO, that makes it more of a targeting problem for the adversary. And so effectiveness likes that redundancy, that level of resiliency. From an efficiency standpoint, it's not the cheapest way to go. Sure. So how do I balance that? You know, the the I have to pay attention to how much something costs and what the price points are, but I want it to be as effective as possible. You have you have to balance those things out. Um, sometimes you have a single vendor that can go very fast if they were to get the contract, uh, because they've already demonstrated capability to do something. But competition usually creates a better uh incentive structure for the government. So, how do I reward a company for going fast, but at the same time generate competition that's gonna maybe compete with that company. Right. Those are good frictions, uh, but leadership has to continually evaluate what where are we in the in the current needs of the government and how do we want to play both sides of that coin to the max benefit of national security. Uh, and that it can get kind of complicated pretty fast.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Aaron Powell A lot of that's balancing sort of short-term and long-term factors, right? You want that competition in the long run, it'll probably deliver you better prices, better quality. But it will cost more. And it might mean slowing yourself down even.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Aaron Powell Or God forbid, vendor lock, you know, which is the the worst thing the government could ever do, right? But sometimes there's an advantage to that.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So do you are there lessons from the engagement you've had over the last nearly four years in that transition to more reliance on commercial that you would pass on to the next CSO, that you would pass on to your next service acquisition executive? Any key thoughts coming out of that?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Well um the the the one overarching thing, and it's so easy to say and so hard to do, is you could kill yourself with analysis. Like I those those friction points that I just said, those are complicated and there's no answer. It's just a continual balancing. So sometimes you just have to make the decision for the sake of making decision and move forward and then adjust as required. And so this idea that you can analyze and figure out what exactly the right deal is for the government, that might be, you know, it might just be a brass ring you're never gonna quite get to. So just don't be afraid to make a decision, move in a direction that's positive, and then continually evaluate assumptions, continually evaluate um uh trade-offs, and and and don't be afraid to shift as you're moving forward. No big bet can't be unmade and go a different direction. So I think it's about continual balancing and not be afraid to make a decision uh with without perfect information.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Aaron Powell One of my colleagues at CSPS in a paper several years ago you know highlighted that oftentimes with commercial, especially services, the the big expenses are not actually the service itself, but rather the integration of it into everything else, putting the terminal on the aircraft or on the ship, training with it, building all of the tactics and techniques and procedures that you need to make it militarily effective. Um do you think the service is making the progress it needs to do in laying that foundation for exploitation?

SPEAKER_02 19:22

I think there's two aspects of that that I'm paying particular attention to. One is the traditional military term is, you know, you've heard dot mil PF. So it's one thing to buy the system, it's another to do all of the other work that turns that system into a combat force uh to achieve a military effect, whether that's MILCON for facilities or the growth of manpower or new operational concepts, you have to do all of that. And I think that's what you're talking about is sometimes those can be more expensive in collective nature than the system itself. But if you don't account for it or you shortchange it, then you don't really have a force, you just have a system. And so I'm I'm really conscientious of building processes where we plan for, account for, and resource all of those.mil PF factors uh for any given system. Yeah, this is a billion-dollar system, but it's really a $2.5 billion system when you factor in manpower, MILCON, et cetera. And I we owe that to the taxpayers, to Congress, uh to the capes of the world to say this is what it's gonna cost if you want to go down this path. I think that's that's an important aspect of it. Um doesn't make it any easier, but we still have to account for it.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

You had talked early on about needing to think about a fully burdened force and understanding that. Do you you obviously you've uh you've had enormous budgetary growth in your tenure if the if the current budget request is is fully enacted, I think it's on the order of five times growth probably from when you started. Um do you think you've made real progress in getting to that fully burdened level, or is there still quite a bit of work to do toward that?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Recognizing that I'm talking to a master here from Cape Days, uh you know full well. Okay. You but you know full well in terms of the logic that budgets don't just get pencil whipped. You have to defend every single dollar. The reason we've grown so much is because I feel like we have accounted uh effectively for all of that other burdening, the manpower, the training ranges, the the simulators that have to come with systems, the you know, the MILCON, the op centers, the resiliency and ground networks, everything that has to go into making an on-orbit system effective, we've accounted for, we've done the cost analysis, we've determined with good data uh analysis what's required. And only with that could we pitch a budget that gets accepted all the way through all the channels, through OMB, over to the White House, and finally over to Congress. I feel really proud of the fact that I feel like we've done that uh effectively so that it's not a hollow force when it's put in place.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

When we talked to five years ago, one of the problems that was on your radar was kind of The modeling and simulation to make the case for space as the massive force multiplier for the whole joint force, as well as the need for domain superiority in its own right. Do you feel like that foundation is built, that analytic foundation, so that I mean it appears that it withstood the uh resource scrutiny, but I do.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

I it starts with a vision. Uh vision kind of turns into requirements, retirements come turns into contracts, contracts turn into capabilities, and then you integrate, et cetera. Um we're somewhere just shy of fielding the full vision, I think, you know, five years hence from when we really started with that vision. Um we had a a pretty small fraction of a small budget devoted to test and training and simulation. We have a pretty sizable, I mean, half a billion dollars a year, more or less, is just focused on building the test and training equipment that the forces need, the acquisition community needs, the modeling and the simulation to really do the work that's necessary. So I do feel like all that's in place now, the requirements there. We have a plan. We we have a new PAE for infrastructure. Uh so you at the highest level of our acquisition management, uh, we're accounting for test and training infrastructure as a key component. So again, I feel like the foundation's there. Now we just got to bring it to fruition.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Uh speaking of the PAEs, this is a you know, it's significant change as part of the acquisition transformation effort the department's going through. Um are there key issues that you're watching as we go through that transition to these more empowered executives leading each of the major capability areas?

SPEAKER_02 23:45

A couple of thoughts there. And one of them kind of ties back to an original thought. As I'm Congress designated me, the CSO, as a force design architect for space for the armed forces. And when as soon as you say for the armed forces, that's that integration piece. And so we stood up an office in the J8 to pull in other service space requirements so that we can account for it holistically. This is the, hey, we can put GPS 3Fs on orbit all day long, but if you don't have receivers that can take advantage of the new codes, then it doesn't matter. So that it's about synchronizing the investments across all the services to get all the full interoperability. And I think that's a you know a key aspect of this. Umce design architect that also then translates into the requirements. And um it's I can't give bad requirements to a new PAE, PEOs that become PAEs and say, okay, now you're gonna be fine. I'm still giving you the old bad requirements and bad process, but I'm sure you'll be better at managing them. So recognizing that on the service side, you know, not the secretariat side where acquisition occurs, on the service side, if I don't get the requirements right, uh it's never, it's never gonna be fielded effectively, efficiently, on time, on budget, et cetera. So we've really gone back and rescrubbed our process. How is it we developed requirements? What does a good requirement look like? And we found that at a minimum, there's three levels of requirements. There's high-level mission requirements. This is what we needed to do to solve an operational problem. There's the system requirements. Okay, the system that we think will answer this has the following characteristics that we can start to talk about. And then you get down to contract specifications. What are we going to put on contract and hold a contractor uh responsible for? And I think understanding that there are those three tiers, and each of them comes with a different mindset is important to getting them right and not having to go back or back and forth and or adding uh requirements that are hard to field because it doesn't tie back connect. So we have this thread that goes through all of those at the appropriate level of detail to help the PAEs do their job. So it's that there's a balance between the two.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Aaron Ross Powell So our traditional analogy of uh big R requirements and little R requirements has to be broadened. And we we all said it.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Yeah. We've lost the meaning.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

And so we've got to get back to what does that really mean when we say that? What are the left and right balance? What does good big R look like? What does good little R look like? And if we define those terms, I think we're in a better position. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

So that I mean that raises a really interesting tension to follow onto your tensions point. Uh the department is really shifting to emphasize more fixed price contracting. And certainly one lesson I learned the hard way from failed programs is uh a fixed price contract is not a panacea. If you haven't written down what the government really needs, you will get exactly the wrong thing and it'll be useless, or you will change what you want, and that fixed price is no longer so fixed. Um If we're gonna do this pivot to fixed price contracting successfully, we obviously have to have good understanding of those detailed contract specs. Um That's that's gotta be an ongoing dialogue between operators, users and other services that are depending on the downstream for the kind of force enhancement stuff and the contracting people, the acquisition people. Um have we made the progress necessary to make smart business decisions in that environment? Jamie, you've got a lot of experience with this.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

You know, I it's an ongoing journey, I just think it's an ongoing journey. And you know, um fixed price contracts are a tool, but if we think they're the tool that that that solves every problem, we're wildly wrong, I think. Um I think the more unknowns there are going into a program, the less valuable a fixed price contract. On both sides. The contractor won't know what to charge because there's too many unknowns, so they'll overprice it or or or not, and that's even worse as it as it goes along. Um so I just think we got to use the right tool for the right problem. And there are certainly good examples where a fixed price contract is what really should apply. Um and where that's the case, we should go with that because it's it helps oversight, it helps Congress understand how much you plan to spend on something and what should be delivered when you get it, and there's value in that. But we ought to be eyes wide open that, hey, when we're building space-based interceptors for a Golden Dome, fixed price contract, how in the world could you do the kind of RD and demos and resolve all the technical issues that you know are going to come up and hold a contractor to only a certain dollar value? Um I just think it we just got to be eyes wide open. Pick the right contracting tool for the problem set that you're trying to resolve, and then you you got a better shot at success.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Aaron Powell I will say with home improvement projects, I'm often criticized for not using the right tool for the job. So I take your And it usually costs more than you expect when you do. Yeah. Looking even more broadly, so as a service chief, you spend a non-trivial amount of your time engaging with allies and partners around the world. Um we have seen dramatic changes in uh the willingness of key allies and partners to invest in space capabilities, to talk about them publicly over the last several years. That that's certainly positive. Uh we're also seeing, maybe on both the U.S. side and with some of the allies, more emphasis on building out sovereign capabilities where we maybe had heavy interdependence before. We're now seeing some more effort to have standalone capabilities. Without asking you to get into specific names of individual allies you're talking to, how how are your counterparts thinking through those issues? And how would you advise them, you know, as a as a friend and ally as they're thinking about really significant investments in some cases?

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Sure. You know, it's a full spectrum from those who are interested and know it's important, but but don't have any aspirations that they're going to be a space for your nation, uh, all the way up to partners that are as capable as we are in many areas. Um and and so the key is understanding your partners. What are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, uh, where can they contribute? Where are they willing to contribute? And and and and just continuing the dialogue of partnership builds trust. And I and I start always with um there are certain areas of space operations where capacity is king. You don't have to go further than satellite communications. Uh, anytime we're in a crisis or conflict, the demand for bandwidth for satellite communications is almost unlimited.

unknown 30:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Uh and so the more that's available to a coalition, the better off it will be. Uh, and so I I tell them, you really pretty can't can't you pretty much can't build too much satellite communications. Uh and that also is is they're encouraged by that because there's such a a peaceful use for that that they don't have to think of themselves as building just a military use kind of capability. Um, space domain awareness. Uh, we all need to understand flight safety in space. That takes a lot of data, which requires a lot of sensors, which requires a lot of sensors around the planet. Uh so partners can contribute to that. And the more data, the better. Uh, and so it's another area where capacity is king and where you are on the earth looking up uh matters. Um uh and then and even if you get into some of the more military things like electronic warfare for counter-selling communications, for example, capacity is king. The number of apertures matters, and where you are on the footprint matters. And so we're working in areas with our partners that are interested in buying equipment in terms of those areas where there's high capacity demands. And that's that's that's a starting point. Uh, but I always quickly follow on. Then build your space cadre, train and experience expertise. So you have organic, sovereign space expertise to help you make the planning and and resourcing decisions that'll go forward. Yeah, that's I think that's a helpful message for them.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

And just like your Human Capital Limited, our many of the allies and partners are even much more acutely. So do you still see a constructive level of exchange officers coming over and joint particip or coalition participation in exercises? Of course, we have real-world events where they're participating too, but is that building, continuing to build the foundation?

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Yeah, far more requests uh to send people over and integrate into our operations than sometimes we can handle. Uh they they certainly like the operations, and we've had long-going, uh ongoing um uh relationships for liaison officers, exchange officers, and our operations like missile warning and the NORAD example with Canada. Uh the five eye partners have been integrated into our operations for a long time. Uh now I think we're starting to expand that out. The the Combined Space Operations Initiative, CISPO, 10 nations now. Uh, all of them want to see how the Space Force is operating. All of them want to learn firsthand the lessons. And so we've gotten requests. The Italians want to put uh an officer on our staff. I have uh uh Air Marshal Godfrey is now part of the staff to connect and uh doing great work there. So much so we just established a two-letter organization that's about partnerships. Uh, you know, how do we manage these? Where do we put people so they can get the most for them their own country, but contribute to the growth of the Space Force as well. Lots of interest. Yeah, that's important.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Do you um one of the stories that we've long told ourselves, and I think has some real truth in it, is that the uh network of allies and partners and the closeness that the U.S. has with those allies and partners kind of plays a critical role in deterrence. Um obviously our demonstrated capabilities matter a lot, our allies demonstrated capabilities, but the notion that you would be taking on both the U.S. and its allies complicates an adversary's decision calculus. Um there specific ways beyond CISPO that you're looking to communicate that? Well, first, do you think that's true still? And yeah, are there specific ways you're looking to communicate that on the global stage to hopefully reduce the risk of conflict?

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Yeah, I agree. I I think uh I absolutely agree with that premise that uh coalitions have a deterrent effect. Uh it's an asymmetric advantage to say you can't just go to war against one nation. If if that nation happens to be the U.S., we're gonna bring partners and allies with us. And and I think that does have kind of a chilling constraining effect on adversary uh goals. So I I think that is an important part of deterrence that we should we should continue to factor in. Um now, does that mean we don't we get along every time? Well, no, of course not. Families fight, you know. I mean, but the but the bottom line is they don't become non-family. Um and so CSPO is one important initiative. W uh NATO the NATO structure talking about how space is going to grow inside NATO. Um, maybe someday to be equivalent to the air component or the maritime component, land component. Do we need a space component NATO? Those discussions are ongoing. That's a lot more nations, brings a lot more of that spectrum of capabilities uh regarding space into question uh to for the utility of a component, but that is happening. Uh there's certainly a a series of allies and partners in the Western Pacific uh in PACOM that we're having continual uh conversations with. We have components now in Korea, we have a Space Force component in Japan that's uh sub-organization of our component to PACOM. So uh it it's just it's important that we always think about those because that's how we ultimately would like to go through a crisis. Who wants to join us? Who wants to help out? We seem to always ask that question, and we want to make that as easy from a space perspective as possible.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

No, that makes sense. Well, let me ask you to take this to big picture. Again, you're approaching four years as a as a service chief. What's the uh what's the accomplishment you're most proud of? And I will follow it up with the flip side.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

So it's hard to it's hard to kind of zero in on the one thing. Um but there's that's why I asked. I know, it's it's a really good question. I so I'm gonna cheat a little bit. I I think the the the description of our service and what are the service level responsibilities. One of the things that hit me early on was hey, we really haven't asked these fundamental questions about what a service does since the establishment of the Air Force almost eighty years ago, right? Everybody that did that's long gone. Um and so we started asking fundamental questions. Why do we have a service? What is it that a service does that a combatant command can't do? Um and and I finally just decided that uh it it boiled down to services are responsible for four basic activities. And it all centers on our ability to contest, command, or control a domain, a new domain warfareing space. We have to be able to do force design. What's the equipment that we need to control the space domain? We have to develop a force, force development, train, educate, experience our operators to be able to be effective. We have to generate forces. How are they ready to do the missions that we're asking to do? And then they have to actually do the missions effectively. Force design, force development, force generation, and force employment. All services are responsible for those four activities. So just by stating that and then putting all of our key initiatives under those headers, saying, hey, the reason we're developing an objective force and standing up S9 and using battle school at SWAC is because we have to do force design. Hey, the reason we have PME and we're building our own captain's leadership course and we redesigned our officer training course, because we have to develop a force that understands this. The reason we did SPA4 Gen, a force generation model where we came out of commit phase, trained for high-end fight before we go back into operations. That was our force generation model. And then the service components, establishing them all, is how you integrate with the joint force to employ the force effectively and as in a synchronized way with the joint community. We had to do all of that. And so I'm proud that we structured our efforts in one coherent way to say this is what a service does. It's not a bunch of ad hoc decisions or a bunch of activities we say, maybe this will all add up to us doing a good job. No, we structured it. So I'm really proud that we have a framework where everybody can see where they fit into what it is that a service does, and all of our initiatives have a coherence to them about being the newest, youngest service.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

Yeah. I um for Father's Day, I saw a cute meme with a grandfather, father, and uh baby in arms, and with the Army, Air Force, and Space Force seals on each of them. And you probably saw that one too. It's a bring building, birthing a new service is no joke.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And it's it is it's an interesting fact, because that is definitely just the way it happened, um, that we're not the baby that maybe the grandfather thinks we are. We're we're pretty dang important to the entire team. But I will say that as we look at our culture, there's things that we're doing because the Army did it. And because the Army did it, the Air Force chose to do it, and because the Air Force did it, the Space Force kind of inherited it. And you go, well, why did the Army do it? It's like, uh, nobody, I don't know. It's just the way it's always been done. So questioning those assumptions because of that lineage, I think is another important thing that we have to keep reminding ourselves. Does this work for the kind of service we are or the kind of service we want to be? And if the answer is yes, then let's keep it. Like, no, let's not reinvent the wheel. But in a lot of cases, it was like, no, we're a little different. You know, what works for a 400,000-person army or a 300,000 person Air Force doesn't downscale to a 10,000 active component in the Space Force. So we just have to be mindful of that.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yeah, different roles of geography for each of the services.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

We're not really expeditionary. We have some expeditionary elements, but as a service, we don't largely do that. So, you know, other services have to orient around being expeditionary, but we don't.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

So uh biggest regret. I I got this question asked that in all hands, and so I slyly said, I have no regrets. Um and I and I kind of do mean that, um, honestly, because I don't feel like I ever put myself in a situation where we made a decision that I felt was so one way that if if we go through this door, there's no way back. I've always felt like this is going to be more of a work in progress. Hey, let's get started. Let's do something, let's take an action, and then let's evaluate how well that action works. And what we like, we keep, what we don't like, we discard, we keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

So any regrets where you were too slow to make a decision, given that ethos?

SPEAKER_02 40:51

Um Yeah, probably. And and I use this example when I got the question. We are still using uh Air Force performance reports. Um and it seems like such an administrative thing. It's like build your own form, let's just go. Uh but I personally, and I so I full accountability here, slowed that down because I felt like it was an opportunity. That the performance report truly could be a valuable tool to give guardians the feedback they need and help them understand where their where their strengths are, where their weaknesses are. And we're so small, no one can fall through the cracks. Everybody has to be optimized. And I felt like, yes, we could adopt the processes that we inherited from the Army and from the Air Force. And you you've seen these forms. Uh I've handwritten them. They have some utility sometimes and they have less utility in other areas. I wanted ours to be different. I wanted ours to be good. So I deliberately slowed it down. So here we are, I'm about to leave, and we still don't have our own individual performance reports. So a little bit of regret that I probably couldn't see that through to the finish line. But I I am proud of the fact that we didn't just go the path of least resistance, that we decided deliberately we're gonna we're gonna do something different, we're gonna get it right, and it's just gonna take a little longer to unfold. But in the end, I hope it'll be a better outcome.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Well, I was I'm just glad that you didn't say sitting down for this interview was your greatest regret. I appreciate that. Um So I know you have a strong appreciation for a good dad joke, if if that is an actual thing. Um so I I did want to offer you the opportunity to throw one in, but just to s get you started, um I notice we have this beautiful backdrop here, so I thought you might know um what really makes my day. The rotation of the earth.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

And I'm not even gonna try to top that. It's so it's so dear. That's a way just to leave it there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Uh thank you so much for your service again to Jenfer as well for all that you guys have done together. And we appreciate your time today. The uh the Space Force clearly is stronger for your efforts, and we will uh look forward to seeing it grow through it's through infancy, it's through toddlerhood. Now we're distinctly into the elementary years, and uh hopefully it's a significant upward trajectory.

SPEAKER_02 43:20

Well, thanks thanks to you as well, and thanks for the aerospace team partnership. Uh it's it's one of the good relationships I think that's helped the Space Force in its infancy. And so thanks for all you do for that, and and thanks for the opportunity to talk to the pleasure. Great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Thank you so much to General Salzman and to Jamie for that very great discussion. They really covered a lot of ground from from tiered requirements all the way through dad jokes. Um as you can see, we are here still in the Pentagon. I'm actually here along this space capabilities wall. And at this space capabilities wall, there's different things that are going on in terms of what the Space Force can do, and then further on down in terms of what other nations can do. There are some other great things in this space hall here in the Pentagon. Things like the flag, the original Space Force flag that was unfurled in the signing ceremony in the White House. Also, there is a flag that was flown on the ISS that is a Space Force flag. Um, and then that was because I was the first guardian ever in space who brought it up there. There's also some very good historical artifacts, other historical artifacts here, an explanation about the kind of motto of the space force, the Semper Supram. Um and then even here on another wall that we're gonna show you, we've got um the story of Operation Desert Storm, where space was actually first used in war. So it's not new, um, but Space Force is something that's still growing and maturing as we learn from the conversation today. So all of our shows are at csps.aerospace.org slash space policy show. Um you can also find all the shows on YouTube or by all the normal podcast channels. The Center for Space Policy has deep research papers on our website, and you can also subscribe there if you want to get notified of things as they come out. Please follow us on social media and thank you again, everyone, for joining the space policy show today.