Before the Conflict, There Has to Be a Rehearsal – Inside SYD 81
In the early days of Red Flag, when the U.S. Air Force finally started training its pilots against a realistic adversary rather than against padded assumptions, something uncomfortable became clear. The first time a pilot faced a thinking enemy, a disorienting number of them lost. Not in actual combat. In practice. That was the entire […]
When Acquisition Becomes a Warfighting Function – Inside SYD 88
For most of the Space Force’s short life, the people who built its capabilities and the people who operated them lived in different organizational worlds. Requirements arrived over a fence. Timelines stretched. By the time a capability was delivered, the threat had sometimes already moved. The system was not designed for speed. It was designed […]
Small Force, Big Mission: Jennifer Saltzman on the People Behind the Space Force
There are only about 10,000 Guardians in the United States Space Force. That’s the entire service. You could fit them all inside a mid-sized college campus. And yet the domain they operate in underpins every GPS navigation route, every satellite weather forecast, every financial transaction, every phone call made today. The Space Force is simultaneously […]
Thirty Years of Building Space Warfighters: Inside the 328th Weapons Squadron
Most people picture a weapons school as the place that takes the best operator of a single machine and makes that operator even better. The fighter community works that way: one squadron trains F-16 pilots, another trains F-35 pilots, and the platform defines the patch. The space weapons school was built to do something harder. […]
Col. Alison Gonzalez: Why the Space Force Created a Dedicated Education Command
Training tells you how to do the job. It doesn’t tell you why the job exists. For most of military history, that distinction didn’t matter much. The mission was clear, the enemy was visible, and the stakes were obvious. But space is different. It’s invisible, contested, and deeply misunderstood, even inside the government agencies that […]
Doubling the Space Force Isn’t a Budget Argument. It’s a War-Fighting Imperative.
When Congress hears “the Space Force needs to double in size,” most assume it’s a budget argument. A bigger number, a bigger ask. But that framing misses the point almost entirely. The case Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna has been making, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and in this conversation […]
What Congress Knows About China’s Space Threat, and What the Rest of Us Don’t
There is a moment in the conversation that stops you cold. Randy Schriver, who spent years inside the Pentagon tracking China’s military modernization, describes the day he returned to government, got his clearances back, and walked into his first intelligence briefing after a few years away. “My mind exploded,” he says. “I literally thought, how […]
Building Combat Power in Orbit – Insights with Lt. Gen Greg Gagnon
Building Combat Power in Orbit When people talk about the Space Force, the conversation usually drifts toward satellites and launch vehicles. Hardware. Orbits. Constellations. But spend a few minutes listening to Lt. Gen. Greg Gagnon, and that framing starts to feel incomplete. Because the real center of gravity in space operations isn’t just the technology […]
SFA Statement on the FY2027 Presidential Budget Request
The Space Force Association welcomes the Administration’s FY2027 Presidential Budget Request, which signals a strong and historic commitment to space as a warfighting domain and a cornerstone of national security. The request for $1.5 trillion in total defense budgetary resources – a 44 percent increase over the FY2026 enacted level – reflects an overdue recognition […]
Building the Force We Don’t Yet Have: Lt. Gen. Miller on Space Superiority
There is a moment early in the conversation where Lt. Gen. Miller pauses, not for effect, but because the weight of what he is describing demands it. Space superiority, as he frames it on the Spacepower Podcast, is not a slogan or a doctrinal buzzword. It is a condition that must be deliberately built, continuously assessed, and, […]
