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 […]
From Longevity to Combat Resilience: The Space Force’s Strategic Shift
At the 30th Anniversary of the 328th Weapons Squadron, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman outlined a fundamental transformation underway in the U.S. military, one driven by a simple realization: the space domain is no longer benign. When the Space Force was established, it inherited systems designed in the 1990s for longevity, not conflict. The guiding philosophy was efficiency. Build […]
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 […]
Our Space Future Depends on What We Teach Kids Today
The future of American spacepower isn’t built in orbit. It’s built in classrooms. Every Guardian who will operate satellite constellations, every engineer who will design next-generation propulsion systems, every acquisition professional who will manage billion-dollar programs, they all started somewhere. A teacher who made physics click. A demonstration that turned abstract concepts into tangible wonder. […]
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 […]
Why the Indo-Pacific Is a Spacepower Story: A Conversation with Gen. Stephen Whiting
SUMMARY: On the Spacepower Podcast, U.S. Space Command Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting discusses deterrence, partnerships, and why space is increasingly central to security in the Indo-Pacific. When most people think about the Indo-Pacific, they picture ships, aircraft, and contested waters stretching from the South China Sea to the western Pacific. But according to Gen. Stephen Whiting, the conversation cannot […]
