PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colorado — Once challenged as duplicative and unnecessary, the United States Space Force in 10 month’s time has spurred America’s closest allies to create their own space agencies and sign partnering agreements to follow the U.S. lead in space security, Space Force commander Gen. Jay Raymond told the Washington Examiner this week.
“After we stood up U.S. Space Command, France stood up its space command, the U.K. has elevated space in their air force. Japan just stood up a space organization,” Raymond said in an interview at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.
Beyond following America’s lead to create their own space security forces, Raymond said U.S. partners and allies have signed numerous partnering agreements to cooperate on security in the space domain.
“We’re turning these partnerships from just one way, data-sharing partnerships to, no kidding, true operational partnerships that deliver advantage,” Raymond added.
The chief of space operations noted that allies are now embedded in U.S. space organizations and participating in joint exercises.
“Historically, on the military side, we have not had the partnerships with our allies that we have in other domains,” explained Raymond about the space domain. “The reason why was we really didn’t need it. The space domain was a benign domain. Today, that’s not the case.”
Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, who became the first space field commander of the newly minted Space Operations Command, or SpOC, on Wednesday, highlighted how U.S. partners are following suit with similar entities.
“Now, Canada has a SpOC. It’s called the CAN-SpOC,” Whiting told the Washington Examiner. “The U.K. has one, we call it the U.K.-SpOC. Australia has a space operations center. We call it the AUS-SpOC. Japan is developing one.”
Whiting’s new command consists of nine “Space Deltas,” each with their own warfighting mission ranging from cybersecurity to GPS warfare.
Raymond highlighted partnerships with “Five Eyes,” the intelligence alliance comprised of the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He also mentioned other allies France, Germany, and Japan.
Another partnership, with Norway, just saved the U.S. $900 million by helping to deliver a payload into orbit, Raymond said.
“If you look at what we’re doing with these partners, we’re operating together,” he said. “When we stood up U.S. Space Command, we actually stood up a Combined Force Space Component Command.”
Combined components in the military encompass multiple countries, while joint components consist of multiple services under one command.
‘Digital service from day one’
Raymond also explained some of the best practices and innovative thinking that is going into the development of the Space Force and its personnel.
“We’re building this service as a digital service from day one,” he said, giving the example of seven new recruits from military entrance processing stations in Baltimore and Denver who were handed a tablet with their full curriculum on it before they head to boot camp.
Boot camp itself will also be different for the new recruits.
“We’ve made some adjustments to that training so that the vast majority of it will be Air Force training, but we’ve changed it a little bit to bring in some of the culture pieces that we expect from our space professionals,” he said.
Space operators will be expected, for example, to speak a second language — a computer language.
“We’re getting after digital engineering to be able to go fast at speed and at scale to meet the challenges that we face,” Raymond said before going into what he called “human capital management.”
“We want to use every kind of authority that we can use to be able to develop these folks differently than the way we’ve developed them in the past,” he said.
The chief of space operations said the 16,000 space operators administratively assigned to the Space Force are already showing the other services what’s possible when a new armed service is stood up “from a clean sheet of paper.”
“It’s all I can do to run fast and stay ahead of them because they’re moving out,” he said.
