US Space Force needs to get bigger

Gen. Chance Saltzman says being commander of the US Space Force is like “jumping on a merry-go-round that’s spinning very fast.” His service is less than four years old, a military toddler, yet it must prepare to combat China in what could be the decisive battle zone of the future.

The Space Force had a painful birth in 2019. Its champion was President Donald Trump, which guaranteed controversy. The military brass initially opposed its creation, and the intelligence community zealously protected its own space agencies. But the “Guardians,” as the new service’s members are known, managed to stand up and begin playing the Pentagon power game effectively, The Washington Post reports.

Saltzman admitted during an interview that the Space Force has had some “growing pains.” The service is tiny, with fewer than 13,000 officers, enlisted personnel and civilians, according to Saltzman’s staff. (The Marine Corps, by contrast, has about 177,000 active-duty members.) The Space Force doesn’t have enough command slots to compete with the other services, let alone people to fill them. And unlike other branches, its missions are so secret that the public knows little about what it does.

“It’s just too damn small,” says John Hamre, head of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an influential early supporter of the force’s creation. He argues that to meet the enormous challenges ahead, the Space Force will need to build a larger ecosystem to develop personnel, weapons and strategic heft.

Saltzman agreed that resources are stretched. “We get out-staffed” in key Pentagon meetings and committees, he said, with other services sometimes overmatching Space Force 10 to 1 in staff preparation. “Quantity is its own kind of quality,” he said. “If that means we’ve got to get bigger, I’m okay with that.”

Saltzman has just embarked on some important innovations that will expand the force’s capabilities. A new targeting cell, known as the 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron, was launched this month, with a spooky skeleton-head insignia, at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado.

“We need to conduct intel for space,” explained Saltzman. His new unit will use ground and space sensors to assess the capabilities, intent and maneuverability of potential adversaries’ satellites. “Ultimately … we’re talking about targets — what the targets are that we would have to effect,” he said, adding: “You have to know what you’re doing in order to jam a satellite or create a disruptive effect.”

Space defense is partly about resiliency, Saltzman said. The United States is vulnerable now because too much of its intelligence and communications capabilities are carried on a few satellites, inevitably described as “exquisite” platforms, but also sitting ducks.

Saltzman said that vulnerability is beginning to change, through a new program called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. A constellation of low Earth orbit satellites will create a mesh network in space for communications and other uses. The first 10 satellites were launched in April, and 18 more are scheduled by year’s end, with an additional 160 next year. The network could grow to as many as 1,000 satellites.

In this proliferation of low Earth orbiters, the Space Force is following the small-satellite revolution pioneered by the Starlink constellation launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The proliferated array “is a much tougher targeting problem,” Saltzman said. “We’re actually seeing the effects of that in Ukraine with the Starlink constellation. Russians are trying to jam that,” without success.

Saltzman’s mission is complicated by the fact that there are so many other government players in space. On the intelligence side, the National Reconnaissance Office manages surveillance satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency oversees mapping, targeting and other tactical collection. Aside from the Space Force, the military has a joint US Space Command, and the Air Force and other services also have their own space units. It’s potentially a jumble of overlapping missions.

China, interestingly, has gone in the other direction — toward consolidation of high-tech military assets. Beijing’s Strategic Support Force, created in late 2015, is a People’s Liberation Army hybrid that combines cyber, space and electronic warfare as well as psychological operations. It’s one-stop shopping for advanced information warfare.

The Space Force, in theory, should provide better coordination for US efforts. Saltzman can now argue space priorities in the “tank” at the Pentagon with other military chiefs of staff. There’s a space-integration cell within the joint staff, and a joint panel to oversee the different services’ space requirements. But none of this will work if the Space Force isn’t big enough to hold its seat at the table and drive war-gaming and strategic planning.

Anyone who doubts that this is an era of great-power competition between the United States and China should look at what’s happening in space. And frankly, America is late to this race. Saltzman recalled that, as recently as 2015, the Pentagon debated whether a top Air Force general “would be allowed to say ‘space’ and ‘warfighting’ in the same sentence.”

Space now is inescapably a domain of potential conflict. The mission, Saltzman said bluntly, is “space superiority — protect ours, deny theirs.” We have a Space Force, and it needs to get bigger and more influential to do its job.