Amid questions of whether the new team will have the same enthusiasm as the departing one, the head of the U.S. Space Force revealed Tuesday he has met with members of Democratic President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s Pentagon transition team.
The fledgling command, a pet project of President Trump, is the first new addition to the Pentagon’s lineup of military services in seven decades. Mr. Biden and his team have yet to tip their hand on the command’s future or on whether the new administration will modify or roll back the Trump administration’s drive to win the military space race.
A relative start-up, the command now faces the tricky task of integrating its operations into the existing U.S. military structure and defining its mission.
In an interview with reporters, Gen. John W. Raymond, the command’s chief of space operations, declined to offer details about the conversation, including whether Mr. Biden will offer the same level of support for a project like the U.S. Space Force that is so closely identified with his predecessor.
“I met with them this past week. It was a very good conversation,” Gen. Raymond said. “I was happy to chat with them.”
The interview with reporters was meant to mark December 20, the first birthday of the nation’s newest military branch. The first year was focused on building the service, to date mostly coming from the ranks of space-focused personnel in the Air Force. The progress has gone faster than he expected, Gen. Raymond said.
“We were up and running from Day One. We have not let our foot off the accelerator ever since,” he said. “The first year was all about inventing the service. The next year is all about integrating the Space Force more broadly.”
While Mr. Trump has taken particular price in the creation of the Space Force, the idea enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress even before he took office.
The massive defense policy bill just passed by Congress — which Mr. Trump has threatened to veto for other reasons — contains a number of provisions that assume the new force will survive under Mr. Biden, including provisions on acquisition strategies for the new command and a mandate that the secretary of the Air Force detail the selection process when the permanent site for Space Command headquarters is revealed.
Gen. Raymond projected that the U.S. Space Force will expand from about 2,400 personnel currently on the books to about 6,400 by the end of next year. He said officials just selected 86 graduates from the U.S. Air Force Academy, while seven enlisted airmen at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland just graduated from basic training as new members of the U.S. Space Force.
“We have way more people wanting to come over than we have slots to bring people into,” Gen. Raymond said.
The number of people brought into U.S. Space Force is expected to dramatically increase in the coming months, officials said.
If the first year was focused on creating the structure of a new military service, the second year will look at integrating it into the rest of the armed forces. The Air Force career fields that will be absorbed into the Space Force include space operations, acquisitions, engineering, cyber, intelligence and software coders.
“Those six specialties all come over,” Gen. Raymond said.
Soldiers or sailors with space-focused job assignments also will be able to transfer to the U.S. Space Force, he said.
“You can’t break the Army and you can’t break the Navy in standing up the Space Force,” he said. “We’ll do it in a way that consolidates those capabilities where needed and strengthens our joint warfighting readiness on both the Space Force side and in the other services.”
Last week, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said his organization will work with the U.S. Space Force to develop the “National Space Intelligence Center” to provide the intelligence community with scientific and technical intelligence on space-related threats.
“It’s going to be a great benefit to the intelligence community and to us,” Gen. Raymond said.
Even with a change of administration, Gen. Raymond said he’s going to continue putting together the U.S. Space Force and integrating operations with other services and friendly allies.
“What isn’t going to change is my focus and the focus of our team — that’s building a service that delivers national advantage,” he said. “The U.S. is more secure when you have access to space and freedom of maneuver in space and you have a safe, secure, sustainable space domain.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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