Theresa Hitchens
Over the past year, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has issued a series of internal “Commander’s Notes” that have sought to create the culture and operational concepts for the newest military service, with a firm focus on the Space Force’s warfighting role.
It’s clear that as 2024 comes to a close and the Space Force celebrates its fifth birthday, what one observer called “chest-thumping rhetoric” clearly has entered into the public domain — a change that defined how the service went about its public and private posturing over the last year.
Saltzman spent most of this year charging up the forces to think of themselves not as support specialists, but as frontline capabilities — or, as he told Guardians assembled at the Space Force Association’s Spacepower 2024 conference in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 10, “You are warfighters, whether you carry a gun or not.”
“In accordance with the law and at the direction of the president, you are trained and expected to carry out offensive and defensive actions against military forces of other countries, or support other military elements that do. When you’re in a combat squadron, you’re the first line of defense for conflict in space and your actions directly impact lives on the ground, in and out of harm’s way.”
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