„It gives us a great opportunity to really think what sorts of qualities do we desire,“ says Thompson, who is an astronautical engineer by training. „We’re certainly thinking about panels of senior officers and senior enlisted members who do the screening, who do the interviews and make the final choice.“
Another charge is to complete a „clean sheet“ proposal required by Congress for how the Space Force — with the guidance of its parent organization, the Air Force — will acquire new space systems more effectively than the traditional acquisition approach.
„It’s in the final stages of being coordinated with the department before we send it to Congress,“ Thompson says. „We’ve got a series of steps that we recommend we can take. If you put those all together, it really shakes the earth and changes the game in terms of the way we will be able to conduct space.“
And we can’t forget the burning question of what to call these space warriors. „It’s a harder challenge than you think,“ Thompson says of the effort to cull through hundreds of crowd-sourced ideas for naming the rank and file.
It may ultimately make little impact in the end. „Members of the U.S. Space Force might decide colloquially and on their own what they call themselves,“ he predicts.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
What are your biggest tasks right now?
Our first focus is on the mission. There are some people who don’t really understand what we do in space and what the United States Air Force has done in space for decades.
We fly the GPS constellation, the blue dot on folks’ cell phones, [for] the timing and synchronization for networks. The thing that allows us to navigate the globe with confidence. That was a U.S. Air Force — now a U.S. Space Force — constellation we’ve been operating for several decades. We talk about missile warning and the job we do tracking global missile threats, providing warning like we did in December for the attacks at Al-Asad airbase [in Iraq]. Keeping track of all the objects in orbit. We’re the ones who keep track of those 26,000-plus objects orbiting the Earth so that we don’t have a „Gravity“ moment — the Sandra Bullock movie. Back in January, they were talking about satellites colliding over Pittsburgh, possibly. Those are the kinds of things that we do every day.
Around that we are building this new organization called the Space Force. The early phases have been hiring. We’ve been hiring a staff right now, we’ve got about 100, I’m gonna say 110 people on staff. We’re going to be a very small and lean headquarters organization. Our immediate focus has been [to] make sure you’re still doing every mission we do every single day and then build that lean, agile, aggressive staff.
You are primarily filling the new branch from the Air Force.
So May 1 we actually opened up the opportunity for folks inside the Air Force to volunteer to transfer into the Space Force. So that’s going well. Right now we’re working with the Defense Department staff to to decide what parts of the other services might transfer into the Space Force and to make sure we set sort of the policies and conditions that we’re going to use to look for a volunteer from the Army and the Navy. That’s coming either later this year or next year. But we want to do it right. And work with the Army and the Navy and the Marines. There may be a few Marines who are interested as partners.
Beyond transfers what is the plan for fresh recruits?
For the near future we think we’re going to have a recurring need for somewhere between maybe 300 and 350 new officers and enlisted personnel every year. That’s not a large number. But it presents us a great opportunity because it means we’re probably the place where we can look at this as hand picking and selecting and screening very carefully individuals to come into the Space Force.
It gives us a great opportunity to really think what sorts of qualities do we desire. Who do we want and how do we kind of go through that process? You may be familiar with Hyman Rickover in the nuclear Navy and the process they used to go through — and still to some extent go through today — in screening and testing and interviewing and hiring people. We’re looking at [a] similar process here as we get new recruits into the Space Force in years to come.
In the Navy today, the final decision rests [with] a four-star Navy admiral who’s in charge. We’re certainly thinking about panels of senior officers and senior enlisted members who do the screening, who do the interviews and make the final choice. We’ll do it very carefully based on criteria.
Acquisition remains a thorny issue. Where does the Air Force end and the Space Force begin?
Acquisition is run through the civilian side of the department. And so in that sense there will be two uniformed services and … the civilian side of acquisition leads acquisition for both. But we have the opportunity to change the game in space. And the reason we do is in the law Congress specifically said, „propose for us a new alternate acquisition model for space systems.“ So we get to take what I would call almost a clean sheet approach.
Where does the proposal now stand?
It’s in the final stages of being coordinated with the department before we send it to Congress. We’ve got a series of steps that we recommend we can take. If you put those all together, it really shakes the earth and changes the game in terms of the way we will be able to conduct space. We’ll be able to be more agile, we’ll be able to get things done faster. We’ll be able to do a better job of fine tuning the acquisition-related activities in law specifically. So they’re tuned for space.
There are about a half-dozen things or so that would require a change in law and therefore we’ll work with Congress and if they’re interested in really making this a new approach … then we’ll work with them and look for their help. Some of it is processes and procedures inside the Department of Defense.
There’s such tremendous energy, innovation and investment in commercial space. There’s a lot going on in launch, there’s a lot going in what I’ll call proliferating constellations, especially for data relay and conductivity. We’ve got to find a way and we’re looking at ways to leverage that to our benefit.
It really took that drive and energy and innovation in the commercial IT sector to give us the cellphone and everything it does, and the smartphone and everything it does for us. I’m hoping we’re on the verge of a similar explosion.
You are still combing through proposed names for what to call space troops?
Some of them [are] in the vein of space … a little bit funny and theoretical. Others serious. It seems like the easy ones are either already taken or just don’t make sense. We are asking questions like, „where did the term soldier come from?“ You’d be amazed how many people have spent a lot of time in foreign languages, in Latin, in popular culture, and a whole host of things looking for an answer. It’s a harder challenge than you think. And so we’ve gone a significant way down that path. I think we’re close.
And I’ll be honest, 20 years from now, members of the U.S. Space Force might decide colloquially and on their own what they call themselves. So it’s important what we call ourselves today but eventually maybe the members of the Space Force in the future will ultimately decide .
How about designating a new structure for higher ranks?
How extensive? We haven’t decided fully yet — other than the first four enlisted ranks. Clearly those ranks have to change. So we are looking at a new rank structure, but no final decision on how much of the rank will change and how different it will be from other ranks.
Source: politico.com
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