AURORA, Colo. (AFNS) As delivered by Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman Feb. 23, 2026 -- Good afternoon! Kathleen, thanks so much for the intro, and thanks as always to Burt and the whole AFA team – the entire AFA team – for hosting us here.
Secretary Meink, Under Secretary Lohmeier, General Wilsbach, we have the entire Department of the Air Force leadership team here and I think just really underscores the importance of this forum. And I can tell you how lucky I feel to be able to work with such tremendous leaders. The problems and challenges we face are complicated and they require serious people having serious debates. And when you have an opportunity to have thoughtful people on your wings being able to criticize each other, talk critically about the key aspects of things, and they listen, and they’re willing to challenge their own assumptions, it really is valuable. So, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate being a part of this team. Thanks to all of you.
And it’s excellent to see so many Guardians, Airmen, allies, industry partners – thank you all for joining us here.
This is my fourth time on this stage, and I’ve been reflecting on where we’ve been as a Space Force in that short time, but really for the entire history of the U.S. Space Force. Chief B9, how many years has it been? About six? Seven?
At the 2023 Warfare Symposium, we defined for the first time our Space Force Theory of Success. In 2024, I talked about our plan to design, develop, deliver, and employ space forces in a purpose-built service. And last year we introduced our foundational Space Force Doctrine Document.
But today does a little different. Not just because this is my last AFA Symposium …although that fact has made me a little more reflective and more grateful for the opportunity to address such a tremendous group of stakeholders and supporters.
It’s different because so much has changed in the world and in our Space Force in the last year. We aren’t just talking about theories or plans anymore. We’re talking about real, operational, combat space effects, and the Guardians who deliver them.
Let me show you what we’ve been up to the last year…
[VIDEO PLAYS]
As you can see – and sometimes hear – we have been growing the Space Force at an incredible pace.
Everything from our force structure, to our relationships with the Joint Force, to the way we’re delivering capabilities has focused on one thing: making sure the Nation wins the fight today and in the future.
We have evolved our critical force providing command – Combat Forces Command – readying the combat units of action the Joint Force demands.
With the activation of Space Forces Southern and Space Forces Northern just last month, we now have Service Components supporting Combatant Commanders in every geographic AOR around the globe … and in General Whiting’s case, above and beyond the globe.
Those Guardians, and so many others, have led the largest space-enabled global exercises in recent memory with the Joint Force and with our allies, honing our readiness and proving that the Space Force is prepared for future conflict.
We have also made enormous investments in our Guardians. This includes our new Officer Training Course, an unprecedented Acquisition Initial Qualification Training Course, a novel Captains’ Leadership Course, tailored Basic Military Training for our enlisted corps, and expanded career opportunities for our vital civilian Guardians. I’m extremely proud to see Guardians, in ever increasing numbers, sporting our distinctive new Service Dress and Physical Training uniforms.
Beyond that, we’ve retooled how we develop and deliver space capabilities by establishing our Program Acquisition Executives, as you heard from Dr. Meink, redesigning our requirements development process, streamlining how we test and field new systems, and delivering new combat space systems to the joint fight.
All the while, we continue to strengthen our bonds with our partners in the commercial space sector and our international allies, as they advance alongside us.
And that evolution has paid off for the Nation in a big way. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Just look at the headlines. Iran. Venezuela. Nigeria. Military operations worldwide.
They all made the news for their precision and effectiveness, and for the professionalism of the warfighters on the front lines. What you did not see on the news were the Guardians and Space Force capabilities on the invisible front line that were so vital to the success of these operations.
At every turn, on nearly every mission around the globe, the Space Force delivered on our promises to the Joint Force – providing unmatched combat capability from space. From over-the-horizon secure communications, to precision navigation, pinpoint strike accuracy, to detailed and timely indications and warning … the Space Force integrated combat effects to ensure combatant commanders can project power and meet our national military objectives.
Now, that’s a lot of growth and success in just 12 months. But we’re not the only ones on a growth trajectory. Each day, our adversaries challenge us with even more complex threats.
In just the last year, China conducted nearly 100 space launches, including the first 12 satellites in its Artificial Intelligence constellation designed to process data and make decisions with speed and scale. And just two weeks ago, they launched their reusable spaceplane for the fourth time.
But it’s not just about the number of launches. They are expanding their space-based kill-webs, designed to find, fix, and target U.S. forces within seconds, anywhere in the world. They are building a warfighting architecture specifically designed to deny us freedom of action in all domains.
At the same time, Russia has demonstrated its willingness to use cyber-attacks against commercial space systems – those supporting Ukraine. They have also launched experimental technologies into unique and concerning orbits, blurring the lines between military and civil space activities.
The threats are moving faster than ever. Our national leaders are asking us to do things we’ve never done before. And this new moment, these new challenges … they demand we think differently.
You see, all too often in our military DNA, change can feel like we’re moving from a world of knowns to a new world of unknowns, and we see this as increased risk. When we change a process, or a tactic, or a system, we’re wired to stop and evaluate the new risk that the change may create.
What if it doesn’t work? What if we lose funding? What if there are second or third order consequences?
You see, standard operating procedures, repetition, and experience … they all create institutional inertia. They make our world feel comfortable and less risky.
But, that’s not the full picture. Those safety blankets don’t stop the world from changing around us, and in fact, they can blind us to reality. The things that we did to mitigate risk in the past will not mitigate risk forever.
Each day that we stick with the status quo, we will accumulate more risk in a changing world. These risks are insidious. They can be invisible. And they can be hard to quantify. But they are undeniably real.
There may be some risk in change … but it pales in comparison to the risk of accepting the status quo.
Teddy Roosevelt, who transformed our military from a coastal defense force into a global power, he understood that hesitation is fatal. “In any moment”, he said, “the best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can do, is nothing.”
He believed that action, even potentially wrong action, is better than no action. The same is true for the Space Force.
In today’s environment, we’re already faced with tremendous risk. The changes we’re making across the Space Force are not just about optimizing how we do business, they are about buying down the risk we’re already facing right now. The worst decision we can make is to do nothing ... and continue to accept those risks.
One area where this is crystal clear is our Space Force acquisitions framework – how we develop and deliver war-winning space capabilities.
You see, the acquisitions system that we have today is not broken. It was just designed for a different era. And it’s still doing exactly what it was designed to do – provide a meticulous, methodical, low-risk way to field new systems, often at the expense of speed. That was just fine for decades, when just a few spacefaring nations operated a handful of satellites in a relatively benign environment.
But that system was built on conditions that no longer exist. The world has changed... and so has the space domain.
Sticking with an acquisitions framework that we know might feel like the safe choice, but failing to evolve means accepting tremendous risk simply through our inaction.
Make no mistake … changing the color of the car won’t improve the gas mileage. We must acknowledge and be ready to change all aspects of such a critical endeavor … the people, the processes, and the products.
So, aligned with the bold strategy you heard from Secretary Meink, we have already started transforming how we acquire and deliver space capabilities and this starts with Requirements.
For too long, we believed that with the perfect requirements, we could deliver perfect systems. This mindset led to countless detailed requirements and endless reviews by stakeholders at every level. We wrote contracts so detailed that industry couldn’t reasonably deliver a working system, on a relevant timeline, for a reasonable cost. What’s more, we stifled any innovation that might have helped us get ahead and stay ahead of our adversaries.
Today, we’re shifting that focus.
Now, we are focused on mission outcomes, rather than compliance standards. We will limit our requirements to only what’s essential for industry to meet our operational challenges.
Simply put: we’re defining the space effects the Joint Force needs to win and then giving our Program Managers the maneuver space to work with industry to solve those problems.
This approach may not be new to industry, but it is a fundamental shift for us. But we know we must change in order to bring novel solutions and new technologies to bear and rapidly deliver urgent capabilities for the Joint Force.
Second, we’ve already started to rally around the new Portfolio Acquisition Executives, the PAEs that Secretary Meink was talking about. These portfolio owners will have the authority to manage risk and resources at their level, making trades to keep their programs agile and deliver on urgent capability needs.
Our PAEs will also help identify, categorize program complexity, characterize risk, and work with external stakeholders to ensure expectations are met.
Third, we’re toppling the silos that used to exist between acquisitions, test, and operations. Testing is a means to an end. It demonstrates through data and sound analysis that systems will work when called upon. But no amount of testing can eliminate every risk or prevent every failure. So, we cannot allow the pursuit of perfection to slow the delivery of combat credible systems and upgrades.
To meet this need, our test and evaluation enterprise is evolving to an Integrated Testing mindset, rather than separate and serial Developmental and then Operational Test.
In short, we will collect test data, determine the risks, quickly deliver a minimum viable product to the field, then, we will commit to a continuous cycle of improvements in operations.
We will no longer have the luxury of pursuing perfection, when a system that is good enough provides combat capability on a more operationally relevant timeline.
A prime example is our recent deployment of electronic warfare capabilities. Our test teams are integrating groundbreaking test campaigns across multiple systems, putting those vital capabilities in the hands of our operators months ahead of schedule, and then upgrading those systems faster than we’ve ever seen before.
Under this new framework, new weapon systems have been rigorously vetted by the very operators who will depend on them in the fight. Continuous incremental delivery gives us the structure and the discipline needed to field capabilities quickly, learn from real-world operations, and adapt to the changing threat environment. The result is maximum combat capability, presented to a Combatant Commander faster than ever before.
But here’s the hard truth. Speed and agility are critical, but they’re not enough.
You see, the Space Force is lean by design. And at our founding – six or seven years ago – we decided ourselves that we needed to be agile, purpose-built, and flat.
I don’t have to remind this audience, the Space Force is by far the smallest branch of the U.S. military – in fact, the Air Force outnumbers the Space Force by more than 30-to-1. Yet we must provide combat capabilities and combat forces across all domains for nearly every Joint Force mission around the world. And at the same time, our small team of about 15,000 Guardians must fully integrate with the Joint Force … all 1.3 million of you.
And because of our lean design, we can’t afford to waste energy or resources. We don’t have the capacity to surge hundreds of Guardians to fill capability gaps until a solution arrives.
If we’re going to move fast and if we’re going to take risks in the name of speed and combat effectiveness, we need a clear understanding of the Space Force our nation needs. And then we must focus our dollars and our energy on realizing that vision.
The path starts with knowing the threats that we will face.
So, for the last year, a small team of expert analysts and strategists have been defining our Future Operating Environment for 2040. They’ve been working hard to bring precision and clarity to the future of the domain, so that we can build the Space Force that will fight, endure, and prevail against the realities we are likely to face.
To do that, we analyzed public information and exquisite intelligence. We captured demands for new mission areas, and the support that they will require. And we built scenarios around technology trends, threat vectors, and motivations of our adversaries today … and the adversaries we expect to face tomorrow.
Then, we tested these scenarios in realistic workshops with experts across military, industry, commercial space, and our allies. And the results were eye-opening.
By 2040, we expect a strategic shift in space warfighting. The space domain will be dominated by Artificial Intelligence, on-orbit proximity operations, and autonomous systems that can sense, decide, and act at machine speeds with little human input. New activities like on-orbit servicing, space commerce, and cyber agents will emerge as new centers of gravity that we must protect, defend, and address. And the side that masters speed, agility, and resilience will have the luxury of setting the rules for that contest.
Our adversaries are working hard to transform space into an even more ambiguous and autonomous domain. So, to maintain our edge, we must evolve the Space Force. We must ensure we can fight and win, every day – today and into the future.
And the future starts now.
Just this morning, we had the opportunity to share a prototype of our Objective Force with key stakeholders from across industry, our government, and our allies. We started with three priority mission areas: Navigation Warfare, Space Domain Awareness, and Satellite Communications.
Our goal was to gather feedback on the structure and the assumptions of key mission areas... and then apply those ideas across the force.
Those who joined in that discussion this morning helped us do just that, and we plan to host similar engagements with a wider audience soon.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit this is hard, this is hard work. It’s arguably one of the most intellectual tasks that we’ve undertaken as a young service. And because this is the first time we’ve tried to tackle something like this, it’s even more difficult.
Unlike the Air Force, with 78 years of warfighting experience and planning under its belt, our central task of achieving space superiority in a contested domain has never been done before. As a brand-new service, operating in a newly contested domain, we’re not just planning for the next one- to two-year budget cycle. We’re trying to predict nearly three FYDPs in the future – our own future, that of our adversaries, and across the space domain writ-large.
Easy, right?
Let me just describe a bit more about what the Objective Force is … and what it isn’t … and where we think it’s going.
Simply stated, the Objective Force is our vision of how the Space Force must evolve over the next 15 years to achieve mission success. It’s the “what we need” and “how many do we need” for our systems, units, people, and supporting infrastructure, to ensure we will prevail in the Future Operating Environment.
But the Objective Force is not simply a listing of satellites to buy and programs to pursue. And it’s not just a description of the space architecture that we want to have.
It’s a comprehensive accounting of systems, units, personnel numbers, facilities, all of the support requirements needed … and the timelines of when we need them.
In other words, it is a roadmap for fielding all of the capabilities a fighting force needs to fight and win in that Future Operating Environment.
The Objective Force, though, is just a point of departure. It is the authoritative foundation for our planning. It provides the guideposts for a campaign of learning. It sends a demand signal to industry. It helps prioritize Science, Technology, and Research efforts. And it will drive everything from recruiting and training, to our CONOP design, to exercise objectives and readiness goals. It pushes the service – along with our allies, partners, and stakeholders – to think critically, to ask questions, and to communicate needs.
The effort is just as much about the dialogue as it is about the conclusions.
We have some of the brightest minds with a wide range of expertise working on this critical effort. But even with the benefit of their feedback ... and your feedback … we know one thing for certain about the Objective Force: it will get many things wrong.
And that’s OK. The Objective Force is a living process – updated annually as conditions change – and re‑published every 5 years to keep all stakeholders in sync with our needs.
In the end, we expect the Objective Force to provide all our internal and external stakeholders with the details needed to oversee, support, and build the Space Force our nation demands.
And I’m excited that I’ll be able to share more details on the Objective Force with a wider audience in the coming weeks, and at all classification levels.
Ultimately, like most things in the Space Force, we will continue to iterate as we learn, gather feedback, and we’ll course correct as necessary.
We’re still only six years old, after all, and success we’ve had in that short time is impressive, but we still have to evolve further. So, as we continue to build the force of the future, we must solidify the many advances we’ve all worked so hard to achieve, and make sure they are a part of our Guardian DNA.
And part of this DNA is our culture of attacking issues head-on. It’s a mindset that says we will not wait for a perfect solution on paper. When we see a need, we don’t wait – we fill it with a combat-credible solution … now.
And again, most likely, it won’t be perfect. And that’s OK. We’ll observe, we’ll learn, and we’ll make it better.
So, we know we are likely to make some mistakes along the way. And believe me, trying to avoid mistakes by not taking actions, or assuming that our old ways of doing business will serve us effectively in the future ... that would be the worst mistake of all.
As we enter our seventh year, our challenges continue to grow in the most complex era in the history of the space domain. I’m just not worried about it, though. In fact, I’m extremely confident that we are more than capable of meeting these challenges head-on. 2026 will be an extraordinary year for our Space Force, because of you, the Guardians. For us to prevail, we need each of you sharpening your skills, learning every day, and decisively executing your assignments. And I have no doubt we will succeed.
I’m incredibly proud of what our Guardians do every day on the Invisible Front Line. You are the most lethal combat Space Force the world has ever seen, and it’s an honor to stand beside you.
Thank you, and Semper Supra!