COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AFNS) As delivered by Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman April 15, 2026 -- Good morning!
Thanks for the intro, Heather, and thanks to Space Foundation for hosting. And we are well into our seventh year as a Space Force, but you’ve been advocating – and the Space Foundation has been advocating – for space warfighters and bringing the most important topics to the forefront of the national dialogue for over 41 years now, and we thank you. Thank you very much.
Secretary Meink, General Whiting, it’s an honor to have you at such an important forum to highlight the necessity of space across the Department of the Air Force and the entire Joint Force, so thank you for being here as well.
You know, I was looking at the calendar, and I realized that today is April 15th, Tax Day for the U.S., and I know that can be a stressful day for many. But on this day in history, 1970 in fact, Apollo 13 – speaking of stressful – set a record traveling 249,205 miles from Earth, … the farthest any humans had every ventured from our planet. That is until about nine days ago, when the Artemis II crew crushed that record by more than 4,111 miles for a total of 252,756 miles from Earth. Congratulations to the entire NASA team for a tremendous mission. The U.S. Space Force is proud to have such tremendous partners in the space domain. And it’s a collaborative team approach to our space missions today that I want to focus on.
For the last three years, I stood here and told you how vital space is to the Joint Force, and how the Guardians delivering our space-enabled way of life are so critical. Perhaps there were a few skeptics in the crowd … you know who you were. But in all honesty, I get it. We were talking mostly about ideas, theories, concepts. Rarely demonstrated, certainly not battle-tested. In a lot of ways, they were just words on a page.
Well, I’m here to tell you, they’re not just words anymore.
The truths we hold close as space professionals – that space is foundational to our way of life, vital to our modern way of war – well, they’re starting to catch on.
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Our national leaders, our combatant commanders, our allies and partners – they see it too. They understand the importance of what the Space Force brings to the joint fight. And they know that the U.S. and our allies would not want to enter any conflict without the asymmetric benefits derived from owning the high ground of space.
But behind the headlines you see on the news is a small, brilliant, and combat-credible team of Guardians on that Invisible Front Line.
Guardians like the tactical electronic warfare experts in U.S. Space Forces Central. On Day One of Operation Epic Fury, one of these specialists led the planning and execution of high-tempo Space Electronic Warfare fires for U.S. Central Command. And even when her unit came under attack by indirect fire, she kept her cool, completing emergency maintenance to make sure her weapon system stayed in the fight. That’s what it means to be a Guardian in today’s Space Force.
Or like another of our SPACECENT teammates – a first lieutenant and a crew commander – who had the enormous task of leading a hasty redeployment of her electronic warfare system between theaters to enable evolving combatant command priorities. This was the first time Guardians had ever relocated one of these systems across multiple areas of responsibility on a single deployment, and doing so enabled the CENTCOM commander to achieve a variety of complex military objectives across the battlespace. Flexible, fast, and reliable – that’s what it means to be a Guardian in today’s Space Force.
Or the SPACECENT technical sergeant, who led the theater-wide effort to account for every Guardian across the CENTCOM AOR. Despite enemy fire, power outages, communication blackouts, he kept watch over our most critical asset in theater – our people. That ... is what it means to be a Guardian in today’s Space Force.
You see, I don’t have to prove it to you anymore, because Guardians are proving it to us every day. When you watch the Joint Force successfully executing operations around the globe, you are seeing combat spacepower at work. And it’s the men and women of the United States Space Force, both uniformed and civilian, who bring that combat power to bear every day. And I’m glad they do. Because the domain is getting more contested each and every day.
Our battlefield is filled with hazards like ground-based microwave and laser weapons, all capable of damaging satellites overhead; jammers that can disrupt GPS and communications satellites; and even threats of nuclear-capable anti-satellite weapons on-orbit. And that’s just what we face today.
As we look to the future, it’s clear that we cannot rest on the status quo. Throughout history, militaries that questioned their own assumptions, faced the realities of the changing character of war, and relentlessly sharpened their swords, were victorious. Those that were complacent paid a heavy price.
That’s the purpose of the Future Operating Environment for 2040, which we’re excited to be sharing publicly for the first time today.
The Future Operating Environment is not an intelligence assessment. And it doesn’t describe specific threat systems or define military solutions. Instead, it’s a conceptual view of a future where our space superiority efforts must contend with new technologies, new threats, new missions, and new ways of war.
An expert team of Guardian strategists put together the Future Operating Environment, a document to spur complex thought, provoke debate, and ultimately put us on a trajectory to secure our nation’s interests in space. It will serve as a point of departure, and a catalyst for the growth and change that the future of space warfighting will demand. So, I ask you to read it critically, debate our assumptions, and then offer suggestions to help us build a stronger Space Force for the future. The aim here is to drive questions, not provide answers.
Because this approach is visionary and predicting the future is tough, it will certainly get some things wrong. But on the new battlefield it describes, one reality becomes clear: the Space Force we have today is not the Space Force we need to secure the future domain. That future will shape the force we need, and we begin to describe it in our Objective Force 2040.
Now, I’ve been talking about this for some time, and it’s been a long campaign of learning and discovery. It’s required analysis, prototyping, and feedback from key stakeholders to define the “what, when, and how many” across our missions and support elements – ensuring that they are resilient, responsive, and driving us toward success in the Future Operating Environment.
We’ve analyzed Space Force missions including navigation warfare, satellite communications, missile warning, and many others in great demand by the Joint Force.
And through our assessment of these vital mission areas, we’ve built a framework for the systems, formations, and support structures we will need for the next 15 years.
For each mission, we start by defining enduring Space Force objectives, and what capabilities the Joint Force needs to achieve them in the face of a dynamic future. Then, we assess which current and future capabilities will best integrate into our fielded force to fill gaps and leverage opportunities.
Finally, we explain the timelines and quantities required to ensure the missions remain relevant, resilient, and combat-credible. And we look to understand the supporting elements that include manpower, infrastructure, and training.
And lastly, we capture our “to-do” list: what we haven’t figured out yet, the questions we still have to answer, the analysis that still is required, and how we expect to resolve those over the next five years.
This framework gives structure to the analysis for each mission, describes our investment priorities, and opens the debate for all of you – industry, allies, partners, Guardians, other services – to join us on a campaign of learning as we iterate on each of these missions. And while that framework gives us a standard baseline to evaluate our architecture, the operational realities of these missions are entirely unique.
Take navigation warfare, for example. The Space Force faces sweeping threats – from jamming to physical attack – against our most widely used capability. GPS was designed for uncontested operations, and today it is woven into the fabric of our way of war and so much of our civil infrastructure. To protect that capability, the objective force calls for diverse allied and commercial navigation and timing systems to augment future GPS, all underpinned by interoperable data standards.
The new ops concept will require a second NAVWAR squadron and its own resilient ops center. We will need enhanced simulators and trainers, and improved GPS receivers across the Joint Force to take advantage of this enhanced architecture.
Likewise, let’s look at satellite communications – vital to the tactics and battle plans of the Joint Force at all levels. Historically, we’ve invested in a small number of exquisite, expensive, easily-targeted communications satellites – like Milstar 6 – which, in today’s space environment, are unlikely to survive through early conflict. The Objective Force for SATCOM brings proliferated constellations, leased bandwidth, and commercial services to the fight. This hybrid, self-healing architecture is resilient to jamming, cyber-attacks, and more. It connects warfighters to the data they need. It ensures combatant commanders can control their battlespace. And it will require manpower, training, and multi-service integration of its own.
As I’ve said before, the Objective Force is intended to be dynamic. While there will be higher fidelity in the near-term, the out-years will require additional assessment and refinement. Documenting it now is our starting point. We want it to spark discussion. We want your feedback.
But we also need you to use this as a blueprint to align your priorities with ours. This is the architecture we must build to enable the Joint Force and secure the domain. The unclassified document of our Objective Force for most of our mission areas is available to you today, and we ask for your partnership and your feedback as we design the future of space warfighting.
But defining our future force is only the first step. Making this force design a reality – and doing it fast enough to meet emerging threats over the next 15 years – requires a generational shift in how we acquire and field new systems.
These changes start at the top, with the President and the Secretary of War. Today, the Department of War is implementing new initiatives to unshackle our industry partners and continue putting our space industrial base on a wartime footing.
These include deploying Special Government Employees directly to factory floors to help speed production. Setting clear government priorities to help industry prioritize investments in facilities and technologies that we see as likely future needs. And providing more stability in production through longer-term contracts.
The Space Force is also following suit. We are realigning our acquisition efforts, as you heard Secretary Meink say, under our Portfolio Acquisition Executives to consolidate authorities and speed program decision-making. We are rebuilding our Test and Evaluation framework to integrate testing milestones, quantify operational risk as the systems are fielded, and doing that much more quickly. We are laser-focused on delivering Minimum Viable Capabilities as soon as they can provide a warfighting advantage and then upgrading them as we learn real-world lessons from operations. That’s just to name a few.
But it’s not just about the systems and processes, it’s also about the Guardians who employ them.
And as national security demands grow, our Space Force must grow to meet them. The Objective Force we’re projecting calls for more Guardians – officers, enlisted, and civilians – necessary to perform the new missions in the operations tempo being asked of the Space Force.
To meet mission requirements in the future threat environment, the Space Force must grow significantly over the next five to 10 years – thousands more Guardians in our end strength. And with equal importance, the infrastructure, the bases, and the training structures to support that growth.
But simply bringing more motivated men and women into the service is not enough. What skills will these Guardians have? How are they prepared for the demands of space warfighting today and tomorrow? What culture are we instilling in our formations? And how do we make sure that they remain operationally relevant and combat credible?
Well, over the last year, we’ve started realizing the benefits of all-new personnel and training approaches. Through focused effort, and a willingness to try before it’s perfect, we’ve built novel pathways to enable our Guardians to meet these growing demands.
Our first cohort arrived at the new Officer Training Course just over a year ago. They jumped right into a program of intensive study. We prepared them to lead combat formations across all operational disciplines. Today, they’re serving on the Invisible Front Line in vital roles across Combat Forces Command, our space launch enterprise, the National Reconnaissance Office, and more.
But it goes beyond just the Guardians serving in operational roles. Last fall, we began equipping our acquisitions workforce to prevail at their own vital mission. That starts with solid, sound foundations at the Acquisitions Initial Qualification Training course, where we educate our young acquisition professionals with the tools and the knowledge, they need to bring war-winning capabilities rapidly into the fight at a time when the stakes could not be higher.
We’re also building advanced acquisition professionals through the Galaxy program, led by Space Systems Command. Now, Galaxy takes our brightest military and civilian Guardians, stretches their limits across acquisitions, operations, and joint warfighting. These top performers spend six intense months immersed with industry, allies, and multinational organizations to show them what fast and flexible capability delivery really means on the world stage. Then we put them to the test, solving some of the hardest technical problems we have. Just this year, they’ve closed critical gaps across Artificial Intelligence, space surveillance, and cyber defense, delivering combat-credible capabilities in record time.
I’m very impressed, and I’m also not very surprised. You see, that’s just our nature. It’s in our Guardian DNA. We’re building a force that embraces change, takes calculated risks, learns rapidly from failure, and innovates at every level. And when our junior Guardians operate with that level of mastery, it’s contagious.
And those small wins –– they add up. Soon enough they’ll build undeniable operational credibility with the Joint Force, with our national leaders, and with the American people. And the result?
Well, the result leaves no question in anyone’s mind. No matter what threats we face today or tomorrow – or in 2040 – the Space Force will be there. Lethal, credible, and in the fight. That is what it means to be a Guardian in today’s Space Force.
But we can’t do it alone. It’s forums like this that really highlight the importance of our allies and partners. And just look around. Seriously, look around. This event is dominated by space professionals from across the United States and spacefaring nations from around the world, united by our shared interest in securing the space domain for our mutual prosperity and benefit.
Over the last four years, the Space Force has made great strides in cementing those relationships. From appointing an RAF Air Marshall to a senior role in the United States Space Force, to authoring our International Partnership Strategy, to signing agreements with like-minded nations. We know that the domain is too vast, too complex, for any single entity to control. So, I’m glad we have some incredible partners working with us to achieve those shared strategic goals.
As I come to the end of my time this morning, I want to acknowledge that this is my final opportunity to speak on this stage as the Chief of Space Operations. And you know, looking around at the crowd, I’m incredibly proud and so humbled by how far we’ve come in such a short time.
Just a few years ago, we were debating theories, thinking about our doctrine, designing uniforms. Today, we’re a combat credible force. Allied by design, collaborating with industry, executing combat operations around the globe, every day, on the Invisible Front Line.
Our adversaries are committed to denying us our space-enabled way of life, finding new ways to test us, and our battlespace will continue to evolve. But as I prepare to hand over the watch, I’m not worried, because I know the Guardians from the operations floors to the program offices have the skills, knowledge, and grit to fight and win in our domain every day. I know that our partners in industry and our allies around the globe stand with us in securing the space domain that enables all of our ways of life. And I know our partnership, our resolve, and our enduring dedication to the space domain will deter anyone who would challenge us.
So, as I leave this esteemed forum for the final time, I do so with an unwavering confidence in our bonds, in our resolve, in our future. The faces may change, but the Guardian Spirit endures. And I have absolutely no doubt that we will continue to prevail.
Thank you. Semper Supra!
