PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. \u2014 Gen. James Dickinson on Aug. 20 took the reins of U.S. Space Command, becoming the second-ever leader of the organization and the first Army officer to hold the position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dickinson\u2019s promotion signals a new era for Space Command, the military\u2019s space operations arm established in August 2019, which will now have a commander solely dedicated to standing up a new unified command focused on protecting military space assets against new threats posed by Russia and China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo be clear, our objective is to deter conflict,\u201d Dickinson said during the ceremony. Defense News traveled to the change-of-command ceremony with Defense Secretary Mark Esper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHowever, should deterrence fail, our imperative is clear. We will win. To do so, we will require a space warfighting culture that permeates the entire command,\u201d he said. \u201cMy pledge to you is that my focus on a commander will be developing, nurturing, and embracing a space warfighting culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the past year, Space Command was led by Chief of Space Operations Gen. John \u201cJay\u201d Raymond, who also held the position of the head of the Space Force, the new military service formed in December. That arrangement was intended to ensure that both organizations remained interlocked as they were established.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Space Force and Space Command are seen as complementary organizations, with the former training and equipping forces that will make up the core of Space Command\u2019s warfighting cadre tasked with manning and operating the service\u2019s satellites and space assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both are still in their infancy, with major decisions about culture \u2014 everything from the Space Force uniforms to Space Command\u2019s headquarters location \u2014 still to be determined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou have to have two different people doing this, because the organize, train and equip side [that Space Force does] can\u2019t distract from the warfighting piece that Space Command does,\u201d said Brig. Gen. Shawn Bratton, deputy director for operations at United States Space Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGen. Dickinson clearly has got the warfighting piece down. General Raymond continues with the standup of the Space Force. It lets those respective commanders have singular focus on the two different pieces without them clashing into each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked by Defense News about the next steps to move Space Command to full operational capability, Dickinson \u2014 who has served as Raymond\u2019s deputy since December \u2014 said that he would continue to pursue the current plan for standing up the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last week has been an eventful one for the Space Force and Space Command, with both swearing in a number of senior officials that will shape the direction of the organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Aug. 14, Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman pinned on his third star and was promoted to the Space Force\u2019s deputy chief of space operations, nuclear and cyber \u2014becoming the 89th member of the Space Force and its second general officer after Raymond. That was followed on Aug. 17 with Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno swearing in as the first female general officer for the Space Force, taking the position of Raymond\u2019s director of staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As more senior officials come onboard, the most consequential change for space operators is just being allowed a seat at the table as critical national security decisions are made, Saltzman told Defense News after his promotion ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Department of Defense is a big organization, and to get service-level attention on key issues, sometimes you just have to be in the room,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd a lot of times those rooms get filled up by very senior people, and if you\u2019re not senior enough, you\u2019re not in the room. That\u2019s the big benefit of the Space Force: A Space Force perspective is in the room. My responsibility is to make sure we\u2019re in the room for the operations discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saltzman most recently served as acting director of the Space Force staff, coming off a yearlong deployment as deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command \u2014 a rare appointment for a space officer. In 2017, he was handpicked by former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein to oversee a yearlong study on multi-domain command and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those experiences will directly shape how he believes Space Force operators can add value in a combat scenario by better integrating with forces on the ground, at sea or in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m really going to lean on what I learned when I was out in the Middle East, watching how operations are done, how we decide if we\u2019re achieving the effects we want or if there are some things we can do differently to get better effects,\u201d Saltzman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt starts with figuring out how to integrate both the experts that are out there, the data that they use, and then the weapon systems that we employ,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can get caught up in little clusters of excellence. The fighters are doing great things for air superiority and the intel people are collecting [intelligence,] and they share, but there are ripe opportunities to try to get better integration across all the domains, all the data that is available so that we can produce the maximum number of options for our decision makers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Space Force and Space Command have both been swearing in a number of senior officials that will shape the direction of the organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":12,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[100,23,93,12,25],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3182],"class_list":["post-12549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-middle-column","category-news","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"Z44YZZC7C5FDPJEHYIXUK5BNQY","arc_canonical_url":"\/space\/2020\/08\/20\/the-pentagons-new-space-organizations-start-to-take-shape-as-leadership-comes-onboard\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n