"What we were is not what we must become, and so our only choice is to transform ourselves to thrive in this new environment, optimized for Great Power Competition," Saltzman said in a keynote address at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

"I know this change is hard, but it is vital because the domain is changing around us so quickly," Saltzman said later in his remarks. "Our choices are either to keep moving or to get left behind and I don't imagine there's anyone in this room who would volunteer for Option B."

The stakes are unquestionably high, Saltzman said, emphasizing a truth that he has made repeatedly since becoming the service's highest ranking uniformed officer on Nov. 2, 2022. Every part of the military, the nation's economy and today's modern lifestyle is tightly connected to services delivered by space.

But space today is officially designated as a warfighting domain. It is more crowded, more dangerous and the United States no longer can automatically claim superiority in the domain.

On that question, Saltzman did not mince words. "I am fully committed to the Space Force's transformation into a warfighting service, purpose-built for space superiority, assured access to space and a global reach in operations to meet the challenges of Great Power Competition," he said.

In the next sentence he answered the important question, "why?"

"The peaceful use of space may no longer be assumed. Yet our nation depends on space everyday both for national security and for our prosperity," he said. "... The Space Force secures our nation's interests in, from, and too space. That's our mission. And now that mission must be accomplished in an era of Great Power Competition."

Saltzman sketched out the path he sees the Space Force must follow to meet the new challenges and succeed.

"For a military service to execute its mission, it needs to do four things: force design, force development, force generation, and force employment," he said.

"The Space Force is overhauling every one of these, aligning our form with our function to become what we need to be - a service purpose-built for Great Power Competition in the space domain."

Saltzman also highlighted one of the service's high-priority efforts to make sure it appropriately balances the critical needs of day-to-day space operations against the capacity to train and build high-end readiness. That effort at perfecting force generation is dubbed SPAFORGEN within the service.

"The whole point of SPAFORGEN is to carve out dedicated periods for positional currency, advanced training, and - when ready - combatant command operations," he said. "... It was a huge lift and I know it put a tremendous strain on the crews in the field. You don't have all the necessary resources, and it feels like a lot of churn just to do the same mission you were already doing without SPAFORGEN."

He added: "Hopefully, we can deter war ... but we don't have the final say on that. And, when called upon, Guardians will be ready because you invested time and energy into your readiness."

While the overarching ideas and concepts were not new, Saltzman added detail and status updates for some of the Space Force's high-priority initiatives.

He noted that the service is working to establish Space Futures Command, a new field command announced in February "to stitch together pockets of excellence across the service into something new and better."

The significance of this step, he said, must not be ignored or minimized. "What we're talking about here is nothing less than re-baselining the way we identify, mature, and develop the concepts that will shape our service for years to come. This is critical because there are so many things we need to get right."

He reviewed the decision to embed a senior officer into the headquarters Space Force staff from an allied partner nation to improve collaboration and seamless meshing of Space Force and allies. British Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, the first foreign-exchange assistant CSO who has been working directly with the service since the summer, was introduced to the crowd.

The logic behind the move, Saltzman said, was clear.

"I want our force design process to account for everything our partners were bringing to the table," he said. "I want to make certain we were taking full advantage of one of our greatest strengths by ensuring the Space Force is integrated by design with our allies, from the generation of concepts all the way through to their execution."

He then explained that one critical element of force development is "ensuring that Guardians understand what exactly the service demands of them," providing details on the steps the service was taking to deliberately deliver leaders and operators for modern warfare in space.

Saltzman also highlighted the way the Space Force and its Guardians will benefit from a new law known as the Space Force Personnel Management Act.

The biggest benefit, he said, "is that we're not going to have 'active duty' and 'reserve" components. We're going to have one component, composed of Guardians serving in full and part-time billets with the capacity to move between the two. ... Strip away the bureaucracy, break down the barriers, and what you're left with is this: career flexibility."

"Once upon a time, you had to choose," he said. "These were hard choices ... and we lost a lot of talented people because they were forced to make a choice. Now we have a better option."

At the same time, Saltzman acknowledged that change is hard, even unsettling. But the circumstances - and adversaries of the modern world - require it.

To succeed today requires "we face new requirements, new expectations, and new threats which demand that we field new organizations, new training, new equipment, and new operational concepts," Saltzman said.

He concluded his remarks by recognizing the service's progress so far has been the direct result of Guardians' character, commitment, connection and courage, and emphasized the success of the ongoing transformation will be determined by them.

"The task is daunting. You know what? None of that worries me because we have the most dedicated, capable space professionals anywhere in the world," he said, returning to the same thought near the end of his speech.

"If we're going to see this transformation through, it will be because of you, because of the Guardian spirit we all share. I see it every day," Saltzman said. "The character to not just do things right but to do the right things. The commitment to overcome challenges and see our work through to its end."

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