NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Space Force has created two proof-of-concept organizations to organize forces under a single commander to minimize gaps between the various job roles and responsibilities to optimize for mission performance, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said on Tuesday.
The new Integrated Mission Deltas (IMDs) are organized for operations and sustainment in support of the electromagnetic warfare (EW) mission, and for precision, navigation, and timing (PNT), he said at the annual Air Force Association Air Space Cyber Conference here.
“Both of these Deltas integrate operations and sustainment, creating the unity of command for all aspects of readiness and enhance our ability to continue to provide world class effects in the face of a determined adversary,” Saltzman said in a morning keynote address.
Previously, the personnel and training components of readiness were separate from equipment and sustainment efforts, Saltzman said later during a media roundtable.
People and training are under Space Operations Command and equipment and sustainment fall within Space Systems Command, “which means the first officer that you get to that combines those together is me,” he said. “That’s not successful in terms of how fast we need to be responsive to changes in readiness.”
The IMDs will be led by a colonel who will have responsibility for all the readiness elements, he said. The new prototypes—specifically for EW and PNT—will provide lessons on whether the IMDs work within the acquisition process.
For example, he told reporters, “Can we still divide those things from capabilities development from big acquisition programs? Right now, they kind of get merged together and we want to make sure that there’s a severable element of the sustainment function that can be given to the Integrated Mission Delta commander without breaking any big picture acquisitions.”
The IMDs are part of the Space Force’s efforts to optimize its forces for great power competition along four lines, force design, force development, force generation, and force employment, he told attendees. He described the new prototype Deltas as part of how the Space Force organizes its people and their roles and responsibilities for force generation to meet operational requirements.
Saltzman said the assessment of the force structure is about optimizing “organizational structures that we thought would be most effective for the new challenges associated with a contested space domain.”
Saltzman described force design as the “blueprint” for the Space Force’s future capabilities and how warfare is changing and the best way to structure forces to address threats. This includes better leveraging commercial space capabilities, he said.
“In particular we want to take full advantage of the capacity, the rapid technology refresh rates, and innovation offered by the commercial space sector all to enhance and support the combatant commanders,” Saltzman said.
Education, training, exercising, and war gaming are key components of force development, which contributed to a “culture of continuous improvement,” he said.
Force employment is the result of force design, development, and generation and is “the application of our military power to achieve our nation’s interests,” Saltzman said. In the past year, the Space Force has stood up components to the regional combatant commands, specifically Space Forces Indo-Pacific, Space Forces Korea, and Space Forces Central Command, “to help strengthen the synergies between the domains within each of these” operating areas, he said.
This December, the Space Force will set up new service components in European Command and Africa Command, Saltzman said.