Main Engine Cut Off - T+318: General Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, United States Space Force

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Yesterday, I had the chance to visit the Pentagon and sit down with General Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations—the head of the United States Space Force. We talk about the service 6 years into its existence, the state of acquisitions, the threats and space environment today, and what the future may hold for the Space Force when it comes to human spaceflight.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Russell, Natasha Tsakos, Will and Lars from Agile, Theo and Violet, David, Matt, Better Every Day Studios, Warren, The Astrogators at SEE, Josh from Impulse, Stealth Julian, Joakim, Frank, Pat, Joel, Donald, Ryan, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Joonas, Jan, Steve, Fred, Lee, Kris, Heiko, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsUnited States Space ForceB. Chance Saltzman > United States Space Force > DisplaySpace Force roadmap set to define what the service needs and why - SpaceNewsUS intel officials “concerned” China will soon master reusable launch - Ars TechnicaAsked why we need Golden Dome, the man in charge points to a Hollywood film - Ars TechnicaSpace Force rolls out new naming scheme for satellites and space weapons - SpaceNewsAndrew Jones on X: “Outrageous images of China's Shijian-26, an apparent new-gen Earth observation satellite, from Maxar. SSD of 1.9 cm.”Andrew Jones on X: “China's CGST has returned the favour, using its Jilin-1 sats to image a Maxar Worldview Legion 2 satellite.”Scott Tilley 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 (@coastal8049) / XThe ShowLike the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by Blue OriginWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Managing Cutoff, I'm Anthony Colangelo, here with what is probably the coolest episode that this show has ever had in its almost 10-year run. Yesterday, I got the chance to drive down to D.C. to go into the Pentagon, into the office of General Chance Saltzman, the chief of space operations of the United States Space Force, the head of the Space Force himself. We got to sit down for almost an hour and talk about everything this service is going through these days. They're about six years in to their existence, so things have been changing. They've been doing a lot of acquisition reform, as everyone likes to talk about. So we talk about what does that mean specifically? We talk about some of the threats that they're facing today, the space environment generally, geopolitical concerns from China's space program, human space flight, lunar landing drama that's going on around the industry.

We talk about the fact that there's not a lot of secrets left in space these days. Everything on the ground's visible, a lot of things in space are visible, and what do they do about that? We spent a shocking amount of time talking about human spaceflight towards the end of the show, which I thought was the most interesting portion. So I think you really enjoy it. He's an awesome guy to chat with, really easy to talk to. Is it game to talk about anything, which is always a godsend for these kind of shows? He even gives us his opinion on whether the tush push should be banned, and he works his way into my Philadelphia Eagles fan heart. So I think you're really going to enjoy the show.

I hope you enjoy. Let's dive in. General Saltzman, honor to be with you in the office here. We've got cool things that I feel like you're going to point around, but I probably can't... I don't know what any of this stuff is, Anthony. They just put this in my office,

and I'm supposed to act like I know what it is, but I'm not sure what any of it is. We're coming up on the sixth birthday of the Space Force in four days as we record this. Saturday, the 20th. I think people will hear this tomorrow. So six years is a good amount of time. It's long enough to settle in.

I'm sure things are different now than when it started. I'd like to hear from you what the most important changes have been over the last couple of years. Anything that we know about or maybe stuff that we don't know about that feels important from the inside? Well, you know, when the Space Force was established, most people didn't know what TikTok was. I mean, think about that. I think that's pretty cool because now it's just you think it's a part of the fabric of culture and social media. And it's just every, I mean, I don't think you could find anybody in any age that couldn't tell you something about TikTok. But when we started the Space Force, nobody was track it.

That's how fast things can go. And so I only kind of reflect on that to think, yeah, it's only been six years. And when you're the U.S. Army and you've celebrated your 250, you're like, yeah, six years, whatever. But there's a lot that's happened. We're kind of in an era, I think, where change and dynamic, fast-paced change is just, that's just the way it works. And we've had to kind of jump in with both feet and, you know, live with that. But that's been good, so. Yeah, and you think about the fact that a lot of policy directions changed in that short time,

and before that was a pandemic that was uprooting everything as the force was started. There's no doubt. I give full credit to the initial team because I was a part of it. But to take on the space force as the first time an armed force was established in the United States in over 70 plus years when we stood it up, and then two months later, COVID-19 kicked off. And so the first real 18 to 18 months to two years of our life

was trying to establish in the midst of that pandemic. And it was an amazing time and now I'm so happy that part's over and now we're trying to get, yeah, exactly. You mentioned that not a lot of people are aware of the space force probably from like a general public sense,

but I don't know at the beginning, it was, we were laughing about this today with your pop culture display out in the hallway that it was kind of central to the culture war for like a couple of months at the beginning where it was a lot of jokes, a lot of memes about it. There was that terrible Netflix show that for some reason you're displaying in the hallway,

that Steve Carell show that was truly bad. And that was built like purely on the memeification of the Space Force when I think a lot of the general public wasn't aware how long the conversation had gone on for decades, really, there was the concept of, is this going to be like the Marine Corps and be the Space Corps, the Space Guard,

or part of the Air Force, or independent service. So there were so many different iterations of the conversation over the years. When it was beginning, what was your position on how it should be stood up or did you have a particular sense for the way that it should go? I had been doing military space for almost three decades when the Space Force was established. So for me, it's an evolution. I think for those that weren't in military circles or maybe didn't think about space operations on a day-to-day basis, it seemed like a very abrupt thing. Like, why do we need a space force? Really, it was just the evolution of doing military space

in a dedicated, focused way through a dedicated service. And so it felt very natural for a lot of us, but I can see why it was so disruptive from the outside looking in. The reason that's out in the hallway is pop culture is an important part of America. Like, if you don't get pop culture, you're missing a big chunk of what the American fabric is, right? And I'm a fan of, especially early on, there was no bad press. Like, you know, it's all good. Any discussion of the Space Force, whether it's good or bad, was positive step in the right direction.

You could make fun of it, but then you usually ask a question, like, tell me, okay, really, I'll joking aside, what is it that you do? And as soon as you get to that question, you have a meaningful discussion. And sure, people make fun of us, but we've been making fun of other services for years. Like, this is just part of the nature of things. And I, when my Marine Corps buddies would make fun of the Space Force and the show or whatever, I said, no problem. I understand that Gomer Pyle doesn't represent. the U.S. Marine Corps, you know, I understand that we all have pulp culture references, petticoat Junction, and all the crazy, you know, McHale's Navy.

I mean, like, that's just fabric. That's just part of the American culture is once you're connecting. So any connection is better than no connection. And luckily, it kind of died off, and now we'll try to replace it with something better and more meaningful. Yeah, I mean, my problem with bad space shows is like there's so many good storylines that could be made, but. You know, I had, I have friends that are in.

the police department and they hate the police shows because there's so much drama that doesn't really happen. So I think any time you're an insider and pop culture is trying to reflect you, they miss more than they get right and you just say, oh, this is just entertainment. Anybody that draws a conclusion that this is how it really works, they're just out of touch. So that's okay. The idea, though, right now that the Space Force is part of the Air Force. That's one thing I'm really curious about because I think there's many out there and I probably count myself as one of those that at some point you'll grow outside and be an independent service. But I don't really know if from the inside that feels like it's needed or obviously, you know,

there's not a big, it was so hot of a topic when it started, but it died off very quickly and people just settle into this being the structure. Is it, do you feel that day to day? Well, let's clarify, we are an independent service. You know, the Marine Corps works under the Department of the Navy, but I think everybody would say the Marine Corps is an independent service. And I think we're trying to establish the same kind of construct. Yes, we work under the Department of the Air Force, under the authorities of the Secretary of the Air Force, but we are an independent service, independent of the U.S. Air Force. How do you know that? We submit an independent budget. How do you know that? We independently train our

guardians to do the work they do. We independently develop our own doctrine. We independently present forces to combatant commanders. So we have independent service responsibilities. That's what really denotes the key difference. But I do think the original framers were pretty smart about it because they recognized that if we wanted to go fast, we had to cut some corners. And one of the ways to cut the corners was to focus us on operations, not all the support functions. The Air Force had a real advantage when it was established in 47 because the U.S. Army Air Forces was a massive organization coming out of World War II. So they downsized and still had a tremendously large Air Force. We were kind of carved out of the Air Force at a time where it was

shrinking. And so we didn't have all the capacity that we would need to take on all those additional support functions. So we left a lot of the support functions in the Air Force for the purpose of going fast and establishing those operations. As we continue to grow, I think it'll be a worthy discussion to say, hey, should we look at taking on some of those support functions? And there'll be pros and cons, and that'll play out over time as we get larger and larger, and the Air Force gets more and more complicated with its operations. But I think it's a healthy relationship right now, and we'll just continue to learn and mature as we go forward. Yeah, I mean, coming in here, there was no difference between the people that have Air Force

on their name tags and you sitting here, right? Like, it didn't feel like, oh, this is a weird two-team situation going on. So it makes sense. I just am curious, what would be the signifier when you're, like, is it a very slow process or is there going to be a moment where everyone, you know, years from now goes, okay, it's actually time to stop annoying them with our space stuff or vice versa? Yeah, I don't think it'll be binary. I think what you'll see is, you know, for example, right now, we don't have a career field for contracting officers.

We use Air Force contracting officers to support our acquisition efforts. Acquisition is so important to us, that's going to be one that I really start to question. Hey, we need people that are trained and understand what a space contract looks like. They're used to working with the space industry. They understand what riders on contracts would look like. They understand the scope of responsibility for a work order on a space contract versus what an air contract might or an Air Force contract might look at. So that's an example of something that I think in the very near term, we might want to start to pull over and start to develop

our own trained, educated, experienced workforce dedicated to the Space Force. I get great support for public affairs. Yeah. Like what, you know, why do I need to start thinking about establishing my own public affairs officers when I can get pretty much the same support without dedicating that? So it just depends on the mission. And I think over time we will collect, add, additions until at some point you go, yeah, they basically can support themselves. So it won't be a binary thing, it'll be an evolution. Some gradient, yeah. Acquisitions is the next thing on my list.

And I heard a speech that you gave within the last year about the percentage of... How was it? Was it good? It was good. It was great. Started with some nice jokes, really got the room on your side. It was great. But one of the things you mentioned was the percentage of guardians that are in acquisitions and even the fact that in training, there's acquisition-specific training going on. What is it about the service that makes, I think it was like 40 percentage points higher than the Navy's acquisitions number? What is it that drives that difference from the other services?

Is it the fact that you're not staffing space stations in the way that others are staffing air bases or the nature of the job? There's two sides of this discussion, and you have to understand both of them to really figure out the answer to the question. The first part of this is we have what we have because it was carved out of the Air Force. So when Air Force Space Command became really the headquarters and the seed corn, if you will, of the Space Force, we were responsible for operations and acquisitions. We didn't have any service responsibilities. We didn't do any of that. So when that portion was carved out and established, that was the demographic.

Half of our force was doing acquisitions and half was doing operations. It was as simple as that. Yeah. So we inherited that demographic. Great. That's where we are. Now the question is, is that the right demographic and what needs to change to continue to provide the kind of support we need on all those key functions? But then the other side of that coin is how critical is acquisitions and operations working together? And the answer is it is substantially important. The difference between acquisition and operations is a very fine line in space. think about aircraft flyers, maintainers, engineers.

You have the engineering force that builds it, and then they pass it off to maintainers, and then maintainers on the flight line and the depots do their thing, and they pass it off to the pilots. That's the same basic skill set all the way through the life cycle of space operations. You know, the engineers that designed it are the maintainers, because it's on orbit. You don't go up and turn a wrench on it.

You have to do it through acquisition processes and sustainment processes and software uploads and really then you think about it, that's the operations. You're looking at measureans and telemeter from space and you're measuring links and you're doing engineering analysis to see if the operations are working the same. So it's really this continuity of skills rather than discrete functions. And so because it's so integrated, that makes me think, well, okay, maybe this is a balance that's pretty close. Like, you need people with acquisition experience, you need people with operational experience, and they kind of do both sets of functions. So we're looking to develop the force

along those lines. One thing that in any interview or conference talk or keynote and something, everyone says acquisition reform, and then they stop, because I feel like you get a lot of credit for saying it, or it sounds good in an interview or something. But nobody really talks specifics around what that actually means and gives a really good, strong example of the differences or things that have already went right in reform versus what still needs to be changed? Is there a specific thing that you point to, even within the last six years, that is different now than it would have been before the Space Force days, that is a good model for what we should think of as the larger term reform?

There's so much there. So much there. It's a great question. I start to answer that question by saying, the idea that you need to do acquisition reform presumes that there's a problem that can't be fixed with the current processes. So we have to reform it. So you say, okay, great, tell me what's broken. And then you get into a lot of different answers. And I've asked the question to a lot of smart people. And they always have an answer, but it's always different. If everything's the

problem, then I don't know how to fix everything. A lot of what it comes back to is we just don't think government acquisition goes fast enough for the changing conditions of the organization, what we're asking the organizations to do. Okay, that's fair. Organizations internally and externally. Yeah, I mean, I think what they're saying is, hey, the missions, the threats, what we're asking the military to do,

you have to be able to acquire systems on a timeline that's operationally relevant. And so much is changing so fast, if you can't acquire and procure the systems on a same tempo, what you get is going to be obsolete before it can even be brought to bear on a problem set.

So you've got to go faster. Great. How do you go faster? What's fast enough? like commercial speed because, you know, industry can move money, they can make decisions in a way that the government can't. When I have a good idea, I'm two years from the first dollar being aligned against it. That's just the normal budget process. Well, no industry could survive by saying, hey, we know how to solve this problem, so two years from now we'll devote some resources to fixing it.

That's not a business model that works, but that's how the government has to work. And when I say two years, that's if we get an appropriation signed every year on time, which famously happens. Yeah, I was just doing the math. The Space Force has been around, you know, for 72 months. More than half of those months has been under continuing resolution, which has restrictions on how you can spend money. So we haven't really operated under a normal, stable budget for half the existence of our service.

That's going to complicate and slow things down. Yeah. So I think understanding what speed means in terms of government acquisition is an important concept. And then once you establish that, yes, there's things we can do to go faster. But you've got to look at it across the board from building the right kind of requirements in small scale, then being able to acquire them rapidly, and then being able to test, field, train, and implement quickly. So the tangible things, which now are to the question you really ask, what is that we can do? well, how about we not try to build these massive constellations that have to be over-engineered

to last on orbit for 20 years in order to justify the expense of launch? Let's take advantage of the fact that launch costs are coming down, that scaled manufacturing for small satellites is now affordable. So why don't we launch maybe a proliferated Leo constellation at a smaller price point and replace it and tech refresh it on a three-to-five-year basis? Well, that fundamentally changes what requirements you have to write to you. I don't have to write requirements for a satellite to last 20 years. So that makes it easier.

It makes it easier to test. So by kind of shrinking and disaggregating to a minimum viable product, get something on orbit that can do it and enhance it fast, knowing that I'll replace it in three to five years is freeing in terms of how fast you can deliver those capabilities. Now we've just got to line up the resourcing and change the guidance and the parson. policies associated with how you do that to take the most advantage of it. Are the other services doing, is there a similar mindset there, or it's so different in that, you know, their ships aren't going to fall out of the sky in five years if left unattended, right?

You've got orbital drag really helps a lot of that mindset. Yeah, I think it's different. I think they aspire to going fast, but shipbuilding is shipbuilding. Those are complicated, large systems that have. I mean, human systems generally, right? If you head over to NASA HQ and talk about the human spaceflight side, that's going to be more akin to the shipbuilding structure than a constellation. Exactly right.

Not putting humans in our weapons systems is a... Helps a lot. Don't have to feed them, keep them happy. And if they fail, okay, it's just hardware. We can replace hardware, no problem. There's no Mark Watney up there to go yet. That's right. There's a lot of software-defined capabilities.

Software is easier to change. You don't have to change the hardware out. You can just change the software-defined part. of the process, that gives us a chance to go fast if we get those requirements right. So I do think there are opportunities for space that are more complicated, I guess, in the other domains. One thing that is one of my concerns in the space industry generally right now, and this across defense and civil, is SpaceX as the outlier in the industry.

A lot of times this is more the civil side of what I usually talk about, that there's a lot of programs at NASA right now that are architected in a way that was architected or a program was architected like when SpaceX did really well to launch humans at the ISS or cargo to the ISS or build a lunar land or something like that. And unfortunately, you've got then Boeing Starliner or something else on the program that's not doing well. And it's like, okay, well, was it the acquisition strategy or was it the execution capability of SpaceX? And every area that they put their company efforts towards, they are the leader in that. And, you know, they haven't done earth imaging yet. But presumably if they jumped in that domain, they would make pretty good

inroads really quickly. They operate more satellites than, you know, the rest of Earth combined at the moment or something like that. So I try to understand, do you need acquisition reform or do you need better execution? And does that hide a lot of the ills of acquisition reform if somebody is able to move quickly and be given that runway to go and operate? Yeah, it's how do you take advantage of what we're seeing in the commercial side in government acquisition? So all of the things you're talking about right now have been for SpaceX's commercial ventures. As we pull them over into government ventures, it's going to slow. things down because just the way the government has to do business, the overhead we impose,

the congressional oversight that's required, the federal acquisition regulation that we have to attend to will slow things down. They won't be able to do things the way the SpaceX model says to do it. So that's where I'm back to government speed versus commercial speed. But what I like about SpaceX, and you hit it right on the head, they're delivering. Whatever they say they're going to do, they seem to be able to do it and do it pretty quick. And then I liken that, you know, if I was to think about a great NFL team, if somebody is just killing it every year, you don't blame them. You say, no, everybody else has got to step up or what are they doing right?

How do we emulate it? What can we steal from them so that we can raise our game and compete against them? And I think that competition is healthy for the entire enterprise across space. And what I want to do is put the government in a position to be able to take advantage of that kind of competition. If somebody pushes the envelope, I expect other companies to catch up because there's a good model there. There's good things worth emulating. If you wanted to work your way into my heart, you would have used the tush push. Is it a good example of this?

That's the way to my heart? You're saying SpaceX is Jalen Hertz of the space industry? And it's funny because you go, I always love beating an analogy to death, so I'll start on yours. Do you outlaw that because it's unfair? Or do you say, look? No, it's a loser mentality. It's a loser mentality. Step up and compete and do what you can.

got to do, right? And so I think that's the key is see what they do well and try to take advantage of it and make your company just as good. And then we'll have good competition. And that helps everybody. If you wanted to steal go birds as the motto for the space force, the entire city of Philadelphia will be okay with it. So it won't be go fast anymore. It'll be go birds. Go birds. Yeah. Okay. You mentioned something about the commercial industry generally. And I'm curious, there's been a couple defining moments of the space force's life. And the war in Ukraine dominates the back half of that, which I point to as a really good moment to see this commercial space industry shining, because I'm sure you guys had

better imagery than we were getting publicly from Planet and Maxar, but the entire world watched the Russian military march into Ukraine on publicly available, you know, lower resolution than a KH11 or something. But we watched that in real time, and then in the war, you see Starlink being such a key part of operations there. It was just a great example of what the commercial space industry can provide, and how strategically important it is to not only the country, but the world at large. Have there been differences beyond that with that as like the centerpiece example that you can point to? Does that help your conversations at all? Or is it just something that, you know, helps you guys out because it exists now? Well, let me just start by saying, you know,

I wouldn't want to minimize the suffering that any of these kind of wars create, right? But shame on us if we don't watch what's going on and learn from it so that we can take advantage and not put ourselves in any kind of situation like that. Or if we are called into that, minimize the suffering, minimize the damage, put an end of the war as fast as possible. So that's what I look at is, what can I learn from what we're seeing?

And, you know, if you think about we haven't fought a war in space yet, thank goodness. There's been maybe warlike actions, but we haven't fought a war yet in space. So what we have to do is we do modeling, we do simulation, we say, well, this work against this tactic, and we try to get as high fidelity models, as possible and really try to learn as much as we can. So you say, well, how do we overcome satcom jamming?

What's the right tactics? What's the, you know, beam splitting and trying to figure all these things out? What's the right tactic to use? And we have to model and assume that. Or we could watch what's going on and say, hey, did a proliferated, low-earth orbiting K-A satellite constellation, was it successful against jamming efforts? Yeah. What a great simulation that was.

You know, for me, I can learn those lessons and say, I am now fully committed to building my own proliferated Leo-Satcom constellation or taking advantage of what's commercially available because it's proven to be resilient in a combat environment. So that's the kind of thing I think that we're trying to take advantage of, space domain awareness data, the use of unmanned aerial systems. Like you said, the commercial imagery. The world is transparent now. Yeah. It's about the level of fidelity, but it's pretty good. How are we going to take advantage of that? You know, what is it that we can pull in to make our own surveillance and reconnaissance missions

as resilient as possible for as little taxpayer dollars as possible? And you can't not see that and then learn the lessons and try to take advantage of it. You're making me skip to the backside of my sheet here already because one of the things I want to talk to about in terms of threats was the fact that the world is transparent and knowledge of systems is so much higher today than it was historically. You know, I've got friends, Scott Tilly is this guy who tracks satellites and, you know, Chinese missions out to the moon

and has recovered NASA satellites they thought were dead and found them, right? And there's a lot of this amateur tracking capability that's out there and they post it publicly for all of us to see. I have photos here from last summer. I enjoyed watching, you know, Maxar imaged a Chinese satellite and then a G-LIN satellite image to Maxar Satellite back

and they're both tweeting this out as, you know, we can do this now. So in that environment where, you know, there's tons of secret stuff, but on the visible spectrum, there are no secrets anymore, you can't, in the old days, they would know when you were flying, probably you personally, back in the NRO days, right, flying a spy satellite above something they want to hide. Now, I don't know how many planets are above us right now, but it's a lot, right? There's Maxar Satellites, Black Sky, Spire, Hawkeye, like I could just name 40 companies that are doing imagery. So you can't hide anything visually anymore on the ground, but you also are hiding less and less in space. So how do you balance what you're keeping secret because you feel like you should keep that secret, but then knowing that near-Earth or non-Earth imaging is happening, and does it matter if somebody takes a picture of an NRO satellite after it's deployed?

Yeah, it's a question, a couple of things come to mind. One is we have to continually be aware of what is state of the art versus state of the world. And if you're trying to put a lot of energy and effort into keeping something state of the art, which has clearly become state of the world, you're just wasting money. You're wasting effort.

And you've got to think about the problem set differently. And then secondly, what is it we want to reveal because it has a deterrent effect versus what do we want to conceal because it's perishable? Meaning, if somebody knew about this, it would be so easy to thwart, mitigate, what to pick your crazy worry. Get around it.

Yeah. How do you get around it? Then those are the things. need to protect. And so what the new environment does is just forces us to re-look at the models that we used in the past. You know, I started in NRO in 98, and we did have a different mindset then because state of the world looked different than it does today. You just have to recognize where you are and say, what is it we really need to protect, and how are we going to protect it, given the circumstances of the environment, and not try to spend a lot of energy and effort

when it's a futile game. And I think that recognition, sometimes we're a little slow to pick up on it, but I think, again, with the Space Force focused on the space domain in a way that the Air Force really couldn't and other services haven't, we're able to progress a little faster in our mindset there. Yeah, and it might be the fact, too, that, you know, we don't know what certain systems are doing on orbit. I'm thinking of this new naming scheme that you're rolling out, right? That it's like, all right, are you going to announce all the names for everything that's

launched or are there some that's going to be named, but not told? Because the naming scheme clearly is like, we're in Jewish Station orbit, and we're spying on you this way. We're doing this. We're doing signals intelligence. And, you know, is that, again, embracing that mentality of, like, sometimes we're going to tell people what we're up to because that does have an impact that we like in the world. But I don't know, like, are there going to be a bunch of secret names, too, even though they follow that mechanism? I'm going to tell the world everything that the world needs to know.

I'm going to protect what I need to protect. I think about, like, the F-117, right? There was a time when it was unknown. And some of it was they thought the technology might be perishable. They weren't sure exactly how it worked. there were some unknowns. You protect the things when you have those unknowns. But as it starts to be used operationally, by the time it was retired, it was well-known, well-established. Now, where there's still some things that were secretive about it? Of course. But that's that progress from state of the

world, or state of the art to state of the world. And I think we just have to be very cognizant about that. And so by and large, a lot of the things we will roll out, say, hey, this is the new weapon system. It's a replacement for this older weapon system. No problem. There's things that we probably want to hide because it's in our best interest to hide. And then the nation needs us to hide it because they need it to be effective, right? One of those topics is maybe too large. I mean, we could spend 14 hours talking about Golden Dome. I won't.

I know you won't, but that's kind of what I want to talk about, right? Because it's almost too large for me to ask you about because it is more of a whole of defense policy than it is a particular program because there are so many different components. Many of them already exist and operate today. you have missile tracking satellites that have been operating for years and, you know, ground-based radar and the space-based interceptors is the one that's going to get a lot of the attention now because it's new and novel and really hard and was the thing that, you know, thwarted this effort in the 80s. But it is almost explicitly a program that you are using from the deterrence end of, like, they know exactly what this is supposed to do and exactly how it's supposed to operate. The details, we're going to keep secret about how exactly it operates, but what it does. is you'd rather people know that we have this capability.

You know, it's much more in the mindset of like a mutually assured destruction type thing, which is like the knowledge is the threat alone. So, you know, not talking about it right now, is that because there aren't answers or the only answers you have are the things you can't tell me right now? Yeah, I think it's about expectation management. And I don't want to put words in Mike Goulin's mouth, you know, because he's got a lot of work he's got to do. We just got to give him a little bit of time.

But, you know, I think that's the key is it's a system of systems that has to all come together in an integrated way to perform a very technically complex mission set. So if you think we've got all of those unknowns figured out, that would be naive. It's a complex system. And so to start talking about it now is just disingenuous. And so I think that's the best way to say. This is a complex system that's got to all come together. There's things that are working. how do you pull legacy systems in?

There's things we have yet to prove out to figure out exactly how we want to do it. We're still learning. And in the learning campaign, if you throw too much information out too early, you set expectations that that's precisely what you're going to deliver. It was all figured out.

And then when you shift because you learn something, people are like, wait, is it failing? Like, what happened? The thing you said. That's exactly right. That's why I'm softer on this than many of my journalistic colleagues where I'm like, I don't know, give them 10 minutes. So like you said, two years from idea to the first budget.

So, like, it's so early days on a thing that, it's not like this is the first time this topic's ever come up in world history, right? And we know how last time went. I think that's the way to think about it is the more complex a structure is or a system is, the more it has to be integrated with other structures, the more unknowns there are from a technology standpoint. Your audience is probably savvy enough to figure out. There's a lot of complexity here. There's a lot of unknowns to figure out. Then the less you want to commit early on because you're still going to be in this learning campaign, is you're still going to be in this learning campaign, you do demos and prototypes and explore different technologies.

And so why set an expectation knowing that it's going to shift? And so I think that's just where we are. Let's talk about some of the other threats I had listed. Somehow we started with threats and we didn't start with China, which is also, I don't know, I had not a good decision, but to start with Golden Dome or China. But two things I want to talk about from the Chinese perspective. One were, you know, these weeks we're seeing the arrival of the reusable launch vehicle

where Zhu Q3 launched a couple of days or weeks ago. long March 12A is on the launch pad in the next couple of days. It's, to me, a signifier of, you know, the Falcon 9 flight rate is coming to China soon enough. How does that shift the capabilities they're deploying? Is it something that you're concerned about or watching? What do you make of that as a trend over there? You know, I think about the old adage about amateurs, talk about tactics and professionals, talk about logistics, you know?

And launch is space logistics. The ability to put a lot of things on orbit at a low cost is a tremendous game changer for how you build your mission sets. As I talked about, the ability to think about proliferated Leo because the launch price points are down is now something that we didn't think about when I started flying satellites. And so reusability is cheaper launch. So if a country is getting good at cheaper launch, I think about it in terms of they're going to have more mission options. They're going to be able to put things on orbit that I have to account for in different numbers. The scale is going to change.

So I think that's the real impactful side of this from a military perspective. Yeah, and it's interesting to figure out what that is, right? Because it's the same time they're launching the quasi-starlink competitors that are more commercial side. But you know, I mean, there's a ton of star shields up there too. So you know from the other side of that

of like, all right, well, once you start doing that, then you start thinking about different things and how to militarize that. It's less clean of a division over on that side of the ocean between military and the civil side. There's much more crossover and, you know, I think, although Europe and others would criticize us for having the same kind of crossover between contractors that work on the civil side and the military side. So maybe it's not that different and we just don't have the level of insight. I think what you see in the evolution of military affairs is that there's the ebb and flow between the offense

and the defense, right? And this is just, this is just normal. Like, and it's all based on technology. You know, when you think about the great stories in the movies of World War II, you know, the bomber flying into the flack You know being put like that's not how it works anymore, right? Well, why not? Well, because we've our technology is better So we there's not really the need for triple A pieces in the way you had it before because that's not the way bomber ops is going to work because bombers are more capable It's just the evolution of air warfare Same thing's going to happen in a contested space domain. There's going to be a technology. There's going to be a technology. There's going to be be a counter technology, and then we're going to figure out how to overcome that counter technology, which will start a cycle that we have to keep ahead of. And so what I'm focused on

is thinking about how we solve our processes for agility. What's the next best idea? Another great learning point from Ukraine. Think about where they started with unmanned aerial systems and where they are now, how they're using them. That learning cycle is fast. The decision cycles, the implementation of new tactics has to be very rapid to maintain viability on the modern battlefield. Same thing is going to happen in space. So it's not about what they can or can't do. It's how fast can you adapt, overcome, and then re-adapt and re-overcome. The other thing I want to talk about with China is a little bit of a, I don't know,

some people would call it a side tangent, but I'm really curious on your view on the Artemis program right now, because we have this new space race that everyone likes to talk about between NASA and the Chinese apparatus at large, right? There's so many different contractors at play, but it's not a smoothly like civil versus civil kind of thing, right? There's a lot of people that are worried about it and people talking internally from the Chinese side about the fact that it's much more akin to like a Belt and Road-style initiative

or, you know, some people would say islands in the South China Sea that they're going to try to claim some territorial, you know, strategic ground on the moon. Now you think back to the old space race and you read all the cool books and watch the documentaries, And a lot of it was military intelligence, you know, lending insight into what the Soviets were up to. And it was harder to understand back then because we didn't have people tweeting out videos from within, you know, China of launches or the Scott Tilley's the world tracking what they're doing out at the moon. So there's almost more information now than there was in the old space race when it was very heavily dependent on military intelligence. But I'm curious, how do you see that playing out as things progress on both of these programs?

Is that something that the Space Force is going to have a role in because of... needing to be aware of what's going on in the space domain? You know, I think those of us that are of a certain age, you know, fell in love with space because of the NASA programs, right? That was either the NRO was still behind the green door and nobody really knew what was going on there, even though it was a little bit of the same time frame. But it was the astronauts and the Apollo and the Gemini programs

and Mercury. Those were, that's where the lower was, right? I just respect so much of what NASA does because it's still at its heart, scientific exploration, pushing the envelope, what can we do? Where does, you know, humankind go next? I love that spirit, and that really is what drives them. We benefit a lot by that.

We work on the same kind of programs for Lyft. We work on the same kind of programs for how satellites and systems work for extended periods on orbit. Space domain awareness is important to both of us. There's a lot of, the Venn diagram is overlapping with regards to what's important to NASA and what's important to space. But I think what you're really seeing as they push the envelope is that space is becoming more and more critical

to the way we conduct our daily lives on the planet. And everything we learn about space has almost a direct translation, whether it's growing crops, you know, whether it's communications worldwide. All of those things benefit everyone on the planet. And so every time we push in that R&D effort or in that exploration effort, it enhances life on the planet. But I think we have to be realistic enough to understand that anywhere where national interests go,

there's going to be conflict and competition. And that usually means you have to protect what you're trying to pursue for your own advantages. And that's where the military gets involved because somebody tries to take it away from you. And so the Space Force is really committed to making sure that we build the incentive structure globally so that space stays a secure, stable environment, sustainable environment for the pursuit of all of those better things, peaceful purposes, business purposes. And without stability or security, it's harder to progress in those areas, and that's where we come in. So I think what you'll see is us continuing to make sure that we're doing our job,

which is everything that's necessary to keep it safe, secure, and stable, so that we can take advantage of it in the more productive, constructive ways for everybody. This wasn't all my notes, but you're leading me there. So in that mindset, knowing that cycles around programs and budgets are really long, that building human systems are really hard, when is the right time for the space force to get involved in human spaceflight? Because if you need it on the lunar surface, if the Chinese program goes well, right, and something happens and you need it in the early 2030s, like right around now is when you

want to get started on those systems. You know, obviously SpaceX has a lot of stuff in play with the NASA overlap that you could, you know, glean a lot of insight from, but your requirements are going to be a lot different. So why not now? Yeah, I just haven't had time to really think about it, to be honest with you. Here's what I will tell you. We participate in the astronaut program. We just brought Nick Haig back last, I guess, spring from his second trip up to the ISS. He's a guardian, brigadier general now that works here on the staff. So I want to stay connected to human spaceflight, And we do that currently through NASA's astronaut program, gives us some insights into those things.

So if tomorrow we wanted to establish our own Space Force, I know who to turn to, I know a guy, who to turn to. So I want to stay connected in that respect. But I think systems level is more interesting to dig into it because the shuttle only existed in the format it did because the Air Force threw its weight behind it. Yeah, for delivery. Right. So, you know, Starship seems like it's going well, but what if there's requirements that the Space Force would need that should be taken into consideration as they develop and not just you deciding, well, I guess this ride's available. We'll use that one. So I hope this is an answer to the question. I want you to judge me on this, okay?

So I think about what is the ongoing process by which we continually evaluate the future and make sure that we're postured to be ready for that future. And so we are standing up a new field command, which is focused on exactly that. And I've given them a time epic to consider and it's 15 years. And the idea is that we'll have three centers. The first one is called our Concepts and Technology Center. Their job is to look out, right now they're looking out to 2040. They're looking at what the threats are that we could likely face.

What missions are we expected to accomplish in that time frame? And then, you know, what are the technologies that can be used against us or that we need to take advantage of? What does that future operating environment look like and document that? And then we will pass it to our war gaming center, which, does all the modeling and simulations, they'll start to beat it up and figure out, are these valid concepts?

Does this technology hold up? Is it ready for us to pursue? And determine, based on that future operating environment, what are the systems we need to start thinking about? And then it passes to our third, a mission analysis center, which will do the physics-based, hardcore analytics, to say, if this is the mission you want to do, here's the kind of hardware you might need.

Here's the kind of structures you might want to think about. Now is the time to start investing here, because the technologies you're going to take a while to develop. inform all of those decisions. We document all of that in an objective force that says over the next 15 years, here are the things that we think we need to pursue in terms of manpower, technology development, risk maturation, risk reduction, all of those things that have to be done. And what's the right timing for it? So that's the, I'm trying to put a process. I don't have an easy answer to your question. I'm trying to build a set of processes that

routinely ask those questions so that we can stay ahead of the curve. Yeah. I think I just look at the timelines involved with the, you know, dragging up the ISS and Starliner, and then there's a lot of drama going on down the street about the human landing system right now that you may or may not keep track of, but, you know, it, and NASA famously has had drifting objectives of the last 20 years. So you're at a moment where you're relying on them to continue developing human landing systems for the moon if in the next 15 years you want somebody, you want Nick Haig to go in a blue suit to the moon, right? And I don't... like to be the guy that's like, you know, doom and gloom about, you're going to need this,

but that's your job to be prepared for what we do need. And human spaceflight, it's really hard, and it takes a long time. And I'm like, ah, feels like it's the time, guys. Like, this is... Yeah, even just having a part of... I'm like super lobbying for this now, and I'm getting some eyes over there. But it just... I'm looking at the timeline. Like, it makes sense.

This time right now, it makes sense to support programs that are happening that are kind of on, you know, razor's edge of, is this going to work, is this viable? Do we have the budget for it? Do we have the political support for it? It's a weird time, but it's important geopolitically. I'm not disagree with any of that. I just, unfortunately, my responsibilities are to figure out what's the nearest term issues and make sure that our resources are put on the near-term problems.

And that just feels like it's a little further out than defending against an ASAT missile system that's already fielded. Or jammer systems that are already fielded, and I have to ensure national command and control through satellite communications is available in spite of the threats that are already fielded. And so when you're given a budget that even though it's growing is still limited in resources, I just have to prioritize. Yeah, yeah. And so we are definitely still at this six-year walking into a space superiority mindset, which we haven't had really before this, making sure that those near-term threats, the near-term priorities are accounted for, but not losing track of the fact that, hey, let's keep an eye out there to 2040 and if we need to make a decision in the intermittent period that we're postured to do it. to do it, but it's just about resourcing and prioritization.

Another area that's kind of similar is space debris and, you know, the space environment generally. And I'm curious, in my brain, I was like, that seems like a thing that might at some point be the Space Force role because there's a lot of murky policy questions around, you know, who still owns these defunct rocket stages, it's the nation that launched them because the outer space treaty. But they're very problematic and it's, you know, there's certain areas of orbit that are, it could be a major issue soon.

And it's not clear to me who in the country is actually going to be tasked with that when it comes time. There's, you know, scientific missions to figure out, can we do this, or what are the concepts? But it feels like an area that might have some space force influence. I don't know if you think that's something that we could see on that same quota, sort of like, what might we need in 15 years. Yeah, I mean, certainly we play a role in tracking as much as we can so that people are aware of what the debris problem is, doing collision avoidance to make sure that any issues associated with debris are kind of accounted for and maybe early enough that we can take mitigating efforts, so there's not damage to active satellites,

and certainly in the ISS. Secondly, there are things you can do responsibly to minimize debris, right? Launch profiles so that rocket bodies come back and burn up, making sure that explosive bolts aren't just shattering off, and there's ways to tether things, so there are behaviors that we can model

and then encourage, certainly in the industry, to minimize the debris, because we've gotta keep it safe and secure and stable and sustainable for the future. So that's where we're focused right now. Efforts to clean it up and maybe, yes, anytime anybody comes in and goes, I got an idea. I'm interested. I'm not going to give you $100 million to go pursue it because I don't know if it's going to work, but I'm interested in it because the less debris there is, the better, I think. It's still a pretty big space up there. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm not with someone that's worried about Kessler syndrome tomorrow.

I think it's, yeah, it's huge. But not contributing to it in an irresponsible way, that's certainly on my mind, and then making sure we characterize everything is up there so it doesn't cause a problem in the near term. Well, I know we've got to get you out of here. I really appreciate this. It's been an awesome conversation.

It went a couple places that I didn't. I thought we might get, but yeah, really fun to have the conversation. I really enjoyed it. Well, thanks, Anthony. It's great talking to you. I hope we can do it again. When we have some more questions,

more time to... Oh, I got more questions. That's not the problem. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thanks so much. Absolutely. Thanks again to General Saltzman for coming on the show. Really amazing conversation.

Loved hearing directly from them on how they see all these different issues in space. I think it's a really interesting moment to talk with them as there's so much policy change going on, both on the military side but on the civil space side as well. So I'm sure he'll be back. I'm actually curious to get him or someone in the staff back after they release that 15-year vision that they are supposed to roll out sometime next. year. That will be really interesting to follow along with. And it sounds like he wants to come on off nominal, too, crack open a beard, maybe talk, I don't know. I don't know if we can get

NRO stories out of them, because it might be too recent still. But, you know, there's probably something you can talk about at this point. Anyway, that's, uh, that's it for the show. I really appreciate all of your supports. The only reason these kind of things are possible is because of you. It's a 100% listener-supported show. The fact that this listenership is so heavily an industry focused, like a huge percentage of you are out there in the industry in really interesting positions. And people like General Saltzman's comm stamp know that. And that's why they have these kind of guests on this show. It's all because of you. I thank you all so much, including everyone who supports over at main engine cutoff.com slash support. There are 900 some of

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But if I don't talk to you, have a great holiday, and I'll talk about this.