Like its sister services, the Space Force has officer, enlisted and civilian members — all called “guardians.” But the Space Force is looking for new ways to recruit civilian employees, which right now make up about 50 percent of the service.
On college campuses, the Space Force is part of a congressionally mandated pilot program, the Defense Civilian Training Corps, or DCTC, which has similarities to ROTC, but which instead aims to bring university graduates into the military as civilian employees rather than uniformed officers, said Katharine Kelley, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for human capital.
“Basically, if the college student is interested in the Space Force … they can volunteer to come and work with the Space Force on projects during their summer break,” Kelley said Wednesday, while speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “When they do that, they get an exposure to what is a civilian job in the Space Force, and what does it mean to be a civilian employee, or a federal employee in the Space Force.”
A Falcon 9 rocket launches from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., Sept. 28, 2024. The rocket carried Space Force Col. Nick Hague in a Dragon spacecraft that he will pilot to the International Space Station. © Space Force Senior Airman Spencer Contreras
Kelley said many Americans remain unaware that it’s possible to work for one of the military services not as a uniformed member but as a skilled civilian.
“There’s still a lot of data out there that shows that a lot of the United States doesn’t understand that you can be in the military but be a civilian and be supported and be supporting,” she said. “This [program] exposes that talent population in some of these schools to those opportunities, and then they go back, they do their normal school year. When they graduate, we guarantee them a job. They join the Space Force, as a guardian, as a civilian, when they graduate college.”
Kelley said students participating in the program have expressed interest in Space Force’s research and development work, problem-solving technologies for space and how weather conditions impact satellite architectures.
Space Force military training instructor Tech. Sgt. Ashley Smith leads a flight of guardians during the 737th Training Group’s coin and retreat ceremony at Joint Base San Antonio, Aug. 14, 2024. During the ceremony, 98 guardians received the guardian’s coin. © Jonathan Cotto, Air Force
“There’s a whole host of scientific and problem-solving related questions that our initial students, who are civilians in this program, have both participated in on a summer rotation, and we anticipate we’ll be able to bring students in on those types of work roles,” she said.
The DCTC program currently partners with four universities, including North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Purdue University, The University of Arizona and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
