The U.S. Space Force, which stood up Dec. 20, 2019, is America’s newest military service branch. Last Friday, service leaders marked Space Force’s 5th birthday with a small celebration in the Pentagon.
“I’m very reflective on our 5th birthday of all the things that we’ve accomplished,” said Chief of Space Operations, Gen B. Chance Saltzman. “There’s lots of work to be done, and 2025 is going to be exciting. We’ve accomplished a lot as a Space Force in our first five years, and everyone deserves to be proud of it.”
Since the Space Force stood up, it has been successful in increasing its budget, largely through absorbing other space-related agencies, and it has grown considerably, tripling the size of its personnel each year since 2019.
The new service has also fielded service components to combatant commands in the same way as other services. Already, there are Space Force components to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Central Command, European Command and Africa Command. Additional combatant command components will be fielded in the future.
The Space Force has also redesigned its professional military education and officer training programs and is working to replicate that for its enlisted personnel as well.
Operationally, the Space Force has in the past five years supported an increase in the speed of space launches by nearly 500%, shared space situational awareness data with 34 foreign nations and provided position navigation and timing, or PNT services, to GPS users worldwide.
The Space Force has also connected over 100,000 active satellite communications users, deployed electronic warfare capabilities to 10 nations for a collective 2,551 days, and already in 2024 guardians have supported 45 exercises, tracked 226 space launches and cataloged 3,345 space objects.
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall assumed his current role in July 2021 and has presided over the Space Force for much of its existence. The U.S. Space Force falls under the Department of the Air Force.
“It’s been a great joy to work with the team and to help you move forward and create a combat force that the nation simply didn’t have when the Space Force was formed,” he said.
Kendall admits that other issues have dominated his tenure as secretary since taking office. But the importance of space, he said, has never been lost on him.
“I always come back to the need for a Space Force that has the warfighting capability to dominate in space and to enable the joint force to survive and to do its missions,” he said. “And we’re well underway in building that force, and I think that’s a huge achievement.”
The secretary also said the Space Force continues develop its own unique culture, such as what its sister services have.
“We’re creating a new culture here for a new organization that has unique and special features, a unique combination of technologies and people who apply those technologies, and you’re really well underway,” he said. “You’ve accomplished a great, great deal, and you’ve got a lot more to do. And I’m very, very confident that this team of guardians and all the people that support them is going to do everything the nation calls upon it to do and be a decisive advantage for the United States in the future at deterring our adversaries and, if necessary, at defeating them.”
As part of the event, Saltzman, Space Force Spc. 3 Caden Dedenbach, Kendall and Space Force Chief Master Sgt. Amber Abramowski, senior enlisted leader to the deputy chief of space operations, cut a Space Force birthday cake.
