US leaders this year faced difficult decisions against a backdrop of rapidly growing challenges from potential adversaries, and a booming commercial space sector that innovation-wise is leaving the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community in the dust.
"We made it clear when we stood this up that it is going to be an evolutionary process, and that we just stood up the bare bones in the first year because it's hard enough to do that," Rep. Mike Rogers said. "And we're putting the flesh on the bones each year trying to mature it in a slow and pragmatic fashion, and do it right."
These Dover airmen have transitioned to Space Force
The friendly jokes have been mounting over the past few weeks.
As Lt. John McGrady walked around Dover Air Force Base recently sporting new patches on his fatigues, a colleague bowed his head and said: Hello, guardian.
McGrady, a cyber operations flight commander, is one of six people on-base in Dover who have recently transitioned into the United States Space Force, which calls their enlistees guardians. Everyone is super excited, McGrady said. The jokes are all well-meaning and in good fun.
A California native who has been stationed in Dover since July of 2019, McGrady said he heard rumblings while he was in tech school that the Space Force would be ramping up, and that buzz only increased after then-President Donald Trump signed the United States Space Force Act, part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020. That created an independent space service by renaming and reorganizing Air Force Space Co