WASHINGTON — Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has signed off on the creation of a new staff organization at service headquarters that would, in effect, take the place of the Space Force’s previously planned Space Futures Command.
The new SF/S9 Force Design and Analysis staff group will be established on April 21 to support the Space Force chief in his “statutory role as Force Design Architect for Space for the Armed Forces,” according to a March 31 memo signed by Saltzman and obtained by Breaking Defense.
Asked for comment about the status of the plan, a Department of the Air Force spokesperson said: “The memo speaks for itself. We don’t have any additional information to provide at this time.”
The SF/S9 office’s responsibilities include “forecasting” the service’s “Future Operating Environment,” developing and “validating” its operational concepts and doctrine, developing and “maintaining” its “Force Design,” and prioritizing science and technology efforts,” the memo explains. As such, it will be charged with developing the Space Force’s rolling “Objective Force” plan establishing the service’s force structure and capabilities requirements 15 years out.
It also will coordinate the activities of the following organizations and field commands (all of which will remain intact):
- Space Warfighting and Analysis Center (SWAC);
- Space Security and Defense Program;
- Assigned and detailed personnel of Task Force Future;
- Space Delta 10, Doctrine and Wargaming;
- The Innovation and Prototyping unit of Space Systems Command’s System Delta 89, Space Combat Power (with the exception of the Space Safari program office for rapid acquisition of US Space Command’s high priority needs);
- The current SF/S9 Analysis Directorate; and
- Chief Science Officer
“The functions of the proposed [Space Futures Command] will be a part of S9. Whatever the name, there is a critical need for out-of-the-box thinking for military space power. Otherwise, we risk falling into the trap described by Henry Ford when he allegedly said, ‘if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses’,” said Clayton Swope, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
According to the memo, the next step is for the Space Force to provide Air Force Secretary Troy Meink a “fully coordinated staff package to officially establish the SF/S9.”
It was Meink who last year tanked the Space Force’s plan to set up Space Futures Command, announced by Saltzman in 2024. Further, the structure of SF/S9 mimics that of the newly restructured Air Force’s headquarters staff unit AF/A5/7, Air Force Futures.
The Air Force on Wednesday announced it now has consolidated the “core functions of Integrated Capabilities Command (Provisional),” activated in September 2024, into AF/A5/7. The service last October announced it planned to kill the command, which was established by the Biden administration as one of several key initiatives under a sweeping Department of the Air Force overhaul dubbed “reoptimization” — an effort rejected by the Trump administration.
