The U.S. Air Force will open a three-star Air Staff position to help increase the visibility of space-related matters within the Defense Department, Defense News reported Tuesday.Valerie Insinna writes the selected candidate will act as a space advocate tasked to spread awareness on the needs of space operators and help drive a cultural change across the space community.
“He or she will work at the Pentagon, it will be a three-star general, and they’ll come to work every day focused on this, making sure that we can organize, train and equip our forces to meet the challenges in this domain,” said Gen. John Raymond, head of the Air Force Space Command.
The service branch said Tuesday it looks to reform its process for approving space acquisition programs and add professionals to teams that develop non-space program requirements.
The Air Force will also seek the help of its Operationally Responsive Space office to procure commercial technologies and field systems.
Gen. John Hyten, head of the Strategic Command, said that the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center has been renamed as the National Space Defense Center to emphasize the center’s mission to unify space efforts of the DoD, National Reconnaissance Office and the intelligence community.
