AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar -- Airmen from several locations throughout U.S. Air Forces Central transition to Guardians in the U.S. Space Force during the month of February.
The newest AFCENT Space Force members are some of the 3,600 Airmen from shared Air Force and Space Force specialties, including intel, cyber, acquisition and engineering, who transferred into the new service.
“Space professionals have been an integral part of the AFCENT mission for decades, delivering space effects in support of the CENTCOM commander since the early days of the Gulf War,” said Space Force Col. Robert Schreiner, USAFCENT Director of Space Forces. “But this is an exciting and historic time; these newest Guardians join a service at its infancy with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the Space Force by establishing a culture of action, innovation, and inclusion.”
Schreiner, who swore in 13 Guardians in a ceremony at Al Udeid Air Base on Feb. 1st, explained how this latest transfer introduces new specialties to complement the budding service’s capabilities.
“This is unique, as it introduced additional specialties to the Space Force; cyberspace operations, intelligence, acquisition, and engineering,” said Schreiner. “These are specialties the Chief of Space Operations and the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force identified as foundational for the Space Force to perform its mission. With their transfer, they help form the initial cadre that will define what it means to be a Space Force Guardian, as well as what it means to be a Space Force cyberspace operator, intelligence professional, engineer and acquirer.”
The mission of the Space Force is to develop Guardians, acquire military space systems, mature the military doctrine for space power, and organize space forces to present to combatant commands. In U.S. Central Command, newly transferred Guardians will continue to fill the roles they were deployed to do as Airmen, remaining integrated within diverse missions.
“This will be a fairly seamless transition for the new Guardians,” said U.S. Air Force Maj. Matthew Frantz, U.S. AFCENT cyberspace operations planner. “There will be no degradation to the mission, and they will still perform the duties they came here to do.”
While the day-to-day job will mostly be the same skillset they maintained as Airmen, the transfer to Space Force affords new opportunities for growth.
“When I started technical training at Keesler Air Force Base, I saw an emblem of the Air Force Space Command on the wall,” said U.S. Space Force Specialist 3 James Brown, 379th Expeditionary Communication Squadron client systems technician. “Two years later, I’m now blessed to be serving in a brand new service that is dedicated to the protection of American assets in space. Excited seems like a mundane term in comparison to how I feel right now.”
While the number of members in the Space Force remains low, the small organizational size offers increased flexibility to perform a highly specialized mission.
The U.S. Space Force’s Chief of Space Operations Gen. John "Jay" Raymond recently underscored this during a recent news interview where he said the service “has to be agile and lean to go fast.”
"I think that's critical to our success in the space domain. I really believe that large organizations are slow, and I will do all I can to stay small,” he said.
He added the service’s small size is not a limiter, as the missions they will undertake are highly specialized and critically important.
AFCENT hosted a ceremony in September when the first AFCENT transferred into the Space Force. There are currently about 2,500 already in the service who joined through new accessions or transfers from the Air Force.