The United States Space Force has a new mission statement.
Space Force unveiled the new statement this week, outlining the service’s mission in just nine brief words: “Secure our Nation’s interests in, from, and to space.”
In a statement, the service’s top officer, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, said the new mission statement was produced exclusively through soliciting suggestions from Space Force servicemembers, who are known as Guardians. “We did not hire a corporate marketing team to develop a catch phrase,” Saltzman said. “Nor did generals sit around a table in the Pentagon debating what the statement should be. Our mission statement was sourced from a Guardian-driven process.”
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Space Force’s new mission statement describes the service’s core functions. “In space” refers to operating the satellites and spacecraft in Earth orbit that are designed to protect American space infrastructure from other nations’ anti-satellite weapons.
“From space,” meanwhile, encompasses space-based assets the U.S. military depends upon such as GPS navigation satellites, communication constellations and early missile launch warning systems.
Finally, “to space” refers to Space Force’s role in assuring America has access to Earth’s orbit through rocket launches and the infrastructure that supports such events.
The new Space Force mission statement was released some six months after Saltzman publicly criticized the service’s previous mission statement. In a memo published by Military.com, Saltzman wrote that very few Guardians can actually recite the former Space Force mission statement and voiced his concern that the old statement “does not reflect why the Nation has a Space Force and the vital functions Guardians perform.”
“Our current mission statement is long and cumbersome,” Saltzman continued. “We can do better.”
The previous mission statement was much wordier than the new one, and contained far more jargon reflective of military doctrine. “The U.S. Space Force is responsible for organizing, training, and equipping Guardians to conduct global space operations that enhance the way our joint and coalition forces fight, while also offering decision makers military options to achieve national objectives,” the previous statement read.
