The newly established U.S. Space Force is building its workforce and develop its people, while primarily looking for people that have science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) backgrounds, Chief of Space Operations for the Space Force Gen. John Raymond today.
Speaking during DefenseOne’s State of Defense event today, Raymond emphasized the importance of a service to develop its people, and for the Space Force to develop space operators, specifically.
“The number of cadets before we became an independent service … that we got out of the academy was about 30. Today we’re at 118,” said Raymond. “And again, the quality is really high, the types of people that we’re looking for are people that primarily have a STEM background, but not exclusively.”
He added that “it’s a broader mix then that [and] we’re really looking for people that aren’t afraid to make decisions, people that are innovative, people that can go fast and be bold and have inherent leadership skills that we require to be able to operate in this domain that we operate in.”
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As far as where Space Force is directing its focus, Raymond said that the service was focusing a lot on data to help with situational awareness in supporting operations.
“So, we have as I said we’ve been working very hard to develop that data infrastructure if you look at the space domain, it’s a big data problem,” said Raymond. “And so, thousands and thousands of objects in space traveling at incredibly high speeds, and we track about 400,000 observations a day. So, we’ve been working to be able to ingest that data, display it in a way that commanders can easily wrap their head around and make decisions, and then use analytical tools on top of that to help solve problems.”
