Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, Commander of Space Systems Command, speaking at CyberSat in Reston, Virginia, on Nov. 19. Photo: Via Satellite

The leader of the U.S. Space Force command focused on buying and operating satellites for the U.S. military told the CyberSat conference this week that he, like many other government technology leaders, faces challenges recruiting and retaining personnel with the right technical skills, especially in cyber.

“I’m really focused on the workforce,” Lt. Gen Phillip Garrant, commander of Space Systems Command (SSC) said in Reston, Virginia, on Nov. 19. He also highlighted SSC’s efforts to build closer links with industry, and integrate commercial communications and earth observation services into military capabilities.

“The big challenge,” he said, “and you all know this — if you have clearance, if you have network certifications, you can write your own paycheck on the outside. So retention and recruiting is a pretty big deal for us.”

The Space Force has branded itself as the first digitally native military service, since space operations, by their very nature, rely totally on digital communications, making the workforce skills issue a critical one.

Garrant acknowledged the Space Force, like the other military services, cannot compete monetarily with the private sector. But he argued it can offer a more exciting mission, since there are many kinds of cyber operations only the military, or U.S. intelligence agencies, can legally carry out.

“We’re focused on recruiting and retention by using our Guardians for cyber and not what I would call Boss IT or network administration, but specifically focusing on defensive and offensive cyber. Give them a mission focus,” he said.

The Space Systems Command CIO office, known as S6, is leading several workforce efforts, Garrant said, including creating a roadmap for workforce development to build pools of qualified Guardians and contractors to fill critical roles. S6 also set up a crypto modernization office, which is developing a roadmap to identify “when new cryptographic solutions need to be developed and certified.”

For workforce development in the future, he added, SSC is planning to lean into its partnerships with industry. “We’re looking at opportunities where we can put Guardians into your companies,” much like an educational institution might for an apprenticeship program,” he said.

Garrant said SSC is moving ahead with implementing the Space Force’s Commercial Space Strategy, released in April, to leverage commercial space capabilities and “integrate them into our processes and architectures.”

Part of SSC’s work to engage with industry is the Commercial Space Office or COMSO to work with the private sector. “They’re leveraging commercial innovations to fill warfighting technical gaps and enhance capability, and they’re building a business model to create value for both the government and for industry,” he said.

COMSO incorporates SpaceWerx, the tech incubator for the Space Force, which nurtures entrepreneurs and helps them navigate the maze of military acquisitions. COMSO’s global data marketplace looks for ways “to integrate existing and emerging commercial capabilities and exploit commercial data sources at speed,” Garrant said.

In a shooting war in the Pacific, the satellite communications and GPS services provided by Space Force to the U.S. military would be absolutely critical, he said. “The Army and Navy really want secure comms in congested parts of the world close to that first and second island chain,” he said, referring to the area east of China and south of Japan encompassing the South and East China Seas, the Philippines, Indonesia, and as far south as Singapore.

In such a vast theater, Garrant said, “we’re going to rely heavily on our partners in Asia and Europe, to help fill some of those gaps.”

In the longer term, he said, the nascent Space Futures Command will have the job of looking over the horizon and figuring out how the service will fight in the future. One of its first jobs, he said, will be tightening the links with industry and allies.

“The new Futures Command the Space Force is standing up is going to have a huge component looking at not just adding commercial and allies into the architecture at the end as an afterthought, but to incorporate them into the architecture as a forethought and actually count on them and integrate them and leverage them as well,” he said.

Asked whether the Space Force needed its own department (it is currently housed within the Department of the Air Force), Garrant noted that the Space Force budget has doubled in the last three years. “I can pretty strongly say that that budget would not have doubled if we were not our own service,” he said.

Space capabilities are ever-more critical to U.S. military power.  “If you think of the future of warfare and the limits of humans in air breathing platforms, you’re going to see a fundamental shift in how you fight, and I think you’re going to see a big focus move towards space,” Garrant said. “So I do think, in the future, not anytime soon, the Space Force will either be a preponderance of the department or its own department.”