Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force: Enlisted Space Force

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Right now, I’d like to introduce our next speaker. Last year, he stood on this very stage just days away from becoming the second Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force. Over the past year, Chief John F. Bentivegna, known as B9, has embodied the Guardian spirit. He has led the enlisted force with unparalleled character, connection, commitment, and courage. His character and commitment is unquestionably demonstrated in his steadfast defense of our nation in his 25-plus years in service as a Space Operator.

He has championed collaboration, innovation, and connection to Guardians, with a focus on readiness, training, and quality of life of a space-minded warfighter.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s an honor to introduce to you a fantastic leader, and your Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, John Bentivegna.

CMSSF John Bentivegna:

Thank you. For many years, at Air, Space, and Cyber conferences, I stood on the other side, in the audience, listening to senior leaders give us their vision and guidance and be inspired by them. It is humbling to stand on this stage in front of you today. It really is. And what an amazing opportunity.

I want to thank General Field and AFA for decades of support, and for providing us opportunities like this, where we can come together and have meaningful conversations. And advocate for the forces, our airmen Guardians, and our families, and what we do for our nation. AFA, General Field, thank you very much for what you’re doing. I really do appreciate it, sir.

General Saltzman, teammate, thanks for your support. I really appreciate the opportunity you gave Cathy and I, a year ago. I’ve been in this seat one year on Sunday, and it’s been an amazing journey and ride to be with you and Ms. Jennifer. So thank you very much for that.

And Secretary, thank you very much for all the support that you show for our airmen and Guardians, and allowing us to get after what we have to, and giving us the vision to move forward, to compete in great power competition.

Five years, we’re going to be five years old coming up in December. And boy, it went by fast. And every year has been meaningful and fundamental to developing and standing up the service. But the last 12 or 13 months, under the visionary leadership of General Saltzman, has just been so amazing. Think about what, just over the last 13 months.

A new mission statement came out for the service, to define who we are and what we do for the nation. We defined officer, enlisted, and civilian roles and responsibilities, so we understand how to develop and move forward, and employ the men and women who serve in the Space Force. We unveiled our core functions of what we’re going to get after as a service as well. We’ve gotten General Saltzman’s guiding principles for command and control, for the fight of the future, for what we do as Guardians. A lot has been happening.

I wanted to spend some time today to talk about, as the office of the Chief Master of the Space Force, me and my team, what are we focused on, what are we working on to help implement all these visionary principles that are coming out to define the service? I want to share a few of my key initiatives that I’ll be spending my time going on over the next couple of years, because it’s going to take time to do this.

Now, these key initiatives are informed by my one year in the seat. They’re driven by the need for the service to optimize for great power competition. And they inspired by you, the Guardians.

Now, I know you’ve heard this before, but I’m going to say it again, providing meaningful quality of life and quality of service to our members and their families is a sacred obligation that we have. But it is also critical and vital to mission readiness. And that’s why we’re going to continue to champion for essential benefits for our service members and their families, child care, access to medical care, housing.

As Cathy and I, when we get a chance to travel and visit, we love to go to installations and meet with spouses, go visit the child development centers, go visit the dormitories, go visit the Family Readiness Centers, because we’re inspired by the passion that men and women across the service have about providing these essential benefits to all of you. But it’s also informative to understand what are the challenges, what are the lessons learned, what are the great practices, to bring them back to the Pentagon, to continue to focus and invest in those?

We’re going to continue to foster supportive communities, because we know, as military members, when we pick up our families, we’re asked to go around the world. And then we bring our children and our spouses, and we’re looking for communities that are welcoming to us, that are supportive, that provide opportunity. And that relationship with local communities is critical as we get after that. And the continuing evolving needs of the service members and their families, we’ll focus on that for quality of life and quality of service, to elevate the journey of what it means to be a Guardian in the United States Space Force.

We talk about quality of service, one of the things that I’m proud of, that we really have worked hard on, is the Guardian voice, the Guardian voice. As we work to work through what development looks like, particularly as an example, for our talent management boards, for our senior non-commissioned officers, the Guardian voice is extremely important in that process, as we decide what opportunities, what development, what schools, what assignments to develop that Guardian looks like. And we go through four questions as we look at that. What has the Guardian done? What can the Guardian do? What’s in the best interest of the service and mission needs? And what are the needs of the member and their family?

Now, the needs of the service, getting the mission done, we have to get after that. But the Guardian’s voice in those discussions and those decisions are critical to quality of service, so the Guardians feel that they’re part of the team, they have a voice to be heard. And we look through everything through those four questions, we talk about development to inspire and ensure that we’re delivering meaningful quality of service.

We’re also excited about the Personnel Management Act. And then, optionality is a phrase I like to use, of full-time and part-time, as we develop that, to increase quality of service and quality of life of service members, to elevate that journey of what it means to be a Guardian in this new model of a service.

It’s exciting opportunities to get after that. And we’re working with the team. I have my IMA, Chief Todd Scott, who’s a reservist today, who works in the office of Chief Master of the Space Force, and is constantly engaged with Ms. Kelly and SAF/MR, to make sure that that journey, it could be implemented in a timely fashion, and it’s such that it not only gets after the mission, but it makes it a new model that inspires Guardians to stay with us for the long haul, because service is challenging.

I will continue to communicate with the Secretary of Defense on initiatives, and talk about what the Guardian journey is like, and the needs of the Guardians. An example is that, we communicated all the senior enlisted advisors across the services, with the secretaries who recently released Memo number four for taking care of people, to have a voice in that. I’ll continue to do that across the Department of Defense.

I’ll start to continue to engage with Congress. When I have an opportunity to testify, and brag about Guardians, and brag about Guardians families, and talk about the needs, and unique type of service that we do. I’ll continue to carry that voice to the Hill. And we’ll also work to leverage the responsibilities and the authorities that we already have within the Department of the Air Force, working with Ms. Kelly, and the S1, and Honorable Wagner and SAF-MR. To make sure that we’re looking at all the levers that we can pull today on our own, to meet the needs of our service members.

An example of that, that recently released cold weather assignment incentive pay. Because looking at what do Guardians and families go through at cold weather installations, particularly in the Space Force? Talking about Cavalier Clear, and up at Pituffik [Space Force Base, Greenland].

We have chosen this life. We have chosen to serve our nation. And we know it’s challenging, and it’s not without sacrifice, but this life will be rewarding. That’s what we mean about elevate the journey. It will be meaningful, and it’ll be rewarding for family members, because we have chosen to defend our nation, we have chosen to be part of the profession of arms.

Now, if you gained anything from the conversations we’ve had in this stage, in the panels over the last day, it is that the threat is real. It is that we are living in a complex world that is dangerous. And as a secretary says, “China, China, China, the threat is now. The threat is today.” They’re expanding their space order of battle. We need warfighters to get after the mission the nation has given us.

And that’s where we’re going to focus on, individualized development, deliberate talent management, to have empowered Guardians that are focused on readiness and get after the mission of the nation. We need warfighters who are going to develop concepts, work on analysis, and when we’re ready, to develop doctrine. We need warfighters who will focus on system acquisition and delivery of capabilities that the warfighter needs. We need warfighters who are going to educate, train, test, and evaluate, leveraging their years of experience and subject matter expertise. And we need Guardians to execute the mission day-to-day.

It doesn’t make a difference whether or not your warfighting operations room is a desk, a cubicle, or an operations center buried deep in the basement somewhere in Schriever Space Force base. Every single Guardian has to have a warfighting mindset. To go over what General Saltzman said, we need warfighters who are going to do force design, force generation, force employment. We have to get after the mission. And it doesn’t make a difference where that operation center is.

Thinking about and understanding what the threat is, what the threat is doing, what are the needs of the nation, what are the needs of the weapon systems, are critically important. And to cultivate that warfighter mentality, is something we need to get after. And I’m going to be focused on that, and telling that story, every opportunity I get.

And I want to make sure that Guardians understand why they do what they do. The imperative of it is critically important, critically important. And we’re doing that through changing our education, and training, and experience that every Guardian goes through, because we have to inspire, we have to deliver space-minded warfighters.

There are many things that have to be done for today. There are policies, and programs, and discussions we have to have to address the needs of today and of tomorrow. But we also have to spend time thinking about what are the next generations of Guardians going to face. Only five years into this journey, it’s vitally important that we look ahead, and make the investments today for the Guardians of the future.

And sometimes those are very difficult conversations, because our resources are limited. I just had a conversation, right before I got up on stage, with my teammate for United States Air Force Academy, John Alsvig. Said, “Hey man, I’d love to have, I want some Guardian NCOs at the Academy, to help shape the future leaders that lead the Department of the Air Force.” Man, I’d love to do that. I don’t have the bandwidth capacity to get after it. But, we’ve got a plan for that.

What does that look like 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now? What is the training environment for Guardians? I was talking about space battle management. As orbital warfare becomes more and more complex, how do we plan for that for the future? There are needs we have to get after today, but we have to think about decisions that we make today that will drive the future, because it’s coming up fast. And we know it takes time to get things done within our nation, the Department of Defense, especially with challenges that we have with funding.

But we’ve got to tell the story today so that the nation understands a criticality of what it means to be a Guardian, and what we’re bringing to the future. And to do that, we need to cultivate an innovative environment. We need Guardians that aren’t afraid to question assumptions, to say, “Hey, well, just because we’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it has to be done this way today.” Question assumptions, be innovative.

I will continue to tell a story, not only within the National Capitol region when I go up on Capitol Hill, and within the building with our joint partners, but we have to tell a story to the American people. They want to be inspired by Guardians of the Space Force. They want to understand and know who we are. And we’re going to continue to do that, because we’re going to inspire the Guardians of the future.

That’s a strategic communication goal that I have, within the office of the Chief Master of Space Force, to tell your story, to brag about you, so the nation understands who you are and what you do, that will allow us to gain the support to move into the future that we need. We’ll continue to strengthen relationships with our allies.

Chief Lawson and I just hosted the Senior Enlisted Leader International Summit just a few weeks ago here in Washington DC. I think we had just about 70 partner nations that were here. Now, many of them have a little more mature space operations infrastructure, like the UK has the Space Operations Command. But the nations were eager to learn about Guardians. They wanted to partner. “When can we get a chance to come to your PME for the Space Force?” “How can we increase exchange for opportunities with Guardians, because we want to learn from the journey that you’re on?”

We have to start building those relationships, because as we said, this business is difficult and we cannot have control of the domain on our own. It’s going to take our allies and partners to help us do that. Those relationships has to start being built today. And we need to make that investment. As difficult as it is, in a resource-constrained environment. It’s vitally important.

We also have to look into the future and talk about, what is our identity and our culture going to be? Sometimes there’s a little bit of a rush. It’s not a checklist to define identity and culture. It’s going to take time to do that. And the OGs, I call them Original Guardians, those are the Guardians who haven’t worn another uniform, that they’re inspired to come and join the Space Force directly.

We just, I think, promoted the first batch of OGs to the rank of Sergeant, I think in August. They’re so just starting that journey. And we have to make sure that we’re setting the conditions, to allow them to define their culture, their identity of what it means to be a Guardian. Setting those conditions, and taking the time, and making sure their future success is vitally important. And it will take time to do that, but it’s worth it.

Some of us may never see the fruits of our labor, but we have a responsibility to do so to build a future. Now, all these key initiatives, as we elevate the journey, cultivate the warfighter, and as we create the future, I bring it all together and I like to call it the Guardian Experience. The Guardian Experience is vitally important. I get asked a lot of times when I’m out, and say, “Hey, how do you make sure you have retention? When you have such highly skilled, qualified, mature individuals, that the industry and academia, they go off and start businesses. How do you keep them as Guardians?” It’s the Guardian Experience. It’s a Guardian Experience that will keep them on the team. And each one of us have a responsibility to make sure that that experience is one that is meaningful, because it’s hard to compete against all the other opportunities that are afforded these great Americans.

And I want to say this as well, I see my role as a Chief Master of the Space Force is not limited to stripes. When I talk about the Guardian Experience, I’m talking about Guardians who are wearing bars, wearing stripes, and wearing suits. We’re all Guardians. And I want to make sure that your experience is one that you value, one that you respect, one that you brag about when you talk to your friends, and your neighbors, and your family. That’s how I envision the Guardian Experience. That’s why these are my key initiatives.

And part of this experience, as General Saltzman talked about earlier, some of the initiatives, for example, with the Officer Training Course. It just started just a few weeks ago, as he’s trying to cultivate that warfighter for the Officer Corps. So if I may, I want to take a few minutes to talk about where I see a vision for the enlisted development path that we’re working on.

When the Space Force was established, we were moving fast. We were moving really fast. And we leveraged the infrastructure, some of the concepts, some of the culture that the Air Force afforded us, so we can get out and deliver to the nation, because the service was established in a day. And we have been partnering with the Air Force to help us do that.

And Mr. Secretary, your motto of, “One team, one fight,” the essence of that really shone through. Because every day, we are leveraging and relying on the Air Force to do things for us that we initially have to do for ourselves. Let’s talk about recruiting. We have recruiters in the house? I know Chief Flosi gave you a shout-out yesterday. Hey, recruiters. Not only have you exceeded your goal to recruit Airmen, but you’re also out there recruiting Guardians. So today, we’re leveraging Air Force recruiting service. Those Airmen professionals that are out there, that are recruiting Airmen, using a system, a process that has been optimized to recruit tens of thousands of Airmen across about 150 AFSCs.

We’re asking to recruit Guardians in three functional areas. And this year, they exceeded our goal, about 700 Guardians in fiscal year ’24. So thanks a lot, recruiters, I appreciate that. Because I know you hit your goal and you’re helping us out as well. So thank you very much.

Then you go to BMT. We have a detachment of BMT, but we are leveraging the complete infrastructure that the Air Force has to offer for those Guardians’ initial experience. And the relationship and the leadership down there has been phenomenal, given us dormitories, allow us to build a safe space for Guardians. But in reality today, the Guardian Experience we’re trying to deliver for them is a top-off on top of everything else they’re doing, because they’re still going through today, the Airman course at BMT.

You go to tech school, especially for a cyber and our Intel professionals, at Goodfellow, at Keesler, they’re going to courses primarily taught by Airman, Air Force courses. And General Allvin and Chief Flosi, they’re trying to develop air minded warfighters. So we have to make sure that what are we doing to develop space minded warfighters and Guardians? So I appreciate the relationship you guys are helping us get…

And the talent and the capability of those Guardians coming out of those courses, are phenomenal for today. But we have got to work out and design our own training for the future. And I talk all the time, when I get a chance to go out and thank the leadership across all these Air Force bases that are providing all this support for us, as we’re on this journey five years in. And I say, “Thank you so much. It’s vitally important, this relationship, and allowing us to build our own environment within your ecosystem, as you’re trying to get after the things that the Air Force needs you to do.”

But I also say to those teammates, “But help us stand up our own two feet.” There are things that, long-term, we’re going to have a relationship with the Air Force, but there are things as a service that we need to do on our own. And helping us get through that. So we have initial training. It’s still kind of air minded as we go through that.

And then we send those Guardians, they go to their first operational unit, they go through that initial training. It might be initial qualification training, MQT, they get certified. And I go around and visit ops floors, combat squadrons, or combat detachments today. And there may be a Guardian who’s full up trained, who’s doing space domain awareness or strategic missile warning, and they’re a two-striper. That’s a lot of responsibility we’re putting on the shoulders of a two-striper. But that’s the model that we have, right? Where the training necessarily isn’t fully aligned with career advancement.

And then overall employment. We inherited the unit manning documents and the structure that was Air Force Space Command, and other organizations as we built the Space Force over the last four years. And some of those concepts, some of those expectations are still being implemented today across our tactical units. And I think there’s still a little bit of a culture or expectation, specifically when you become a non-commissioned officer, that you distance yourself from operations, and you get more into management and maybe team leadership. And that that operational stuff is for the tech sergeants, for the sergeants, for the specialist fours and specialist threes.

Now we’re getting after it. You talk to General Miller, you talk to General Schiess, the men and women who are executing the mission. You talk to General Sejba, who do an operational test and training. They are doing it today. But as General Saltzman talked about, earlier, what we were is not what we must become. What we were is not what we must become.

We have to shift the way we think about this. Scouting, as I like to call it, we need to scout for talent. It’s a different philosophy, and it’s a service responsibility. As much as I appreciate, love the airmen who are recruiting for us today, scouting talent and building the Space Force is a service responsibility. And we’re getting after it. We just recently, I think, selected a commander for the first, I call it scouting squadron, that we’re going to have at Air Force recruiting service down there. And then we identified, I think, 11 Guardians who are going to be Guardian Talent Scouts, is a phrase I like to use. And they’re going to go down. They’re going to get trained. They’re going to learn how the Air Force recruits. They’re going to learn how the Marine Corps recruits. They’re going to learn how other agencies, they’re going to go out to industry and academia, and they’re going to learn what are the best practices to scout, attract, develop talent.

Because this is an opportunity for us to embrace the fact that we’re just about 10,000 active duty strong at the end of the year, with only three real functional areas, specifically for on the enlisted side. And on the officer side with the officer training course, we have the ability to focus in on the actual talent that we need for the service, and do so in a very deliberate manner. Where, if for one reason, for one year from an enlisted perspective, we need to grow more cyber operators, then we can feed that to the scouting squadron, and say, “This year, I need you to get me several hundred more cyber operators, as opposed to intelligence operators or space operators, because that’s the direction the service is going with the new weapons system that’s coming online.”

What an opportunity for us to embrace that thought process and that model. So scouting talent and job alignment is where we’re going in the future. Individualized and purposeful development. I’d like to modernize and expand the current E1 through E4, full qualified promotion system that we have today. Leveraging our scouting for specific talent to more align career advancement for Guardians to the skills and certifications they receive through that journey of individualized and purposeful development, that it’s clear and transparent, that maybe as you go through these new training courses that STARCOM is delivering, that is Guardian space-minded specific. These are not easy courses. This is not an easy journey. And then you get certified and we ask you to do orbital warfare, or strategic missile warning, or space domain awareness, or test and evaluation, that maybe we closely more align your career advancement to those certifications and that warfighting skill that you have.

And then when you look at where we’re going, officer enlisted civilian roles and responsibilities, warfighters, subject matter experts, our unit of action, combat squadrons, combat detachments, we need sergeants, tech sergeants, and mass sergeants who are going to embrace those opportunities. Those responsibilities, they’re going to lead those teams, and make sure they’re ready and prepared to execute at echelon command and control, and embrace mission command.

So when we look at this chart, this chart is not time phased. It’s about how in the future we’re going to look at the roles and responsibilities, the expectations and development we’re going to give you within these phases of your career. So when we look at our sergeants, tech sergeants, and our master sergeants, who we’re going to leverage and put responsibility on your shoulders. We’re not going to distance you from operations, we’re going to put you right in the middle of it and make you responsible for it.

But we got to train you and develop you before we can put that burden on your shoulders. This is the future vision I have for enlisted development. And we talk about our E8s and E9s, the key phrase, operationally relevant. As much as I hate sitting in an office every day, I’m an ops guy, by man, I love ops. It doesn’t mean I give up about what’s, hey, the current threat brief. I don’t need to know what’s going on in the world. I don’t need to know about operationally what’s happening. I don’t need to understand where my deployed de attachments are.

No, that expectation is on every single non-commissioned officer, regardless of the office that you sit in. Because if we’re not operationally relevant, how do we remain to be principal advisors to our teammates? How do I advise General Saltzman if I don’t understand the evolution of where we’re going with force design and the next weapon system? If I’m not keeping in contact with now team Chairman S4S, or Chief Simmons at US Space Command, to understand what is happening in the world? What are the needs from the warfighter that are being asked of the Space Force? Every single Guardian, every single noncommissioned officer, senior noncommissioned officer, need to understand that that’s part of the warfighting culture. And it’s part of the roles, and expectations, the responsibilities, and development we’re going to give you to get you there.

And all of this, all of this, the key initiatives, the Guardian Experience, how we’re going to empower Guardians to own the mission, to be responsible for readiness, all leads to what I call the concept of Guardian For Life.

How is it that we’re able to create an environment, an experience, where Guardians, regardless of when they take off the uniform and go off and do other things, that they stay connected to the Space Force, that those relationships still exist? As Guardians go off into academia, start businesses, go into government service, that that tie, that passion remains with the Space Force, so we can leverage that years of experience.

And I’m talking beyond part-time, I’m talking when they retire and move on, doesn’t mean you say goodbye to the Space Force. You’re still part of the family. You’re a Guardian for life. That’s the type of experience, that’s the type of environment that I aspire to create for our Guardians and their families. That’s the future of what service and the Space Force will look like.

We will elevate the journey. We will cultivate the warfighter. We will create the future. And we’ll have Guardians for life. This is hard work. It’s going to take time. So let me set some expectations.

My vision is going to be implemented tomorrow. This will be a journey. But every change, every policy update, every brief I give you will be just one step closer to the vision that we all need and want, to the growth of the future. And I will work with SAFMR and Honorable Wagner, I’ll work with Ms. Kelly, I will work with STARCOM, on this vision to implement it.

I’ll be honest, I don’t have a lot of authority, but I got a lot of influence. I build relationships. I have a vision. I’m going to work with the senior leaders across the Department of the Air Force, to make this vision a reality, to deliver for every single Guardian, that experience that makes them be Guardians for life. Because we are Guardians, and this is the way.

So… Yeah, yeah, Star Wars fan. Star Wars fan.

Audience:

[inaudible 00:33:12].

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna:

Hey, so I do get a lot of questions. This is a great product that the staff put together, Space 101. Please scan the QR code. We’re hoping to make it a live document. But it talks about the Space Force, who we are, what we’re doing, where we’re going. So I encourage you to download it, share it, put it on your desktop. But it’s a great document. I really do appreciate it.

Thank you again, AFA, for the opportunity for me to stand on the stage. I think I’m just right on time, so my team’s going to be really happy about that. Semper Supra.