Spacepower Podcast

He joined at eighteen because he wanted the tech school that would get him out of town the longest.

This is the season finale of Spacepower Podcast. Thank you for watching, listening, and sharing episodes. We are taking a short break, and we will be back with a new season soon. We cannot wait.

Forty years later, he is the Vice Chief of Space Operations, the number two officer in the United States Space Force. There was no plan. There was no map. There was a recruiter and a string of people who kept opening doors as he was ready to walk through them.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Gen. Bratton, Vice Chief of Space Operations, to close out the season with the question every young person asks when they look at this service: is there a path for me?

The answer, as Gen. Bratton tells it, is that there are a hundred of them. He was an E-1. He was a staff sergeant in the Arizona Air National Guard fixing ground radars. He was a captain who walked into his commander's office and asked for a job earmarked for a lieutenant colonel. He flew high altitude balloons over the Nevada ranges. He volunteered for a deployment to Baghdad. He found out he was going to build STARCOM in a four car parking garage.

In this conversation, Gen. Bratton discusses:

• Why he told his recruiter he wanted whichever school kept him away from home the longest, and how that decision set up everything after it
• The doors and windows framework he has used to make every career decision since, and why he says he closed as many as he opened
• What it was like to be the first National Guard officer sent to the space track of the Weapons School
• How balloon experimentation at Nellis solved a real problem for troops calling in air support from Afghan valleys
• Walking into a three and four star Army planning session in Iraq as the only space officer in the room, with no shared language
• The moment US Space Command landed on the table, and why he missed the parallel effort to stand up the Space Force entirely
• Standing up an entire field command from zero to change of command in roughly six months
• Why he believes lieutenant colonels and senior NCOs change more lives than any general ever will
• What today's specialists and second lieutenants are being taught that he did not learn until he was a colonel
• Why he says the Guardians coming up now will be better at space warfighting than he ever was

Want to be in the room for the conversations that come next? Tickets for Spacepower 2026 are available now at https://attendspacepower.org.

Hosted by Bill Woolf
Produced by Ty Holliday

Guest:
Gen. Bratton, Vice Chief of Space Operations, United States Space Force
He enlisted in the Air National Guard as a radar maintainer, commissioned through Officer Training School, and served as the first commander of Space Training and Readiness Command. He now serves as the second highest ranking officer in the Space Force.

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/
Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/
Attend Spacepower 2026: https://attendspacepower.org

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

Two American cities had land, airspace, and a hunch. Neither had a guarantee. This is the story of what it actually took to turn that hunch into reality, and a bet that's still being placed.

The commercial and national-security space economy has outgrown its old coastal footprint, and the launch, testing, and infrastructure demand it's generating has nowhere left to go but inland. That shift is landing in city halls that never expected to be part of the space conversation, and the mayors making the call are becoming the model for how it gets done.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Mayor Lori Blong of Midland, Texas, and Mayor Douglas Nicholls of Yuma, Arizona, to unpack what it actually took to turn two very different cities into space and defense hubs, and why the decision came down to local leadership, not geography.

• Why the pace of commercial and national-security launch demand is pushing new capacity away from the coasts and into the interior of the country
• Why Midland's spaceport license is a horizontal-launch designation, not vertical, and what that actually means for anyone picturing rockets over their neighborhood
• Why a binational agreement signed this month between Yuma, the state of Arizona, and the state of Sonora, Mexico ties directly into the safety case for a southern launch trajectory over the Gulf of California
• What lifting the federal ban on supersonic flight over domestic airspace actually unlocked for hypersonic corridor testing between Midland and Spaceport America
• Why Midland's real bet wasn't the money, it was holding onto a spaceport designation
• Why neither mayor thinks the long-term payoff is one company launching rockets, and what they're actually building around it instead.
• What each mayor tells a resident who assumes this is just insiders and developers cashing in
• How a "three-body problem" of city, economic development corporation, and industry has to move together for any of this to work, and what happens when it doesn't

Space development isn't happening to these cities from the outside anymore, it's being decided by them. Midland and Yuma make the case that a city's place in the space economy has less to do with geography and more to do with whether its leadership will hold a bet through the years before it pays off.

Hosted by Bill Woolf

Produced by Ty Holliday

Mayor Lori Blong, Mayor of Midland, Texas Mayor Blong has led Midland for three-plus years as the city built out the Midland Spaceport Business Park, now home to AST SpaceMobile and a growing base of defense and aerospace testing companies including Firehawk, Castelion, LeoLabs, and Starfighters.

Mayor Douglas Nicholls, Mayor of Yuma, Arizona Mayor Nicholls has led Yuma's push to add a commercial launch site alongside Yuma Proving Ground and Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, including a binational aerospace development agreement signed with the state of Sonora, Mexico.

Learn more about Midland's spaceport development: midlandspaceport.com

Learn more about the City of Yuma: yumaaz.gov

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/ Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

Nobody handed them the answers. When Chance Saltzman got engaged, two weeks before shipping out for missile training, neither he nor Jennifer knew what military life would demand. When he chased a brand-new weapons school, the personnel office told him it was "a terrible idea, an unproven path." So he did it. The through-line of a 35-year career and marriage turned out to be four words: we'll figure it out.

That instinct built more than a family. It helped build a service. The Space Force is still writing its identity, what it means to be a Guardian, what traditions to keep, what culture to forge from scratch, and few people have shaped that answer more directly than its Chief of Space Operations. This is the story of the character behind the stars.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with General Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, and Jennifer Saltzman, back in the Space House where Bill first interviewed a brand-new CSO four years earlier, for a candid conversation about marriage, character, and how you build something that lasts without a blueprint.

In this episode:

- Why "an unproven path" was the exact reason Saltzman chose the Weapons School, and how a warning to stay away became the best career advice he ever ignored
- How a physics scholarship he couldn't finish funneled him into ICBM operations, and why he was certain he'd gotten the better end of the deal
- What it actually means that Guardians conduct combat operations from garrison, watch an adversary act in space, then drive home for soccer practice and help with math homework
- The 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test, told from the ops floor, and the moment there was no hand signal for "they destroyed the satellite"
- How the "floodgates" from missiles to space turned a generation of missileers into the Space Force's first operators
- The surreal night a Hollywood director had dinner at their house, and what saying "yes" has to do with a whole career
Standing up a service from nothing: no flag, no song, no uniform, and why "you have to pay the tax" of becoming real
- Guardian #89, the 89th Weapons School space graduate, Bowling Green High class of '89 — and why Saltzman calls it karma
- Saltzman's one regret as CSO
- Why Jennifer is his "best sensor", the things Guardians will tell her that they'll never tell the CSO
How a marriage that "grew up together" with the service became a lesson in connection and community

The Space Force will be defined by its technology and its doctrine. But this conversation is a reminder that services are built by people, and that identity, partnership, and the willingness to walk a path no one has mapped are as foundational as any capability in orbit.

Hosted by Bill Woolf
Produced by Ty Holliday

General Chance Saltzman
General B. Chance Saltzman is the second Chief of Space Operations, U.S. Space Force, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A former ICBM operator and space Weapons Officer, he was among the first general officers to commission into the Space Force and helped stand up its foundational operational, readiness, and intelligence processes.

Jennifer Saltzman
A three-decade military spouse and advocate for Guardian families, Jennifer has been a constant presence alongside Chance across every assignment, and, in his words, his "best sensor" for what's really happening in the force.

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/
Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

Nobody handed them the answers. When Chance Saltzman got engaged, two weeks before shipping out for missile training, neither he nor Jennifer knew what military life would demand. When he chased a brand-new weapons school, the personnel office told him it was "a terrible idea, an unproven path." So he did it. The through-line of a 35-year career and marriage turned out to be four words: we'll figure it out.

That instinct built more than a family. It helped build a service. The Space Force is still writing its identity, what it means to be a Guardian, what traditions to keep, what culture to forge from scratch, and few people have shaped that answer more directly than its Chief of Space Operations. This is the story of the character behind the stars.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with General Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, and Jennifer Saltzman, back in the Space House where Bill first interviewed a brand-new CSO four years earlier, for a candid conversation about marriage, character, and how you build something that lasts without a blueprint.

In this episode:

- Why "an unproven path" was the exact reason Saltzman chose the Weapons School, and how a warning to stay away became the best career advice he ever ignored
- How a physics scholarship he couldn't finish funneled him into ICBM operations, and why he was certain he'd gotten the better end of the deal
- What it actually means that Guardians conduct combat operations from garrison, watch an adversary act in space, then drive home for soccer practice and help with math homework
- The 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test, told from the ops floor, and the moment there was no hand signal for "they destroyed the satellite"
- How the "floodgates" from missiles to space turned a generation of missileers into the Space Force's first operators
- The surreal night a Hollywood director had dinner at their house, and what saying "yes" has to do with a whole career
Standing up a service from nothing: no flag, no song, no uniform, and why "you have to pay the tax" of becoming real
- Guardian #89, the 89th Weapons School space graduate, Bowling Green High class of '89 — and why Saltzman calls it karma
- Saltzman's one regret as CSO
- Why Jennifer is his "best sensor", the things Guardians will tell her that they'll never tell the CSO
How a marriage that "grew up together" with the service became a lesson in connection and community

The Space Force will be defined by its technology and its doctrine. But this conversation is a reminder that services are built by people, and that identity, partnership, and the willingness to walk a path no one has mapped are as foundational as any capability in orbit.

Hosted by Bill Woolf
Produced by Ty Holliday

General Chance Saltzman
General B. Chance Saltzman is the second Chief of Space Operations, U.S. Space Force, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A former ICBM operator and space Weapons Officer, he was among the first general officers to commission into the Space Force and helped stand up its foundational operational, readiness, and intelligence processes.

Jennifer Saltzman
A three-decade military spouse and advocate for Guardian families, Jennifer has been a constant presence alongside Chance across every assignment, and, in his words, his "best sensor" for what's really happening in the force.

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/
Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

There is a version of ready where the hardware works. There is another version where the people, the doctrine, the joint playbooks, and the partner relationships all hold under the pressure of an actual conflict. Building the second one is a full-time job, and almost none of it is visible from the outside.

The Space Force organizes, trains, and equips. U.S. Space Command employs. The layer in between, the exercises, the wargames, the training architecture, and the doctrine that tells the joint forceMaj. Gen. "Bull" Keener: Inside Space Command's Exercise and Wargaming Architecturehow to operate together in a contested domain, belongs to the J7. As adversary counterspace capability moves from projection to fielded reality, that layer is where readiness is either proven or exposed.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Maj. Gen. Samuel "Bull" Keener, Director of Exercises, Training, Wargames, and Experimentation (J7) at U.S. Space Command, to walk through how a combatant command builds itself into a warfighting organization.

• Why U.S. Space Command's area of responsibility begins at 100 kilometers and has no upper limit, and what that means for who actually provides the forces that operate there
• The difference between the Space Force and U.S. Space Command in the plainest terms you will hear it, from someone who gets asked constantly
• Why a combatant command needs a Tier 1 exercise at all, and why standing one up was the first thing Gen. Keener was told to go build
• Why you cannot replicate a thinking adversary on a white card, and how red cells, red teams, and space aggressors are used to close that gap
• The modeling and simulation problem nobody has solved: why no single tool can accurately represent the space fight, and why artificial intelligence and machine learning are now part of the answer
• How the Space Force's Future Operating Environment 2040 and Objective Force 2040 nest with Space Command's Space Warfighting Environment 2040. One defines the environment, one defines the force, and one defines how the joint force fights and wins within it
• Why satellites in geosynchronous orbit are, in the commander's framing, static targets, and what maneuver has to do with self-defense
• The 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers analogy, and why an exercise that reorganized the U.S. Army's armored divisions before World War II is the model for what happens on orbit
• What coalition training requires in a domain where you cannot put allies in a formation and fly a mission together, and why communications and classification remain the hardest problems
• Why lessons learned measured in weeks or months is no longer fast enough, and the push to find a problem and implement the fix in days

Capability delivered is not capability employed. The distance between the two is measured in exercises, in wargames, and in the honesty of the models you train against. That distance is the J7's work, and it is where the Space Force's investment either becomes joint warfighting readiness or does not.

Editor's note: this conversation was recorded several months before U.S. Space Command published the Space Warfighting Environment 2040 on July 28, 2026.

Hosted by Bill Woolf

Produced by Ty Holliday

Earlier this year, a finished GPS satellite was sitting in Florida ready to fly. The rocket assigned to it needed more time. The warfighters waiting on that satellite could not.

So System Delta 80 moved it. Different rocket. Full recertification. On orbit in about six weeks. What normally takes two years happened in a month and a half, and it was the fourth time the team had pulled off something like it.

Nothing in national security space gets off the ground without System Delta 80. Every satellite this series has covered, the SATCOM links, the GPS constellation, the systems certified by OTTI, all of it begins at the launch pad. This episode is the capstone: how the Space Force gets its most critical capabilities to orbit, what it takes to keep multiple launch providers viable, and what becomes possible when satellites are no longer constrained by the fuel they launched with.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Col. Ryan Hiserote, Commander of System Delta 80 at Space Systems Command, to discuss the National Security Space Launch program, the GPS rocket swap that made headlines, and the on-orbit servicing mission that could fundamentally change how the Space Force operates in space.

In this conversation, Col. Hiserote discusses:

- Why System Delta 80's claim — that nothing in national security space gets off the ground without it — is literal, not rhetorical

- How the dual-lane NSSL structure works: Lane 1 for competition and capacity, Lane 2 for no-fail missions with complex requirements

- What it actually takes to certify a new rocket for national security missions — and why that process takes years

- How the GPS 3-8 rocket swap worked, why it happened, and what it signals about the Space Force's willingness to move at the speed of need

- Why Rocket Lab and Stoke Space were added as Lane 1 providers in early 2025 — and what the service is looking for as it evaluates more

- The on-orbit servicing mission: what Starfish Space's Otter vehicle and Astroscale's refueling demo are designed to prove

- Why Gen. Whiting at U.S. Space Command has been calling for a maneuver warfare strategy in space — and how on-orbit refueling enables it

- What it means for a satellite to be "no longer constrained by its gas tank" — and how that changes tactics

- Why Col. Hiserote describes launch as a team sport — and who all the players are

- Why he calls this the most exciting time to be in the launch business since the Apollo days

The Space Force can build the most advanced satellites in the world. They mean nothing until they reach orbit. This is the mission that starts everything else — and it's about to get a lot more capable.

Hosted by Bill Woolf

Guest:

Col. Ryan Hiserote, Commander, System Delta 80, Space Systems Command

Col. Hiserote commands System Delta 80, the Space Systems Command unit responsible for space access — launch, range operations, and on-orbit servicing. He also serves as dual-hatted program manager for the National Security Space Launch program, the largest dollar-value program in the Space Force. A certified mission director, Col. Hiserote personally served as mission director for the two most recent GPS launches.

Learn more about Space Systems Command: https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/

Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

Fighter pilots don't go to war on day one. First comes Red Flag, the punishing mock combat over the Nevada desert designed to be harder than anything a pilot will ever face in actual conflict, so that when the real moment comes, it isn't the first time.

For most of the space mission's history, that rehearsal didn't exist. Guardians operated systems that had only ever been tested in benign environments. The capabilities were real. The training wasn't. System Delta 81 is the unit changing that.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Col. Corey Klopstein, Commander of System Delta 81 at Space Systems Command, to discuss the Operational Test and Training Infrastructure, OTTI, the Space Force's answer to Red Flag, and why building it is one of the most consequential things SSC is doing right now.

In this conversation, Col. Klopstein discusses:

- Why the Space Force went this long without a Red Flag equivalent, and what changed in the threat environment to make OTTI urgent

- The three layers of space test and training infrastructure: digital simulation, physical on-orbit assets, and the data architecture connecting them

- Why a simulation is only as honest as the live data feeding it, and what it takes to build a physical lane that validates the digital one

- What a range-as-a-service contract looks like in practice, and how a commercial satellite's on-orbit maneuver became a live Guardian training event

- Why SYD 81 pairs with multiple commands simultaneously, Space Training and Readiness Command and Combat Forces Command, rather than a single Mission Delta

- How the Joint Simulation Environment, already used by F-35 pilots, is being extended for space

- What Gen. Saltzman told Col. Klopstein about delivering an F-22 without a training infrastructure, and why that analogy captures exactly what OTTI solves

- Why "when I say football and you say football, we need to mean the same thing", and what that has to do with building a shared operational language across commands and allies

- What ruthless prioritization looks like for a mission area with more requirements than people and more requirements than money

You can build the most advanced satellite in the world. If the Guardian operating it has never trained against a thinking adversary, you haven't delivered combat power. This episode is about the infrastructure that closes that gap, before the conflict starts.

Hosted by Bill Woolf

Produced by Ty Holliday

Guest:

Col. Corey Klopstein, Commander, System Delta 81, Space Systems Command

Col. Klopstein commands System Delta 81, the Space Systems Command unit responsible for developing and delivering the Operational Test and Training Infrastructure for the Space Force. On his 13th year at Los Angeles Air Force Base, he serves as both the SYD 81 commander and the Portfolio Acquisition Executive and Program Acquisition Executive for infrastructure. SYD 81 works across Space Training and Readiness Command and Combat Forces Command to ensure delivered capabilities are tested against real threats and Guardians are trained to operate them before the first flag event.

Learn more about Space Systems Command: https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/

Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

Your phone knows where you are right now. Your bank recorded the exact millisecond of your last transaction. The plane you flew on landed safely in low visibility. The farmer who grew your food planted rows one to two centimeters apart. Every one of those things runs on a signal broadcast from twelve thousand miles overhead, a signal the United States Space Force has guaranteed to the entire world, by law, since way before its inception, 1978.

GPS is the closest thing the planet has to a shared utility. It is also something the Space Force has to defend, every single day, against adversaries who cannot out-engineer it and are actively trying to deny it.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Col. Neil Barnas, Commander of System Delta 831 at Space Systems Command, to discuss what makes American GPS the global gold standard, what it takes to keep a 31-satellite constellation running against active threats, and what the next generation of GPS will be able to do that the current one cannot.

In this conversation, Col. Barnas discusses:

- The three pillars that make American GPS the global gold standard, accuracy, transparency, and a legally guaranteed service level

- Why GPS is certified for human flight operations, and what that standard means in practice

- How the signal has been continuously broadcast since 1978, and why the satellites being launched today are designed to serve for 15 years or more

- What GPS Space Vehicle 10, the final GPS III satellite, means for the constellation and the warfighters waiting on it

- The GPS III-F upgrade: a 1,200-kilometer spot beam capable of up to 63 times the baseline M-code signal power, focused on exactly the area of the Earth where it's needed most

- How 63 international partners integrate GPS user equipment into their own aircraft, ground vehicles, and munitions

- Why agriculture is one of the most GPS-dependent industries on Earth, and what differential GPS does at the centimeter level

- How AI tools are now processing eleven hundred pages of technical documentation to accelerate acquisition decisions

- What the System Delta construct means for a mission area as globally consequential as position, navigation, and timing

GPS is often called a gold standard. This episode explains what that standard actually requires to maintain, and what happens to the joint force if it degrades.

Hosted by Bill Woolf

Produced by Ty Holliday

Guest:

Col. Neil Barnas, Commander, System Delta 831, Space Systems Command

Col. Barnas commands System Delta 831, the Space Systems Command unit responsible for developing, fielding, and modernizing the GPS constellation and the ground and user equipment systems that deliver positioning, navigation, and timing to the joint force and to civilian users worldwide. SYD 831 is paired with Mission Delta 31, which operates the GPS constellation daily.

Learn more about Space Systems Command: https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/

Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

On the worst day imaginable, the day a nuclear decision has to be made, the President of the United States needs to talk to commanders and allies anywhere on Earth. That conversation runs through space. And the people responsible for delivering it just did so two full years ahead of schedule.

But this episode isn't just about a single acquisition win. It's about a fundamental shift in how the Space Force thinks about buying capabilities. For decades, a cultural wall separated the people who acquired systems from the people who fought with them. Requirements passed over a fence. Timelines drifted. By the time a capability arrived, the threat had sometimes already moved. System Delta 88 exists to make that model obsolete.

In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Col. A.J. Ashby, Commander of System Delta 88 at Space Systems Command, to discuss how the Space Force is rewiring military satellite communications acquisition and what it looks like when acquisition becomes a warfighting function.

In this conversation, Col. Ashby discusses:

• Why the Space Force created System Deltas in 2025 and how they differ from traditional program offices
• What "acquisition is a warfighting function" actually means in practice, not just on a slide
• How SYD 88 won the 2025 David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award, the Department of War's highest acquisition team honor, for delivering a critical NC3 capability two full years early
• The cultural wall between acquirers and operators, and the specific steps SYD 88 is taking to tear it down
• Why new SYD 88 personnel earn a SATCOM patch the same way an operator earns a rating
• What "zero daylight" between SYD 88 and Mission Delta 8 looks like in a weekly ops meeting
• The commercial-first philosophy: where industry solutions win outright and where the hard military-specific problems begin
• Why vendor lock is one of the biggest risks in the SATCOM portfolio and how open architecture changes that
• What it means to deliver capability at the speed of threat relevance, not just the speed of the program schedule
• How junior acquirers who have never read a requirements document are being trained to think like warfighters

Military satellite communications is invisible on a good day. It has to be invisible, reliable, and unjammable on the worst one. This episode is about the team building it and the reform changing how the Space Force buys for war.

Hosted by Bill Woolf Produced by Ty Holliday

Guest: Col. A.J. Ashby, Commander, System Delta 88, Space Systems Command Col. Ashby commands System Delta 88, the Space Systems Command unit responsible for developing and delivering military satellite communications capabilities to the joint force. Under his command, SYD 88 received the 2025 David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award for delivering a critical nuclear command, control, and communications capability two years ahead of schedule. It was the largest source selection in Space Force history across a $24 billion portfolio.

Learn more about Space Systems Command: https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/

Join SFA: https://ussfa.org/

Subscribe for more conversations on spacepower, national security, and the future of the space domain.

Ten thousand Guardians. That's it. The entire United States Space Force fits inside a mid-sized college campus. And yet the domain they protect underpins every GPS route, every weather forecast, every financial transaction, every call you made today.

Jennifer Saltzman has been part of that community since before the Space Force existed, since before most people had heard the word "Guardian," since the uniforms were still being designed and the swag hadn't been invented yet. As the spouse of Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, she has traveled to bases and installations across the country and around the world, meeting families in places where a handful of Guardians are embedded in a much larger military community, sometimes feeling invisible, always doing critical work.

Thank you to CXAL (Connected Alliances) for sponsoring this episode of Spacepower Podcast. To learn more about CXAL, visit ⁠https://cx-al.com

In this conversation with SFA Founder Bill Woolf, a decades-long friend, Jennifer talks candidly about what military family life actually looks like inside the Space Force, why "deployed in place" is harder to explain than it sounds, and what it means to build a community from scratch inside the newest branch of the U.S. military.

In this episode:

• Why the Space Force's small size makes community-building both harder and more urgent
• What Jennifer means when she says "connection" is her favorite Space Force value
• The Buckley Spouses Alliance: how a group of spouses built a food pantry from the ground up, logging over 5,500 volunteer hours and distributing 38,000 pounds of food in two years
• The Peak Food Pantry at Peterson Space Force Base: up and running since September 2025 and already distributing nearly 23,000 pounds of food
• Why "deployed in place" is a uniquely difficult experience for Guardian families and why it deserves more attention
• The Space Force uniform journey, from borrowing Air Force gear to service dress on the mannequin at clothing sales
• Why Jennifer has been handing out space-themed chocolate for years, and why a Guardian told her he still has a piece she gave him two years ago
• What it felt like to watch the first Basic Military Training class graduate in full Guardian service dress
• Why talking about space with your neighbors, your kids, and your coworkers is one of the most meaningful things civilians can do right now

This episode doesn't talk about orbital mechanics or acquisition strategy. It talks about the people holding the community together while Guardians do work most Americans will never see. That story matters too.

Hosted by Bill Woolf / Produced by Ty Holliday

Guest: Jennifer Saltzman is the spouse of Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, United States Space Force. She is an advocate for Guardian families, military spouse programs, and public awareness of the Space Force mission.

Learn more about the U.S. Space Force: https://www.spaceforce.mil/ Join SFA: https://linktr.ee/ussfa