Chief's Corner: CMSgt. Caleb Lloyd

As the United States Space Force continues to mature in its third year of life, we must all take a moment to pause and look at where we stand. Whether you are a Guardian or Airman enabling Space Force operations, we all play a crucial role in the success of this endeavor.

I’d offer that in just three short years, we have fundamentally changed the way our nation views space operations, taking us from an incredibly benign view of the domain to one that is focused on the exponential growth of threats to our capabilities.

We are now recruiting, training and professionalizing a diverse workforce designed to deter and if necessary, defeat these threats, ensuring we maintain space superiority to infinity and beyond!  

With the release of Space Force Handbook 1-1 “Guardian Spirit”, I think evaluating where we each stand with our commitment to our new service is appropriate. To start, I believe it is vital to our rapid development to fully embrace being Guardians, particularly those of us who transferred from a sister service. While our prior service experience has undoubtedly shaped us and offered an incredible amount of knowledge to lean on, we must not let it hold us back.

Above all else, we are Guardians now. We now have a significant portion of our young force that knows no other service; they only know what it means to be a Guardian. They only know the Guardian Ideal, the Guardian Commitment and now the Guardian Spirit and they rightfully expect that our organizations are operating with those principles and vision in mind.

If you are in a leadership position at any level, have you embraced these core documents? Have you read and sought to implement them? Have you sat down with your teams and discussed the Guardian Commitment and its roles and responsibilities? Do your Guardians understand their roles as team members or team leaders? If you’re not doing these things, I implore you to read through the documents, ask questions and work to fold the guidance and vision into your day-to-day operations. Waiting to be told how and when to implement is not the answer.

For this growth to work, it cannot be directed top down; it must grow from within because our teammates at all levels understand the intent and embrace it as part of our evolving culture.

This is easier said than done. It will take both individual and organizational courage to see it through. The stakes are too high for us to be comfortable, content with the status quo and willing to take the paths of least resistance. We need team leaders and team members at all levels to embrace the uncomfortable and unfamiliar and lead through it.

As a service, we are too small with too many responsibilities to wait for our most senior leaders to spoon-feed us policy and direction that dictates when, where, why and how we conduct our assigned missions. We have the guidance and intent, we have the vision and values defined it is now up to each of us to live it, to proliferate it and to make it all more than just words.

The world we call home is becoming more complicated by the day and help is not coming. No one else conducts the missions you execute for the reasons you execute them. We are the smallest military service responsible for operations in, from and through the largest domain we will ever know.

Whether you are a Guardian or an Airman, you all ensure the capabilities and services we operate continue to drive the modern world forward. That they continue to be the distinct advantage that ensures our sister services can execute their missions with extreme precision at the time and place of their choosing. You all ensure that should deterrence fail; any potential foe will immediately and permanently regret their poor decisions.

So, thank you! Thank you for choosing to be part of this team! Thank you for standing watch day and night to ensure families can sleep soundly and wake up with endless opportunities to grow the next day.

I look forward to sharing the challenges and successes we will inevitably experience as we continue this journey that stands up the greatest Space Force the universe will ever know… Semper Supra!