Space Force boot camp? Newest service wants its own military training

The Space Force wants to set up its own tailor-made boot camp for aspiring guardians, top officials said at a Florida conference this week.

“We’re trying to figure out, what’s the right scope, what’s the right scale, what’s the right evolution away from the Air Force training our inductees, and get to a more guardian-focused environment,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Tuesday at the Space Force Association’s Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Since 2020, the Space Force’s new recruits have trained at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, where Air Force recruits also train.

Along the way, Saltzman said, the Space Force has “carved out pockets” inside the Air Force’s basic military training curriculum to teach future guardians information specific to their service.

But the time has come for the Space Force to put its own stamp on BMT, Saltzman said in a roundtable with reporters.

“At some point we say, well, we’ve got to train and educate our own people,” Saltzman said. “It’s a natural part of the evolution. When you enter the Space Force … we want you to be focused on being a guardian from day one.”

Creating a Space Force-specific boot camp requires a lot of effort and investment, Saltzman said, which is one reason the service has piggybacked on the Air Force’s BMT so far. The Space Force plans to continue using the Air Force’s training infrastructure as it sets up its new training, so it can move as quickly as possible, he said.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna told reporters that the Space Force recently created its own BMT curriculum at Lackland, instead of using a slightly modified version of the Air Force’s plan. That Space Force curriculum is taught by guardian MTIs, he said, and Space Force recruits have their own formations and flights. It is also 7.5 weeks long — the same as the Air Force’s curriculum — so guardian training is better integrated with the “ecosystem” at Lackland, Bentivegna said.

But a bespoke Space Force training curriculum may need to be a little shorter or longer to best train aspiring guardians, Bentivegna said.

“Let’s figure out what we need to do,” Bentivegna said. “It’s really defining first, without any kind of barriers, what do we need to do for the nation to develop the guardians that we need? And we’ll go from there.”

Bentivegna said it is not yet decided where a possible Space Force boot camp might be held.

C4ISRNET’s Courtney Albon contributed to this report.