Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told Congress Wednesday he is opposed to the formation of a separate space force. “Any move that actually ends up separating space as opposed to integrating space, I would argue is a move in the wrong direction,” he told the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. Though he did say, “We probably ought to keep that dialogue open,” leaving open the possibility down the road. Goldfein said a space corps is a bad idea “at this time in our history” because the Air Force is in the midst of “a strategic shift” from seeing space as “a benign environment” to treating it as “a warfighting domain.” Goldfein said, “to get focused on a large organizational change would actually slow us down” while this concept of operations transition is ongoing.
The Air Force is leaning toward a less-sophisticated autonomous aircraft in the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the services chief futurist said. He also suggested that the next increment of CCA may be air-launched, a la the "Rapid Dragon" experiments conducted by the service in recent years.