Space Force Deltas: Challenges and Opportunities
This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of Schneider Electric
Maj. Gen. Kimberly Crider, USAF (Ret.):
All right. Well, hello everybody. Welcome to the Space Force Deltas Panel, probably one of the most
exciting panels of the day. Certainly something that we're really glad that you're able to be a part of here
at the end of the day here at the symposium. So I'm Kim Crider, and for those of you that don't know
me, I retired a little over two years ago. At the time when I retired, I had the great honor to be part of
the team that stood up the Space Force. And very relevant to our conversation today, I spent quite a bit
of time in Colorado Springs helping to stand up Space Operations Command and establishing the
construct for the Space Force Deltas. Now that construct, as many of you know, has continued to evolve.
The Space Force Deltas are super strong and providing really valuable capability to our war fighters, but
the organizing construct is changing and we're going to hear a little bit about that today, what those
changes entail. And we're very fortunate to have on our panel here this morning some of the leaders
that are right in the middle of what those changes look like, what is going on with respect to those
changes and where we see that moving in the future across the entirety of the force. So without further
ado, I'm going to let each of our panel members briefly introduce themselves and then we'll jump into
some questions. I'm going to start off with Colonel Carl Bottolfson. Carl?
Col. Carl Bottolfson:
Cool. Hi, Colonel Carl Bottolfson, director of Futures and Integration up at Headquarters Space Force.
This is actually a side job for me. This does not really fall within the portfolio of Futures and Integration.
So this has been a fun experience and I'm glad to be able to work with these two up here. And I'd like to
say thanks to AFA for hosting this and having this great conversation.
Maj. Gen. Kimberly Crider, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks, Carl.
Col. Nicole M. Petrucci:
Hi, I'm Nicole Petrucci. I'm the commander of Space Delta 3. This is not my side job. This is what I do full
time. And we lead, at Delta 3, over 600 Guardians, Airmen, civilians, and contractors, and we do space
electromagnetic warfare.
Col. Andrew S. Menschner:
Good afternoon. I'm Colonel Andy Menschner. I'm the commander for the PNT Integrated Mission Delta.
So this is our newest Delta. As part of this project, I have the pleasure of leading about 400 Guardians
focused everywhere from operations to acquisition to sustainment, and split fairly evenly between
Colorado Springs and Los Angeles. So looking forward to the conversation today.
Maj. Gen. Kimberly Crider, USAF (Ret.):
Okay, thank you all. All right, so let's jump in. So many of you may know this, but I'm just going to kind of
emphasize a few important points. When the Space Force was first established, there were definitely
some specific decisions that we all made to organize around a command echelon that's very unique
among the services. For example, the Space Force has no command echelon equivalent to the Air
