The Senate confirmed Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton on Thursday as the Space Force’s third vice chief of space operations, replacing Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, who stepped down to lead the Golden Dome project.
Who is he? In his prior job, Bratton played a key role in crafting the Space Force’s budgeting, strategies, and requirements. He also helped develop the Space Warfighting Framework, released in April, which laid out how the military would fight “in, from, and through” space.
Bratton also helped create the Space Training and Readiness Command, and was its first commander.
Here’s a rundown of Bratton’s past remarks on some of the top issues facing the Space Force.
Warfighting in space: Bratton believes better communication between different military services is essential to maintaining military superiority—especially when conflict stretches across multiple domains.
“To win the space fight, we need to be able to communicate to the Air Force and the Navy and Army,” Bratton said at the release of the Space Warfighting Framework—adding that conflict in space will always include a terrestrial impact.
“We’re going to fight in space to make sure our aircraft carrier doesn’t get struck, and 5,000 sailors won’t go to the bottom of the ocean,” Bratton said.
No I in team: Bratton sees commercial partners as both vital to the Space Force’s success, and to boosting innovation.
“There’s certainly a lot of innovation out in the industry where they’re bringing new concepts that we hadn’t thought of. And I think we have the responsibility to sort of wring that out—not in a room by ourselves, but with commercial partners who are helping us understand the technology and how it might be used,” Bratton said at an event at the Atlantic Council last year.
Innovation is especially relevant, he said, as the commercial industry has demonstrated their importance in conflicts around the world, including through remote sensing or communications capabilities.
The Commercial Space Strategy is the document supporting the Space Force’s focus on more rapid acquisitions—including identifying which technologies would be beneficial to the Space Force, and would contribute to US space superiority.
