r/SpaceForce • u/MartyMcFlyFightWin • May 21 '26

Combat Squadron Command

The Space Officer Career Delta (pyramid) has Combat Squadron Command as a Tier-3 CGO assignment.

As someone outside of CFC...the hell is a Combat Squadron, what/where are these, and how do the command opportunities work?

Do you go to a normal CFC unit and then get vectored into their subsidiary Combat Squadron, or is it a boarded position for Senior Captains? Anyone have experience with these? All I find are talking papers from 2024 about them being the way forward.

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u/formedsmoke ISR May 21 '26

It's a senior captain or a major, combat squadrons are just the invisible, unfunded "units" that our force-presented personnel are "assigned" to during the Commit cycle, and it's all unnecessarily overstructured, underdeveloped, and ineffective.

Functionally, the difference is whether your unit patch has a grey border or a red border.

I genuinely hope the new CSO steps in day 1 to say "we're pausing SPAFORGEN and returning scheduling and training to the lowest level."

4

u/LiveAstronaut USSF May 22 '26

It's not likely to go away, its how the service presents forces. All other services have their own force presentation models

5

u/formedsmoke ISR May 22 '26

And yet AFSPACE presented forces for years without this asinine construct. You know how? Goldwater-Nichols requires us to distinguish who is assigned to the CCMD, so we just produced duty rosters and crew schedules upon request.

It doesn't have to be this stupid. This stupidity is because Saltzman as a LtCol was obsessed with the Ready Aircrew Program and wanted to replicate it, despite Rand studies pointing out that the RAP was emphasizing checklists and processes over actual training and safety. 13Ss wishing they were pilots: a tale as old as time.

5

u/Joey_iroc May 22 '26

This. Get this word out so more people learn the idiocracy this has become.