Senior enlisted leaders say partnership is key to space superiority

Senior enlisted leaders from the United States and Canada used a high-profile panel at the 41st Space Symposium on April 15 to underscore that strong partnerships with industry, allies, and technology providers are central to maintaining an edge in the increasingly contested space domain.

The session, titled “Perspectives on Partnership,” brought together Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John Bentivegna, U.S. Space Command Senior Enlisted Leader Chief Master Sgt. Jacob Simmons, and 3 Canadian Space Division Chief Warrant Officer Jamie Marshall. Across the discussion, they emphasized the need to align talent management, allied integration, and rapid adoption of new technologies to meet future operational demands.

Bentivegna pointed to the restructuring of Space Systems Command into mission-focused System Deltas as a catalyst for deeper industry engagement, while noting that organizational charts matter less than the people executing the mission. “It’s not just the organizational chart where we align system deltas into mission functions, it’s the men and women that we put there that are making the difference,” Bentivegna said. “We have many operators that are currently working with the acquisitions community to make sure that what we’re building is relevant, and that the communication and feedback to industry is rapid.”

He highlighted the Space Force’s Education with Industry program as a pipeline for developing that talent, citing a recent example: Maj. Andre Ball, who moved from an industry rotation at Lockheed Martin to help author the service’s new Future Operating Environment 2040 strategy.

Allied cooperation, the leaders said, is now inseparable from day-to-day space operations. “I’ve been in space operations for 26 years… I can’t think of a single time when I was on crew, and I didn’t have a mission partner with me,” Bentivegna stated, describing allied integration as a necessity for mission success.

Marshall announced that the Royal Canadian Air Force will introduce a dedicated career path for space mission operators this summer, enabling service members to build full careers as space professionals and deepen institutional expertise. To personnel joining this multinational environment, his message was direct: “listen, learn, learn from each other… and make your team stronger.”

Simmons, representing the joint force, urged broader public understanding of how space capabilities underpin daily life and national security, and called for moving beyond early, administrative uses of artificial intelligence toward applications that bolster resilience in conflict. “We immediately got after document management [and] data mining, but that can’t be where we stop with AI,” Simmons cautioned. He advocated for applying AI to contested logistics and ground system architectures, creating a “’keep alive chain’ for our systems so that we can actually operate through a contested environment.”

The panelists also emphasized that institutional partnerships are reinforced by personal bonds built over decades of service. Simmons noted that he, Bentivegna, and Marshall served on the same crew at then Buckley Air National Guard Base, Colorado, in 1998—an example, he said, of the durable relationships that underpin international and inter-service cooperation.

The 41st Space Symposium, held in Colorado Springs, is among the most significant gatherings on the space calendar. It brings together more than 1,500 organizations—including senior government and military leaders—for a slate of discussions, networking events, and live demonstrations, making it the largest assembly of space leadership this year.