Space Guard proponents hope for last-minute Trump intervention

WASHINGTON — National Guard officials have yet to give up hope for a last-minute intervention by President Donald Trump to reverse the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) plan to begin transferring Air National Guard members with space specialities to the Space Force as full-time Guardians on Oct. 1.

“We’re still trying to get him to weigh in on it,” Frank McGinn, president of the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS), told Breaking Defense.

“We’re having a tough time kind of breaking through the firewall, but we’ve got inquiries, a bunch of different angles, trying to get in,” he said.

Rather than shifting Air National Guard members to the active-duty Space Force, McGinn referenced a “campaign promise” Trump made last year in which the then-candidate said he wanted to create a dedicated Space National Guard.

“Now that Space Force is up and running, I agree with your leadership — you want this very badly, but I agree — that the time has come to create a space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the US Space Force,” Trump said during NGAUS’s annual conference in Detroit in August 2024.

NGAUS is an advocacy group for National Guard members across the services, sporting a direct membership of more than 40,000 serving and retired Army and Air National Guard officers.

McGinn, a retired Army two-star, said that at a minimum National Guard officials just want to know if Trump has had a change of heart.

“If you change your mind, let us know. You change your mind, and we’ll go in a different direction: just making sure the airmen are reclassified, their retrained, re-equipped,” he said.

In response to a query about Trump’s current position on the issue, a White House spokesperson referred the question to the Department of Defense. A DoD spokesperson referred the question to DAF Public Affairs. A DAF spokesperson replied, “In accordance with Section 514 of the [fiscal 2025] National Defense Authorization Act, space functions currently performed by the Air National Guard will transfer to the United States Space Force, effective 1 October 2025.”

The transfer date was first reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine.

“As authorized by law and directed by the Secretary of the Air Force, on August 18, 2025, the Space Force is opening a voluntary application window for eligible full-time and part-time Guardsmen who are interested in joining the Space Force in a full-time work role,” the spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

“We will use similar processes to transfer Guardsmen as were used to previously transfer servicemembers from sister services into the Space Force. We anticipate the first transferees to be gained into the Space Force in mid-2026,” the spokesperson elaborated.

Those who choose not to enter the service full time will later have an opportunity to join on a part-time basis, opt to retrain for other Air Force-related missions, or retire, according to the Biden administration’s plan sent to Congress last March.

The DAF spokesperson said that the service will “develop the schedule for part-time opportunities to join the Space Force” following the full-time transfer process.

The DAF spokesperson said that “as prescribed in law, the transfer is limited to no more than 578 total billets (224 full-time and 354 part-time).”

The Air Force’s Plan, And Vocal Opposition

Senior Space Force and Air Force officials since last year have been touting the need to better integrate space-related roles in the Air National Guard with the Space Force’s mission. They say the transfer plan would improve the Space Force’s effectiveness and avoid duplicative and costly administrative requirements that would be incurred by setting up a separate Space Guard, even given the relatively small number of personnel involved.

Frank Kendall, then-Air Force secretary further pushed back on NGAUS assertions made in a Breaking Defense op-ed that the concept was an “existential threat” to the Guard during a House Armed Services Committee hearing last April.

“No one is suggesting dismantling the Guard. This is a sui generis, a de minimis exception to our norm and it’s necessary to make the Space Force effective as it needs to be,” he said.

The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act approved the transfer plan as submitted by DAF in a legislative package, which broke years of tradition by cutting state governors out of the decision-making process. The bill further gave the Defense Department eight years to implement the transfer gradually so as not to disrupt capabilities and give affected Guards time to make domestic plans.

According to an Aug. 12 NGAUS press release, the Space Force “will take over all space missions currently performed by nine Air National Guard units Oct. 1, according to a July 30 memo signed by Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink.

“These units are in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii and Ohio. They provide 60% of the U.S. military’s deployable offensive space electronic-warfare capabilities.”

All totalled, 14 Air Guard units across seven states perform some sort of space mission, according to the NGAUS release.

NGAUS, senior National Guard officers, all 55 state and territorial governors, and a bipartisan group of 125 members of Congress from both sides of Capitol Hill have vehemently opposed the DAF plan.

In addition, a survey conducted by the Colorado Air National Guard taken in February and provided to Breaking Defense found that of 101 space operators only eight would transfer to the Space Force full time, 79 would not transfer and 14 might be willing depending on how their families would be affected.

“I know they’re trying to be innovative, and that’s all well and good. But I think by absorbing these units, they’re making a big mistake,” McGinn said.

Further, the emerging DAF plan for part-time Air Guards and Reservists to join the active duty Space Force already is taking heat from affected personnel and NGAUS.

Space Force and Air Force Reserve officials have begun explaining the part-time plan in a series of town halls, as first reported by The Denver Gazette.

“Unlike other military branches with Reserve components, the U.S. Space Force is a single-component service. Space Force Guardians will serve in either full-time or part-time status. Legacy Reserve models with fixed monthly unit training assemblies and full mission sets are not part of the new structure,” explained an Aug. 11 press release issued by the 919th Special Operations Wing at Peterson SFB, Colo.

“Instead, Space Force part-time opportunities are role-specific and designed to be episodic. These include test and evaluation, training support and education, and headquarters staff roles,” the release added.

The 919th SOW is comprised of Air Force Reservists, an includes a space unit called the 310th Space Wing that participated in an Aug. 2 town hall meeting on the issue of Space Force transfers.

Col. Matthew Holston, director of the Space Force’s Personnel Management Act Integration unit, told the town hall that the “minimum participation” for part-time Space Force personnel can be 36 days, “but the expected work schedule will be set by the hiring authority, and it may be Monday through Friday work,” according to the press release. Whether weekend work can be an alternative, he said, will be up to each commander.

McGinn said the arrangement, especially the Monday through Friday condition, makes no sense for part-time Guard and Reservists with space chops, who generally have full-time “real jobs” in the aerospace industry.

He also stressed that the fact that after three years every part-time job will be recompeted also takes away the “predictability” that many Guards and Reservists want, and that the lack of opportunity for operational roles rather than administrative ones would be a further turn off.

“When airmen or soldiers joined the Guard, they joined for a career. They joined to have predictability. They joined us to to work for their community, be part of their community,” McGinn said.

In addition, the part-time scheme will have a negative effect on the Space Force itself, he said, in that it eliminates the ability for the service to “surge” capacity by calling up Reservists in times of crises.

“Now they don’t have a surge capacity, they don’t have a Reserve they can call up if they need it that’s deployable. That’s why we think it’s a huge mistake what they’re doing,” McGinn said.