Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess has been nominated by President Donald Trump to become the next Chief of Space Operations, the top uniformed leader in the U.S. Space Force. The decision was published in a congressional notice posted April 30 and people familiar with the matter confirmed the nomination to Air & Space Forces Magazine.
If confirmed by the Senate, Schiess would become the third Chief of Space Operations and succeed Gen. B. Chance Saltzman in the job later this year. Saltzman assumed charge of the Space Force in September 2022; service chiefs are appointed to four-year terms, but serve “at the pleasure of the president,” meaning they can sometimes be longer or shorter.
Schiess is currently deputy CSO for operations, or the S3, and has been on the shortlist for promotion for the past year or more. If confirmed, Schiess would spearhead the service’s ambitious plan to double in size in the coming years.
A career space operator, Schiess previously commanded Space Forces–Space, the Space Force component to the U.S. Space Command and its primary Space Force liaison. USSPACECOM is one of the military’s geographic combatant commands, akin to U.S. European Command or U.S. Indo-Pacific Command as the operational commander in that theater of operations.
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon immediately commented on the matter.
