What Do You Call the Troops of the US Space Force? – By Marcus Weisgerber (Defense One) / Feb 5 2020
The Pentagon wants your input — and space cadets and spacemen are not under consideration.
There are soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. But what do you call members of the U.S. Space Force?
Top Pentagon leaders still don’t know, a month after the 2020 Defense Authorization Act ushered in the military’s newest branch. But they’re crowdsourcing options and hope to settle on an answer soon.
[W]e’ve spent some serious time and energy” on it, Air Force Lt. Gen. David Thompson, vice commander of the Space Force, said during a Wednesday briefing at the Pentagon. “We have recently gone out to our language department at the Air Force Academy, the Defense Language Institute, other English and language centers, to open up thoughts on what [they] might be called.”
Spoiler: Space cadets and spacemen are not among the candidates, Thompson said. He declined to list any of the names under consideration, but said there is “internal crowdsourcing” under way among those currently assigned to the Space Force.
“There are a couple of really strong options on what we might be called and some pretty strong opinions,” Thompson said. “But what we’d like to do is ensure we’ve thought as broadly as we can, gotten the opinions of the people who matter: …the young folks who are on the console [controlling satellites] today and consider it as best we can what that ought to be before we land on an answer.”
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