Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John Bentivegna answers questions after a screening of the Space Force short film “Always Above” at the U.S. Air Force Academy planetarium in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Jan. 28, 2026. (U.S. Air Force photo by Eric Dietrich) (Eric Dietrich/U.S. Air Force)
(Tribune News Service) — The U.S. Space Force needs to double in size, said John Bentivegna, the Space Force’s highest ranking non-commissioned officer, and he expects Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to be part of the service’s growth.
Wright-Patterson is already home to key intelligence missions focused on air and space, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center and the National Space Intelligence Center, missions that have grown steadily over the years.
Federal funding has been approved for the design of a new home for the latter organization. Today, NSIC and NASIC share space in a single complex.
The first priority, said Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force Bentivegna, is to avoid “operational surprise” for the American military. That means knowing what’s happening in the sky — and higher.
“When you think about the infrastructure and the enterprise that we need to make sure we understand what is happening in the space domain, to provide that information not only within the service but also to share it with our allies and other combatant commands, the function here in the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base area and in Dayton is extremely important as we build that that out,” Bentivegna said Friday at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.
There is no timeline for construction of the new center. But he said some 700 Space Force guardians, both uniformed and civilian, work at Wright-Patterson. Once the center is complete, that number may rise to about 1,000, he said.
“Once we stand up the new facility in a couple of years, I think we’ll have a little over a thousand individuals here in the Space Force who are working on providing that intelligence and deep analysis that we need,” he said.
“We’re excited about future growth,” he added. “We have over $350 million we’re planning to build in the new Space Force Intelligence facility.”
Today, Space Force in total has about 10,000 guardians and 5,000 civilians globally, but Gen. Shawn Bratton, the vice chief of space operations, and other Space Force leaders have called for faster growth.
“To effectively fulfill our national mandate, we must increase our infrastructure and double our size,” Bentivegna told the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee in February. “This critical expansion is not only necessary, but entirely achievable.”
“I’m super optimistic about ‘27 and we’ll see how that comes out. It’s less about budget though,” the website Defense One quoted Bratton as saying this year. “Do I have enough operators to fly all that stuff? Do I have enough infrastructure to base it somewhere? Do I have enough intelligence squadrons to develop the intelligence to make operators useful at their job?”
Bentivegna has been at Wright-Patterson in recent days for the retirement ceremony of David Flosi, a former chief master sergeant of the Air Force. Flosi knows Wright-Patt well, having served as the top enlisted leader at the headquarters of Air Force Materiel Command.
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