Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Michael Gilday has shared the U.S. Navy's plan of transferring the operations of its 13 satellites to the Space Force and assured that the process will be easy due to both military service branches' connection to Space Command, Military.com reported Wednesday.
Gilday made the remarks at a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA)-hosted virtual forum.
The CNO also talked about the Navy's decision to continue doing space-related work at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), where space research offices, including the Space Science Division and the Naval Center for Space Technology, are located.
"The decision has been made to maintain our Navy capability within those labs and keep it in the Navy for the sole reason that … in a Navy research lab, there's a lot of cross-cutting work that goes on across a number of different disciplines," said Gilday.
The service branch also looks to provide the Space Force with more authority over NRL work through memorandums of agreement that are currently being developed.