SPACECOM’s New Senior Enlisted Chief Is First Guardian In COCOM Position

July 4, 2023

U.S. House Command’s new senior enlisted chief might be a Guardian, the primary ever picked to advise a combatant command. Chief Grasp Sgt. Jacob C. Simmons will succeed Marine Corps Grasp Gunnery Sgt. Scott H. Stalker, the Pentagon mentioned in a June 26 announcement.

Simmons is presently the senior enlisted chief for House Operations Command (SpOC) at Peterson House Power Base, Colo. He took that position in 2022, following within the footsteps of Chief Grasp Sgt. John Bentivegna, who was not too long ago tapped to grow to be the subsequent Chief Grasp Sergeant of the House Power.

“House is ubiquitous,” Simmons mentioned in feedback at AFA’s Air, House, & Cyber Convention in September 2022. “It’s concerned in each mission, it’s concerned in each functionality, and it have to be intertwined as such.”

Guardians should work intently with members of different providers, he mentioned, as he’ll now as the highest enlisted member at U.S. House Command.

“We’ve got to be built-in,” Simmons mentioned final yr. “We’ve got to be interoperable.”

Simmons was one of many 5 finalists to interchange outgoing Chief Grasp Sgt. of the House Power Roger A. Towberman to grow to be the second-ever senior non-commissioned officer within the service’s historical past.

Simmons “has served in management positions at squadron, group, wing, main command, and Air Workers, in addition to joint and multi-national duties in United States House Command, United States Southern Command, United States Strategic Command, and North American Aerospace Protection Command,” in keeping with his official House Power biography. Simmons first enlisted within the Air Power in 1992.

“I enlisted into the army as a result of I needed to do one thing that mattered; one thing I may very well be proud doing till I discovered which manner was up for my life,” Simmons mentioned in a 2018 interview.

Earlier than changing into an Airmen and later a Guardian, Simmons got here near becoming a member of the Military, he mentioned.

“Rising up at Fort Hood, Texas, I truly had each intention of becoming a member of the Military and would have been a Soldier had I not listened to a nonetheless small voice throughout one life-changing occasion,” Simmons mentioned. “Whereas getting set to signal my very last piece of Military enlistment paperwork at MEPs [Military Entrance Processing Station], an Airman walked by in service gown. I finished simply shy of the oath once I realized that in my eagerness to get ‘life’ began, I didn’t analysis all of my choices. I owed myself that.”

That have will probably serve Simmons effectively because the senior enlisted chief of SPACECOM the place he’ll hear from the rank and file members of all providers and advise the commander of U.S. House Command, Military Gen. James H. Dickinson.