Warfighting and global competition are no longer limited to the ground, air or sea. Now, they’ve gone to space.
Faced with growing competition and the rapid advancement of technology, critical space capabilities will be increasingly contested by America’s adversaries. The U.S. Army and its sister services depend on space enablers such as satellite communications, GPS, missile warning, electronic warfare and more as the services train and prepare for a transparent, more lethal future battlefield. As the military’s largest user of space, the Army must maintain its advantage in the final frontier to ensure its success in the future fight.
It is not a question of if, but when, the next large-scale combat operation will require the Army’s space capabilities. As the future fight extends beyond the conventional battlefield, soldiers will need to see, sense, assess and strike farther, and space systems will enable them to do so.
“Space is essential to how we compete and fight in every domain,” John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, told the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee during an April 2023 hearing on national security space activities. “It provides us with missile warning and missile tracking critical to defending our homeland. It provides position, navigation and timing to strike targets with precision. And it provides communication in austere environments to support global command and control.”
Satellite Warnings
Satellites used by the joint force operate thousands of miles above Earth and are “key enablers for national defense and military operations,” according to a joint publication by the National Space Intelligence Center and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center published in January.
These satellites provide early warning of ballistic missile threats, support remote sensing to monitor adversary movement and installations, provide positioning data for guided munitions and forces, and ensure communications, even in areas where traditional communications are inaccessible.
In the current threat environment, allies and competitors “have access to” and “can be observed by … space-based assets,” according to the Army Space Vision Supporting Multidomain Operations, known as the Army Space Vision. “Space capabilities start and end on the ground,” the vision says. “This means that understanding commercial, military, and scientific space platforms directly correlate to our ability to conceal and protect friendly ground forces across the entire battlespace. … Simply put, we will be operating under constant surveillance and must invest in the knowledge and forces to counter threat space systems and enable our own space systems.”
The Army Space Vision, published in January by Army leadership, guides the Army’s role in space operations. It also outlines the role of Army space capabilities in support of multidomain operations.
The Army and its U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command play a key role in joint force success and efforts to maintain a competitive advantage in space. “Army space professionals lead efforts to increase the understanding and integration of friendly, joint and coalition space capabilities into Army multidomain operations, while also interdicting an adversary’s use of space-based and space-enabled capabilities,” said Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, commanding general of Space and Missile Defense Command.
Early Start
During the 1950s, the Army, along with the Air Force, already was developing ballistic missiles and antimissile technology when Russia successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time on Aug. 21, 1957.
The launch heightened “the [U.S.] sense of urgency for this technology,” and, as a result, antimissile system development “received the highest national priority” in August 1957, according to a Space and Missile Defense Command history publication.
In response, the Army took on a ballistic missile defense mission and established the Redstone Anti-Missile Missile Systems Office at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, on Oct. 3, 1957.
Over the next 50 years, the office developed, and, in 2003, it became the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command.
The Army’s space capabilities played a vital role during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, when Army Space Support Teams “clearly demonstrated that the space-based products provided by [Army Space Support Team]-equipped teams markedly enhanced command and control, situational awareness and analysis for commanders and their staffs,” according to a joint publication from Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command.
By Aug. 21, 2020, Space and Missile Defense Command was officially recognized as the Army service component command to U.S. Space Command.
Dual Focus
The Army and the other services depend on space-based assets to operate and compete in space through integration and interdiction.
“The Army’s role … is a focus on two things,” said Col. Pete Atkinson, space operations chief with Headquarters, Department of the Army. “The first is to integrate space capabilities from the Department of Defense [and] our allies. ... The second is a growth in interdiction capabilities to protect friendly forces and to protect the Army in order to allow us to do our mission and support the joint force.”
Space capabilities “touch every warfighting function” and are the Army’s “connective tissue,” said Col. Donald Brooks, commandant of the Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence’s Space and Missile Defense School. Without them, “warfighting functions fractur[e], which results in less effective combat.”
Over 620 space operations officers, known as FA 40s, are integrated into Space and Missile Defense Command and all organizational levels of the Army, according to a Space and Missile Defense Command article from May 2023.
Space and Missile Defense Command is home to the 1st Space Brigade, the Army’s only space brigade. It spans 11 locations in nine countries, and its units use satellites and space technology to help units maneuver, fire and communicate over long distances, conduct intelligence and reconnaissance operations, protect deployed troops and project power.
“We have soldiers who can visualize the electromagnetic environment. They can see things on the battlefield that we need to be able to see,” said Col. Mark Cobos, commander of the 1st Space Brigade. “Without Army space supporting tactical maneuver, we are unable to see or … do the things that we need to be able to do on the battlefield.”
Dominant Threats
Just as China is the pacing challenge and Russia remains an acute threat for the U.S., they also are leading threats in the space domain.
“Russia and China [are] the dominant threats in the space domain,” Atkinson said. “Mostly it’s through their behavior, where we don’t see adherence to basic tenets of responsible behavior; we see bellicose actions, … irresponsible behaviors in the domain. I think that’s very true in other domains, but we see that play out in the space domain.”
In response to evolving global threats, the Army is strengthening its space capabilities by working closely with its allies and partners, Atkinson said.
“Across the joint force, we’re seeing strengthening cooperation with our allies [as a] critical component [of our] path going forward,” he said. “Space is becoming a topic that we routinely see our allies from various land forces asking about and getting to understand it through our senior leaders’ space vision document. They see that as a model for how they can communicate the importance of space with their land forces.”
According to Gainey, one Army space collaboration that has made significant progress is the Cyber-Space-SOF Triad, which joins Army cyber, space and special operations forces capabilities.
“[The triad] is developing real-world employment concepts designed to enable Army and joint force objectives anywhere in the world at a time and place of our choosing,” Gainey said in a Space and Missile Defense Command news release from February. “The Triad will enable ‘Left of Launch’ trans-regional missile defeat and active campaigning to ensure the ability of our nation’s adversaries to strike the United States, as well as its partners and allies is prevented.”
Mobile Options
As future battles are waged beyond conventional battlefields, the Army is prioritizing increasingly mobile space capabilities for the warfighter.
During Project Convergence-Capstone 4, soldiers with the 1st Space Brigade’s 18th Space Company partnered with joint and coalition forces at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, to test a tactical space control system between mid-February into early March. The system is “ruggedized” and mobile enough to be used by expeditionary units, according to a March Space and Missile Defense news release.
“Larger space capabilities cannot effectively integrate with more expeditionary units, such as Special Operations Forces,” Capt. Noah Siegel, Triad Experimentation Team platoon leader, 18th Space Company, said in the Space and Missile Defense news release. “Shrinking our equipment and focusing on mobility allows our Soldiers to provide space support to units of all types at or beyond the tactical edge. For warfighters on the ground, this tactical space support enables the synchronization and convergence of joint and multidomain effects to enhance lethality.”
It is not just space capabilities that are changing and evolving. Warfare itself has changed, Cobos said.
‘No Going Back’
“The character of warfare has fundamentally changed,” he said. “There is no going back to the way that we used to fight wars. We will be fighting on hypertransparent battlefields where people are using space to see [and] judge the effectiveness of the American military in near-real time. And when we employ artillery and fires, there will be near-instantaneous judgment on the success of those fires.”
Amid growing competitor space capabilities and the looming threat of future conflict, Army space professionals will play a vital role in enabling multidomain operations.
“Developing new space capabilities, organizations, and trained professional soldiers to deliver effects for Army maneuver forces is critical to multi-domain operations,” according to the Army Space Vision. “Rapid proliferation and tactical application of competitor space capabilities will erode the advantages that ensure U.S. land dominance. To counter this challenge, current and future Army space integration and interdiction capabilities must enable multi-domain operations for the Army.”
The Army of 2030 will be asked to sense farther and share data more than ever, Atkinson said.
“When we think about what an Army of 2030 … must do, … we talk about the ability to sense farther, … being able to concentrate lethal forces across the globe, delivering precise, long-range fires, sustaining the fight, protecting our forces and then communicating and sharing data across wide ranges,” he said. “Almost every one of those areas that the Army of 2030 needs to do is somehow enabled by space, directly [or] indirectly.”