Army Building Up New Space Operations Branch

The Army has long been dependent on space capabilities to navigate terrain, communicate in hard-to-reach areas, and identify and strike targets. Now, the service wants to deepen its space operations expertise and is making plans to expand its own cadre of operators in the coming years.

In June, the service established its a Space Operations Branch, consolidating space-related career paths and created to train Soldiers to operate and deploy space systems.

This week, during the annual Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting in Washington, after transverring 600 enlisted Soldiers into the branch Oct. 1, Army officials predicted the Space Operations Branch will eventually include thousands of officers and troops.

The 600 transfers were reclassified as 40D Tactical Space Operations Specialists, the Army’s Military Occupational Specialty code for space troops—uniting them with 40A Space Operations Officers. The enlisted Soldiers had previously been temporarily reassigned to space-related units from Air Defense Artillery, Signal, and Military Intelligence fields.

Speaking with reporters Oct. 14 during the conference, Col. Joseph Mroszczyk, director of the Army’s Transformation Integration Directorate for Space Superiority and High Altitude, said the service’s space operations cadre has almost doubled since 2012, and he expects that to continue within the new Space Operations Branch.

“When we talk about the branch and the targets, having a couple thousand dedicated folks within the branch, between the enlisted and the officer side, is a significant contribution across the service,” Mroszczyk said when asked if the Army has a target level of growth for the branch. He didn’t offer more specifics on how long it might take the service to get there.

After the Space Force was created in 2019, space operators and units transferred from the Air Force, Navy, and Army, with the bulk of Space Force operators coming from the Air Force. Army officials have continued to make the case that they need to have their own space-focused Soldiers. While critics charge that this risks duplicating effort and blurring roles and missions, the Army says the difference is that while the Space Force is focused on maintaining space superiority in orbit, its role is integrating space capability and effects into tactical multidomain operations from the ground.

Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, commander of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an Oct. 13 interview that as demand for these capabilities grows, the Army needs to provide the same professional pathways and training for space operators that it does for other specializations, like artillery, infantry, and aviation.

“Training, education, experience, and talent management is how you create great leaders, and that’s how you build great units with great leaders,” Rafferty said. “It became apparent to the Army that in order to capitalize on the momentum, the gains that we’ve made in Army space-delivered capabilities, we need to professionalize the branch and do it fast.”

Rafferty highlighted a few areas where the Army expects to need more space personnel and effects in the coming years.

The service on Oct. 8 activated its a new Multi-Domain Task Force at Fort Carson, Colo., one of four elements stationed around the world and designed to integrate air, land, sea, space, and cyber operations in theater. A fifth is slated for activation in 2028. Each task force incorporates space effects, and Rafferty said that as the service adds more MDTFs, it will naturally need more space personnel and systems.

He also pointed to the creation of a new Theater Strike Effects Group at U.S. Army Pacific, which will require space support. The service also wants to expand the focus of its 1st Space Brigade—headquartered at Fort Carson, but distributed across six countries—beyond GPS, theater missile warning, and satellite communications into new capability areas. He did not provide details.

As for space systems, the Army hasn’t revealed plans to field its own satellites, but Rafferty and others said the service has an interest in building out an architecture of stratospheric platforms in the “near-space” region—between 60,000 and 100,000 feet in altitude.

“That’s a—no pun intended—space that is just ripe with potential, and the opportunities for various payloads to be on those is remarkable right now,” Rafferty said. “It’s affordable and scalable, and we’ve just got to really pursue that as part of the space branch growth.”

Mroszczyk described the region as a sort of transition point between the air and space domains where platforms could host a variety of payloads supporting missions like sensing and communications, and even serve as platforms for “launched effects”—the Army’s term for small, air- or ground-launched autonomous systems.

As an example, Mroszczyk said high-altitude platforms could form a “complementary” layer for some of the Space Force’s data transport efforts, like the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture or the Space Data Network. Systems in that layer could help distribute data during a conflict and provide resiliency should space systems be targeted.

He told reporters the Army is looking at a range of systems—from smaller platforms to larger balloons—and is planning multiple experiments in the coming year.

“That operational space allows some persistence and broad coverage in an area where you can deliver space-like capabilities in terms of payloads, but then also take advantage of the deep access that you get from a stratospheric balloon,” he said.