New Army Space Vision Defines Roles and Missions

The Army announced today the release of the Army Space Vision Supporting Multidomain Operations, which communicates to Army commanders, staffs and other stakeholders the need to create and exploit space domain effects that enable successful Army operations. The vision also communicates the urgent need to invest more in space capabilities and formations, according to a published announcement.

According to the vision, by leveraging Army, joint and coalition space capabilities, Army space professionals will lead the effort to increase understanding and integration of these capabilities into all Army operations and activities. Army space professionals will also employ service-unique assets to interdict, or disrupt, adversaries’ use of their space capabilities, ensuring Army forces gain and maintain the initiative to fight from positions of relative advantage in all domains. 

“Integrating joint and Army space capabilities into the operations process must become second nature to commanders at every echelon,” Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy A. George, said in the written statement. “We accomplish this by incorporating these capabilities into training, education, experiments and exercises.” 

The vision document calls for forward-stationed Army space organizations to “conduct continuous operational preparation of the environment during campaigning to help set conditions to defeat layered defenses and open contested theaters in crisis and conflict” and to “build partnerships with close, highly capable allies to increase interoperability.”

It adds that “Positioning Army space operators in theater with cyber and special operations forces allows for convergence, amplifying lethality and contributing to deterrence.”

The vision statement also explains, “Army Signal integrates satellite communication services from the Department of Defense and external agencies to establish the networks vital to multidomain operations” and that “Army intelligence leverages space-based assets to provide geospatial, signal, and all-source intelligence, enabling the Army and joint interdiction fires necessary for multidomain operations.”

Furthermore, “Expeditionary, scalable, and mobile Army space formations, empowered by flexible command relationships at echelon, should move alongside and keep pace with ground combat formations to protect the force and enable the Army to deploy, fight and win decisively against any adversary.”

The Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence will work closely with other Centers of Excellence and the combat training centers to ensure the vision is incorporated across the institutional Army. This helps shape the development of live, virtual and constructive environments that replicate the complexity and uncertainty of 21st-century battlefields, the written statement said.