The picture shows the U.S. Army's low-level air defense and anti-missile radar system. (DVIDS)
[Reporter Wu Zheyu/Comprehensive Report] The U.S. Army is accelerating the expansion of its space combat capabilities. In June this year, it formally established the "Space Operations Branch" and transferred the first batch of 600 soldiers to the new branch on October 1. It plans to expand to thousands of professional officers and soldiers in the future. In addition to integrating satellite communications, navigation and missile warning tasks, the US military has also turned its attention to the stratosphere at an altitude of 18 to 30 kilometers, studying the use of high-altitude balloons and other platforms to perform sensing, communication and unmanned system launch missions.
The military news website "Air & Space Forces Magazine" reported that the U.S. Army explained its expansion plan for the Space Combat Division during the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) in Washington. The first batch of 600 transferred soldiers have been reclassified as "40D Tactical Space Operations Professional Soldiers" and form a professional branch together with the original "40A Space Operations Officers". In the past, these soldiers mainly came from air defense artillery, communications and military intelligence units, and were temporarily deployed to support space-related tasks.
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Colonel Joseph Mroszczyk, director of the U.S. Army's Space Superiority and High Altitude Transformation Integration Branch, said on the 14th that the Army's professional manpower for space operations has nearly doubled since 2012. With the establishment of the new unit, it hopes to have thousands of full-time officers and soldiers in the future, but the specific time for completion has not yet been announced.
Although the U.S. Space Force was established in 2019, the Army emphasized that the missions of the two sides are different. The Space Force is primarily responsible for maintaining space superiority in orbit, while the Army focuses on integrating space capabilities into tactical multi-domain operations for ground forces, including navigation, communications, target acquisition, and strike support.
Lieutenant General John Rafferty, commander of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, pointed out that as the demand for space operations increases, the Army must establish a complete training, education and talent management system based on infantry, artillery, aviation and other majors to quickly professionalize the space operations department.
In terms of force establishment, the U.S. Army only established the fourth "Multi-Domain Task Force" (MDTF) at Fort Carson, Colorado, on October 8, and the fifth is expected to be established in 2028. As each task force needs to integrate space operations capabilities, there will be additional professional and system requirements in the future.
In addition, the newly established "Theater Strike Group" of the U.S. Army Pacific and the 1st Space Brigade, which is headquartered at Fort Carson and has units distributed in six countries, will also become important units in the expansion of space capabilities.
It is worth noting that although the U.S. Army has not yet announced plans to deploy satellites on its own, it is actively studying the establishment of a combat structure composed of high-altitude balloons and other platforms in the "near space" area at an altitude of 60,000 to 100,000 feet and about 18 to 30 kilometers.
Rafferty pointed out that the stratospheric platform has the advantages of being affordable, easy to expand, and can carry a variety of mission payloads. Moroszczyk said that in addition to performing sensing and communication tasks, these platforms can also serve as launch platforms for small autonomous unmanned systems.
In addition, high-altitude platforms can complement the Space Force's data transmission architecture, including the Space Development Agency's Distributed Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) and the Space Data Network, to help transmit data during wartime and maintain communications resilience when satellite systems are attacked.
Moroszczyk revealed that the U.S. Army is evaluating different options, ranging from small high-altitude vehicles to large stratospheric balloons, and plans to conduct a number of experiments in the next year to use the long-duration and wide-area coverage characteristics of high-altitude platforms to provide combat support capabilities similar to space systems.
