To boost expertise in space operations, the Army is working to establish a new space MOS and branch, said Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Work also is underway to push critical space capabilities down to the tactical level.

In remarks July 23 at a Coffee Series breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army, Gainey acknowledged that the demand for troops who are experts in the space domain exceeds the capacity, and the tasks are being filled by soldiers in air and missile defense MOSs, increasing their operational tempo.

“The way we operate right now is we pull soldiers from air defense, signal corps and [military intelligence], and we build crews based off of several different MOSs,” Gainey said. He explained that, in what becomes almost a three-year cycle, soldiers get certified in space operations but may only get to perform one mission before they go back to their own basic branch. As a result, no one is an expert in the craft.

“Everybody knows that’s probably not a good business model if you won't train the experts, so the concept we’ve developed is to take those authorizations that are already being provided to those different branches and change those soldiers to a 40D MOS, to where now there’s space soldiers, and they’re experts,” he said.

With soldiers training in space operations starting in basic training, “you get a professional noncommissioned officer corps, which we’re really excited about,” Gainey said.

Gainey, who has led Space and Missile Defense Command since Jan. 9, said his command has worked with the Army’s other branches to develop the new MOS, a proposal that is being reviewed by Army senior leaders.

A dedicated space MOS will help the Army push that expertise into formations across the Army, Gainey said, adding that his command is developing a space training strategy to focus on getting space capability and awareness into the Army’s formations.

Faced with growing competition, the rapid advancement of technology and an increasingly transparent battlefield, the Army and its sister services depend on space enablers such as satellite communications, GPS, missile warning, electronic warfare and more. The Army also is the military’s largest user of space, increasing its need to maintain its advantage in the final frontier.

More space expertise, such as that resident in the multidomain task forces and within divisions and brigades, is needed, Gainey said. He pointed out that his command is working with Army Training and Doctrine Command to integrate space capability and awareness into initial entry training and “all the way through the training pipeline.”

By propagating space expertise throughout the force, he said, training at the Army’s combat training centers can be made even more realistic by leveraging the capabilities resident in Space and Missile Defense Command to create a “denied or degraded environment” for squads to be able to react and respond.

“Everybody has to be prepared to fight in a degraded, denied environment and be able to leverage space all the way down to the tactical level,” Gainey said.