The role of the "S" in the acronym of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command is evolving as Space Force expands.
Steve Trimble
A Joint Tactical Ground Station raised the alarm when Iran fired ballistic missiles at U.S. troops in Iraq last year. Credit: U.S. Army
Space, high-altitude flight and missile defense have been the three pillars of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command since the organization was founded in 1997.
As the Army approaches the 25th anniversary of the Huntsville, Alabama-based command, the future of the “S” in the acronym for the Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) has become an intriguing question.
Satellite operations brigade shifts to Space Force
Future of Army space battalions is unclear
The advent of the U.S. Space Force has put pressure on the Army to divest certain functions to the new branch of the Department of the Air Force, with an agreement now in place to transfer the first SMDC unit, nominally on Oct. 1.
At the same time, the Army’s recent adoption of the multidomain operations concept has elevated the role of capabilities from the near-space and space domains. If ongoing experiments and investments pan out, the service’s presence at very high altitudes and in orbit could still increase alongside SMDC’s colleagues in the Space Force.
On the eve of the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, the locally headquartered command is at the center of a roles-and-missions discussion between the Army and the Space Force, even as its missile defense responsibilities dramatically expand to face new threats ranging from small quadcopters and subsonic cruise missiles to rocket-boosted hypersonic gliders.
In a sense, the Army functioned as the original Space Force. In 1958, the Army’s Juno 1 rocket launched Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, into orbit. But the Army’s leading role in the U.S. space program had been limited by a Defense Department policy adopted two years earlier. The policy split responsibility for missile development: The Air Force was given charge of all rockets with a range over 200 mi., and the Army took control of ground-launched, short-range missiles.
For the next four decades, the Army operated mainly as a consumer of space resources provided by the Air Force and the intelligence community. Operation Desert Storm in early 1991 revealed the significance of space-based capabilities to the Army’s tactical operations, especially for communications, navigation and tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). The SMDC, which consolidated the Army’s disparate space and missile defense operations, was then formed in 1997.
The Army’s modern interests in space and high-altitude airborne platforms have been well established. As the ground forces maneuver, the commanders need information about over-the-horizon threats, particularly any incoming ballistic missiles. The service also needs dedicated, secure communications between widely dispersed forces.
Which military organization provides those needs is now a matter of discussion. The creation of the Space Force in December 2019 first raised the question.
The Space Force’s operational mission is to attack or interfere with enemy assets in space, while defending U.S. and allied assets from attack or interference. But Space Operations Command (SpOC)—the operational unit within the Space Force—also provides support functions, including control of most space-based ISR and communications satellites, such as the narrowband Advanced Extremely High-Frequency (AEHF) satellite constellation.
An agreement on responsibility for the communications mission took 18 months to negotiate, but the SMDC and Space Force have reached a deal in principle.
The U.S. Space Force will gain full control of the Army’s Wideband Global System satellite payloads starting Oct. 1. Credit: U.S. Army Concept
On Oct. 1, full control of the Wideband Global System (WGS) will pass to the Space Force’s SpOC. The 10 satellites of the geostationary WGS constellation provide high-bandwidth services for all of the services, but the Army’s dispersed brigade combat teams are the heaviest users during hostilities. The system allows the mobile brigade combat teams (BCT) to stay connected with units down to the company level as well as to keep the BCT’s Tactical Operation Centers in contact with the Army’s global network anywhere in the world, via satellite links to five regional hub nodes.
The mission of the SMDC’s Satellite Operations (Satops) Brigade will transfer to the SpOC at the beginning of fiscal 2022. The brigade, which includes the 53rd Signal Battalion, now manages the WGS payload, while the SpOC owns the WGS spacecraft. The transfer means that SpOC will now fully own the WGS program, along with the AEHF. Only the Navy’s Multiple User Objective System, a narrowband communications satellite constellation that entered service in 2019, remains outside of the Space Force’s control.
Army officials are careful to note that the agreement to transfer the WGS mission to the Space Force is not complete. The mission is transferring to the Space Force, which will provide the WGS communications services to U.S. Space Command, headed by Gen. James Dickinson. But the staffs of the Army and the Space Force must now choreograph an elaborate bureaucratic transition that begins on Oct. 1, while neither disrupting the careers of soldiers as they become guardians (the designation for Space Force personnel) nor the services provided by the WGS constellation itself.
“It’s not going to be on 1 October, flick the light switch, raise your right hand and you’re a guardian. We will do this very deliberately,” the SMDC commander, Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event on May 21.
“We really want to make sure [the Satops brigade soldiers] are set, and they’re stabilized within the Space Force to continue doing that [mission],” Karbler said. “Gen. Dickinson is not going to allow for [any] degradation in capabilities that we as an Army are providing to him. The expectation is when a unit goes over to Space Force, [the capability] stays the same.”
A memorandum of agreement between the Army and the Space Force will define the conditions for completing the transition of the Satops Brigade.
“It’s got to be conditions-based,” Karbler said. “The Space Force has got to be ready to truly do the organized, trained and equipped [functions] as we transfer those capabilities over there.”
The transfer of the WGS mission also comes at a critical time. The Defense Department plans to move forward within a few years on the next generation of wideband communications satellites. Today, each WGS payload provides over 2 GBps of bandwidth. That is more throughput than was needed during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 but falls short of projected demand in a modern, all-domain combat operation. Along with the Satops Brigade, the Space Force will inherit the responsibility for executing the acquisition strategy for the next-generation wideband constellation.
The long-term status of SMDC’s other space-related functions remains unclear.
Army commanders prize early warning of ballistic missile attacks. The SMDC’s capability resides in the 1st Space Company of the 1st Space Battalion of the 1st Space Brigade. The company staffs four Joint Tactical Ground Stations (JTAGS) around the world. It was JTAGS staff that raised the alarm on Jan. 8, 2020, when Iran launched ballistic missiles at U.S. forces stationed at the Ayn Al Asad Air Base, Iraq. The JTAGS receives data from U.S. early warning satellites, along with five, forward-based Lockheed Martin TPY-2 radars.
Finally, the SMDC also provides a staff of specialists to Army field commanders. The Army Space Support Teams, which form the 2nd Space Company within the 1st Space Battalion, are composed of three-person units known as “Functional Area 40s.” These teams explain to Army commanders how they can integrate joint resources in space into their campaign plans, while also pointing out vulnerabilities created by an enemy’s space-based assets or ability to disrupt U.S. capabilities.
