Last week, the new heads of U.S. Space Force’s three field commands–Space Systems Command (SSC), Space Operations Command (SpOC), and Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM)–met in Colorado Springs to discuss their needs in the next two years, as the U.S. looks to heighten military readiness in the Indo-Pacific.
SSC’s Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, SpOC’s Lt. Gen. David Miller, and STARCOM’s Maj. Gen. Timothy Sejba met with their staffs to discuss “in the next two years, what can we absolutely deliver?” Garrant told a Space Force Association virtual forum on March 28.
“I think space domain awareness is gonna be critically important and then, on the back end of the kill chain, battle damage assessment,” he said. “Space control is important, not just to defeat adversaries, if we have to, but to enable blue capabilities as well.”
Citing classification, Department of the Air Force leaders have not recently disclosed space control systems. Space Force has revealed non-kinetic counterspace efforts, including COLSA Corp.’s Bounty Hunter system, a ground-based system providing satellite communications interference detection, which achieved initial operational capability (IOC) on Aug. 7, 2020, and the Counter Communications System (CCS) Block 10.3 Meadowlands system by L3Harris Technologies [LHX] (Defense Daily, Oct. 3, 2023).
Space Force has said that Meadowlands’ predecessor, CCS Block 10.2, achieved IOC on March 9, 2020 as Space Force’s first space control system.
Garrant acknowledged Space Force’s “growing partnership with commercial providers–less traditional defense contractors partnering with the larger defense contractors–and our allies as well, and even academia.”
“We want to make sure that in two years, if we’re gonna have competition with an adversary that we have a kit that the warfighter can use and rely on, not just fielded, but tested, fielded, trained, ready to go, forces presented, and executable,” he said. “That’s gonna be a call to action for all the field commands, but primarily for us. We’re gonna go after a few very specific threat chains to make sure that we do develop capability. We’re gonna need our partners, industry, and allies to make that happen.”