The Space Force’s push to prepare for a future war in the Indo-Pacific in the coming years isn’t just about rapidly deploying more resilient satellites and ground systems – it also means ensuring the Guards and the broader joint force are trained and be ready to use it. options during a conflict.
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has made readiness a top priority for the service, calling on the organizations that write requirements, train wardens, and develop testing and training infrastructure to act quickly to prepare the force for operations in a more contentious space environment. .
That’s a tall order for an agency that was founded just five years ago and is watching space transform from a benign domain into a potential battleground. And leaders of the agency’s testing and training enterprise say they are feeling that time crunch.
Col. Corey Klopstein, who is leading efforts to acquire operational testing and training infrastructure at Space Systems Command, said Saltzman’s mandate means his organization “has a long way to go in a very short period of time.”
“We need to make sure we have our forces ready to present as quickly as possible,” he said during a recent Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference webinar. “We are not in the same position as other services that have trained in these contentious environments.”
Maj. Gen. Tim Sejba, head of the Space Training and Readiness Command, said Tuesday that while it will take decades for the Space Force to build high-quality training and test ranges, there are interim steps the service can take to protect his life and safety to improve. simulated training infrastructure.
Speaking at the annual I/ITSEC conference in Orlando, Florida, this week, Sejba said the Space Force is taking a hybrid approach to improving its current systems, combining existing capabilities with new technology available on the commercial market.
“The only way we can support the joint force and our allies is by working with industry in a different way than we have in the past,” he said.
The agency is using its $12 billion Space Enterprise Consortium contract to buy some of these capabilities. The contracting mechanism allows the Space Force to issue task orders to more than 750 pre-approved companies and obtain solutions more quickly than would be possible under a more traditional acquisition program.
In September, the agency issued an RFI through the consortium seeking commercial companies with in-orbit satellites that have excess capacity and could be used to support Space Force live training and testing. These and other acquisition tools are not only efficient ways to buy new capabilities, but they are often more affordable, Klopstein said.
“I want to see what’s out there and push the envelope to see if there’s something we can bring in and leverage as quickly as possible,” he said. “And if you can work with the commercial industry and use dual-use technologies, that helps us collectively drive down costs.”
In the short term, Klopstein said, service plans depend on the industry’s ability to address the biggest gaps in training: integration and outdated simulators.
The integration challenge involves understanding how the service’s satellites interact and influence each other in orbit and simulating that in a virtual training environment. Today, much of the Space Force’s training is done on a system-by-system basis, but Klopstein said the service needs to better connect its capabilities to make its training more comprehensive and realistic.
The Space Force also needs to invest in upgrading its simulators, which currently don’t provide the capabilities the service needs to validate its tactics, Klopstein said.
For now, Space Systems Command is doing what it can to bring together new capabilities and existing systems, but the Space Force’s future training needs will require a more robust virtual training infrastructure.
Klopstein’s team has met with industry several times over the past year to assess what modeling and simulation capabilities it could leverage today to build that future infrastructure. That work forms the basis for a broader acquisition strategy that the service expects to unveil early next year.
