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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—The Space Force on Wednesday released its long-awaited vision for its future force that outlines nearly a dozen mission areas and the types of capabilities that might be needed 15 years from now to fulfill those missions.
On top of the 104-page Objective Force 2040 vision, the service released the Future Operating Environment 2040, a 68-page concept document intended to foster debate and discussion about the evolution of space warfare over the next 15 years.
Both documents are intended to generate feedback from a broad array of internal and external stakeholders, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said at the annual Space Symposium.
The unclassified version of the Objective Force vision lists 11 mission areas, ranging from space control, missile warning and tracking, and navigation warfare, to spacelift and launch range control, command and control, and space domain awareness. It excludes at least two classified mission areas, electronic warfare and orbital warfare, Saltzman said during a media roundtable.
Nodding to the Future Operating Environment, the Objective Force says space domain awareness (SDA) will become more challenging as adversaries launch more, and more sophisticated, assets into space.
“The SDA Objective Force marks a fundamental transition from a safety-of-flight paradigm to one of warfighting battlespace awareness defined by speed, scale, and actionable information, the document says. “It will deliver greater sensitivity, improved cueing, and enhanced characterization for faster, more informed decisions.”
The mission areas are divided into three five-year blocks, with the first period consisting of known budgeting and programing information, the second accounting for already programmed forces and capabilities, and the third more objective. For example, within space domain awareness under the reconnaissance, characterization and identification capability, the document says the far-term objective is “fully ‘transparent’ battlespace where the integrated architecture provides exquisite, complete, and timely characterization and positive identification against any object or threat, enabling both initial assessment and post-engagement BDI” (battle damage indication).
For the missile warning and tracking (MWT) mission, the Objective Force lays out a concept of a layered architecture, which is something the Space Force and Missile Defense Agency have been working toward.
“To outpace the evolving long-range threat, the Space Force will field a layered MWT architecture, purpose-built for persistence and survivability in a contested environment,” according to the Objective Force framework. “The guiding premise is to integrate a comprehensive space and ground sensor network capable of detecting, tracking, and discriminating advanced missile threats and their payloads through all phases of flight. This requires resilient segments that can be reconstituted during conflict and can react to threats from all domains.”
Threat Ahead
The Future Operating Environment 2040 includes a sidebar entitled, “Dark Horizons,” which predicts “ongoing, hard-to-detect competition below the level of declared war. The line between peace and conflict has become unclear and continuous electromagnetic activity, cyber operations, and covert interference in orbital regimes.”
Regarding China’s space vision, the operating environment document says “The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) aspires to a 2040 where it can deter the United States, and, if necessary, inflict critical defeats.”
Key capabilities that China will invest in over the next 15 years include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, proliferated low Earth orbit constellations, geosynchronous through cislunar, counterspace, space maneuver and human-machine teaming, it says.
Saltzman highlighted that the Future Operating Environment 2040 is not an intelligence estimate.
“It is not definitive,” he said. “We are not drawing conclusions, even though we use declarative statements. The reason you use declarative statements is to generate debate and discussion.”
