Army 3-Star: Soldiers Won't Be Fighting in Space Anytime Soon

Soldiers aren't likely to don space suits and blast off into space to fight an enemy, the head of Army Space Command said this week.

But the domain is going to play a big role in the way the Army trains and fights in the future, Lt. Gen. James Dickinson, commanding general of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told reporters at the annual Association of the U.S. Army meeting in Washington, D.C.

"We need to make sure we're going to be able to protect what we have in space," the three-star said. "But I don't think that lends itself necessarily to formations in space."

Space as a future conflict zone led President Donald Trump to direct Pentagon leaders last year to create a Space Force. The U.S. has since stood up Space Command, a new unified combatant command that's serving as a precursor to the future Space Force.

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"Space is very important," Dickinson said. "It's gotten a lot of national senior leader attention over the last year or so, and the Army is excited to be part of that."

The service is developing a new space training strategy, he added, which will likely be completed in the next three or four months. That could lead to changes across the force about how soldiers train for ground fights.

There are a lot of space-based tools on which soldiers currently rely, he said, that could be jammed or degraded by adversaries. The Army will need to place soldiers at the unit level who understand those risks and challenges.

"We need soldiers that are subject-matter experts who know about space in formations," Dickinson said.

The Army's upcoming training strategy could suggest how those formations will be organized, he said. It's also going to outline how security challenges in space will affect future operating environments.

"The training strategy ... will give you fundamentals on what we need to look for as far as environments we're going to operate in and what we see in terms of those formations and who will be in those types of formations," he said.

-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.

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