Army crafting a new space policy, moving out on counterspace

SMD 2025 — The US Army is working on a new space policy to serve as the “umbrella” for a new Army space strategy and doctrine, as well as the foundation for future requirements and acquisitions, according to a senior service official.

The rewrite of what is known as Army Regulation 900.1[PDF] is necessary in the face of the changed operational environment in space stemming from advancing adversary threats, Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks, deputy commanding general for operations at Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), told Breaking Defense in an interview on Tuesday.

“The last one was written in 2011. And a lot of things have changed over the last 14, almost 15 years,” he said, noting that the previous Army space strategy also was crafted in 2011.

Work on rewriting the policy is being spearheaded by Col. Pete Atkinson, space division chief with the Army’s Strategic Operations Directorate, with SMDC supporting the effort, Brooks added.

An Army spokesperson said Atkinson and his team (HQDA G-3/5/7 Space Division) “anticipate a major revision” of the current policy, “which will likely result in a publication summer 2026.”

Speaking during a panel at the the annual SMD Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., Brooks explained the new policy will not just drive the new strategy, but the overarching Army “roadmap” for space operations.

“That’s not just an equipment roadmap or fielding roadmap, but it’s also people, training, education, all of the components and aspects of doctrine … have to be accounted for in that roadmap. And establishing routine touch points so we get feedback from warfighters, feedback from the operational force, feedback from the experimentation, the exercise elements and the forces out there,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Army is not standing still in its effort to expand and modernize its space operations, Brooks said.

The service is on track to activate the first of its planned Theater Strike Effects Groups, to be embedded with Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), on Oct. 15, 2027, he said.

“This coming fall, we’re going to compete that 06 command and the command selection process, and so that’s a little more granularity and fidelity for the Army space community that we’re going to be real. We’re going to be a real boy,” Brooks told Breaking Defense.

Already, he said, operational planning teams are being put together at SMDC and Army Pacific Command.

Further, SMDC is working with INDOPACOM and US Space Command on a plan to “deactivate two space control companies in the [Army] 1st Space Brigade and simultaneously activate two space control companies in the TSEG,” Brooks said.

The TSEG concept was initiated last year, flowing from the Army’s “Space Vision” published in January 2024. The mission of the groups is both to defend Army access to space and to undertake counterspace operations to deny the enemy the same.

SMDC envisions the Indo-Pacific TSEG to be followed by one for the European theater, but is awaiting decisions about requirements from US European Command.

With regard to the TSEG counterspace missions, Brooks said SMDC is focused on the “counterspace aspects for the terrestrial fight … really focused on the Army,” although with the “understanding that there are things that we can do to help support our brothers and sisters in the joint force and multinational capabilities.”

The Army’s emphasis, he said, currently is “on the counterspace piece for space control, electronic warfare, really doing counter-communications. I would say we’re moving on a well defined path that is very clear how we’re going to do this.”

Brooks said that aside from counter-communications, the Army also is well advanced on fleshing out concepts for other types of operations to disrupt adversary space capabilities.

“On the counter-surveillance [and] reconnaissance, on the navigation warfare, and the high altitude sides, we’ve developed great concepts of operation. We have been working those in and through the Army. Some of those have been approved by the Army. And now it’s going out and finding technology that already exists, and maybe it’s just using that technology in a different way.”

This could be doing something as simple as taking a laser-equipped weapon designed to take out adversary mortar, maybe changing its “form factor,” and repurposing it to “dazzle reconnaissance satellites,” Brooks said.

“I think our concept of employment was there, and that CONEMP is what drove the approval of the TSEG,” he explained. “Now, it’s OK, take that concept of employment and bring it to reality with concepts of operation, right? And I think we’ve done that clearly with space control, electronic warfare, and I think we’re well on our way with counter-surveillance, reconnaissance, nav warfare and high altitude as well.”

Indeed, Brooks said the Army already has fielded five of its new “Tactical Integrated Ground Suite Version 2,” or “TIGS V2,” jammers, which are in essence a smaller, more mobile variant of the original the TIGS. TIGS V2 can be dismounted, or even broken down and carried by several soldiers and reassembled closer to enemy emitters. TIGS V2 is based on a prototyping project initiated last year by the SMDC Technical Center called the Broadband Advanced Ground Radio (BAdGR).

Brooks explained that the general Army approach to counterspace is based on developing “multi-form factor capabilities” that allow “commanders to kind of pick and choose a menu of options that then they can bring to bear” based on the situation at hand.

For example, he said: “Do I need an MLRS [Multiple Launch Rocket System] weapon system to fire on this target, or do I need a 60-millimeter mortar to fire on a target?”

That said, he said SMDC’s goal is to make its counterspace weapons “as small as possible” based on power requirements necessary to make the systems effective.