MARCH 24, 2025 – The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, in close collaboration with U.S. Army Forces Command and U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, released the latest iteration of the Army Space Training Strategy, or ASTS, in late 2024. The updated ASTS provides a framework that focuses on how Army space will help build the Army of 2030 and beyond through space education and training.
First published in 2013, the new ASTS accounts not only for the vast technological improvements and quantity of modern friendly and adversary space capabilities, but also for new space-based formations outside USASMDC such as the multidomain task force and theater strike effects group. It also looks forward to the proposed Army space branch and recently announced enlisted space military occupational specialty 40D (space operations specialist).
“The original 2013 ASTS was developed after looking at the experience between Russia and Ukraine during the annexation of Crimea and those follow-on operations. Russia had a lot of success with electronic warfare against Ukraine, specifically a lot of GPS and satellite communication,” said Robert Marquez, chief of Space Training Division, Army Space and Missile Defense School. “The ASTS was originally focused on training brigades and below, but fast-forward 11 years later and the 2024 version still talks brigade and below, but more succinctly and accurately lays out the framework to truly leverage space to enable our land component operations from the lowest echelon all the way up to corps.”
The ASTS is far from a stand-alone document. It directly supports tenets of Army space policy, combat training center programs, joint and Army field manuals, and the recent Army Space Vision Supporting Multidomain Operations.
To build a Total Army force that is manned, organized, trained, equipped, and led to win in a complex and dynamic electromagnetic operating environment, specifically a denied, degraded, and disrupted space operating environment, or D3SOE, the ASTS will integrate space knowledge, skills, and tasks across all levels of institutional domain training. This includes space education and training as a part of professional military education, home station training, combat training centers, and through Army and joint exercises.
“One of the key advantages of the 2024 ASTS over previous versions is the endorsement of it by not only the USASMDC commanding general, but also the TRADOC and FORSCOM commanders. Those are the institutional and operational organizations within the Army.” said COL(P) Donald Brooks, Army Space and Missile Defense School commandant until March 20 when he became the command’s deputy commander for operations. “This will bring space into various venues such as combat training centers and centers of excellence, ultimately bringing this training to all forms of the professional military education pipeline and even home-station training supported by their OPS group and a robust OPFOR.”
In order to support the unique requirements of Army space training and education, the ASTS also outlines the need to develop increased capacity at the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense School, create a worldwide network of ranges capable of providing D3SOE; a robust opposing forces capability to replicate adversary and neutral (gray) space capabilities; enhanced training aids, devices, simulators, and simulations ready to develop and deploy; and a critical force of intelligence professionals who are trained and educated to provide timely and accurate Intelligence support to space.
“We’ve seen in Ukraine and we’ve seen globally with China, North Korea, and other adversaries, they seek to defeat our ability to use space. And so gone are the days of setting that theater with air power and air defense artillery alone to gain air superiority that then would facilitate land and maritime superiority.” Brooks said. “I would say today and in the future, far left of launch, we must shape that multidomain environment with effects layered at scale, range and echelon with space.
The new ASTS also brings attention to the fact that space training in the Army is far from confined to specialized Army space units such as the 1st Space Brigade or those with FA-40 space operations officers among their ranks. It outlines efforts to train and educate elements of the total force down to the lowest echelon, not otherwise trained in space operations, to fully integrate and leverage space domain capabilities and employ their effects at the time and place it chooses through all levels of institutional domain training: professional military training; home station training; maneuver combat training center(s); and exercises.
“Through the tenants of the new Army Space Training Strategy our Soldiers are going to be better prepared to operate in this environment more effectively and more efficiently.” Marquez said. “They will recognize when a D3SOE exists, react to it, mitigate it, and report it higher. In the end, that will make the decisions of leadership more risk-informed, which will be critical to saving our Soldiers lives.”
Note: To learn more about the Army Space Training Strategy, listen to Army USASMDC’s companion audio podcast to this article, The High Ground – Episode 21: https://www.dvidshub.net/audio/85224/high-ground-episode-21-army-space-training-strategy
Story by Ronald Bailey
U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command