ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s leader said the command has the lead role in the Army’s Space Vision supporting multidomain operations and defending the United States.
Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, USASMDC commanding general, spoke at a Coffee Series event hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army at AUSA’s headquarters, July 23, 2024, in Arlington.
“Right now, based off of where the Army has moved in some of our demand requirements, we feel we are on path to meet our modernization goals,” Gainey said. “Depending on how we move forward potentially impacts modernization. As of right now, we’re moving on the right path. There are no issues at this time progressing forward with the force structure plan that we have and the growth that we have in place.”
He discussed the command’s initiatives to lead a proof-of-concept demonstration for using C-UAS in the homeland to help U.S. Northern Command determine how to move forward with C-UAS capabilities across the continental United States.
“Warfare is changing drones and all the capabilities that they may need,” Gainey said. “We do our own internal science and technology work so we’re able to do the gap analysis across the space and missile defense portfolio through our (Space and Missile Defense) Center of Excellence. Then our Center of Excellence is able to walk down and document to our technical center from an [science and technology] perspective.
“They can go out and work closely with industry and see what’s out there to help get after some of the challenges that we have moving forward,” he added. “We’re having to leverage more capability for a mission set with our modernization. We’re building based off knowing that there’s a 360-degree threat.”
Gainey said everybody is involved in space and has to be prepared to fight in a degraded denied environment and be able to leverage space.
“We at SMDC developed an Army Space Training Strategy that essentially focuses on how do you get space capability and space awareness, all the way down to the tactical level,” Gainey said. “We leverage that with our space experts inside of formations in our divisions. We are essentially building it inside of the schoolhouse and initial training, always through the training pipeline, and integrating space as part of awareness.”
Gainey talked about the future space operations military occupational specialty and how it will benefit the Army and its future space branch.
“You have an initiative on the space MOS,” Gainey said. “A lot of great work by the leaders in vision that came before me seeing that we can no longer continue to do business as usual in the way we operate right now as we pull Soldiers from air defense.
“We will change those Soldiers to 40 delta MOS to where now they’re space Soldiers and they’re experts,” he added. “So they get basic training all the way up, and then you get a professional noncommissioned officer, which we’re really excited about. We believe this is a stepping stone to a space branch.”
By Jason Cutshaw, USASMDC