Space Force Has a Plan for Training Its Troops. Now It Must Figure Out What They Need to Learn
The newest service can’t train the same way its sisters do. It needs a new simulated environment.
By Patrick Tucker
Technology Editor
November 29, 2021
Unlike its earthbound sister services, the Space Force can’t simply head out to some terrestrial exercise range to train its troops, develop new tactics, or peer into the future of weaponry. Nor do Space Force units have a natural deploy-and-rebuild cycle that affords time for advanced training. So the two-year-old service is creating a new force-generation concept and modeling and simulation environments, a top Space Force leader said.
“Whether it's missile warning or precision, navigation, timing, military satellite communications— all of that doesn't stop. None of it stops,” Lt. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations, nuclear, and cyber, said Monday. “So how do I figure out how to organize and present the forces where it preserves some residual capacity to do the advanced training?”
The answer, Saltzman told a virtual audience at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event, is a new force-generation model that uses rotations to create time for Guardians to be away from the immediate duties, which has become more practically achievable now that the Force has reached 8,400 active duty troops, as of August.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/11/space-force-has-plan-training-its-troops-now-it-needs-figure-out-what-they-need-learn-do/187146/
