Army budget prioritizes counterspace for first time

AUSA 2025 — The Army for the first time has included counterspace capabilities as a top priority in its five-year budget program starting in fiscal 2027 as it moves closer to establishing a new space branch, according to senior officials.

“This year during program budget review, we included counterspace capabilities for the first time in our strategic priority list. Again, that’s the Army prioritizing how important these consequential capabilities are in making sure that they get the requisite resources, a really consequential action,” Col. Pete Atkinson, space division chief at the Army Strategic Operations Directorate, said today during the annual Association of the US Army (AUSA) conference here in Washington, DC.

He stressed that the Army transformation memo signed by Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth in April actually calls out counterspace as one of several “consequential mission areas to accelerate” work on, along with precision long-range fires, air and missile defense capability, cyber, and electronic warfare.

“Calling it counterspace by name, is really important,” Atkinson said.

The Army’s 2024 Space Vision sets two main thrusts for its space activities: integrating space support capabilities — such as satellite communications (SATCOM), intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) — across the service and “interdiction” of adversary space capabilities.

“Interdiction is ubiquitous with counterspace. What it’s getting at is counter-satellite communications, counter surveillance and reconnaissance, [and] navigation warfare,” Atkinson said. “How do we protect friendly forces from threats emanating from the air and space domains? It’s really important for the Army. No one service has a monopoly on protection. We have to protect ourselves, and so we work as a team across the Army and the joint force to make sure we have the requisite capabilities.”

Meanwhile, the Army is getting close to standing up its own space branch, Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks, deputy commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), said during the AUSA conference.

“It’s in the approval process,” he said. So far, he added, the plan has received “overwhelming affirmation” from general officers, and … the chief is all about Army Space Operations.”

SMDC last December approved the creation of a new military occupational speciality, or MOS, for enlisted personnel expected to double the number of service space specialists, called “40D Space Operations Specialist.”

Brooks said that MOS “activates in August of ’26.”

Those non-commissioned officers, along with space-specialist officers known as 40 Alphas, will be integrated across the service from brigade combat teams all the way up the chain “to make those warfighting formations more lethal,” he said.

Brooks explained SMDC has “been working over the last several weeks” on a proposal about how the command “will integrate people at the various echelons … not just down into the company level, but up into the Multi-Domain Task Force [and] the headquarters level.”