On the Employment of Space Forces:
Combined-Arms in Space Campaigning
On the Employment of Space Forces: Combined-Arms in
Space Campaigning
“Military organizations are societies built around and upon the prevailing weapons systems. Intuitively and quite correctly the military man feels that a change in weapon portends a change in the arrangements of his society.”
Introduction
The day is won. Within the symposium of American military debate, the space domain is conclusively a militarized and war-fighting domain after decades of infighting. Space combat will mark a change in warfare, distinct from previous epochs, but faces conceptual and principled unknowns in how it will be employed. The aim of space superiority, “the degree of dominance in space of one force over any others that permits the conduct of operations at a given time and place without prohibitive interference from space-based threats”[2], enables the protection of American interests in, from, and through space. However, the employment of space capabilities enabling space superiority face an unresolved unknown: How should space capabilities seek to be organized and employed? Space strategists lack the real-world body of evidence in the space domain required to make real assertions on this topic, but advanced wargaming and the study of previous evolutions in the character of warfare offer a path forward. A concept on the employment of space forces is intended to be simple, communicable, and enabling. Additionally, this concept must be cognitive, not merely an exercise in material weaponeering. Answers may be found in the concepts of campaigning, combined-arms, and maneuver warfare.
Andrew W. Marshall, Director of Net Assessment in the Pentagon for over two decades and the hidden godfather of the modern American military, suggested in the early 1990s, that the United States (U.S.) was emerging into a new “revolution of military affairs” marked by the impressive use of satellites, stealth, and precision-guided munitions during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. More than 20 years later, we see the magnanimous presence of the American military with nearly unlimited global reach, a hyper-responsive Special Operations, and fused Command, Control, and Computer (C3) infrastructure enabling the integrated control of all joint resources.
Allies, and adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran, have integrated these lessons learned into their own military and industrial systems. Beginning in the mid 2010’s, with the pivot away from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, national leadership and security pundits heightened their acknowledgement of the danger should space and cyber capabilities be degraded in a fight against a near-peer threat. With each new application of technological infrastructure, the U.S. and its allies have more to lose, and all to gain, by the successful integration of space systems and concepts into a combined-arms approach. As Andrew Marshall notes, national and military success is not the inevitable outcome of technological advancement, but in their employment.[3]
The preponderance of discussion regarding the employment of space fires fails to take seriously this assertion. Attention largely surrounds the technical arms race and the cult of deus ex machina. This technical showmanship, and the immature excitement that surrounds it, spites the legacy of American dominance in warfare, as it belies the importance of comparative analysis across various independent factors, not just the technical novelty of a new system. The concept of combined arms, familiar to most American military audiences, seeks to identify the organization and employment of forces which is not simply additive, but multiplies the effectives of said forces as more than just the sum of its parts.[4] Integrating fire and maneuver to maintain advantage and force uncomfortable choices on the adversary, must now become the focus of space warfighting.
Our goal, as Guardians, is to ensure our adversaries see their defeat as victims of the inevitable, in “a sudden, unpredictable advent of a profound change in warfare.”[5] This will not come through the introduction of new technology, adopted command and control concepts, nor in the mass of systems capable of executing fires, but in the operationalization of doctrine, technical, and organizational concepts that fundamentally evolve space warfare. To achieve the honor of ‘inevitable’ victors in a future conflict involving the use and attrition of space systems, intentional diligence and effort is required.
Built upon strategic study, joint doctrine, wargaming, and analysis, this paper proposes an initial framework and establishment of core principles which seeks to advance and challenge the existing space policies, strategies, theories, operational plans, tactics, and training towards a truly combined-arms approach to space warfare, akin to the American way of war uniquely applied in all other domains. The following sections will detail a simple strategic framework, refining service concepts to better frame the initial organization of space forces and their employment. Ultimately, this paper proposes a marked flashpoint on the competition continuum and its implications, and a method for categorizing space capabilities which catalyzes planning frameworks for a combined-arms approach to space superiority.
Enduring Competition: Competition vs Conflict
“Strategy is the art of the dialectic of wills using force to resolve their conflict.”
In all forms of strategic education, the Joint Force emphasizes the competition continuum. The approach the U.S. military employs across this continuum is identified in the 2018 Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning.[7] Integrated Campaigning is defined as “Joint Force and interorganizational partner efforts to enable the achievement and maintenance of policy aims by integrating military activities and aligning non-military activities of sufficient scope, scale, simultaneity, and duration across multiple domains.” Current Space Force Doctrine describe the concept of “Competitive Endurance,” and establish a strong foundation for the campaigning of allied space forces in the pursuit of space superiority.[8]
This argument seeks to distill the unique elements of Integrated Campaigning and Competitive Endurance as they apply to the space domain and its relationship with competition continuum. This framework separates the competition continuum into ‘Competition’ and ‘Conflict’, offering a familiar but novel conceptualization of these words as applied to the space domain, and provides guidance on the categories of space capabilities necessary to secure the national interest in across the continuum.
Competition is continuous encirclement of the adversary in both cognitive and physical terms. Once terrestrial political actions transfer the space domain from a state of competition to a focus on actualizing the gains made in the space domain for the benefit of terrestrial forces, space forces transfer to a state of ‘conflict’. Successful actions in conflict resist the mentality of ‘use-or-lose’ employment, and accounts for both short- and long-term objectives and the interplay of Striking and Shaping forces. Achieving strategic resilience without sacrificing tactical brilliance, space forces can enact this framework to win, deter, prepare, counter, and support.
On Competition
“The true aim of strategy is not so much to seek battle as to seek a situation so advantageous that it brings about battle only if the enemy is willing to accept defeat.”
“You must take energy with you or generate it in orbit—this creates challenges. Maneuver without regret is needed—we are not designed to defend ourselves. Maneuver will create a more resilient architecture. The Holy Grail is dynamic orbits that are continuously maneuvering.”
“When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humbleto fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them.Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.””
The objective of Competition is to dislocate the adversary’s synchronization of space power to the terrestrial fight or national power via the following actions:
Deterrence: Discouraging an opponent from action by threatening unacceptable cost or denial of benefit.[12]
Compellence: Coercing another state into action, usually by escalation or application of pressure.[13]
Delay: Shaping movements, counter-battle management/C3/intelligence saturation.[14]
Deception: Inducing the adversary to act on false perceptions in order to gain advantage.[15]
These actions, Deterrence, Compellence, Delay, and Deception, assist in operational and strategic space power dislocation, breaking any first-mover or space campaign advantage or its synchronization with terrestrial campaigns. Alternatively, this can be explained as a near-continuous encirclement of the adversary via tactical and operational movements in both the physical and cognitive domains, an active parallel to the Chinese concept of shì (势), the constant search for a strategic advantage.[16] While difficult to define in western parlance, the classic board game of Go represents shì via its focus on additive encirclement, as contrasted to chess with its more Jominian and linear form of game play. This constant search, resulting in both real and perceived advantages or disadvantages,[17] argues the direct goal of controlling the situation through deterrence, compellence, delay, and deception. The successful mastery of these should lead to Conflict on one one’s own terms, and the prevention of Conflict on another’s, if Conflict does occur.
On the space domain, professionals assume the information environment and operations within it contain a greater level of difficulty than information operations do in other domains. Any form of shaping activity via physical or informational means[18] is challenging in any domain, and even in daily social interactions. Information operations in the space domain is no more difficult, but is only novel in the immaturity of its practitioners, but through intentional development it will mature to the confidence of any other domain.
In addition to the Striking and Shaping forces, which will be described in the next section, the presentation of forces during Competition primarily focus on INFRASTRUCTURE forces and SUPPORTING forces. In the context of space power, Infrastructure is defined here as the organizations and space-based systems which provide space-enabled services to terrestrial users, while Supporting forces are the organizations and systems which provide services to the space domain.
Infrastructure forces are largely composed of what many consider as ‘traditional’ space power. Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT), satellite communications (SATCOM), Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), Moving Target Indication (MTI), and environmental monitoring form the preponderance of Infrastructure, and is critical to the continuity of our modern way of life, nearly all elements of modern war.
Supporting forces are the elements providing and securing link services, ground services, situational awareness, domain awareness, tactical intelligence products, command and control, and battle management to the Striking and Shaping forces described later in ‘On Conflict,’ as well as infrastructure forces. Without supporting forces, space power is unable to connect to, be understood, or be controlled by terrestrially based political entities.
Ultimately, the goal of Competition is to limit the ability of the adversary to use its space forces in support of a joint campaign centered on terrestrially focused interests. Competition can include some reversible and limited non-reversible space combat, although it is not its defining characteristic.[19] Allowing for possible pre-Conflict space combat and the observation of its outcomes could save millions of lives when a greater information environment exists to negotiate and barter through conciliatory de-escalation and diplomacy. Whether sudden, or gradually through ‘salami-slicing, the determination of adversary goals and commitment prior to Conflict, provide great-power battlelines to be drawn diplomatically, enabling a smaller ‘proxy war’ or space combat within Competition, rather than total war.
On Conflict
“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”
“Victory in space will not be won by those with the most assets, but by those who are fastest, more agile and can sustain through a protracted (long) fight. Success will belong to the side that can dynamically respond to threats and maintain operational endurance long after the first strike. The choices we make in the next few years, will decide whether space sustainment becomes a vulnerability or our most significant advantage.”
“Victory is achieved not by courage alone, but by the correct use of forces and means.”
Conflict in the space domain is the phase two or more actors enter when terrestrial interests necessitate the explicit attrition or degradation of adversary space forces for the purpose of accomplishing terrestrial campaign objectives. The transition from Competition to Conflict does not necessarily occur when the first satellite is destroyed, or when the first blood is spilled on Earth, but when the primary focus changes from vying for advantage to use that advantage through intentionally managed violence to achieve space superiority.
The Marine Corps, famous for its maneuver warfare fanaticism, defines the mission of a rifle squad as “Locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy’s assault by fire and close combat.”[23] The space domain is beholden to this concept of fire and maneuver, especially as it is characterized by the concept of orbital flight.[24] The concept of fire and maneuver must become central to the space domain, in which forces exercise a technique of advance in which one element (the maneuver element) moves while being supported by another element (the support by fire element).[25] Terrestrially, this concept is designed to retain an assault’s momentum throughout conflict. Though we may be decades from hosting a squad of Marines in space, the same concepts found in fire and maneuver are critical to the execution of Conflict in space campaigns, most importantly in the understanding of a STRIKING and SHAPING force in space conflict.
The STRIKING force in space warfare is defined here as the system or systems capable of near instantaneous fires in dynamic Conflict. Close analogies for the Striking force include artillery, close support aircraft, snipers, assault teams, and the armored knight. These analogies form a grouping defined by the ability to engage specified targets with accuracy, destructive effect, or both. While the Striking force may take many different forms, the Striking force is the true hammer in conflict (as opposed to the anvil). As the hammer, the Striking force is more likely to be bespoke and of low quantity, or indiscriminate. Striking forces, for reasons both political and military, are likely to be hidden, each like the Chinese military strategic concept of the concealed “assassin’s mace” in Chinese folklore, which describes unconventional methods and technologies designed to overcome a stronger adversary’s critical vulnerabilities.
The SHAPING force in space warfare is the system or systems capable of actions that influence or control the movements of the adversary for near-immediate tactical advantage (e.g., Turn, Fix, Canalize, Block).[26],[27] Close analogies for the Shaping force include skirmishers, light infantry, the support by fire element, heavy machine gun suppressive fire, smoke screens, roadblocks, mines, and grass fires. These analogies form a group that is defined by the ability to alter the decision calculus and impede freedom of maneuver for specified targets. The Shaping force may also take many forms, and can include electromagnetic and cyber warfare elements, but is akin to the anvil (if the Striking force is the hammer). As the anvil, the Shaping force is resilient, expendable, and/or reusable, capable of being used as the conditioning force upon which the adversary is struck. Shaping forces do not necessarily lack their own destructive capability, as in many of the Shaping analogy examples. In fact, the ability to shape an adversary’s actions may come from the threat or perceived threat to its own preferred course of action, much like nuclear deterrence at the strategic level. Additionally, though not introduced in the exploration of Competition, the Shaping force is the exclusive force capable of campaigning throughout peacetime and deterrence operations.
Some systems, by design or use, can be both Striking and Shaping forces, or transition between. This could be seen in cover stories, where the hidden nature of the Striking forces, publicly acknowledged as Shaping forces throughout Competition, are secretly intended as Striking forces during Conflict. Shaping forces may also be used as Striking forces during Conflict when utilized in combined-arms with other Shaping forces which may have a lower relative ability to conduct fires.
Having introduced Shaping and Striking forces, the strategic priorities found in Conflict are:
1. Retain combat capability throughout conflict through protection and conservative use.
2. Use combat capability to negate adversary Infrastructure and Support forces.
3. Protect and defend friendly infrastructure and support forces.
Success in the use of the Striking and Shaping force is found in the control of operational tempo, momentum, and restraint. Guardians must neutralize adversary Infrastructure and Supporting forces while defending friendly Infrastructure and Supporting forces. However, these actions must be balanced with preserving flexibility to conduct unknown near-future operations and retain freedom of action.
There will likely be an organic urge on the part of all belligerents to rapidly employ all Striking capabilities at once in a massive ‘volley’, for the following reasons:
1. Space capabilities are extremely expensive and take years to present; commanders do not want to risk losing what they might not be able to use, unless used now.
2. Space is non-intuitive, driving simplistic representations of fires as a ‘point and shoot’ capability, rather than acknowledging domain realities as in other domains and acknowledging limiting reliance on Supporting forces.
To fall into this trap is a strategic fallacy. Although alluring, these pitfalls restrict the ability for Shaping and Striking forces to be used in concert, as part of a combined-arms approach to space Conflict. Using the Striking force to focus limited capability on limited targets, while potentially facing acceptable losses in all types of forces, enables the Striking and Shaping forces to be used toward their maximum effectiveness. Additionally, this combined-arms approach is resilient to drawn-out space Conflict, where a decisive advantage is not gained immediately, and belligerents are forced to maneuver, reconstitute, and re-engage repeatedly until space superiority is achieved by an actor.
The desire to reveal all Striking forces through their employment at the immediate onset of conflict is dangerous in four ways:
1. Increased risk in misjudging an adversary’s intent and capability, aggressing a non-combatant force or fiercely underestimating and attacking a superior force.
2. A space ‘Pearl Harbor,’ much like the real Pearl Harbor attack, is likely to underperform and not entirely cripple the entire inventory of adversary capability.
3. In not showing restraint, space forces force bottlenecks upon SUPPORTING forces, withhold de-escalation flexibility to national leadership, and negate the ability to demonstrate the continued will to fight.
4. The specific moment at which Competition transfers to Conflict may only be perceived in hindsight. Caution in this escalation may not only provide off-ramps if misjudged but also retain capability for later use.
Without the intentional use of the Shaping force in combat to guide the tempo and momentum of conflict, a commander cannot use Striking forces to their maximum effect. Shaping forces and information operations, combined with restrained use of the Striking force, will result in both command of the domain and maximal preservation of its terrestrial support.
On Special Space Forces
“1) Humans are more important than hardware
2) Quality is better than Quantity
3) SOF cannot be mass produced
4) Competent SOF cannot be created after emergencies occur
5) Most Special Operations require non-SOF support ”
On the subject of the employment of space forces, this argument has created the foundation for campaigning at the macro level, enabling the preponderance of forces to be used with efficiency and effectiveness. A consideration especially unique to the employment of forces within the last century is the employment of special forces, those forces capable of providing non-scalable solutions to nearly intractable challenges. As part of a combined-arms approach to space campaigning, special space forces may generate asymmetric advantages in support of the Infrastructure, Support, Striking, and Shaping forces.[29]
Special space capabilities and their organizations will likely be employed within the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) construct currently operating in all other domains with components from every other service, providing specific capabilities for the most challenging national security concerns. As the only Department of Defense service without a dedicated organization provided to JSOC, the Space Force is missing organizational and employment opportunities to asymmetrically maximize combined-arms, solve its most challenging problems, access aggressive alternate pathways for capability development, and drive cultural warfighting change within its service.
Any study of the application of special operations to a concept should begin with the five SOF truths which begin this section. As of this writing, the Space Force lacks many of the core elements that create elite forces. However, the goal of the service is not to attain those standards across the force, since SOF cannot be mass produced. The Space Force must determine how it will separate its general forces from its special forces, as every other service has, and how it will organize, train, equip, and present them.
In recognition that general space forces cannot be held to the standards of special space forces by default, the development of general service Guardians must advance nonetheless. Accomplishing the most complex of campaigning operations across Competition and Conflict, in concert with other forces, will take more endurance and adaptable operations than has traditionally been found in the space forces of the U.S. General space forces are unlikely to contain the endurance and adaptability that special space forces contain, but will instead form the preponderance of Infrastructure, Supporting, and Shaping forces. This is due to the heightened emphasis on scale, consistency, and integration with the joint force for terrestrial needs, requiring more Guardians than can be captured by SOF Truth #3.
Inversely, the special space forces of the Space Forces will represent a smaller overall proportion of the manning, budget, and attention, but with increased per capita investment. Likely serving in Striking forces elements, special space forces will conduct operations addressing the space domains’ most challenging problems. From covert action, employment of novel and untested systems, to action within envelopes of adversary superiority, special space forces must be created to exacting standards of performance without the institutional inertia of today’s general space forces. Instead, special space forces will receive advanced training on domain fundamentals, tactical exploitation, and cognitive endurance, trusted because of extreme internal standards.
It is reductive to believe that the space domain is so unique and separated from the warfighting nature identified across all other domains. The interaction between humans, professionalism, conflict, and physics is nearly identical across the nature of war, where warfighting requires general and special services, neither superseding the other, and focused upon different problem sets. General forces must focus on economy of scale, and the special forces on bespoke and less economic capabilities. In their intentional combination, friendly space forces will maximize desired outcomes in both Competition and Conflict.
Conclusion
“The essence of command is the ability to bring together many different elements into a single, coherent effort.”
Much like the silent service conducting undersea warfare, the Space Force fights in a domain that does not lend itself to salient national publicity, but must nevertheless maintain a conceptual, cognitive, logistical, and technological edge over its adversaries, should they ever become enemies. Understanding the well-ordered application of Infrastructure, Supporting, Shaping, and Striking forces within both general and special concepts, can achieve dominance in Competition and victory in Conflict. These combined-arms approaches to space campaigning, if prepared for and executed properly, may be seen to future strategists because of the inevitable forces of history. Only through creative destruction, uncomfortable evolutions, and the focused ardor of Guardians will these results come to pass.
It is the hope of this document, building upon established doctrine, that further development of combined-systems organizations and concepts which are unique to the space domain will evolve and improve. The robust discipline of operational forces will not falter as the Space Force continues to grow, but what is missing is the integrative element that creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Today, the Space Force and its Guardians trade strategic resilience for operational robustness. Technology and capabilities remain sheltered, and cognitive approaches to their employment, such as combined-arms, are only now emerging. The bifurcation of space campaigning and categorization of capabilities provide an anti-fragile framework, better suited for incorporating technical and tactical innovations into a combined arms framework. Additionally, as other actors adapt and expand their space power, this framework will remain more adaptable to changes in policy, priority, and the ever-present vote of the adversary. Operationally, this concept of employment creates greater flexibility for commanders to pursue defense in depth, aggressive, or de-escalatory objectives, without creating a static physical or cognitive Maginot Line.
Dynamic Space Operations, agile acquisitions, Integrated Mission Deltas, and combat training are all acknowledgements, whether conscious or not, of the need to enhance and improve Space Force operational capacity. However, the efforts and programs implemented are a necessary, but insufficient foundation, to meet the demands of space warfare. Through the framework, definitions, and arguments provided, theorists and practitioners invested in space power can advance the Space Force’s ability to defend American and allied interests.
The failure to observe actual space campaigning in military history requires that this framework be flexible and not overly prescriptive. The opaqueness of how the future will unfold is only a call to action for each individual Guardian, combat element, and practitioner to intentionally feel out across the unknown, take risks, and craft that hard-won knowledge into systems, concepts, and doctrine that evolve space warfighting to the point of evolution where our adversaries study their failure as a “sudden, unpredictable advent of a profound change in warfare.”[31]
REFERENCES
[1] Elting Morison, Men, Machines, and Modern Times (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 36.
[2] MV Smith, “Ten Propositions Regarding Spacepower” (thesis, Air University, 2001), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA407810.pdf; Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, November 8, 2010 (as amended through 15 September 2013), http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf, 256.
[3] The German innovation of Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) in 1904, ultimately contributed more to Allied victory in World War Two, as the Nazis did not employ it in a “combined-systems” with its Luftwaffe for the purposes of air defense. The British did, contributing greatly to the eventual domination of allied airpower over the Western Front.
[4] E. Aaron Brady, “Rethinking combined arms for modern warfare,” Atlantic Council, 2025, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Rethinking-combined-arms-for-modern-warfare.pdf.
[5] Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 375-6.
[6] André Beaufre, An Introduction to Strategy, trans. R. H. Barry (New York: Praeger, 1965), 22.
[7] Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning, March 16, 2018, https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/concepts/joint_concept_integrated_campaign.pdf?ver=2018-03-28-102833-257.
[8] Competitive Endurance, as a theory, is divided into avoiding operational surprise, denying first-mover advantage in space, and undertaking responsible counter-space campaigning. For more information, see https://www.spaceforce.mil/Portals/2/Documents/White_Paper_Summary_of_Competitive_Endurance.pdf.
[9] B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), 339.
[10] Gen B. Chance Saltzman, interview by David A. Deptula, March 26, 2025, transcript, “Schriever Spacepower Series,” Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, https://www.mitchellaerospacepower.org/events/sss-saltzman-25/.
[11] Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles, (Project Gutenberg, 1994), chap. I, #18-20, https://www.gutenberg.org.ebooks.132.html.images.
[12] Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 2–3; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations, (Washington, DC: Joint Staff, 2018), I-1.
[13] Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 68–72; Lawrence Freedman, Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 340–342.
[14] Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), chaps. VI–VIII; Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), Book III.
[15] Sun Tzu, The Art of War, chap. I; B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), chap. XX.
[16] Timothy Iannacone, The Use of Shih in Chinese Operational Art (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2016), 3.
[17] This applies to both superior and inferior space forces.
[18] Examples: Signaling, coercion, deterrence, compellence, delay, deception.
[19] It is important to avoid the trap of analogizing too closely with nuclear mutually assured destruction, where the attack on one space asset triggers a global and violent war, space combat should not be seen as the point at which the boats have been burnt and there is no turning back. While some similarities exist to nuclear warfare in the remoteness and distances that capabilities must be employed at, drawing absolutist conclusions risks one’s ability to effectively use non-nuclear space warfare as an exercise to determine adversary intent and will without the first-order loss of human life.
[20] Clausewitz, On War, 119.
[21] Gen Stephen Whiting, keynote speech at Space Mobility Command, transcript [title unknown], January 28, 2026, https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/Speeches/Speech-Display/Article/4399677/transcript-gen-whiting-keynote-at-space-mobility-command-jan-28-2026-as-deliver/.
[22] Georgy K. Zhukov, Marshal of Victory, trans. Harold Shukman (London: Pen & Sword Military, 2011), 23.
[23] U.S. Marine Corps, Rifle Squad Tactics, B2F2837: Student Handout (Camp Barrett, VA: The Basic School, Marine Corps Training Command, 2015), 10.
[24] U.S. Space Force, Space Capstone Publication: Spacepower ‒ Doctrine for Space Forces (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Space Force, June 2020), 12, ch. 1.
[25] U.S. Marine Corps, Rifle Squad Tactics, 25.
[26] U.S. Marine Corps, Rifle Squad Tactics, 7.
[27] Also found in the unclassified Mission Delta 9 Mission Planning Guide as Orbital Warfare Tactical Tasks.
[28] U.S. Special Operations Command, Special Operations Forces Truths, 2024, https://www.socom.mil/about/sof-truths
[29] This concept does not belay the idea of irregular space forces, used by state or non-state actors, but only on the non-scalable nature in which they are employed.
[30] Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 269.
[31] Watts and Murray, Military Innovation, 375-6.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy, position, or endorsement of the Department of War, the United States Space Force, or any other agency of the U.S. Government.