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A brand new Military area initiative will see space-based capabilities pushed “right down to the operator stage,” the service’s Area and Missile Protection Command chief Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey mentioned final week, at the same time as his command prepares to fight the rising menace of blended drone and missile assaults.
In early January, the Military introduced a brand new “imaginative and prescient” for Military operations in area. The plan emphasizes adapting to operations in a world the place enemies use space-based property to surveil and intrude with U.S. troops, reminiscent of jamming their communications.
The U.S. should “shield pleasant forces from remark and concentrating on by counter-satellite communications, counter-surveillance and reconnaissance, and navigation warfare operations,” the doc acknowledged.
The doc follows a push by Military Chief of Workers Gen. Randy George to assist U.S. troopers adapt to battlefields the place troops may be tracked by all the things from hand-held drones to satellites.
Whereas Gainey didn’t point out particular area capabilities that might fall below Military purview, a key thrust of the plan is to convey space-based instruments not simply to brigades and battalions, however to “ahead troops,” he mentioned.
The army’s latest department, Area Drive, protects satellites and ensures the sleek working of GPS and different space-based navigation methods, amongst different capabilities.
Nonetheless, Gainey mentioned the Military area imaginative and prescient is important as a result of it’s going to make it simpler for the Military “to combine capabilities into our formation right down to the consumer stage.”
The hassle permits the Military to be “not reliant on an entity to offer functionality,” however as a substitute have sure capabilities “resident throughout the Military,” he mentioned.
Gainey took command of Military Area and Missile Protection Command in January after main the Pentagon’s anti-drone efforts as chief of the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Plane Techniques Workplace (JCO).
As chief of the JCO, he presided over the push to equip each Ukraine’s forces and U.S. forces deployed overseas with the anti-drone weapons.
Such efforts have gained growing significance amid assaults on U.S. troops within the Center East. On Sunday, the U.S. introduced the deaths of three troopers at a base on the Jordanian border with Syria. They had been killed by a one-way assault drone. Air defenders noticed the incoming drone, however didn’t open fireplace in time as a result of confusion about whether or not it was pleasant, the Wall Road Journal reported.
Going ahead, Gainey mentioned he sees directed power as a key weapon for offsetting the price of defending bases with expensive and complicated missiles. “We’ll by no means have sufficient missiles” towards threats like small drones, Gainey mentioned.
Gainey additionally praised Raytheon’s Coyote drone, which brings down enemy drones by flying towards them and exploding. “Considered one of our most profitable interceptors is the Coyote,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, Gainey’s time at JCO satisfied him {that a} single sort of sensor and weapon—reminiscent of a radar and a missile—isn’t sufficient to cope with drone threats.
As a substitute, counter-drone operators want “a number of methods of detecting the menace after which a number of methods for addressing it,” he mentioned, together with with passive measures that might cease the drone however not destroy it.
Military infantry models may also want their very own potential to kill drones with out calling up the chain of command for assist, Gainey added.
“We at the moment are delivering counter-UAS functionality all the best way right down to the squad stage inside the divisions,” he mentioned. “It will probably’t simply be an air-defense drawback.”
The advanced assaults launched by adversaries—together with a mixture of drones and missiles—now imply the U.S. should additionally study to juggle between counter-drone and counter-missile weapons on the similar time, he added.
“Now we have to have the ability to fuse all these capabilities collectively,” he mentioned. “Not are you able to simply deal with counter-UAS in isolation.”
Gainey highlighted his command’s plans to ultimately discipline a number of Oblique Hearth Safety Functionality (IFPC) battalions, which can ultimately be geared up with a single system designed to take out all the things from drones to missiles.
The Military will discipline 9 IFPC battalions between fiscal 2026 and financial 2031, in line with an Military spokesperson. That’s another than was initially scheduled, in line with a 2020 Congressional Analysis Service report. That report recognized the primary, third, fifth, and 18th Airborne Corps, and eighth Military as slated rfor IFPC battalions.
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