Space Force Initiates a “Campaign of Learning” to Develop its Objective Force

New Documents Offer Unique Transparency into the Space Force’s Needs

This past spring the United States Space Force published two highly anticipated, forward-looking documents: Future Operating Environment 2040 and Objective Force 2040. When Chief of Space Operations General B. Chance Saltzman unveiled these documents at this year’s Space Symposium, he declared the service’s intention was for them to “drive questions, not provide answers.” As such, Guardians, the Joint Force and the Space Force’s international and industry partners were encouraged to engage, debate and provide feedback in a ‘campaign of learning’ to evaluate what the future space domain might look like and define the Space Force’s future force design requirements.  

“This campaign of learning is centered on transparency, where these documents are out in the public for everyone to read and see,” said Mike Dickey, Founding Partner at Elara Nova and former Chief Architect of the United States Space Force. “It signals to the defense industrial base what the service is thinking, which enables them to think strategically about applying research dollars and engaging capital markets to create the capabilities that the Space Force needs. Now industry can better present their product or service as a solution to the national security space problems that need to be addressed.”  

Force designs for any military service can be understood in three ways: its fielded force, its programmed force and its objective force.  

“Our fielded force includes all of the people, hardware and software that is delivering space capabilities on behalf of the nation,” said Bill Liquori, Executive Partner at Elara Nova and the first Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Strategy, Plans, Programs, and Analysis for the United States Space Force. “Our programmed force accounts for what will be fielded through the program objective memorandum that outlines the next five fiscal years, in addition to the president’s budget. But together, these two force designs still don’t meet all of the Space Force’s future requirements, that’s why these two documents present the objective force that the Space Force will need to build toward for the future.” 

But in order to develop that objective force, the Space Force first needs to understand what the future operating environment might look like. That’s why these documents were released in tandem: so that the Space Force’s partners can not only understand what the operating environment is expected to look like, but also the steps the service is taking to organize itself to achieve its mission. 

“These documents present a baseline for how the Space Force thinks about the space environment and how the service will evolve into 2040,” Liquori said. “Our force designs traditionally focused on hardware and software, but it takes more than just capabilities to deliver a space effect on behalf of the nation. These documents recognize we need organizational constructs and hybrid architectures to enable future success across mission areas, which means the Space Force also needs the infrastructure – with the appropriate staffing, testing and training – to employ those capabilities successfully.”  

A Decade-Long Journey in a Rapidly Evolving Environment 

The public release of these documents can be traced back to over a decade ago and marks the latest iteration of how the Department of War is responding to a rapidly evolving space environment. 

“These documents reflect a compilation of actions that began with General John Hyten’s appearance on an April 2015 episode of 60 Minutes to speak to the American public about the emerging threat environment in space,” Dickey said. “A year later, the Air Force published a study called the ‘Space Enterprise Vision,’ which thought conceptually about the military space architecture that would be needed to operate in the face of the emerging threat. Then the Space Force was formed in December 2019, followed by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center in 2021 to develop its force design.” 

Both documents look ahead to 2040 on a 15-year time horizon. But the space domain is quickly evolving in unexpected ways, particularly as technologies advance. That’s why the Space Force has stood up a new SF/S9 Force Design and Analysis staff group to re-evaluate and update these projections on five-year intervals.   

“The S9 office will oversee the life cycle of these force designs in a three-step process,” Dickey said. “By bringing together some existing pockets of talent, they will first develop conceptual approaches to how the Space Force can solve operational challenges. Second, they’ll test those concepts in wargames, tabletop exercises and computer simulations to evaluate their potential effectiveness. Step three will see the Space Warfighting Analysis Center model and build a more specific set of technical capabilities that becomes the objective force design.” 

Regularly re-evaluating these documents will enable the Space Force to accommodate and address unexpected changes in the space domain. 

“The Future Operating Environment 2040 document explores the strategic arc of potential future military and geopolitical states but cannot predict specific threats and capabilities,” said Dickey. “For example,  AI and China’s deployment of a 21,000 satellite networking constellation weren’t in the Space Enterprise Vision that was published over ten years ago, which demonstrates how quickly space is changing in ways we can’t predict. So the Space Force created this new S9 office to make changes to the architecture and the forces they field on a more frequent basis.” 

Mission Area Expansion and Projected Budget Growth 

Both documents come at a time when the Department of the Air Force recently put forward a record-setting $71.1 billion budget request for the Space Force, while officials also call to double the service’s personnel by 2030. 

“These two documents allow the Space Force to signal to Congress what threats the country is facing in space and the budget request starts that conversation,” Dickey said. “The emerging threat environment will require new capabilities, so the FY27 budget – no matter how much will ultimately be appropriated – will be a down payment for incorporating all of these new mission areas that the Space Force will inevitably have to grow into.” 

While the Space Force was founded as an intentionally lean and digital first military service, its anticipated growth in personnel and resources reflects the growing demands being placed on the service.  

“The nation is asking the Space Force to do more than it was asked to do when it was founded in December of 2019,” Dickey said. “The Department is talking about tracking ground and airborne moving targets from space, a mission set largely accomplished in the air domain today.  Golden Dome will have a space-based interceptor layer in space that has to be managed and operated. As these mission areas expand, so too does the need for additional personnel and resources. At the same time, doubling the size of the Space Force doesn’t relieve the service of doing things in an efficient way.”  

Creating Opportunities for Proactive Partner Engagement 

In order to effectively deliver on these increasing demands and wide-ranging missions, the Space Force will need to leverage capabilities provided by its international and industry partners. That’s where these documents will play an integral role. 

“Two groups of people routinely engage with our Space Force at senior levels: international and industry partners,” Liquori said. “They often want to know what they should spend their money on to develop or acquire capabilities that will be most beneficial to the service. These documents will enable a more informed starting point for them to develop and test capabilities that will ultimately provide resiliency, redundancy and the ability to reconstitute the Space Force’s capabilities.” 

As the Space Force incorporates the feedback it receives from stakeholders across the national security space enterprise, the service is initiating this campaign of learning to facilitate better engagements moving forward.  

“These documents are a good indicator of the Space Force’s continued progress, but success in the future takes several forms,” Liquori said. “Success means whoever the senior leaders of the Space Force are in five or 10 years from now, will be enjoying more fulsome conversations with their allies and industry counterparts. Success means there might be some proposed answers to the questions posed in these documents that are then wargamed and tested out. But ultimately, success means that our guardians will continue to be more informed, more capable and more recognized for what they do to secure the nation’s interests in, to and from space.” 

This cross-functional collaboration, however, also requires the expertise and connections available to streamline the development of the Space Force’s future objective force. That’s where Elara Nova exists to help the Space Force and its international and industry partners achieve that end goal. 

“Elara Nova is full of the leaders who have been involved in these force design conversations, debates and decisions since these conversations started a decade ago,” Dickey said. “These are the people that have been enabling the core functions across key mission areas. They have all the scar tissue from the successes and failures of previous efforts, which is necessary to help the government, strengthen the industrial base, and empower our international partners to contribute their own space capabilities.” 

Elara Nova is a trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/