Exclusive: SPACECOM reorganizing amidst theater component command debate

Correction: This story was updated to correct the titles of the Army brigade and battalion. WASHINGTON: Space Command head Gen. James Dickinson has signed off on the creation of a new operational component command as part of an effort to streamline his current convoluted subordinate command chain, Breaking Defense has learned.

“SPACECOM is going to have Joint Force Space Component Command as our primary warfighting command,” one SPACECOM source said. However, final details aren’t likely to emerge until early next year — possibly as late as the spring.

Meanwhile, the issue of how space forces (i.e. personnel and capabilities) are provided — “presented” in military lingo — to the various regional commands remains subject to fierce internal debate, according to sources both inside and outside the Defense Department.

The new joint component command, known as the JFSCC (pronounced jif-sic), in many ways “is going back to the future,” one DoD space expert said. In 2017, prior to the creation of SPACECOM, Gen. John Hyten, who was then head of Strategic Command (STRATCOM) created a JFSCC to consolidate milspace operations. The head of that command? Current Space Force chief Gen. Jay Raymond.

The difference is that back then, space operations were seen primarily as supporting other military operations by providing space capabilities, such as communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and GPS positioning, timing and navigation. Five years later, space has been designated as a warfighting domain, and SPACECOM given the status of a geographic command with an area of responsibility — starting at 100 kilometers in altitude and extending to infinity — and the power to demand support from other combatant command

According to an early draft of the reorganization plan, obtained by Breaking Defense, the new JFSCC will serve as the central hub for SPACECOM’s missions as defined in the January 2021 revision of the Unified Command Plan (UCP):

• supporting other combatant commands with space-based capabilities, such as communications and missile warning; and,
• defending US satellites from adversary attack, including by prosecuting offensive operations against adversary space systems.

This means that SPACECOM has the lead in deciding who gets priority use of communications satellites during combat, and what targets missile warning and space surveillance sensors are tasked to monitor.

“Under the UCP, we, Space Command, have been given the role of joint space force provider … to the rest of the joint force,” another SPACECOM official explained.

The JFSCC will serve as “as a functional component responsible for planning, exercising, coordinating and executing global offensive, defensive, and supporting space-based operations,” the draft plan elaborates. (While details may change from this draft, the overall creation of the JFSCC is locked in, with the draft noting that Dickinson made that decision this summer.)

The plan is for the new organization to be led by Space Force Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, SPACECOM sources say. While planning for the reorganization is in a very early stage, it is clear that it will involve no relocation of personnel. It will combine the current Joint Task Force-Space Defense (JTF-SD), led by Army Maj. Gen. Tom James (who just became the first Army space officer to receive two stars) with the Combined Force Space Component Command (CFSCC), led by Space Force Maj. Gen. Deanna Burt.

The JTF-SD, headquartered at Schriever SFB in Colorado, is responsible for protecting and defending US space assets, including coordinating with the Intelligence Community through the National Space Defense Center. The CFSCC, headquartered at Vandenberg SFB in California, takes care of all the day-to-day space support functions for military operators, such as managing access to comms and operating GPS satellites. It is called a “combined force” command because it includes allied representatives.

Straightening Out Reporting Chains

A key reason for the reorganization is the need to streamline what have become tangled reporting chains under SPACECOM and Space Force, numerous sources said.

A big part of the problem is the fact that DoD promised Congress to keep the Space Force’s personnel numbers — and number of flag officers — to a bare minimum. Thus, there aren’t enough bodies to go around, involved sources said. And while generally supportive of Space Force, Congress isn’t in any mood to increase its size.

This has resulted in “not just weirdly circular” but even “weirdly triangular” chains of command in some circumstances, the SPACECOM official explained.

For example, Whiting currently serves as commander of Space Operations Command (SpOC), reporting to Raymond. Besides being a Space Force field command, SpOC has been designated as the Space Force’s component command to SPACECOM. But while Whiting also serves as Commander of Space Forces at SPACECOM, meaning he has responsibility for administrative and personnel decisions regarding Guardians working there, the SPACECOM source said he currently has no direct role in operational matters. (Remember, Space Force organizes, trains and equips space professionals; SPACECOM conducts military operations.)

Meanwhile, Burt reports reports to Whiting (and through Whiting to Raymond) as the SpOC deputy. But wearing her second hat as the operational commander of CFSCC, she reports directly to Dickinson. Ditto for James as JTF-SD commander.

Having two stars officers (Burt and James) report to a four star (Dickinson) while their three-star service commander (Whiting) has to walk out of the room is, to say the least, “awkward,” the SPACECOM source said.

The paucity of Space Force personnel also is a factor in the ongoing debate raging about how space forces will be presented to the other geographic commands, such as European Command (EUCOM) and Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), DoD officials said.

The Army, Navy, Air Force and even the Marine Corps — like Space Force, relatively small in numbers — have service component commands in each of the theaters, led by senior officers. For example, in INDOPACOM, these are Army Pacific, Pacific Fleet, Pacific Air Forces and Marine Forces Pacific, respectively. The component commanders are responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning of their service forces, making recommendations to the joint force commanders on allocation and employment.

Space Force currently has only one formal component command, and that is SpOC at SPACECOM.

“Presenting forces is an essential element of service business, and we are working on the plan for how forces are going to be presented to the other combatant commands,” a Space Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

For example, as first reported by Defense News in August, the service has been working to figure out how to organize a component command for the Middle East at Central Command. But, the spokesperson said, it is “but not as simple as slapping a new label on the existing Director of Space Forces staffs in each” combatant command.

This is because, as one military official explained, “they have to make sure that they sort through both the internal Pentagon wickets, but also the congressional wickets because they promised the committee leadership they were going to keep Space Force lean and mean.”

Which raises the question of whether the right answer might simply be for Space Force to stop with the SpOC, and leave dealing with the other combatant commands up to the new SPACECOM JFSCC.

Component Command Debate

Another complication is that the Army currently embeds space forces, such as satellite communications specialists, within its component commands. And it has no intentions of shifting those personnel or responsibilities (and command of their gear) to the Space Force, numerous sources said.

The 1st Army Brigade, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is “in 16 locations in 10 countries with Soldiers in CENTCOM, INDOPACOM and EUCOM,” an Army spokesperson said in an email. “To really integrate space we tell people that it’s important to be physically present with the combatant commands which allows us to integrate space at the Army service component command.”

The only Army unit that is going to move over to Space Force is the Satellite Operations Brigade, and its subordinate 53 Signal Battalion (Satellite Control). That battalion, according to the Army website, “is the only unit in the Department of Defense that conducts payload and transmission control” of both the aging Defense Satellite Communications System  and its replacement, the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) system. WGS is used by all Combatant Commands and nine partner countries.

This means that any combatant commander will have at a minimum not one but two — Army and Space Force — chains through which to request different space services.

Finally, coming back full circle, there is the messy question of how exactly do any Space Force components embedded in other regional combatant commands interact with SPACECOM’s own new JFSCC — since both would in theory have responsibilities for space forces to be employed by those commanders.

For example, does CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie call the JFSCC commander  when he wants extra space communications bandwidth to support a contingency? Or does McKenzie call the Space Force component commander — located either at CENTCOM’s main headquarters in Tampa, Florida or its forward headquarters in Qatar — who then has to call the JFSCC commander to make it so? Relatedly, will JFSCC have a rep in theater or only back at SPACECOM HQ?

“That’s something we’re fighting through right now,” the SPACECOM source said. “It’s a mess.

And if the answer is that it doesn’t matter because everyone is dual-hatted, another one long-time DoD space professional said, then why do both organization exist in the first place?

“There’s been a huge ‘discussion’ about how space forces (notice I didn’t capitalize) to the non-space combatant commands. Discussion is the diplomatic way of describing it,” the SPACECOM official said.