The Army has established a space operations branch that will unite space operations officers with enlisted tactical space operations specialists, the service announced today.

By consolidating these different Army space professionals under one branch, the service aims to reduce “operational pressure” on the air defense, artillery, signal and military intelligence branches of the Army, according to a Thursday press release. With the establishment of a space branch, the Army is attempting to decrease “non-mission-essential billets” and move soldiers to more “critical vacancies.”

The Army uses hundreds of thousands of space-enabled systems for maneuver and multidomain operations, and this restructuring will ensure the service “keeps pace with the growing space operations force structure” that will be needed in the joint force, including within the multidomain task forces and theater strike effects groups, according to the press release.

Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, commanding general of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said in a statement that the service is the largest “user of space capabilities” in the joint force.

"Establishing the space operations branch is an important step in the Army’s continuous transformation. It provides the Army with the professional structure to deliver space-based effects directly to our soldiers and units at the tactical edge enabling commanders to fight and win in a contested, multidomain environment,” he said.

The idea for a dedicated space-related military operational specialty (MOS) within the Army was proposed nearly two years ago by Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, who was then the commander of Space and Missile Defense Command. Gainey noted at the time that the Army was pulling soldiers from the Signal Corps and MI Corps to go through three years of training and certification in space capabilities, but those soldiers in some cases only did one mission set before returning to their normal branch.

“And as you can imagine, the way we’re moving forward in this multidomain fight, you have to have the experts to be able to leverage this capability,” Gainey said in July 2024.