VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. – Members from the Five Eyes (FVEY) alliance collaborated during a Space Tacticians Course here, June 21 – 30, 2022, aimed at enhancing current global space operations through effective planning.
Hosted by Space Delta 5’s 55th Combat Training Squadron (55 CTS), the 8-day course consisted of 39 total personnel, 19 students and 20 instructors, from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, U.K. and U.S.
“The intent of the course is to train Guardians and Airmen how to plan space operations at the tactical and operational level,” said U.S. Space Force Capt. Richard Davis, 55 CTS weapons and tactics flight commander. “As U.S. Space Force's only command and control organization our people have to understand how to bridge the planning divide between tactical and operational.”
According to Davis, this was the first-ever FVEY tactician course of its kind by incorporating multiple allied nations. Previous venues typically focused 10 years into the future staying at the strategic level where as this course maintained a tactical level aimed specifically at identifying planning gaps across the coalition.
“We normally run the Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC) Tacticians Course as a way of giving younger Guardians and Airmen a crash course in planning,” explained Lt. Col. Forrest Poole, 55 CTS commander. “For this iteration, we invited our FVEY partners and focused on operational planning across the allies. We want to bring allied space professionals together and have them create a Coalition space plan to support a terrestrial operation.”
During the course, each nation provided insight to its own sovereign capabilities and planning methodologies, allowing for the meshing of ideas and concepts between one another.
“The mixture of knowledge and experience within the student cohort benefitted a successful course delivery,” said Sqd Ldr James Slevin, U.K. Space Operations Centre executive officer. “The importance of individual nations corroborating on space matters can’t be over emphasized towards supporting each other in the international fora such as the UN.”
With each nation providing a different perspective on the conduct of space operations, the course will immediately benefit those handling day-to-day operations by bringing awareness to each nations’ individual efforts to be responsible users of space.
“Our legacy of fighting as an alliance provided the jump start to coalition space operations and greatly enhances each nation’s space capability just as it does in the terrestrial domains,” said Australian Army Lt. Col. Jordan Norrish, member of the Australian Defense Space Command. “Space operations prove the whole coalition is greater than the sums of the individual national parts.”