OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (AFNS) -- While thousands of service members train across multiple warfighting domains during exercise Freedom Shield 26, a small team from U.S. Space Forces – Korea is working behind the scenes to bring the space domain to life.
Freedom Shield 26 is a recurring exercise between the Republic of Korea and the United States, in collaboration with the United Nations Command, ensuring continuous preparedness for military forces on the Korean Peninsula. For SPACEFOR-KOR, the exercise is an opportunity to rehearse theater-relevant operations across all Space Mission Areas, stress-test procedures and sharpen the command’s ability to scale operations rapidly.
A core focus of Freedom Shield 26 is to provide a demanding training environment to enhance combat readiness and response capabilities. Across the warfighting domains – ground, air, naval, space, cyber and information – the space fight is being exercised digitally.
In the months leading up to the exercise, the SPACEFOR-KOR S7 directorate, responsible for force development, training and exercises, worked to develop a robust space environment to meet the command’s objectives.
“Our primary objective is to ensure we’re rehearsing theater-relevant [operational plans],” said U.S. Space Force Maj. Dillon Hagerty, SPACEFOR-KOR director of force development. He added that additional objectives include validating the space operations planning cycle, testing command and control capabilities, and conducting partnership engagement.
Achieving those objectives was no easy task, with planning beginning long before the exercise started.
Building the scenarios under normal conditions, the S7 directorate operates as a small four-person team responsible for extensive coordination across higher headquarters and supporting commands, as well as detailed planning and scenario development.
Hagerty explained the small team manages a heavy workload that includes administration, logistics, personnel coordination, exercise planning and scenario design.
To develop scenarios and simulated data, the S7 directorate works with the Pacific Air Simulation Center at Osan Air Base, the Korean Battle Simulation Center at Camp Humphreys and other simulation centers in the United States. These partnerships allow the team to create a more realistic and responsive training environment for exercise participants.
“Our role here is a lot of coordination between the different simulation centers to make the space scenario work for these exercises as realistically as possible,” said U.S. Space Force 1st Lt. Roman Ocampo, SPACEFOR-KOR chief of exercise development.
During exercise execution, the directorate transforms into a 24-hour operation known as the Exercise Control Group, or ECG. This team scales to more than a dozen members, including subject matter experts from across the Space Mission Areas and liaisons from the Republic of Korea Air Force’s Space Operations Group.
Together, the ECG executes and manages the scenarios that drive the space portion of the exercise forward.
“We are the controllers for the entire space domain for the exercise,” Ocampo said.
That responsibility spans a wide range of Space Mission Areas, including Missile Warning, Space Domain Awareness and scenarios involving degraded space-enabled effects that support combined operations. By building those mission areas into the exercise, the group creates a more realistic contested environment for participants.
Much of the group’s operations take place at the Pacific Air Simulation Center, the only center in the Korean theater of operations that provides integrated air and space simulation, wargaming capabilities and continuous simulated data. Inside the center, the space-focused ECG works alongside its air component counterparts to synchronize efforts and integrate space operations.
But the group’s role does not end once a scenario is launched.
“One of the big jobs that the [exercise control group] has to perform is monitoring player actions in order to keep the scenario running,” Ocampo said, explaining how U.S. members track U.S. forces actions while Republic of Korea counterparts monitor how ROK forces are responding to the space scenarios introduced in the exercise.
As the exercise unfolds, the ECG assesses how U.S. and Republic of Korea forces respond to simulated adversary threats, then adjusts the scenario to allow participants to see the impact of their actions. This process sharpens shared understanding, improves coordination and reinforces how space operations support combined defense in the Korean theater of operations.
As SPACEFOR-KOR continues to grow its role in Freedom Shield, the command is making the space domain a more operationally relevant part of the training environment. For the S7 team, that means continuously expanding the complexity, realism and scope of the space fight so combined forces are better prepared for real-world operations on the Korean Peninsula. In that effort, the space domain is not just represented but fully integrated into the fight.