JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AFNS) -- When a military service conducts exercises, there’s an opposing force – live, virtual, synthetic, or constructive – ready to test, stress, and validate the tactics, techniques and procedures used by the friendly force.
And when the Space Force is testing the ability to operate in a contested environment during the largest service-led exercise to date – Resolute Space 2025 – Guardians want to go up against the best.
The best notional adversary they can find just happens to also be the Space Force.
Aggressors from three squadrons under Delta 11, Space Training and Readiness Command, made up the opposition forces: the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, electromagnetic warfare; the 57th SAS, orbital warfare; and the 33rd Range and Aggressor Squadron, cyber warfare.
Aggressors are responsible for creating a realistic, threat-informed environment pitted against operational forces in cyber, orbital and electromagnetic warfare scenarios. Together, they serve as thinking adversaries presenting challenging dilemmas across multiple domains for operational forces to spar against.
“We’re responsible for knowing, teaching and replicating the threat environment to exercise operational forces,” said Maj. Michael Husar, director of operations at the 527th SAS, Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado. “There’s a lot that goes into planning and executing an exercise like Resolute Space to ensure our forces get the best possible experience. What we want to see are operational forces constantly growing and getting better, and that just makes the whole force better.”
Aggressors carry out these missions from a variety of settings, from indoor operations floors to field sites in mobile, transportable operating units. Operating from a variety of settings tests and validates the ability to present functional capabilities from anywhere and anytime based on the needs of exercises and operations under any combatant command’s area of responsibility.
During Resolute Space, aggressors challenged friendly forces with effects modeled on how potential real-world adversaries are known to operate across multiple warfighting domains. Throughout the exercise scenario they introduced factors such as interference that could disrupt satellite communication, irregularities that affect navigation signals, and cyber actions that strain network defenses. These efforts are built into the overall exercise scenario to mirror the types of obstacles Guardians could face in conflict.
This is all accomplished within the safety of a controlled training environment made possible by Delta 11’s range professionals: the 25th SRS, electromagnetic warfare range; the 98th SRS, orbital warfare range; and the 33rd Range and Aggressor Squadron, cyber warfare range.
Although exercises are conducted in structured and controlled settings, the intent is to push friendly forces to, and beyond, a breaking point. From those experiences, they move forward to innovate, develop and improve TTPs that ensure no potential adversary can match their ability to operate in conflict.
Resolute Space provides an opportunity for Guardians to move fast, think outside the box and disrupt the status quo to find new concepts for operating in a contested environment. The training scenarios are designed to grow warfighters and hone their ability to deter emerging threats, leverage advanced technology and tactics to stay ahead of competitors and adversaries, and defend U.S. interests in, from and to space.
That effort doesn’t happen in isolation. The Space Force trains and fights as part of a larger joint team, with range and aggressor participation in exercises like this refining how space capabilities are integrated across air, land, maritime and cyber domains.
“Our goal is always to assure the joint force, our allies and partners, and frankly the world that our space-enabled and space-based capabilities are secure and operational,” said Lt. Col. Shawn Green, Resolute Space 2025 deputy exercise director and also the 527th SAS commander. “Our combined arms training stresses mission areas that need to be routinely trained in complex scenarios; and all of those mission areas, in some way or another, serve as force multipliers to the joint and combined forces’ fight. Everything we do strives to advance a competitive warfighting edge and advance combat capability."
“There’s no scenario in which the U.S. Space Force is not providing some form of critical capability to joint all-domain operations,” Green said. “First and foremost, we are readying forces to deter any potential adversary aggression, and second, to assure our nation and our allies and partners that should deterrence fail, the U.S. Space Force remains ready to fight and win through a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment.”
