Digital Space: Entering Year Four, Space Force Focusing on Cyber Capabilities.

• Author: Luckenbaugh, Josh

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland When one thinks of a traditional warfighter, they picture an operator engaged in conflict in a physical domain: a soldier moving through enemy terrain, an amphibious assault ship sailing across the ocean or an F-35 fighter jet soaring in the air.

But for the Space Force, the primary battlespace is not material--it's digital.

"If you look at the space domain, the way you experience that domain is through data," Chief of Space Operations Gen. John "Jay" Raymond said during a panel discussion at the Air and Space Forces Association's annual Air, Space and Cyber event in National Harbor, Maryland.

As the United States' youngest service enters its fourth year, the Space Force is reevaluating "what readiness means to a force that is primarily employed in place rather than waiting to deploy overseas." That includes contemplating new approaches to training, sustainment and reporting data to the Pentagon, Raymond said during his keynote address at the event.

In particular, the service is expanding its exercise program "to increase readiness of our squadrons," he added.

The same week of the AFA conference in September, Space Force operators were participating in a new exercise called "Black Skies."

Focused on electronic warfare, the exercise "trains the force in a realistic threat scenario," Raymond said.

At Black Skies, warfighters experienced "a mix of live fire and constructive" training activities, Maj. Gen. Shawn Bratton, the commander of Space Training and Readiness Command, or STARCOM, told reporters during a roundtable discussion.

"We have the ability to conduct live fire activities, monitor those for safety and security purposes, and observe and then provide feedback and lessons from the training," he said.

Black Skies is the "first of a series of exercises STARCOM will develop to build the readiness of operating in this new warfighting domain," Raymond said.

Along with Black Skies, the Space Force is planning to conduct "Red Skies," an exercise focused on orbital warfare to train soldiers on combatting threats in space.

"For Red Skies, we'll need orbital warfare capability for sure," Bratton said. "Whether that's [actually] live flying an asset on orbit, I would say that's unlikely for 2023, as much as my team is super excited about doing that.

"But then we move into the digital space, and what are we going to do in the virtual constructive space with the tools available to us? What can we bring on board? So I...