TRAINING THE SPACE FORCE: HOW THE MILITARY WILL PREPARE FOR FUTURE BATTLES.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

When President Donald Trump announced earlier this year that he was asking the U.S. military to begin the process of establishing a sixth armed service that would focus on space, Washington pundits and analysts wasted no time lauding or decrying the move.

Although details on what a future space force could look like are still nebulous and the reorganization requires congressional approval, industry is already thinking about how it can provide future space warriors with simulators and training equipment to prepare for battle.

While these skirmishes likely won't include hand-to-hand combat in full astronaut gear, space warriors will need to understand how to deal with hostile actions from adversaries that could include everything from electronic warfare attacks that jam signals, or even missile strikes that obliterate key satellites, experts have said.

While Air Force Space Command already takes the lead in equipping and training, a dedicated space force could be advantageous, said Gene Colabatistto, CAE's group president for defense and security.

There is an opportunity to consolidate space with "an intent to focus attention ... and ultimately resources to ensure that the space mission is not held subordinate to all the other missions that defense and national security has to execute," he said in an interview.

It will be important to train from the tactical, operational and strategic levels, he noted.

At the tactical level, the military already has some space-based systems in its flight simulators.

"Clearly when we build a flight simulator and a high-fidelity cockpit, that cockpit will be outfitted with avionics that depend on GPS," he said. "Whether it's GPS, satellite communications, or some other service provided by space-based assets, the operator needs to know that they're there. They need to know the capabilities and limitations. They need to know how to use it."

While such training already occurs, it will need to be enhanced in order to prepare for future threats, he said.

Mission planners must also be trained, Colabatistto said. They need "to understand what other systems are out there to include ones they may not know about today, and get them to actively ask not just what are we doing but what can we do, and can we organize our space-based assets in a way ... [that changes how they] support the commander?" he added.

For industry, this presents a number of opportunities, he said.

The first "opportunity for us is to make sure that...