The U.S. Army is moving quickly to expand its space capabilities, from the creation of a separate space branch to improvements in battlefield communications.
The service is getting closer to standing up Army space operations, a plan that has received “overwhelming affirmation” from general officers, Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks, deputy commander of the Space and Missile Defense Command at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado, said during the Association of the U.S. Army conference in October 2025.
Army leaders also noted that for the first time in its budgeting, the service has included as a top priority counterspace capabilities — described, in part, as countersatellite communications, countersurveillance, and reconnaissance and navigation warfare. Counterspace is one of several mission areas targeted for acceleration under an Army transformation memo from War Secretary Pete Hegseth, military news website Breaking Defense reported. “Calling it counterspace by name is really important,” said Col. Pete Atkinson, space division chief at the Army Strategic Operations Directorate.
Meanwhile, the Army is turning to space commerce to help bring about digital modernization under its Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) program, the website SpaceNews reported. NGC2 is described as a redesign of the Army’s enterprise communications backbone, with innovations such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and space-based connectivity plugged in from the commercial world.
Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, has been awarded a $100 million contract to prototype an NGC2 architecture for an infantry division, working with tech giants Palantir and Microsoft. The Army’s vision is to fuse data streams from land, air, sea, cyber and space into a single operational picture, Craig Miller, head of satellite broadband company Viasat’s government business, told SpaceNews. Miller said this will require resilient satellite communications, persistent imagery and edge computing close to the fight.