The Space Force is plotting for a complex future in Earth’s orbit, and that takes a lot of big-picture thinking and coordination. To set the stage for that future, the branch released a new type of strategic guidance document on Friday, which it’s dubbed Vector 2025.
The document includesguidance for each of the Space Force’s four service activities: Force Design, Force Development, Force Generation, and Force Employment. The goal? To give servicemembers clarity on the service’s big picture mission and organization so that they can do their jobs more effectively.
“If every Guardian can internalize the concepts contained herein, I am confident that we will accelerate our transformation into a warfighting service; a service that embodies warrior ethos, outpaces our adversaries, and protects our Joint Force and our nation from space-enabled attack,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in the document’s foreword.
“We must act quickly and with urgency, but the difference between haste and efficiency is understanding. Guardians must know why they do things before they can truly excel.”
Sign of the times: Saltzman said troops need Vector now because the nature of the space environment has fundamentally changed in recent years—and that the US needs to take active steps to ensure and protect its superiority in the space domain.
“[The US] military is sized and built around the assumption that spacepower will be available when needed,” the Vector doc reads. “In the past, this has been achieved without the need to contest and control the domain. However, that is no longer the case.”
Per Vector 2025, three core values must be prioritized on the way to space superiority:
- Avoiding operational surprise—i.e., maintaining effective space domain awareness and visibility in orbit.
- Denying first-mover advantage by making it “impractical and self-defeating” for an adversary to make a strike in space.
- Responsible counterspace campaigning, meaning that “space forces must conduct military activities in space that can disrupt, degrade, or destroy enemy space capability.”
Plan of action: In each of the four service activities the document outlines, the Space Force has created a list of objectives to accomplish (though it didn’t lay out a particular timeline for these). Those objectives include things such as operationalizing announced programs and digitizing documentation, as well as increasing the cadence and reach of space activities.
The objectives in the document are left relatively vague and open-ended, meant more as a directional guide for the force to build upon—a vector, if you will—than as a set of formal instructions that servicemembers can follow.
“It is critical that every action we take produces tangible results that address the requirements
and challenges that Guardians face today,” the document reads. “It is equally important that we ensure sustainable growth and development of our force, building the capabilities and talent our Nation needs.”
