A space career field for enlisted soldiers is coming to the Army as the U.S. builds up its space-based capabilities.
The Army is planning for a couple of hundred 40D space operations specialists who would be integrated into Space and Missile Defense Command to provide communication and support to counter the threat of satellites and other technologies facing troops on the ground. The new military occupational specialty, or MOS, will be open to enlisted soldiers between the E-4 and E-9 pay grades.
“It’s going to be very competitive,” Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, commanding general of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, told reporters Friday. “The personnel that are gravitating towards some of those high-tech MOS are going to naturally gravitate towards space also because they served their initial term in whatever it is — signal corps, air defense.”
The Army’s space units currently borrow enlisted soldiers from other fields like air defense, signal corps and military intelligence for three years to support space operations. But with the new MOS, the Army wants dedicated enlisted soldiers who can build on their space expertise throughout their careers, Gainey said.
“To date, most expertise and experience in space operations reside in the officers corps instead of the noncommissioned officers corps,” Gainey said. “This new space operations MOS will ensure that specialists through command sergeant majors arrive at Army space formations with expertise and experience in space operations.”
The new 40D military occupational specialty will be open to soldiers who want to reclassify and are between the ranks of E-4 to E-9 — specialists to sergeant major. The MOS will go live in October 2026, but the Army is currently looking for soldiers with the relevant skill sets across its formations, Gainey said.
Space operations specialists will attend Initial Qualification Training and gain an Additional Skill Identifier at the Space and Missile Defense School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where they will be trained on electronic warfare systems and other space-based systems like the Tactical Integrated Ground Suite, also known as TIGS.
The new MOS comes as the military is adding new space-based capabilities across the force since the Space Force was stood up in 2018. On Thursday, Sandboxx News reported that the Space Force plans to stand up its own component within U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees operations of elite units like Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets.
While the Space Force is the military’s prime space-focused unit, the Army’s role in space involves soldiers who “provide close space support to Army conventional and special operation forces, protecting them from space-enabled attacks,” Gainey said.
In a January memo titled “Army Space Vision Supporting Multidomain Operations,” Army leaders laid out how soldiers will use commercial space technologies for operations that require positioning, navigation, sensing, beyond-line-of-sight communications, force tracking, environmental monitoring, and space reconnaissance capabilities. To counter enemy space-based threats, the Army intends to mix “necessary fires and effects” to protect friendly forces with “counter-satellite communications, counter-surveillance and reconnaissance, and navigation warfare operations,” according to the document.
The 40D soldiers could be assigned to a Multidomain Task Force, Theater Strike Effects Groups, the Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence, SMDC’s Space and Missile Defense School, 1st Space Brigade, 100th Missile Defense Brigade, or a space support element.