Over 700 Space Force personnel stationed at multiple military bases are participating in the exercise, where guardians will test and train on space-based capabilities to conduct orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare, cyber warfare and more. During the event, the service will present threat-informed scenarios simulating a fight with an adversary and allowing for troops to use operational military satellites — as well as commercial assets — to counter them.

“As the scenario increases in challenges and complexity, this gives our blue forces a thinking adversary to spar against,” Lt. Col. Shawn Green, commander of the Space Force’s 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, said Tuesday during a briefing with reporters. “Our goal is to create a relevant, realistic, informed threat replication for blue to fight through so that we can increase the probability of success in war.”

Resolute Space 2025 is part of the Department of the Air Force’s massive exercise known as Resolute Force Pacific (REFORPAC), intended to demonstrate the ability of both the Air and Space Forces to rapidly deploy against adversaries in the Indo-Pacific. It is a central piece of the DAF’s new Department Level Exercise (DLE) series that includes other major Air Force training events, such as Mobility Guardian and Bamboo Eagle, happening concurrently.

The Space Force’s exercise began July 8, and will feature guardians stationed at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, as well as Peterson, Buckley and Shriever Space Force Bases, according to the service. Other personnel stationed throughout the Indo-Pacific will also participate in Resolute Space 2025, which is slated to wrap up in early August.

To simulate enemy capabilities and attacks, Green said the Space Force created a mission planning cell that will synchronize fires across space-based orbital, cyber and electromagnetic warfare — presenting various moves and countermoves that guardians will have to fight through.

Resolute Space 2025 will also integrate with elements of the REFORPAC exercise, which aims to ensure the Space Force can effectively fight alongside the Air Force in the future.

“We are working to fuse our different mission areas with the time-phased scheme of maneuver as part of the larger scenario,” Green said. “We’re doing that by providing space electromagnetic warfare, orbital warfare [and] cyber warfare. And we’re using those types of activities to fuse into this large, globally integrated exercise for live, virtual, synthetic scenarios so that our training is realistic, relevant and challenging.”

Col. Jay Steingold, Resolute Space director, told reporters that the exercise also spans across other key mission areas — including space domain awareness; satellite communication; positioning, navigation and timing (PNT); intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); missile warning; command and control; and military-commercial integration.

Personnel will be able to use on-orbit space assets designed for training guardians, as well as satellites owned by commercial partners during the exercise, Steingold added.

“We have satellites that we are able to utilize to provide training for our U.S. Space Force guardians, whether that be an understanding of how they quote-unquote fly, or in terms of payload capacities and capabilities and general training on orbit,” he said. “We’re certainly leveraging our commercial partners and their capabilities — not only from their developmental standpoint, but also what they bring to bear in terms of cost savings.”

While the Space Force has held exercises in the past, those events were largely focused on individual mission areas and not at the scale of Resolute Space. Steingold said that while large-scale exercises are costly and time-consuming to plan and execute, participating in Resolute Space 2025 is imperative to improving the service’s capabilities, training and overall integration with the joint force and international allies.

“This is the opportunity to really dig in and find out if we have any weaknesses whatsoever, so we can fill them,” he said. “Whether it’s capabilities that our [Operational Test and Training Infrastructure] partners can bring from a training environments perspective, to actual warfighting capabilities that we need to take us further into the future to ensure the safety and security of the space domain.”

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The so-called “space warfighting” framework is expected to outline the common vocabulary and concepts used by the service in order to achieve what it calls “space superiority” — that is, the ability for the United States to operate freely in the space domain while also denying an enemy’s ability to do the same. The document will also categorize adversary on-orbit capabilities, link structures, ground facilities and network targets, Saltzman said during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

“What the framework does is, it defines our terms so that planners — and this is space planners, but this is [also] joint planners — to make sure that our capabilities are accounted for and integrated fully into all the operational design,” Saltzman said. “We felt like we owed the Joint Force that set of framework, that set of definitions, so that we could have the right kinds of discussions.”

The drafting of the new framework comes as the Space Force continues efforts to more accurately convey its mission and warfighting functions both within the Defense Department and to the general public. In recent weeks, Saltzman and other senior service leadership have begun openly discussing the Space Force’s ability to conduct warfare in the space domain — marking a shift in messaging following years of keeping such rhetoric behind closed doors.

“We must think of space as a warfighting domain, rather than just a collection of support activities that the Space Force must organize, train, equip and conduct warfighting operations as an integral part of the joint and combined force,” Saltzman said March 3 during his keynote speech at the annual AFA Warfare Symposium in Denver, Colorado.

Saltzman said during Wednesday’s webinar that senior leadership across the Pentagon fully support the Space Force’s mission to enable all the military services to conduct joint operations. Likewise, younger warfighters who understand today’s “digital environment” understand the importance of space-based capabilities, he added.

However, there is a group in between those two levels that aren’t as informed as others, he said. The new space warfighting framework will provide a doctrine-level lexicon for that middle group and others as a way to help inform them of the Space Force’s missions.

“Here’s the terms we can talk about. Here’s what orbital warfare means. Here’s how we use electronic warfare. Here’s how we would use cyber warfare, and in pursuit of space superiority, protect what we have and deny an adversary,” Saltzman said regarding what the document will lay out.

Additionally, the service’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) will also soon publish the Space Force Doctrine Document–1 (SFDD-1). Saltzman previously said that the document will articulate the doctrinal concepts shaping the service moving forward — including the service’s newest core function known as “space control,” among others.

The concept encapsulates the Space Force’s ability to deny, degrade, disrupt or even destroy adversary space systems using both kinetic and non-kinetic weapons. Space control can refer to both offensive and defensive orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare and other counterspace operations.

“We have to deny the adversary the ability to use the space-enabled targeting that has now made them so lethal — particularly in the western Pacific — against our other terrestrial forces,” Saltzman said. “They have increased the range and the accuracy of their weapons because of that space-enabled targeting system, and it’s the Space Force’s job to deny them that.”

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Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) hosted the inaugural event Dec. 11-15. Red Skies is envisioned as an annual training experience that emphasizes “orbital warfare” disciplines, according to the Space Force. The simulation-based exercise enabled guardians from Space Operations Command (SPoC) to hone skills in orbital mechanics and satellite flight relevant for Space Force operations.

“Realistic simulation like this allows us to refine tactical skills that drive us towards tactically relevant thinking … more towards what it means to ensure space superiority,” STARCOM Deputy Commander Brig. Gen. Todd Moore said in a statement.

During the exercise, guardians trained for tactical command-and-control operations and how to operate multiple satellites, all while engaging opposing forces in a simulated environment, according to a Space Force press release.

While the first event was held entirely through simulations, the service plans to eventually incorporate real-world satellites — similar to the “live-fire” training demonstrated during Black Skies.

“Red Skies will grow from here, expanding to include more units under realistic command and control scenarios with an emphasis on executing coordinated, integrated space sorites,” Lt. Col. Scott Nakatani, commander of the 392nd Combat Training Squadron, said in a statement. “We are building service orbital warfare experience in simulation with an eye on transitioning Red Skies into the live-fly on-orbit exercise we need as a service.”

The inaugural Red Skies exercise was initially slated for summer 2023, but was delayed until the end of the year, according to a July report from Breaking Defense.

“I can confidently say that this ‘first-ever’ will become a mainstay in how SpOC and STARCOM partner to ensure we achieve the true goals and objectives of advanced training,” Moore said. “There is a lot more to come as we iterate on a capability like this and will drive to include every SpOC Delta that wants to prove they are ready.”

STARCOM was able to identify requirements that will allow future Red Skies exercises to grow, including ways to improve the orbital warfare simulations and streamline integrated sortie planning processes. Moore noted that those requirements will serve as a cue for the space industry to develop the needed capabilities to train guardians on relevant threats — a key priority for Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman.

“Competition and combat in space is new and current space capabilities are vulnerable. We need to be equipped and ready for any conflict in, from, or through space,” he said in a statement. “During Red Skies, these Guardians achieved more for [orbital warfare] readiness than anything else we’ve done to date as a combined STARCOM/SPOC team.”

Red Skies is part of STARCOM’s series of “Skies” events. The service has already held three Black Skies exercises tailored to electromagnetic warfare operations, and it’s planning to begin another event focused on cyber warfare called Blue Skies.

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