Last year, Defense Department officials announced the launch of a Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center, or JICSpOC, that would bring together a range of partners in space defense. Now that effort is gaining momentum, according to one of the key leaders in the program.
"All of the community involved in space coming together – whether that's DoD, interagency coalition partners and especially the intelligence community – to better understand what might be at risk, what are the threat intentions and more importantly, how do we get after it?" Lt. Gen. David Mann, commanding general of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said March 16 at the AUSA Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. "So there's a lot of scenario development that we're looking at, feeding lessons learned to that operational center so we make sure we can always rely on those on-orbit assets."
The JICSpOC launched last summer "at the behest" of Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, and is being helmed cooperatively by leaders like Mann, U.S. Strategic Command's Adm. Cecil Haney and Air Force Space Command's Gen. John Hyten. Mann indicated they are eyeing its current location, close to Space Command, as the permanent headquarters for JICSpOC.
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"We just had a meeting about two months ago at Schriever Air Force Base (Colorado)," where JICSpOC currently operates, Mann said. "Quite frankly, what we're doing right now is building combat power. At that meeting we had a lot of folks from the intelligence community and other agencies that are part of this. We've already done a couple scenario runs, and we're looking at additional scenario runs in more complex environments in near future."
Mann said the vision is for JICSpOC to serve as a sandbox of sorts for coalition space operations, in particular incorporating and exploiting more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capacities.
"I see that the JICSpOC is like a battle lab; it really helps us look at what threat capabilities are out there, what the threat is pursuing and how we address threat advancements," Mann said. "But I also think that in addition to the developmental side, the scenario analysis side, I think we'll also see the JICSpOC down the road also providing an operational capability to augment what's already provided by the Joint Space Operations Center" based at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
Mann emphasized that those decisions have yet to be decided made, but they are options among proposals on the table.
"We want to make sure we leverage this JICSpOC to not only help us with the developmental side of the house but also help us in at least informing the operational side of the house in terms of how we respond to threats daily, whether it's electromagnetic interference resolution or possible threats to on-orbit assets," Mann said.
