Space Force Nomenclature....
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2025 12:21 pm
...This is, apparently, for real. H/T to the Instapundit.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/a ... s-new-era/
This is the important part:
Mike
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/a ... s-new-era/
This is the important part:
P for Pursuit once more....now that's something I can get behind.According to the Space Force memorandum, the basic mission designations are:
A for Attack: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to attack enemy forces or equipment.
B for Battle Management: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to direct and control friendly forces tactically engaged with an adversary.
C for Communications: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to support communication or data transport activities.
D for Defend: Systems, platforms, or vehicles that can protect friendly forces.
E for Electromagnetic Warfare: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to attack, protect, or exploit signals in the electromagnetic spectrum.
K for Support: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to ensure maintainability of space missions or payloads, including activities such as hosting, deploying, maintaining, sustaining, or servicing space vehicles or payloads while in orbit.
M for Meteorological: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to observe, record, or relay meteorological and oceanographic data.
N for Navigation Warfare: Systems, platforms, or vehicles that conduct navigation, positioning, and timing or navigation warfare activities.
P for Pursuit: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to intercept space targets in support of offensive and defensive operations.
R for Reconnaissance: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to perform targeted collection of intelligence and/or threat indications and warning to answer specific military questions.
S for Surveillance: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed for persistent collection of intelligence and/or threat indications and warning on a target within a terrestrial, orbital, or cyber battlespace.
W for Warning and Tracking: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed for the systematic observation of aerospace for the purpose of detecting, tracking, and characterizing terrestrial, air, and missile threats.
The second letter in the prefix will describe where the Space Force system will reside:
C for Cyberspace Domain: A domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.
D for Deep Space: Deep space is any orbit beyond the cislunar regime.
G for Geosynchronous/stationary Orbit (GEO): An orbit synchronized to the Earth’s rotation, orbiting at the same rate at which the Earth rotates upon its axis. Satellites in this orbit have an altitude of approximately 36,000 km above the Earth’s surface and create a figure eight ground trace over the ground. This designator includes Geosynchronous or Geostationary as the key point of reference to describe their main mission orbital regime.
H for Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO): A non-circular orbit with eccentricity greater than 0.2 that extends into other orbital regimes. Two common examples of this regime are the Tundra and Molniya orbits, both of which have low perigee (LEO altitude) and a high apogee (GEO altitude).
L for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO): Orbits that are at a height of approximately 2,000 km or less above the surface of the Earth and have an average time to orbit the Earth of approximately 90–100 minutes.
M for Medium Earth Orbit (MEO): A roughly circular orbit between low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit (approximately between 2,000 and 36,000 km).
T for Terrestrial: Systems, platforms, vehicles with this designator are designed to enable effects within the space domain, but conduct operations within the land, air, and maritime domain.
V for Various: Systems, platforms, vehicles with this designator are designed to operate across multiple orbital regimes or domains. Space vehicles with this nomenclature can either move between multiple orbits or can be the identical platform located at various orbits.
Mike
