ARSPACE: The Way We Were

In June, 1994 I had the privilege of taking "command" of the U.S. Army Space Command (ARSPACE). I had been the Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at U.S. Army Europe and had been involved in 18 deployments, including Somalia, during that time. When I arrived in Colorado Springs, Colo., I was focused on the operational command, one that had a deployment mindset and needed great organizational flexibility to accomplish the mission. I was soon humbled to learn that I was not the commander of Army Space Command - that title belonged to the Commanding General of SMDC, LTG Donald Lionetti and later LTG Jay Garner. I was intent on carving out ARSPACE's role as the Army's Space warfighter so I convinced LTG Garner to allow ARSPACE elements in Colorado Springs to be called ARSPACE (Forward). This identified us as the combat element of SMDC. ARSPACE was organized with dual deputies when I arrived, one for support and one for operations. I argued to reorganize the staff into a standard G-Staff organization, to facilitate the ARSPACE interaction with outside agencies - especially Army ones. The command is still organized that way today. The ARSPACE commander position was an Air Defense Artillery (ADA) position, and the second surprise I experienced was that the ranking officers in the command were anything but ADA. COL Bill Hoyman became the Chief of Staff and he was a dyed-in-the-wool Infantryman. COL Jim Kulbacki was the G-3 and a signal officer. Having a signal officer as the operations officer turned out to be a blessing as communications was the key that held all our Space activities together. Kulbacki was a great Space operations guy and educated me on the complex link between Space and communications. I relied on Hoyman as an invaluable source of experience and advice - he ran the command like a Swiss watch. The key to ARSPACE's success was a group of incredibly dedicated Army civilians, many of whom had been with the command since its inception. ; Published in the Army Space Journal, p1F-3F, Spring 2005.