The U.S. Space Force is building a new cloud-based digital training range designed to connect guardians from across the service into a shared, simulated environment, a senior official said on July 10.
Dubbed “Swarm,” the capability is still in early development but is envisioned as a multi-classification, scalable platform that allows units to train together against complex threats, Maj. Gen. Timothy Sejba, commander of Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), said.
Swarm builds on digital environments first developed for Space Flag — the Space Force’s premier mission planning and operational support exercise. Sejba noted that recent iterations of the exercise have already incorporated early Swarm prototypes.
“The Space Flag that we just completed here about a month and a half ago, many of the threats that we faced were simulated in that environment,” Sejba said during a Mitchell Institute webinar. “You had crews from across the Space Force that were actually executing over a two-week period to understand how they would actually perform in the environment.”
Currently, the Swarm environment is only available on-premises at STARCOM. The initial goal, Sejba said, is to deliver the first phase of the capability by the end of 2025.
Looking ahead, the service plans to migrate Swarm to the cloud within the next two years. That transition is key to enabling more flexible, distributed training – where guardians from different locations can participate simultaneously in large-scale scenarios.
“We’re quickly building not only the red threats that we need to represent, but also all of the blue systems that are coming online over the next several years,” Sejba said. “Then we’re quickly moving it to the cloud so we can get to a distributed training capability that allows each of those guardian units to actually be able to [train] from their home stations, but do it over and over.”
“We know what it’s going to take to be able to adopt that environment,” Sejba said, noting that extensive research has confirmed it’s the right path forward—not just for the Space Force, but to support joint needs across services for space effects.