In an effort to reinforce its identity as the youngest military branch, the U.S. Space Force is adopting an official naming scheme for its mission areas, including drawing from the Norse pantheon for orbital warfare systems.
Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman announced the thematic categories during the Spacepower conference held this week in Orlando, Florida, SpaceNews reported. Operational units within the Space Force spent around a year developing the seven categories as “terms of reference we will use to cement the identities of space weapon systems,” Saltzman is quoted as saying.
The categories are:
- Orbital warfare: Norse pantheon
- Cyber warfare: Mythological creatures
- Satellite communications: Constellations
- Space domain awareness: Ghosts
- Electromagnetic warfare: Snakes
- Missile warnings: Sentinels
- Navigation warfare: Sharks
With its new naming scheme, the Space Force joins a long-held tradition among other military branches of assigning themes to their systems. In the Army, artillery systems are often named after mythological figures, while vehicles are sometimes named after animals.
In the business of branding
Since it was established in 2019, the U.S. Space Force has struggled to reinforce its role with branding that often leaves most people confused as to what the military branch actually does. In September 2022, Space Force released its own theme song, describing itself as the “mighty watchful eye” and an “invisible front line.”
Later in 2023, the Space Force scrapped its original, lengthy mission statement in exchange for a snappy, nine-word phrase that left us scratching our heads. The new mission statement reads, “Secure our nation’s interests in, from, and to space.” Not exactly catchy, and still super ambiguous.
The Space Force’s new naming scheme is a bit more detailed and aims to establish a sense of identity for the Guardians (members of the military branch). “To some degree this is about having a culture where the people responsible for the mission feel directly connected to it, and it’s hard to get connected to a program name or some number system in the catalog of weapon systems,” Saltzman told reporters, according to SpaceNews. “We’ve chosen to represent each of our mission areas with specific symbology. These symbols conjure the character of the systems, the importance of their mission and the identity of the guardians to employ them.”
As the newest military branch, the Space Force was also left with scraps and had to avoid other themes that were already in use. “We had to find categories that you could use, like ghosts or constellations or things that nobody could claim ownership of,” Satlzman added.
I’m not sure how many known ghosts are out there to choose from, but the space domain awareness systems might be the trickiest ones to name.
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