Space Soldiers, guardians stay grounded in grenade training

  • Published
  • By Brooke Nevins
  • 1st Space Brigade
FORT CARSON, Colo. --  Soldiers with the 1st Space Brigade recently hosted United States Space Force guardians for a live grenade training event at Fort Carson, Colorado, on Aug. 28, allowing the guardians a rare shot at close combat tactics. 

Brigade Soldiers oversaw the M67 fragmentation grenade qualification to certify several Soldiers and nearly two dozen guardians with Space Delta 9, Delta 6 and Delta 7, headquartered at Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. Guardians began the day acclimating to dummy grenades, throwing them from various angles while navigating the course’s six stations of trenches, concrete bunkers, metal targets and more.  

Soldiers manned each station by demonstrating the required maneuver for that station, providing feedback during practice runs and evaluating the guardians on execution. 

After hours of throwing dummy grenades, the guardians advanced to simulation grenades with real grenade components and audible and visual reactions upon impact, then moved to deploying live grenades from the pit. 

By learning the step-by-step process of effectively aiming and detonating a hand grenade on the ground and under pressure, the guardians received a first-hand experience of how joint and coalition ground forces conduct small arms fire and how it related to mastering their own – and largely intangible – systems. 

“Army forces work with very sensitive, dangerous and lethal equipment,” said Spc. 3 Luke Felker, 69th Cyberspace Squadron, Space Delta 6. “In the Space Force, we – as cyber guys, for example – might not really see much of the front lines stuff. We might be sitting behind a desk not physically seeing our impact, but the space systems that we work on could affect many lives depending on how we operate.” 

Delta 6's mission is to assure access to space through satellite control and defensive cyberspace capabilities. Delta 9 (Orbital Warfare) prepares assigned and attached forces to conduct protect-and-defend operations and provide decisionmakers with options to deter and defeat orbital threats, as well as support Space Domain Awareness. Delta 7 is the operational Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance element of the Space Force. 

In conducting the training, 1st Space Brigade Soldiers, whose mission includes providing close space support to enable the warfighter at and beyond the tactical edge, demonstrated how they must also possess fundamental Army skills and maneuvers on the ground. 

Sgt. Jonathan Flores, a unit supply specialist with Headquarters and Headquarters Company with 1st Space Brigade’s 1st Space Battalion and one of the Soldiers conducting training, said such skills prepare the brigade Soldiers, and now these guardians, in the event of a close combat scenario. 

“I’d rather have the knowledge and not need it than need it and not have it,” Flores said. 

Lt. Col. Derek Wouden, commander of the 9th Combat Training Squadron, Space Delta 9, told the guardians that the qualification should also help frame how they think about their own areas of expertise.  

“It's a lot easier to put hands on an object and take it apart to understand absolutely how it works,” Wouden said. “I don't have that luxury in space. I have to learn my system after it's up in space. You need to take it apart, but you're going to have to do that through a manual, a computer and asking questions. It's not as easy, but this is a means of understanding how you operate a system, stay safe with that system and keep others safe. 

“Space weaves,” he added. “It interacts with every aspect of our civilian and military lives. It’s a united front and it’s very joint.”

 

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