Space Force subject of InterAgency Brown-Bag Lecture

Mr. Thomas A. Gray, the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Liaison to the Combined Arms Center and Army University, spoke on the topic of a “Space Force” on Oct. 24 as part of the Inter-Agency Brown-Bag Lecture Series for academic year 2019. The title of Mr. Gray’s presentation was “The Domain of Space and National Security.”

Mr. Thomas A. Gray spoke about the Space Force during his presentation, “The Domain of Space and National Security,” on Oct. 24.

Gray’s presentation focused heavily on the use of satellites and the evolution of the Space Force, from the establishment of U.S. Space Command in 1985, to its reassignment to U.S. Strategic Command in 2002, to renewed interest in a separate Space Force in 2017. “What we’re doing today is nothing new,” said Mr. Gray of the President’s call for a Space Force.

“We as a nation rely on space. We don’t think about it, but we do,” continued Gray as he reviewed our reliance on space-based capabilities, including telecommunications, GPS, entertainment, finance, and national security. “It’s not just about trains, planes, and automobiles, because those trains, planes, and automobiles do not work without space-based capability.”

Thomas A. Gray serves as the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s liaison officer to the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and Army University with responsibility for the integration of space knowledge and education across various TRADOC, Joint, and other service schools to include the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. A retired U.S. Army officer, Mr. Gray was one of the first officers selected to be designated as a space operations officer. He served in Army Space Command, the Space and Missile Defense Lab, and the SMDC Directorate of Combat Development. He is qualified as a Level 3 Space Professional of the U.S. Army Civilian Space Cadre, holds the space operations officer designation 3Y, and has earned the U.S. Army Master Space Badge. Mr. Gray holds a bachelor’s from New Hampshire College and earned a master’s from Central Michigan University.

The InterAgency Brown-Bag Lecture Series is co-hosted by the CGSC Foundation’s Simons Center with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School (CGSS). The lecture series is an extracurricular, interagency topic-focused series that is intended to help enrich the CGSS curriculum. The CGSC Foundation and the Simons Center have received support for all brown-bag lectures in academic year 2019 from First Command Financial Services in Leavenworth, Kansas. The presentations are scheduled each month.- See the full schedule.

All lectures in the InterAgency Brown-Bag Lecture Series are free and open to the public. As the series moniker states, the lecture series is conducted in the traditional “brown-bag lunch” format. – Attendees are welcome to bring their own lunches into the conference room. Members of the public coming to the lectures from off-post will need to add extra time to check-in at the Fort Leavenworth visitor center. – For gate information, see the Fort Leavenworth homepage.

Visit the CGSC Foundation album on Flickr for more photos from the lecture.

See the video of the full lecture below.