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Department of Spacepower

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  • Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Maxwell AFB, AL

Department of Spacepower

The Department of Spacepower is home of the Schriever Space Scholars program, a rigorous year-long immersion for developing space strategists. The program is the nation’s first space-centric military developmental education opportunity for interagency, international and joint military members as well as future U.S. Space Force leaders. The department’s purpose is threefold: to build a core of skilled space domain strategists who will serve as key leaders, advocates and advisors to warfighting commanders and national leadership; explore the operational implications of space as a warfighting domain; and serve as a mechanism to infuse the best of operational and strategic space thought into the core Air Command and Staff College curriculum and across Air University. As part of their studies, Schriever Space Scholars participate in space war games, meet with senior leaders and experts throughout the U.S. national space enterprise, and produce a personal research capstone project to present to U.S. Space Force leaders at the culmination of their studies.

Dr. Andrea Harrington currently serves as the Dean of Space Education at Air University. Prior to her current role, she served as Chair of the Department of Spacepower and Director of the Schriever Space Scholars concentration at Air Command and Staff College, where she is an Associate Professor of Military and Security Studies. Dr. Harrington previously served on the faculty of the University of Mississippi School of Law as the Associate Director of the LLM Program in Air and Space Law. She has also served as Associate Chair for the Policy, Economics, and Law Department of the International Space University’s Space Studies Program.  Dr. Harrington was an Erin J.C. Arsenault Fellow in Space Governance at the McGill University Institute of Air and Space Law (IASL), where her doctoral research focused on insurance and liability issues for the commercial space industry. Dr. Harrington holds a DCL and LLM in Air and Space Law from the McGill IASL, as well as a JD from the University of Connecticut School of Law, an MSc in European Politics and Governance from the London School of Economics, and a BA in International Relations and History from Boston University. She is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts. Dr. Harrington serves as a member of the editorial board for the McGill Annals of Air and Space Law, New Space Journal, the Space Force Journal, and the American Bar Association publication The Air and Space Lawyer.  She is the author of the book “Space Insurance and the Law: Maximizing Private Activities in Outer Space” and numerous articles and book chapters, primarily focused on space law and policy.

Research Interest/Expertise: Space Law and Policy, International Law, International Relations, Treaty Interpretation, Aviation Law, Science Fiction

Dr. Gregory Miller is Chair of the Department of Spacepower and Director of the Schriever Space Scholars program at the Air Command and Staff College. Before joining ACSC, he was Chair of the Strategy Department at the Joint Advanced Warfighting School. Prior to that he held faculty positions at the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University.  Dr. Miller received Bachelor’s Degrees in Political Science and History from the University of California, Los Angeles (1996), a Master’s Degree in Security Policy Studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University (1998), and a Master’s Degree (2000) and Ph.D. (2004) in Political Science from The Ohio State University.  His 2012 book, The Shadow of the Past: Reputation and Military Alliances before the First World War, is part of Cornell University Press’ Security Affairs series. His scholarship also appears in more than a dozen journals, including recent space-related articles in Space Policy, Air and Space Power Journal, The Space Review, and The Strategy Bridge.  He also has an article forthcoming in Astropolitics and a book manuscript under contract with Naval Institute Press titled Sun Tzu in Space: What International Relations, History, and Science Fiction Tell Us about Our Future.

Research Interest/Expertise: International relations theory and international security (especially reputation and military alliances), terrorism and political violence, strategy formulation and evaluation, the application of international relations and political violence concepts to spacepower theory.

Dr. Everett Carl Dolman is Professor of Comparative Military Studies at the United States Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College. His focus is on international relations and theory, and he has been identified as Air University’s first space theorist. Dr. Dolman began his career as an intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency, and moved to the United States Space Command in 1986. In 1991, he received the Director of Central Intelligence’s Outstanding Intelligence Analyst award. Dr. Dolman received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. He then taught international relations and international political economy at The College of William & Mary, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and Berry College before taking his current position at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. Dr. Dolman received the Air Force’s Educator of the Year Award for 2003/04. His published works include Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age (2002); The Warrior State: How Military Organization Structures Politics (2004), Pure Strategy: Power and Principle in the Information Age (2005), and Can Science End War? (2015). He has written numerous book chapters as well as articles for the Journal of Strategic Studies, Comparative Strategy, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Journal of Small Wars and Insurgencies, Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, Citizenship Studies, Politics and Society, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, and The Air and Space Power Review. Dr. Dolman is also co-founder and editor emeritus of Astropolitics: The International Journal of Space Power and Policy and editor of Routledge’s Space Power and Politics book series.

Research Interest/Expertise: Military Strategy, Space and Cyber Power, Civil-Military Relations, Intelligence, Military Theory and Philosophy.

Major Jiemin Hou is an Air University Fellow and Instructor in the Department of Spacepower at the United States Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College (ACSC). He is a graduate of ACSC and the Schriever Space Scholars in AY21. Maj Hou previously served as a Joint Staff J2 targeting officer in the Pentagon. He also served as Flight Commander, 20th Intel Squadron, Offutt, Nebraska. His other assignments include 366th Fighter Wing, Mountain Home, Idaho, and ROTC Instructor at the University of Maryland. He also deployed to Iraq and Kuwait. Major Houreceived his BS and MS degrees in molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of Connecticut. He also graduated with a BA in government and politics from the University of Maryland, a MA in intelligence studies from the American Military University, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina (UNC) Kenan-Flagler Business School. Major Hou is a Language Enabled Airman (LEAP) in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese.

Research Interest/Expertise: Military strategy and operation, spacepower, business strategy and management, finance and accounting, data analytics, and modeling.

Dr Kun-Chin Lin is Professor of Military and Security Studies at the Department of Spacepower at the Air Command and Staff College. He was a University Lecturer in Politics and Tun Suffian College Lecturer and Fellow at the Gonville & Caius College, and directed the Centre for Rising Powers and the Centre on Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge. Dr Lin received his PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley, was a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, and taught at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore. His principal interests are the political economy of China as a rising power and its implications for the global order, and has published extensively on maritime powers in Asia, Chinese energy and transport infrastructure policies, and Asian regionalism and global governance, including articles in Energy Policy, Marine Policy, Transport Research Part A and Part D, Transport Policy, Asian Survey, China Journal, Pacific Focus, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Political Studies Review, Enterprise & Society, and Business & Politics. His research has been supported by the British Academy, Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, and Korea Foundation, etc. He is an editorial board member of Business and Politics, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs, and Maritime Policy & Management, and was an associate fellow of the Chatham House in London.

Research Interest/Expertise: Space and maritime power, geoeconomics, international relations, state capitalism, China, Indo-Pacific

Captain Matthew Nedved is the Director of Operations of the Schriever Space Scholars, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He is a Space Operations officer who has previous experience at the squadron and group levels operating, training, and evaluating officer and enlisted Military Satellite Communications operators. His prior assignments include Extremely High Frequency Satellite Systems Officer, Chief of Training for Mobile Operations and Crew Commander while in the 4th Space Operations Squadron, as well as Staff Evaluator and Standardizations Branch Chief for the 50th Operations Group. Captain Nedved graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering from South Dakota State University. 

Research Interest/Expertise: Military Satellite Communications, Mobile Space Operations and the United States Space Force.

Dr. Jim Powell teaches Schriever Space Scholars as Assistant Professor of Military and Security Studies in the Air Command and Staff College’s Department of Spacepower. A retired U.S. Army colonel and strategic planner, he has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and has served in the Pentagon as speechwriter for the U.S. Army chief of staff and as military advisor to the director of net assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. His previous teaching experience includes postings at the U.S. Army War College, the School of Advanced Military Studies, as well as the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Powell holds a Ph.D. in history from Texas A&M University. He has published Learning under Fire: The 112th Cavalry Regiment in World War II and served as a principal author of the U.S. Army’s two-volume study on the Iraq War.

Research Interest/Expertise: World War II’s Pacific theater, strategic appraisal and net assessment, learning and adaptation in military organizations, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Iraq War (2003-2011).

Dr. M.V. “Coyote” Smith, Colonel, USAF (Retired) is an associate professor in the Schriever Scholars program at the United States Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College.  He retired from active duty in August 2016 as a command space operations officer serving as a professor of strategic space studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.  He has served in various flying, space, and missile assignments and as an instructor at the USAF Weapons School.  During Operation Allied Force (Kosovo) he served as a strategist and targeting officer on Lt General Michael Short's staff at the Air Component headquarters at Dal Molin Air Base in Vicenza, Italy.  During Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), he served at USCENTCOM Headquarters as a strategist on General Tommy Frank’s staff.  He later served as the chief air and space power strategist on the Pentagon’s Strategic Planning Council during Operation Iraqi Freedom, providing advice to the Joint Staff and the Secretary of Defense.  He is the author of Ten Propositions Regarding Spacepower, and the article “America Needs a US Space Corps,” which triggered Congressional and Presidential interest in an independent space service.

Research Interest/Expertise:  All things spacepower; independent space service, space deterrence, space warfare, space control, space commerce, space law enforcement, off-Earth settlement, advanced space technologies, future space concepts, and dinosaurs, because space and dinosaurs are cool!

Dr. Samantha A. Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Military and Security Studies in the Schriever Space Scholars Department of Spacepower at Air Command and Staff College. Dr Taylor joined ACSC in 2021 and teaches War Theory and Joint War Fighting. Before coming to ACSC she started her career in Professional Military Education with a Postdoctoral Fellowship at U.S. Naval War College where she taught Theater National Security Decision Making in 2017. In 2018 she left USNWC and taught as Visiting Professor at US. Army War College in the Department of National Security and Strategy where she taught theories of war, international relations, and national security strategy and policy making. Her Ph.D. is in US diplomatic and military history with an emphasis on the Cold War to 1998 from the University of Southern Mississippi. 

Research Interest/Expertise: Along with US diplomatic and military history, Dr. Taylor studies European military and diplomatic history, World War I, World War II, US national security strategy and policy making, cultural history, international relations, and mass communications.

Dr. Brent D. Ziarnick is an Assistant Professor of  Spacepower and Schriever Space Scholars faculty at the Air University’s Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.  Dr. Ziarnick is a command space operations officer in the Air Force Reserve with extensive experience in Global Positioning System (GPS), space-based space domain awareness, offensive space control, and theater space command and control operations.  In civilian life he was a launch operations engineer at Spaceport America, New Mexico where he developed the long-range plan for the world’s first purpose-built inland commercial spaceport’s vertical launch activity.  He holds doctorates in economic development from New Mexico State University and military strategy from Air Univeristy, a master’s degree in space systems engineering from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, a bachelor’s degree in space operations from the United States Air Force Academy, and is a graduate of both the Air Command and Staff College and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.  Dr. Ziarnick is the author of two books and multiple articles on space power theory and strategy.