Space Is Playing Field For Newest War Game

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58813-2001Jan28.html

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 29, 2001 ; Page A01

SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Last week, the possibility of war
in space moved from pure science fiction created in Hollywood to
realistic planning done here by the Air Force.

Spurred by the increased reliance of the U.S. military and the U.S.
economy on satellites, and facing a new secretary of defense, Donald
H. Rumsfeld, who is more focused on space than his predecessors were,
the Air Force's Space Warfare Center here staged the military's first
major war game to focus on space as the primary theater of operations,
rather than just a supporting arena for combat on earth. The scenario
was growing tension between the United States and China in 2017.

"We never really play space," Maj. Gen. William R. Looney III said.
"The purpose of this game was to focus on how we really would act in
space."

The unprecedented game, involving 250 participants playing for five
days on an isolated, super-secure base on the high plains east of
Colorado Springs, was the most visible manifestation of a
little-noticed but major shift in the armed forces over the last
decade.

The Gulf War showed the U.S. military for the first time how important
space could be to its combat operations -- for communications, for the
transmission of imagery and even for using global positioning
satellites to tell ground troops where they are. The end of the Cold
War allowed many satellites to be shifted from being used primarily
for monitoring Soviet nuclear facilities to supporting the field
operations of the U.S. military.

But military thinkers began to worry that this new reliance on space
was creating new vulnerabilities. Suddenly, one of the best ways to
disrupt a U.S. offensive against Iraq, for example, appeared to be
jamming the satellites on which the Americans relied or blowing up the
ground station back in the United States that controlled the
satellites transmitting targeting data.

In response, the Air Force over the last year focused more on space --
not just how to operate there, but how to protect operations and
attack others in space. It established a new "space operations
directorate" at Air Force headquarters, started a new Space Warfare
School and activated two new units: the 76th Space Control Squadron,
whose name is really a euphemism for fighting in space, and the 527th
Space Aggressor Squadron, whose mission is to probe the U.S. military
for new vulnerabilities.

All those steps come as Rumsfeld, who just finished leading a
congressional commission on space and national security issues, takes
over the top job at the Pentagon. Among other things, his commission's
report hinted that if the Air Force doesn't get more serious about
space, the Pentagon should consider establishing a new "Space Corps."

So, perhaps to show that it is giving space its due, the Air Force
held its first space war game here, and even invited reporters inside
for a few hours. The players worked in a huge building behind two sets
of security checkpoints, the second of which features two motion
detectors, four surveillance cameras and a double-fenced gate with a
"vehicle entrapment area."

Yet officials were notably jumpy about discussing specifics with the
reporters they brought in. "We're doing something a little
unprecedented, bringing press into the middle of a classified war
game," said Col. Robert E. Ryals, deputy commander of the Space
Warfare Center here.

The U.S. military has a long tradition of conducting war games, not so
much to predict whether a war will occur, but to figure out how to use
new weapons, how to best organize the military and how political
considerations might shape the conduct of war.

After World War II, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz commented that the war in
the Pacific had been gamed so frequently at the Naval War College
during the 1930s that "nothing that happened during the war was a
surprise -- absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics towards the
end of the war. We had not visualized these."

Last week's space war game was set in 2017, with country "Red" massing
its forces for a possible attack on its small neighbor, "Brown," which
then asked "Blue" for help. Officials described "Red" only as a
"near-peer competitor," but participants said Red was China and Blue
was the United States. When asked directly about this, Lt. Col. Donald
Miles, an Air Force spokesman, said, "We don't talk about countries."

Going with the conventional wisdom in the U.S. military, the game
assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and
Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other
satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even
frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based
lasers that could temporarily dazzle or permanently blind the optics
of satellites.

The Blue side also had a National Missile Defense system, as well as
reusable space planes that could be launched to quickly place new
satellites in orbit or repair and refuel ones already there. Veiled
comments made by some participants indicated that both sides also
possessed the ability to attack each others' computers -- in military
parlance, "offensive information warfare capabilities" -- but no one
would discuss those.

On Monday, as the game began, no conflict had occurred -- or was even
inevitable. As Red threatened its neighbor Brown, the first major
question that Blue faced was whether to stage a "show of force" in
space, akin to sending aircraft carriers to the waters off a regional
hot spot.

On Day Two of the game, Blue decided to show force by launching more
surveillance and communications satellites, making it harder for Red
to stage an early knockout attack -- that is, a successful Pearl
Harbor.

Space gives the United States "more opportunities to demonstrate
resolve" without using force, said Maj. Gen. Lance L. Smith, who
played the role of commander of a Blue military task force. Asked
whether that included taking over Red's broadcast satellites, he said:
"Those are the kind of options."

On Day Three of the game, privately owned foreign satellites became a
key issue. The Blue side asked the foreign firms not to provide
services to Red. In response, Red tried to buy up all available
services to constrain the U.S. military, which relies heavily on
commercial satellites for many of its communications. Red offered to
pay far more than is customary. Blue then said it would top Red's
offer. The eight people playing the foreign firms responded that they
would honor their contracts, which left Blue worried and unhappy.

Robert Hegstrom, the game's director, concluded that "dealing with
third-party commercial providers is going to be a priority for
CincSpace" -- the U.S. commander for space operations.

Another lesson of the early friction between Blue and Red was that the
Pentagon should prepare plans for what to do if it picks up
indications that an adversary is getting ready to shoot blinding laser
beams at commercial satellites operated by U.S. firms. Among other
things, one official said, the government could tell the American
companies to close the "shutters" over the optics on those satellites.

For four days, the two sides tiptoed up to the edge of war, but never
actually fired a shot. They did come close: At one point, the Red
military prepared a plan to fire dozens of nonnuclear missiles at U.S.
military installations in Hawaii and Alaska. They calculated that
those missiles would use up all the shots the United States had in its
missile defense arsenal -- and thereby leave the U.S. homeland open to
being hit by subsequent missiles.

But the players found that "theater missile defense" -- that is,
coverage of a region, usually by U.S. Navy warships -- bolstered
deterrence in two ways, by making it harder for Red to attack deployed
U.S. forces, and by encouraging U.S. allies to stay in the coalition,
which would keep them under the protective umbrella of those ships.

Red also launched cyberattacks on U.S. computers, said Miles, the Air
Force spokesman, who declined to provide details.

Officials were unusually tight-lipped about what actually happened in
the game but were willing to describe some of their conclusions.

Not surprisingly, they found that many of the weapons on the Air
Force's drawing boards -- missile defenses, anti-satellite lasers and
"reusable space planes" -- could have a useful role in deterring
future wars by discouraging adversaries from thinking they can
preemptively knock out the United States.

"With a robust force, we can absorb some losses before [the situation]
becomes critical," said Hegstrom, the game director. But, he said,
with the "thin" space presence the United States will have in 2017 if
current trends continue, "it becomes critical to respond almost
immediately." Thus a future president might be backed into escalating
quickly, launching preemptive strikes against enemy weapons that could
attack key U.S. satellites. "Space surprised us a bit" in how much it
might help boost deterrence of a future war, said retired Air Force
Gen. Thomas S. Moorman Jr., who played part of the Blue team's
political leadership. "It turns out that space gives you a lot of
options before you have to go to conflict."

But generally the players came up with more questions than answers,
both about how deterrence might work in the 21st century and how to
employ the new weapons the Air Force is contemplating.

"We know what deterrence was with 'mutually assured destruction'
during the Cold War," said Brig. Gen. Douglas Richardson, commander of
the Space Warfare Center. "But what is deterrence in information
warfare?"

Likewise, said Maj. John Gentry, who played a staff member on the Blue
force, the small attack satellites that both sides possessed are only
barely understood. "A lot more thinking will have to go into the
microsatellite, the concept of operations about how to use it," he
said.

"I hate to use the word 'paradigm,' but mind-set changes are happening
here," added Maj. George Vogen, who helped run the game. "This is the
next step in seeing the growth of space into its own right."



*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;  Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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