<http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/nationalsecurity/A58813-2001Jan28.html>
Space Is Playing Field For Newest War Game
Air Force Exercise Shows Shift in Focus
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."
***********
"But consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and
then charges for its reduction. Governments provision of this protection, by
this standard, often qualifies as racketeering. To the extent that the threats
against which a government protects its citizens are imaginary or are
consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection
racket. Since governments themselves often constitute the largest current
threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in
essentially the same ways as racketeers." [C. Tilly "War Making and State Making
as Organized Crime"--from Bringing the State Back In edited by Peter Evans
Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, Cambridge University Press]
