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

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."