With the increased focus on space as a warfighting domain, a deeper understanding of operating in a contested environment is paramount to ensuring that space capabilities and space systems can be protected from emerging threats and adversaries. Aerospace is expanding its expertise for space warfighting concepts and architectures in support of strengthening the nation’s leadership in space.
Recently, Aerospace successfully conducted an unclassified internal wargame as a demonstration of a real-world informed experience of space operations for engineers, scientists, acquisition officers and space warfighters. The ability to simulate threat scenarios for space addresses the growing need of Aerospace’s government customers to better train and prepare across the full spectrum of capabilities and operations.
“Space warfighting is not only about defending individual satellites. It’s about ensuring our entire range of space-based capabilities continue to support the objectives of all US and allied joint forces in the face of attacks. And denying our adversaries the same … it’s about space superiority to win the war,” said Dr. Robert Stevens, Director of the Model Based Systems Engineering Department and lead for Aerospace’s Concurrent Design Center (CDC). “We also recognize that the adversary isn’t going to come at us with just one type of attack. And we won’t attack or defend with just one type as well. The fight will involve kinetic weapons, electronic attack, cyberwarfare, directed energy, and other methods.”
The Space Environment for Combat – Tactical and Operational Readiness (SECTOR) previously known as the Space Warfighter Initiative (SWI), and the CDC are continuing their years long collaborations. The wargame was developed by CDC, SECTOR and IDAS, leveraging existing applications developed for Aerospace’s government customers. CDC also added new functionalities and different perspectives to the wargaming environment.
Space wargaming and advancing space warfighting concepts are key areas in which Aerospace is demonstrating its ability to lead from the front to address the increasingly contested space environment.
The Key to Protecting Space
Wargaming is essential for operators and warfighters to learn tactical, operational, and strategic decision making informed by real world data. While terrestrial wargaming has a long history across the nation’s military, the ability to practice warfare in space is still a relatively new area. One of the main objectives of this specific space wargame was to expose players to a large-scale conflict in space and show the end effects, or how outcomes of the space battle impact the success or failure of the Joint Forces.
This allows them to be in the commander’s seat, working as a team to make decisions to defend critical assets on the ground and in space while simultaneously attacking the adversary. Wargames typically include real-world data with fictional assets. In this case CDC, SECTOR and IDAS, created assets, such as sensor satellites, jammers, ground stations, and communication satellites for players to utilize in their strategy.
“The value of practicing warfare lies in discipline, resilience, and good tactical judgement,” said Dr. Rick Vazquez, Systems Director in Aerospace’s Defense Systems Group. “Space, as the newest warfighting domain, lags traditional domains like land, sea, and air in terms of wargaming capabilities. It poses unique challenges due its vastness, complexity of technology and nations involved. As the dependency on space continues to grow, developing robust wargaming capabilities for space is imperative to anticipate and mitigate potential threats.”
Another, crucial aspect of this wargame was the emphasized importance of space to multi-domain operations. The terrestrial, sea and air joint warfighters who engage in conflict – the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard – all depend on space-based capabilities to operate, such as missile warning surveillance, global broadcast services, and tactical data links. It is important for space warfighters to understand how these capabilities can be impacted during conflict. Throughout the wargame, players gained a better understanding of how to prioritize their defensive response options and their offensive strategy during a high-pressure situation against an adversary.
A Red vs Blue Battle
To create the wargame, Aerospace’s CDC leveraged its considerable data, accumulated over a long history of designing satellites, architectures and other space technologies for resiliency. It collaborated with SECTOR to take that data, lessons learned, preexisting infrastructure, and scenarios with IDAS developing the interconnected user interfaces (UIs). All these components were then combined into the SECTOR’s Epoch software and programming framework to enable players in different locations to view and interact with the game data simultaneously during the three-hour event.
In just a few short months, the collaborative development effort produced a space wargame capability that enabled users to manage the battle space across a more holistic, immersive environment instead of defending just one satellite constellation.
“The idea here was to give players a chance to be in the hot seat as a commander of essential space capabilities,” said Stevens. “When space capabilities go away due to attacks, then participants will see the impact that outcome has on the terrestrial warfighters. Halfway through our game, one team lost an aircraft carrier partially due to reduced space-based missile warning capabilities.”
The CDC created the scenario and set the challenge for their engineers, with three teams across Chantilly, Colorado Springs and El Segundo designated Red, Blue or White. With a call of ‘Fight’s On’, a phrase that is used to start wargames, Red and Blue battled and protected their capabilities. After the game concluded, the teams received assessment metrics that provided scores and determined the winner.
Looking Forward
The success of this space-wargame, in many ways, marks a new era for Aerospace’s CDC and SECTOR teams, both of which have recently adapted their organizations under new names looking to more actively apply their expertise across the mission lifecycle.
“For almost 30 years, we have been the Concept Design Center and focused on designing concepts for satellites and architectures,” said Stevens. “Our scope has expanded recently beyond just concept designs. We decided this year to expand what we do, and wargaming is one of those areas we'd like to expand into.”
Stevens added that future iterations of the space wargame could include more players, possibly incorporating an even fuller spectrum of threats and space-based missions. Outcomes of wargames like this could help inform adjudicators in large-scale global wargames, like those played at Naval War College.
“We need to keep in mind that adversaries want to take away our ability to operate freely in space. We must have the mindset to defend and protect our space capabilities,” said Stevens. “However, you touch space, whether in acquisition, operations, or engineering, you need to factor in resilience and space protection.”