Schriever Wargame 2010 - Air Force Space Command

on key issues impacting our nascent defense space program.
Beginning with three observers for the Schriever II Wargame
in 2003, Canada’s participation has continued to grow. For
Schriever Wargame 2010 (SW 10), our 20 person team consisted
of representatives from a broad range of defense and civil
organizations. The intent was to have the appropriate representation
across all game cells to capture the breadth of issues
and requirements associated with military-to-military collaboration
and government-to-government interaction. Our ongoing
involvement in these games has provided the DND/CF
with critical insight and renewed appreciation of the challenges
and potential vulnerabilities associated with space operations,
which have been effectively used to inform the development of
our new draft space policy and plan for future investments in
our space capability development strategy. Several Air Force
Space Command commander’s objectives for SW 10 had previously
been briefed, including one to explore integrated planning
processes that employed a whole of nations approach to
the protection of assets and execution of operations in both
space and cyberspace. In line with these objectives, Canada
also established the following national objectives: to further develop
and exercise the combined joint task force (CJTF) Space
and Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC) constructs;
to gain a better understanding of the synergies and related vulnerabilities
of the space-cyberspace linkages; and to assess the
direction articulated in our draft national defense space policy
against issues and events that arose during the conduct of game
play. I will therefore provide both my comments and perspectives
on SW 10 as a reflection of these objectives.
Game Play
From a Canadian perspective, the game’s overall success
was due, in no small part, to the changes made very early to
the Executive Decision Cell (EDC) and Space Council (SC).
Expanding the EDC membership to include the senior SC
members effectively closed the seams between military and
political gaming authorities and resulted in a more responsive
structure in terms of game options analysis, inject of coalition
perspectives, and game direction for execution. This, in turn,
allowed a much improved strategic approach to the game focused
on policies, evolving geopolitical dynamics, and measured
responses. More importantly, SW 10 allowed the senior
leadership to actively challenge “what-if” scenarios with the
red team in advance of game play, providing the unique opportunity
to better understand the complexity and uncertainties
of an issue; an adversary’s underlying intent or ambition; an
adversary’s interpretation of and likely response to actions; and
finally the potential collateral or 2 nd and 3 rd order effects of a
conflict that escalates into the global commons. I would at this
stage encourage that this EDC/SC structure be retained for the
development of future Schriever Wargames.
Notwithstanding the benefits derived from a restructured
EDC, it was evident that elements of the CJTF-Space and
CSpOC construct require further attention to ensure that they
are fully enabled to take a more active and deliberate role in
the actual command, control, and management of apportioned
national space assets in response to dynamic day-to-day events
in space. The doctrinal intent of a CJTF is to ensure the effective
and efficient employment of assigned forces through unified
command and control. In SW 10, the CJTF-Space was to
provide assured space capabilities support to a regional CJTF,
utilizing the CSpOC’s centralized command and control of apportioned
national US/coalition space assets. The CSpOC was
to support the planning, coordination, and employment optimization
of these space assets to provide maximum effect while
concurrently protecting those assets and, when applicable,
mitigating their exposure to either interference or attack. The
CSpOC construct would enable increased space capabilities
and capacity, employment flexibility, and enhanced redundancy
if/when some of these assets were lost. Unfortunately, from my
perspective, much of the SW 10 game play resulted in strategic
level direction and tactical level engagement. Consequently,
the CSpOC was not “operationalized” to adeptly manage the
employment of apportioned space assets, nor was it able to be
responsive to interference or attack on its apportioned space assets.
The CSpOC and its operators, including analysts, should
have been working issues of attribution by ascertaining the
cause and effect of satellite losses or degradation, subsequently
determining the impacts on the capabilities available to the users,
and developing plans to mitigate the effects. The commander
CJTF-Space, through the CSpOC, should have been
actively managing and dynamically repositioning space assets,
as applicable, in direct response to perceived threats to, and
inherent vulnerabilities of, US/coalition satellites.
While I firmly believe in the intrinsic value of the CJTF-
Space/CSpOC construct, its basic ability to influence and react
to unfolding space events in SW 10 was, unfortunately, artificially
constrained by game moves which spanned several days’
activities. While these game moves greatly enhanced the game
play at the strategic level and enabled a comprehensive assessment
of the consequences of the previous day’s direction, they
unfortunately inhibited the CSpOC from taking more deliberate
and timely action to address the unfolding dynamics of a conflict
in the space commons. Specifically, when a week or several
days of events are compressed into a single day for a game
move, the result could be a significant loss of key space capabilities
that could have been potentially avoided or mitigated if
the CJTF-Space and CSpOC had been able to engage when the
actual events were occurring. Timely engagement and management
of space capabilities could have significantly altered some
of the strategic decisions that the EDC may have had to contend
with, from deterrent efforts to managing escalating activities
that at times artificially pushed the game to red lines.
I fully appreciate and value the necessary controls and
mechanisms required to move scenarios along to generate strategic
decision making. There may now be an opportunity, if
not a fundamental requirement, to consider adopting a more operational
focus for Schriever Wargame 12 (SW 12) that would
enable the CJTF-Space/CSpOC construct to specifically be
gamed. If this is not possible, then we should consider running
the CJTF-Space/CSpOC constructs in an exercise, maybe similar
to the US Strategic Command sponsored Global Thunder or
23 High Frontier