Schriever Wargame 2010 - Air Force Space Command

enable appropriate internal defense of information systems and
networks, but are not meant for disclosure to an adversary as a
way of “cyber signaling” to express changes in our posture and
enable conflict escalation control. To be effective in managing
escalation during the period leading up to a potential conflict,
cyber posturing tools must be inherently disclosable to an adversary
without increasing the risk of compromise to our own cyber
systems. They must also be sufficiently rich in nuance to allow
accurate messaging and to express relatively subtle changes in
the perceived level of tension. The need for entirely new S&T
efforts that can enable such effective cyber posturing tools is one
of the key insights from the SW 10
SW 10 also reinforced the need for methods that can provide
significantly increased “cyber resilience,” as opposed to the traditional
focus on cyber defense. Technologies that enable resilience
permit cyber systems to fight through attacks to maximize
mission effectiveness even in large-scale conflicts. For instance,
as noted in “Technology Horizons,” 2 highly virtualized computing
environments controlled by hypervisors that are inherently
agile by design could enable massive network polymorphism
as a new means for achieving cyber resilience. In effect, the
topology of critical networks within such an environment could
be made to change continually, perhaps hundreds of times each
second in a pseudorandom fashion. Such inherently dynamic
networks would be fundamentally different from today’s static
networks, which give cyber adversaries as much time as they
need to observe how we operate within the network, to plan attacks
against it, and to emplace the tools needed to enable their
attacks. In contrast, massive network polymorphism causes a
cyber adversary to have almost no time after gaining entry into
the network to observe and plan such attacks, thereby negating
much of the benefit from gaining access in the first place.
Moreover, the quick steps that cyber adversaries must take to be
effective in such a highly polymorphic network also increase the
likelihood that they will leave behind forensic evidence of their
activity. That, in turn, addresses another of the cyber domain’s
most difficult challenges, again revealed in SW 10, namely the
need for improved means of attribution in the cyber domain.
Note that many of the key technologies to support massive virtualization
and agile hypervisors are already being developed
commercially for cloud computing applications. Air Force S&T
efforts will focus on those additional technologies that can enable
massive network polymorphism to provide greater cyber
resilience and improved cyber attribution.
The S&T cell considered various small, micro, and nanosatellites
during SW 10, with particular emphasis on adversary
use of “grappler” satellites that can attach themselves to a target
satellite to change its momentum and shift its center of mass.
The former induces drift and tumble in the target satellite, while
the latter causes the target satellite’s control system to be unable
to correctly control its orientation and motion. Conceivably,
even very small and remarkably simple satellites of this type
can render a large and extremely expensive target satellite essentially
uncontrollable. Small satellites could also be designed
to provide an on-demand kinetic kill capability, or with microwave-based
directed-energy capabilities to degrade or destroy
the target satellite. Co-orbiting satellites can also provide nondestructive
counterspace options, for instance by interfering at
relatively close ranges with satellite uplink transmissions. Such
small, maneuvering, co-orbiting satellites might also provide an
adversary with other options for lethal and non-lethal proximity
operations in support of counterspace efforts. Increased satellite
self-awareness of the surrounding space environment will
become increasingly important to warn of the approach of such
objects.
SW 10 further showed the need for S&T to support better
characterization of the capabilities of orbiting space objects. It
is technically feasible to achieve such characterization, at least
in part, by inferring potential capabilities of space objects based
on spectral reflectances and emissivities of various parts of their
exterior surface. Factors such as total photovoltaic cell area
could be obtained in this manner and then used to infer operating
power levels. Radiative surfaces can similarly provide information
on thermal management within the object. While such
approaches based on external characterization would provide
valuable information, they leave room for substantial uncertainties
in the real capabilities of an object. In the longer term, interior
characterization could potentially be achievable with an
inspection satellite pair positioned on either side of the object
being inspected, one emitting as an x-ray source and the other as
an imager. Corotation of the pair around the object could even
allow for three-dimensional tomographic reconstruction of interior
components in the object.
During SW 10 the need for substantially greater space situational
awareness was again reaffirmed, both for determining
potentially hostile space actions and for avoiding orbital debris.
Current ground-based radars and telescopes as well as spacebased
space surveillance assets that together comprise the space
surveillance network can, in principle, be augmented to provide
birth-to-death detection, tracking and characterization of every
object in orbit, from large satellites to picosatellites and orbital
debris at low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, and geosynchronous
Earth orbit altitudes. This can be done through a combination
of new ground-based and space-based assets, with appropriate
fusion of data from other satellites, ships, and other sources
into an integrated database. Augmenting radars and optical telescopes
in the space surveillance network with a 3.5-m Space
Surveillance Telescope, the Space Based Space Surveillance
system, and the S-band Space Fence would greatly improve detection
and tracking. As noted above however, determining the
contents of a satellite or its potential capabilities and intent will
remain challenging. By including whole-chain intelligence as
part of birth-to-death tracking, critical “missing pieces” can be
provided that allow a clearer picture of an object’s true nature to
be formed. Bringing together data from active and passive radar
frequency and electro optic/infrared sources can provide a true
“space situational awareness (SSA) network” with capabilities
far beyond those of its individual elements. In principle, all satellites
in orbit could contribute various types of information that,
when fused and analyzed, provides a far more complete SSA
picture, including space weather effects to allow discrimination
of hostile actions from natural causes. Commercial satellites
39 High Frontier