Schriever Wargame 2010 - Air Force Space Command

Dynamic, Multi-Layered, Defense-in-Depth
A dynamic, multi-layered, defense-in-depth strategy is a key
aspect of the comprehensive approach. The US must be willing
to take all appropriate collective, mutual, or individual selfdefense
measures to ensure that hostile actions by nation-states,
sub-national entities, or individuals cannot prevent our access
to or use of space or cyberspace. Self-defense measures should
seek to deny an adversary the benefit of hostile acts and/or inflict
punishment for aggression.
The strategy should be based on a theory of victory (and
war termination) for conflict involving the space and cyber domains.
It should link ends, ways, and means. It should address
the relationship among passive and active defenses as well as
offensive measures to protect the space and cyber assets the US
and its allies own, operate, or employ.
The strategy should recognize that America must be able to
deal with surprise attack and absorb an aggressor’s first blow.
It must take into account the consequences of loss or disruption
of space and cyber capabilities and services. This includes
understanding their secondary and tertiary implications. We
must be able to operate through an attack and the resulting degraded
environment. Subsequently seizing the initiative and
reasserting at least working control of the operating mediums
will be essential to defend successfully the freedom of space
and cyberspace.
The strategy should establish clear defense priorities. It
should direct actions for mission assurance, resilience, protection,
security, reconstitution, and recovery. This should encompass
all space and cyber system segments and functions
end-to-end. We should seek to channel threats into costly and
unproductive areas. While avoiding the imposition of unaffordable
costs on us, the strategy should ensure that US space
and cyber mission capabilities will be sufficiently ready, secure,
resilient, and survivable to meet national and homeland security
needs. Indeed, such resilience and survivability are directly
tied to issues of self-deterrence and reassurance.
Establishing alliance or coalition arrangements to protect
against threats to international security in space and cyberspace
will be an important component of the strategy. This includes
new public-private sector partnerships in recognition that much
of the pertinent assets and infrastructure are privately owned
and operated. The US should reorient extant relationships and
expand its engagement with new international partners to establish
a space and cyber security framework based upon mutual
security and economic interests.
In the process, regional security architectures will have to be
squared with the global nature of the space and cyber domains.
Such arrangements will contribute to deterrence by sharing the
defense burden and complicating a potential adversary’s risk
calculus. They will also contribute to escalation control and
warfighting by increasing the resources and options that can be
brought to bear in response to aggression.
Centralized Planning, Decentralized Execution
Preparations for crisis management, conflict prevention,
and warfighting should recognize that policies, processes, and
structures established for the Cold War may not have caught up
with this century’s threats to space and cyber security. They
may need to be altered or replaced. A comprehensive approach
cannot be undertaken on an ad hoc, disjointed basis. It will
require comprehensive strategic planning.
Implementing a comprehensive approach will require new
policy and guidance, intra- and inter-governmental planning
mechanisms and processes, and organizational constructs. The
DoD’s Joint Operation Planning and Execution System has
provided a solid foundation for military planning. But the US
will need a new paradigm and broader system to accomplish
the holistic planning necessary for a comprehensive, whole of
nations approach. The National Security Council system provides
a potential mechanism for comprehensive planning at the
strategic level. Similarly, the Combined Joint Task Force, Joint
Interagency Task Force, and Combined Operations Center constructs
could provide a basis for orchestrating integrated planning
and execution at the operational levels.
Deliberate, whole of nations, pre-crisis planning for plausible
space and cyber contingencies is an essential basis for
concerted action. Such centralized planning is necessary to
coordinate, de-conflict, synchronize and, as appropriate, integrate
decentralized execution of lines of operations. It should
produce a rich menu of carefully thought out courses of action,
ranging from flexible deterrent to major attack options, similar
to what the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff generated for
the Single Integrated Operations Plan. In addition, it should
align conditions, postures, rules of engagement, and authorities
to enable those alternative courses of action.
The options should encompass all phases of operations and
involve all available instruments. Military options should range
from conditioning and signaling to preemptive and preventative
actions. Response options may range from demarches and
sanctions to a response-in-kind to asymmetric (horizontal or
vertical) cross-domain, escalation.
Planning should clarify our red lines (or zones), thresholds,
and triggers. We should recognize that unintended or unanticipated
effects may contribute to inadvertent escalation. Consequently,
our red lines/zones must be clearly articulated through
communications of declaratory policy, conditioned by operational
behavior, and understood by both allies and adversaries
alike.
While no plan can be expected to endure beyond contact
with the enemy, the process of comprehensive, whole of nations
planning will enrich strategy formulation and its operational
execution. Given the dynamism and complexity of the
space and cyber mediums, the intellectual engagement of senior
political authorities and operational commanders prior to
the emergence of a deep crisis or outbreak of hostilities will pay
dividends. Moreover, it will put us in a far better position for
effective crisis action planning by establishing a foundation to
meet the exigencies of specific crises.
In particular, decision-making must be prepared to address
the speed of battle in the space and cyber domains. Command
and control processes must be adapted to operate at network
speeds to enable US, allied, or coalition forces to seize and
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