Schriever Wargame 2010 - Air Force Space Command

Achieving security in a medium such as space, where offense is highly favored and where
attacks originate primarily in other mediums (which are often politically difficult to attack),
will require the most innovative of thinking.
tion that we have a dysfunctional acquisition system which is
optimized to deploy 20 year old technology in an environment
of constant overruns and there is a real problem. In the time it
takes the Pentagon to approve a single requirements document,
other nations have demonstrated repeatedly the ability to develop
and test multiple generations of a new system. Our most
impressive space capabilities have, in some cases, become unaffordable
and we have lost them. Others are stuck in a time
warp—slight modifications to designs essentially unchanged
since the Reagan administration.
Achieving security in a medium such as space, where offense
is highly favored and where attacks originate primarily
in other mediums (which are often politically difficult to attack),
will require the most innovative of thinking. This kind
of thinking was prevalent at the dawn of the space age, but has
today given way to the conservative certainty that, necessarily,
accompanies any mature mission area upon which daily operations
and national—actually world—economic health depend.
We must recognize that, while traditional space force enhancement
missions (satellite communication; positioning, navigation,
and timing [PNT]; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance;
etc.) are mature, the space control mission area in
this new multi-polar space environment is in its infancy—to
it we must apply highly creative, bold thinking. This thinking
will inevitably require major changes in the traditional mission
areas as well.
Below is, I hope, some bold thinking.
The Joint Space Operations Center – Think Wikipedia
When it comes to data, assuredness and currency are both of
value. In a 1960s nuclear war, assuredness was more important
than currency, in a 2020 space war, their values are reversed.
When you go online to look something up, do you go to
EncyclopediaBritanica.com (the major validated encyclopedia
on the Web) or Wikipedia (written by anyone and everyone)?
The answer is that most of you choose Wikipedia. In 2010,
Wikipedia had over 1,000,000 entries, 50,000 searches per second,
and was growing by over 30,000,000 words per month—
faster than a human could read them if he/she read 24 hours
a day. EncyclopediaBritanica.com has a comparatively paltry
100,000 entries and generally less than 1,000 hits per second,
not all of which are searches. 2 Wikipedia offers currency, EncyclopediaBritanica.com
offers assuredness.
A space war begins and occurs “at the speed of light.” Its
major events happen on the other side of the world. It can be
over in hours. The Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC)
must become a Wikipedia, not the EncyclopediaBritannica.com
that it is today.
Actually, today’s JSpOC systems (not its people who have
one of the toughest jobs in the Air Force) are neurotically
hyper-conservative even by EncyclopediaBritanica.com standards.
These systems reject even data from Air Force space
ground stations, let alone data from other government entities.
Given that much of the best data out there will be in places like
foreign-owned space industry, there is a long, long way to go.
The JSpOC needs to be radically re-engineered to take in all
data from all places at “the speed of light,” albeit tagged with
a confidence level.
Currency is achieved by casting a wide instantaneous net for
data—a useable level of assuredness is achieved through aggregation
and comparison of many data sources rather than rigid
stovepipe integrated tactical warning and attack assessment
certifications. Studies suggest that Wikipedia has four errors
for every three in EncyclopediaBritanica.com. But the Wikipedia
model allows one to cross-check the answer on Google—
instantaneous, personal aggregation of raw data is the new way
Figure 2. Space Telepresence and Collaboration System under development in Glendale, California.
49 High Frontier