Schriever Wargame 2010 - Air Force Space Command

Industry Perspective
When the Future Dries Up
Dr. Steven M. Huybrechts
Vice President
Applied Minds, Inc.
Reston, Virginia
You glorify the past
When the future dries up ~U2
The fruits of Apollo and Corona have created something
marvelous—something very special. It’s a shame we
now need to tear it down.
While the US space community pats itself on the back for
what is, admittedly, a glorious past and present, its doom is a
mere 15-20 years away. As a long-term part of this community
this author has personally engaged in a lot of this back-patting,
especially when visiting the extremely impressive National Reconnaissance
Office ground sites or participating in such things
as Global Navigation Satellite System negotiations abroad
where the US delegation is justifiably proud to be the standard
that all others look up to. A major change, though, is coming.
It is a strange paradox that the US space community is at once
at the top of its game, simultaneously staring into the abyss.
America’s space infrastructure is increasingly marginalized—marginalized
by new foreign weapons, the growth of
the internet, the accelerated march of technology, and a defunct
acquisition system. In the halls of the Pentagon, Langley, Fort
Meade, and Bolling, decision-makers
are increasingly turning to other mediums.
In many cases, space is simply
seen as too fragile, too expensive. In
these pages, an author recently wrote
the “Department of Defense (DoD) is
presently hesitating at a key decision
point regarding the evolution of space
technology … a clear and purposeful
decision, or lack thereof, will either
lead to increasingly assured space-superiority
… or a decrease in US relevancy
in space.” 1 While accurate, this
article argues that the choice is starker
than this.
Why Have a Schriever Wargame
The Schriever Wargame series is
the single most important simulation
event that the DoD has had in the past
decade—a bold and somewhat parochial
statement, no doubt. But the
Schriever games have illuminated a
critical topic we knew almost nothing
about. Three or four Schrievers ago,
we knew space war only as something entangled with nuclear
war. Today we have a sense of and an intuition about its likely
course, if only an inkling of how far-reaching globally the impact
is likely to be.
What becomes apparent from the Schriever series is that
our space architecture consists increasingly of small numbers
of fragile, vulnerable systems that cost many times more than
what they should (and significantly more than what it costs to
deny/destroy them). New technology is increasingly difficult
to apply and commercial systems are beginning to surpass military
ones in capability. The incredible exponential power of
the internet and Moore’s law, which is changing life every day,
has proven to be difficult to leverage inside our existing space
industrial base. Instead of harnessing it, we are allowing it to
marginalize our space capabilities.
Precision and Bold Thinking
The biggest change to the space environment in the past two
decades is measured in levels of precision. Precision used to be
the sole province of the US military which could drop a bomb
on any point on Earth within a few meters, identify individual
emitters, track the location of the objects orbiting the Earth,
and follow every space launch. But all technology proliferates.
Today, terrorists use GPS to locate buildings in New York and
China engages old weather satellites traveling at 20,000 mph—
these are just two examples of the erosion of our precision advantage.
The proliferation of precision
has turned a sanctuary (short of
global nuclear war) into a potential
kinetic, directed energy, and cyber
shooting gallery.
Given how easy it is now becoming
to target space systems,
the Schriever Wargame series has
taught this author that space deterrence
is extremely fragile—national
militaries are highly dependent on
space assets, space attack can occur
instantaneously with almost no
warning, and significant destruction
can be achieved in a short period of
time, which then can limit response
options. As a result, nations are
motivated to attack first, creating a
situation that can rapidly become
unstable in a time of heightened tension
and mistrust. America needs its
Figure 1. It took more time to get approval of an Acquisition
Strategy for GPS III after the 1999 PNT Selected
Area Review recommended it than it took to land a man
on the moon after President Kennedy’s famous speech.
space infrastructure to get engaged
in theater, the temptation to stop us
getting there can be great indeed.
Couple these ideas to the recogni-
High Frontier 48