1/30/01 10:25 a.m.
War Games, Rumsfeld Style
Exercising space power.

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy
& an NRO contributing editor

hat a difference a week makes! Presumably, the Pentagon will say it was purely a coincidence that the first war game it has ever held in which outer space was treated as the primary theater of operations occurred in the week after the Clintonistas finally left town. There is reason to believe, however, that — as the Marxist-Leninists are fond of saying — it was no accident, comrade.

After all, for the past eight years, President Clinton paid lip service to the importance of America being able to have ready and reliable access to and use of space — and the capability to deny such access and use to hostile powers. Yet, his administration deliberately precluded the nation from acquiring the means to exercise this sort of "space power." In fact, the only time Mr. Clinton used his line-item veto authority (before it was found to be unconstitutional) explicitly for policy reasons was to excise funding for military research and development programs that would have given the United States even limited space control capabilities.

Then, just as the new Bush-Cheney team arrived to take the Pentagon's helm, the military signaled its recognition that this was a strategically foolish — and potentially costly — policy disconnect. As a front-page article in yesterday's Washington Post revealed, during the new administration's first week in office, the Air Force conducted a major simulation of a conflict between "Blue" (i.e., the United States) and a country called "Red" (understood to be China) in 2017 that revolved around warfare and other operations in space.

This war game had to have been informed by the report released on 11 January 2001 by a blue-ribbon commission that urged the United States to obtain and exercise space power. It certainly was influenced by the fact that the commission's chairman, Donald Rumsfeld, had just been sworn in as Secretary of Defense — after stressing as he was nominated and during his confirmation hearings that he was determined to enable the nation to deal with present and growing threats to its civil, as well as military, equities in space.

In any event, according to the Post report by its Pentagon correspondent, Tom Ricks, the war game illuminated a number of ideas long championed by proponents of space power like Don Rumsfeld. These include:

• The Gulf War showed the U.S. military for the first time how important space could be to its combat operations — for communications, for the transmission of imagery and even for using global-positioning satellites to tell ground troops where they are…. But military thinkers began to worry that this new reliance on space was creating new vulnerabilities. Suddenly, one of the best ways to disrupt a U.S. offensive against Iraq, for example, appeared to be jamming the satellites on which the Americans relied or blowing up the ground station back in the United States that controlled the satellites transmitting targeting data.

• The U.S. military has a long tradition of conducting war games, not so much to predict whether a war will occur, but to figure out how to use new weapons, how to best organize the military and how political considerations might shape the conduct of war.

• Going with the conventional wisdom in the U.S. military, the game assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based lasers that could temporarily dazzle or permanently blind the optics of satellites. The Blue side also had a National Missile Defense system, as well as reusable space planes that could be launched to quickly place new satellites in orbit or repair and refuel ones already there.

• "On Day Two of the game, Blue decided to show force by launching more surveillance and communications satellites, making it harder for Red to stage an early knockout attack — that is, a successful Pearl Harbor. Space gives the United States 'more opportunities to demonstrate resolve' without using force," said Maj. Gen. Lance L. Smith, who played the role of commander of a Blue military task force.

• Not surprisingly, [participants] found that many of the weapons on the Air Force's drawing boards — missile defenses, anti-satellite lasers and "reusable space planes" — could have a useful role in deterring future wars by discouraging adversaries from thinking they can preemptively knock out the United States. "With a robust force, we can absorb some losses before [the situation] becomes critical," said Robert Hegstrom, the game director. But, he said, with the "thin" space presence the United States will have in 2017 if current trends continue, 'it becomes critical to respond almost immediately.' Thus a future president might be backed into escalating quickly, launching preemptive strikes against enemy weapons that could attack key U.S. satellites.

• "Space surprised us a bit" in how much it might help boost deterrence of a future war, said retired Air Force Gen. Thomas S. Moorman Jr., who played part of the Blue team's political leadership [and served on the recent Rumsfeld Commission]. "It turns out that space gives you a lot of options before you have to go to conflict."

In other words, it appears that — notwithstanding the keening of those who oppose the "militarization of space" — U.S. control of space, far from promoting global conflict, will actually help keep the peace. With this lesson learned, no more weeks should be allowed to go by before the U.S. begins acquiring the means to exercise space power.