Look for my after action report in a couple of weeks:

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. – The Space Innovation and Development Center will conduct the sixth Schriever Wargame at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., starting May 7, 2010.

The Schriever Wargame, set in the year 2022, will explore critical space issues and investigate the integration activities of multiple agencies associated with space systems and services.

The objectives of the wargame will center on: 1) Investigating space and cyberspace alternative concepts, capabilities and force postures to meet future requirements, 2) Examining the contributions of space and cyberspace to future deterrent strategies, and 3) Exploring integrated planning processes that employ a whole-of-nations’ (comprehensive) approach to protect and execute operations in space and cyberspace domains.

Although the details of the scenario remain classified, the game stresses space planning and deterrence in the context of a future global conflict. This wargame builds on the challenges associated with U.S. and allied space systems highlighted during the previous five wargames.

The Space Innovation and Development Center will conduct this wargame on behalf of Air Force Space Command headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Approximately 350 military and civilian experts from more than 30 agencies around the country as well as from Australia, Canada, and Great Britain, will participate in the wargame.

The Schriever Wargame Series is “an important tool that helps us understand a very complex operational environment,” said Gen. C. Robert Kehler, AFSPC commander. “These games give the Air Force and all space mission partners a better idea of how to protect space assets from potential adversaries and how to better integrate space systems through our national security community.”

Agencies participating include: Air Force Space Command; Army Space and Missile Defense Command; Naval Network and Space Operations Command; the National Reconnaissance Office; the National Security Space Office; Air Combat Command; Office of the Secretary of Defense; US Joint Forces Command; US European Command, US Pacific Command; US Strategic Command; US Southern Command; US Transportation Command; US Special Operations Command; US Northern Command; NORAD; Defense Information Systems Agency; the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency; the National Security Agency; NASA; the Office of Homeland Security; Department of Transportation; Department of State; and the Department of Commerce.

Just over a year ago the US Air Force expanded its mission statement, declaring its commitment “to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.” [Mitch Gettle, “Air Force Releases New Mission Statement,” Air Force Print News, December 8, 2005. Emphasis added] Highlighting its newly raised status, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne recently stated: “Cyberspace is a domain for projecting and protecting national power, for both strategic and tactical operations.” [Jim Wolf, “U.S. Air Force Prepares to Fight in Cyberspace,” Reuters News Service, Friday, November 3, 2006. Emphasis added]

Accordingly, AFCYBER Command has been established and slated for eventual four-star authority. But just where is the cyber domain? The Joint Chiefs, with support and input from USAF and STRATCOM leaders, have endorsed a new definition of cyberspace within the draft National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations: “a domain characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures.” Although Wynne stated the new definition incorporated a breadth that goes far beyond “merely defending or attacking computer networks,” and this has been repeated by incoming AFCYBER Commander Lt Gen Elder, the focus of most efforts to date has been on the hardware and peripherals of cyberspace. While the increased attention to and understanding of the value of cyber operations is welcome, it is important that the Air Force does not subordinate the truly revolutionary potential inherent in the new command to the physical manifestations of cyberpower’s supporting architecture. Unless the full possibilities of cyberspace are recognized as existing apart from the physical or real world, AFCYBER risks becoming little more than the latest iteration of INFOSEC.

Cyberspace is a virtual place, an imagined reality. It does not exist in the sense of the physical or real world. It is carried in the frequencies and on the wires of telecommunications networks, but it occupies no territory, nor is it bound by the physical laws of distance, substance, or time. It abides in the minds of its users, and is limited only by their imaginations. Cyberspace is inseparable from the technology that allows the user to interact with it, but it is not the technology that defines it.

The term itself was coined by science fiction author William Gibson in his 1982 Omni magazine novelette, “Burning Chrome,” but was thrust into the popular lexicon via his best-selling 1984 novel Neuromancer. Gibson essentially defined the cyberpunk movement in info-tech fiction by focusing on the “consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions” through on-line computer interactions “ranged in the nonspace of the mind.” [William Gibson, Neuromancer, 20th Anniversary Edition (New York: Ace Books, 2004): p. 69]

Gibson’s description appeared to join with (and ultimately shape) reality with the rise of the civilian Internet in the 1990s, and since then the terms have become effectively interchangeable—though an implicit distinction exists between the communications network expressed in servers and other computer hardware, software, frequency emitters and transmission cables that constitute the Internet proper and the information stored and accessed on the Internet (in cyberspace).

Thus the elements that enable cyberspace have a physical location; they exist in the real world. Interactions that occur within the Internet (and the places—web cites—upon which they occur) do not occupy physical space and essentially transcend the real world. These interactions occur in cyberspace, in the virtual space somewhere in the interconnected minds and expectations of the users enhanced by the technical attributes of the Internet and the physical activities of manipulating keyboards and other input mechanisms in response to feedback from peripheral devices. As such, it cannot be bounded in physical or geographical space. It is not localized. It allows near-instantaneous transport from one virtual location to another, with the click of a mouse. Time itself can be suspended, accelerated, or made moot. And it is in constant, uncontrollable, perhaps even un-guidable organizational flux.

Naturally, without the physical devices and the networks that connect them, there is no cyberspace in which to act. And while the capacity to destroy a thing is a powerful form of control, it does not in any way imply the best use of the thing. Here is where AFCYBER’s thought is currently stunted. Its focus on the real-world manifestation of cyberspace support is understandable. It is a corporeal fact. Computers, frequencies, and users can all be targeted by real-world munitions. Thus the primacy of effort is on cyber protection (physical as well as intrusive denial) and real-space attack (destruction of the enemy’s physical connectivity). Yet this is only a part of the cyberwar equation—and the lesser part at that. The increasingly critical force multiplying value of focusing on cyberspace in the more abstract understanding above (apart from its external physical characteristics) is in training, testing new ideas and concepts, and in augmented reality (AR). 

Fortunately for the US military, virtual reality has long been a vital (if not properly recognized as such) training tool. It is clear that there is no equivalent substitute for direct experience—combat veterans are the most able on the battlespace—but this does not mean that between it and no experience at all is an unusable chasm. As an educator, I assert that reading or learning about war and battle provides vicarious experience—clearly inferior to actual experience but useful nonetheless. Wargames are a type of simulation long embraced by the military, be they traditional thought experiments in strategic venues or hands-on training at the tactical level.

Combat has tremendous costs, and is not always available for hardening combatants. Thus we rely on training and simulations to approximate the battle experience, to provide virtual experience. Increasingly for the Air Force, simulators are providing cheaper, safer, and increasingly more realistic training than hands-on experience.

Augmented reality is the enhancement of real-world experience via real-time cyber-data inputs. It includes the addition of digital data into (or overlaid onto) real world video to enhance and augment the visual experience, but for the military is best expressed in the push of real-time information forward to the combatant as well as the return of real-time data to a central coordinating facility from each user/combatant. The local view or picture of reality is enhanced by motion-tracking inputs, friend-or-foe identification icons, and the like, while the rear-area view of the battlespace may be entirely virtual as represented on a command console.

Cyber-support to the combatant commands is already functioning in this manner, and increased network connectivity and information overlay capabilities will maximize this type of AR in the near future. But this is not the limit of cyber-enabled AR. As the hardware for presenting virtual information in increasingly effortless and individually useful formats accelerates, the combatant will no longer distinguish between the real and the cyber information available, and will seamlessly maximize both in the creation of a lethal synergy.

In medicine we note a parallel example; virtual cadavers are replacing human specimens for all but final training and practice in surgery and autopsy. Difficult surgeries can be virtually practiced in advance using specialized simulators of a living human. Indeed, many of the most difficult surgeries are already performed in a virtually augmented fashion. Laparoscopies and all manner of microsurgeries, for example, are remotely controlled via feedback from a television screen.
Simulators are routinely used in other critical areas, such as testing stress in architectural renderings and in automobile and aircraft designs, even for assessing nuclear explosions. It is no longer necessary to detonate a nuclear device, or wreck an automobile, to get valuable information. Moreover, urban simulators recreate transportation and land-use patterns in reaction to policy decisions. Bomb disposal can be conducted via human manipulation of a simulated (projected) reality via mobile robot.

Pilots now spend long hours in flight simulators, ultimately requiring less expensive basic flight training and reducing equipment loss. Military pilots can virtually practice emergency landings, dangerous flight paths, and new engagement tactics. Special Operations Forces can virtually fly and walk-through the terrain anticipated in an upcoming mission, preparing them for contingencies and enabling unsurpassed preparation and familiarity before embarking. The Air Force simulates conditions in nuclear missile silos, practicing launch events, as does the Navy in its marine simulators, recreating a ship’s bridge for training and evaluation. The ultimate test is in the real world, of course, but the probability of success or desirable result is greatly increased the better the quality of virtual space immersion.

Some day, entire battles may be fought in cyberspace. Already we see Predator unmanned aerial vehicles supporting troops around the world from control centers in the deserts of Nevada. It will not be long before the first virtual dogfight takes place on computer screens located in rival states. The possibilities can only be guessed at, but one thing is sure. In the very near future, the military that can command cyberspace will have an extraordinary advantage on the real-world battlespace. Soon, war may no longer be focused on defeating the enemy’s plan, but on defeating its simulation.