EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- More than a dozen commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) industry representatives recently participated in Space Systems Command’s (SSC) Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve’s (CASR) first-ever wargaming event.
CASR is a new SSC strategic initiative designed to ensure access to commercial capabilities throughout the spectrum of conflict while maintaining security, reliability, and availability.
SSC’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO) hosted the first CASR wargame at the Hoover Institution in Washington, D.C. in late March. Leaders from the COMSATCOM community, USSF, and stakeholder agencies came together for this all-day event.
USSF Maj. General Stephen Purdy, military deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, provided opening remarks at the event. USSF General Michael Guetlein, Vice Chief of Space Operations, served as the keynote speaker, and the event closed with a roundtable discussion between Ret. General John “Jay” Raymond; Barb Golf, USSF strategic advisor for Space Domain Awareness; Maj. Gen. Dennis Bythewood, special assistant to the Chief of Space Operations; Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader, Commercial Space Office; and Lt. Col. Brandon Galindo, CASR division chief.
Wargames are a time-honored military tradition designed to explore strategic concepts, train personnel and assess potential outcomes, Galindo said. Currently, USSF capacity requirements during a crisis or conflict are expected to exceed peacetime capacity, so CASR is working to develop a framework for guaranteeing access to critical commercial capabilities during times of conflict.
The wargame focused on COMSATCOM and revealed areas of opportunity to better maintain secure and reliable satellite communications in times of conflict, Galindo said. This is a critical capability that must be integrated into a hybrid architecture with military, international, and commercial capabilities.
“We had a blue cell, which was the government, a white cell, which was the group throwing the war game injects and then we also had a cell for industry,” Kniseley said. “And what this war game allowed us to do was really test out the framework we have and answer questions like: do we have the right mechanisms in place to increase the capability?”
CASR aligns with the USSF Commercial Space Strategy, leveraging a “hybrid” space architecture that integrates both government and commercial capabilities. SSC is spearheading CASR’s development, beginning by introducing a framework in 2023 that has since evolved over multiple government and industry reviews. Engagements with more than 1,000 industry representatives and multiple industry days has continued to refine CASR’s approach to ensure effective integration.
CASR’s goal is to identify voluntary commercial participants and ensure interoperability through training, wargames and exercises, while also crafting pre-negotiated contracts with commercial space companies to provide surge capacity when needed. These services could include: satellite communications; tactical surveillance, reconnaissance, and tracking; and space domain awareness.
Surge capacity could include leveraging commercial capabilities already on orbit, augmenting existing USSF missions with added capacity, reaching back into existing production lines to rapidly produce satellites, and denial of service over a region.
Earlier in March, COMSO awarded CASR pilot contracts to four Space Domain Awareness companies to inform CASR’s framework and further develop the programs maturity, Kniseley explained.
As the CASR office looks to the future, they are actively taking the lessons learned from the end-to-end process from participant identification and culminating with a wargame. This pilot approach will be applied to multiple mission areas as the team continues to refine the various aspects of CASR and engage with industry and government stakeholders, Galindo said.