Consider a tank game where you can respond to disasters in space battles

The conference offered several activities for the participants. Events at days 0, 45, 60, 90, and 180 included air and ground attacks.

Credit: Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies

US military officials and allies must decide when and how to respond to such incidents. Governments may prefer a diplomatic response to military action in some cases. If a military response is appropriate, should it be in space or elsewhere, such as on land, sea, air, or cyber? All these areas are continuously connected, with ground assets supporting space missions and space assets supporting military operations on Earth. One attack affects the other.

“It wasn’t surprising, but friction in space is a difficult topic,” Galbreath said.

Solving these problems could take time, delaying the US response.

“Because there are few commonly accepted definitions of what causes conflict in space, decision-making can be delayed, uncertain, and reactive,” said Col. Jennifer Reeves, retired, co-author of the Mitchell Institute report.

Cooking a frog

It is also easy to get emotional or relaxed. GPS connection and cyber attacks on space-related equipment are already happening, and it is sometimes difficult to find the perpetrators.

“The meeting also highlighted the importance of this,” Reeves said. “Before leaders can decide on a credible response, they need confidence in what happened, who did it, how it happened, and whether the consequences were intentional.”

“This ambiguity gives our adversaries an advantage,” Reeves said. “Unrelated kinetic repetitions, things like jamming, lasing, and cyber effects can slowly change hostile behavior if it is not clearly identified and resolved over time. This can make us refrain from doing things that in another context may seem very tempting. This is why the meeting emphasized the danger of what some students said to ‘burn the frog’. If pressure is used slowly and continuously, the response process continues. “