Wargaming the Unknown: The Space Force’s challenge in preparing for a war no one has fought
by Sandra Erwin
February 25, 2025
WASHINGTON — Military planners have centuries of battlefield history to draw from when wargaming conflicts on land, at sea, and in the air. But in space — where no war has ever been waged — there is no historical precedent to guide strategy, no past battles to analyze, and no proven playbook for how a conflict might unfold. This presents a unique challenge for the U.S. Space Force as it works to build a wargaming and experimentation infrastructure capable of modeling a domain where the rules of warfare remain largely untested.
Col. Lincoln Bonner, deputy director of the Space Force’s Space Futures Command Task Force, said that simulating potential adversary actions in space is “absolutely essential” given the lack of historical conflicts to study.
“Fortunately, we’ve never engaged in space warfare, and what space warfare will look like is largely a matter of imagination. And that presents its own tremendous challenge,” he said Feb. 24 at an online forum hosted by the University of Tennessee Space Institute.
Bonner, a graduate of the institute, works under the Space Training and Readiness Command, and is supporting the planning of the proposed Space Futures Command, a new organization championed by Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman.
https://spacenews.com/wargaming-the-unknown-the-space-forces-challenge-in-preparing-for-a-war-no-one-has-fought/
