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.

Let’s look at some of the basic flaws in Broad’s article. It starts with the very dramatic and colorful renderings of earth orbit. Note the 10,000-plus bits of space junk larger than a softball are portrayed as significant blobs. In fact, were these depicted to scale (relative to an earth roughly nine inches in diameter), most would be invisible to the most powerful microscope. Indeed, the space junk that looms so ominously in the NYT graphics would be so insignificant they would exist only in theory—as no direct evidence of them could be detected. Each of the red, yellow, and blue dots is shown larger than the metropolitan area of the city of Houston, TX. In truth, if all of the space junk, known and hypothesized, were jumbled together, it could be piled into a single vacant black in the aforementioned city, with room left over for municipal parking. It’s a big sky out there, folks. Collisions are bad, but just how likely is a catastrophic crash? 

Broad claims the debris cloud will expand continuously, apparently increasing its mass and destructiveness over time. No doubt the ability to detect the debris will expand, as sensors are cross tabulated and estimates refined (going from 800 to 1000 bits of detectable debris in this case), which is a quite different thing than spontaneous generation of new debris. The apparent growth in the model is from the increasing dispersion of debris over time. The implosion of the satellite created by the hyper-velocity ASAT sent the debris out in a three dimensional cloud (not unlike a large firework display). This means that as the debris gets farther from the center of the implosion some of it will burn up in the atmosphere and some will move out of earth orbit altogether. Some bits will track along a relatively stable orbital path and remain a nuisance/threat for thousands (hardly millions, as claimed) of years. The key factor here is that as the debris cloud expands the debris effectively disperses (distance between bits of detritus increases) making it less of a navigation hazard than if the same cloud were to stay roughly contiguous in a usable orbital slot. The catastrophic cascade effect referenced is a particularly scary and dramatic argument. In this case, a large piece of debris collides with another large piece (on the order of a spent rocket body or decrepit satellite) smashing the latter into thousands of other bits which seek out more large bodies to crash into, and so forth and so on, until space junk is present on the order of 300-1000 times its current density. The likelihood of such a chain of events occurring today is so remote that the author of the idea now agrees that it was a fanciful and essentially ridiculous idea. Only if one projects a geometric progression of orbital debris growth along the curve evidenced in the past fifty years is the possibility even remotely possible. Before the Chinese ASAT, it was something on the order of a fifty percent chance (of one occurrence) within the next thousand years. Now it is probably something like a fifty percent chance of one occurrence in 970 years. 

Of course, all this presumes an unchanging future. No assumptions about the possibility of cleaning up space junk (and there are numerous interesting proposals out there on how this might be accomplished), learning from previous mistakes (the earliest space launches were the dirtiest), or limiting blast damage from kinetic engagements can be considered. As for the last comment, the Old Soviet Empire tested up to twenty of its massive, SL-11 launched co-orbital ASATs in the 1970s and ‘80s, and achieved about a fifty percent success rate. It was a typically ham-fisted approach. Essentially they maneuvered a massive shotgun shell into proximity of the target satellite (about 5 km or so) and then detonated, allowing the momentum of the ASAT to dictate the vector of the blast pattern. Anyway, after the first attempt riddled the orbit with detritus, the Soviets altered the direction of the intercept so that the velocity of the blast would be toward the earth’s atmosphere (down its gravity well). In this way, not only was the ASAT debris quickly and efficiently disposed of in the upper atmosphere (quite attractively, I imagine, if one happened to be watching in the night sky) but the entire target, too—shreds and all—was pushed into the atmosphere to burn up rapidly and cleanly. It is impossible to argue that these tests actually made orbits safer (by taking out the dead hulks of old satellites), but the latter ones did not add any significant debris to orbit. The Chinese could use a similar approach to future tests by simply altering their engagement trajectory. Kinetic kill is not the only space weapon envisioned, and in fact the least desirable. A laser or other directed energy weapon based in space could disable satellites without creating any debris. Smaller bits of debris could become target practice for lower levels of generated energy, giving them a push into decaying orbits for complete burn disposal. The important point here is that no one knows what space war will look like in the coming centuries. But it likely will come. The Chinese have placed an exclamation point on the preceding sentence. 

This debris problem is vital to the anti-weaponization platform. If they can argue a single test might ruin spaceflight forever, then oh-my-gosh Chicken Little, a war in space would inevitably eliminate the ability to operate there FOREVER. That the world will be forced to abandon space travel because of increasing debris due to some mindless warrior ethos expanding into the heavens is preposterous.