Exploration note of the space wargame realized on 19/11/2021

Abstract

Designed in two phases, crisis management and Red Team exploitation of the results of the crisis, this Wargame allowed an in-depth reflection of the players, leading to the most negative possible result of a generalized catastrophe of the Kessler syndrome type. The causes of this development are to be found in a continuous escalation due to the export of traditional geopolitical oppositions to space competition, in particular between great powers, pushing the players to act in a logic of confrontation rather than cooperation. The relevance of decisions, as well as their rationality, have demonstrated a fundamental political dimension of management of Space, in particular in case of crisis, with the pursuit of interests and the will to power as the main engine of actions. The cooperation emerges then only after the disaster, to manage and try to minimize the consequences once this one is realized, and still only in the impacted environment, since the terrestrial crises having emerged during the management of space crisis (the phenomenon of chain crises) are perpetuated because of a conflictual logic still in progress and not timed by a disaster or mechanisms of decompression.

The wargame thus realized, in addition to confronting the players to the decision-making under constraints (the pressure of time, chance, the urgency of the decision, the permanent adaptation… ) and to put into practice their theoretical reflections, has allowed us to draw some lessons from space crisis management, such as the relevance of such scenarios, the ever-increasing probability of space wars and the proximity between space crises and the mechanisms of nuclear deterrence (arguing at the same time for the creation upstream of a grammar of crisis management and escalation, in order to develop means of countering it, to avoid a result as disastrous as that of the present simulation…).

About the Author

Thibault Fouillet is a research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research, and a PhD student at the University of Luxembourg. He is writing a PhD thesis in military history and strategy with the title Grand Strategy and Small States. He was an Artillery Officer between 2016 and 2018 and is currently a research associate at IESD. t.fouillet@frstrategie.org