By Any Other “Blue Four Is Dead

SSgt. Erick Vega, an avionics specialist, attempts to determine if his equipment was failing or if the space systems used by the F-16 were being attacked by simulated enemy forces during a Red Flag exercise in 2016. Airmen participate in the live, virtual, constructive portion at the CAOC during a Red Flag exercise at Nellis in 2015. Space forces first officially played in a Red Flag in 2011, with the first operational Blue cyber participation in 2013. In each year since, at least once during the four annual exercises, space and cyber warriors join the scrimmage along with the pilots, weapon systems operators, air battle managers, combat search and rescue crews, intelligence personnel, and maintainers employed in today’s modern air combat domain. Red Flag still evokes images Red Flag adversary forces today include not only the 64th Aggressor Squadron flying specially marked F-16s and the of aerial combat, but space 507th Air Defense Aggressor Squadron replicating near-peer SAM systems, but also the 57th Information Aggressor Squad- and cyber capabilities are Capt. Brian Goodman, an Aggressor flight commander, ron (IAS) and the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron (SAS). A Kill an increasingly important prepares to test a fighter squadron’s GPS capability without The Air Force Reserves’ 26th SAS and the Kansas Air National the squadron knowing, during a 2016 Red Flag mission. Guard’s 177th Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron aug- aspect of the training. ment the bad guy forces as well. sea, and in the air. Today, warriors of advanced nations, and The 57th IAS maps and mines the friendly Blue Force By Any Other “Blue Four is dead. Blue Four is dead.” many from less so, and even nonstate actors, also go to war computer networks to discover useful information and dis- Believe it or not, this is a good radio call to hear—if it appears in space and cyberspace. rupt Blue operations and support functions by degrading over the lava-baked shades of brown landscape north of Nellis Using cyber attacks to disable an adversary’s command those same networks. The 527th SAS impairs GPS reception AFB, Nev., as part of a Red Flag exercise, that is. and control system can be just as effective (if not as satisfying in the training range and disrupts Blue Force satellite-based For more than 40 years, the desert skies of the Nevada Test or as permanent) as blowing it up. It also comes with a cost communications. and Training Range (NTTR) have reverberated to the roar of advantage: Cyber warfare can be much cheaper to wage and jet engines, the boom of live ordnance being dropped on the harder to attribute to an aggressor than it would cost for the AT RED FLAG 17-1 DomainBy Brick Eisel many targets scattered across the terrain, and some variation US to send an F-35 or a B-2 to drop a guided munition on a To fight their adversaries, the Blue Forces for 17-1, con- of the radio call mentioned above. target in response—if you even know who it was who attacked ducted Jan. 23–Feb. 10 of this year, had 98 aircraft ranging Which is entirely the point. Red Flag exists so that combat you in the first place. Not knowing for sure who attacked you from the first operational F-35A squadron to B-1B bombers to airmen—in particular, inexperienced wingmen known as or how or when they planned the strike most definitely crimps F-22s, plus numerous dedicated space and cyber unit repre- “Blue Four”—can learn from their mistakes in training and the options of leaders wanting to retaliate. sentatives. Other “firsts” for Red Flag included the inaugural not make them when an enemy is playing for keeps. Count- Space, meanwhile, hosts a unique blend of both hardware appearance of the Royal Air Force’s RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft less aircrews have undergone this training, and today new and computer software, on the ground and in orbit. The Unit- and the RAF KC3 Voyager tanker. operators are being added to the mix. The definition of who ed States has invested many billions of dollars in its military However, a real issue for the meshing of space and cyber in is Blue Four is evolving rapidly. space architecture to achieve a dominance in space-based the more traditional Red Flag is the different command and Each new generation of American military aviators needs information gathering. Other nations might not want the US control required for these new domains versus the old-school to learn the lessons written in blood from past conflicts and to maintain that dominance and recognize the attractiveness jets-attacking-the-bad-guys scenario. to develop their skills through realistic training opportunities of denying those capabilities. Red Flag, to date, has been a tactical-level event. Crews such as a Red Flag. Equipment and tactics have evolved over If tomorrow’s Blue Four dies because he or she didn’t get receive the tasking, mission plan the flight, execute, then time, and today’s warfare includes areas, or domains, that the information needed about a deadly surface-to-air missile debrief that mission. It is a self-contained world that focuses once weren’t considered vital in a fight. (SAM) site or the updated location of a high-value, but mobile, on a narrow part of a military campaign to achieve one spe- Traditional wars were fought on the land, on and under the target, or is even given deliberately deceptive data, then past cific objective. lessons from Red Flag will be for naught. That focus involves a detailed and long day spent mission An F-15 takes off from the runway at Nellis AFB, Nev., Jan. 21, Enter today’s Red Flag, incorporating space and cyber into planning. Once the tasking order has dropped, the mission on a mission for Red Flag 17-1. the exercise. commander works on a plan, coordinating all the assets allo- Spangler;Photos: Buchanan/ANG; Thomas TSgt. J. TSgt. Salanitri; Salanitri SrA. MSgt. David David William 50 SEPTEMBER 2017 H WWW.AIRFORCEMAG.COM SEPTEMBER 2017 H WWW.AIRFORCEMAG.COM 51 cated—air-to-air escort fighters, strikers/bombers, electronic but every target did need to be dealt with using the forces attack and/or suppression of enemy air defenses, intelligence available, she said. gatherers, command and control, and the all-important tank- A method for melding tactical with operational is via the ers—to accomplish the day’s tactical objective. command and control interface in the combined air operations Adding space and cyber to the mix increases the level of center (CAOC). For Red Flag, the 505th Test Squadron con- difficulty of herding all those cats—and unlike the jets that ducts its own CAOC training in conjunction and coordination deploy to Nellis, the infrastructure for space and cyber is large- with the exercise itself. While the tactical crews concentrate ly fixed and located at various military installations around on their particular piece of the day’s air war, the CAOC trains the globe. Thus, those units send liaisons to Red Flag who personnel for the operational level as executed in regions coordinate the mission commander’s direction into tasking around the globe. for those at-home units. This link introduces another layer of While Red Flag fliers perform their one mission per day— complexity to the process. although there is both a day “go” and a night “go”—the CAOC A second difficulty affecting the integration of space and uses the Red Flag mission as but one problem set to solve cyber capabilities into a Red Flag is the level of experience while it simulates a much larger and broader air war. It is in in the tactical leadership sent. While the overall mission History on Display: The 414th Combat Training Squadron the CAOC that the space and cyber representatives operate, commander is usually a field grade officer, or a very senior has been Red Flag’s home from the beginning and upholds coordinating the desired effects for the Red Flag mission with captain at the least, the package commanders are also usually the military tradition of a unit presenting a memento their home stations where the actual operators of the satellites more experienced leaders. During 17-1, however, the space essentially proclaiming, “We were here.” The two-story-tall and servers are based. package commander alternated between a junior captain main auditorium is a veritable shrine to the hundreds of These operators receive their tasking as part of a joint air and and a first lieutenant. squadrons that have flown in the Red Flags since 1975. space tasking orders process, typically based on a three-day cy- Cyber participants had a similar level of experience for their cle, thus conforming more to the operational level of warfare’s Col. DeAnna Burt, standing, gives SrA. Brandon Myers, portion of the mission. Participants indicated that the dichoto- and operational effects.” Cyber has similar caveats on its use. timeline. That tasking order, once produced, is distributed to a satellite system operator, the final command to my of the junior officer having to interact with the much more Those levels of effects are oftentimes removed from that tactical the units who are executing and fulfilling the tactical role and decommission a satellite at at Schriever AFB, Colo., in June. seasoned officer led, initially, to a reticence to speak up on the promise of “getting it done now.” actually delivering ordnance on target. part of the space operators and the cyber forces. By definition, “strategic and operational” are spheres above Except in today’s multidomain fight, the ordnance might Finally, the errors are analyzed, and the resulting learning the tactical.

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