Nuclear War in 2030: Wargaming the Unthinkable

It is the year 2030, and the US Air Force is facing a nuclear war.

Eighty-year-old B-52s, armed with the latest standoff weapons, patrol the skies. Shiny new intercontinental ballistic missiles stand at the ready. And the stealthy Long Range Strike-Bomber slips past enemy defenses.

Earlier this month, Air Force Global Strike Command conducted a large-scale nuclear war game at Maxwell Air Force Base, designed to assess whether the Air Force is developing and fielding the right kinds of capabilities to meet future threats. The exercise explored AFGSC’s ability to operate across the full spectrum of a nuclear conflict, from conventional to nuclear strike missions.

“We want to wargame the entirety of our capabilities,” Brig. Gen. Ferdinand Stoss, AFGSC’s director for requirements, plans and programs, told Defense News in an interview here Dec. 9. “We want to see if we are getting the bang for the buck we need.”

The Air Force’s plan to modernize its nuclear force includes building a next-generation bomber — the LRS-B — upgrading the existing fleet of B-1, B-52 and stealthy B-2 bombers, and replacing the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with a Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD).

AFGSC’s war game, conducted Dec. 7 through 10 here at the Air Force Wargaming Institute, was designed to help the Air Force find better ways to use the future force in the battlefield, Stoss explained. AFGSC commander Gen. Robin Rand will evaluate the findings, and decide whether to “elevate” them to top leadership, Stoss said.

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The Haderach-Caprican Drone Wars: the Game of Drones Wargame by a Think Tank

The Haderach militants were in a tight spot. They were dispersed throughout towns in southern Caprica and were under assault by the powerful Caprican military.

The Haderach leaders, who were based out of neighboring city of Kobol, ordered the militant cells to maintain pressure on the Caprican government and safeguard the towns that sympathized with the rebels. They deployed their large stockpile of unguided rockets to tie up Caprican air defenses and launched medium-range Ababil and Mohajer drones to identify vulnerable targets within Caprican cities, followed by guided rockets.

Having made their move, the members of the Haderach team sat back in the stark classroom at the National Defense University, and waited to hear the results from the game officials.

The Caprican-Haderach contest was not in fact taking place in a distant land or on one of Frank Herbert’s planets in Dune, as the names of the actors might suggest. It was one scenario in a two-day war game organized by the Center for a New American Security, a national security think tank in Washington, DC.

The “Game of Drones” was designed to explore the different ways that drones could be used for tactical and strategic effect in a conflict.

The summit sought to address whether shooting down a drone might escalate tensions between countries or whether drones changed the character of a conflict by giving actors capabilities they didn’t have before. As more and more state and non-state actors acquire drones, the war game illustrated how drones could be used in creative ways to further political or military objectives.

“One of the things that we see with new technologies like drones, is that the marginal utility for that platform is much higher for weaker actors than strong actors,” Ben Fitzgerald, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and one of the organizers of the war game, said afterward. “For non-state actors, they get much more value in relative terms, because all of sudden they have airpower.”

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A Thought Experiment: the Hacking of Rome (or America Loses a Cyberwar)

This is not a prediction for the future, simply a thought experiment to tell a story of what might be. Thinking about how American power and influence might decline is not a slight to the United States. It is a strength. We are not a people blinded by American hubris, but instead are willing to honestly analyze the negative what-ifs while working toward the positive ones.

When discussing the fall of the United States, the initial reaction is to think of a dramatic collapse. Things such as losing World War III in an enormous battle or an economic collapse making the Great Depression look like a little setback could make for an engaging movie, but reality does not have to entertain – it simply has to be.

This is fiction, not a prediction, but hopefully it makes us think.

And Now for our Story…

The United States is powerless. Though our economy is still intact for the moment, our ability to influence events on the world stage and protect our national interests is gone. We try to turn to our allies for help, but even our oldest friends recognize that the balance of power has shifted and begin to reshape their alliances to look out for their best interests. We are alone, afraid, and powerless in a very complicated world. How did we get here?

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Russia Wargames Nuking, Invading Poland?

The armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland's leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the "potential aggressor".

The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a "Polish" beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Real or not?

However, the use of nukes on the first roll of the dice is perfectly in line with the Russian military doctrine.