Vulcan Guard exercise tests Air National Guard space warfare training
AIr National Guard leaders gathered this morning over Zoom to discuss the new frontiers in combat and how they’re training to combat them.
About 50 members of the Air National Guard, along with Romanian and Police Armed Forces members, conducted training exercises focused on space during exercise Vulcan Guard Bolt 6 at NATO’s Allied Air Command in Germany last month. The sixth version of the exercise covered mission planning with NATO partners to develop their own space warfare capabilities. The exercise involved using realistic space threats from enemies. Members trained using ground-based jamming and other simulation software.
“The National Guard has a proven track record with over 28 years of conducting space missions,” said Major General Rich Neely, adjunct general for the Illinois National Guard. “Vulcan Guard was a great opportunity to work with our partners in NATO, including Poland and several other allies who had joined us for this exercise. We reviewed lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, such as the use of space for SpaceX’s Starlink for drone warfare.”
While Illinois doesn’t have a space unit, the National Guard plays a vital role in space operations, he said. “Cooperation with our allies is vital. We learn together. Defending against an attack in space has important implications, not just for our nation’s military infrastructure, but our allies’ military capabilities as well. For example, an attack against GPS or a global positioning system and time synchronization could affect our entire nation and democracies around the world.”
“Vulcan Guard was only possible because of the relationships the National Guard has with our partner nations through our State Partnership Program,” said Major General Laura Clellan, who heads the Colorado National Guard. “I think the more we pivot toward a large-scale combat operation, the more they’re going to see the need to incorporate space. Combatant commanders absolutely see the need. And the Army at large is seeing the need because they’ve just said that they want to put more force structure in the space units. So, I think we’ll see a growth in the Army as it pertains to space capabilities and cyber as well.”
Training for warfare in cyberspace or outer space doesn’t mean an end to ground warfare, the experts said. “Our adversaries have spent the last several decades studying how the U.S. and its allies go to war and focusing their capabilities on mitigating our advantages,” said Brigadier General Samuel Keener, Deputy Director of Space Operations, National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon. “I think space and cyber are both advantages for the U.S. and our allied partners. I think that’s why our adversaries are focusing on those capabilities at the beginning of a conflict and throughout the conflict. But I don’t think it will change.”
“The United States and many of its allies really are dependent upon the technology that we use through our critical infrastructure through our space capabilities and the assets that we have there,” said Maj. General Neely. “It becomes a little bit more of a challenge for us to defend so much of our critical infrastructure. What we’re seeing is our adversaries starting to look for our weaknesses in those particular areas that they may be able to take advantage of, even prior to the kinetic portion of the war or a war that may never go kinetic. We could see, like we are now in cyberspace, attacks happening from our adversaries around the world, even prior to or even if a conflict doesn’t break out.”
Guard officials are planning the seventh version of the Vulcan Guard series as an Indo-Pacific exercise.
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