SPACE GAMES
orbit, because it allows satellites to stay
in line with speciic locations—like a big
line of parking spaces. he International
Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency,
works to assign every satellite a particular
parking spot. If a satellite gets too close to
another’s assigned parking space—inten-
tionally or not—it can prevent the satellite
assigned to that area from operating, just
like if another car is too close, you can’t
open your door.
Other than those assigned parking
slots, when it comes to space, there is no
agreed-upon rulebook in terms of how to
behave, unlike on air and land and sea. “In
all other domains we have years of experi-
ence in terms of policy, international law
that dictates the rules and sets of actions
that can and cannot be taken—what
is considered hostile and what is not,”
Rodriguez says. “In space, we don’t have
those data points to inform our actions,
to characterize whether something is of a
hostile nature.” Currently, the only bind-
ing agreement about the use of space is a
1960s-era U.N. document on the peace-
ful uses of outer space. But scholars at
McGill University’s Centre for Research
in Air and Space Law and a team ofsubject-matter experts are working to
develop a manual for how international
law applies to military uses of outer space.
“We’re writing the book on space as we
speak,” Rodriguez jokes.
Not having a rulebook certainly doesn’t
make the Space Aggressors’ jobs any eas-
ier. Neither does the demand for their
services: In the past few years, the Space
Aggressors have seen a signiicant increase
in requests for their training. “Right now,
the need for what the squadron is doing is
growing at a pace that our resources can-
not keep up with,” Rodriguez says.
Perhaps ittingly, the night of the
Aggressors’ Red Flag mission coincides
with February’s brief government shut-
down. And yet, the Space Aggressors are
still gathered in the Barn, many of them
reservists like Lieutenant Colonel Jaska
Cason, a former C-130 cargo plane pilot.
Around 8 p.m. he leads a walk-through of
the evening’s mission. he airmen practice
adjusting radio frequencies, demonstrat-
ing just how they can disrupt the signals,
and citing patterns called “hoppers” and
“sweepers” that look like colorful Etch A
Sketch drawings on the display. Rodri-
guez stands on the periphery. He’d lownin from Nellis in Nevada earlier in the day
and has only had a few hours of sleep. He
drinks cofee and listens to a senior air-
man explain that they want to challenge
their training audience, but they don’t
want to dominate them tonight. hey
could if they wanted to, but they won’t.
“hat would defeat the point of the train-
ing,” Cason says. “It’d be like you boxing
with Muhammad Ali. What are you really
going to learn?”
Rodriguez smiles. He looks a little
tired, but happy. his is one of his last
Red Flag exercises as commander of the
527th Space Aggressors. In June, he’ll
hand over command of the squadron to
someone else and move into a new job
at Peterson. He’s sad to leave, he says,
but that’s the way of the military: always
moving, always changing. he same is
true for the Space Aggressors. hey’ll
keep learning, keep growing, keep train-
ing as the threats around the world move
and change, carrying out a mission almost
as ininite as the stars that light up the
sky over Schriever each night. mKasey Cordell is 5280 ’s features editor. Email her
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