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If he stands here all night, he can watch those constellations born from Greek
mythology—irst Taurus, then Orion, and later Leo—move across the sky. But it’s the
stars that don’t move and don’t twinkle that have captured Rodriguez’s interest this
evening. hose stationary celestial bodies aren’t stars at all, but rather communication
satellites parked thousands of miles above the Earth, rotating in lockstep with the planet.
Some of them are transmitting episodes of Homeland. Others are providing a constant
channel for communications between the men and women of America’s military.
Tonight, those satellites have targets on their solar-paneled backs.
THERE’S A RICH IRONY in the fact that the heart of modern American warfare sits
in the middle of cow pastures, juniper trees, and sagebrush on Colorado’s plains. he
directions to Schriever Air Force Base—home of the newly minted National Space
Defense Center—come with instructions to keep an eye out for deer and antelope as
you pass gravel roads with names like Paddock Road and Quail Drive.
Perched on a rise 20 empty miles from Colorado’s second-largest town, the base’s
view is awe-inspiring: You can see Pikes Peak and the gneiss and granite ingers of
the Sangre de Cristos stretching southward. Contrails crisscross the vast sky above
Schriever—and yet this base of more than 9,000 airmen has no runways. Schriever’s
domain is well above the clouds: his is the home of the 50th Space Wing, whose mis-
sion is to “evolve space and cyberspace warighting superiority through integrated and
innovative operations.” Part of that evolution falls to a group of less than 100 men and
women who are known as Space Aggressors.
Although the Space Aggressors are located at Schriever, they technically belong
to the 57th Adversary Tactics Group and the 926th Operations Group. Made up
of one active-duty squadron (the 527th) and one reserve unit (the 26th), the Space
Aggressors’ mission is to train American troops in the art of ighting without the aid
of modern space-based tools such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and satel-
lite phones. hey aren’t riding missile-equipped spaceships into our outer atmosphere
like science iction space cowboys. Instead, they’re helping the U.S. military detect and
discern when things like GPS and satellite communication signals are being inten-
tionally disrupted or corrupted—and teaching troops how to function without them.
heir domain is approximately 73 trillion cubic miles of dynamic atmosphere—a play-
ing ield that extends from Earth to satellites sitting 40,000 miles above the planet.
Instead of tanks and machine guns, the Aggressors’ weapons cache includes
modems, oversized antennas, and radio frequency equipment. It’s gear that can largely
be purchased on Amazon (“here’s nothing Gucci about this stuf,” says Rodriguez,
commander of the 527th) but which has a reach far greater than that of any bullet.
After all, the signals that those tools, coupled with other technologies, can disrupt are
the same ones troops tap to communicate with one another, to relay images and other
data, and for early missile detection signals—and that DirecTV uses to bring you Game
of rones. And while ighter jets, drones, and smart bombs use GPS signals, in part, to
navigate, the civilian world relies on them for every-
thing from transportation to banking. here are, in
fact, very few things in the military and civilian world
that do not rely on information relayed through our
satellite systems.
Which is why the Aggressors are such an inte-
gral part of the Air Force’s Space Operations—and
the military at large. As the only units of their kind
in the U.S. military, Schriever’s Space Aggres-
sors play war with the Air Force and the likes of
Navy SEALs, Army soldiers, and Marines. hey’re
the sparring partner for the entire Department of
Defense—in efect, permanent bad guys. And for
them, losing often means winning. “he job we do
in terms of training is to ensure that our guys are
able to get the job done right and come back safe,”
Rodriguez says. “But if you step back even further,
if we don’t get this right, what is at stake is the way
of life we’ve all reaped the beneits of for the better
part of the 21st century.”AS THE SUN BEGAN to light up Eastern China
on January 12, 2007, the Chinese weather satel-
lite known as Feng Yun 1C, or “wind cloud,” was
cruising along its orbit 500 miles above the nation.
Although still emitting an electronic signal, the sat-
ellite was eight years old and ready for retirement.
It got its send-of later that day, courtesy of a Chi-
nese anti-satellite missile that collided with Feng
Yun 1C and obliterated it into thousands of pieces
of debris—fragments that now have to be tracked
along with the 23,000 other pieces of space junk
loating around our planet. Even something as small
as a paint chip, when traveling at 17,000 miles per
hour, can wreck a satellite or other important space
objects like, for example, the International Space
Station. hat’s why both NASA and the Air Force
track everything, from astronaut gloves to broken
satellite wings, that is whirling around our world.
he 2007 intentional satellite smashing was the
irst time the Chinese had demonstrated an abil-
ity to threaten U.S. space assets—and it rattled
the American military. Up until that point, it had
been ixated largely on the potential capabilities of
our longtime space rival: Russia. “he number of
countries seeking to develop capabilities to com-
pete militarily with the United States in the space
domain on a peer-to-peer level,” Rodriguez says,
“has gone from one to...more than one.”
Several countries, Russia and China among
them, are reported to have the ability to launch
anti-satellite missiles. And despite Hollywood’s sug-
gestion that moving satellites is as easy as resetting
your sprinklers, it’s not a quick and painless process.
Depending on its type, a satellite might not be in
constant communication with the ground. Beyond
that, it takes fuel to maneuver in space—fuel that’s
supposed to be used to carry out the satellite’s mis-
sion. If you burn all of the fuel, you’ve almost done
an adversary’s job for them. China has continued to
test deep space weapons, reportedly iring a missileABOUT AN HOUR AFTER THE SUN
disappears behind the Front Range on a cold February
evening, Lieutenant Colonel Anibal Rodriguez steps
outside a two-story warehouse on Schriever Air Force
Base, east of Colorado Springs. From where he stands,
Rodriguez can see the city’s light pollution, an ethereal
purple-pink glow, casting the Rockies in a dierent kind
of purple mountain majesty. It’s a clear evening, and
despite the far-o light, a million twinkling stars begin to
emerge. Rodriguez cranes his neck and looks up at the sky.