Wargaming Outer Space: Challenges, Limitations, Emerging Approaches, and Lessons From Terrestrial Domains

Background and Rationale

Wargames have long been used by military leaders to improve decision making. They are a highly effective pedagogical tool to explore and reinforce legal and ethical decision making, especially in contested operational environments (Gordon IV et al., 2021; Perla, 1990, p. 164). In the context of space where the rules of warfare remain largely untested, wargaming presents a viable tool for the development of a professional warfighting ethos and the combat readiness required to avoid operational surprises, in a safe-to-fail environment.

Planners trying to build wargaming and experimentation infrastructure, however, must contend with a scarcity of empirical data on how conflict might unfold in space. Even when the literature on military space strategy is quite broad, it draws heavily on land, maritime, and air domains to theorise the core concepts of deterrence, escalation, and domain control (See: Klein, 2004; Barbaro, 2023; Creedon, 2012), which limits its practical utility in space. The…