how the french air force is preparing for a space war

The Air and Space Force completed its annual space warfare exercise AsterX on Friday, March 10, a conflict simulation involving the naval forces as well as the army, the air force and above all the Command of space, created in 2019, which manages military satellites. The enemy in this exercise is an imaginary country, Mercury. But as imaginary as this enemy is, it has a space force surpassing that of France, capable of attacking observation or communication satellites. Characteristics that are reminiscent of those of the very real Russian space force.

Satellite attacks can take a variety of forms. Commander Cyril describes one, in progress on the screen of the space command’s operating room, located at the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes), in Toulouse. “It’s an object that was apparently dead for several months and is reactivating. It will approach strategic satellites for the force and begin to drop small satellites which will harass the satellitesays the commander. They will circle around like insects and then they will adopt more aggressive modes of action: jamming, altering communications with Earth, etc.

Bombing on Earth to respond to an attack in space

Concretely, this attack prevents the French forces, engaged on the ground against the Mercury, from directing or communicating with each other. Decision is then taken to modify, a little, the course of the satellite. In technical language, in the mouth of Commander Cyril: “move the satellite in the box”there “box” being an area of “several hundred kilometers”, he explains. The idea is in any case to find parries to counter the attack.

Except that Mercury does too much: a good twenty actions against French satellites are listed. From where the decision by the command to operate a direct bombardment against Mercury: the operation “Gravity” is launched. “The starting point of Gravity is a sum of actions that was led by Mercury, which we resisted, tried to avoid, but which we felt were going to corner us at one time or another. “, explains Colonel Guillaume Bourdeloux, chief of operations for this exercise, who then alerts the “joint forces commander”. In good French, the Joint Operations Command, headed by General Le Nen.

“I alerted General Le Nen in Lyon to the fact that we were starting to have a frankly unfavorable balance of power in space and that we could potentially be in trouble.”

Colonel Guillaume Bourdeloux, Chief Operating Officer of AsterX

at franceinfo

The ground bombing operation was not planned at all in the exercise. “Gravity consists of a set of targeted strikes on military targets in Mercurian territory on its command centers, two satellites and its space surveillance center”explains Guillaume Bourdeloux.

Rafales and frigates then launch their cruise missiles on Mercury’s targets at the most opportune moment. Twenty minutes later the French satellites will indeed pass vertically to the objectives. to verify that they have been destroyed.