Schriever Wargame 2025 to explore future space strategy, strengthen international partnerships

Published Aug. 11, 2025
By Brandon Kalloo Sanes
Space Training and Readiness Command

MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. (AFNS) -- The U.S. Space Force will host the Schriever Wargame Capstone 2025 Aug. 10-21 at the LeMay Center’s Wargame Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base. The event will bring together more than 350 participants from the United States Department of Defense, industry and partner nations to explore strategic challenges in a future conflict scenario.

Military exercises and wargames help prepare forces for conflict, but they also support numerous other functions. Exercises focus on the current environment testing people, systems, policies, interoperability and capabilities in live and simulated environments to ensure forces are prepared for current threats and crisis. Wargames, on the other hand, look further ahead, challenging decision-makers to plan for future threats, technologies and coalition responses before they materialize.

Students move pieces around the board during a war-game based on Pacific conflict while attending Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, December 21, 2023. The U.S. Space Force will host the Schriever Wargame Capstone 2025 Aug. 10-21, a tabletop wargame set a decade in the future, where players will respond to a notional conflict scenario, test the limits of strategies and policies and consider how advanced technologies could strengthen coalition operations. This year’s iteration will bring together more than 350 participants from the United States Department of Defense, industry and partner nations. (U.S. Air Force photo by Billy Blankenship)

SW 25 is a tabletop wargame set a decade in the future, where players will respond to a notional conflict scenario, test the limits of strategies and policies and consider how advanced technologies could strengthen coalition operations.

“The wargame allows the air and space forces from the U.S and nine international partners to see the impacts of their decisions in a fast-paced scenario and ask, ‘Do our policies and proposed capabilities hold up in a fight? What would we need to change if scenario X or Y happens?’” said Col. Shannon DaSilva, Space Delta 10 commander. “It also lets them explore what technologies they would like to have if those scenarios occurred. The wargame helps inform the future force design and acquisitions process to ensure the U.S. and its allies remain the most formidable combat force the world has ever seen.”

Space Delta 10, the Space Force’s wargaming and doctrine-development unit, will lead SW 25’s execution. The delta is co-located with its parent unit Space Training and Readiness Command, or STARCOM, at Patrick Space Force Base, Fla. Delta 10 builds combat-credibility and enhances warfighter lethality through staging scenario-based wargames, evaluating operational concepts, developing doctrine and managing the service’s lessons learned program.

Students from Air War College participate in a war-game designed around Pacific conflict, December 21, 2023. The U.S. Space Force will host the Schriever Wargame Capstone 2025 Aug. 10-21, a tabletop wargame set a decade in the future, where players will respond to a notional conflict scenario, test the limits of strategies and policies and consider how advanced technologies could strengthen coalition operations. This year’s iteration will bring together more than 350 participants from the United States Department of Defense, industry and partner nations. (U.S. Air Force photo by Billy Blankenship)

“SW 25 allows participants to ask, ‘What future capabilities, policies and interoperability do we wish we had?’ not just, ‘What can we do with what we’ve got?’. This effort directly informs the Chief of Space Operation’s Competitive Endurance strategy and actions the Partner to Win line of effort,” DaSilva said.

This year’s iteration includes five advanced notional technology concepts to prompt discussion on future investment and integration. Guardians will be joined by space professionals from sister services, commercial industry and nine partner nations under the Combined Space Operations initiative. This international effort focuses on advancing shared concepts, increasing mutual security and interoperability in space, and using SW 25 as a risk-managed setting to test cooperative frameworks and policy options towards common objectives.

“Wargames like Schriever help like-minded nations work together to stay ahead of potential threats,” DaSilva said. “They give senior leaders a clearer picture of how a space conflict could unfold and what it would take to deter it. The goal isn’t just to win on the table—it’s to make smarter decisions today that prevent real-word conflict tomorrow.”

Planning for the first SW began in 1998, with the inaugural event held in 2001. Lessons learned through the years have laid the foundation for many of today’s policies and will continue to guide planning for tomorrow’s international space operations.

“As the years of this wargame carry on, our partners now come to Schriever with more space knowledge and more targeted questions. But the value remains the same: they get to see the impacts of their decisions in real time through adjudication,” DaSilva said.