The Space Warfare Forum
The GrayMan Forum, featuring the Space Warfare Forum, grew out of roundtable discussions Gray started with fellow USAF officer and 4th Space Ops Squadron member Mike Lutton back in 1996 or so. Gray and Mike invited fellow members of 4 SOPS to brown-bag lunches at which they discussed various military and political topics. In 1998, after Gray left for another assignment, they carried on conversations and debates by e-mail and slowly added people to the group. The e-mail discussions continued for several years, but the lengthy e-mails got unwieldy. As a result, Gray built the on-line forum and invited all comers.
The old e-mail based group discussed such issues as
- The idea of a Douhet or Mitchell of space may not be valid
- The first space war was not the Gulf War (as some have claimed), but was a "Cold War" that started with Sputnik in 1957
- In the Gulf War, space was a support medium (as it is still today)
- We don't call the Civil War the first air war, even though observation balloons were used
- Then has the first space war ended?
- But why ever fight a "hot" war or battle in (or from) space?
- Some questions
- Who is the enemy? What threat does the enemy pose?
- Is fighting in space inevitable?
- Is the potential gain of fighting a space battle worth the expense? Would the victory be worth the expense? Or would losing be so catastrophic as to justify the cost of fighting?
and eventually produced an article, "Toward Space War," which was published in the Air Force Space Command professional journal, High Frontier.
The Space Warfare Forum Today
In its first iteration, The Space Warfare Forum grew to over 100 members, but since most of them were busy with active duty responsibilities, it struggled to survive. A "spam" e-mail attack the summer Gray retired -- and which we didn't catch because our computer was packed for shipping -- soured a number of folks on the experience. In February 2008, however, we migrated to a new server and installed new software for the GrayMan Forum, which made it more user-friendly.
We still hope to revive the venture.