Michael Coumatos is a former U.S. Navy test pilot, U.S. Space Command director of war gaming, and a National Security Council counterterrorism advisor.  William Scott is a retired Rocky Mountain bureau chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine and a former U.S. Air Force flight-test engineer, who served with the National Security Agency and as aircrew on nuclear-sampling missions.  These renowned experts have joined forces to grippingly depict how the first hours of World War III might play out in the year 2010.

Coumatos and Scott take the reader inside U.S. Strategic Command, where top military commanders, space-company executives, and U.S. intelligence experts are conducting a DEADSATS II wargame, exploring how the loss of critical satellites could lead to nuclear war. The players don’t know that the war they are gaming has already begun,  miles above them in the lifeless, silent cold of space. Jam-packed with the actual systems and secret technologies the United States has or will soon field to protect its space assets, Space Wars describes a near-future nuclear nightmare that terrorists will relish but politicians prefer to ignore. In a quieter, more peaceful time, Space Wars would be an exciting work of fiction. But with the United States now at war, Space Wars is all too real.

MICHAEL COUMATOS is a former U.S. Navy test pilot, ship's captain, and commodore; U.S. Space Command director of wargaming; and a National Security Council counterterrorism advisor.

WILLIAM B. SCOTT is a retired bureau chief of Aviation Week & Space Technology and a nine-year Air force veteran who served as aircrew on nuclear sampling missions. He is a six-time Royal Aeronautical Society "Journalist of the Year" finalist, and won the Society's 1998 Lockheed Martin Award for the "Best Defense Submission." He also received both the 2006 and 2007 Messier-Dowty awards for "Best Airshow Submission."

WILLIAM J. BIRNES is the New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Day After Roswell and Worker in the Light.