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Feb
23
Cyber Command: The Future Of The Military
Filed Under Air Force, Cyber Command, Cyber War, internet, military
Air Force Cyber Command
While I’m partial to the U.S. Army — I’m an Army brat and my dad has spent 40+ years working for the Army either on active duty or as a civilian — the U.S. Air Force always has the fun stuff that’s always fascinating — killer airplanes, stealth fighters, remote controlled UAVs, nuclear missiles, B52s and all sorts of other expensive and alluring technology.
The latest cool Air Force command is it’s 10th — the Air Force Cyber Command — designed to stop the bad guys who are making their own plans for cyber war and terrorism.
Writes Gautham Nagesh in Government Executive, the Air Force is moving ahead with building the 8th Air Force into Cyber Command.
The Air Force is moving ahead on establishing its new Cyber Command, searching for permanent facilities and planning meetings to establish rules by which it will operate, according to Air Force officials.
In September, the Air Force announced it would establish a Cyber Command to prepare for fighting wars in cyberspace by defending national computer networks running critical operations and to attack adversaries computer networks.
The Air Force now operates a Provisional Cyberspace Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in northwest Louisiana. Its vice commander, Col. Anthony Buntyn, said the provisional command is solely involved with “standing up the permanent command,” meaning it is developing a structure, finding a location for the base and hiring and training staff. Buntyn spoke this week at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s annual Air Force IT Day in Vienna, Va.
Next week, Air Force officials, mostly with the rank of major and colonel, will meet at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., to begin laying out the rules that the command will follow during a possible cyberwar. Called the Cyber Space Warfare Doctrine, the rules will include defining what constitutes an act of cyberwar as opposed to what is merely a cybercrime or act of cyberterrorism.
Marty Graham writes about Cyber Command for Wired and the competition among politicians to host its headquarters in one of their Congressional districts.
He gives a detailed overview of the mission of the new Air Force command.
The Cyber Command is rooted in a historic vision statement penned in 2005 by the secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne, and co-signed by the Air Force chief of staff. In the 21st century, Wynne wrote, America’s enemies would contest America in a new range of theaters, and the armed forces must be ready to meet them and, if necessary, “destroy them” there. Henceforth, he vowed, the Air Force would “fly and fight in air, space and cyberspace.”
“Tell the nation,” Wynne reiterated in a speech last September, “that the age of cyberwarfare is here.”
“Our mission is to control cyberspace both for attacks and defense,” says Lord’s boss, Lt. Gen. Robert Elder — a three-star general who totes a Blackberry and holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Wearing a green flight suit with no brass, bars or Bronze Star in sight, Elder relaxes in a leather chair away from his desk, and lays out the vision, which amounts to nothing less than a complete transformation of the Air Force.
“We have to learn to plan years out for operations, security defense and integration, to plan how to deter attacks, how to posture to prevent attacks, and we have to stay very current,” Elder says.
Some suggest Cyber Command is here to counter future threats from foreign powers, such as China — which is also one of our major creditors.
Reports Graham in Wired:
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the reorganization. Defense expert John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, says the Cyber Command’s mission is murky. “There’s been so much gee-whiz flackery to this,” Pike says. “They’ve got the whole thing tarted up, and it’s hard to tell what they’re actually doing.”
Pike says the Cyber Command may be part of a secret Air Force plan to prepare for war against China, already suspected of trying to hack Department of Defense networks. He says the new command’s defensive mission is muddled and duplicative: The NSA already defends military networks. As for civilian infrastructures like the internet and power grid, they’re privately owned, and the Air Force has no jurisdiction over them.
But, there might be a need to be able to bring about peace through superior firepower. There are reports that the Cyber War has already started, writes Michael Posner in Government Executive.
A technology expert said Tuesday that the United States is in the midst of an active cyber war and is now implementing still-secret security plans for protection.
Andrew Palowitch, a former CIA official who is now an industry consultant to the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, peeled back a gauzy layer over the secret national cyber-security initiative that will be a blueprint for protection.
“We are currently in a cyber war and war is going on today,” Palowitch said in a talk at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies. He credited Gen. James (Hoss) Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with that assessment but said he agrees with it.
“America is under widespread attack in cyberspace,” Palowitch said in citing Cartwright’s statistics that there were 37,000 reported breaches of government and private systems in fiscal 2007. There were nearly 13,000 direct assaults on federal agencies then, and 80,000 attempted computer network attacks on Defense Department systems, he added.
Some of those assaults “reduced the U.S., military operational capabilities,” Palowitch said. He never discussed who the enemy might be.
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3 Responses to “Cyber Command: The Future Of The Military”
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[...] wrote about how I thought that the Air Force was pretty cool for creating Cyber Command, but I’m thinking it might just be another way for the government to waste money. Could [...]
For about a year now the former Chief Strategist of Netscape has been warning everyone through his articles that this was a huge threat and actually identified several strategies and tactics that if used would compromise the information infrastructure in the U.S. and globally. Why is it our intelligence services are just waking up to this threat? Why is it throughout history we ignore or dismiss the experts until it is too late! I just did a Google search (Kevin Coleman Cyber Attack) and found over 13,000 references. With that much intelligence we should be much further along in protecting and defending against cyber attacks that we are today!
Hi Spy Guy,
It’s the threat of the future. Not too long ago, there was news that cyber forces had taken down power plants in countries outside of the United States. And, just tonight, I saw a recruiting commercial for Cyber Command that said there were 3 million attacks against the Pentagon’s computers.