[Infowarrior] - Air Force to Establish New Cyberspace Operations Command

[Richard Forno]

Air Force to Establish New Cyberspace Operations Command
John T. Bennett | 04 Oct 2006
Inside the Air Force
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=233

Senior Air Force leaders plan to establish a new command for directing the
service's numerous activities in cyberspace, a move intended to combat the
ever-growing Internet prowess of terrorist groups like al Qaeda, according
to sources and documents.

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley
have tapped the service's Air Education and Training, Air Combat and Air
Force Space commands to formulate a range of options for the notional
"Operational Command for Cyberspace," according to a Sept. 6 letter signed
by the two leaders. Inside the Air Force obtained the letter this week.

"All options are on the table at this point," one service official involved
in Air Force cyberspace operations told ITAF on Sept. 27. The United States
is "already at war in cyberspace, so we need to get everything under one
umbrella," the official added.

"We're going to do more than just move around deck chairs on the Titanic" in
molding the new outfit, Lani Kass, director of of the service's Cyberspace
Task Force, told ITAF this week. "This will be a 24/7/365 kind of
operation," she added during a brief interview at an Air Force
Association-sponsored conference in Washington.

Moseley established the task force in January to examine the service's
cyberspace capabilities and identify deficiencies, according to a service
fact sheet.

Wynne and Moseley appear to be moving quickly to establish the new
cyberspace command, giving the three existing commands that are studying its
creation 30 days to deliver options, according to the letter.

The leaders, in the missive and in comments made this week during this
week's conference, have described their vision for the new command in broad
terms.

"Our enemies are already operating [in cyberspace], exploiting the low entry
costs and minimal technological investment needed to inflict serious harm,"
Moseley said during a Sept. 27 address. "We cannot allow them to expand a
foothold in this critical strategic domain, much less find sanctuary."

The service secretary, speaking Sept. 25 at the event, warned that because
the military is increasingly dependent on network- and computer-based
systems, all other aspects of warfighting could be hindered without an
increased focus on cyberspace.

"This domain offers many unique opportunities and highlights a new inviolate
principle: Without cyber-dominance, operations in all of the other domains
are in fact placed at risk," Wynne said.

Last December, when they were both relatively new to their posts, the two
service leaders published a new Air Force mission statement, which reads:
"The mission of the U.S. Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the
defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly
and fight in the air, space and cyberspace."

The revised strategic statement added two key facets: "sovereign options"
and "cyberspace." In a Dec. 9, 2005, statement, Wynne noted that "we have
quite a few of our airmen dedicated to cyberspace . . . from security
awareness, making sure the networks can't be penetrated, as well as figuring
out countermeasures."

The 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review also states that cyberspace is playing
an increasingly important role in U.S. military operations.

The new command "should enable the employment of global cyber power across
the full spectrum of conflict, both as a supported and/or supporting
component of a joint force," the service leaders' Sept. 6 letter states.

"Inherent in this requirement is the need to integrate the full range of
global effects across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and networked
systems and must include scalability of force packages, ease of
implementation and enhanced componency and force presentation through" U.S.
Strategic Command, it adds.

Wynne and Moseley want the cyberspace command eventually to become the
service entity that trains and equips all forces branded with the "cyber"
moniker, according to officials and documents. The manpower and personnel
shop, or A1 office, at the service's Pentagon headquarters and "other
functional experts" have been tasked with identifying which Air Force
specialties will be classified in the cyberspace realm, the letter states.

Plans call for the new organization to be on an equal footing with the
service's numbered air forces, several officials said this week.

"You don't want to stand up a new thing like this and have it be a major
command right off the bat," the service official involved in Air Force
cyberspace operations said. "Maybe it will be a major command one day, but
not right now."

The fiscal year 2009 budget cycle will be key for the new command, offering
service officials the first opportunity to implement a research, development
and acquisition strategy for cyberspace. The two service leaders have tasked
Air Force Materiel Command with formulating that plan, according to the
missive.

The service's move to bolster its efforts to conduct cyberspace missions
comes as Islamic extremist groups like al Qaeda and other U.S. enemies have
demonstrated expanded capabilities in using the Internet to spread their
messages, transfer funds and communicate.

Groups like al Qaeda and other extremist organizations can be effective
using cyberspace because "as a warfighting domain, it's different than the
land, air and space domains," according to Kass, the task force director.

As opposed to expensive weapon systems like fighters, bombers, advanced
ground vehicles or aircraft carriers, in cyberspace everything one needs to
"cause chaos from afar very cheaply . . . is available off the shelf," she
said at the conference.

Air Force leaders want to beef up the service's ability to guard against
Internet-based attacks because the United States "is uniquely vulnerable
because of our reliance on cyberspace," both militarily and "in our everyday
lives," she said. Cyberspace offers advantages to those who do not want to
deal with U.S. forces in a symmetric fight, Kass added.

The effort to create the new command comes as senior Pentagon leaders
continue reviewing the classified "2006 National Military Strategy for
Cyberspace Operations." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter
Pace already has approved the plan, which is now on the desk of the defense
secretary awaiting final approval, Kass said.

That strategic document, "for the first time," calls cyberspace a
warfighting domain, she told ITAF. The plan, she added, is "very
operationally focused," but she declined to describe it in detailed because
it is classified.

The Pentagon's newest operational realm, according to briefing slides
presented by Kass, is composed of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

The task force director made clear the service plans to exploit the entire
spectrum during its cyberspace missions: "I was asked by a general officer
how much of the cyber-domain the Air Force claims, and I said, 'All of it.'"

Mosely this week echoed that sentiment.

"We understand the physics, the technology, the synergies required to
operate in and through cyberspace," he said during a Sept. 27 address to
conference attendees. "We intend to operate across the entire
electromagnetic spectrum: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, X-ray, directed
energy, and applications we have not even begun to think about."

Following the release of the Wynne- and Moseley-crafted mission statement
late last year, some current and former military officers questioned whether
the sudden inclusion of cyber-operations as a core Air Force mission was
merely the leaders posturing to become the military's lead service for the
mission.

In an example of that questioning, a retired military officer told sister
publication Inside the Pentagon last December that he gives the Air Force
"credit for including cyberspace," but wonders "what exactly do they mean to
do there? Is this just another budget-justifying buzzword to them?"

Some officials and analysts contacted earlier this year speculated that the
Air Force might be angling to become the Pentagon's executive agent for
cyber-missions, much like it already is the military's "EA" for space. In an
interview in February, however, Lt. Gen. Michael Peterson, the Air Force's
warfighting integration director and chief information officer, dismissed
that notion.

When asked by ITAF this week whether creation of the Operational Command for
Cyberspace is a move in the executive agent direction, Kass said it is just
Air Force officials "tending our own garden.

"We're not trying to poach any other service's domain," she continued.
"There's plenty of work for everyone."

That work likely will not be easy, a former Air Force official who was once
involved in cyberspace efforts while in uniform told ITAF during the
conference.

"We tried this once before and it got all fouled up because . . . tribal
warfare" within the service doomed a number of initiatives aimed at
bolstering such missions, the former official said. "All I'll say is: 'Good
luck to them,'" he added.

For her part, Kass agreed that securing funding for essential cyberspace
programs will be a hurdle the new command must tackle.

"It's true," she said, "one challenge will be making sure programs don't
just fall off like they did in the past."