[ISN] Air Force seeks cyberwar edge

[InfoSec News]

Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk at c4i.org>

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/1213/web-cyberwar-12-14-04.asp

By Frank Tiboni 
Dec. 14, 2004 

Air Force officials plan to award contracts worth up to $25 million
for computer warfare technologies, according to a solicitation [1]
issued today.

Officials in the Air Force's Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., want 
industry officials to submit papers explaining their ideas and 
capabilities through 2008. They will review them and award contracts 
as they receive them, according to the "Cyber Defensive & Offensive 
Operations Technology" document published today on the Federal 
Business Opportunities Web site.

Industry officials can submit white papers no longer than 10 pages in 
five computer warfare areas. They include: assured infostructure 
support; complex systems; covert cyber operations; threat evaluation, 
attack recognition and diagnosis; and wireless information assurance, 
the document states.

Defense Department and military services officials do not like to 
discuss the country's computer warfare capabilities. George Tenet, 
former CIA director, abruptly but politely ended a question-and-answer 
session last month at the FCW Events' Homeland Security and 
Information Assurance Conference and Exhibition 2004 when someone 
asked if the military could disrupt or destroy information on Web 
sites operated by al Qaeda.

DOD officials announced plans last year to create an organization that 
attacks computer networks. The new group would be under U.S. Strategic 
Command, one of the department's nine unified combatant commands that 
oversee the use of combat forces in a geographic region or provide a 
capability and develop doctrine for them, manages the operation and 
protection of the military's networks and information operations to 
include psychological operations and computer network defense and 
attack.

Industry officials said the military's computer network attack 
capability originated in the National Security Agency. They said DOD 
officials moved it a few years ago to the former Joint Task 
Force-Computer Network Operations until they made the computer network 
attack organization announcement last year and formed the Joint Task 
Force-Global Network Operations, devoted entirely to computer network 
defense, in June.

[1] http://www2.eps.gov/spg/USAF/AFMC/AFRLRRS/Reference%252DNumber%252DBAA%252D03%252D18%252DIFKA/SynopsisP.html

 
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