Wednesday, August 13, 2008

USAF "Suspends" Cyber Command


Typical USAF Powerpoint Silliness

Well, this is just great. The newswires are screaming with news of how effectively the Russians have used cyberwarfare to attack Georgia.
But now news comes from nextgov via Wired that the United States Air Force "is about to suspend its controversial effort to reorganize its forces to "dominate" cyberspace." Can their timing be any freaking worse? And why is wanting to dominate a given terrain/battlespace "controversial"?

I was a little surprised when I first heard that this command was being organized as an Air Force command. I would have assumed that it should be a joint command with Navy and Army personnel. Prior to creating AFCYBER USAF had several different commands, seperate operating agencies, etc., doing similar work, so some consolidation makes sense. However in the Big Picture, it seems to me that I would want our network centric offensive and defensive operations under one big tent. If the President or SecDef wants us to creep into a jihadi server hosted in country X, or wants to "exfiltrate data" from the document management system of country Y's navy, I think they should be able to provide that "service"... And I think POTUS or SecDef should only have to keep one phone number on speed dial to do it.

2 comments:

Eric said...

There's already a certain TLA that handles this.

Mark said...

To be sure, it's not as if AFCYBER was this nation's first and only activity in this regard.

I think this whole thing is indicative of the meandering leadership we have seen in the Air Force for several years.

I do believe there is a need for a military oriented cyber warfare operation... and that it should be a multi-service enterprise.