it/networks
TIME MANAGEMENT
THE ARMY WANTS
FLEXIBILITY TO INSERT
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
INTO ITS NETWORK
AS IT CONTINUES
TO MODERNIZE.
Buying Time
The Army lays out its schedule for 2021 network update
By Mark Pomerleau
T
he Army’s top network buyer provided the most
detailed timeline to date of how the service will plan
an update to its tactical network in 2021.
“We have until about early [20]20 to get after the
meaningful experiments that are going to inform our
final set of design choices as we refine our prelimi-
nary design,” Maj. Gen. David Bassett, Program Executive Officer
for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, said at a May 1
AFCEA event.
In a chart outlining what the 2021 capability set — which, among
other tasks, will provide units more abundant communications
options — could look like, he listed broad deadlines for when the
Army wants open proposals on hardware and software solutions
and when it is trying to narrow down which of these proposals will
work for the service.
Bassett said that, while ideally he’d like to keep software solutions
open as long as possible, hardware solutions will likely need to be
identified earlier in the process.
According to the chart, the Army will be open to hardware and
software solutions in fourth quarter 2019. Around spring 2020,
the Army will finalize hardware solutions while industry proposes
software packages. In the third quarter 2020, the Army expects
to narrow potential products for both areas.
Also revealed by the chart is the fact that Army leaders won’t look
for hardware solutions again until summer 2021 and software until
second quarter 2022.
“There’s going to come a point where all of your good ideas in
PHOTO: STAFF SGT. CODY HARDING/ARMY
technology are too late, like a good idea cut off point. Then those
things are going to have to flow into the next capability set,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean we’re going to ignore them, it just means in order
to deliver that integrated capability, we’ve got to be able to converge
on something. We want good broad divergent critical thinking about
the range of technical options that are available to us and then we
want to converge and deliver capability.”
Bassett noted that the Army will juggle simultaneous network
upgrades in the near future. By the time the service gets to critical
design review of the 2021 build, the Network Cross-Functional Team
C4ISRNET.com/it-networks
should be driving the preliminary design review for the capability
set of 2023.
“I’m going to be fielding one while I’m doing the detailed design
on the second while I’m doing the [science and technology] and
technology research for the third,” Bassett said.
WHAT’S IN STORE FOR 2021
Army officials also said that some of the hardware and software
that will be included in the 2021 capability set is not guaranteed
for future iterations.
“Capabilities that will be assessed between now and capability
set ’21 procurement [are] pretty much locked in place and after the
[preliminary design review] we’ll have a better idea of exactly what’s
in and what’s out,” Col. Garth Winterle, program manager for tactical
radios in PEO-C3T, said during the same event.
He added that while there has been some concern of vendor lock,
the Army is currently resource constrained.
“If we have only a certain number of vendor solutions that are
demonstrating that capability as part of the \set ’21 evaluation, that
does not man those vendors are locked in for those capabilities,”
he said. “In many cases, we have multiple vendors that will be
demonstrated whether from [Rapid Equipping Force] procured
assets or assets that have been procured to support the 1st of the
82nd [Airborne Division] evaluation.”
These capabilities will then compete in field experiments, said
Winterle. In the case of multiple vendors, there will be a run off
and down select. The Army has said these experiments, which
have occurred in concert with the Network Cross Functional
Team, have helped better inform designs and drill down on risk
reduction.
“We had hoped by now to be experimenting at brigade level. But
the money didn’t move,” Bassett said. “The above threshold repro-
gramming last year wasn’t approved. The one that we needed this
year to keep it on track wasn’t approved even inside the Pentagon.
So we’re going to have less experimentation than we had hoped
for to inform our design.” o
JUNE 2019 21
electronic warfare
Signaling
change
How an electronic warfare update could help the Navy
By Adam Stone
T
he Navy wants to harden its aircraft carriers, cruisers,
destroyers and warships against an ever more hostile
electronic warfare environment. To do so, the service
recently awarded a $184 million contract to Lockheed
Martin.
The contract is for ongoing production of Block 2
systems that are part of the Surface Electronic Warfare
Improvement Program, or SEWIP.
SEWIP supports AN/SLQ-32(V), a shipboard electronic warfare
system that delivers both support and countermeasure protection
for U.S. and international navies.
The Block 2 upgrade “increases system capability significantly,”
said Joe Ottaviano, director at Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission
Systems. “The number of threats and signals out there is increasing
exponentially, and the system has to be able to handle those more
complicated threats. It also brings the system into the digital age as
the first open-architecture EW system that the Navy had moved on.”
Designed in the 1970s and deployed in the 1980s, AN/SLQ-32
(pronounced “slick”) scans the electronic spectra for indications
of incoming missiles. While a Block 1 upgrade worked to fine-tune
some of those capabilities, Block 2 is more of a reboot, giving the
system considerably expanded powers. Reaching across the entire
electromagnetic spectrum, Block 2 enables the AN/SLQ-32 system
to tune into not just missiles, but also ships, radio traffic and other
key electronic signals.
The Navy points to enhanced capabilities via an upgraded
electronic support antenna, an electronic support receiver and
an open interface with the Navy’s key combat systems. “These
upgrades are necessary in order to pace the threat and improve
detection and accuracy capabilities of the AN/SLQ-32,” according
to Navy documents.
Together, these improvements will “take electronic warfare to the
21st century,” Bryan Fox, engineering agent manager at the Naval
Surface Warfare Center’s Crane Division, said in a news release.
“We are giving the war fighter game-changing technologies so that
current and future threats can be combatted.”
Ottaviano said the open interface is significant in an increasingly
hostile electronic warfare environment, where integration between
22 C4ISRNET.COM
SEWING THINGS TOGETHER
NAVY LEADERS WANT AN EW
SYSTEMS UPGRADE TO HELP
PROVIDE A CLEARER PICTURE
OF WHAT’S HAPPENING.
shipboard systems becomes critical.
“You have more flow of information, allowing the combat system
to make faster, real-time decisions. It also gives the combat system
a better picture of the overall environment that it sits in,” he said.
With its broad range, Block 2 creates situational awareness across
the electromagnetic domain. When it’s possible to integrate that intel
into the combat system, “that’s a very powerful capability, in that it
enables the combat system to be looking everywhere all at once,”
Ottaviano said.
In practical terms, Block 2’s sophisticated signal processing
should give commanders the ability to more effectively interpret the
electronic warfare landscape.
“Most battles take place close to shore, where you get more signal,”
Ottaviano said. “This system can take apart that complex, dense
environment very quickly and ascertain what is a threat and what
is not a threat. In a digital world, I can look at an extremely fine level
and tear those signals apart so that I can understand exactly what
is going on. Being digital gives me the ability to look at the environ-
ment with much finer granularity.”
The open-architecture approach also allows Block 2 to seamlessly
interface with other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
assets, such as the Advanced Off-Board Electronic Warfare system.
“Together that gives you an increased field of view,” Ottaviano
said. “It comes from being digital and it comes from having an open
system. A lot of work was done to standardize the interfaces, to really
think well into the future.”
Further future-proofing comes via the programmability of Block 2,
which is largely based on off-the-shelf technology components.
“As threats continue to become more complex, we had to be sure
PHOTO: COURTESY LOCKHEED MARTIN
the system was software upgradable to give the system additional
capabilities,” he said. “This is a new tool and everyone is still finding
out just how powerful it is. If there is a decision to upgrade systems
software, we can do it very quickly and easily.”
Looking ahead, Ottaviano said a planned future Block 3 likely will
augment Block 2’s passive scanning with tools for an active response
on the electromagnetic spectrum. In January, the Navy awarded
Northrop Grumman a contract to bring a modern electronic warfare
attack capability to U.S. surface ships. o

Building
Blocks
The E/A-18G Growler
electronic attack plane is
about to get more lethal
By Valerie Insinna
B
oeing’s E/A-18G Growler could receive a package
of upgrades in the mid-2020s that would provide a
suite of new tools to electronically attack its foes.
Early this year, the Navy awarded Boeing initial
funding to begin studying what kinds of technologies
could be incorporated into a “Block 2 Growler,” said
Jen Tebo, the company’s director of Super Hornet and
Growler development.
“There were kind of rumblings of Growler Block 2 a year ago, and
now it is a real thing,” Tebo told reporters on the sidelines of the Navy
League’s Sea-Air-Space, held May 6 – 8 in Maryland. “The Growler is
the only platform of its type that is being produced today, so it makes
sense that we would take something that was designed in the ’90s and
now enhance it to be relevant for decades to come.”
The Navy is interested in retrofitting some — potentially all —
of its E/A-18G fleet in the mid-2020s. The exact nature of those
upgrades is still to be decided, but Tebo outlined a couple of the
improvements.
First, Boeing plans to improve the electronic attack sensors. For
example, it is considering enhancements to Northrop Grumman’s
ALQ-218 system, used by the Growler for radar warning, electronic
support measures and electronic intelligence, Tebo said.
Boeing leaders also plan to add “adaptive, distributed processing”
so that the E/A-18’s computers can quickly digest and pump out
threat information. And because the computers will be processing
more information and delivering it to the pilot and weapon system
officer, it makes sense to improve interfaces so that the data is easy
Being Decoy
PHOTO: MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS ANDREW LANGHOLF/NAVY
This isn’t your dad’s denial
and deception
By Mark Pomerleau
Officials are becoming more specific about what the congested and
contested battlefield of tomorrow might look like.
Unlike technologically inferior foes of the counter-terror fight
in Iraq and Afghanistan, near-peer adversaries have sophisticated
technologies that can jam communications and even geolocate units
merely based on sensing the units’ electronic signature. This trail
could be internet connections or radio transmissions, all of which
exist in the electromagnetic spectrum.
Under the Army’s new concept — multidomain operations —
the service has moved beyond notional, conceptual and future
terms and started outlining what it needs to present sophisticated
adversaries with multiple dilemmas.
In the non-kinetic electromagnetic spectrum world, the new
C4ISRNET.com/electronic-warfare
Electronic Warfare
FRESH GROWLER FILLS
AN EA-18G LANDS ON
THE FLIGHT DECK OF
THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
to digest and the aircrew’s workload is minimized, she said.
“All of that is kind of accomplished through software-defined
radios that are enabled through a flexible and adaptable hardware
architecture,” Tebo said.
“That not only gives the Navy step function capability now, but
it also sets up the infrastructure and the architecture to allow us
to continually evolve capability, as threats are dynamic out there
and they change,” she said. “We don’t know what they are, and the
life of the Growler is very, very long.”
The Block 2 upgrades will also contain some capabilities that
Boeing has already developed for the latest Block 3 iteration of the
Super Hornet, such as low-drag conformal fuel tanks. The company
is also assessing whether to boost the Growler’s 7,500-hour service
life as part of the retrofit process.
Boeing is in the “wrap up phases” of its initial trade study and
will brief the Navy and other stakeholders in industry on its result,
she said.
“As we move later this year to the SFR — the system functional
requirements phase — sometime in that you’ve got to nail down an
architecture to get to the functional requirements of this and how
we might achieve them.” o
approach includes saturating the environment with electronic
decoys to hide units or sensitive assets.
Gen. Robert Brown, the commander of Army Pacific, speaking
during a March 27 presentation at AUSA Global Force Symposium
held in Huntsville, Alabama, explained that the Army must get back
to denial and deception. In this new environment, the use of denial
and deception will look different from that of years past.
He described the potential prospect of deploying 10,000 water
bottle-sized devices that emit the electronic signature of a TYP-2
radar. With 10,000 of these signatures in the environment, “good
luck finding the actual TYP-2,” and just think of all the time wasted
doing it, Brown explained.
Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, commander of Army Cyber Command,
has envisioned dropping a decoy emitting strong signals off a truck
at a fork in the road, thus drawing enemy attention to it.
“Now we are presenting multiple dilemmas to the adversary,”
he said.
These decoys can be used, for exampale, to throw adversaries
off the trail of friendly forces or distract from other items forces
might want to protect.
“If I have something like a counterfire radar, that is going to be really
important to me. Maybe what I want to do, again, is push an alternate
threat to the adversary,” Fogarty said. o
JUNE 2019 23
c2/COMMS
Teaming with
Potential
The US Navy’s
unmanned dream:
A common control system
By David B. Larter
T
he Navy’s growing and increasingly diverse portfolio
of unmanned systems is creating a jumble of control
systems, creating problems for a force that hopes robot
ships, aircraft and submarines will help it to regain an
advantage over rivals such as China and Russia. One
major issue with having myriad systems, however, is
needing to train sailors on several different ones, which
can prove time-consuming, inefficient and expensive.
“From a manned-machine teaming and sailor-integration perspec-
tive, we need a portfolio of systems to do a wide variety of things,”
Capt. Pete Small, the head of unmanned maritime systems at Naval
Sea Systems Command, said. “We can’t bring a different interface
for each platform to our sailors — from a training perspective but also
from an integration perspective.
“We might have a destroyer that needs to operate an [unmanned
surface vessel] and an [unmanned underwater vehicle] and they all
need to be linked back to a shore command center. So we’ve got to have
common communications protocols to make that all happen, and we
want to reduce the burden on sailors to go do that.”
Paths
of Least
Resistance
What the Air Force learned
from insurgents’ networks
By Mark Pomerleau
Air Force leaders plan to experiment this summer with a mesh network
that would allow military users in hard-to-reach areas to connect to a
top-secret network and share intelligence information without the fear
of losing service.
Department of Defense officials worry that in a potential conflict
with China or Russia, adversaries will look to shut down friendly
communications channels. As a result, soldiers will need resilient and
redundant forms of communication.
To combat that possibility, Air Force officials want a system that has
multiple ways to quickly connect to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence
Communications System.
“It’s a kit that, when units go out and deploy to bare base locations,
they’re able to set up and get linked into JWICS,” Shane Hamilton,
associate director of intelligence at Air Combat Command, said April 11
at an event at Langley Air Force Base.
24 C4ISRNET.COM
FRIENDLY FIRE
AN MQ-8C FIRE SCOUT IS CHAINED TO THE FLIGHT DECK OF THE
INDEPENDENCE-CLASS LITTORAL COMBAT SHIP CORONADO.
The philosophy that is driving the Navy toward a goal of having one
control system to run all unmanned platforms in the service’s portfolio:
a goal that is a good ways away, Small said.
“The end state is — future state nirvana — would be one set of soft-
ware that you could do it all on,” he said. “I think that’s a faraway vision.
And the challenges are every unmanned system is a little bit different
and has its own requirements. And each of the integration points — a
destroyer, shore base or submarine — has slightly different integration
requirements as well.
“But the vision is that we can enjoy commonality as much as is
possible and share pieces of software wherever possible.”
The effort mirrors a similar endeavor in the surface Navy to develop
a single combat system that controls every ship’s systems.
The goal is that if a sailor who is trained on a big-deck amphibious
ship transfers to a destroyer, no extra training will be necessary to run
the equipment on the destroyer.
“That’s an imperative going forward — we have to get to a single
integrated combat system,” Rear Adm. Ron Boxall, the chief of naval
operations’ director of surface warfare, said in a December interview
at the Pentagon with C4ISRNET sister publication Defense News. o
Hamilton said Air Force leaders are operating under the assumption
that an adversary might take one or two of the networks down and that
the new system should automatically find the right path to move the
data to intelligence personnel downrange.
These types of mesh or fractal networks are what the Air Force
will need in the future, Hamilton said. Already, he added, insurgents
have proven they work.
“One thing I learned from facing insurgent bad guys: they’ve got
mesh networks figured out,” he said.
“When we figured out how to stop their comms through any one
medium, they were very quick to adapt and move to another medium.
I think that is a lesson learned from their [tactics, techniques and
procedures] that we need to incorporate into our operations.”
The head of Air Combat Command, Gen. James “Mike” Holmes,
said April 11 that the service plans to rely more on commercial systems
and is less likely to consider building its own specific, purpose-built
communication system.
“It’ll be about protecting the data, keeping our confidence in the data
as people try to take the confidence we have away from us and build
systems that can communicate over fiber, over commercial telecom,
over Wi-Fi, over satellite links, over all the different paths that are out
PHOTO: ENS. JALEN ROBINSON/NAVY
there,” Holmes said.
Similar to the JWICS system’s ability to automatically find the right
pathway, Holmes described an approach of that would mimic the way
commercial cellphones automatically connect to the proper cellphone
network or Wi-Fi.
“You don’t always know how you’re talking to your spouse; you
just know the cellphone is figuring it out and finding the path to get
there,” he said. o

PENALTY SHOOT OUT
THE ARMY IS UNDERTAKING
SEVERAL EFFORTS TO SUPPORT The Army targets systems to ‘see’ 1,000 miles
LONG-RANGE, MULTIDOMAIN
OPERATIONS.
A
dversaries are creating systems to keep U.S. forces
at bay, including long-range missiles, advanced radar
equipment to sense incoming assets and non-kinetic
means of engagement, such as cyber and electronic
warfare. This has made the Army realize it needs a
long-range penetrating capability to thwart these so-
called anti-access area denial areas.
But, in order to target accurately, the Army has said it needs to be
able to “see” thousands of miles to locate what it is shooting at.
“Right now, we have a challenge with sensing deep in the U.S.
Army. The chief’s No. 1 priority for modernization is long-range
precision fires,” Maj. Gen. Robert Walters, the commander of the
Intelligence Center of Excellence, said March 26 during the AUSA
Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
Brig. Gen. Jennifer Buckner, director of cyber within the Army’s
G-3/5/7, told an audience at a March 21 AFCEA conference held in
National Harbor, Maryland, that the need to see long ranges means
sensing where missiles are firing, but also viewing activity in virtual
space.
To address this hybrid approach, Army officials have outlined a
variety of efforts, including task forces and actual materiel solutions.
One is an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance task force
created in 2018 by the Army’s intelligence directorate to optimize
Army ISR for so-called multidomain operations, Cheryle Rivas, an
Army spokeswoman, told C4ISRNET.
The task force will also enhance and capitalize on complementary
capabilities across the joint force and intelligence community.
Rivas noted that the task force performs a complementary and
enabling role to the Army’s eight cross-functional teams, which sit
under Futures Command and are associated with the service’s top
six modernization priorities: long-range precision fires; next-gen
combat vehicles; future vertical lift; the network; air and missile
PHOTO: SGT. MICHELLE U. BLESAM/ARMY
defense; and soldier lethality.
Rivas added that intelligence is central to the Army’s ability to
conduct lethal strikes that are not hampered by the denial strategies
of near-peer competitors.
The task force “is working alongside the long-range precision fires,
assured precision, navigation and timing, and future vertical lift
cross-functional teams to optimize existing intelligence capabilities,
as well as to identify critical collection requirements from the space
to the terrestrial layer that can provide targetable data in support
C4ISRNET.com/c2-comms
c2/COMMS
Sense of
Direction
By Mark Pomerleau
of long-range precision,” she said.
On the materiel side, Walters outlined a variety of capabilities —
from the space to the terrestrial layer — the Army is pursuing to get
after the challenges of sensing deep into enemy territory.
The first is the multidomain sensing system. This is designed to
be sensor-centric as opposed to platform-centric and will include
things from tethered antennas to high-altitude balloons to low-orbit
satellites in space, Walters said.
“We want smart sensors that are tied down to shooters to close the
gap to when we see the enemy to when we kill the enemy,” he said.
Part of the multidomain sensing system includes sensors, such
as synthetic aperture radar and moving target identification sensors
enabled with artificial intelligence, that can detect enemy move-
ments on the ground.
“The intent of this aerial layer of intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance is to enable us to sense deep so that we can provide
the intel support to targeting, but we can also provide electronic war-
fare capabilities deeper into the enemy’s formations,” Walters said.
He added that this includes electronic attack.
“We have to be able to sense that far to provide that to the shoot-
ers for them to engage the enemy,” he told C4ISRNET. “We have to
do it rapidly. That’s why we want the smart sensors in the sky and
we can program them so we know what the enemy’s order of battle
looks like.”
A program called TITAN will change the need for four different
ground systems that receive overhead information to one, Walters
said, with the intent being to capitalize on national assets, commer-
cial capabilities and capabilities possessed by sister services.
According to a slide during Walters’ presentation, TITAN will
allow for the conduct of deep targeting in a contested environment
and enabling “cross-domain fires with AI shortened kill-chains.”
Walters also included the Terrestrial Layer System in this discus-
sion of providing sensing capabilities deep into enemy territories.
TLS is a combined signals intelligence and electronic warfare system
that will be mounted on ground platforms.
Walters told C4ISRNET that the ultimate intent for the Army is
to provide all these capabilities at all echelons.
TLS will be at the brigade combat team level, as well as with the
expeditionary military intelligence brigades, while TITAN will be at
all echelons and ground stations. The multidomain sensing system
will likely be a division and above asset, he told C4ISRNET. o
JUNE 2019 25
cyber
Cyber
insights
Will every Marine a
rifleman remain?
By Kyle Rempfer
P
lans to bolster the Marine Corps’
cohort of cyber experts are moving
forward, but this new unit will not
don the service’s uniform, service
leaders said.
The Marine Corps will create
a new Cyber Auxiliary division,
Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said April 29,
and the new force will not be beholden to strict
Marine grooming standards.
“We are going to do a Marine Corps Cyber Auxiliary,” Neller said
at the Future Security Forum in Washington.
“If anybody wants to join, you can sign up. You can have purple
hair, too, but no [Eagle, Globe and Anchor].”
The comment was easy to dismiss as a joke, but Marine officials
said the Cyber Auxiliary unit is a serious endeavor that is moving
forward, although confirmed details are scarce.
“I will confirm, however, that the CMC was not joking about
the creation of a new cyber unit,” said Capt. Joseph Butterfield,
Headquarters Marine Corps spokesman.
To underscore the need for unconventional approaches to man-
power, Neller recounted a 2015 event in Silicon Valley. Neller said
he was surrounded by experts from all over the world for five days
of lectures on directed energy, biomechanics, artificial intelligence
and more.
“You just sit there and go, ‘wow, I had no idea,’” he said. “You have
to kind of open up your mind a little bit.”
While new technology is being introduced, fundamental military
principles like training hard and maintaining discipline remain.
“At some point in the fight, there may be a time where somebody’s
going to stand on a piece of ground with a weapon in their hand and
say, ‘this is mine; you can’t have it,’” Neller said.
“But to get to that point, you have to control your network and
deny them theirs.”
The need for specialized cyber experts is one felt across the
Defense Department, and the federal government at large. Military
leaders have found it difficult to coax talented computer and tech
wonks away from the private sector’s lucrative six-figure salaries
and into public service.
The new Cyber Auxiliary unit may be a workaround.
It also appears to address concerns from Marines expressed
over the past few years when the idea of “lateral entry” into the
service for cyber experts was introduced — the option of skipping
26 C4ISRNET.COM
SEMPER WI-FI
NEW MARINES CYBER UNIT
‘CAN HAVE PURPLE HAIR,’
BUT NO EAGLE, GLOBE AND
ANCHOR, COMMANDANT SAYS.
boot camp and putting on a uniform as a mid-career rank upon
entry into the service.
Because the new force will not be wearing the Eagle, Globe and
Anchor, they won’t be Marines who went through boot camp.
Still unanswered is what exactly a Cyber Auxiliary will do.
“Cyber expert” is sometimes used as a catch-all by government
officials, ranging from white-hat hackers, to information technology
professionals to intelligence collectors.
Whether the cyber operators will be in the field, or be relegated
to offices, is yet to be seen. But putting civilians into operational
roles comes with complications, Marine Corps Times previously re-
ported.
For instance, legally, some offensive cyber operations would have
to be carried out by a uniformed service member.
Modernizing the Corps has been a major focus. The effort has
included goals such as fielding all 32 infantry battalions with small
quadcopter drones and implementing a new 12-man rifle squad PHOTO: CPL. JOSEPH SCANLAN/REGIONAL COMMAND SOUTHWEST
model to free up Marines for areas like cyber and intelligence.
But the modernization push also means introducing automated
vehicles such as amphibious ship-launched sea drones. That tech-
nology changes the way warfare is conducted.
Neller was bullish regarding the possibilities for naval and air
automation, including swarming underwater and aerial drones. But
he remained skeptical of ground automation at its current level.
“Obviously, autonomy, robotics, manned-unmanned — that’s
all happening ... pretty much every vehicle you have can be driven
autonomously. I mean, the other day they drove an amphibious
assault vehicle up and down the beach, driven by somebody with
a controller,” Neller said.
“That sounds great until it throws track and the robot can’t put
a track back on. And the robot can’t do security, and then I’m going
to ask you if you’re going to put your son or daughter in the back
of that thing without a human driving?” o

RESPECT MY AUTHORITY
CYBER OPERATIONS WERE
FEW AND FAR BETWEEN.
NO MORE.
New authorities mean new missions at Cyber Command
L
eaders at U.S. Cyber Command have used new author-
ities to conduct more cyberspace operations in the last
few months than in the previous 10 years, according to
Department of Defense officials.
“I would say that in 8, 9, 10 years — under the old
decision process — I can count on less than two fingers
the number of operations conducted,” a senior Defense
department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told
reporters in April.
The new process — known as National Security Presidential
Memorandum (NSPM) 13 and minted in August 2018 — replaced
an Obama administration-era process, which required presidential
approval for offensive and defensive cyber operations taking place
outside U.S. networks.
“In this time since mid-August, when the new process went into
place, we’ve conducted many more” operations,” the official said.
The official, as well as other top officials in the DoD enterprise,
declined to say just how many more operations Cyber Command
has undertaken since the executive branch created a new process
for signing off on operations.
NSPM-13 is essentially the process by which the government
grants approval for offensive and defensive cyber effects operations,
the official said. The process can be associated with any department
or agency, although it mostly revolves around DoD operations. The
formal document that describes the process is classified.
DoD is now operating under a new concept known as “persistent
engagement,” which recognizes that cyber forces must be in constant
contact in cyberspace with competitors day to day. A key pillar to
that concept is what officials call “defending forward,” which in-
volves operating outside U.S. networks to face threats as far away
from the United States as possible.
Defending forward is a concept that “helps us better protect
ourselves,” Maj. Gen. Charles Moore, the director of operations, J-3
at Cyber Command, told reporters May 7 during a media briefing
at Fort Meade.
“When we do this, we can observe enemy techniques and their
procedures and tactics, as well as potentially uncover any tools or
weapons they might be utilizing.”
PHOTO: J.M. EDDINS JR./AIR FORCE
Moore added that the new decision-making process had been
critical because it allowed departments and agencies “the ability
to execute cyberspace operations within very specific confines as
given to us by the president and requires very close coordination
and synchronization with the interagency in terms of doing that.”
The combination of a maturing Cyber Command, a more experi-
enced cyber force and new authorities that allow for more activity
have led to a normalizing of cyber operations alongside other more
C4ISRNET.com/cyber
cyber
Pushing
forward
By Mark Pomerleau
conventional activities.
In previous years, cyber operations were less understood by both
senior government leadership and military commanders, leading
to cyberwarfare being considered as an afterthought in planning.
Operators “understand that every time they touch the keyboard
where the authority comes from and where they are in the command
chain and who is authorized that particular operation. It’s clear,” the
Defense Department official said.
“That’s part of the checklist of when you log on and before you
take an action. Just like a pilot climbing into a cockpit or a soldier
picking up a rifle and going on patrol, they understand their [rules
of engagement], they understand their left and right bounds, they
understand the objectives, they understand how that all fits into a
higher echelon of objectives.”
He added that while they might not be conducting cyber effects
operations daily, they are regularly leading collection operations
and preparation.
Cyber Command officials noted that Congress granting additional
authorities in this space has cleared the way for daily operations.
In 2018’s defense policy bill, Congress clarified which activities
qualify as an exemption to the covert action statue by listing “clan-
destine” cyber operations as a traditional military activity, excluding
it from previous restrictions. This allowed the Defense Department
to hunt outside of its networks to see attacks before they reach the
United States.
“You can imagine that if we are not considered a traditional
military activity, that we essentially have to declare or make very
overt any of our operations — and acknowledge that it is being done
by the Department of Defense and the United States of America,”
Moore said.
That is “not very conducive to being successful inside the cyber
domain,” he continued. “By declaring it a traditional military activity,
it allowed us to move away from that.”
Similarly, this authority — as well as NSPM-13 and the language
in the bill authorizing actions against certain nation-state actors
should they conduct malicious activity in cyberspace — allowed
Cyber Command unprecedented freedom of action in defensive
actions during the 2018 midterm election.
“We had actually been constrained to only operating our forces on the
[DoD Information Network],” Maj. Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander
of the Cyber National Mission Force, told reporters at Fort Meade.
“We’re proud of how it was done, meaning we worked really closely
with the Department of State, we worked really closely with European
Command to be able to do missions, and at the end of those missions
we had a more secure ally, we gained insights that we wouldn’t have had
otherwise in a very transparent way.” o
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