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Air Force focusing on cyber warfare challenges

Photos: Dayton InfoTech conference

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By John Nolan, Staff Writer Updated 9:24 PM Wednesday, October 21, 2009

DAYTON — Add this to the complexities of cyber warfare: It may someday be difficult for the United States to attack an enemy in cyberspace without damaging a network that the U.S. military itself needs for its own electronic communications.

That is one of many issues that the Air Force and sister services need to figure out as they define how to try to attack enemies and defend key U.S. computer networks in cyberspace where “battlespace management at the speed of light” may be necessary,” Kenneth Percell, director of engineering at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Robins Air Force Base, Ga., said Wednesday, Oct. 21.

“How do I attack somebody else and not damage myself in the process?” Percell told a business audience at the InfoTech 2009 conference during a panel presentation on global vigilance. “Some of my packets might need to go through that router, wherever it is.”

Another challenge will be doing cyber casualty assessments, to determine which key network points may have been undermined by enemies, he said.

According to one projection, electronic communications will have become so interdependent by 2030 that no one will be able to attack another in cyberspace without hurting themselves by damaging a network they will need, said Col. D. Scott George, commander of the National Air & Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Percell, George and other senior Air Force officials on the panel shared glimpses of a rapidly changing, increasingly threatening world with the audience at the InfoTech 2009 conference, an annual gathering of Air Force and information technology leaders at the Dayton Convention Center.

“We need you guys. We need your smarts,” Maj. Gen. Marshall Sabol, director of strategic plans, programs and analyses for the Air Force Materiel Command headquarters at Wright-Patterson, said to the business audience.

The challenges that the speakers highlighted included:

More than 20 nations have ballistic missiles. China is developing attack missiles and its own anti-missile defenses, and North Korea is developing missiles. Russia, however, is expected to remain the largest source of strategic missiles outside the United States.
China and Russia are developing military stealth aircraft, to counter the capabilities of U.S. planes including the F-22 Raptor, B-2 bomber and the in-development F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Finding, tracking and trying to neutralize threats in cyber combat may have to be done in nanoseconds, in an environment changing far more quickly than traditional military planning and acquisition are designed to address.
The growing demand for unmanned aircraft, between the armed forces and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is straining the availability of the fleet, with the increasing needs for maintenance and support.

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