Cyber symposium spawns powerful partnerships

  • Published
  • By Chuck Paone
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affaris
HANSCOM AFB, Mass. --  The Electronic Systems Center, 8th Air Force and the service's provisional Cyber Command are already building on partnerships established during the first-ever Air Force Cyber Symposium, which wrapped up Nov. 29. 

Held in Louisiana's Shreveport Convention Center, near Barksdale AFB, the first symposium featured a slew of high-level speakers and informative break-out sessions that helped lay out the goals and objectives for a mammoth effort: gaining and maintaining cyberspace dominance. 

"Look at air dominance as we now think of it," said Col. Leslie Blackham, commander of ESC's 753rd Electronic Systems Group, who coordinated the center's participation in the symposium. "No American ground troop expects to be attacked from the air, and adversarial ground forces always expect to be attacked from the air. That's dominance, and that's where we want to be in terms of cyber, too." 

What if, the colonel asked, U.S. and coalition forces could always be assured of their data's integrity, and enemy forces always had to question the veracity of theirs? "That kind of cyber advantage would be huge. It would allow us to control the cyber domain just as we currently control the air," she said. 

That's the essence of what the Air Force means by 'fly, fight and win in cyberspace,' the colonel said. Organizers and speakers devoted the first full day of the conference to defining that mantra, which the Air Force officially added to its mission statement earlier this year. 

"I think it was really important that we did that, and that so many people were on hand to hear and think about what we're trying to accomplish," Colonel Blackham said. "I think the first day of the symposium really helped clarify why the Air Force is standing up AFCYBER." 

That day, Estonian Under Secretary of Defense Lauri Almann delivered a sobering presentation about the massive cyber attacks his country faced last spring. His testimonial, Colonel Blackham said, made the 2,000 participants realize just how real and immediate the threat is. 

"He showed us all what happens when one's country experiences its cyber Pearl Harbor," she said. 

The colonel listed this new level of awareness as the first on a list of major accomplishments produced by the symposium. The strong partnerships formed are next in order, she noted. 

"As Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) and 8th Air Force are working through concepts of operations, tactics, techniques and procedures, we need to think about the best materiel solutions," she said. "But it's absolutely critical that we all work together so that we're defining the right needs and coming up with best ways to meet them."
Outreach to industry and academia is also very important, the colonel said. 

The three partners will team up with AFA for the second Air Force Cyber Symposium June 17 through 19, 2008, in Marlborough, Mass. Planning for that event is already under way. Going forward, the plan is for Cyber Command to host the event in odd-numbered years, and for ESC to host in even years. 

"During the years it's held there, we'll focus a bit more on operational issues; and when it's held here, we'll focus more on acquisition issues and materiel solutions," Colonel Blackham said. 

ESC, through its existing portfolio of command and control and combat support programs, is already emplacing some of those solutions. Others will be designed as challenges are defined. Sometimes those solutions will have to be developed very quickly. 

"We're always in the mode of revising offensive and defensive capabilities (to meet emerging needs)," Colonel Blackham said. "With cyber, in some cases, we're going to have to turn things in very short timeframes, often in a matter of days." 

Among the macro-level challenges that planners already face is the need to integrate global command and control of non-kinetic cyber forces and assets with traditional kinetic forces. 

"How can we take a battlefield status picture and overlay a health-and-status-of-the-network picture, and make it easy for an operational commander to see the whole picture?" Colonel Blackham asked. 

It's a logical leap - one many have not yet made - to go from considering cyber as an enabler of other warfighting domains to actually being a primary domain in its own right. But once a person has made the leap, it's easy to see how critical it is to control that domain and " to seize the electronic high ground," the colonel said. 

And it's easy to see how much work must be done. 

"Right now, we're at the level that pilots were at in World War I and II," Colonel Blackham said. "In the last 10 years we've entered an era of sophisticated cyber attacks, and we're just now really starting to grapple with how to deal with them - and starting to recognize how essential it is that we do." 

Just as air power needed to evolve, so must cyber power, and cyber projection. Colonel Blackham predicts that cyber forces will be where air forces are, in terms of strategy, tactics and technological sophistication, in about five years. 

"I'm convinced that we're going about this the right way, and that by working together toward the common goal, we'll accelerate that evolutionary process," she said.