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Cyber may ultimately be commander's business. But for commanders
to adopt and employ capabilities that the cyber community brings to
the table, operators must excel at explaining their abilities in
terms commanders can understand.
Maj. Gen. Stephen G.
Fogarty, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort
Gordon, Georgia, said he believes now that the nation's defense, and
the Army's ability to operate, is almost completely dependent on
Department of Defense information network, or DODIN, operations.
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Cyber may ultimately be commander's business. But for commanders to adopt and employ capabilities that the cyber community brings to the table, operators must excel at explaining their abilities in terms commanders can understand. (U.S. Army artwork by Peggy Frierson)
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"I think DODIN operations, from the enterprise level
[DISA] all the way down to the rifleman radio, is the most
complex, most important operation that DOD conducts," he
said, speaking at a conference on cyber operations,
sponsored by the Association of the United States Army, Nov.
10. "We are almost completely dependent upon DODIN
operations."
Today, he said, mission command,
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, precision
fires, joint logistics and tele-medicine, among
other things, all depend on DODIN operations.
"We are
at a point now where the network is not just an enabling or
supporting capability, but is a warfighting capability and a
warfighting platform," he said. "As we start to move into
the offensive realm, with cyber capabilities, it becomes
even more important to really recognize that fact."
Ultimately, Fogarty said, cyber is the responsibility of the
commander.
"From the defensive to the offensive, he
is the one responsible for integrating all these
capabilities, like he is for fires, combat aviation or
logistics," Fogarty said.
Maj. Gen. Charles Flynn,
commander of the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield
Barracks, Hawaii, said the efforts of cyber liaison
officers, or LNOs, are pivotal in how maneuver commanders
accept cyber capabilities into their arsenals and how they
employ those capabilities.
"These cyber teams and
LNOs - they have to get out to the divisions, the corps, the
Army service component commands, into the theater armies,
and they need to get out there yesterday," Flynn said. "They
are not coming fast enough."
And those who come,
Flynn said, need to be the very best the Army has to offer
in the way of cyber. They must not just be experts in their
own area, in cyber operations, but they must also be
extremely knowledgeable in land operations as well, so that
they can articulate to commanders - in language the
commanders can understand - what they bring to the table.
"You need to send your very best people, and they need
to be reliable and incredible upon arrival," he said. "They
need to be able to describe to the commanders what they
offer. I cannot express to you adequately [enough], if you
don't send your best people out there to talk to division,
corps, and theater commanders, it will set back your efforts
more than you can ever imagine."
Flynn said cyber
LNOs must understand maneuver warfare and doctrine, so they
can convey to those commanders how cyber will fit into the
fight. "And they have to convince the commanders that they
are value-added to their fight."
Those LNOs must
understand how the maneuver commander thinks, he said. And
to do that, they must form a relationship with the
commander, as do other LNOs. "From that relationship [comes]
trust. Then you can build teams. Without a relationship, you
will not have the trust, and you will not get to building
the teams required to execute this."
Flynn suggested
that cyber warriors be able to speak top operational
commanders in "doctrinal and simple terms."
"They
have to be able to describe what they offer to the
commander, or they will be put in what I call the 'island of
misfit toys,'" he said. "They are going to go somewhere off
to the side, nice to have, but they are not being employed,
because they can't bring to the commander what they offer."
Flynn described how he sees the network - described in
the military, operational terms he thinks make it most
understandable and digestible to commanders.
The
network, he said, is a weapons system. Bandwidth is a class
of supply, he said, and commanders must anticipate their
requirement for that class of supply and weigh the demands
on it. "They have to understand where do they manage it at,
who manages it for them, because they are going to end up
using that class of supply to weight their efforts in the
fight."
Data, he said, is a munition, "just like a
precision-guided munition, or a 5.56, the munition has to be
understood by the commander or the team, so that munition
can be pointed in the [right] direction." And spectrum is a
terrain feature, he said.
"I talked about a weapons
system, class of supply, terrain features, munitions - these
are all terms that are understood by company commanders,
battalion commanders, brigade commanders, division
commanders, corps commanders," Flynn said. "You have to
speak in simple terms so they understand what it is you are
bringing to the fight. So they understand, in their context,
what it is you can apply for them."
CYBER CAMPUS
In
September, Fogarty said, the Cyber Center of Excellence
published a strategic plan, focusing on five lines of
effort. But he instead mentioned three objectives that he
called the "three Cs."
First among those was
a change in culture across the Army, where cyber is not
considered just an issue for the signals or intelligence
community, but for the entire Army.
"We have to get
the different tribes to work together much more
effectively," Fogarty said.
Secondly, he said, there
must be a true "cyber campus" on Fort Gordon.
"The
facilities down at Fort Gordon, outside the operational
facilities, are not up to the task," he said. "The Army is
going to have to make a significant investment."
He
said already the Cyber Center of Excellence is working with
the assistant chief of staff for installation management,
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and the Army staff
to make that happen.
Finally, he said, "convergence."
He said there isn't just one network, but multiple networks.
"The way we operate today is unsustainable, and frankly it's
indefensible," Fogarty said. "We are going to have to drive
not only the convergence of the network, but the convergence
of organizations and convergence of tactics, techniques and
procedures to get to the cooperation I talked about."
By U.S. Army C. Todd Lopez
Army News Service
Copyright 2015
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