The Army Cyber Center of Excellence (CCOE) this month tested electronic warfare capabilities for implementation to avoid falling behind adversaries at its second annual Cyber Quest training exercise, where industry professionals offered solutions for meeting operational cyber security challenges.

The cyber exercise, which brought in 27 industry vendors testing 40 different technologies, began June 5 and ends on Friday in Fort Gordon, Ga. Cyber Quest is conducted by both CCOE and the Army’s Cyber Battle Lab and offers a chance for operational forces to test out new tools and capabilities for addressing cyber defense challenges, with a specific focus this year on electronic warfare technology.

U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence logo. Photo: U.S. Army.
U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence logo. Photo: U.S. Army.

“Having soldiers employ these technologies and learn how to implement them is absolutely critical,” Commanding General of the Army’s CCOE Maj. Gen. John B. Morrison Jr. said in a media session on Wednesday. “Rapid prototyping like this let’s us put capabilities in the hands of soldiers, and give industry the immediate feedback on how their products work and are received.”

The CCOE wanted to move past just simulating electronic warfare challenges and focused this year on having soldiers test out new capabilities and provide real-time feedback, according to Morrison, who believes the Army is behind its competitors in utilizing electromagnetic spectrum tools.

Operational forces had the opportunity to explore capabilities allowing the use of radios as sensors and learning controls for electromagnetic spectrum tools to geographically map areas and conduct proper data analysis, according to Lt. Col. Gary Lyke, Training and Doctrine Command Capability Manager-Electronic Warfare Capabilities Development Branch Chief. 

“Last year was a building block to set the conditions for testing electronic warfare capabilities this year,” said Lyke. “You will watch the soldiers go through an integration process on their own during testing and see if these technologies are instinctive to use.”

The CCOE is working towards leveraging electronic warfare capabilities along with increasing machine to machine learning to boost data analytics capabilities in the face on growing cyber threats from adversaries. Participants in Cyber Quest looked at new approaches that reflect cyber industry’s transition from rules-based analysis to more behavioral analytics.

“What you’re having now is the machine is telling us something is different in this system and there is a problem with the network that needs to be addressed,” said Morrison, who emphasized how critical it is for soldiers to test these capabilities so they can properly assess when cyber anomalies are present. “You have to be able to discern if what’s happening is on the electromagnetic spectrum, if it’s just interference, or if an adversary is trying to affect the execution of a specific task of a maneuver.”

The 27 vendors at Cyber Quest presented 40 different technologies, including Nett Warrior capabilities for situational awareness systems and Tactical Defense Cyber Operations infrastructure for communication networks, according to Lt. Col. Stephen Roberts, Cyber Quest ‘17’s lead project officer.

Cyber Quest also included representatives from defense Project Management Offices to discuss risk reduction efforts and provide operational assessments of the technical capabilities being tested.

“We have used Cyber Quest as a chance to consider many defensive cyber technologies,so we can protect our networks and remediate attacks in a rapid fashion,” Roberts said. “Now we may take hours or days to remediate attacks, we want to get that down to minutes.”