The Air Force believes it is in the early phases of developing an algorithm that will be able to predict the effects of cyber capability.
Air Force Air Combat Command (ACC) Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson said Thursday ACC and the Rand Corp. have been working together for the past year to develop a mathematical algorithm to predict cyber capabilities. In one year of study, Jamieson said the team has tested six cases: four were “traditional” cyber while two were electronic warfare. 
Jamieson compared the Air Force’s “nascent stages” of predicting cyber capability with the Army’s early days of aviation in the early 1900s.
“I really believe we’re in 1917 of cyber, like we were in aviation when we used it in World War I and we exploded with capability,” Jamieson said at an Air Force Association (AFA) Mitchell Institute event in Arlington, Va. “I think that’s where we are today.”
Jamieson said the Air Force and Rand team have put a lot of thought and number-crunching to isolate variables needed to be considered in non-kinetic environments. Jamieson said the service will field the algorithm in exercises once it is put through rigorous testing.
The goal, Jamieson said, is not the extent of the capability but the “predictability.”
“We do not want to use a capability and have no idea what the second- or third-order effects,” Jamieson said. “That’s just not how the Air Force conducts its operations.”
Jamieson also compared this nascent cyber algorithm with the Air Force’s approach to kinetic weapons. She said most people understand that when the service deploys a kinetic capability, the weapon has been tested and airmen have been trained with it so the Air Force knows how many weapons it needs to achieve the desired effect.