DULLES, Va.—The traditional cyber mission space for the Defense Department has been around protecting networks and industry’s role here has been helping by supplying expertise but with the ongoing standup of the first Cyber Mission Forces and the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy there will likely be demand for cyber weapons that military commanders will want to bring to the fight, a Raytheon [RTN] official said on June 5.
The demand for expertise and training help from industry will continue “but I think my sense is there also has to be cyber tools, cyber weapons that have the same characteristic as any other weapon that we would talk about that a Combatant Commander would understand instinctively where and how it could be used, that has got reliable battle damage assessment, and it fits into a campaign the way that a JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) fits into a campaign, the way a Tomahawk [missile] fits into a campaign or any other traditional weapon system,” Bill Leigher, head DoD Strategy for Cyber at Raytheon’s Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS) segment, told reporters.
The Defense Department is working through the issues associated with going beyond the traditional mission, which has been network security, to “getting more of a mission space that’s largely about how do I use it against an adversary,” Leigher said. Leigher has been with Raytheon a little more than a year following a 33-year Navy career where he spent is last five years working cyber issues, including a time as the deputy of Fleet Cyber Command.
Raytheon officials discussed the company’s approach to, and capabilities in, the cyber domain for its customer set that includes government, commercial and international. The officials also provided tours and overviews of the Raytheon’s new Global Cyber Solutions Center, which lets the company research, test and demonstrate solutions for customers in a non-classified environment, and its classified cyber range, the Cyber Operations, Development and Evaluation (CODE) Center.
The new DoD strategy is clear in talking about cyber weapons, Leigher said. The military service cyber commands, in line with United States Central Command, have been talking about three key mission areas for their cyber forces. These are defensive cyber operations, offensive cyber operations, and defending the DoD Information Network.
Network defense will remain an important mission as seen with the latest high profile cyber incident, which was the disclosure on June 4 of a hack against the federal Office of Personnel Management, Leigher said. In line with the Defense Department’s recently published cyber strategy, that means strengthening partnerships between “Homeland Security and the rest of government,” he said.
“It was always one of my frustrations as a DoD guy and a Navy guy because I didn’t think we had the right mechanisms, when something really bad happened in cyberspace,” Leigher said. “DoD was the only one with capacity. So we’ve got to work on that problem and that’s as much a national problem as it is a DoD problem.”
The talk of offensive cyber weapons is no longer “veiled” and these tools will be used but how is the question, Leigher said.
Cyber weapons allow for more precision than kinetic weapons and will change how warfare is conducted, said Jack Harrington, vice president of Cybersecurity and Special Missions at IIS. “It is changing the future of warfare to where civilian casualties are much less likely because we can be more precision-oriented,” and this applies to friendly and adversarial sides, he said.
Michael Daly, the chief technology officer for the Cyber Division at IIS, said it could be that instead of dropping a bomb on an enemy communications node a soldier sends a “packet” to disable it while we do our mission, and turn it back on afterward and everyone can communicate.” Still, Leigher added, any cyber weapons still needs the same type of “reliability” that kinetic weapons have.
“Before I saw a hole, now I need to know it’s not working,” Leigher said.
Cyber Command and the service cyber commands are expected to have their Cyber Mission Forces and related teams full-up by the end of 2016.