U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) over the last couple of months has developed a model that instructs the services how to support it, according to the Air Force’s top officer.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said Monday at an Air Force Association breakfast in Arlington, Va., that this new rollout is part of the Defense Department’s effort to figure out its national posture for cyber. CYBERCOM is a sub-unified command subordinate to U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM).
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| Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh. Photo: Air Force. |
Welsh said the Air Force will have to think about what CYBERCOM’s new posture means to the service organizationally and for training and developing people. Welsh said about 95 percent of the people the Air Force calls cyber are really communications people: those who stand up architectures, manage infrastructure, administrate networks and defend those apparatuses.
Welsh said he doesn’t expect those kinds of people as the ones that CYBERCOM chief and NSA Director Army Gen. Keith Alexander wants to support his national mission teams or combatant command mission support.
“They’re not that group of people,” Welsh said. “Those people are going to be exquisitely trained. They’re going to be able to operate in the offensive environment, the active defensive environment and the exploitation world.”
Welsh said he foresees the number of these specially-trained cyber people being in the range of thousands. He said the Air Force is also determining how to manage its cyber force. Instead of one “big cyber” field, which Walsh said “doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said it could be one pool for those “supporting the fight” in the cyber arena and another pool for USAF support and infrastructure.
Welsh said Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) is leading the effort to determine how to manage the service’s cyber force. The Air Force would also have to “look hard” at how to organize the 24th Air Force, which establishes, operates, maintains and defends Air Force networks; the Air Force’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) agency and AFSPC. The Air Force would have to ask itself questions, Welsh said, like does it need cryptological coordination authorities and “going through multiple lines,” or can it be centralized?
“I don’t know what the answers are, but we’re working this pretty hard,” Welsh said.
Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said last week that CYBERCOM could eventually become a unified combatant command like U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), allowing it unique budgetary and acquisition authorities, but the Pentagon is not ready for that just yet (Defense Daily, June 13).
CYBERCOM did not respond to a request for comment.