The Pentagon said Tuesday the United States has not lost it “technological edge” with its weapons platforms, despite a new report about widespread cyber spying on their designs, allegedly by Chinese hackers.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that a confidential version of a Defense Science Board report prepared last year states more than two dozen weapons programs have been compromised through “cyber exploitation.” While the advisory panel did not say in its report to the Pentagon that the attacks originated in China, the Post states “senior military and industry officials” said the “vast majority” of the breaches were part of “a widening Chinese campaign of espionage against U.S. defense contractors and government agencies.”
The hacked “system designs” cited include missile-defense capabilities–including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, Patriot Advanced Capability-3, and Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System programs. They also include the Pentagon’s major weapons efforts–the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, F/A and EA-18 jets, Littoral Combat Ship, V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, C-17 cargo plane, Global Hawk drone, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, P-8A/Multi-Mission Aircraft, Army Brigade Combat Team modernization, Marine Corps tracked combat vehicles, and the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) system, among others.
President Barack Obama’s administration responded quickly on Tuesday to the newspaper article, which caused a stir in the defense industry.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement military officials “maintain full confidence in our weapons platforms.” He said suggestions “that cyber intrusions have somehow led to the erosion of our capabilities or technological edge are incorrect.”
“The Department of Defense takes the threat of cyber espionage and cyber security very seriously, which is why we have taken a number of steps to increase funding to strengthen our capabilities, harden our networks, and work with the defense industrial base to achieve greater visibility into the threats our industrial partners are facing,” Little said.
Some weapons experts have warned the alleged Chinese cyber spying could help the nation speed up its efforts to build up its military arsenal.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, in response to the revelation about the Defense Science Board report, said Obama will discuss cybersecurity with Chinese officials.
Carney told reporters Tuesday that “cyber-security is a key priority of this administration,” according to a transcript of a press briefing aboard Air Force One.
“It is an issue that we raise at every level in our meetings with our Chinese counterparts and I’m sure will be a topic of discussion when the president meets with (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping) in California in early June,” Carney said. “It was certainly a topic of conversation when National Security Adviser (Thomas) Donilon was having meetings in China, from which he is just returning now.”
The newspaper report generated little reaction from Congress, as the House and Senate are on recess this week.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has been active on the matter of cyber attacks on defense contractors. The panel helped add language to the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization act for defense contractors with access to classified data to report cyber attacks to the government.
Yet lawmakers have clashed over wider-reaching cybersecurity legislation. Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blocked legislation intended to better protect critical-infrastructure providers’ networks, maintaining it would lead to excessive regulation.
It remains to be seen what the disclosure about the confidential material regarding cyber attacks on weapon systems will have on the cybersecurity debate in Congress.
In addition to the specific system designs accessed by hackers, the report also lists information on broader technologies that were compromised, according to the Post. They include electronic warfare, satellite communications, directed energy, nanotechnology, unmanned aerial vehicle video systems, tactical data links, electromagnetic aircraft launching, and export-control data.
The previously undisclosed section of the Defense Science Board obtained by the Post reportedly does not detail the extent of the cyber attacks or say if they were inflicted on U.S. government or industry computer networks.