The commander of U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) identified several challenges on facing the command, including cybersecurity issues, at an association meeting speech Oct. 31.
Gen. Darren McDew characterized the command’s role as “It’s to deliver an impact on the battlefield. That’s what we’re about… [Our adversaries] know that immediately, we can get someplace at the time of our choosing and deliver an impact.”
He especially noted that cyber issues should get “much more of our attention” than they currently do, before elaborating on the command’s relationship to cybersecurity” in a speech to the National Defense Transportation Association meeting in St. Louis, Mo.
“We’ve gone from cyber awareness to cyber knowledge. Now, it’s scaring us. If you get to knowledge, it should scare you a lot more than it does. And if you think this is an [information technology] problem, you’re in the wrong place.”
Cyber is both an operational and commander issue as well as a business environment evolution challenge, McDew said.
He highlighted that while there are manpower shortages across the cyber spectrum, future challenges will focus on both having the right amount of the right people for the right job and baking cybersecurity into every department process.
“We will have to get ahead of [our adversaries]. Matching them is no longer good enough,” McDew said.
Although he noted the U.S. has the most battle-hardened force it has ever had following 15 years of war, the country is at a crossroads. “But does it prepare us for the next war? We need to focus on some of the opportunities [and] find new ways to do business.”
The TRANSCOM commander also identified other future challenges. This includes how the military is organized to contest geographically isolated problems but future conflicts will cross regional boundaries.
“Our freedom of movement, and the dominance that we’ve enjoyed in all domains — air, space, cyber [and] surface — we won’t have that anymore. We’ve enjoyed pure dominance in every domain,” McDew said.
Future conflicts may also include a near-peer nation that would involve five combatant commands with contested strategic lines of communication.
“We’ve had a distinct technological advantage…But once you start talking about a peer, someone that could match us with technology [and] numbers, that’s a different fight altogether,” he said.
Dealing with a near-peer competitor would also challenge the U.S.’s freedom of movement and dominance in air, space, and cyber from the past 15 years. This idea spurred his question: “So what’s got to change?” He answered that the U.S. military must address its own attitudes and figure out what baggage it is perpetuating that adds no values to these possible future fights.
“In this global, transregional nature of war, we have to consider all the disruptive influences that we’re going to face. We have got to better leverage speed, range and flexibility that is inherent in some of the things we do, and look at how we do things smarter, and how we command and control in a different way,” McDew said.