HQDA Cyber Directorate Weekly Media Report
17-21 December 2016
Table of Contents
ARMY
Army launches Digital Service branch
Federal Computer Week, 16 Dec 16, Sean D. Carberry
The Army’s Cyberspace Advantage
Army.mil, 19 Dec 16, ARCYBER & Second Army Staff
JOINT
What is the difference between adaptive and cognitive electronic warfare?
C4ISR & Networks, 16 Dec 16, Mark Pomerleau
Greater Integration Across the EMS Needed for Battlefield Dominance
Signal Magazine, 20 Dec 16, Capt. Kenneth Parks, USN (Ret.)
GLOBAL
Info Sharing Agreement ‘A Key Piece in the Jigsaw’ for NATO Cyber Strategy
Defense News, 16 Dec 16, Martin Banks
First pictures show Saudi-Ukrainian electronic warfare aircraft
Al Arabiya, 21 Dec 16, Staff Writer
Ukraine investigates suspected cyber attack on Kiev power grid
Reuters, 20 Dec 16, Pavel Polityuk
Threat from Russian UAV jamming real, officials say
C4ISR & Networks, 20 Dec 16, Mark Pomerleau
OF INTEREST
Trump’s Army secretary pick is a billionaire NHL owner, West Point grad
The Military Times, 19 Dec 16, Leo Shane III
Viola may be what the Army needs, experts say
Federal News Radio, 20 Dec 16, Scott Maucione
Bipartisan Senators Call for New Committee on Russian Hacking
Roll Call, 18 Dec 16, Bridget Bowman
***Relevant Conferences & Events listed at bottom of report.
ARMY
Army launches Digital Service branch
Federal Computer Week, 16 Dec 16, Sean D. Carberry
Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning is getting into the digital services game.
The “SWAT team of nerds” that is the Defense Digital Service has been working for months on the next generation of GPS, modernizing the Department of Defense travel system and other digital and tech challenges. Now, the Army is building its own team of nerds.
At a Dec. 16 event in New York, Army Secretary Eric Fanning and DDS Director Chris Lynch announced that the Army Digital Service is open and looking for tech talent. The ADS plans to bring on about 20 tech experts to serve six- to 12-month tours solving complex problems for the Army.
“We have almost an unlimited target set, problem set, where we want some help,” said Fanning. “There’s so much potential with this model in an area where we have so much that we need to do.”
According to background materials provided by the Army, the ADS mission is “to drive a giant leap forward in the way Army builds and deploys technology and digital services. We work with the DOD and alongside our public servants and service members, empowering them to incorporate private sector best practices and talent to build a better future now.”
DDS already has been working on two projects for the Army. First is modernizing the service’s recruiting software, which is in some cases pre-mouse level code. The second is administering the “Hack the Army” competition, which is currently underway and based on the Hack the Pentagon competition DDS ran earlier this year.
ADS eventually is expected to take over these projects, but its first pilot program will be to work on how to better recruit and bring on board the needed cyber workforce. Lynch said that the goal is to make sure “that how we bring in top talent also goes into Army Cyber Command as well.”
Fanning and Lynch held the announcement event at New York at General Assembly, a tech “education and career transformation” entity. They said the audience there was their target with this initiative.
“What we can guarantee you as a part of Army Digital Service is working on projects built around this incredible mission of protecting the country, and you will have significant impact,” said Fanning.
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The Army’s Cyberspace Advantage
Army.mil, 19 Dec 16, ARCYBER & Second Army Staff
What is it?
The Army’s Cyberspace advantage is established by aggressively defending the Army networks, data and weapons systems, delivering effects against global adversaries in and through cyberspace, as well as developing and integrating cyberspace, electronic warfare and information operations capabilities.
What is the Army doing?
The Army is already in the cyberspace fight, engaged in real-world efforts today to:
Operate and defend Army networks and data around the clock and protect the nation in cyberspace.
Secure Army weapons platforms against persistent global threats.
Develop capabilities for the future fight.
With 41 teams of cyber Soldiers and Civilians, the Army is the largest service contributor to the Department of Defense’s Cyber Mission Force, which defends military networks, supports objectives of joint and Army commanders and, when directed, defends U.S. critical infrastructure. An additional 21 Army Reserve and National Guard cyber teams contribute unique sets of skills and experience and bring the Total Army Force to the efforts in cyberspace.
The Army is the only service that has launched a dedicated cyber career field to centrally manage Soldiers throughout their careers. The Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Georgia, is educating hundreds of these cyber Soldiers every year in one of the Army’s most academically rigorous training programs.
To effectively organize and employ cyber Soldiers and civilians, the Army has established a Cyber Directorate (HQDA G-3/5/7, DAMO-CY) in the Pentagon to serve as the focal point for requirements prioritization and policy development.
What continued efforts are planned for the future?
The Army continues to build and refine a world-class force able to fight, shape and win in cyberspace. Building on an ongoing Army cyber program launched in 2015, brigade combat teams will add expeditionary cyber, electronic warfare and information operations elements to their rotations at Fort Irwin’s National Training Center in the coming year, informing doctrine and policy for cyber combat enablers.
The Army has delivered talent, infrastructure, and capabilities in cyberspace, but it won’t win the fight alone. Partnerships with the interagency, intelligence community, academia and allies are key to Army success.
Why is this important to the Army?
The battle in cyberspace is real. The Army recognizes that the forces must remain dominant in this globally-contested domain and will continue to protect the nation in the years to come. Developing capabilities and enabling partnerships to defend the networks and defeat the adversaries are critical to maintaining the Army’s strategic advantage in cyberspace.
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JOINT
What is the difference between adaptive and cognitive electronic warfare?
C4ISR & Networks, 16 Dec 16, Mark Pomerleau
Ask any lawyer and they’ll say semantics matter. The same can be said in the military. For example, what is the difference between adaptive and cognitive electronic warfare? Does it even matter?
According to the Air Force Science Advisory Board, it does matter. These two terms are used almost interchangeably, said the board’s chair, Werner Dahm, at the Pentagon this week in a briefing on the 2016 studies the board examines.
The board’s goal is provide the Air Force — and DoD — with independent and scientific insight into operationally relevant problems. While a general officer is assigned to each study as a means of ensuring the independent scientists from outside the government are focusing on operationally relevant aspects, the board’s findings serve in an advisory capacity only, unless greater action from leadership is taken based upon findings.
In this particular case, one of the studies the board undertook in 2016 was titled “Responding to Uncertain or Adaptive Threats in Electronic Warfare.” According to an abstract, recent developments of software-defined architectures and digital signal processing from adversaries — which play into much-discussed anti-access area denial environments — have rendered inadequate the traditional processes of collecting, assessing, developing and testing countermeasures before fielding.
The study’s charter sought to:
Define current and likely further threat characteristics.
Survey current state-of-the-art machine learning and adaptive decision-making algorithms.
Determine the performance that will be realistically achievable in the near, mid- and far-term.
Identify the most promising avenues of cognitive electronic warfare along with realistic timelines and milestones.
Recommend integrated demonstrations and transition opportunities for near-, mid- and far-term implementation of cognitive electronic warfare.
Differentiating between different levels of adaptability and true cognitive EW is important, Dahm said, noting it was not one of the study’s major findings. He described cognitive EW as the “Holy Grail,” and thus the most difficult to achieve.
True cognitive EW systems, he explained, should be able enter into an environment not knowing anything about adversarial systems, understand them and even devise countermeasures rapidly. Cognition in this space is essentially applying machine learning to make systems smarter, according to Josh Niedzwiecki, director of sensor processing and exploitation at BAE Systems.
These systems, Dahm said, literally stimulate the adversary system, look at what comes back and automatically learn, trying a few waveforms; they are able to very quickly find an effective technique.
Adaptive solutions, conversely, allow for basic operation in these environments, but are not capable of rapid understanding and countermeasures. There are a surprising amount of benefits from relatively simple levels of adaptability in EW systems, Dahm said. These simpler systems are something that’s “no kidding” achievable on time scales of the Air Force, he added, noting that just differentiating those was important.
For the Air Force, it’s all about tightening the cycle time. Part of this demand signal in devising new solutions is being driven by these A2/AD threats, James Chow, vice chair of the board, told reporters. These threats are becoming much more adaptive, meaning the cycle time for responding to them must be much faster.
Dahm emphasized that with many adversary systems, a software change is all that is needed to change the waveforms. The whole study the SAB looked at was predicated on when forces go into a future environment, they can no longer count on having good awareness of what the threat waveform will look like or even the response to a waveform. This has to made up on the fly, he said.
Dahm continued that current systems are adaptive, but there is a loop time that takes years. Niedzwiecki, of BAE, said that in decades past when forces would deploy to a theater and observe a type of jamming signal, frequency, wavelength or bandwidth, troops would collect evidence and take it to a laboratory for analysis and countermeasure development. Months later, a countermeasure or antidote would be programmed in the system and used in theater. The advances in software and reprogrammable radios make this previous paradigm infeasible, he said, leading to a new shift in leveraging machine learning.
This was fine in the Cold War when there were very few adversary systems, Dahm said. Ultimately, the pace of technology advancement is what is going to set how fast this can be done, he noted. But technical implementations must still be identified, he said, adding that to some extent every technology only moves forward as researchers, engineers and scientists can drive it and if they understand what the end goal is — where the sweet spot is — it can be achieved faster than just a board brushed advance.
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Greater Integration Across the EMS Needed for Battlefield Dominance
Signal Magazine, 20 Dec 16, Capt. Kenneth Parks, USN (Ret.)
There’s no disputing technology’s role in the rapidly changing face of modern warfare. The convergence of commercial services with military applications, such as delivery of real-time data from anywhere using various devices, has changed the physical nature and understanding of what constitutes a combat environment. The U.S. military seeks to define a strategic approach to these converged operations.
The collection, exploitation and transmission of digital information takes many forms across the electromagnetic spectrum. U.S. adversaries use integrated concepts that combine tools such as cyber operations with electronic warfare (EW), a trend the military is addressing by removing barriers to operational silos and taking advantage of the speed, scale and flexibility offered by cyber capabilities combined with EW.
Assuring information dominance across the spectrum is an imperative that cannot be overlooked. Properly linking EW and cyber systems for multidomain operations will be needed to overcome rapidly evolving technical challenges. Access to information and flexible capabilities at operational speed is necessary to address the next phase of operational threats and adversarial technologies.
Fewer resources needed to disrupt networks and communications
The proliferation of connected devices has created a huge reliance on the finite radio frequency (RF) spectrum, both in the military and commercial sectors. Battlefields today, such as those in Ukraine and Syria, are proving grounds for adversaries combining the tools at their disposal to multiply the impact of their limited resources.
Disrupting operations using these combined tools no longer requires kinetic or a physical presence to have an impact. Working from remote locations, adversaries can jam communications while simultaneously probing for other vulnerabilities at machine speeds, which can overwhelm battlefield systems. The Defense Department has launched its third offset strategy, which stresses innovation to maintain the country’s technological advantage over its adversaries. It is difficult to definitively state what will be the most effective outputs from merging EW and cyber capabilities. It is important to continue research and field-testing solutions to maintain our progress while making any course corrections as new challenges are identified.
Defining responsibility and operational flexibility
Military leaders search for the best methods to define and operationalize efficient tactics to turn the competing priorities of speed, security and cost into advantages. As it stands, there is no one set definition of what EW is, and how it relates to incorporating cyber tools.
In a conventional sense, EW is a transient effect as it only has an impact when it is actively engaged. For example, with jamming tools, once the RF signal no longer is directed actively, the effect goes away.
Once inserted into a network, cyber operations can be fleeting or persistent. Determining the appropriate mission tools can mean going through multiple chains of command, which slows the process, adds complexity and puts operators at a disadvantage.
The longer officials wait to put a stake in the ground, the further behind the DOD will fall. This is not an easy fix, complicated by competing priorities and immense institutional inertia. New doctrine is needed to guide investment in training and equipment, and to maintain flexibility as emerging concepts challenge the status quo. When dealing with machine learning and speed of development, we can no longer afford to sit with a stagnant operating procedure and defined rules that are inflexible.
It is acceptable to not have a perfect answer here, as with many technology issues, these ideas are still being discussed, but we need to iterate and get better faster.
Building out the force: capability and personnel
DOD planners in the final stages of drafting the first department wide electronic warfare strategy to provide greater guidance on synchronizing cyber and EW operations for combined effects. However, this work is useless without integrated capabilities and the personnel to activate them.
Electromagnetic spectrum capabilities still are largely viewed in silos for specific missions. The military must train operators to function in increasingly congested and contested information environments, including elements of collaboration among the services and simulations of enemy effects. As battlefield complexity increases, warfighters must be prepared to take on both low- and high-end threats.
Current status and the path forward
While there is a sense that the United States has fallen behind in strategically combining cyber and EW operations because of a traditionally segmented approach, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity to apply existing capabilities to regain spectrum dominance.
Deploying EW and cyber capabilities in a coordinated fashion creates a force multiplier to ensure information superiority across operational domains—physical and electromagnetic. Hardware and software exist that can tackle many operational challenges. As long as they are applied correctly, they can improve the speed and accuracy of decision making, ensure access to information and be deployed to deny those same benefits to adversaries.
EW and cyber effects will be delivered via multifunctional, software-defined hardware; meaning a single device configured to meet multiple missions.
Capt. Kenneth “Kilo” Parks, USN (Ret.) is a senior manager of business development for the electronic warfare business area at Harris Corporation. He served more than 26 years in the Navy as an electronic countermeasures officer. He recently moderated a panel discussion focused on electronic warfare and spectrum operations at this year’s AFCEA MILCOM conference in Baltimore.
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GLOBAL
Info Sharing Agreement ‘A Key Piece in the Jigsaw’ for NATO Cyber Strategy
Defense News, 16 Dec 16, Martin Banks
A senior NATO official has hailed a newly-signed agreement on cyber information sharing as a “key piece in the jigsaw” in the ongoing fight against cyber warfare.
The agreement comes after President Obama accused Russia of a cyber attack on the recent U.S elections and warned of threats of retaliation.
Obama accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of orchestrating cyber hacking in a bid to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump. It is claimed the hackers got access to confidential details of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
The outgoing president has now warned of “consequences.”
As part of efforts to combat the cyber threat, the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency and the U.S-based FireEye Inc. have signed what is called an industry partnership agreement.
Jamie Shea, NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, told Defense News that the deal, penned on Thursday, would give the western military alliance “enhanced awareness” of potential cyber threats.
“This is particularly welcome and comes at a time when the cyber threat has never been higher,” he said. “It will improve our ability to detect, prevent and respond to the cyber threat.”
Shea, speaking on Friday, said the agreement would boost cyber information sharing and “further strengthen” NATO and industry collective cyber defense.
The deal, said the British-born NATO veteran, will foster timely information sharing on cyber threats, allowing both parties to enjoy “enhanced situational awareness” and better protect their networks.
Shea said, “You have to remember that 90 percent of the cyber network is owned and run by the private sector so it is important that we have this sort of agreement.
“It should lead to a much greater range and exchange of information between NATO and private companies which is especially important at a time when the cyber domain is under pressure. In practice it will facilitate rapid and early bilateral exchange of non-classified technical information related to cyber threats and vulnerabilities.”
This information will be integrated into the NCI Agency’s detection and prevention processes, “further enhancing NATO’s cyber security posture.”
He added, “NATO will contribute directly because this is a bilateral exchange of information. When it comes to tackling cyberwarfare it is a two-way street.”
“Being connected in this way is an absolute key to combating the cyber threat,” said Shea, who is based at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. “FireEye has been very prominent in providing assistance on cyber issues in the United States and this agreement is another key piece in the jigsaw puzzle in the ongoing efforts on cyber warfare.”
Further comment came from Koen Gijsbers, general manager of the NCI Agency, who said the agreement with FireEye represents an “important” part of the effort to bolster the Alliance’s cyber defense posture.
“If we are going to move faster than the cyber threats we face, then it is absolutely imperative that we exchange timely and actionable threat information with industry,” he said. “Our existing IPAs have already shown impressive results that are making a real difference to the NCI Agency and our industry partners. FireEye’s depth of expertise from responding to many of the largest cyber breaches in the world will be very valuable to the IPA framework. We look forward to a productive partnership.”
At NATO’s Warsaw summit earlier this year, NATO leaders emphasized the need for information sharing and strong industry partnerships to address cyber challenges.
Shea said the agreement bolsters further a program that is already benefiting NATO and industry.
He pointed out that the IPA with FireEye is the ninth in a series of agreements through which the NCI Agency and industry partners generate “high-quality” data resulting in a mutually improved ability to detect, prevent, and respond to cyber threats.
Further reaction came from Bill Etheridge, defence spokesman for the UK Independence Party and a Member of the European Parliament:, “It is great to see NATO at the forefront of our cyber defenses. The alliance with FireEye can only bring greater security against cyber threats. It is our links with NATO that need alliances such as this.”
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First pictures show Saudi-Ukrainian electronic warfare aircraft
Al Arabiya, 21 Dec 16, Staff Writer
The first pictures to show a Saudi-Ukrainian electronic warfare aircraft were released on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s state-owned enterprise Antonov, the only Ukrainian designer and manufacturer of cargo and passenger planes, presented the first prototype of the new An-132 transport aircraft, UNIAN reported.
Joint cooperation between Antonov and Saudi Arabia led to the production of the aircraft.
The aircraft, which is based on the An-132 light multi-mission transport aircraft, is capable of countering air defense systems as well as manned and unmanned aircraft, according to designers.
The modernized version of the An-132 is assembled without any components made in Russia
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov were present at the ceremony in Kiev.
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Ukraine investigates suspected cyber attack on Kiev power grid
Reuters, 20 Dec 16, Pavel Polityuk
KIEV Ukraine is investigating a suspected cyber attack on Kiev’s power grid at the weekend, the latest in a series of strikes on its energy and financial infrastructure, the head of the state-run power distributor said on Tuesday.
Vsevolod Kovalchuk, acting chief director of Ukrenergo, told Reuters that a power distribution station near Kiev unexpectedly switched off early on Sunday, leaving the northern part of the capital without electricity.
A Ukrainian security chief said last week that Ukraine needed to beef up its cyber defenses, citing a spate of attacks on government websites that he said originated in Russia.
Kovalchuk said the outage amounted to 200 megawatts of capacity, equivalent to about a fifth of the capital’s energy consumption at night.
“That is a lot. This kind of blackout is very, very rare,” Kovalchuk told Reuters by phone.
He said there were only two possible explanations for the accident: either a hardware failure or external interference.
The company’s IT specialists had found transmission data that had not been included in standard protocols, suggesting that external interference was the likeliest scenario.
Over the past month, Ukraine’s finance and defense ministries and the state treasury have said their websites had been temporarily downed by attacks aimed at disrupting their operations.
Kovalchuk said Ukraine’s state security service had joined the investigation. “There are no final conclusions yet about what it was, but experts say that this was something new and they have not encountered this before,” Kovalchuk said.
Last December, another Ukrainian regional power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported an outage, saying the area affected included the regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk. Ukraine’s state security service blamed Russia.
Experts widely described that incident as the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. The U.S. cyber firm iSight Partners identified the perpetrator as a Russian hacking group known as “Sandworm.”
“The purpose of this Ukraine attack: Two options. Either it’s a show of power. Prove to the people of Ukraine that your government cannot protect you,” Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure, told Reuters.
The other option is that there was something else happening at the same time and they needed this to be their cover or somehow to assist another operation to succeed as a result of the power outage, he added.
He said that during this year the cyber capabilities of the Russian government have done nothing but increase and we are seeing the beginnings of a new arms race, in both military and cyber activities.
“We are tracking several different, separate attack campaigns which we link back to different Russian intelligence agencies, and the targets are typically not just for sabotage, but for espionage,” he said.
“The vast majority of government attacks that we attributed to the Russian government are not about sabotage or disruption but about collecting intelligence and spying on foreign computer networks, and that has been increasing.”
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Threat from Russian UAV jamming real, officials say
C4ISR & Networks, 20 Dec 16, Mark Pomerleau
Russia’s advanced jamming and electronic warfare capabilities are well known. The conflict in eastern Ukraine involving Russian-backed separatists, who are taking advantage of Russian capabilities and assistance, and the Ukrainian armed forces is providing the U.S. military a unique lens to examine Russia’s capabilities.
“We’re learning an awful lot from the environment in Ukraine, both the capabilities we’ve seen the Russians display in Crimea — electronic warfare capability at a tactical level that we absolutely don’t have,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding general for U.S. Army Europe, said earlier this year.
In one of the more startling displays of Russia’s capabilities, they have disrupted the unmanned aerial vehicles tasked by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine to chart the conflict. The OSCE SMM monitors the security situation on the ground involving the separatists and Ukrainian army detailing ceasefire violations, shelling and acts of aggression.
This development was first reported by Foreign Policy in October. According to their report, long-range UASs as part of the SMM were suspended in August following a series of hostile acts undermining the mission’s UAS operations and strength.
These UAS were disrupted via surface-to-air missiles and military-grade electronic jamming, Foreign Policy reported.
“The Mission’s UAV strength has been severely undermined during last several months,” an OSCE spokesperson told C4ISRNET in an emailed message. “Apart from long-range UAVs, our mid-range and mini-UAVs were targeted during that time as well.”
The specific long-range aircraft affected were the Austrian-made Schiebel Camcopter S-100s.
“I truly believe that Schiebel was out of their depth in this one,” Foreign Policy quoted a former senior OSCE official. “Live fire and GPS jamming were the two main factors for the loss of the drones. The units did not have the capabilities to resist jamming … Schiebel may not be the only drone provider wary of going toe-to-toe with hostile adversaries armed with military-grade equipment.”
It is unclear the types of measures OSCE took to secure this aircraft from Russian jamming attempts.
“The tender to renew the contract for UAVs failed because the two leading companies in the tender process would not sign the negotiated contract after the series of shooting downs,” a spokesperson from the organization told C4ISRNET. “Subsequent to the failure of the tender, a temporary contract agreement with the service provider was reached. At no stage di[d] the OSCE suspend its UAV operations but in August, the service provider withdrew unilaterally, breaching the contract.”
Many of these threats were evident in recent world events, most notably in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Susan Thornton, chair of the NATO Air Force Armaments Group and director of Information Dominance Programs Organization within the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, said at the annual Association of Old Crows annual symposium in November. One of the primary lessons learned from the annexation of Crimea is how the Russians used EW, she continued, adding it was really a game changer for NATO because Russia’s capability suggested high levels of investment and planning.
During this campaign, Thornton said they witnessed the jamming of communications to deny services, and the spoofing of GPS systems forcing Ukrainian forces to use maps as well as cyber attacks against UAVs.
Moreover, it is unclear if U.S. systems could be susceptible to similar capabilities or if U.S. systems have undergone the proper hardening to thwart jamming. Despite Hodges’ comments regarding U.S. observations of Russia’s capabilities in eastern Europe, U.S. Army Europe told C4ISRNET that it was not in a position to comment as its mission in Ukraine is in the western portion of the country with no personnel in the conflict zone with direct knowledge of the situation.
Similarly, given the highly sensitive nature of EW, the Army’s new cyber directorate in the Pentagon, which encompasses cyber, EW and other similar elements, declined to comment along with the office of the Secretary of Defense. Additionally, the Ukrainian defense ministry did not respond for a request to comment.
“I would say that we’re aware of the ability to try to attack our command and control of the asset and also its position, navigation, timing — so it’s ability to sense where it is,” Brig. Gen. Edward Sauley, deputy director of operation for Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations and the mobilization assistant to the Director of Operations for Strategic Command told C4ISRNET at the AOC symposium. “So the techniques and focuses on trying to defend both our command and control and PNT are separate but related. We are aware of those and advancing both.”
In terms of hardening U.S. assets, Sauley declined to provide any details. He did, however, offer that the possibility of jamming UASs is a real threat and a consideration the force is trying to address.
For their part, the Marines Corps said their “small tactical UAS is employing basic safeguards and protections across the EM spectrum as well as assessing and developing qualifying solutions to enable mitigation for emerging and advanced EW threats.”
From a general force protection standpoint, this issue comes down to basic battle management.
“If you’re just static in one piece of the spectrum of course they’re going to target it and you’re going to get jammed,” Marine Corps Lt. Col. Jeffery Kawada, deputy director of information Warfare Integration Division at HQ Marine Corps Capability Development Command, said. “But if you can maneuver in the spectrum and you can sense that and you can maneuver to a clean part of the spectrum — that’s the intent of everything we’re doing … being able to do dynamic spectrum access … we know we’re going to get jammed because we’re doing it to them.”
This is just tactics 101, he continued; “you’re not going to attack the strong spot. If he’s hitting you here, if you could just go around them [and] that would be the tactic.”
Kawada said the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, which outlines the acquisition requirements that go into a particular system, such as UAS, define basic security protections to guard against things like cyberattacks and electronic attacks.
The force is “absolutely” learning from observations of events in eastern Ukraine as they apply to Russian capabilities, Sauley said. While the invasion of Crimea and meddling in eastern Ukraine was a “very watershed event,” he clarified it might not have been all that startling from a pure electronic warfare knowledge base. Many experts, he said, were likely aware of the capability extent that existed from the Russians, but “it’s more an awareness across leadership in the military that we need to pay more attention to.”
In light of advanced capabilities demonstrated by Russia, as well as other near-peer competitors, the U.S. has stood up several offices and projects aimed at countering these capabilities such as the Strategic Capabilities Office within OSD, the Army’s Rapid Capabilities Office and the so-called Third Offset Strategy, aimed at countering the parity adversaries have reached with the U.S. through a series of research and development projects in autonomy, man-machine teaming and other similar technologies.
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OF INTEREST
Trump’s Army secretary pick is a billionaire NHL owner, West Point grad
The Military Times, 19 Dec 16, Leo Shane III
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday nominated billionaire philanthropist Vincent Viola as the next secretary of the Army.
Viola, founder of digital stock trading firm Virtu Financial and owner of the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers, is a 1977 West Point graduate who rose to the rank of major in the Army Reserve.
If confirmed, he’ll effectively be the fourth new secretary for the service in the last two years.
Current Army Secretary Eric Fanning was nominated to replace John McHugh in late 2015, but did not officially take over the job until May because of a lengthy confirmation fight with Congress. Deputy Army Secretary Patrick Murphy served in an acting role for more than four months.
No timetable has been set for when Viola’s confirmation hearing may take place. In a statement, he called the responsibility of the role an honor and a challenge.
“If confirmed, I will work tirelessly to provide our president with the land force he will need to accomplish any mission in support of his national defense strategy,” he said. “A primary focus of my leadership will be ensuring that America’s soldiers have the ways and means to fight and win across the full spectrum of conflict.”
Trump praised Viola as “a man of outstanding work ethic, integrity, and strategic vision” who will help keep America safe.
“Whether it is his distinguished military service or highly impressive track record in the world of business, Vinnie has proved throughout his life that he knows how to be a leader and deliver major results in the face of any challenge,” he said in a statement.
Viola brings a wealth of business experience to Trump’s Pentagon, and will be a key figure in helping carry out the next president’s promises to cut waste and build up America’s armed forces.
The 60-year-old businessman is a former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange and was serving in that role during the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
In response, he helped found the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, a privately funded research wing of the school focused on “counterterrorism policy and strategy” and “ways to confront the dynamic threat environment” facing America today.
He has also been a donor to numerous Army charities and support networks, including the Army Cyber Institute, the Modern War Institute and Army athletic programs.
He’s the son of Italian immigrants, and his father served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
The Army appointment will require Viola to step away from several of his business holdings, including his NHL franchise. In a statement, team officials said ownership of the Florida Panthers will remain in the Viola family, but the team’s vice chairman will take over operations responsibilities.
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Viola may be what the Army needs, experts say
Federal News Radio, 20 Dec 16, Scott Maucione
When President-elect Donald Trump announced Vincent “Vinnie” Viola as his pick for Army Secretary yesterday, one word was on the mind of the defense community.
Who?
It’s not that Viola isn’t a prominent figure — he owns the Florida Panthers, a professional hockey team — but he is someone with whom defense companies and military organizations are largely unfamiliar.
But that may be just what the Army needs, some defense analysts think.
“Often times outsiders or non-experts in these matters can have new insights or can be disruptive for positive change,” said Jeff Eggers, a senior fellow at New America. “I don’t know that there is a prima facie reason to expect change in one direction or the other, but there’s certainly the opportunity for change.”
If confirmed by the Senate, Viola is inheriting an Army that has faced constant war for the past 15 years. It’s a force that has a high operational tempo and a declining active duty force.
He will join a Pentagon headquarters staff that was beaten up repeatedly about its serial procurement failures over the last few years, said James Hasik, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. At the same time, the headquarters and force functioned extremely well considering the budget uncertainty, cuts and sequestration they faced.
While Viola isn’t a high powered Pentagon player, he served in the Army and graduated Army Ranger School. He left the military as a major in the reserves, but kept abreast of defense issues.
He used his billions of dollars to create the Combatting Terrorism Center and invested in the Army Cyber Institute, both located at West Point.
“This is a guy who definitely understands the Army. There’s no learning curve for him in that regard,” Hasik said.
Creating Change
Where Viola can make a difference is in acquisition and budget.
Viola may be able to inject some speed into the procurement process with his business acumen.
“This is a guy who was a flash trader. He’s sort of the king of it. … They were making crazy amounts of money for a while on a pretty small staff. So we’re talking about a guy who really understands rapid or understands the value of it. That’s a company he founded in 2008, it made him a billionaire in the last eight years. We’re probably talking about a guy who doesn’t have a lot of patience for a 15 year cycle for things,” Hasik said.
That bodes well for upstarts like the Army’s Rapid Capabilities Office, which was created only a few months ago.
RCO follows in the footsteps of the Defense Department’s Strategic Capabilities Office and the Air Force’s own Rapid Acquisition Office. All of those organizations were created as a means to quickly deliver critically needed products to the warfighter. The Army is focusing on cyber, electronic warfare, survivability and position, navigation and timing.
Katherine Kidder, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said she thinks Viola will fight for the RCO right from the beginning.
“The appropriations [for RCO] haven’t been set for 2017. They are set for 2018 but he may need to fight for adequate resources right off the bat to make sure that’s going because the number of capabilities they are looking at are rather specific to the Russian context, whether it’s cyber warfare or electronic warfare or jamming of GPS, it’s through the lens of what would happen if Russia starts acting up,” she said.
Personnel
When it comes to personnel both Democrats and Republicans are on the same page about who the Army needs to recruit. It needs more talented soldiers with cyber skills and strategic minds.
Viola seems to be on the same page.
He told Defense systems in 2011, “We’ve got to find geeks who love their country. … At my company, I’ll gladly trade 10 pull-ups and five minutes on a run for 20 IQ points and heart.”
That is in line with where the Army, and DoD as a whole under the Obama administration, is taking recruitment.
He’ll also be working with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who is of the same mindset.
The question is if Viola and the new DoD leadership will use the same tactics to get those troops as DoD did under the Obama administration.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter started the Force of the Future initiative to draw in talented individuals. That policy increased maternity leave and extended daycare hours, but also came under fire from Republicans.
DoD also tried to expand its aperture by accepting gays and transgenders in the military and allowing women to fill combat roles.
Viola and Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee Gen. James Mattis, may not share those same ideals.
“Given Mattis as the secretary of defense and the posture the Republican Congress has taken on women in combat, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the DoD writ large and then how that trickles down particularly to the Army and to the Marine Corps on the future of women in combat. … The question will be what policies Mattis sets regarding women in combat and then how the secretary of the army will execute that within his own service,” Kidder said.
The Curve Ball
The Army’s biggest issue in the new administration is size, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Cancian said Trump mentioned bringing the Army active duty force from 470,000 to as high as 540,000. Congress already authorized the force to move up to 475,000 in 2017.
Even if Trump doesn’t bring the force as high as 540,000 it still will cost a lot more money to maintain a bigger force. That’s money DoD doesn’t have right now. The Army is trying to modernize and maintain its force.
The last time the Army hit levels that high was at the peak of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and it used contingency operation spending to pay for it.
If the Army wants to expand it’s going to need a lot more money in the budget, but even though DoD is expecting it from the Trump administration, there is one thing standing in the way.
That’s Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget.
“He is one of the Tea Party. He has argued very strongly to cap all spending, including defense. He was part of an effort to cut the war funding. That appears to be a signal from [Trump] that defense is not going to get a free ride and maybe DoD is not going to get the kind of funding it thought it was going to get,” Cancian said. “It makes it that much harder for the Army to make a tradeoff there. They are going to have to really decide how much size versus capability.”
Viola will have to use his business savvy to navigate that budget scenario.
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Bipartisan Senators Call for New Committee on Russian Hacking
Group includes incoming minority leader and Armed Services chairman
Roll Call, 18 Dec 16, Bridget Bowman
A bipartisan group of four senators is calling for a select committee to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, Armed Services Chairman John McCain of Arizona, Armed Services ranking member Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Sunday that the Senate should establish a temporary committee to investigate the matter. The new committee would also develop comprehensive recommendations to improve cybersecurity.
“We share your respect for, and deference to, the regular order of the Senate, and we recognize that this is an extraordinary request,” the senators wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “However, we believe it is justified by the extraordinary scope and scale of the cyber problem. Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to address this unique challenge.”
Schumer and Reed are Democrats. McCain and Graham are Republicans.
The four senators called on Dec. 11 for an investigation into the issue, following a Washington Post report on the CIA’s assessment that the Russian hacking of the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman was perpetrated to swing the election in favor of Donald Trump, now the president-elect. Trump has rejected the intelligence community’s conclusions.
The push for a select committee on this issue could face some resistance from McConnell, who said last week that the Intelligence Committee can sufficiently investigate the issue.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee sit as ex-officio members, is more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters. “Sen. Schumer will soon join us on the committee, and he can review this matter through the regular order.”
Schumer told reporters in New York that McConnell’s statement that the Intelligence Committee could conduct the investigation was “not good enough.”
Schumer said conflicting committee jurisdictions could leave holes in the investigation, and different committees could get contradicting information from the CIA and FBI. Schumer also said the current Senate committees will be busy vetting and conducting confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominees.
In their letter, the four senators made a similar argument, noting six committees have jurisdiction over cyber issues.
“Despite the good work that these and other committees have done on their own, cyber is the rare kind of all-encompassing challenge for which the Congress’ jurisdictional boundaries are an impediment to sufficient oversight and legislative action,” the senators wrote. “Only a select committee that is time-limited, cross-jurisdictional, and purpose-driven can address the challenge of cyber.”
McCain tried to make his case for a select committee to investigate the Russian hacking on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning.
“We need to find out exactly what was done and what the implications of the attacks were, especially if they had an effect on our election,” McCain said. “There’s no doubt [Russians] were interfering and there’s no doubt that it was cyberattacks. The question now is how much and what damage, and what should the United States do?”
McCain also called for another select committee focused on cyberwarfare, arguing that the the United States has “no strategy and no policy.” McCain said cyberwarfare is “perhaps the only area where our adversaries have an advantage over us.”
Sen. Cory Gardner has also called for a new committee to be focused on cybersecurity. In a Dec. 12 statement, the Colorado Republican cited a Congressional Research Service report that noted that there are 19 committees between the House and Senate that have held cybersecurity hearings. Gardner said a new committee “would be narrowly focused on providing oversight of our strategy to protect sensitive data, defend our networks, and to deter malicious cyber actors.”
Select committees are established for specific purposes and can expire, such as the committee that investigated the Watergate scandal. The current Intelligence and Ethics Committees are also select committees. The Senate must approve the establishment of new committees.
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Relevant Conferences & Events
16-18 Jan 2017, Electronic Warfare Singapore, Association of Old Crows, Singapore
Register: https://www.crows.org/event/192-aoc-conferences/2016/09/20/76-ew-singapore-2017.html
25-27 April 2017, 46th Annual Collaborative EW Symposium, Association of Old Crows, Pt. Mugu, California
Register: https://www.crows.org/event/192-aoc-conferences/2017/04/25/77-pt-mugu-2017.html
10-11 May 2017, Land Electronic Warfare Technology Conference, SMI Group, Prague, Czech Republic
Register: https://www.smi-online.co.uk/defence/europe/conference/Land-Electronic-Warfare
6-7 June 2017, Electronic Warfare Europe, Association of Old Crows, London, England
Register: https://www.crows.org/event/192-aoc-conferences/2017/06/06/78-ew-europe-2017.html
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Filed under: Cybersecurity, cyberwar, Electronic Warfare Tagged: Cybersecurity, cyberwar, Cyberwarfare, Electronic Warfare 
