US: Cyberwar turf battle continues

It seemed rather odd that just as reports were arriving in Washington about the cyberwarfare dimensions of the Russo-Georgian conflict, the US Air Force shut down its Cyber Command operations - at least temporarily.

That does not mean that the US military is giving up on developing cyberwar capabilities, of course. But the US Air Force Cyber Command - although the Air Force has never quite admitted it - was positioning itself to become the key strategic cyberdefense agency, not only within the US Department of Defense, but government-wide.

Officially, Cyber Command, which was set up provisionally last year and was to begin operations on 1 October, is to be the subject of review by the Air Force's new leadership, Acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz. Reading between the lines, it appears the Air Force may have lost, or at least has been set back, in a turf war to dominate US cyberwarfare activities.

The fact that the Air Force recently inaugurated a new leadership is one clue to the jockeying that has been going on behind the scenes. The previous Air Force secretary and chief of staff were both sacked by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates after it was discovered that the Air Force had mishandled nuclear weapons. In another scandal, the Government Accountability Office overturned an Air Force decision on a multi-billion dollar procurement of refueling tankers, saying that the Air Force had acted unlawfully and misleadingly. In response, Gates took the decision away from the Air Force and gave it to one of his deputies.

Given these events of the last several weeks, the other pretenders to the "cybercrown" may have perceived an opportunity to strike. The US Navy, with the encouragement of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, may wish a larger role for itself in cyberwarfare. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, although not a warfighting entity, may see itself as the most appropriate actor at the national level. It is also possible that Gates wants to keep the domain within his own office.

There is no question that the Air Force will continue cyberoperations, as will the other armed services. The question is whether the Air Force's operations will be confined to its own activities, or whether it will exercise department-wide and national leadership.

"The cybermission is important, and it will go forward for the Air Force," Donley said at a Washington press briefing on 13 August. "The issue is in what context, form and national framework. This is not just about the Air Force. It has to fit with the Strategic Command and the broader national security community, and we're going to make sure all those pieces fit together as we proceed."

In other words, it is the Air Force's cyberwarfare role at the highest level that is in contention. It is likely, then, that the re-evaluation of the Cyber Command will involve not only internal Air Force reflection, but also high-level external scrutiny.

From strategic bombing to strategic warfare

The Cyber Command's position within the US Strategic Command, an overarching department-wide policymaking organization, was important to the Air Force's assertion of a national role in cyberspace. The Cyber Command's inclusion as an operational unit of the Strategic Command carved out a pre-eminent space for the Air Force among the armed services in the cyber warfare arena. The Navy's NAVNETWARCOM and Army's NETCOM, the cybersecurity agencies within those armed services, were never part of the Strategic Command.

There were also other indications of the Air Force's ambitions in cyberspace. One was a revision of its mission statement last year to add cyberspace to its air and space mission areas. The Air Force also touted its capabilities in television and web advertisements and in a series of presentations conducted by its commander, Major General William Lord.

In recent months, the Air Force has stirred some controversy by taking up the possibility of developing its own offensive and defensive botnet capabilities. (Botnets are groups of compromised computers which are used to launch various kinds of attacks on other systems.)

Colonel Charles Williamson, in a recent article in external pageArmed Forces Journalcall_made, advocated the deployment of a such a capability by the Air Force, which could take out offending systems by launching distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against them. A DDOS attack involves launching huge volumes of e-mail or other messages, more than the target system can handle, from multiple locations, thus disabling the target.

In yet another recent development, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) posted an announcement in May which cryptically indicated its desire to develop a "Proactive Botnet Defense Technology." Elsewhere in the announcement, the AFRL indicated it was seeking the capability to infiltrate offending systems, to exfiltrate information undetected and, if necessary, to destroy the system.

For those who supported the Air Force move into cyberspace, all of this made perfect sense.

"The military is thinking more about the non-kinetic effects of warfare," Barry Watts, a senior fellow at Washington's Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told ISN Security Watch. "It makes sense to have the guys delivering most of the precision ordnance from the air to have control over both the kinetic and the non-kinetic aspects of the operation."

Cyberwarfare is also consistent with the Air Force's strategic focus, according to James Lewis, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"Strategic operations often target infrastructure, including economic infrastructure," Lewis told ISN Security Watch. "Traditionally, the Air Force has carried out strategic bombing. Strategic cyberwarfare could be seen as an extension of that mission."

Air Force overplays its hand?

But the Air Force may have overplayed its hand with its hard charge into cyberspace, provoking a turf war with other armed forces and other government entities. The US military's mission in space is an example of how these turf wars can fester.

"Fifty years later, they are still squabbling over which is the lead service in space," said Lewis.

As in other warfare and intelligence arenas, the involvement of multiple organizations in cyberoperations creates the potential for mission conflicts, giving rise to the argument for an overarching central authority to coordinate policy and activities.

"The National Security Agency may have tapped into a foreign command and control system while the Air Force simultaneously has plans to take it out," Ira Winkler, an author and former NSA analyst, told ISN Security Watch.

"I would love to say there should be an information warfare czar to coordinate these types of activities, but we often find there is not good coordination even at the higher levels."

Lewis agreed there was no substitute for appointing an overall authority "to sit the responsible managers down together to coordinate activities jointly."

It is perhaps with this role in mind that some say that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was behind the abrupt halt of the Air Force Cyber Command. After all, whichever agency emerges as the cyberspace lead is likely to attract substantial federal budget funding in the coming years.

The decision to put the kibosh on the Cyber Command may have come from Mullen, who advocates a greater role for the Navy in cyberspace.

The Navy's Network Warfare Command and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center have led the way in cyberspace, according to Philip Coyle, a senior adviser with the Center for Defense Information, a security policy research group in Washington, and a former assistant secretary of defense. Coyle also speculated that the Air Force's public thrust into cyberspace led to a pushback from which the Cyber Command now suffers.

In all likelihood, the review of the Air Force Cyber Command will result in the continuation of that organization in some form, although with more modest ambitions for national leadership in cyber space. The new Air Force leadership will probably want to tread lightly, lest they suffer the same fate as their predecessors.