WASHINGTON — A misconception of U.S. Army Cyber Command’s mission is that it’s only about defensive and offensive cyber, said Lt. Gen. Stephen G. Fogarty. But equally important, he said, are other “tribal members” of ARCYBER — signals intelligence, electronic warfare and information operations.
Fogarty, commander of ARCYBER, spoke Thursday during an Association of the U.S. Army-sponsored forum on cyber warfare.
PFC Nathaniel Ortiz of the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade sets up deployable cyber tools overlooking the mock city of Razish at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., May 5, 2017. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Bill Roche)
ARCYBER needs to provide the combatant commander with an entire array of options from each of those communities that will provide him or her freedom of movement on the battlefield and deny the same to adversaries, Fogarty said. “We want to present multiple dilemmas to the enemy, not just cyber.”
Fogarty added that next week he’ll convene a meeting with leaders in ARCYBER to discuss the roles each of them play and how they can more effectively be utilized in the future, such as by better synchronizing their efforts.
U.S. Army Cyber Command is a relatively new organization, stood up just eight years ago, he said. Over the course of that time, particularly within the last two years, ARCYBER has been able to assess what it has gotten wrong and right so far.
ARCYBER operators “are in the fight every day,” he explained, and in the last two years that fight has heated up as peer adversaries acquire new technologies and capabilities and test those of the U.S. and its allies.
That high-intensity fight has enabled ARCYBER to accelerate its learning and evolve much more quickly than ever before, he said. The backbone of that effort has been the excellent ARCYBER workforce.
Lt. Gen. Bruce T. Crawford, Army chief information officer/G-6, said he wants to ensure that the ARCYBER workforce of 13,600 individuals has the right skills and training to meet the higher demands that will be placed on them as they defend the U.S. network and work to disrupt the network of the enemy.
NETWORK MODERNIZATION
Today’s effort to modernize the network is the largest in 35 years, Crawford said. In the early 1980s, he said, the Army was just getting a grasp of how software and the Internet would fundamentally change the character of warfare. The Army’s network modernization effort now is being led by two cross functional teams: the Assured Position, Navigation and Timing team and the Network team.
Advances in information technology, particularly within the last two years, mean that the Army must get a grasp on how this new technology can shape the modern battlefield and how to best take advantage of that by working closely with partners in industry and academia, he said.
Crawford said that if he had to pick the top three IT developments that will shape the nature of war, they are cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and identity, credential and access management.
Peer adversaries, he said, are working hard on developing these three as well, and some have even suggested that whoever reaches a breakthrough in AI first will obtain world dominance.