CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.—Command and control must be assured anywhere the Marine Air Ground Task Force operates, which requires in-depth testing to deliver success on the battlefield.

Cyber security experts and engineers from Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity recently tested various systems within the Marine Corps Enterprise Network, or MCEN, to assess interoperability and cyber resiliency.

“MCTSSA started executing mission-based systems tests as a means to aid Marine Corps acquisition programs in security engineering and ensure our capabilities can perform in cyber-contested environments,” said Jimmy Clevenger, MCTSSA senior principal engineer for Cyber Security.

This mission-based system of systems testing is one of the functions of the MCEN Planning Yard.

The MPY evaluates proposed changes to the MCEN from a performance, interoperability, and cyber security perspective. The MPY testing takes a big-picture approach to validate network processes, provide baseline performance characteristics and conduct an adversarial cyber vulnerability assessment.

“The MPY capability is a great test and analysis service that informs leadership of the impacts imposed on the MCEN’s core services of transport, processing and storage,” said Clevenger.

MCTSSA conducted the cyber resiliency tests in April and May, and delivered a final report of the results to Marine Corps Systems Command programs of record as well as Marine Forces Cyberspace Command and Headquarters Command, Control, Communications, and Computers, United States Marine Corps stakeholders in June.

Specific testing measured the impacts and cyber resiliency of several command and control programs that are connected to the MCEN.

“We collected performance metrics such as network utilization and throughput,” said Paul Tice, MCTSSA technical director. “This enables us to measure the impact of future changes.”

These tests have expanded in size, scope and complexity as MCTSSA looked at different warfighting functions and the systems that support them.

Large scale network tests are a big undertaking, and under the direction of MCSC, MCTSSA formed a federation of technical organizations to aid in the detailed analysis, including: SPAWAR Systems Center (SSC) Atlantic; SSC Pacific; Naval Surface Warfare Center – Crane Division; and Portfolio Manager, Supporting Establishment Systems, Systems Integration Lab.

“System of systems tests are challenging, and we decided to take a crawl, walk, run approach as we developed the current capability here at MCTSSA,” said Clevenger.

MPY testing facilitates the maintenance of the MCEN by enabling a technical evaluation process of proposed hardware and software changes within the MCSC portfolio to determine the impact of those changes to the network.

“The goal of the MPY is to technically evaluate changes to the MCEN before they are introduced,” said Tice. “The idea is to determine whether a proposed change impacts the performance or security posture of the MCEN and recommend mitigation steps before the change is implemented.”

One of the side benefits is enterprise awareness of the changes happening to the network.

“Each program office is extremely busy delivering their particular product to the MAGTF, and often don’t have time to see what is changing in the other systems that share their environment,” said Tice.

This strategic look at the MCEN aids future planning and gives a better understanding of current network capability.

“We have established a measurement of the Marine Corps’ Aviation C2 systems’ impact to the MCEN and have preliminary formulas that can estimate the bandwidth required for these systems in a Tactical Air Operations Center role,” said Darren Spies, test director for MCTSSA’s Test and Certification Group. “For future planning efforts of the MCEN, this information will be useful when gauging further impacts of modifications made to existing systems or incorporating any future systems into the architecture.”

By evaluating the impact of various C2 tools on the MCEN, MCTSSA provides the data leaders need to deliver a C2 environment for tomorrow’s Marine Corps today.

MCTSSA, the only elite full-scale laboratory facility operated by the Marine Corps, is a subordinate command of Marine Corps Systems Command. MCTSSA provides test and evaluation, engineering, and deployed technical support for Marine Corps and joint service command, control, computer, communications and intelligence systems throughout all acquisition life-cycle phases.

Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity personnel tested various systems within the Marine Corps Enterprise Network as part of the MCEN Planning Yard 18-1 event. MCTSSA started executing mission-based system of systems tests as a means to aid programs of record in security engineering and cyber resiliency. (U.S. Marine Corps illustration by Jennifer Sevier)

By Sky M. Laron, Public Affairs Officer, MCTSSA

WASHINGTON — Combatant commanders are increasingly getting better support in the cyber domain thanks to a diverse group of problem solvers, said Lt. Col. Wayne A. Sanders.

Sanders, chief of the Cyber-Electromagnetic Activities Support to Corps and Below Program, U.S. Army Cyber Command, spoke Aug. 2 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Cyber Hot Topics panel.

Sgt. Camille Coffey (on the antenna), Spc. Victorious Fuqua (on the computer), and Spc. Mark Osterholt, all cyber operations specialists from the Expeditionary Cyber Support Detachment, 782nd Military Intelligence Battalion (Cyber), from Fort Gordon, Ga., provided offensive cyber operations as part of the Cyber-Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA) Support to Corps and Below (CSCB) program during the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, National Training Center Rotation 18-03, Jan. 18-24, 2018. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Steven Stover)

After each of the past 10 combat training center rotations and numerous deployments, these problem-solving cyber operators have been learning something new each time and are improving and integrating better with the staff of the maneuver commanders, he said.

As a result of learning from those 10 CTC rotations and lots of assessments from the Cyber Center of Excellence and other commands, a determination was made to double the size of cyber teams supporting brigade combat teams from five personnel to 10, he said.

Each of those teams will be led by a major who has a “17B Cyber Electromagnetic Activities Officer – Electronic Warfare” military occupational specialty, and a captain, with a “17A Cyber Operations Officer” MOS, he said. Teams will include offensive and defensive cyber, as well as electronic warfare and information operations Soldiers.

Soldiers from the Expeditionary Cyber Support Detachment, 782nd Military Intelligence Battalion (Cyber), provide offensive cyber operations in support of the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division during a seizure of a town at the National Training Center during Rotation 18-03 on January 18, 2018. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Capt. Adam Schinder)

The other big development is that the secretary of the Army authorized the creation of a cyber warfare support battalion, he said. Initial operational capability for that battalion will be in fiscal year 2019, which begins in October.

The battalion will go after gaps in cyber against peer threats, he said. Those personnel will find the software and hardware solutions that will make the cyber teams more innovative and expeditionary.

Sanders said that in every single operation that cyber teams are a part of, they learn something new during their forensic analysis of attacks. That information is then shared with cyber teams throughout the Army.

A lesson learned could be about a new tactic or technique used in a cyber or electronic warfare attack, he said. Or, it could be about something totally unrelated.

He provided an example. During a recent deployment, the cyber team assigned to the maneuver commander found out after hitting the ground that transportation was not readily available. “We weren’t a known entity to anyone,” one of the Soldiers said. The lesson learned was to integrate early into the operations planning process and attend home-station training prior to going to the combat training center.

Soldiers of the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade embedded with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, establish a location to conduct cyberspace operations during Decisive Action Rotation 18-08 at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., June 6, 2018. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jeff Storrier)

Brig. Gen. William Hartman, deputy commander, Joint Force Headquarters, U.S. Army Cyber Command, looked back on the brief history of cyber. Just a few years ago a cyber team of four Soldiers was invited to their first combat training center rotation. There wasn’t Internet set up, so it was impossible to conduct realistic training.

On the next rotation, 35 cyber operators were able to surveil enemy targets at 900 meters, he said. On subsequent rotations, that improved to 5 kilometers, giving the maneuver commander the ability to see cyber activity around him from inside the tactical operations center.

Hartman noted that besides being really good at what they do, cyber operators need to know how to communicate to the maneuver commander and his staff in language they can understand.

Col. Paul T. Stanton, commander, Cyber Protection Brigade, oversees 20 cyber protection teams.

“We understand the ones and zeroes and the complexity of the systems we’re defending,” he said. “We develop interesting and novel algorithms, sometimes on the fly in order to analyze the data in a meaningful way to defend the network.”

Having said that, there are limitations to defending the network at the tactical edge, he noted. There are just 2 megabits of bandwidth per second available at the tactical edge, compared to many times that available at home station.

That means there’s limited bandwidth for those systems at the tactical edge, but the upside to that is there’s a smaller footprint, meaning it’s harder for the enemy to find and target the cyber team’s activities.

Frank Pietryka, director of Information Operations, Electronic Warfare Systems, Raytheon, said that 2 megabits of bandwidth might be okay today, but as artificial intelligence and machine learning take hold, operators at the forward edge of the battle area are going to need “more horsepower.”

By David Vergun, Army News Service