Air Force Cyber Command plan falls through hole in nuclear control net

Despite a renewed focus on nuclear weapons safety and management, the Air Force will forge ahead on a command intended to safeguard military and domestic networks, an Air Force cyberspace official said at the Air Force Information Technology Conference in Montgomery, Ala., last week.

The Defense Department has not canceled plans to launch the Air Force Cyber Command, said Maj. Gen John Maluda, director of cyberspace transformation and strategy at the Air Force’s Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer. The service launched a provisional Cyber Command more than a year ago and planned to finish organizing the unit  by Oct. 1. But the Air Force has put those plans on hold after the departures of Chief of Staff T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael Wynne, who were fired after two incidents involving mishandled or misplaced nuclear detonators or weapons.

In one incident, the Air Force mistakenly shipped a set of nuclear detonators instead of helicopter batteries to South Korean forces. In the other, a flight crew did not know they were carrying nuclear missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., in August 2007.

Because of those mistakes, DOD reviewed Air Force priorities, resources and plans for new commands, including the Cyber Command, Maluda said. He added that his boss, CIO Lt. Gen. Michael Peterson, was in Washington at the time of the conference to meet with new Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz to recast plans for the Cyber Command.

"I can think of nothing more important than to rebuild that trust and faith and confidence our civilian leadership has in our nuclear mission, whether it's ICBMs of Space Command or B-52s” in the Strategic Command, Maluda said. "This country needs to have faith and confidence that that system is sound, and our adversaries need to know we can command those resources when and where we need them."

The Air Force has at least temporarily lost its campaign to become the primary cyberspace security operator for the military services and civilian infrastructure.

But Maluda said the Air Force is not backing away from its effort to build a cyberspace command. He said the decision to postpone the official launch of the Cyber Command will not affect the Air Force’s ability to control cyberspace. The command will continue to protect sensitive information and restrict access to it.

Maluda said information systems previously considered to be low risk might need more protection because they could be more susceptible to cyberattacks than non-Air Force specialists realize.

For example, the Transportation Command, is one of the most-hacked DOD commands, Maluda said. Because the command can quickly deploy troops, aircraft and equipment across the world, “any country that's unable to do that and wants to get information on how to do it” has an interest in hacking into the command’s systems, he said.

The Transportation Command’s systems include strategic unclassified information, such as the mean time between failures for the fuel pump of an F-22 Strike Fighter, Maluda said.

The Air Force has bigger ambitions for  cyberspace operations than just protecting unclassified information, Maluda said. Because cyberspace does not have defined physical or geographic limitations, cyberattacks and cyber defense can include satellites, satellite-tracking stations, space stations, remotely operated vehicles and other resources that rely on networks or computing to operate effectively.

Maluda said it makes sense to let specialists control physical resources, such as satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles and other assets. But the networks, software and security that support those resources might better be protected and operated by cyberwar specialists – such as the Air Force IT employees who heard Maluda speak. He was at least partially trying to assuage concerns about their professional future.

Kevin Fogarty is a contributing writer to Defense Systems magazine.