U.S. Military Needs Computer Hackers

Military Needs Hackers, StratCom Chief Says

By William H. McMichael - Staff Writer
Posted : Thursday Oct 2, 2008 6:08:36 EDT
ourtesy Of The ArmyTimes

Uncle Sam is looking for a few good computer hackers.

The U.S. military needs a two-edged cyber capability that can not only defend its .mil and .smil domains from outside attacks but, if necessary, launch cyber attacks against intruders. To do that, the individual services need to recruit and train more cyber-qualified personnel, Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, chief the U.S. Strategic Command, said today.

The military is dependent on its .mil and .smil domains for everything from e-mail exchanges to employment of its nuclear arsenal. StratCom’s vast portfolio includes operating and defending those domains.

The importance, Chilton said, is self-evident.

“On your worst day, you want to be able to make sure that the military network still works so that you can effect either the defense of the United States ... or an offensive action, should they be required,” Chilton said in a meeting with Military Times reporters and editors.

“The hardest thing we’re going to have to do is to be able to operate this network in time of war — as we will be attacked,” Chilton said. “And there’s no perfect firewall.”

Each service, and each combatant commander, has to have operational networks, he noted.

As such, each service needs to provide forces to support that effort. However, they are coming up short.

“I don’t think our services [have] quite yet come to grips on how best to organize, train and equip forces to support this mission area,” Chilton said. “It’s not because they’re not working the problem hard — they are. It’s just new.”

According to a February 2008 report by the Pentagon inspector general on contingency planning for the military’s mission-critical information systems, the military is coming up woefully short in defending its networks.

“DoD mission-critical systems may not be able to sustain warfighter operations during a disruptive or catastrophic event,” the report concluded.

StratCom is also responsible for all U.S. strategic deterrence, military operations in space, missile defense, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

In addition to defending and maintaining the military’s networks during an attack, Chilton said, the military needs to develop offensive capabilities — not only across computer networks but in the domains of space, air, land and sea.

Chilton said StratCom has been asked to plan for how to conduct these “cross-domain” attacks as well as offensive cyber operations. Recommendation for the move was included in this year’s National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations.

“You need to be able to operate, defend and attack in the domain, and then cross-domain,” Chilton said. “And I think there are opportunities to do that. So we’ve been given the task to think about those opportunities.”

The most devastating sort of cyber attack on the U.S. would involve a decidedly kinetic weapon — a nuclear bomb, detonated high over the Earth. Such an explosion would shut down all but the most “hardened” networks and computers within range; the Pentagon has hardened its most critical structures and weapons systems, such as nuclear-capable B-52 bombers, for such an eventuality.

In one such scenario that defense officials have considered at length, an enemy detonates a nuclear device over international waters in an effort to sidestep the detonation being termed an act of war.

That rationale wouldn’t fly, Chilton said.

“If you affect the United States of America with a nuclear detonation, I don’t care where you detonate it, that’s an attack on the United States of America,” Chilton said. “We have been thinking about that, and we do think about … how we might respond to that. And of course, that would be up to the president.

“I’m not one who says, well, just because there’s no visible kinetic effect, that that means it doesn’t count,” Chilton added. “It counts. Because the long-term effects on the population and the economy and our lifestyle and the very existence of the United States of American being held at risk is important to deter.”

On another issue, Chilton said recent Russian muscle-flexing, evident in acts as overt as the recent invasion of Georgia and as symbolic as using Venezuela as a temporary base for carrying out strategic bomber training flights — echoes of its aggressive Soviet past — haven’t affected how he does his day-to-day job.

“Not at all,” he said, noting that U.S. Northern Command has specific responsibility for the air defense of the U.S.

“The difference between 1989 and today vis-à-vis a country like Russia is intent, not in capability,” Chilton said. “So, we have been in the business, and continue to be in the business, of deterring any thought of using that capability. ... That’s baseline going in, no matter how many airplanes they fly, or what they do.”