Army crafts blueprint for cyberwarfare - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Army crafts blueprint for cyberwarfare

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — The Army is developing its blueprint for battling attackers in cyberspace, the latest writing of a major military playbook aimed at staying ahead of increasingly sophisticated enemies.

Similar to its recently finished manual on the use of electronic warfare, the Army is crafting new concepts for a high-tech battlefield. The 86-page document, an early draft of which was obtained by The Associated Press, tries to account for everything from monitoring the passing of information between enemies to stopping computer hacks from taking on entire networks of machines.

“It’s just our drive to get better networked and better tied in, not with just the military but civilian societies at every level,” said Col. Jeff Witsken, deputy director of Fort Leavenworth’s Capability Development Integration Directorate.

The doctrine will be the Army’s principles for battlefield commanders to use computers and information technology to identify enemies, inform soldiers and notify other countries what the U.S. military is doing and why. The early draft is light on specifics but heavy on high concepts. The final version is to be released in October.

“We want commanders to think about what they do to gain the advantage on air, land or space,” Witsken said. “Now they have to think about cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum.”

Brig. Gen. Steven Smith, the chief cyber officer for the Army’s information office, said the U.S. has to be ready to fight its enemies online that can range from high school kids hacking into government systems from their basements to well-trained personnel overseas.

“It would give a tactical advantage over the adversary,” Smith said of the Army’s playbook. “It’s a terrorism weapon almost.”

Some are skeptical of the Army’s move to have its own cyberspace plans.

Barry Watts, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said Army officials’ plan to “march off on their own” to develop Army-centric cyber capabilities seems out of step with the Pentagon’s decision in June to establish a uniform cyber command for all military branches.

Cyber warfare requires a much more integrated approach,” he said.

“Achieving this may be much more difficult in the cyber domain than it has been in more traditional warfare areas,” Watts said.

The Army and Pentagon says the Army’s efforts do not conflict with the uniform cyber command, yet is part of the mix.

According to the Pentagon, the Army’s efforts were similar to the Air Force decision to establish a separate unit to lead the service’s operations.

Each unit, whether it’s a company of 120 soldiers or brigade of 3,500, would have some networking systems, but may need to ask the new cyber command for support to accomplish a mission, Witsken said.

“They have some means to deal with the situation themselves, or ask for help,” Witsken said.

The challenge, he said, is defining what role the Army will give its units. The draft document doesn’t describe what those activities would be and the Army refused to elaborate.

To implement the changes in the blueprint, the Army will have to require more training and new equipment, but how much it will cost or what new technologies will be required is unknown.

The draft document outlines how the Army can maneuver to keep the enemy from operating in cyberspace — either by denying access to a network, influencing how and what their devices transmit or disabling machines by erasing data or destroying the hardware.

For example, an attack could cause a hardware failure that cripples systems that control temperature extremes for computer hardware. If the equipment overheats, it will be damaged or inoperable, causing other systems to fail, such as electric power plants.

Or soldiers could send a virus to an enemy computer, setting off a “Trojan horse” that damages software or allows the soldier to gain access to information that could expose enemy weaknesses, such as its resources or security measures.

One scenario outlined in the document pits regions of a fictitious nation against each other, battling for control of oil reserves. Region A has a strong military and teams with Region C in a show of force against the defenseless Region B. It results in Region A launching a cyber attack against Region B, with the United States and other nations responding to defend the systems and deter future attacks.

The scenario has a familiar feel. In early July, U.S. and South Korean Web sites were attacked and disabled when a flood of computers tried to connect to servers at the same time, overwhelming the system. Officials are divided over whether the North Koreans were behind the attacks, signaling technological advancement, or that the attacks were coordinated in the region by hackers who simply took over those computers.