By Richard Sterk, Defense Electronics Analyst, Forecast International.
The U.S. Cyber Command’s (USCYBERCOM) mission is to deter or defeat strategic threats to U.S. interests and infrastructure, provide mission assurance for the operations and defense of the Department of Defense information environment, and support the achievement of Joint Force Commander objectives.
USCYBERCOM, in conjunction with the Services and Defense Agencies, is working to develop and expand infrastructure architectures and capabilities/tools to support Cyber Mission Forces (CMF).
The U.S. effort was restructured to the Cyber Operations Technology Development program to facilitate the alignment of resources to capabilities.
The focus will be on four broad program areas:
- Common Services: funding is for enterprise capabilities that enable mission execution for the CMF. Common Services includes a Unified Platform (UP) that will enable CMF to conduct the planning and execution of full-spectrum cyber operations. UP supports and links the following common service capabilities to enable the CMF: Command and Control, defensive cyber operations, situational awareness, and training and assessment.
- Access Platforms: funding supports the development of capabilities and/or infrastructures used by CMF for the employment of access on networks to create effects. Efforts include research, analysis, testing, assessment, and integration. Further details are held at higher classification levels.
- Tools: funding supports development of common and specialized tools critical to gaining access to or creating effects on networks. Efforts include research, studies, analysis, testing, assessment of development, integration, and operational assessment of cyberspace capabilities, methodologies, and tactics. Funding also supports Offensive Cyber Operations (OCO) requirements for Cyber, Joint Task Force ARES.
- Analytics: funding supports capabilities used in CMF operations to store, correlate, and analyze data collected from multiple sources to garner unique insights to enable decision making. The origin, details, and specific aspects of these efforts are classified and will be provided on a need-to-know basis.
As an increasing number of network breaches occur and data theft is discovered, expect an ever-increasing amount of funding to be pumped into cyberspace – specifically cybersecurity – across a wide spectrum of Department of Defense efforts.
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