The New Air Force Mission? 444
mvnicosia asks: "The US Air Force has released its new mission statement, which reads 'The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.' With the recent rows over US Internet governance, what do you think is the impact of a US government overtly practicing cyberspace warfare? And what are the US's legal limitations?"
Re:Chairforce! (Score:1, Informative)
Project for the New American Century on Target (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flying and fighting in cyberspace? (Score:3, Informative)
Well see, we have these places where all the planes and bombs are... they are called "air force bases", and at these bases, they do alot of research on, ya know, planes and bombs... and alot of these secrets are very important and held on computers in varying levels of connectivity... and see... these secrets would be most easily accessed by an outsider via, say, an inter-network of computers... which Al Gore shortened to "internet".
More seriously, the term "cyberspace" probably has more components then just the internet.... There are other "networks" separated from the internet with classified information... there are ad-hoc networks over RF between jets, and so on.
Re:Don't Worry (Score:2, Informative)
...And what are the US's legal limitations? (Score:4, Informative)
People need to realize, there is no such thing as international "law." There certainly are things that are called international law, but it is not actually law. They are parts of treaties and agreements built between nations, and they are broken by all nations when it is in their best interest. The U.S. does it; Canada does it; Mexico does it; Japan does it; China does it; They ALL do it. There are no legal implications, unless the U.S. decides that they will allow some other nation to bring legal charges. I really don't see that happening.
Of course, that does not mean there are no other implications... like retaliation.
Legal limitations? Who could wage 'cyberwarfare'? (Score:2, Informative)
I once was at a lecture by Lieutenant Commander Chris Eagle, an instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School, who taught courses on cyber defence and cyber warfare and he made an important point: Only uniform wearing members of the United States Armed Forces can actively engage in warfare of any kind, including 'cyberwarfare'. This is because of laws and treaties governing who is and who is not a combatant. Even though many civillians may be involved in developing 'cyberweapons', just as civillians are very involved in developing physical weaponry, when deployed and used it must be an active member of the armed forces pulling the trigger, pushing the button, or, in this case, hitting the enter key.
Re:The US hasn't a choice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't Worry (Score:3, Informative)
Where I worked, it was like some kind of freakin' ancient technology museum. All of our computers were old. We had systems with the Burroughs name on them, so you knew they pre-dated their merger with Sperry which turned into Unisys around 1985. This was in the early 1990s that we still had these. We had a system with giant 10 inch floppy drives that was still in use. Most people have no idea that 10 inch floppies ever existed. I used to say that the Air Force's motto should be "Making yesterday's technology work today." There are people in the Air Force who do work with state of the art equipment and they have some really bright officers who know their stuff. However, based on my experience it would be wrong to assume that all over the Air Force they work with and understand modern equipment. I wouldn't be surprised at all if one or two systems from the time I was there are still in use, 10+ years later.
Re:Two questions (Score:5, Informative)
Is this to say that the Air Force will be in charge of any "cyberspace"-related activity?
No. Loads of people are reading this wrong, though it's not entirely their fault since they don't understand how the Air Force works. The best way to visualize the AF is as a gigantic (even international) company dedicated to US defense through air power. By and large, the AF does its own thing and hardly ever mingles with the other branches except to provide air support in joint-service operations.
The cyberspace that the AF will be in charge of is it's own cyberspace. On the surface it seems redundant that they'd include cyberspace in its mission statement. Of course they're going to protect their own information systems. But I think they were primarily driven to include cyberspace in the statement due to the ever-increasing numbers of attacks on Air Force information assets. Particularly those connected to the Internet.
The AF has one of the largest information systems in the world. So it's a huge target. Also, the AF is extremely reliant these days on their information technology. Every single member has an email account that they're expected to monitor and almost everyone needs a computer to access applications that they need in order to do their job.
Finally, those running this huge information network are incompetent. More often than not, they're civilian contractors with paper MCSEs who just sort of bumble along and solve problems based on trial and error rather than having actual knowledge of how things work. (Trust me, I've met a few of them and most revealed themselves as MS fanboys during casual conversation.) The enlisted members in the info admin shops are undertrained, underbugeted, and understaffed. To top it all off, the entire Air Force information system is based on high-powered expensive Microsoft solutions that are extremely fragile and just rarely work.
(As an example, our netadmins are *always* sending out notices to everyone telling them not to open emails with a particular subject line or attachment. But of course they wouldn't have to burden us, the end users, with this crap if they just filtered viruses out properly at the mail server.)
These result of all of these factors is that the Air Force is frequently on the receiving end of script kiddies, hackers, and viruses. This new missions statement indicates to me that the AF leadership have reached the unfortunate conclusion that they merely need to fight harder to protect our information assets rather than wake up and realize that they really just need to bring in some I.T. people and vendors with a clue.
Already tried by AFCC (Score:3, Informative)
For about a 10 month period.
The culture of the rest of the USAF was not ready for this change, and the other major commands essentially forced AFCC to change them all back by refusing to update all their documentation & correspondence to the new names.
The difference between then and now, is of course 22 calendar years and 60+ internet years. Also, this is the entire USAF, and not a supporting major command. Who knows -- they might actually get this change to stick.
Chip H.
Re:The USA is a sovereign nation (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, when we sign a treaty and it is ratified by the Senate, the treaty has the same force as a US law. We can, of course, exit a treaty just as we can overturn or rewrite a law. The important point is that more than just being sovereign, we are a nation of laws, which include international treaties. So breaking a treaty is breaking the law, though I admit most countries at least bend treaty obligations all of the time.
A second point is that a treaty is only agreed to by two or more parties who agree it is in their best interest. Have you ever signed a contract that you felt wasn't in your best interest? Treaties and agreements have played an important roll in protecting US interests in the past and they can likely do so in the future with respect to 'cyberwarfare'. There are, however, a number of challenges. For a treaty to work, the conditions of the treaty must be verifiable. In terms of arms control treaties from the cold war this meant removing missiles from silos and then leaving the silos open for a time so the other side could take a peek with aerial/satellite recon. After that, the silos could be blownup, filled in, or blocked with something heavy and immovable--but the point is both sides could check that the other was owning up to the agreement. In terms of cyber warfare the most important challenge to any treaty will be how to define what constitutes cyberwarfare and cyberweapons and how to make such an agreement verifiable.
Due Diligence (Score:3, Informative)
Now you may or may not like the policies of the US government, but that has nothing to do with the military - the military's job is to carry out those policies.
And as far as the US's legal obligations, well what does the Constitution say about that? Well, the military has a few limits - it can't board soldiers in your house without compensation, it can't use soldiers for law enforcement in the US. But in terms of carrying out warefare, the legal limitations are that it has to follow the orders of the President, who is ultimately accountable for it's actions. And the President is bound by a few restrictions in his role. For example only Congress can declare war, Congress can impeach, etc.
And WHAT THE HELL does this have to do with the root zone file maintainer? Bupkis, that's what.
Re:Huh? What's Love Got To Do With It?! (Score:3, Informative)
The saltpeter used in the Revolution came from manure.
Re:Fight in Cyberspace? (Score:4, Informative)
The best defense is a good offense.
Also, there already was a Sino-American cyberwar. Here is just one link that you may find interesting: http://infosecuritymag.techtarget.com/2002/nov/ne
Cyberwarfare is happening in the current conflict in Iraq and Afganistan. Radical Islam groups uses internet technology to coordinate - but then again so does my mother's sewing club so thats not too surprising. Open Source Intelligence Gathering is useful against such efforts as is direct manipulation of the same technologies.
The war in Kosovo also involved a limited amount of cyberwarfare. That is easy enough to google up.
So, yeah, the US may have claimed to be interested in this in the 1990's and I know for a fact that Tiger Teams were in place at least as far back as 1989 but its definiately gotten much more sophisticated and important in 2005.
Re:The Answer.... (Score:4, Informative)
Today, aircraft like the AWACS [wikipedia.org] and JSTARS [wikipedia.org] are integral to controlling theater level communication and are often used for intel gathering.
Other dedicated surveillance aircraft like the Rivet Joint [wikipedia.org] are packed full of sensory equipment to intercept, block, and manipulate wireless communication transmittions(cellular, 802.11, 900MHz).
After Vietnam, the Prowler [wikipedia.org] was repurposed for radar jamming and surveillance in support of combat operations.
In the last few American wars, the EC-130E [wikipedia.org] was used quite a bit to broadcast radio and TV content for PsycOps.
These days, it could be argued, the Air Force is used for electronic warfare more than it is as an "ordinance taxi service". Either way, this role certainly disserves mentioning in its mission statement.
Re:Fight in Cyberspace? (Score:4, Informative)
Are you sick? WW2 was for capitalism? Now you will tell me they didn't round up jews and anyone else they didn't like and kill them.
Actually, not capitalism, but resources, which ties back into economics.
Take the Pacific Front. The Japanese invaded China seeking it's manpower and natural resources. They went to war with the United States over oil and scrap metal. They invaded the Dutch East Indies seeking oil and rubber. Every acre of land they invaded can be tied directly to resources or the need to form a defensive line to protect those resources.
The European Front wasn't directly about resources -- yet it still was in a way. Hitler wasn't content to become an economic power (as Germany arguably could have). He wanted living space for his "master race". That living space was to be Russia. All the actions in the West were ironically meant to avoid a two front war (how'd that work out??) with the Western Democracies while he was seizing Russia. His mistake was to think that the Brits would fold and quit -- and to declare war on the United States (what the hell was he thinking?).
That said, there are still examples of military objectives in the West based directly around the need for resources. The drive towards Stalingrad was meant to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus. The Ukrainian campaign had living space and farmland as it's objective. Army Group Center was meant to knock out the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union. The action in Egypt was meant to close the Suez canal and eventually seize the oil of the Persian Gulf.