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  February 14, 2024 | International, Land

  Air Force leaders sound alarm over looming yearlong funding delay

  The Pentagon is operating under its third continuing resolution of fiscal 2024 as Congress continues to draft defense spending legislation.

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  July 22, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  The new ways the military is fighting against information warfare tactics

  Mark Pomerleau One of the clearest examples of how the military wants to defeat adversaries using information warfare is by publicly disclosing what those enemies have been doing and what capabilities they have. Information warfare can be abstract, combining cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare, information operations, psychological operations or military deception as a way to influence the information environment or change the way an adversary think. “At our level, the most important thing we can do is to be able to expose what an adversary is doing that we consider to be malign activity, in a way that allows that to be put in the information environment so that now more scrutiny can be applied to it,” Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander 16th Air Force, the Air Force's newly established information warfare organization, told reporters during a media round table in late February. One of the first ways the Department of Defense has sought to test this is through U.S. Cyber Command's posting of malware samples to the public resource VirusTotal. Malware samples discovered in the course of operations by the Cyber National Mission Force are posted to the site to inform network owners. It also helps antivirus organizations of the strains build patches against that code and helps identify the enemies' tools being used in ongoing campaigns. Haugh, who most recently led the Cyber National Mission Force, explained how these cyber teams, conducting what Cyber Command calls hunt forward operations, were able to expose Russian tactics. U.S. military teams deploy to other nations to help them defend against malign cyber activity inside their networks. “Those defensive teams then were able to identify tools that were on networks and publicly disclose them, [and] industry later attributed to being Russian tools,” he said. “That was a means for us to use our unique authorities outside the United States to be able to then identify adversary activity and publicly disclose it.” Officials have said this approach changes the calculus of adversaries while also taking their tools off the battlefield. “Disclosure is more than just revealing adversary intent and capabilities. From a cyberspace perspective, disclosure is cost imposing as it removes adversary weapons from the ‘battlefield' and forces them to expend resources to create new weapons,” Col. Brian Russell, the commander of II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, told C4ISRNET in June. “Disclosure forces the adversary to ask: ‘How were those capabilities discovered?' It causes them to investigate the cause of the disclosure, forcing them to spend time on something other than attacking us. If I can plant a seed of doubt (messaging) that the disclosure might have been caused by someone working on the inside, it makes them question the system's very nature, perhaps spending more time and resources to fix the system.” The NSA has demonstrated a similar tactic when it created its cybersecurity directorate in late 2019. The entity was formed in part, due to the fact that adversaries were using cyberspace to achieve strategic objectives below the threshold of armed conflict. Now, the directorate uses its intelligence and cyber expertise to issue advisories to the network owners of cybersecurity threats so they can take the necessary steps to defend themselves. One recent advisory had direct bearing on a nation state's malicious activity, according to a senior intelligence official. In late May, the agency issued an advisory regarding a vulnerability in Exim mail transfer agent, which was being widely exploited by a potent entity of Russia's military intelligence arm the GRU called Sandworm. “Quickly thereafter, we saw five cybersecurity companies jumped on it and really used that to deepen and expand and publish information about the GRU's infrastructure that they use to conduct their cyberattacks and further information as well,” the official told reporters in early July. “That was terrific because we felt that that had a direct impact on a major nation state in terms of exposing their infrastructure ... and we saw significant patch rates go up on a vulnerability that we knew they were using. That's the kind of thing that we're looking for.” The military has had to think differently to combat for how adversaries are operating. “A central challenge today is that our adversaries compete below the threshold of armed conflict, without triggering the hostilities for which DoD has traditionally prepared,” Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of Cyber Command, wrote in prepared testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in early March. “That short-of-war competition features cyber and information operations employed by nations in ways that bypass America's conventional military strengths.” These disclosures or efforts to call out malign behavior have also taken the forms of media interviews and press releases. For example, Gen. Jay Raymond, the head of U.S. Space Command and the commandant of Space Force, said in a February interview in which he detailed what he deemed unacceptable behavior by Russia in space, a surprising charge given how tight lipped the U.S. government typically is about its satellites. “We view this behavior as unusual and disturbing,” he said of Russian satellites creeping up to American ones. “It has the potential to create a dangerous situation in space.” Or consider that leaders from Africa Command on July 15 issued a press release detailing the activities of the Wagner Group, a Russian security company, as acting on behalf of the Russian state to undermine the security situation in Libya. “U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has clear evidence that Russian employed, state-sponsored Wagner Group laid landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in and around Tripoli, further violating the United Nations arms embargo and endangering the lives of innocent Libyans,” the release said. “Verified photographic evidence shows indiscriminately placed booby-traps and minefields around the outskirts of Tripoli down to Sirte since mid-June. These weapons are assessed to have been introduced into Libya by the Wagner Group.” Moreover, Africa Command's director of operations called out Russia, noting that country's leaders have the power to stop the Wagner Group, but not the will. Sixteenth Air Force, at the request of C4ISRNET, provided a vignette of such behavior from Russia in the form of how it covered up the explosion of a radioactive rocket, dubbed Skyfall. According to the service, Russia took extreme steps to curb monitoring of the site where the explosion took place and sought to conceal the true nature of the explosion potentially hindering surrounding civilian populations from receiving adequate medical treatment and guidance. With new forces integrated under a single commander, using unique authorities to collect intelligence and authorities to disclose, 16th Air Force is now better postured to expose this type of malign activity, which previously the U.S. government just didn't do. Top Pentagon leaders have explained that the dynamic information warfare space requires a new way of thinking. “We've got to think differently. We've got to be proactive and not reactive with messaging,” Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds, the Marine Corps' deputy commandant for information, told C4ISRNET in an interview in March. “We have been very risk averse with regard to the information that we have. You can't deter anybody if you're the only one who knows that you have a capability.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/information-warfare/2020/07/20/the-new-ways-the-military-is-fighting-against-information-warfare-tactics/

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  October 25, 2018 | International, Naval

  To combat Russian subs, NATO allies are teaming up to develop unmanned systems at sea

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. and its NATO allies are teaming up to more closely cooperate on the development and fielding of unmanned maritime systems, according to an agreement signed by the defense heads of 13 NATO allies. During the July summit, the powers signed onto a plan to jointly pursue technologies aimed at mine and sub hunting, according to an October news release making the agreement public. “The use of unmanned systems is a potentially game changing leap forward in maritime technology,” the release read. “Working alongside traditional naval assets, these unmanned systems will increase both our situational awareness and our control of the seas.” The release, while short on details, seems to open up the possibility that development of underwater and surface drones could be even more lucrative for companies involved, as it hints at the alliance seeking common, interoperable systems. That means a proven drone might be competing for business in 13 markets simultaneously instead of just one. “Through this initiative, Allies will also be able to exploit economies of scale to reduce costs, allowing increasing defence budgets to go even further,” the release said. The countries involved in the agreement are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. For NATO watchers, the agreement is the latest sign of just how seriously the alliance is taking the threat from Russian submarines. “NATO members are alarmed by the growing threat from Russian submarines, and are investing more resources to deal with it,” said Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously served as the lead on NATO issues for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “Under [President Vladimir] Putin, Russia has deployed new, stealthier submarines in the north Atlantic that are much harder for NATO navies to track. “This new multinational cooperation in undersea drones is the most recent example that NATO is taking the Russian threat in the north Atlantic much more seriously than it has in the past quarter century.” Expanding role The agreement also reflects the ever-expanding role of unmanned systems in the underwater domain, which countries are banking on to offset the ever-quieter and more advanced submarines. As the U.S. submarine fleet has dipped to 56 attack and guided-missile boats, and the Navy projects that number is slated to further drop to 42 by 2028 and hold below 48 boats through 2032, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. The Navy's 2019 30-year shipbuilding plan shows the number of attack submarines dropping precipitously in the mid-2020s, something CRS has warned about for years as the Los Angeles-class boats begin to retire in numbers. That shortfall is prompting an all-out push on developing unmanned systems that can perform some functions to free up the big hunters for missions where they are more needed. When it comes to cooperating in development of drones, monitoring the littorals in and around the Baltic — and in the Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom gap — is an area where this kind of cooperation could be helpful, said Bryan Clark, a retired submariner and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The Battle of the Atlantic The renewed threat from Russian submarines has triggered what the U.S. Navy's Europe commander, Adm. James Foggo, has dubbed “The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic,” harkening back to the fight with German U-boats in World War I, World War II and the standoff with Russia in the Cold War. But with the expansion of NATO to former Soviet satellite states, the Battle of the Atlantic will sprawl from the Eastern Seaboard all the way to the Baltic and Black seas, areas that Russia has fortified with anti-access, area denial weapons and other capabilities in recent years. That battlespace, however, extends not only to the undersea domain but all the way to the ocean floor, which is home to everything from pop-up mines to undersea internet cables that transmit the vast majority of the world's data. That means the alliance will need to know more than ever about what's on the sea floor, a job that simply can't be done with the declining number of attack submarines needed to shadow nuclear missile subs and conduct high-risk intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions around the globe. In that arena, experts say that underwater systems — be it drones or stationary systems — will be necessary to monitor crucial chokepoints. "We don't have to know everything everywhere,” retired Vice Adm. Michael Connor, former head of American's submarine forces, told the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee in a 2015 hearing. “But there are places where you would like to have very good knowledge. We have critical things we want to protect, like some of the undersea infrastructure that is so critical to our economy. “There may be places we decide we want to have some volume of systems and that relatively small area around that infrastructure where you would have sufficient vehicles to obtain perfect knowledge.” Pawns Developing and using autonomous underwater unmanned vehicles has proven to be a challenge. The issues are multifarious, but they boil down to three core problems: communications, navigation and endurance. Communicating underwater is a challenge in the best of circumstances, and surveillance drones aren't worth much if they can't tell others what they find. To that end, they must either have a home base to which they can navigate and upload data, or they need to surface and transmit, said Clark, the CSBA analyst. A second challenge is navigating around obstacles. Fish, which know quite a bit about navigating underwater, have trouble avoiding commercial fishing nets that are common in sea lanes. Likewise, drones have issues finding and avoiding them, and that's just one example. Endurance is another challenge. Some of the best underwater drones in the U.S. Navy's inventory, under ideal usage conditions, last a day underwater, Clark said. “UUVs can only go a few knots, and that's of limited duration,” he said. Underwater drones are showing promise in the areas of mine hunting and mine sweeping, but perhaps even more promising — in terms of becoming an adequate stand-in for an attack boat — are some of the surface drones in development. Clark said programs such as the Sea Hunter, a medium-displacement unmanned surface vessel, could be a huge leap forward for monitoring chokepoints. Developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, or ACTUV, was designed to track enemy subs while avoiding collisions and abiding by the rules of the road. The first Sea Hunter was christened in 2016, and in January the project transitioned to the Office of Naval Research for further development. The idea behind Sea Hunter is that one can field a multitude to cover a lot of area at a fraction of the cost of a frigate of destroyer. “ACTUV represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate,” Fred Kennedy, head of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, said in a January news release. “The U.S. military has talked about the strategic importance of replacing ‘king' and ‘queen' pieces on the maritime chessboard with lots of ‘pawns,' and ACTUV is a first step toward doing exactly that.” Other technologies have also shown promise. Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider, which uses ocean current and solar panels to power itself, can stay at sea for months at a time and provide persistent surveillance for anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000 a unit, a company representative told Defense News last year. The agreement reached by 13 NATO powers is just the latest indication of how countries see unmanned systems impacting the future of warfare. “It's an important statement that NATO allies and partners are thinking seriously about these emerging capabilities — and they need to think about them,” said Michael Horowitz, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose research has centered on unmanned systems. “It's a reflection of how they see these systems impacting the maritime domain.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/10/21/to-combat-russian-subs-nato-allies-are-teaming-up-to-develop-unmanned-systems-at-sea/