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The New Air Force Mission?
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?"
Really though, what the hell has the internet got to do with the wingflapping guys?
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.
None.
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.
Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
Actually, it's worse than being made by the lowest bidder. At one time in my life, I was a computer programmer for the Air Force. I have since escaped to the private sector, but as late as 1991 or 1992, where I worked was STILL USING PUNCH CARDS on one particular computer system. I was just amazed. When I was in college in the 1980s, punch cards were old, antiquated technology. I talked to a guy who maintained the punch card system and he told me that it was the only punch card system still in operation in our state that his company made. He told me that they bought a used punch card reader from another company and kept it around for parts. Eventually the system was replaced with a somewhat more modern inventory system that didn't use punch cards.
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.
Disclaimer: I'm a lowly airman and have no idea what really goes on at the top, but this is what I can glean from my perspective.
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.
Infrastructure is seen as more and more important. People here can't already have forgotten the problems when the switches in the basement of the World Trade Center were taken out 4 years ago, have they?
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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.
The mission statement's use of "cyberspace" is likely a bit misleading, as it is more often used in reference to the internet (by people who don't know the correct terms to use). Actually, however, the Air Force has been deeply involved in electronic warfare since before the cold war.
Today, aircraft like the AWACS and JSTARS are integral to controlling theater level communication and are often used for intel gathering.
Other dedicated surveillance aircraft like the Rivet Joint are packed full of sensory equipment to intercept, block, and manipulate wireless communication transmittions(cellular, 802.11, 900MHz).
After Vietnam, the Prowler was repurposed for radar jamming and surveillance in support of combat operations.
In the last few American wars, the EC-130E 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.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.