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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?"
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
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.
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.