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?"

Comments

War?

[verbnoun]

Could this be the beginnings of the first ever war that takes place over the Internet?

We need a new branch of the military.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Cyber Guard

Each branch is going to end up having it's own "Cyberspace" division duplicating the efforts of other branches and wasting taxpayer dollars.
I just hope we don't have a cyber-civil war with the branches trying to out hack each other.

While we are at it, why not redefine the mission of the US Coast Guard to "Border Guard". Give them the resources they need to defend all our Borders.

Re:Flying and fighting in cyberspace?

[virtual_mps]

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 this differentiates the air force from the army or navy--how? I think the original point was that there's no clear reason for this to be an air force mission. If anything, the army has more computing resources than the air force.

Re:Read It Differenty

[SirWhoopass]

Mostly, it's just a play by top Air Force officials to sell the service. They believe that information warfare will be big in the future, and they'd rather have Congress give the Air Force money to do it, rather than the Army or Navy. In reality, all the services have personnel who do that work.

At the top level, the services fight among themselves more than they do anything else. NASA was born out of competing Air Force and Navy space programs.

Information Warfare

[dustinbarbour]

The Department of Defense realizes that information warfare is a serious business. During Gulf War II we had computers constantly dialing damn near every phone number in Baghdad which overloaded their phone system and forced them to constantly bring it down and back up. The system was practically unusable. The internet has become the communications medium of choice for most everything these days and the Air Force knows this. Thus they realize that they're gonna need a strong ability to conduct warfare in cyberspace if they wish to have every possible advantage when the bullets and bombs start flying. Nothing more, nothing less.

I don't understand why someone would have a problem with that. What? You're not patriotic?

Re:The Answer....

[budgenator]

The Air Force has had specialised a unit for about twenty years that deals with cyberwarfare, at least the computer/network security aspects of cyberwarfare.
Neither the technical capabilities nor institutional culture of the Air Force really lend themselves to this mission. Given the mega-tonnage of stratigic nuclear weapons in the Air Force invetory, the entire world hopes you are wrong about that.

Re: WWI aftermath

[b17bmbr]

you are correct. the world was dramatically reshaped after ww1, however, it was basically realigned after ww2. much of the world's problems today date from versailles. we never dealt with ethnic nationalism and we basically created pan-arabism. while we dealt with militaristic imperialism, we reverted back to a 19th century model of realpolitik and balance of power. we supported thug dictators so longs they fought communism and we sought alliances such as NATO and SEATO.

funny, as we try to change the calculus of the last 50 years, we're being criticized. it's as if we had a century of peace or something.

Re:./ users misinterpreting this

[WhiteWolf666]

Are we misinterpreting it wrongly?

Can you not see the advantage of Neuromancer/Matrix style war on the internet?

The ENTIRE U.S. east coast powergrid was shut down for 3 days, on an accident.

That seems like it would be a much better way for us to attack a country, rather than bombing the actual infrastructure out. Imagine if in Iraq we had simply rendered their utilies off, rather than blowing them up. Imagine how much faster the reconstruction would be.

It seems like a far more civilized way to fight.

Re:Fight in Cyberspace?

[b17bmbr]

yes, the T34 was far far superior to the Sherman. however, by 1945, tanks without air cover were targets. we would have controlled the skies absolutely. the russians had nothing to contend with the heavy bomber forces. we'd have been able to interrupt their supply lines and destroy their armies in the field. no, it wouldn't have been pretty, and no it wouldn't have been easy, but rather tahn stopping at moscow, we could very well have chosen the middle ground, as I said in the orig post, make them go back to 1939 borders. it's a whole different world then. i do think that we were aware of what it would mean to go to moscow, and it would make our efforts in Iraq look like a cake walk. i think the general consensus of the anti-communists was to get them out of europe proper. that was doable, and probably necessary. but hell, we survived, eh?