Slashdot Mirror
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?"
to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace
And people wonder why there called the chairforce.....
Is this a mission statement from the early 1990's or something?
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace
I'm thinking Tron light cycles in the skies above Iraq. How cool is that?
My guess is that if the U.S. government felt a threat was so grave that it would resort "cyberwarfare" as well as conventional warfare (knowing the consequences), then I think we'd all have a more serious problem than just worrying about internet governance.
Just like anything, the U.S. has the power to abuse it. But I feel, as with many others, that the U.S. is less likely to abuse it due to its economic reliance upon it. The U.S. would only resort to "cyberwarfar" as one of the last resorts, it would seem.
All of their equipment was made by the lowest bidder.
Read any good sonnets lately?
Could this be the beginnings of the first ever war that takes place over the Internet?
There is no god but Google and GTalk is the messenger of Google.
You could be worried about it but if you read it more narrowly and in context, it's not that scary. The USAF will fight in space, air, and cyberspace as it relates to warfare. Given how dependent the US miliary and other militaries are on information, it's reasonable to expect them to practice techniques for attacking and defend networks. Put it another way, while the air force practices gaining air superiority, we rarely ever see them go around downing civilian aircraft in times of peace (though there have been mistakes). Just because they're developing the ability it doesn't mean they're going to recklessly use it on everyone. The military needs to be prepared for things that might happen.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
After spending 22 years wearing the USAF uniform I think I can be confident in saying that the new mission statement has been looked over and discussed by many General officers, public affairs officers and lawyers both civilian and blue-suiters. They don't often post public statements like that without knowing exactly what ramifications might pop up.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, For you are crunchy and go well with ketchup.
Bluntly speaking, the US's legal limitations are whatever it decides they are.
AFAICT there are no international treaties about cybercrime and information warfare---except those involving copyrights. The U.S. seems happy to prosecute or cause to be prosecuted anybody who is electonically inconvenient to U.S. companies.
This is not my sandwich.
The different branches of the U.S. military spend far more time competing with each other for budgetary dollars than against foriegn powers. Witness the Air Force vs the Navy for fighter plane designs. This new mission statement is from the Secrtary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff - no higher. I'm guessing it represents a turf grab on the part of the Air Force - cyberspace is ours!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
"what are the US's legal limitations?"
Maybe I'm being a troll here (mod me down if you wish), but the current administration has pretty much made it clear that any "legal limitations" that may have previously existed are now void.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
US surrenders to Fatal1ty
The US airforce today acknowledged defeat in cyberspace after being challenged by 1 individual, Johnathan Wendel, aka Fatal1ty.
The chief of staff confirmed that after hurling 20 marines at Fatal1ty, they discovered that they were not able to defeat him. Extrapolating this knowledge to the rest of the airforce, they surrendered the complete airforce to him.
There has not been any news yet from other defenses until now. The expectation of this news agency is however, that by the end of the month, the US will have a new president for live.
Note: This news agency is in no way forced to support either party because of continuing cyber attacks. We are not under attack, serious, we mean it.
Backroom noise: Aaahhh, he fragged me for the 10th time this hour. PUBLISH THE ITEM, PUBLISH THE ITEM!
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
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.
"the United States of America and its global interests"
Once upon a time those two were considered mutuall exclusive.
"seeking out new life" and "exploring strange, new worlds"
Optimists surrender.
Never mind just the UK. The horror will be continent-wide: France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Holland, Germany...need one go on? And that's before you even begin with a shudder to contemplate what will be going through the minds of the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese...I mean what can these two have been smoking when they had the Air Force press office deliberately produce a news release about this folly??
It ranks as the most extraordinarily unfortunate public U.S. pronouncement since Al Gore "invented" the Internet - which frankly I for one thought would never be surpassed.
There just went the USA's special relationship, or whatever is left of it, with the outside world. The "Age of U.S. Isolation" has begun. I just hope the US voters are 100% cool with it and above all will be able to cope with the global backlash that will be unleashed by this dangerous lunacy. They're about to start living full-time in Fortress America. Perfectly fine, so long as the average American citizen doesn't mind being locked in. But where's the evidence for that?
And where do you draw the line between POLICE ACTION on the internet and CYBERWARFARE? Is monitoring internet traffic for terrorist communications a POLICE ACTION or CYBERWAREFARE? What if you more from passive to active, by sending fake messages to suspected terrorist?
My guess... the US is already there and we're not the only ones in the game.
The UK/European reaction has begun: US Air Force To Invade Cyberspace [sys-con.com] - whatever possessed Wynne to say/write anything so colossally stupid??
Hahahah US Air Force to Invade Cyberspace.... and I thought slashdot had the stranglehold on misleading and sensationalist titles... Let us never forget who the true masters of distortions are.
An Army grunt stands in the rain after marching 12 miles with 35-pound pack on his back and says, "God, this is shit."
An Army Airborne recruit stands in the rain after jumping from an airplane and marching 18 miles with a 45-pound pack on his back and says with a smile, "God, this is the shit."
An Army Airborne Ranger lies in the mud after jumping from a plane into a swamp and marching 25 miles at night past the enemy with a 55-pound pack on his back and says with a grin, "God, I love this shit!"
A Green Beret kneels in the stinking mud of a swamp with a 65-pound pack on his back after jumping from an airplane into the ocean, swimming ten miles to the swamp and crawling 30 miles through the brush to assault the enemy camp and says with a passionate snarl, "God, give me some more of this shit!"
An Air Force recruit sits in an easy chair in his air-conditioned, carpeted quarters and says, "The internet connection's out? What kind of shit is this?"
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Cyberspace is ours, let the Army, Navy, and Marines sit and spin.
Justifcation of one's budget usually means jumping the gun and laying ownership claims quickly. Expressing it in your mission statement is one good way of doing it. Now the other branches will have to figure out how to keep the Air Force from getting the sole control of that arena.
In other words, we want money and here is our justification, after all Cyberspace is so big and scary!
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Kind of interesting that the document starts with a rationale based on the Iraqis having tried to jam GPS during Gulf War II -- "adversaries will target space capabilities" -- and then quickly moves on to a "We've got to be ready to do that to our opponents" stance that's openly aggressive.
Lots of interesting details in there. A sidebar says over 80% of US military satellite communications during GW II used commercial satellites.
Page 49 of the 63 has a scant paragraph about legal considerations. Basically the M.O. is "check with a judge advocate to make sure it's okay."
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
Anyone who fails to see the strategic military, economic and other importance of comm nets is ... naive.
... Europe has been deliberately trying to undercut US standards, pressuring the UK (for instance) to adopt equipment incompatible with ours. This USAF statement just acknowledges that the EU intentionally is positioning its countries, technology and policies in opposition to the US ... indeed, in many cases in stupid, blind kneejerk opposition.
.. anybody remember the Red Lion attack in March 03? It wasn't the first and it certainly hasn't been the last.
A key asset in our comms capability orbits in space: the constellations of comms satellites, along with GPS and other capabilities (including visual surveillance / reconaissance). Those satellites were put there by USAF in most cases and they retain operational responsibility for many of the military ones.
As far as the announcement goes (and Euro response) well
So be it. We aren't about to roll over and curl into a sobbing heap in response. If we need to go it alone to defend ourselves and those who are allied with us, that's just what we'll do.
Oh and snide boy above? You might be rather surprised at the depth of skill in the infowar ranks. Cyberwarfare has already been tested against us in a variety of probing attacks
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
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.
and hell, they've already started attacking us and our allies.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
The fact of the matter is that the USA did not become the world's only superpower by force -- quite the opposite, it got their by being a benevolent power that other countries trusted.
What?!? Are you just, like, making up history as you go along?
We became the world's only superpower by (1) building a giant friggin' arsenal, (2) training a ridiculously immense armed forces, and (3) developing a staggeringly robust economy to sustain both. The previous century's other superpower had (1) and (2), then fell short on (3). (I leave the debate re the efficacy of the respective economic systems to a different thread.)
Now, China teeters on superpower-dom, if it can't be classified as one already. Is that because the Chinese have labored so hard at presenting a benevolent face to the world and building up other nations' trust? Obviously not.
If you got to be a superpower by being nice, Iceland would rule the solar system. Or, at least their women would...
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.
In the early 1980's, the Air Force Communications Command (AFCC) changed all their flight, squadron, and group names from "Communications" to "Information Systems". So, the 2049 CG (at McClellan AFB, now closed) became the 2049 ISG.
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.
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.
Traditional Geneva Conventions apply to air. There are few practical constraints here.
There are separate treaties outlawing militarization of space. How prohibitive the treaties will be in practice is yet to be seen. Regardless the US will always act to defend itself, particularly in regards to its satellite system which is today's "high ground" that facilities military dominance. Certainly the US will deploy defensive systems to protect satellites. Whether it will deploy systems designed to disable enemy satellites is uncertain, but likely.
There are no legal treaties explicitly controlling cyber wars. There may be some older international law that could be applied to this new arena. Such would be similar to the desire of some to apply the international laws allowing nations the right to attack and capture pirates to the current war on terrorism -treating terrorists as pirates. If legal scholars can see parallels here, they'll surely see them in cyber warfare.
Today many would consider carpet bombing an entire city filled with civilians in an attempt to destroy a radar tower as a practical violation of the Geneva Conventions' rule against targeting civilians because the same tower could be destroyed with other means that would not endanger a whole city of noncombatants.
Would targeting an entire ISP to take out one terrorist website be similar? If that ISP refused to take down the website, how careful does the US have to be if it chooses to electronically attack it? Can it wipe out the data on all the ISP's servers, thus affecting "noncombatant websites?" Or must it be more careful and try to affect only the enemy's website? Probably not because the collateral damage is not that serious... loss of a website, eh... he'll live.
But what if the US is at war with an entire country, how careful must it be in attacking entire networks in that country? In that case, there may be some serious considerations. Taking out a major ISP may disrupt not only government and military networks of the enemy but also hospital networks or networks that control municipal water systems, etc, etc, which would knowingly endanger civilian lives and possibly affect third party nations. In war a country must differ to saving its citizen's lives over those of the enemy when it has no other options. So, I suppose the legal limitations are such that the US has to decided, what options it has that will likely defeat/incapacitate the enemy and then choose the ones that least endanger civilians (lives and property). Maybe it will be that cruise missiles are safer to civilians than a cyber war.
If you don't want an air attack from the USA now, all you have to do is block their IP range!
-/What do you mean there's Internet from satellites now?! Damn!
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
*** Disclaimer *** I work for a major defence contractor that sells Sats and stuff
/would/ be doing that kind of thing, among the NSA, CIA, or maybe even the FBI at first.
The Air Force had always launched and maintained most of the military communication satellites. These uplinks usually form the trunk of deployed military networks... after all, it wouldn't be too convenient for the Army to subscribe to the nearest middle east DSL line or for the Navy to spool thousands of miles worth of fiber behind a flotilla. So most of what the military considers the "network" is this wireless communications system, which needs to be heavily secured, defended, etc.
One of the first things the Air Force is responsible for during an invasion is to take out the enemy's command and control infrastructure - destroying their radar, microwave tranceivers, satcomm, and other network and surveillance equipment. Whether this is done using bombs/missiles, jamming equipment, or perhaps some kind of network attack/exploit, I suppose you could agree that the latter modes could be less destructive and more subtle in terms of offering you counterintelligence options ("no, the invading force is actually over *here*". And the less infrastructure you physically destroy, the less you have to rebuild later, I guess.
While some of this might be carried on over the internet, I imagine the vast majority would occur over isolated military intranets.
I'd be pretty surprised if Air Force honeynets and botnets start duking it out with the supposed North Korean hacker army over the normal internet we know and love, playing a game of cat 'n' mouse over the tattered remains of a compromised IIS server... though I wonder who
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?
What is your penile percentile?
Well apparently lying in a bloody pool of denal
And also to quote a US general "He[Bush] made a decision that Geneva [conventions] would in fact govern all but al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda look-alike detainees. Any other prisoners of course would be governed by traditional methods, international law, Geneva and so forth".
IMHO the US is acting with total disregard for the basic human rights of people. They apear to be hell-bent on total world domination.
It's a massive shame
Jaj
So the question is why is this a problem? The United States armed forces had damned well better be prepared for military actions in cyberspace, IT IS THEIR JOB. Anything less is gross negligance and dereliction of duty.
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.
The saltpeter used in the Revolution came from manure.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
I've been thinking about that lately. It occurs to me that, in terms of rearranging the world political landscape, WWI had far more of a lasting effect than WWII. The main difference between the map in 1936 and the map in 1946 was virtual: the Iron Curtain. OTOH, the difference between maps from 1910 and 1920, featuring the carved-up Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires (think: the Balkan Peninsula, Turkey, Iraq, the entire Middle East), is really the shaping of today's world.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Charging the Air Force with this one makes sense - for now. USAF is our "networked" armed force - primarily aviation-related missions, but the AF culture thinks in terms of an enemy distributed functionally and/or geographically. They're also the most technology-friendly branch, inherent to the type of work they do.
As far as letting CIA/NSA run this, you don't want an intelligence agency conducting offensive missions. Period. Yes, they're doing that now, but we already have huge oversight problems of intel groups (even the budget total is classified).
Besides, the Air Force is the US's "standoff" branch. They can attack, cause mayhem, destroy and kill - but air power and cyberwar are both constrained by the fact that they cannot singly defeat an enemy. Both roles are support for another effort, be it political or on-the-ground military. The fact of jointness enjoyed by US commanders makes this seem like a natural fit.
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.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
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.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Part of the issue is that the United States doesn't quite know who the 'bad guys' really are.
You people have a colored history of violence for the sake of national or ideological interests. What you don't give proper conisderation to is that your interests are not always in the best interests of everyone else. And that you couldn't care less, because you need another crusade.
We all have been shown time and time again that you do not act in everyone's best interests no matter how much bleating we hear from your country to the contrary.