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

Read It Differenty

[Comatose51]

"'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.' "

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.

Legal Limitations??

[BiloxiGeek]

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.

Project for the New American Century on Target

[Oniron]

Reading Paul Wolfowitz & co. in Rebuilding America's Defenses from September 2000, it looks like the past 5 years have been right on target. This particular development is the subject of pages 54 to 57 concluding with the following paragraph.

Taken together, the prospects for space war or "cyberspace war" represent the truly revolutionary potential inherent in the notion of military transformation. These future forms of warfare are technologically immature, to be sure. But, it is also clear that for the U.S. armed forces to remain preeminent and avoid an Achilles Heel in the exercise of its power they must be sure that these potential future forms of warfare favor America just as today's air, land and sea warfare reflect United States military dominance.

Happy 21st century!

Re:War?

[mcgroarty]

I was going to enlist, but my screen name was taken. :(

Noticeably absent

[voice_of_all_reason]

"seeking out new life" and "exploring strange, new worlds"

Optimists surrender.

TAF

[XO]

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?"

Re:TAF

[stanmann]

Which Service Has the Smartest Enlisted Force?

There is no doubt at all that, of all the Services, the Air Force has the most intelligent enlisted people. This is not just opinion, it's provable fact:

Take the Army, for instance. When the stuff hits the fan, the young Army private wakes up from a bellow from the First Sergeant. He grabs a set of BDUs out of his foot locker, gets dressed, runs down to the chow-hall for a breakfast on the run, then jumps in his tank. Pretty soon, the Platoon Commander arrives, gives him a big salute, and says, "Give 'em Hell, men."

Now take the Marines. When the stuff hits the fan, the young Marine recruit is kicked out of bed by his First Sergeant, puts on a muddy set of BDUs because he just got back in from the field three hours before. He gets no breakfast, but is told to feel free to chew on his boots. He runs out and forms up with his rifle. Pretty soon, his platoon commander comes out, Gives his Marines a Sharp Salute, and says, "Give 'em Hell, Marines!"

Now take the Navy. When the stuff hits the fan, the young Sailor is eating breakfast in the mess room. He walks 20 feet to his battle station, stuffing extra pastries in his pocket as he goes. There he sits, in the middle of a steel target, with nowhere to run, when the Captain comes on the 1MC and says, "Give 'em Hell, Sailors! I salute you!"

Now the Air Force. When the stuff hits the fan, the Airman receives a phone call in his off-base quarters. He gets up, showers, shaves, and puts on a fresh uniform he had just picked up from the BX cleaners the day before. He jumps in his car, and stops at McDonald's for a McMuffin on his way into work. Once he arrives at work, he signs in on the duty roster and proceeds to his F-16. He spends 30 minutes pre-flighting it, signs off the forms. Pretty soon the Pilot, a young captain, gets out and straps into the Plane. He starts the engines. Our Young Airman stands at attention, gives the Captain a sharp salute, and says, "Give 'em Hell, Sir!"

Re:Two questions

[Eil]

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.

ChairForce - Legal Limitations?

[RITMaloney]

"US's legal limitations?"

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.