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Air Force Suspends Cyber Command Program
AFCyber writes "The Air Force on Monday suspended all efforts related to development of a program to become the dominant service in cyberspace, according to knowledgeable sources. Top Air Force officials put a halt to all activities related to the establishment of the Cyber Command, a provisional unit that is currently part of the 8th Air Force at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, sources told Nextgov.
An internal Air Force e-mail obtained by Nextgov said, 'Transfers of manpower and resources, including activation and re-assignment of units, shall be halted.' Establishment of the Cyber Command will be delayed until new senior Air Force leaders, including Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz, sworn in today, have time to make a final decision on the scope and mission of the command."
We just don't need them anymore. We have better missiles, and better drones.
The only thing we need actualy piloted aircraft for are close-in ground support, where things are too crowded/messy for computers to do a good job. And even then, remotely-piloted drones are taking over.
A lot to be learned right now on cyberwar from Russia.
What a load of rubbish, the black boxen are ClearCube "Digital Fiber C/Port" thin terminals connected to a workstation somewhere in a cabinet, if you were to swap them around you'd have the computer connected to the top-secret network on the other side of your desk.
It's not like if you did that packets would magically leak out and allow Chinese hackers to read their e-mails...
This is quite a neat setup because everything can be stored away, centrally managed and physically secured from a single location.
We're going to have a new Commander in Chief next January. Did they ask any of the five people running for President what their opinion on it was?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Ummm... Wi-Fi and Satellite. Yea it kinda vague. I think the air force had more command experience with high end technology. I much rather be in the air force in a nice chair doing my code then in the army in a tent with a laptop, trying to setup a network connection with the chances there are people who want to shoot me.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's THEM. This is just what they WANT you to believe.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
The AF run in an Army mindset? Egad, that would be terrible! The Army and Air Force use very different skills and for lack of a better term, types of people. The Army needs automatons that are essentially brainless, if they get smart they might start making their own decisions. The USAF needs technicians who can figure out things on their own. Autonamoustons? Retention of VERY expensive pilots and techies would be a nightmare. You can turn a kid into a tank driver or infantry goon in a few weeks. USAF training is typically months, sometimes up to a year.
The army *should* have all the helicopters.
Having the USAF run the cyber show is a natural progression, since they already run the satellites and are tech oriented. Or we could establish a cyber corp. Folks would join that just because it would sound cool.
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Not that I agree in the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, now that it is created shouldn't a "Cyber Command" be under it's jurisdiction for protecting the US military and commertial IT infrastructure? Offensive cyberwarfare should be an integrated tool in all of the millitary branches.
What worries me far more is that in the picture accompanying that article, the computers are quite obviously running Windows.
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
We just don't need them anymore. We have better missiles, and better drones.
The only thing we need actually piloted aircraft for are close-in ground support, where things are too crowded/messy for computers to do a good job. And even then, remotely-piloted drones are taking over.
First, we're a long way off from being able to turn airpower completely over to robotic drones.
Second, I think you touched on the real question while missing the larger point... we're always going to need airpower... the military projection of power via aerial weapons. The question is, why do we need an Air Force? Why do we need an individual military branch with an identity based on airpower, when airpower is simply one facet of warfare that all branches need? The Navy has their own aircraft because oceans have skies over them too.
To me, splitting the Air Force from the Army was like establishing a separate military branch just for armor, or establishing an independent infantry branch. Why? What makes it imperitive to seperate airpower from ground power over the land? We did just fine with the Army Air Corps being a part of a larger Army. Ask any soldier, especially career soldier, and they'll likely complain about how USAF puts such a low priority on boring ground support missions... they aren't sexy enough to sell on recruiting posters.
Just as the Marines are tied at the hip to the Navy, the Air Force should more or less be a part of the Army. We don't live in castles in the sky. We live here on the ground, and ultimately, any air force's job is to support objectives on the ground when things are said and done. We have air superiority fighters because we don't want the enemy's aircraft hurting our guys on the ground.
I think our previous model of splitting defense responsibilities via geography between the Army and the Navy was a better model than our current one, with the Air Corps (or Army Air Forces, if you will) and the Marine Corps subordinate to their larger sister services. USAF went independent because of the argument that airpower in and of itself should fight separately, which was an outgrowth of Billy Mitchell's ideas. The problem is that Mitchell was wrong about a lot of things. He thought armies and navies were largely obsolete, and history has proven him wrong on that.
Airpower is just a tool, one that can be used by any branch. It doesn't justify a separate service, with all its associated costs duplication. Should we establish a separate service for submarines just because they're under the water? Of course not. Why establish a separate service just for airplanes?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It does have a lot to do with timing, but not the timing you're thinking about. This is happening because a new Chief of Staff is taking over--specifically, because he is taking over as a direct result of the mismanagement of his predecessor. He's walking in the door asking a lot of hard questions along the lines of, "What, exactly, would we say we do here?" I'm betting that he took a good look at the situation and realized that the Air Force was screwing up its core missions (air superiority, air support, air transport, air- and space-based ISR, strategic deterrence, etc) because it was diverting attention and resources to carving out new territory in places like cyberspace. He's going to put the focus back on doing well at the jobs they already have before pursuing new jobs. I'm also willing to bet that he's smart enough to realize that any U.S. Military cyber-command needs to be fully joint to be effective, possibly as another major command (ala SOCOM).