Commander foresees Air Force mastery of cyberspace

  • Published
  • By JoAnne Rumple
  • Air Force Materiel Command Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFPN) --  Information technology is a two-edged sword the Air Force must wield more expertly than the nation's enemies, said the commander of Air Force Materiel Command during an Oct. 25 speech at the InfoTech Conference in Dayton, Ohio.

Gen. Bruce Carlson discussed today's fight against terrorism, including the use terrorists make of cyberspace, at the annual conference and trade show staged by the local chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. He also touched on AFMC contributions to U.S. Air Force cyberspace capabilities, the need for leadership in cyberspace operations and the future of cyberspace applications.

The United States and its partners are involved with "an incredibly complex, difficult set of enemies," fighting an ideological war, General Carlson said.

"Let me just assure you that win, lose or draw; come early or stay late; more troops, fewer troops ... the war will continue after the battle for Iraq has been fought to a conclusion," he said. "These guys are committed to their project."

The general noted that terrorists use the Internet and information technology for recruiting, command and control, and obtaining funds. He reminded the audience that mobile wire communications were used in 1996 to blow up Khobar Towers, a housing complex in Saudi Arabia in which 19 service members were killed and 372 people of several nationalities were injured. Sept. 11 terrorists were connected by complex international cellular and Internet connections, and Estonia suffered a debilitating denial-of-service attack just this year on its government, banking and other sites.

Speaking of information technology as it applies to the battle space, General Carlson noted that Air Force success today comes from its ability to find, fix, track, target and eliminate targets on the ground. Describing the limited nature of current tactical data links, he said the Air Force plans to improve networking capabilities for the warfighter, using Internet-like technology on airborne and other platforms, to enhance the service's ability to find and eliminate mobile targets.

Technology developments also will allow the Air Force to make better use of existing bandwidth, so more data in more formats -- video and video with text, for example -- can flow to all who need it in the fight, almost instantaneously, over much greater distances.

In the out years, he said, the goal of Air Force officials is to seamlessly integrate assets on the ground, in the air and in space by using cyberspace.

"We will do that," he said, "by making every (aircraft) platform a sensor or a shooter. That will allow us rapid movement of information around the battlefield and allow us to very rapidly -- orders of magnitude more rapidly -- kill those targets on the battlefield."

To realize this vision, he said, AFMC has begun work, mostly within Air Force Research Laboratory, on several projects.

One example is a secure automated system that will route messages based on their content so users don't have to sift through junk mail to get to needed information.

Another system will, for the first time, enable users to correlate moving map indicators with synthetic aperture radar to eliminate false targets.

In discussing a third example, General Carlson said the Air Force will improve its airlift capabilities by developing technology to manage information, such as weather changes, diplomatic-clearance changes, flight-profile changes and crew changes all over the globe, and in real time.

"We're convinced that, in the future, communications and information technology are the engines war will run on at the operational level," General Carlson said. 

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