U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOMM)
As someone who, as a consultant, proposed a Cyber Command for the USAF over a decade ago, it is good to see the DOD moving in that direction with the proposed US Cyber Command. Cyberspace is a critical operational dimension. I first referred to this in a 1997 MILCOM paper co-authored with Lt. Col. (R) Glenn Watt, Simple Framework for Filtering Queued SMTP Mail (Cyberwar Countermeasures), Tim Bass, Glenn Watt, IEEE MILCOM 1997, 02/11/1997, Monterey, CA, (1997). In the abstract of that paper, we opened,
Pre-information age military battlefields are based on the traditional land, sea, air, and space paradigm. Global internetworking is causal to the creation of a dangerously real 5th Dimension of Warfare – Cyberspace.
One of the most interesting factors of cyberspace operations is that, unlike land, sea, air and space, we create the dimension that we are operating in. The cyberspace dimension is a bit like laying down the railroad tracks before the train. The possibilities are endless and exciting. We create the dimension we are operating in; but the domain is just as real as traditional dimensions.
As one of the early pioneers in this field, I am pleased to see, nearly 12 years later, the US is creating a fully authorized cyber command. However, I also have some advice for this new command; advice that I hope might influence the operational pillars of the new command, more than a decade after we began think along these lines. I will share my thoughts on this topic in a few posts to come.
