Expeditionary cyber aiding maneuver commanders

Photo By David Vergun | A non-scripted part of the exercise is the flora and fauna of NTC. Here, a burro waits patiently for a Humvee to pass before crossing the highway, Aug. 10, 2016. Expeditionary cyber is providing offensive and defensive cyber to the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team. (Photo Credit: David Vergun)  

FORT IRWIN, CA, UNITED STATES

08.10.2016

Story by David Vergun       

Defense Media Activity - Army   

FORT IRWIN, Calif. (Army News Service) -- An expeditionary cyber pilot, known as Cyber Support to Corps and Below, or CSCB, is providing maneuver commanders an improved situational awareness of the information environment and tools to shape that environment, said Lt. Col. Jon Burnett.

Burnett, chief of U.S. Army Cyber Command's CSCB, said expeditionary cyber teams, embedded in the brigade, would be able to help commanders maneuver in the information environment by leveraging defensive cyber operations, offensive cyber operations, electronic warfare and information operations.

During a recent rotation at Fort Irwin's National Training Center in late July and August, the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team has now become the fifth brigade to integrate cyber effects under the CSCB pilot program.

Burnett said cyber training has evolved during the CSCB experiments in ways that make it possible for the maneuver commander to gain a greater advantage than ever before in the warfighting domain of cyberspace.

TARGETING

Maj. Deonand Singh, operations officer for the 781st Military Intelligence Battalion, said that during this rotation the expeditionary cyber team was deployed to carry out a variety of activities while operating against an opposing force.

First, the team conducted reconnaissance of the training scenario's operational information environment to understand the adversary's activities.

Once information is collected by the cyber team, it then goes to an analytical cell, where a team develops insights and actionable intelligence Singh added.

Capt. Samuel Lough, offensive cyber operations planner, offered that if a battalion were to move through or near a city, the cyber team could disrupt enemy networks located there. NTC has mock cities and villages sprinkled about the mountains and deserts in an area the size of Rhode Island, so such scenarios are easily replicated.

Singh added that the enemy can operate using social media that's available to the general public.

DEFENSIVE CYBER

Capt. Robert Busby, defensive cyber operations planner, said his portion of the brigade's cyber mission is to defend key systems from enemy cyber attacks.

Key systems can be anything the brigade commander deems critical to the mission, be it servers, routers, transmitters or targeting systems.

Busby said he consults with the brigade commander and staff regarding the unit's key enablers that must be protected and his team then prioritizes those in their defensive tactics.

The cyber defenders try and think like the enemy, Busby said, so as to anticipate as much as possible the threat environment.

"We definitely rely upon these defenders to harden our networks," Busby said. Demonstrating how brigades with proper defensive cyber manning in their Information Assurance cells are able to harden their networks has been a "huge win for us on this rotation," he added.

Pfc. Jomar Rodriguez, one of Busby's cyber defenders, said he realizes the importance of his role. As a network analyst, he used specialized software to discover adversary activity on the brigades' network.

While Rodriguez said he's relatively new to the Army and cyber, he said the team's seasoned Non-Commissioned Officers and Warrant Officers have welcomed him and have been eager to show him the ropes.

"I feel at home using this technology," he added. "It's a good feeling knowing you have a real impact."

AFFECTING OUTCOMES

Singh stressed that he looks at cyber tools and assets as "effects-based operations."

All of these occur as the brigade moves quickly through the battlespace, he added, so the cyber team is constantly busy and on their toes.

With this and previous pilots, the Army is "learning an extraordinary amount of information about where cyber fits and what it can do for the maneuver commander," Singh said.

Also, the experiments are helping the Army determine the right size and mixture of talents needed for an expeditionary cyber team, depending on what types of missions they're tasked with, he said.

During the next rotation here, the Army will have collected enough data to see trends and begin to answer those questions, he added.

INTEGRATING WITH COMBAT ARMS

Singh said one of the most important things he's found in these exercises is how important it is to build credibility within the brigade, from the lowest to the highest echelons.

Credibility means not just showing what effects cyber can do, it's also about speaking the same lexicon those in the combat arms branches use. That means translating the very technical cyber speak to tactical speak they can understand, he said.

It helps that most of the cyber operators here came from a combat arms background and already have that lexicon, he said. Singh was a cavalry scout and Lough was an infantryman, for example.

Although this rotation is just two weeks, cyber personnel have been in on the planning and exercises leading up to this NTC event 180 days prior, so getting that credibility right has already occurred, Singh said.

During those 180 days, cyber operators participated in training exercises with 24 of the 25 companies that make up the 4,000-person brigade, he added. That time spent with them gave the cyber team cohesion with every element of the brigade.

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• Date Taken: 08.10.2016
• Date Posted: 08.29.2016 13:59
• Story ID: 208426
• Location: FORT IRWIN, CA, US