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SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany – U.S Air Force aircraft are tasked to carry out complex missions. It’s easy to see the relationship between aircraft maintainers, such as crew chiefs, aircraft ground equipment and avionics, and the flying mission; however one career field’s role has increasingly grown through the years: Communications.
The duty of safeguarding critical digital infrastructure within aircraft at Spangdahlem AB and across the Air Force falls to a group of specialized Airmen within the communications squadron.
“The mission defense team as a whole is tasked to protect and defend the F-16 mission at Spangdahlem AB,” said Tech. Sgt. Robert Gangwish, 52nd Communications Squadron Mission Defense Team noncommissioned officer in charge.
As one of 10 primary MDTs in the Air Force and the only one in U.S. Air Forces in Europe - Air Forces Africa, the 52nd Cyber Defense Flight has a large influence throughout the F-16 Fighting Falcon community. The work is divided between the mission support team and the mission defense team.
“The mission support team will perform a functional mission analysis of all cyber components related to the F-16 weapon system and then determine their role and criticality to the mission,” said 1st Lt. Kieran Pellicano, 52nd CS Cyber Defense Flight commander.
The MST uses a functional mission analysis, which is an interview and evaluation process to determine what is normal for every system within the F-16 and forms a baseline for the MDT to monitor.
The systems in the F-16 record every entry, authorized or unauthorized, and it is up to the professionals in the MDT to determine if any of these are out of the ordinary.
Gangwish said part of the MDT's mission is to monitor servers authorized to communicate with F-16 subsystems and evaluate files that deviate from the baseline for those networks.
With the career field still in its infancy, each day presents an opportunity to improve.
The biggest challenge with the MDT is that everything is new, said Tech. Sgt. Matthew Mayer, 52nd CS Mission Support Team NCOIC. Airmen learn a lot every day because they are essentially starting from scratch.
As one of the first MDTs, the Airmen in the 52nd Cyber Defense Flight are developing training and a standard that will be the backbone for every unit under their umbrella.
| Date Taken: | 07.20.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 07.20.2022 03:59 |
| Story ID: | 425363 |
| Location: | SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, RHEINLAND-PFALZ, DE |
| Web Views: | 165 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Spangdahlem AB leads the way in cyber defense, by SSgt Marcus Hardy-Bannerman, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
