Photo By Master Sgt. Christian Jadot | U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Morgan Mitchell, 144th Communication Squadron specialist,...... read more read more
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The California National Guard is dedicated to defending our country on land, air and in cyberspace. Cyberspace is an ever growing dimension in modern warfare that friendly and adversarial nations are emphasizing because technology is such an important part of conducting military operations.
To help prepare the California National Guard for the defense of cyber space, Cyber Dawn was created.
A team of specialized Airman from the 144th Communications Squadron participated in the two week exercise Cyber Dawn 2025 starting on June 2, 2025 in Rocklin California.
Cyber Dawn is an annual multi-service cyber security exercise hosted by the California National Guard.
“The risk of a cyber attack could be completely shutting down power to critical infrastructure,” said U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Morgan Mitchell, 144th Communication Squadron specialist. “If PG&E were attacked, what kind of an impact would that have on the state of California? They provide electric electricity for a huge population of California and a lot of our government facilities. If the grid was shut down, the impact that would have would be catastrophic for the entire state.”
Defending against cyber attacks is a detailed and in-depth process that requires a keen eye and an adaptive mind.
“It’s really tricky to identify these [cyber attacks] when you have no idea what has happened and you’re looking at what you think is normal data,” said Mitchell. “We are looking at their historical logs to see if there has been a spike in network traffic–to see if there’s more traffic being generated today than there was yesterday. As well as [asking], what machine is it coming from so that we can determine if that is in excess, and if there is an adversary hiding in traffic.”
Cyber Dawn tests service members by deploying an adversarial force.
“This is an opportunity to sharpen our cyber skills and develop our tool kits that we don’t get from our day to day work,” said U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Joshua Chaplain, 144th Communication Squadron specialist. “This Cyber Dawn exercise pits the blue teams against the red team. Blue teams, being protectors of a fictitious network. The red team acts as the bad actors, hackers, nation state actors; these are the type of folks that our mission may encounter.”
The red team is made of experts in the field of cyber security with years of combined experience.
“I’ve been a red team member, which is more like penetration tester, AKA hacker, for the past 20 years,” said U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Andres Torres, DCO IDM Company A, 6th Communication Battalion. “My role here is to mentor the younger service people on how to be able to not only defend the network but also put themselves in an adversarial mindset. If you were going to attack someone, how would you do it?”
Cyber Dawn as an exercise has matured and greatly expanded its scope since its inception.
“Cyber Dawn has grown immensely,” said Torres. “Initially it was a few soldiers; maybe a couple Marines in the beginning. We have over 360 personnel now. It has grown not only in the scope, but in the breath of knowledge that is in the room.”
Military positions from across the services are starting to be integrated into the cyber space battlefield.
“Intel combining with cyber is fairly new within the recent years,” said Lance Cpl. Jayne Aceves-Connolly, DCO IDM Company A, 6th Communication Battalion specialist. “It is really good knowledge to be able to have intelligence [personnel] within cyber because Intel is practically getting a larger scope of view of what cyber analysts are able to find.”
Members of the 144th Communication Squadron stepped outside of their information technology duties and brought home a new skill set.
“We learned a lot,” said Mitchell. “We’re augmented from other government entities. They have hands-on experience running their firewall, whereas at the 144th our firewall is controlled by higher headquarters. They’ve been able to sit down with us and teach us how to implement rules on the firewall that we normally would not have seen.”
Overall the 144th Fighter Wing stepped up to their role and had an educational experience.
“It’s a great exercise,” said Chaplain. “Anyone that has the opportunity, should take part, or at least visit, it’s worth coming and checking out.”
| Date Taken: | 06.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 07.15.2025 17:14 |
| Story ID: | 542150 |
| Location: | ROCKLIN, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 164 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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