Weapons and equipment are the foundation of military combat capability and an important factor in determining the outcome of wars. In the current situation of increasingly fierce competition among major powers and of increasingly evident militarization of cyberspace, all countries have increased capital investment; strengthened the development and deployment of cyberspace weapons and equipment; promoted research and development, as well as transformation, and application of emerging technologies; and sought to shape new technologies for military development and future operations.
As a
concept for integrating cyberwarfare systems, the US Cyber Command created the
Joint Cyber Operations Architecture (JCWA) to guide cyberwarfare acquisition
and investment decisions, with the aim of enabling cyber forces to execute
command and control decisions, as well as training in having access – through a
unified platform – to the broad tasks of the system. Since 2021 the US military
has continued to use the JCWA as a guide and rely on various services to
develop and improve cyberwarfare systems and tools.
The JCWA
includes several acquisition programs, as well as cyber tools and sensors to
support cyber operations. According to the US Defense Department’s 2022 budget,
the U.S. Air Force is responsible for requesting to the Joint Cyber Command and
Control (JCC2) a budget of 79 million dollars, more than double the previous
year’s 38.4 million dollars due to a number of programs, including the Internet
Key Exchange (IKE) project. i.e. an artificial intelligence-enabled tool that
will provide a new way for cyber forces to understand the common operational
framework in warfare.
Funds
will be transferred to the project, and the IKE software development has moved
from the planning to the execution phase.
The US
Air Force is responsible for the Unified Platform (UP) for fiscal year 2022.
The research and development budget is equal to 101.8 million dollars. The US
Army will also be responsible for the Persistent Cyber Training Environment
(PCTE) research and development budget for fiscal year 2022, which amounts to
52.9 million dollars. The budget for the US Army’s Joint Common Access Platform
(JCAP) has so far been kept secret.
The US
Army offered the PCTE, version 3, in the second quarter of 2021, following the
release of version 2 to the US Cyber Command in October 2020. The PCTE version
3 will provide users with additional response channels and give training
managers an overview of the network status. It will also include a content
repository to host previous scenarios built by content or training curators.
This makes it easier to train or simulate the activities.
Security
Insider (https://www.secrss.com/) says that the US Army plans to deploy and
distribute version 4 of the PCTE platform to the U.S. Cyber Command in the
first quarter of this year. The version provides a more intuitive engine for
discovering training activities, exercises or modules available to troops,
designed to reduce redundancy and enable better individual and team
training.
The Army
also continues to lead the Cyber Innovation Challenge to award contracts and
apply new technologies to the PCTE platform. The latest contract, awarded in
February 2021, includes “enhanced assessment” and “traffic generation” features
and functionalities that will be incorporated into version 5 of the PCTE. The
“enhanced assessment” is critical to the US Cyber Command, as it helps improve
force readiness reports. On the other hand, the “traffic generation” is also a
key capability that helps cyber forces in areas including “friendly space,”
“grey space” and “red space,” operating in the entire IT and intelligence
environment, not just in certain networks.
In June
2021 the main annual US Cyber Command exercise, i.e. Cyber Flag 21-2, used the
PCTE platform again, thus enabling the US Cyber Command to expand the exercise
of activities.
The PCTE
team is applying the exercise readings to future events for subsequent versions
of the platform. The PCTE and project team have developed studies to support
and monitor thousands of daily events – even the most insignificant – and make
them available to the other major Cyber Yankee service as well.
The US
Army is also exploring the PCTE integration with other JCWA components to
enable the interoperability of the US cyber mission forces. The above
integration not only reduces access and accounts for multiple systems, but also
seamlessly feeds data response to the combat platform. For example, the US
armed forces are conducting initial pilot work to enter and incorporate the
PCTE data into the JCC2-Project IKE component.
The
Pentagon formally handed Project IKE over to the US Cyber Command in April 2021
and it is serving as a reference point for key cyber tools for its cyber
mission force. The IKE project is considered a precursor to the JCC2, one of
the pillars of the JCWA, available to the US Cyber Command.
The JCC2
seeks to integrate data from a variety of sources to help inform and support
commanders’ decision-making; assess readiness down to the individual level;
visualize cyberspace and give situational awareness to all levels of combat
forces.
The IKE
project enables users throughout the chain of command to plan, prepare,
execute, and evaluate cybersecurity operations. IKE will be used to map the
network and assess the readiness of cyber teams and command forces in
cyberspace. IKE enables commanders to understand the status of offensive and
defensive teams, as well as friendly and enemy forces in cyberspace, which is
critical to its command and control, and to ensure the dissolution of crises in
conflicts between combat teams. IKE is already used by the US combat troops and
currently has thousands of military users.
The US
Cyber Command plans to migrate its various service network components to the
JCAP. It will provide it with the infrastructure for offensive missions by
fiscal year 2024. Service cyber forces will move on crisis platforms, using the
separate tools that now operate proactively, and link their respective
cyberspace activities more closely. The Army plans to withdraw its current
offensive cyber tools in 2024 and then move to the JCAP. The Army is developing
the tool for the U.S. Cyber Command and the Army, which will be deployed in
four joint mission operations commands: the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and
the Marine Corps, which have already signed a memorandum of understanding.
The JCAP
uses an innovative software acquisition approach and the system is updated
quarterly to add new functionalities, thus giving the Army the freedom to
continue to repeat and gradually add more functionalities to the system itself.
In December 2020 Mattel Technologies announced it had been awarded a 265
million US dollar contract to support the project over 42 months.
Furthermore,
the US Army awarded a 2.4 billion US dollar contract to 14 companies to provide
IT services for the national cyber range complex. The companies will provide
incident planning and execution, site safety and security, IT management and
range modernization services, as well as operational support for the military
in cyber missions. The National Cyber Range is therefore a US Army program
focused on improving battlefield resilience by creating an operationally
representative cyberspace environment for respective mission testing, training
and simulations. As part of the Capability Set 21, the Army plans to implement
a tool called Cyber Situational Awareness to prepare units for combat as early
as this year. Cyber Situational Awareness is a tool designed specifically for
commanders on the ground, not intended for use in cyberspace operations, but to
help commanders better perceive cyber and electromagnetic situations to make
more informed decisions. (1. continued)
***Giancarlo
Elia Valori: Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia
Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious
academic distinctions and national orders. Mr. Valori has lectured on
international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as
Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva
University in New York. He currently chairs “International World Group”, he is
also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese
giant HNA Group. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la
République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders
to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title “Honorable” of the
Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France. “