Combatant Commanders must incorporate cyber operations into planning and understand their impacts on the other domains and potential for unintentional effects. Cyberspace Support Elements are integrated into Combatant Commanders staffs to assist with cyber operations planning. (JP 3-12, p. III-6)
The greatest challenge for Combatant Commanders when planning cyber operations is unintentional effects. Cyberspace is unlike the other domains and does not have the same physical limitations. The network is not limited by range or distance so cyber-attacks can easily extend beyond the intended target resulting in unintentional consequences. Planners must deconflict cyber operations with other operations. Offensive and defensive cyber applications
At this juncture, it may be somewhat difficult to accept the proposition that a threat to the telecommunications grid, both wired and wireless, in the United States could potentially be subject to a catastrophic cyber attack. After careful research on the subject, it appears the potentiality of an event of such magnitude, which either disrupts one or the other grids for a long period or destroys either, is both theoretically and realistically impossible. It may be that proponents—those who advance such theories—equate such “doomsday” scenarios as if a cyber attack would or could be of the same magnitude as a conventional or nuclear military strike. Terms such as “cyber Pearl Harbor,” “cyber 9/11” and “cyber Vietnam” have been used to describes potential catastrophic cyber attacks and yet, “Though many have posited notions on what a ‘real’ cyber war would be like, we lack the understanding of how such conflicts will be conducted and evolve.” (Rattray & Healey, 2010, p. 77). Yet, the U.S. government continues to focus on such events, as if the plausibility of small-scale cyber attacks were not as pressing.
In today’s operational environments, the U.S. Army is facing a range of problems and mission sets that are arguably more complex than previously encountered. Forces face an array of demands that encompass geo-political, social, cultural, and military factors that interact in unpredictable ways. The inherent complexity of today’s operations has underscored the need for the Army to expand beyond its traditional approach to operational planning. In March 2010 in FM 5-0: The Operations
If wars were declared, innocent people would be threatened; therefore, some may argue that wars are unfogivable. Given the devil destruction of wars, those conflicts carried on by arms are conditional. Only defensive war should be righteous, but even the defensive war should be considered as the last resort. According to various religious views, though peace is usually the mainstream from different religious perspectives, defensive wars seem to be a moral exception.
By the end of the war, about 5,000 men and 500 women had been charged
Today, the complexity of the battlefield has experienced significant increases due to the challenges of asymmetric menaces after the end of the Cold War. The concept of Effects-Based Operations (EBO) tries to embrace these new conditions based on ambitious processes like Knowledge Base Development (KBD). Furthermore, military planning and operation execution have to cope not only with a highly complex and dynamic adversary’s system conducting asymmetric operations, but also with great challenges on the Blue side, such as the coordination and interaction of multiple coalition partners and different agencies and organizations in a non-linear battlespace. Experiences from recent months and years have undoubtedly proven that EBO cannot be successfully conducted without adequate support by IT tools. Especially the various wargaming activities within EBP cannot be properly accomplished by just using traditional measures. Military planners desperately need automated tools in order to handle data masses, multi-dimensional and dynamic interrelations within the adversary’s system and own (blue) forces and instruments.
Leaders today need to have an appreciation for the operation process, understand a situation, envision a desired future, and to lay out an approach that will achieve that future (Flynn & Schrankel, 2013). Plans need to be created that can be modified to changes in any factors considered. However, plans should not be dependent on specific information being precise or that require things to go exactly according to schedule. Instead, the staff NCO should be flexible where they can and always be prepared for the unexpected. Today’s military members are fighting an unconventional war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The enemy constantly changes their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP’s) to counter the United States technological advances, making planning very difficult for leaders. There are multiple tools at a staff NCO’s disposal to try to anticipate an outcome of a current operation, but also assist with the development of concepts in follow-on missions. The Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) is just one tool a staff NCO can utilize. In order to stay ahead of the enemy, create effective plans and orders, it is critical for a staff NCO to assist the commander, and understand that the MDMP and planning are essential in defeating the enemy and conserving the fighting force.
The most simple dictionary definition I have found is: The quality or state of being accountable; an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one 's actions. Accountability can be applied to many situations in the daily life and it can easily be overlooked in the civilian world, but when it comes to the US Army or any military branch, accountability is one of the most important things. That is why is instilled in every soldier since the moment they are shipped out to Basic Combat Training. The whole Army needs accountability to keep operations running 24/7. From the PVTs, all the way up to high ranking officers, we all need to be accountable for our assigned equipment, location/status, personnel, and our actions. If we are not held accountable of our
Gone are the days when we knew our enemies based on our doctrine and training. Fighting in irregular warfare or counter insurgent scenarios are complex and requires constant thought, adjustments and refinements to the plan, with no guaranteed metric for success. Understanding that the operational variables, political, milita...
“Operational design is a journey of discovery, not a destination.” Operational design provides a framework, with the guidance of the Joint Force Commander (JFC), that staffs and planning groups can use to give political leaders, commanders, and warfighters a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the problems and objectives for which military forces will be committed, or are planned to be committed. Furthermore, operational design supports commanders and planners to make sense of complicated operational environments (often with ill-structured or wicked problems), helps to analyze wicked problem, and devise an operational approach to solve the problem in the context of the operational environment.
Armed with numerous studies, and intensive public hearings, Congress mandated far-reaching changes in DOD organization and responsibilities in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. This landmark legislation significantly expanded the authority and responsibility of the chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Included in this expanded authority and responsibility was the requirement for the chairman to develop a doctrine for the joint employment of armed forces. As operations Urgent Fury, Just Cause, and Desert Storm have vividly demonstrated, the realities of armed conflict in today's world make the integration of individual service capabilities a matter of success or failure, life or death. Furthermore, the operation Desert One demonstrated the need for a strengthened Joint Warfare Doctrine and the consequent change in Joint Warfare Employment. It is plain to see the benefits of having the greatest navy integrated with the world's greatest army and air force. However, even in the wake of a relatively successful joint operation in the Middle East (Desert Storm), certain weaknesses are evident in the current joint employment tactics and/or capabilities. By analyzing past operations such as Urgent Fury and Desert Storm, we are able to see sufficient evidence that the Joint Warfare Concept can be disastrous in one instance and virtually flawless in another.
Many analysts have indicated that there is an increasing convergence in the different modes of warfare. They suggest that the greatest challenge in the future will not come from a single approach from a state, but state and non-state actors choosing from a variety of tactics and technology. They will also be used independently, or combined in new and innovative ways to create greater complexity. It is this variety of options that enable the threat to switch between and even use concurrently, these techniques and technologies, thus create confusion about where and who the enemy is, and complicate the battlefield with conditions that would not be expected when facing a conventional enemy. Because real world experience shows us that these threats have gone from being distractions in conventional warfare, to taking the centre stage in the contemporary operation environment (COE).
The U.S Army Cyber Branch was created in September 2014, as one of the first official steps in establishing a seventeen-series career field specialty, dedicated to managing the careers and professional development of officers. Army Secretary John McHugh and Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno approved the creation of the Cyber Branch in September 2014. The U.S. Army Cyber Commander capitalizes on existing U.S. Army cyber resources and improves operational readiness by organizing all cyber resources under a single command. The Network Enterprise Technology Command, the 9th Signal Command and the 1st Information Operations Command (Land) are subordinate units to the Army Cyber Command. Command
Businesses today must manage growing risks to their mission critical networks from attacks such as spyware, rogue wireless LANs, compromised remote/VPN users, DDOS attacks, system misconfigurations, and unpatched OS's, all of which increase the risk of a network breach and interruption to both sales and business operations.
As the Department of Homeland Security continues to improve cyber security across all critical information sectors as well as in cyber infrastructure and network they are not effective. This lack of effectiveness comes from the overwhelming work load that is being put on one department which can cause one purpose to fail more than another and as a result the purpose fails as a
Unequivocally speaking, the threat of a cyber-attack has become one of the most critical domestic and national security challenges we face as a nation today. Infrastructures supporting government operations are ...