Army Brigades Calling for Cyber Attacks in Joint Fire Strikes

Future offensive attacks could incorporate high-precision cyber-attacks as part of joint fire strikes against military targets, said an official with the US Army Cyber Command.

Currently working on implementing the chain of authority, ARCYBER is trying to incorporate targeted offensive cyber-attacks designed to achieve certain effects, instructed by a brigade or division officer.

“As you can imagine, with an emerging domain and an emerging operational dynamic, those authorities are not delegated down to the lowest levels,” said Col. Thomas Goss. “If you picture the equivalent of joint fires, somehow we have figured out how a division or brigade commander drops a [Joint Direct Attack Munition] where they want it without giving them an airplane.”

Cyber training scenarios conducted at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, and at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, aim to improve cyber security practices by learning which attacks are successful.

“What we are looking for is basically to approximate what threat or adversary the OPFOR commander is modeling, so we have tiers of adversary capabilities,” Goss said. “That allows my commander not just to have a talk with the OPFOR commander but ask, ËœHow did you learn this? How did you get these graphics? Why did this system … get to slower and slower when the battle went on? It also allows him to interact with his staff to say, ËœHow can we prevent this from happening again?`”

With cyber operations incorporated in military actions, Goss believes the future of warfare will rely heavily on battlefield intelligence collected via cyber warfare. Cross brigade and division-level training exercises are meant to aid commanders in leadership development and battlefield awareness.