U.S. Navy Boosts Cyber Focus
Rivalry With USAF Rises As Threats Proliferate
By JOHN T. BENNETT
Published: 4 May 2009
As the Obama administration reviews how to improve U.S. cyber defenses and the Pentagon plans its future strategy, the chief of the U.S. Navy is making it clear his service has a major role to play in defending the nation's computer networks.
"Cyberspace is on the bottom of the ocean," even though many U.S. military slides depict the cyber domain as lightning bolts traveling from satellites to war fighters, Adm. Gary Roughead said May 1 at a Center for International and Strategic Studies forum in Washington. "That is the domain of the United States Navy."
Much of the world's Internet traffic travels along undersea cables, and if adversaries attempt to disrupt electronic transmissions, Roughead said, the sea service will play a critical role in responding.
To address the problem, the Navy must devote more "thinking and resources" to cyber security, which will "dominate our thinking and investments in a significant way" over the next few years.
Roughead spoke just a few days before the annual Navy League conference here May 4-6.
White House officials are wrapping up a 60-day review of the state of the nation's cyber assets and other critical infrastructure. They intend to soon release a study that will underpin a new policy for guarding government and private networks.
The push for a new federal cyber policy comes as attacks on crucial U.S. networks have increased in recent years.
The CNO did not say what new tools the sea service might need for cyber missions, though he noted that protecting undersea cables might be a perfect task for unmanned vehicles. Nor did he disclose how much an increased Navy cyber force might cost.
Such unmanned vehicles might be launched from any platform but would most covertly be deployed by submarines. Sub crews tapped Soviet underwater communications cables during the Cold War.
Roughead, a vocal fan of the silent service, said submarines' ability to tackle a vast array of missions, from undersea surveillance to strike, make them "worth their weight in gold."
One congressional source who heard Roughead's address agreed that the Navy might lead the effort to protect cables that carry sensitive American electronic communications. Other analysts agreed that the Navy, along with the other services, will receive a larger role in protecting the ever-growing cyber domain.
But they also said that public pledges to step up such activities are largely about securing a larger piece of the federal government funding pie.
Who Will Lead?
In recent years, the Air Force tried to anoint itself the lead DoD branch for all things cyber - a job that would likely come with the biggest share of Pentagon cyber cash. Service leaders planned a cyber command that they envisioned would play a key role in steeling military networks and launching offensive cyber strikes.
But the Defense Department put a stop to that last summer. The Air Force suspended its efforts while senior Pentagon leaders re-evaluated their approach to defending cyber assets.
In October, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and Secretary Michael Donley relaunched their service's cyber command effort but with the more modest goal of coordinating just Air Force cyber operations.
Now, sources say, Pentagon officials are considering standing up a joint cyber organization within U.S. Strategic Command.
Meanwhile, several analysts said other services have stepped up their own cyber talk in a bid to get and retain cyber authority and funding.
"The solution to date has been to throw money at the problem. And with the services, it's like throwing red meat at dogs. They all just go right after it," said Brett Lambert, managing director of Civitas, a homeland security consulting group.
Lambert described federal cyber efforts to date as "a free-for-all," largely because Washington has not clearly defined roles and tasks in the relatively new domain that is cyberspace. Nor have several administrations succeeded in setting an "all-of-government cyber strategy."
He said that means "almost anything can be cyber," and the services have used this lack of clarity to expand their reach.
Take those undersea data cables.
"There's no question that because of those cables the Navy has a role to play to guard against sabotage. The world's Internet cabling really is now critical infrastructure." Lambert said. "The question is, however, what is that role in an overall federal government context."
Analysts said a federal cyber plan should assign specific roles and missions to each service. It remains unclear whether the forthcoming Obama plan, however, will delve that deep in the weeds, they said.
QDR, Arriving
Moreover, the White House cyber policy is not expected to arrive soon enough to shape DoD's own multiyear roles-and-missions plan: the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), due to Congress in February.
The services have long jockeyed for attention in the QDR, which helps shape roles and budgets.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed the terms of reference that will guide the study, Pentagon policy chief Michèle Flournoy said at a March 29 Center for Strategic and International Studies forum.
"We expect to start getting some answers for the QDR in the next six months," Flournoy said.
Echoing Gates, she said the review will seek to "balance" American forces for both the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ones most likely down the road.
Sources said cyberspace is expected to get a thorough look.
Flournoy said the review must lay a path to create American forces that can meet hybrid threats that wield traditional and asymmetric capabilities. The latter include "high-end asymmetric" tools, including cyber and long-range missiles, being developed by nations like China and others.
But she said the review must also position the U.S. military to take on lower-end threats and that she "expects we will be pulled in both direction as the review goes on."
Flournoy used her speech to lay out how the Obama administration will fashion and implement its national security policies. She said the new security policy machine will use realistic assessments, seek close coordination with allies, heed international accords and engage in difficult situations.
Analysts said that marks a clear break from the Bush administration, which often stuck to ideological aims, repeatedly shunned some traditional U.S. allies and ignored several global pacts.
Flournoy said the Obama team's guiding principles will include: put pragmatism over ideology, remain engaged in critical regions, be more proactive in employing non-military tools to solve problems, and abide by international agreements.
She added the Obama team will put more work into building and maintaining alliances and fashioning "whole of government" strategies because "military power will not be enough to deal with 21st-century problems." ■
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