Appearing in a special edition of the Cyber Defense Review, a journal produced by the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, commander of Army Cyber Command, provided a road map for where his organization is headed.

Army officials have said Army Cyber Command will change its name to better reflect its mission in the information environment, though specifics have not been finalized. The command is in the midst of building new formations and skills to better compete against adversaries in the information environment.

“The stunning social media-powered rise of ISIS [the Islamic State group] in 2015, Russia’s interference in the 2016 US Presidential election, Iran’s increasing digital belligerence, and China’s disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic are upending that perception and igniting a conversation across the defense establishment regarding appropriate roles for the uniformed armed services in this environment of unprecedented information warfare,” wrote Fogarty and co-author Bryan Sparling, an adviser.

“The Army is currently evaluating whether [operations in the information environment], [information warfare], or some other concept should replace IO to describe an expanded Army mission in the IE. We are likewise considering whether Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER) should change its name to more accurately reflect the full spectrum of its mission portfolio. Regardless, ARCYBER is building upon a ten-year foundation of continual innovation, and accelerating its modernization efforts to enable information age Army operations across tactical, operational, and strategic echelons.”

Aside from new formations, some of the biggest changes to the new structure is realigning command relationships of existing units beneath Army Cyber Command, which will afford the commander more flexibility to tailor units or task organize personnel and units for missions.

What are the three phases?

Fogarty sketched out three phases Army Cyber Command will undertake over the next 10 years, with the first reaching out to mid-2021.

By that time, the command hopes to realize the initial builds of new programs and formations, many of which have already been underway for some time.

The main effort is the migration of ARCYBER’s headquarters from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to Fort Gordon, Georgia. The command uncased the colors at its new state-of-the-art headquarters attached to the National Security Agency’s Georgia division in a brief July 24 ceremony.

“For the first time, the Army’s operational and institutional Cyber forces will enjoy unprecedented synergies by operating from a single, information power projection platform,” Fogarty and Sparling wrote.

One relatively new entity is the 915th Cyber Warfare Support Battalion. Created in 2019, the battalion will consist of 12 teams that support brigade combat teams or other tactical formations. These “fly away” teams, as some officials call them, would help plan tactical cyber operations for commanders in theater, and unilaterally conduct missions in coordination with forces in the field. Officials previously noted that this formation will likely evolve over the years: As the force conducts operations and exercises, it may need to revisit its structure and capabilities.

One of the entities that will fall fully under ARCYBER’s command by late 2020 will be 1st Information Operations Command. The command will also undergo a reorganization to increase the number of available field information operations support teams, expanding reach-back and social media capabilities to both conventional and special operations forces, Fogarty wrote.

The last component of phase one Fogarty described is a new offensive cyber operations signal battalion. ARCYBER received approval to create the “long-needed” battalion, which will be at Fort Gordon in late 2021 and provide support to Army cyber forces.

Given this is a new entity, little information is available. However, Fogarty said it will reflect the mission previously performed by National Guard forces as Task Force Echo, for which details are also scare, except it’s known that the task force supports U.S. Cyber Command and the Cyber National Mission Force. The Cyber National Mission force conducts offensive cyber operations under the guise of defense to defend the nation from malicious cyber actors.

Fogarty said phase two, which will take place between 2021 and 2027, is where the force will “experiment and innovate.” This phase will see the employment of the new capabilities and units created in phase one.

“As Army commanders gain increased ‘sets and reps’ integrating information capabilities into sustained operations, ARCYBER, in conjunction with [Training and Doctrine Command] and Army Futures Command (AFC), will serve as the Army’s key knowledge collector for emerging 21st century warfighting art in the [information environment],” Fogarty and Sparling wrote.

During this phase, ARCYBER will create an information warfare operations center at Fort Gordon. The center will provide ARCYBER an “unprecedented,” real-time ability to sense and understand the global information environment with connectivity to all Army service component commands.

“This unique vantage point will allow ARCYBER to sense, understand, decide, and respond to emerging global IE conditions, providing options to Army senior leadership and regional Army and Joint Commanders with unmatched speed, enabling strategic decision advantage,” the authors wrote.

The creation of this new center is meant to directly benefit ARCYBER’s support to Cyber Command through Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber and the combatant commands for which it conducts cyber operations.

Critical to the success of the new operations center will be a specialized military intelligence brigade organic to ARCYBER, Fogarty stated. This brigade, which is not yet resourced, will focus on the information environment to include cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum.

Fogarty also mentioned that as information warfare evolves, the missions of the offensive cyber teams that ARCYBER fulfills for Cyber Command through the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade could shift toward shaping the information environment.

The Army will also evolve its tactical forces by expanding the current cyber and electromagnetic activities, or CEMA, cells within the staff sections to include information operations, psychological operations and public affairs personnel. This cell works to inform and plan operations for the commander at echelon within the CEMA environment.

Along those same lines, the Army will work to optimize Reserve components. Fogarty noted that many of the information capabilities aligned to support conventional forces reside in the reserves.

Fogarty also described a fair amount of experimentation that will occur in phase two. This will help inform the continued development of forces and capabilities to support multidomain operations. This experimentation will include:

• The Multidomain Task Force, specifically ARCYBER, assisting in the training and readiness of the Intelligence, Information, Cyber, Electronic-Warfare, and Space Battalion.
• A theater information command, which is an Army Futures Command concept for a two-star command, providing theater commanders with influence capabilities that will be tested during Joint Warfighting Assessments and Defender exercises.
• The Information Warfare Task Force-Afghanistan, which was led by the Army Special Operations community, will conduct military information support operations, social media collection, data analytics and cutting-edge digital advertising technology for influence messaging.

Phase three will take place from 2028 and beyond, and focus on multidomain capabilities. By this point, Fogarty and his co-author write that whatever Army Cyber Command becomes, it should be able to succeed in information and unconventional warfare, conduct intelligence and counter-adversary reconnaissance, and demonstrate a credible deterrent.

“As part of the Joint Force, the Army must master these essential Competition Actions through what [Multi-Domain Operations] MDO calls ‘active engagement’ to become MDO-capable,” they write. “In each critical task, ARCYBER will play an essential supporting role as the Army better develops its ability to conduct active engagement through the converged employment of maneuver and information capabilities focused on achieving desired cognitive effects and behaviors in our adversaries.”

While each service is undertaking a slightly different approach toward information warfare, Defense officials have said there is a broad buy-in to a larger vision of how to fuse capabilities and better prepare to fight. Collectively, they show the breadth of the movement.

Here are several ongoing efforts within the services and the Pentagon underway.

Navy

Upon assuming the service’s top officer in December, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday issued a fragmentary order outlining a variety of tasks for the Navy. Included in this order was a direction that the Navy will pilot a dedicated information warfare cell within a maritime operations center at Large Scale Exercise 2020 to more effectively execute space, electronic warfare, information operations and special operations forces into all-domain operations.

Large Scale Exercise has been put on hold until next year due to the ongoing pandemic.

Gilday explained that the results from the exercise will refined the requirements and timeline for these IW cells in all fleet maritime operations centers as part of the budget for 2022.

Gilday also required the Navy to develop a plan to field small tactical cyber teams for fleet cyber commanders, however, that also is still forthcoming.

Army

The Army’s primary arm for cyber operations has been working to reorganize and change its name.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty in August announced Army Cyber Command intended to change its name to Army Information Warfare Command. Similar comments came from Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville. It is still unclear when the official name change will take place.

The tactical manifestation of this name change will exist with the 915th Cyber Warfare Battalion, a relatively new unit consisting of 12 teams that support brigade combat teams or other tactical formations. These “fly away” teams, as some officials call them, would help plan tactical cyber operations for commanders in theater and unilaterally conduct missions in coordination with forces in the field.

The Army has already activated its first two companies under the 915th in the last year and plans to create another within the next year.

On the capability side, the Army is continuing to field its first organic brigade information warfare capabilities. These include the Multi-Function Electronic Warfare Air Large, the first organic bridge aerial electronic attack asset, which is also capable of cyberattacks pod mounted on a MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone, as well as the Terrestrial Layer System Large, the first ground based integrated signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber platform.

The Army recently awarded a development contract to Lockheed Martin for MFEW and plans to equip units in 2022.

The TLS is currently in the prototyping phase with two companies competing for the contract. The Army aims to equip units in 2022 as well.

Air Force

In October, the Air Force created its first information warfare command in 16th Air Force, which combined 24th Air Force and 25th Air Force. It now fuses cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, information operations and weather together under one commander.

While the new entity reached fully operational capability this month, there is still more work to be done in getting the right personnel in place and continuing to integrate the disparate entities that existed separately before.

Specifically, 16th Air Force’s commander Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh said an information warfare cell that will be tied closely with the air components at European and Indo-Pacific Command has been assigned but that leaders still need to hire personnel.

Additionally, he noted during a July 15 event hosted by the Mitchell Institute that the 16th will be partnering with their parent entity Air Combat Command to create a spectrum warfare wing.

Marine Corps

The Marines decided to reorganize their Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters nearly four years ago and create the MEF Information Groups (MIGs).

These entities centralize cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence and information operations into tactical maneuver formations.

These forces are still participating in exercises to better refine structures and concepts.

Pentagon

Congress in last year’s defense policy bill directed the Department of Defense to designate a principal information operations adviser.

Those countries are leveraging U.S. laws, social media platforms and divisions within society to their larger strategic advantage and as a way to weaken the United States.

“This pandemic crisis has made it very, very clear that Russia, China and others intend to strategically use cyber-enable information operations against the U.S.,” Lt. Gen. Mary O’Brien, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, said during a Joint Service Academy Cybersecurity Conference webinar June 11.

“They’re injecting disinformation, which is not a new concept in itself, but now by incorporating cyber means, they’re reaching millions of people to exacerbate existing tensions within the U.S. and between us, our allies and partners.”

She said these efforts include spreading conspiracy theories and confusing messages about the virus such as its origins and risks.

Such tactics are here to stay.

“Our adversaries have made it very clear that this aspect of strategic competition will be enduring,” O’Brien added.

These tactics, which include waging influence campaigns below the threshold of armed conflict, have forced the military, and U.S. government more broadly, to rethink its strategies and views toward conflict. Traditionally, the United States government has taken a binary view of war and peace, while adversaries such as Russia in particular have viewed conflict on a perpetual continuum.

“In many ways, we have trained ourselves as a service at every Red Flag we’ve gone to that conflict begins when two fighters engage or we find a target on the battlespace. So we’ve really trained ourselves that conflict begins at that moment,” Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander of 16th Air Force, the service’s first information warfare command, said at a July 15 Mitchell Institute webcast. Red Flag is the Air Force’s premier tactical training event.

“Was the first element really when we got into conflict in the information environment … the first day that one of our companies was hacked that the intellectual property theft of one of our weapon systems stole?” he said. “Was that really when conflict began? Was it the day that Russian hackers hacked into the DNC? Was that really the day that conflict began for our nation and how we should be thinking about it when the adversaries went to another level of using some level of malign activity that is outside of things that we would consider norms.”

As such, the military is looking at ways to expose this activity abroad when it can.

“Sixteenth Air Force units are focused on developing tactics, techniques and procedures and they’re looking to identify, expose and when directed, countering the threat from the state sponsored disinformation campaigns,” O’Brien said. “This is continuing, I think we’ll see it again as we address the racial discrimination.”

Adversaries have exploited U.S. laws and principles, such as the freedom of speech with online platforms, which makes outright banning accounts difficult. They’ve also targeted existing divisions within society such as protests over police tactics and racial equality.

“[Adversaries] also are in a position where they can take advantage of a lot of the disinformation/misinformation that’s created right here at home in the United States by actual Americans who understand the language in a way Moscow couldn’t at a native level,” Cindy Otis, vice president of analysis at Alethea Group, a start-up that counters disinformation and social media manipulation. told C4ISRNET.

Experts explained that adversaries in many cases don’t have to create content, although many choose to.

“At the end of the day they’re really just amplifying our existing social divisions. We suspect, especially lately, that they’ve really done enough amplification that they’re just kind of allowing things to snowball now …There’s enough existing division that it really only requires tiny nudges at this point to amplify,” Maj. Jessica Dawson, research lead for information warfare and an assistant professor at the Army Cyber Institute, told C4ISRNET.

One way they do this is called memetic warfare, which involves sharing memes on various social media platforms to stoke a particular reaction from various groups.

“When we think about memetic warfare, what’s really happening is we’re taking these sort of deep seeded emotional stories and we’re collapsing them down into a picture, usually it’s something that has a very, very quick emotional punch,” she said. “They’re collapsing these narratives down into images that are often not attributed, that’s one of the things about memes is they really aren’t, someone usually isn’t signing them, going ‘I’m the artist.’ There [are] these really emotional punches that are shared very, very quickly, they’re self replicating in a lot of ways because you see it, you react and then you immediately pass it on.”

While many experts noted that these tactics are nothing new, the difference is the internet.

“The major change throughout history is today they’re able to spread and amplify and reach people where they are all over the world in a way that was never possible before,” Otis, who previously was a CIA analyst, said.

Previously, nations such as the Soviet Union had to prop up media outlets and place stories in newspapers around the world hoping they’d be picked up in English language outlets. Now, they just have to tweet.

In some cases, they are overt social media channels and actors might not even hide their origin, but other more covert cases, states might use certain influencers or cut outs to do their bidding.

What’s the point?

The goal of these operations varies slightly, but experts said they serve the ultimate purpose of put down the United States compared to their own nations.

“For Russia it all goes back to the desire to undermine United States’ global credibility but also show their own population ‘hey, you know that democracy you want, it’s actually not a great thing … look how it’s turning out for the United States,‘” Otis said.

She added that Russia tries to undermine the credibility of the United States on issues such as human rights, something the United States is active in promoting on the world stage, by highlighting social divisions such as potential police brutality and racial injustice.

Dawson noted this can also distract from what Russia is doing abroad.

Russia also wants to discourage citizens from voting, Otis said by making large swaths of the population feel disenfranchised. Often times, these actors will play both sides of an issue to maximize reach and discord.

When it comes to China, Dawson noted that they are trying to appear more benevolent on the world stage to present itself as a world power, which is much harder. They are also good at making information disappear online, she said, citing information on the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Otis pointed to Chinese benevolent efforts such as providing medical aid to nations such as Italy during the ongoing pandemic.

Combating these efforts, including those focused internally at domestic populations and undermining government, can be difficult given the existing divisions within society and the broad speech freedoms guaranteed.

Otis explained that the government can sometimes be mired in its own bureaucratic processes, noting it can be its own worst enemy.

She provided the example of Taliban forces in Afghanistan publishing in their media channels that the United States and NATO forces bombed a school killing scores of children. Those stories would go viral in their circles and sometimes make their way to mainstream outlets. When questioned about those claims by reporters, U.S. officials would explain they have to conduct an investigation, which could take months. By the time the investigation is concluded and the claim is found to hold no truth, the damage is already done and the Taliban have successfully recruited against it.

Dawson noted that one way to begin combating disinformation is building trust from the local to the national level while also addressing the underlying domestic problems adversaries are exploiting from abroad.

Sixteenth Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, created in October, combined what was previously known as 24th and 25th Air Force. The move placed cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare and weather capabilities under one commander, serving as the Air Force’s first information warfare entity.

With all these new wings and capabilities now under a single unit, they need to understand what everyone is doing and how it can feed together.

“How do we bring forums together where all of our wings that are focused on a problem can be in the same room and we start to build out what things are they all contributing,” Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, 16th Air Force’s commander, told a webcast hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “Then taking it to the next layer, so all the weapons and tactics teams are talking. That simple act of creating a forum was built largely on our component responsibilities. We have very good forums … for how do we support and produce cyber outcomes. We expanded that forum into an information warfare environment.”

Some of this integration is already taking hold. Haugh explained he received a positive update earlier this month about how one meeting had led to fewer stovepipes and more data sharing.

In addition, he said he’d like to see more components share intelligence as a way to enable others within the enterprise. For example, if a portion of the ISR enterprise, be it analysis or exploitation, in support of Air Forces Africa, discovers a Russian private military corporation conducting malign activities in Africa, they can pass that to the cyber enterprise to potentially pursue the adversary.

Then the cyber element can feed their information or operation back to the ISR enterprise to produce better intelligence for the air component.

“This is where for us, that art is starting to come together. Right now, it’s very manual, and we’re seeing the processes and the data flows start to fall in place that that will become a more automated and routine function that now becomes mutually supportive across our enterprise,” Haugh said.

This initiative seeks to deliver an information advantage to the Department of Defense in two ways. The first is improving the DoD’s ability to integrate commercial and government AI solutions. The second is improving the standardization of foundational DoD data needed to field high-performing AI-enabled capabilities to support operations in the information environment, said Lt. Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson, a spokesman for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

Nand Mulchandani, the JAIC’s acting director, told reporters in early July that this initiative also includes cyber operations — both broad defensive and offensive measures for use by U.S. Cyber Command.

The DoD is discovering that it needs ways to process, analyze and act upon the vast amounts of data it receives.

“As we look at the ability to influence and shape in this environment, we’re going to have to have artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools, specifically for information ops that hit a very broad portfolio,” Gen. Richard Clarke, commander of Special Operations Command, said at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in May. “We’re going to have to understand how the adversary is thinking, how the population is thinking, and work in these spaces in time of relevance. If you’re not at speed, you won’t be relevant.

“To make sure the U.S. message and our allies’ and partner message is being heard and it’s resonating. What we need is adapting data tech that will actually work in this space and we can use it for our organization.”

A program in support of network incident detection, called MADHAT — or Multidimensional Anomaly Detection fusing HPC, Analytics, and Tensors — is helping the JAIC develop an information warfare capability. The program allows for the exploration of network data as a way of enabling more effective detection of nuanced adversarial threats, Abrahamson said.

MADHAT has already been deployed, he added, and analysts working on the High Performance Computing Modernization Program are being trained on the tool for operational use. This program accelerates technology development and transitions it into defense capabilities through the application of high-performance computing.

Mulchandani also told reporters that other information warfare-related efforts include using natural language processing, which involve processing and analyzing text.

“NLP and speech-to-text is actually a fairly mature AI technology that can be deployed in production. And that actually is going to be used in reducing information overload,” he said. “So being able to scan vast quantities of open-source information and bring the sort of nuggets and important stuff on the NLPs.”

Following recent riots in some American cities, some acting and former U.S. officials (including top ones) and security experts implied, yet not directly, that violence might have been enhanced by Russia. Moscow instantly dismissed the accusations and, twisting the issue around, used its high-ranking officials to push a narrative that the U.S. authorities should ensure that human rights are respected in their country in the first place.

In May 2019, NBC News reported that it had reviewed documents suggesting Russia could seek ways to exploit racial resentment in America. The documents, shared with NBC News by Dossier Center — a group of investigative journalists funded by former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodrokovsky — included communications between Yevgeny Prigozhin (a.k.a. “Putin’s chef”) and his alleged associates. Prigozhin is one of 13 Russian nationals charged by the U.S. Justice Department with interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

According to NBC News, the dossier included (among other troubling ideas) a plan to destabilize the U.S. through domestic violent actions performed by recruited and trained African Americans with criminal records or with ties to radical movements.

All this sounds like confessions of a twisted mind, and perhaps should be treated accordingly. And maybe it would if it was not for Russia. All too often we have seen what the Kremlin is capable of, just to ignore such sensational reports.

On Nov. 21, 2019, El Pais — one of most circulated daily newspapers in Spain — reported that the Audiencia Nacional (Spain’s high court) had opened a probe into the alleged Russian footprint in the illegal Catalan independence referendum of 2017. The confidential investigation revolved around the role of “military Unit 29155” — a unit of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence directorate — in the separatist drive in Catalonia.

Its name first emerged in an article posted in The New York Times last October, under the telling title “Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say.” Later reports by the likes of Bellingcat suggested the members of the group had been implicated in the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea; a destabilization campaign in Moldova in 2014; the attempted poisoning of Bulgarian arms manufacturer Emilian Gebrev in 2015; and a failed coup in Montenegro in 2016.

Regarding alleged Russian meddling in Catalonia, East StratCom Task Force, a unit of the European Union set up to counter the Kremlin’s disinformation efforts, saw a surge in false information published both in Russian and Spanish ahead of and after the referendum.

Similar findings were presented with regard to the “yellow vests protests” in France. The German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy found that in December 2019, Twitter accounts it connected to Russia used hashtags related to the movement to push narratives of discord and chaos, and to denigrate the West. Earlier that year, Avaaz, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, had published a study suggesting that Russia had exploited the “gilets jaunes” protests to significantly expand its French-speaking audience. Indeed, according to the study, between the start of riots in late 2018 and the spring of 2019, RT France — the Kremlin’s mouthpiece in France — posted two times more content to YouTube than all major French news outlets combined.

But worst of all, as found by Avaaz, the fake news related to the “yellow vests” movement reached roughly 105 million views on Facebook alone. No wonder, in December 2018, the French foreign minister revealed that the French security services were looking at the situation as part of an investigation into a possible Russian interference.

Then there is Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum. The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has just made public a report titled “Russia,” which it drafted more than a year ago. The first bullet point of the ISC’s press release concerning its inquiry reads: “Russian influence in the UK is the new normal.” The committee conclusively found that Russia had tried to influence the referendum on Scottish independence of Sept. 18, 2014. As for the Brexit vote held two years later, the committee did not obtain sufficient evidence of the Russian footprint from competent services. However, the ISC urged the U.K. intelligence community to prepare its own assessment of a potential Russian interference in the EU referendum and to publish an unclassified summary of it.

Some British media familiar with its findings have suggested that ISC, which had studied possible Russian interference in democratic processes in the U.K. for 18 months, was not able to rule out the Kremlin’s footprint in the 2016 Brexit vote.

Returning to the current unrest in the U.S., in its recent analysis posted to EUvsDISINFO, East StratCom Task Force wrote: “The pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem attempts to exploit the protests in every possible way — expressing sympathy with the protesters, as well as conveying openly racist sentiment.” The analysis ends with the following remark: “Anything goes when the Kremlin desperately is seeking an audience.”

But why would Russia want to destabilize an internal situation in such remote (from Russia’s perspective) countries like Spain or the U.S.? The simplest answer is: divide et impera, or divide and rule. The more a society is polarized, the more vulnerable it becomes. Deeper vulnerabilities can be further exploited later on. Another possibility is that an interference by a hostile actor in a country’s internal affairs serves to test how far the actor can go before it is exposed. Besides, interfering can be used as a means of intimidation or a message, such as: “Don’t underestimate us, or else ….”

Here in Poland we have also seen Russia’s attempts to polarize society. With the presidential election set to be held June 28, Russian propaganda has stepped up its efforts to deepen the existing divisions among the Poles and push its agenda. For instance, pro-Russian media have been advocating in favor of those candidates who openly criticize the construction of a ship canal across the Vistula Spit and the purchase by Polish armed forces of American-made F-35 fighter jets. Both investments are a serious pain in Moscow’s neck, as they enhance the national security of Poland and are a further step toward severing ties with Russia.

The Kremlin also makes repeated attempts to pit local communities against the troops of the U.S. and its allies in the locations where they exercise or are stationed. Most recently, a pro-Russian website has exploited the fears of COVID-19 by pushing a narrative that the U.S.-Polish military drills Defender Europe 20 Plus (that have just finished) would make the number of coronavirus cases skyrocket.

Speaking of the pandemic, in recent months, pro-Russian outlets have produced endless amounts of content amplifying conspiracy theories about the virus and moves to fuel the anti-vaccination drive. For example, there has been a bogus claim that 5G technology has a role in activating or aggravating the disease.

In 2018, a group of Poles set fire to the office of the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association in Uzhhorod in Ukraine. They were nabbed by Poland’s counterintelligence and counterterrorist service, the Internal Security Agency. During the trial, one of them stated the trio had been hired by a German journalist tied to AfD, Germany’s far-right party notorious for its pro-Russian stance. Another one said the aim of that complex and meticulously planned attack had been to “devastate the building and undermine relations between the Hungarian minority and Ukraine.” However, the operation also risked deteriorating Polish-Ukrainian relations, which are not completely free from turbulence. The Kremlin knows it and exploits the issue on a regular basis. (There are an estimated 1.4 million Ukrainians living and working in Poland.)

The Uzhhorod incident had all the hallmarks of an influence operation, one that the Russian special services could have easily carried out to destabilize a country of their choice.

Interviewed by the Polish weekly newspaper Do Rzeczy, Hans-Georg Maassen, former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency BfV, said: “We cannot be blind to the fact that Russia, by way of a diversity of measures, not only intelligence activities, is seeking to destabilize Europe. And we must counteract.”

Indeed, the following — from a recent opinion piece by a Russian political scientist and academic lecturer — confirms it all: “With regard to the West, Russia must embark on active and offensive operations modeled on a very hybrid war, one that the West managed to test on us. Russia as such does not need the West. All we need is for the West to leave us alone. And for this to happen, the West must face a series of internal issues that will highly affect its external activity. These problems are already there, and they are growing more serious. So do not prevent the Western society from self-destruction. Moreover, if Russia notices that within this society a force emerges whose program may have genuinely suicidal consequences for the Western civilization, it should provide it with support.”

Maybe the above excerpt is simply an opinion, a subjective point of view. Still, it seems to accurately reflect Russia’s modus operandi. So if you notice a looming crisis in a Western country, a Russian propaganda campaign may be waiting in the wings.

Stanisław Żaryn is a spokesman for Poland’s Minister-Special Services Coordinator.

Information warfare combines several types of capabilities, including cyber, intelligence, electronic warfare, information operations, psychological operations and military deception. On a high-tempo battlefield, military leaders expect to face against a near peer or peer adversary. There, one-off solutions, systems that only provide one function, or those that can’t feed information to others won’t cut it. Systems must be multi-functional and be able to easily communicate with other equipment and do so across services.

“A networked force, that’s been our problem for years. Having built a lot of military systems, a lot in C4 and mission command, battle command, we build them and buy them in stovepipes. Then we think of integration and connecting after the fact,” Greg Wenzel, executive vice president at Booz Allen, told C4ISRNET. “My whole view … networking the force really is probably the best thing to achieve overmatch against our adversaries.”

Much of this networking revolves around new concepts DoD is experimenting with to be better prepared to fight in the information environment through multi domain operations or through Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). The former aims to seamlessly integrate the capabilities of each domain of warfare – land, sea, air, space and cyber – at will. It also aims to integrate systems and capabilities across the services under a common framework to rapidly share data.

While not an official program, JADC2 is more of a framework for the services to build equipment.

“It’s more likely a mish-mash of service level agreements, pre-scripted architecting and interoperability mandates that you got to be in keeping with those in order to play in the environment,” Bill Bender, senior vice president of strategic accounts and government relations at Leidos, told C4ISRNET of JADC2. “It’s going to take a long journey to get there because, oh by the way, we’re a very legacy force and … a limited amount of technology has the interoperability that is absolutely required for that mission to become a reality.”

The “information warfare” nomenclature can feel nebulous and hard to understand for industry officials that provide solutions to the Pentagon.

“It’s a pretty broad definition. I think it’s something that the DoD is struggling with, that’s what we’re struggling with in industry and it also makes it challenging because no one really buys equipment that way,” Anthony Nigara, vice president for strategy and business development in L3Harris Space & Airborne Systems, said. “No one really buys stuff to an abstract term like information warfare.”

Others agreed that the term “information warfare” may be too broad, an issue that’s further complicated as each service tackles information warfare in their own way.

Most members of industry C4ISRNET talked with on the need to integrate described the key theme of a more networked force as a unifying way to think about the new push to information warfare.

“There’s a lot of discussions about the Joint All Domain Operations or the multidomain operations. When we look at that and we want to say ‘okay, what is information warfare really mean to everyone?” Steven Allen, director of information operations and spectrum convergence at Lockheed Martin rotary and mission systems, told C4ISRNET. “We look at it as how can we get the right information to warfighters in order to fight or how do we get the right information for them to plan? How do we move all that data across whether it’s different levels of security or different levels of the warfighting and the data associated with it.”

Others expressed the need for contractors to be flexible with how DoD is describing its needs.

“Industry has learned to be flexible in responding to messaging calling for new situational awareness capabilities while other established capabilities were being mandated for use in cyber exercises,” Jay Porter, director of programs at Raytheon Intelligence & Space, said.

The push to a more information warfare-centric force under the guise of larger concepts to defeat adversaries is pushing the DoD as a whole to fight in a more joint manner.

Paul Welch, vice president and division manager for the Air Force and defense agencies portfolio at Leidos, explained that there’s a consistent view by the services and the department that they must integrate operations within the broad umbrella of activities called information warfare just as they’re integrating warfighting capabilities between the services and across the domains. This goes beyond merely deconflicting activities or cooperation, but must encompass true integration of combat capabilities.

Some members of industry described this idea as one part of convergence.

“When I talk about convergence, my observation is there is a convergence in terms of a family of technologies and of a family of challenge problems and how do they come together,” Ravi Ravichandran, chief technology officer of the intelligence and security sector at BAE, told C4ISRNET.

Ravichandran provided five specific challenge problems the military may have in which a married suite of technologies can help provide an advantage against adversaries.

They include JADC2, overmatch or the notion of assembling technologies in a way better than enemies, joint fires where one service’s sensors may be acquiring a target and passing that target off to another service to prosecute it, sensing in the electromagnetic spectrum and strategic mobility to get forces and resources to a particular place at a particular time.

Similarly, Welch provided the notional example of an F-35 flying over an area, seeing something on its sensors and sending that information to either an Army unit, a carrier strike group, a Marine Corps unit, or even a coalition partner to seamlessly and rapidly understand the information and act upon it.

These sensors must be incorporated into a joint kill chain that can be acted upon, coordinated and closed by any service at any time.

Allen noted that when looking at information warfare, his business is examining how to take a variety of information from sensor information to human information to movement information and pull it all together.

“There’s a lot of discussion on [artificial intelligence] AI and machine learning and it’s very, very important, but there’s also important aspects of that, which is hey what’s the technology to help the AI, what’s that data that’s going to help them,” he said. “We tend to look very closely with the customers on how do we really shape that in terms of the information you’re getting and how much more can you do for the warfighter.”

By bringing all these together, ultimately, it’s about providing warfighters with the situational awareness, command and control and information they need to make decisions and cause the necessary effects, be it cyber C4ISR, intelligence or electronic warfare, Nigara said.

Porter said at Raytheon’s Intelligence & Space outfit, they view information warfare as “the unification of offensive and defensive cyber missions, electronic warfare and information operations within the battlespace.” Integrating EW and IO with cyber will allow forces to take advantage of a broader set of data to enable high-confidence decision-making in real time, he added, which is particularly important in the multi-domain information environment to influence or degrade adversary decision making.

From a Navy perspective, the ability to share data rapidly across a distributed force within the Navy’s distributed maritime operations concept will be critical for ensuring success.

“We will certainly have to include the mechanisms with which we share information, data and fuse that data from node to node. When I say node to node, a node may be a ship, a node may be an unmanned vehicle and a node may be a shore based facility,” Kev Hays, director of information warfare programs at Northrop Grumman, who mostly supports the Navy, said regarding areas Northrop is investing. “Linking all those participants into a network … is critically important. We have quite a bit of technology we’re investing in to help communicate point to point and over the horizon and a low probability of intercept and low probability of detection fashion.”

Ultimately, the information space is about affecting the adversary’s cognitive space, they said.

“When it comes to information warfare, it’s a lot less tangible … It’s not tank on tank anymore. You’re trying to affect people’s perception,” James Montgomery, capture strategy lead for information operations and spectrum convergence at Lockheed Martin rotary and mission systems, told C4ISRNET.

As a result, he said, it is critical to take the time with the customer to truly understand the concepts and capabilities and how they all fit together in order to best support them.

“Really spending time with them [the customer] and understanding what it is that they’re attempting to get at. It helps us better shape the requirements but it also helps us better understand what is it they’re asking for,” he said. “When you’re moving forward and attempting to come together with both a software hardware based solution to something, it takes a lot of talking time and a lot of touch time with that customer to understand where their head’s at.”

During the last year, the Army already activated its first two companies under 915th.

The 915th is relatively new. It was created by Army Cyber Command and consists of 12 teams that support brigade combat teams or other tactical formations. These “fly away” teams, as some officials call them, would help plan tactical cyber operations for commanders in theater and unilaterally conduct missions in coordination with forces in the field. However, that will require interoperable equipment within the brigade.

“The 915 CWB provides Army Cyber Command insight on how to integrate and support cyber and electronic warfare operations from the Brigade to Army Service Component Command echelons,” Lt. Col. Matt Davis, the head of the 915th, told C4ISRNET in a statement.

These forces are the tactical manifestation of where the Army is moving in the information warfare sphere, with expeditionary cyber teams conducting local cyber and radio frequency-enabled operations. The 915th has already activated the first expeditionary cyber team and will add to that in the next year.

What is the new contract for?

L3Harris Technologies recently won a contract to equip these units under the 915th. However, unlike traditional capabilities, such as rifles, these units will primarily use backpacks that plug into new electronic warfare and cyber equipment the Army plans to field in the early 2020s.

The Tactical Cyber Equipment-C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) Chassis (TCE-CC) is meant to provide the foundation for an expandable, modular, frequency-agile and soldier-portable capability for conducting spectrum surveys and delivering area-wide and targeted cyber/electromagnetic activities (CEMA) effects at the tactical edge, a spokesman for the Army’s Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, told C4ISRNET.

Col. Kevin Finch, program manager for electronic warfare and cyber within PEO IEW&S, said these capabilities will benefit cyber warriors.

“These capabilities are going to enable our cyber troops to be able to effect [radio frequency]-enabled cyber at the tactical edge. These capabilities will be fielded to the teams that will be sliced to [brigade combat teams] and enable them to conduct RF-enabled cyber,” he said June 10 during a presentation at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

The systems these tactical cyber teams will leverage and plug into using the TCE-CC include the forthcoming Terrestrial Layer System Large — an integrated signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber platform mounted on ground vehicles — and the Multi-Functional Electronic Warfare Air Large — the Army’s first organic brigade electronic attack asset mounted on an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone.

Finch told C4ISRNET in October that the service wants these flyaway units to be compatible with the capabilities of the brigades.

Sources have also noted that these expeditionary cyber teams have tested capabilities with similar systems and prototypes such as the Tactical Electronic Warfare System, a bridge capability for the Terrestrial Layer System that is used by forces in Europe.

One source told C4ISRNET that extra training is required to prepare for cyber and RF-enabled operations, something personnel in the average brigade wouldn’t go through, which is why these units will need the specially trained and equipped 915th expeditionary cyber teams that will augment a brigade as needed.

So far, the 915th has supported 10 Army exercises and 16 other events, Davis said. He recognized that the coronavirus pandemic has impacted these events, but said the battalion was able to provide remote support.

Keeping pace with adversaries

Open architecture-based systems are a key to the Army keeping pace in the rapidly evolving information warfare space, as such technology allows for quick upgrades.

The CMOSS open-architecture requirement the Army has instituted for several of its electronic warfare, signals intelligence and cyber systems will allow the service to insert new capabilities on demand.

Finch explained in June that the Army would previously run into vendor lock if it chose a particular box. With the CMOSS open architecture, it allows the service to more quickly integrate new capabilities because it’s usually just a matter of inserting a new software-based computer card. This also helps the Army better deal with obsolesce because if a new or better technology emerges, it can quickly integrate the tech into existing systems.

This rapid insertion of technology also allows the Army to stay ahead of threats. And if new threats pop up? The service can quickly address it with a software fix or a new card plugged into the system.

“We’re maturing this organization, moving past merging and focusing on integration,” Lt. Gen. Mary O’Brien, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, said during a Joint Service Academy Cybersecurity Conference webinar June 11. “We find that our intelligence and cyber roles are focused increasingly interdependent and interconnected.”

Within the last 18 months, the Air Force reconfigured its intelligence shop, formerly known as the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and added cyber effects operations. That change was followed by the merger of two numbered Air Forces – 24th Air Force and 25th Air Force – to create 16th Air Force last fall, the service’s first information warfare entity.

Officials have said in this new setup the deputy chief of staff handles the workforce, concepts, training, platforms, tools and integration. This is done so operators at 16th Air Force have the guidance they need.

O’Brien added that the Air Force is now working at integrating the 2018 ISR flight plan and the 2019 cyber warfare flight plan. Each sought to chart a path for how the Air Force will fight in each respective area into the next decade as part of a great power competition.

The ISR flight plan examined transforming the enterprise to meet future threats as opposed to modernization. The cyber flight guided funding, resourcing, training and capabilities for Air Force cyber offices.

O’Brien also said integration related to network defense has proven critical with the increased telework during the pandemic.

Intelligence and cyber experts are “identifying the threats and they’re posturing to defend against them,” she said. “This was not always the case.”

The Marine Corps’ version of this idea is to follow a concept it is specifically calling “operations in the information environment [OIE].” It is purposefully not using the term “information warfare.”

Lt. Gen. Loretta Reynolds, the Corps’ deputy commandant for information, is taking the lead in this area. She spoke recently with C4ISRNET’s Mark Pomerleau to help unpack the Marines’ information environment concept, explain how it’s different from what other services are doing, and to explore what challenges lie ahead for the information environment.

C4ISRNET: The other services are reorganizing under information warfare. What’s the Marine Corps’ approach?

LT. GEN. LORETTA REYNOLDS: You’ve heard Commandant Gen. [David] Berger talk about the idea that the fight today is an information fight. What does that mean?

I think it means, what is our message, how are we communicating our message, are we aggressive enough with our message, and do we understand how to measure the impact?

It’s like the art and the science of the information fight. The art would be how do you think about influence and are we moving aggressively enough in the right directions. I think the science is the cyber fight; it’s the space fight.

We see our adversaries maneuvering in all these domains right now. They are maneuvering in space. You saw Gen. [Jay] Raymond’s story about what the Russians are doing. Unsafe, unprofessional behavior. What are we going to do about it? We know what the cyber fight has looked like.

I always go back to [former commandant] Gen. [Robert] Neller’s comments about how we’re going to have to fight to get to the fight.

We call it “operations in the information environment” for a reason. We don’t call it “information warfare” deliberately, because we believe firmly that we have to think differently about strategic communications.

How we talk about warfare to the American people, how we talk to them about what’s happening, how we talk to them about the geography of this battlespace, if you will, that is to say that they’re in it, is really important.

C4ISRNET: U.S. Cyber Command’s VirusTotal effort is disclosing adversary malware. There’s been ideas pushed out by 16th Air Force about potentially disclosing enemy missile locations through ISR. How does this idea of increased transparence fit with what the Marine Corps is doing?

REYNOLDS: We have been very risk averse with regard to the information that we have. You can’t deter anybody if you’re the only one who knows that you have a capability. And, so, we really have to be more thoughtful about being able to share information that the world believes we have anyway.

We have a vice chairman [of the joint chiefs of staff] right now who is very thoughtful about this kind of thinking. We have adversaries right now who are going to push the limits and we have to expose that every time it happens. Every single time it happens, we have to expose it and we’re too slow.

C4ISRNET: How do you see this coming together? You created information command centers that would coordinate a lot of these issues at the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) level. Do you see that as the focal point? Are the MEF Information Groups (MIGs) the tactical manifestation of what you’re trying to do?

REYNOLDS: They are. The MIGs were built to be able to think about this in direct support of those MEF commanders.

Where the naval integration piece of this comes in is how we, the Navy and the Marine Corps, get organized for this information fight at, say, the [Joint Force Maritime Component Command] level.

Because right now the joint force is trying to figure out, as you’re developing Space Command and we already pulled out Cyber Command, how you integrate all this stuff at the combatant command level where all the authorities are.

Where can we, Navy and the Marine Corps, work together in this information fight? Is it inside the JFMCC? Can we just build an integrated staff inside the JFMCC in Pacific Command, in

European Command and others, so that we can synthesize all

of this and make it make sense? Because the danger is you begin to think differently. In terms of operational and strategic fires, you don’t want to plan for it as a whole and then have it picked apart at the combatant command level.

That’s where I think the JFMCC comes in. If we can get organized to think about this stuff holistically, the Navy has a ton of game and history and some of the science of this and I think where we can actually add a lot of value to them is in things like influence, perhaps information, and some of the psychological operations kinds of capabilities and the tactical. How can, for

example, the infantry squad leader with an attached electronic warfare support team extend the range of naval fires for sensing and recon and the spectrum? That’s where we want to add some value.

C4ISRNET: Do you see the need for an overall information warfare planner for the Marine Corps that would coordinate electronic warfare, cyber, communications strategy?

REYNOLDS: The whole point of the information groups was that we believe that someone has got to be able to understand what’s happening in the information environment for the commander.

Someone has got to be able to think broadly about what’s happening in cyber, how is space going to impact your ability to go do what you want to do over there in that [Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations], what is that messaging component, how do we want to use deception. Somebody has to bring all this together in a comprehensive way.

I use cyber as an example in this because sometimes we have treated cyber like a football game: it’s offense and defense. But sometimes there’s a soccer game going on and you may wish to allow something to happen, some intrusion, if it allows you access into someone. So, someone has to be able to accept that risk.

As you think about risk in the information environment, you need to think who’s looking at it, who’s got the big picture and who’s able to inform the commander. We have never deliberately planned for some of this stuff in the past.

C4ISRNET: From the Marine Corps’ perspective, what is the big problem that you’re hoping to solve as you’re trying to thwart malicious behavior from adversaries?

REYNOLDS: The most important thing we probably have to get after here in the near term is, no kidding, making this a part of who we are as Marines and how we think about war fighting.

You don’t add new war-fighting functions every day. [Former] Secretary [of Defense James] Mattis said information is a war fighting, battlespace function, the commandant said get it done and there’s a lot of work associated with that.

There’s how do you training entry-level Marines to think about them as being a player in the information environment. That’s that whole idea of playing defense every time you pick up your personal cellphone, getting your families ready for this fight, because they’re going to be targets; how do you combat disinformation, because it’s everything associated with who we are as Marines and how we think about this as actually part of the battlespace.

That’s hard and new. How do you get it into the Marine Corps University system, how do you get it into [professional military education], how do you make sure that it’s fed in with understanding into our experimentation?

One of the challenges, quite frankly, that we’re having is that, in the joint force, the language about this is all over the place. Is it [information operations], is it OIE, is it [information warfare]?

Everything that we do sets a precedent as we’re doing experimentation. We got a lot of good, smart people who are thinking about this, but at some point we’ve got to begin to standardize some things across the MIGS, buy some tools and then just get after it so we can being to assess ourselves and actually make progress.

We’re in a good place right now. It’s a good challenge for us to have because I think more and more people are thinking about this. But, at some point, we want it to sink in as this is doctrine, this is part of how we fight, and that whole culture change has been hard.