WASHINGTON \u2014 A top Air Force general wants to dispel the common assumption that adversaries will always try to cut or jam U.S. troops\u2019 friendly communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, they might want to leave those communications intact to use them to spread false and misleading information, for example, said Lt. Gen. Mary O\u2019Brien, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, during the Air Force Association virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium on Feb. 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To prepare against potential hacking or jamming of systems that could take troops offline, the military is working to harden its communications, electronics and other digital equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While this resiliency is welcome, the military must not ignore other vulnerabilities, O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf our adversaries are not incentivized to disconnect us for their security, would that perhaps mean they want to maintain that connection in order to inject disinformation or misinformation and take advantage of opportunities that way,\u201d she said. \u201cWould they want to inject counter machine learning or counter artificial intelligence where their capabilities could corrupt ours? Could they attack our data in our algorithm integrity? What capabilities would we require then if we turn that assumption and looked at it from a different perspective?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The misconception that adversaries\u2019 priority is to cut communications has surfaced recently, O\u2019Brien has noticed. Based on behavior observed in the today\u2019s information domain, she said adversaries might not always desire to interrupt connectivity to achieve their effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Separately, O\u2019Brien addressed the concern that the Department of Defense won\u2019t be able to process or understand all available data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor most of my career, it has been an age of data scarcity, and we have all these prioritization frameworks on how we were going to go after the information we needed. That is being turned on its head,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Air Force will need support from industry to handle this \u201cdata abundance,\u201d which includes publicly available information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Culture also must change to accept automation, with machines performing mundane tasks to free airmen to use their problem-solving skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll need capabilities to streamline the speed and accuracy of repetitive tasks, and we\u2019ll need to let airmen use their higher cognitive skill sets to get after these problems \u2014 so human-machine teaming, advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics and automated visualization and presentation that will aid decision making,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What adjustments must the military make to counter adversaries that want to get inside communications systems instead of cutting them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":32365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","news","middle-column","home"],"primary_category":"your-military"},"4":{"categories":["daily-news-roundup","newsletters","your-air-force","news","left-column","home"],"primary_category":"your-air-force"},"10":{"categories":["air-force-priorities","smr","daily-news-roundup","newsletters","air"],"primary_category":"air-force-priorities"}}},"categories":[7,106,29,14,36,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3268],"class_list":["post-11718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-battlefield-tech","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-information-warfare","category-it-networks-battlefield-tech","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"LVZNFBTZXVDY3FGBI7IYBWHDXI","arc_canonical_url":"\/battlefield-tech\/2021\/02\/25\/air-force-general-busts-myth-that-enemies-always-try-to-stop-rivals-communications\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n