Network-centric systems relying on mass capabilities rather than individual systems continue to grow in sophistication and complexity, often enabling controllers in one location to use search and targeting sensors in another while launching weapons from still more platforms.
The resulting distributed architecture makes it far more difficult for an enemy to eliminate a threat and provides commanders with many more options to target and contest. And it’s proved effective: such capabilities spurred the creation of an entire agency to support the IT and communications requirements of the services, the Defense Information Systems Agency. Simultaneously, network-centric concepts rapidly filtered into the platforms themselves. They’re inherent in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air Capability system, to name just two examples.
The increasing reliance on secure data links, however, is also a potential weakness an enemy could disrupt or exploit. Suddenly, with platforms as well as command and control systems relying on networked capabilities, vulnerabilities became targets. The result is a cat and mouse came between military installations determined to protect assets and sensitive information, and adversaries determined to hack our systems and steal sensitive information. And history has shown that they’ve succeeded on multiple occasions. Beyond sensitive disclosures, military, intel and homeland security agencies face the very real risk that networked systems could create an avenue for new tactics of warfare.
“We recognize the enemy will use the Internet to recruit, to take down SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition] systems,” said Lt Gen Alan Lynn, DISA director, at the CyberCon 2015 conference in Arlington, Virginia, Nov. 18. “In short, we expect a cyberattack as a prelude to war.”
“What’s interesting is no one knows where the red line is yet,” he added. “When do you cross the line into kinetic war?”
