Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) Decision Support

Abstract : Many important issues need to be resolved. The Air Force needs to * articulate its cyber goals and objectives more clearly * identify strategies, missions, and tasks within its purview * continue to develop cyberforces with capabilities to ensure Air Force-specific needs are met. We believe there is more to military cyberoperations than those outlined for the more-limited defensive cybersecurity initiatives across the government overall. The regional and functional COCOMs have two concerns relative to cyber: (1) mission assurance (the ability to conduct operations in a degraded cyber environment, in which CND will hopefully limit the degradation) and (2) integrated attack (of which CNA is just one element). We believe that the Air Force's goal should be to posture its cyberforces for the broader context-integrated air, space, and cyberoperations in support of joint operations, with initial emphasis on integrating these regional operations in an AOC under the control of a joint force air component commander, while, at the same time, engaging more proactively with USSTRATCOM to help shape and conduct global cyber missions, day to day and in crisis and war, through the JFCC-NW and JTF-GNO.18