[August 29, 2009] Air Force faces new frontier Tweet Aug 29, 2009 (Montgomery Advertiser - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- The Air Force is fighting in cyberspace. This week it was at the annual Air Force Information Technology Conference in Montgomery, examining both the new technology and the new culture it will need to win this battle. The conference attracted about 6,000 people from government and industry fields to talk about new capabilities, new needs and the new frontier -- cyberspace. "Tomorrow's security challenge is going to cause us to think differently," Gen. C. Robert Kehler said. "Cyberspace is very complex ... and it's all encompassing." Kehler is commander of Air Force Space Command, the parent command to the newest cyberspace unit, 24th Air Force, which was officially activated on Aug. 19. The 24th focuses entirely with cyberspace operations, requires new career fields, new acquisitions processes and culture change, Kehler said. The Air Force is recommending that the 24th be the Air Force component to the new U.S. Cyber Command, announced recently by the Pentagon, that will be a sub-unified command under U.S. Strategic Command. Cyberspace will require that the military change its culture because it's completely unlike the areas where the military has previously battled, such as air, land and sea. Cyberspace has different boundaries. Time and space are almost irrelevant, and in most cases, the enemy's location is also irrelevant, Kehler said. Adversaries recognize American dependence on cyberspace and that can create vulnerabilities for the military and society. Cyberspace has taken on an ever larger role in American society as more and more people shop, bank and communicate online. "I would argue that almost anything you can do walking down the street in Montgomery, you can do in cyberspace," Kehler said. But, that interconnectivity means the military can't power down or disconnect during an attack, Kehler said. He mentioned a 2008 paper by Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the former Chief of the Staff of the Air Force, that listed air, space and cyberspace as interdependent. Those are the three domains for which the Air Force assumes responsibility. Lose one, you lose all three, Moseley argued in his paper. Kehler added his own equation. "If you lose all three, you lose," he said. Kehler and fellow cyber guru, Lt. Gen. William T. Lord, said the acquisitions process for cyberspace needs some adjustments. Lord is the chief of warfighting integration and the chief information officer in the Secretary of the Air Force's office at the Pentagon. He spoke at AFITC last year, while he was serving as the commander of the Air Force's provisional cyber command. The Air Force axed the major command in favor of Global Strike Command, which recently was activated to oversee nuclear operations and other related activities. Technology changes rapidly as do the capabilities of the military and its adversaries. But as the country's military moves into cyberspace it will no longer be able to acquire new weapons or technologies the way it has acquired them before. The Air Force, which once aspired to flying at the speed of sound has now made its goal buying at the "speed of need," Lord said, borrowing a phrase from Kehler. He said that traditionally, obtaining military acquisitions has been a slow process. Weapons systems, such as the F-22 -- a fighter plane that uses stealth technology -- take more than 10 years to develop, build and put into service, Lord said. "We can't do it that way (anymore)," Lord said of cyberspace acquisitions. In an interview with the Montgomery Advertiser, Lord said new processes are needed to help contracting officers get what the Air Force needs more quickly. "Some capabilities you have to deliver in hours and days, some you have weeks and months and some you have years," Lord said. "It has to get faster." The Air Force can create those processes and rules, Lord said, because existing laws allow for flexibility in acquisitions. Major concerns for the Air Force and new technologies that they're paying attention to include network defense, cyber situational awareness and other tools to help airmen manage the network, Lord said. He added that industry has seen the need develop in the Air Force and is creating the tools and capabilities to meet that need. Industry companies, such as Telos, are providing those tools, and Telos currently has a contract with the Application Software Assurance Center of Excellence at Gunter Annex. Telos and the center help ensure that software and applications developed by industry are safe for Air Force networks and won't create security breaches or weaken the network's overall security. Dave Kovach, director of San Antonio operations for Telos, a network security company, said his company is doing a lot of work with the military to install secure networks and application and software assurance. Security is an essential requirement for anything it delivers to the government, Kovach said. With just a week under his belt in the new job, Lord is also trying to create more opportunities for innovation. "Too much policy stifles innovation," he said. He is attempting to do something that's not common in the military -- cut through the tomes of rules, regulations and policies. He's attempting a 75 percent reduction in policy, "so that what's left is something people will pay attention to." 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