The Army is already struggling to man its new cyber units — and now it wants to expand their ranks and responsibilities for a new mission.

AUSA: The Army is giving its electronic warfare force more troops, more training, and a more prominent role in combat headquarters, senior officers said here Thursday, pushing back on criticisms that the service neglects EW even as Russia and China pull ahead. The number of EW troops has increased from 813 (both officers and enlisted)… Keep reading →

This internal budget battle in the Army could cede the actual battlefield to high-powered Russian and Chinese jammers, electronic warfare advocates fear, with the same lethal consequences for US troops that Ukrainian forces have suffered since 2014.

ARLINGTON: Outgunned in the airwaves by Russian jammers, the US Army has a new plan for electronic warfare. The Army hopes to rebuild the long-neglected EW branch more quickly — in part, paradoxically, by partially submerging it in other branches, namely military intelligence and cyber. There’s both an equipment aspect and an organizational one. First… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, has ordered a review of service’s longstanding shortfalls in electronic warfare, officers told me in an exclusive interview. The ultimate goal: give commanders from platoon to corps the ability to shut down enemy radio and radar as readily as they now call in airstrikes and artillery. It’s a critical… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The US Army is rushing to stand up cyber forces but its progress shows both how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go. “From an initial start of six officers in 2014… today we have 397 officers, 141 warrant officers, and 560 non-commissioned officers and soldiers” in the Army’s recently created cyber… Keep reading →

ARLINGTON: The Army is reinforcing its combat brigades with cyber soldiers. In 18 months of wargames with a wide range of units — tanks, Strykers, infantry, Airborne, Rangers — Army Cyber Command troops have brought hacking and jamming to bear on the (simulated) battlefield alongside guns and bombs. The exercises have already revealed cybersecurity shortfalls… Keep reading →

ARLINGTON: “We needed to learn to speak infantry,” said Col. William Hartman, commander of the Army’s first offensive cyber operations brigade. That’s not easy. When one of Hartman’s teams joined a brigade of the 25th Infantry Division for an exercise this spring, the colonel recounted, the 25th’s commanding general told Hartman that his cyber operators… Keep reading →

Technology is moving too fast to keep track of everything, but there’s one overarching trend that policymakers must not miss in 2015. Call it “convergence.” Cybersecurity is no longer its own specialized function for tech geeks to take care of off to one side while the rest of the organization gets on with the real… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In an Army budget outlook that’s otherwise as grim as television tuned to a dead channel, there is one bright spot: cyberspace. “You know, we say that ‘flat is the new growth’ in DoD,” Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld, said at yesterday’s Bloomberg conference. “[Even] special operations forces”… Keep reading →