What will a AF Cyber Squadron Look Like?

Brew Dawg-

Great discussion. In my opinion, the Cyber Squadron is needed as the COS and NOS have found themselves overstretched and the pendulum will need to swing back to where bases have more involvement in securing their part of the battle space. That means a more operational focus, and more rights (appropriate to their level) on the network. Can't tell you how many times I've told my base leadership "If it was mine to fix, I would have fixed it already." The bases, with the right permissions, can ease the strain while being more responsive to their base's missions. What I have never had explained is who takes on the "Comm Squadron" roles, as many of those will still need to be done. And does the new unit report to the base leadership or 24 AF?

But we're thinking too small. I think cyber defense and offense are both complex mission sets that defy national and governmental boundaries and jurisdictions, and should be handled as such. A good problem set to use as a baseline is terrorism, and the JIATF(s) created to combat this problem set. If given the right legal authorities and capabilities (and mindset), a JIATF under CYBERCOM could move as fast, if not faster than our enemies, especially as the operating concept has already been established in F3EA. To bring it back to the original question, would the Cyber Squadron have play in this construct? I think would depend on the threat and what forces need to be presented. And would most likely involve the CMTs.

Lastly, the Cyber Squadron is our best bet to rebuild the experience we can't currently build at the base level.

General Hyten came from the secret squirrel world, and he seems to embrace change to adapt to the changing environment, so he probably has a decent idea of what a cyber squadron should look like. The hard part is getting everyone from the President down to Airman Snuffy to buy into the details. Nobody knows what those details are, because policy, doctrine, manning, training, and funding do not all change with the times at the same rate.

There will be a difference between what the squadrons should look like and what they will look like. They should not look like base communications units. They should probably be collocated (physically or virtually) with other secret squirrels. They should be selectively manned through Green Door. Speaking of Green Door, those Airmen should be sheltered from standard deployments while assigned to cyber squadrons, and "deployed in place" while ADCON to the base, OPCON to the COCOM JTF, TACON to the JFCC-Cyber. For defense the squadrons would be OPCON to USCYBERCOM; for offense that OPCON may shift to, say, USPACOM in the form of a cyber mission team while they operate a classified weapon. Cyber squadrons should always be drilling offense and defense. Approvals for deploying effects is a difficult discussion to navigate through due to policy, as well as technical difficulties in proving attribution. Just because the computer sees an inbound IP address originating from China, it does not necessarily mean that it is actually from China. We cannot go to war against China over solar flares rebooting computers or something crazy like that.

There will be many changes and many missteps before we arrive at the correct way to operate cyber squadrons.

Great question. While it might sound cool, the devil is in the details. The AF Trains, Organizes, and Equips its forces...to support the Joint Force Commander...that's its role. Ops units train at home base, but do their wartime mission when assigned to COCOMs/JTFs. Offensive cyber requires very high level approval...well above a JFACC. So, how will AF Cyber Squadrons, assigned to USCYBERCOM under STRATCOM, support the PACOM commander when he needs to retaliate against a Chinese cyber attack? Who has COCOM, who has OPCON, who has TACON, and how does approval for execution of a strike get done? Until we know how they will support the JFC in going offensive, they will still be regarded as base Comms support personnel.