Cybercom warfighting system faulted in Pentagon report

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

The military command in charge of conducting cyber warfare lacks the tools to conduct successful offensive attacks and defend against digital strikes by China and other adversaries, according to a report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board.

The Cyber Command’s Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, known as JCWA, is a suite of software and other tools used for cyber warfare. It has been in use since 2019 but has failed to produce needed capabilities, the science board concluded in unusually blunt criticism.

“While it has made incremental improvements since its inception, it is not a resilient, agile, future-facing warfighting architecture,” the report said. “Its limited capabilities are insufficient to support U.S. Cybercom assigned missions.”

Cyber Command is tasked with conducting operations during “competition, crisis, and armed conflict” against formidable adversaries, the report said, noting that successful warfighting requires “speed, scale, agility, and precision.”

“Without a cohesive architecture and suite of capabilities, however, U.S. Cybercom, cyber operational forces, military service cyber components, and the nation incur unacceptable risk to the cyber mission,” the report said.

The Pentagon, however, has been unable to innovate and field new cyber and related capabilities in a timely manner. The current JCWA system was produced by a defense system that is “falling ever farther behind as cyber technology and capabilities continue to change,” the report said.

The command needs to achieve “analytic superiority” for cyber warfighting.

The current system uses differing cyber warfighting tools to store and manage offensive and defensive cyberspace data and is spread among the military services. So far, the program “has not and cannot deliver analytic superiority,” the report said.

The architecture was built to improve capabilities, platforms and programs for the command. Its elements include a training system; a unified platform for data analyzing and sharing; a command and control element; and a joint common access platform for conducting offensive cyberattacks.

Fixing personnel and technical shortcomings to improve the cyber warfighting system will not solve the command’s problem. There is also a lack of prioritization and stabilization of strategic and operational-level targets that undermines the JCWA, the report said.

“Overcoming these limitations is essential for JCWA to deliver all-domain integrated effects that are synchronized in timing and tempo, as required by combatant commanders and national leadership,” the report said.

The board said the Pentagon and Cybercom must initiate bold — not incremental — changes today to ensure national success over the next decade.

The report urges the implementation of a newer version of the system called NextGen JCWA.

The 20-page report is dated May 2024 and posted recently to the Defense Science Board website. It was required by Congress under 2020 defense legislation.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its fiscal 2025 defense authorization bill, in June added language that would restrict funding for the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture until the commander of the Cyber Command, Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, provides a plan for moving on to NextGen JCWA.

Gen. Haugh told the committee in April that China remains the premier cyber threat actor and noted serious concerns about Beijing’s “persistent access and pre-positioning for attack on U.S. critical infrastructure systems.” Russia, Iran and North Korea also pose cyber warfare threats, he said.

Cybercom recently was given new authority for the use of JCWA that will be used to define its use with subcomponents of the system that are currently managed by the military services, he said.

A spokesman for Cyber Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, Michael Clark, deputy director of plans and policy at Cyber Command, unveiled plans to integrate artificial intelligence into military cyber operations.

The use of AI will seek to improve analytic capabilities and scale operations in bolstering efforts to disrupt adversary cyberattacks, he said.

“The integration of AI is a strategic necessity,” Mr. Clark said during a security conference. “Our road map will incorporate AI into all aspects of our operations to better address cyber threats.”

Israeli attacks on Hezbollah devices signal shift to nonkinetic warfare

Under international criticism for high civilian casualties during military operations against Hamas, the Israeli military is shifting to more targeted, nonkinetic warfare, according to a military affairs analyst.

Israeli military operations in Gaza in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack have decimated the Palestinian militant group’s forces. But the operations also reportedly inflicted a large number of civilian casualties, prompting international criticism, including complaints from the Biden administration.

The use of covert action against Hezbollah in Lebanon signals a new phase of the conflict through the greater use of hybrid intelligence and military operations, the analyst said speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hezbollah was hit with a large-scale military intelligence operation that involved detonating thousands of electronic pagers used by the terrorist group in a dramatic attack on Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria.

Reports indicate at least 12 people were killed and some 3,000 wounded by exploding pagers used by Hezbollah. The devices reportedly were sabotaged by the inclusion of small amounts of explosive and a detonator prior to delivery from a manufacturer in Hungary, news reports from Lebanon said.

Among the casualties were members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s shock troops.

The pager attack, which Israel’s government has not commented on, was followed on Wednesday by the similar explosions of sabotaged Hezbollah hand-held communications devices. The walkie-talkies exploded across Lebanon’s south and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Reuters reported.

The suspected Israeli operation against Hezbollah reflects the policies of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who is said to favor more covert and nonkinetic warfare against the Jewish state’s enemies.

Mr. Gallant has clashed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is said to favor more conventional military operations.

Mr. Netanyahu is considering dismissing Mr. Gallant, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The exploding communications device operations followed months of Hezbollah missile and drone strikes against Israel in support of Hamas, the group’s Palestinian ally. Israel also said it had thwarted a planned Hezbollah attack on a senior Israeli official.

The Hezbollah missile attacks have prompted Israeli airstrikes into Lebanon in response and raising the prospect of a wider regional conflict.

The sabotage operation required both sophisticated intelligence, such as identifying the procurement of the devices and intercepting them before delivery, as well as military expertise — planting the explosive and detonating the devices nearly simultaneously.

The defense source said the indications suggest the explosive device represents a new style of warfare using attacks with near zero forensics in determining the origin.

“Nobody can confirm or deny the likelihood of a stealthy nonkinetic attack on pagers and cellphones but to simply imagine that form of attack is pure science fiction would be a very dangerous and naive conclusion,” the source said.

“Also, one needs to seriously consider whether future attacks among sophisticated nations will feature embedded nonkinetic probes mixed in with conventional systems.”

Air Force official: Threat posed by China increases

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said this week that the threat posed by communist China is increasing and called for the U.S. military to increase its readiness in response.

“China continues to push boundaries of acceptable behavior with aggressive actions directed toward its neighbors,” Mr. Kendall said.

“I have instructed our briefers to stop referring to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army as a ‘future’, or ‘emerging’, or ‘potential’ threat. … It is a serious threat today,” he said.

The Chinese Communist Party is investing heavily in weapons systems and other capabilities and warfighting concepts designed specifically to defeat the United States and its allies’ ability to project power in the region.

The weapons include missile systems that can strike American land and sea forces including air bases and aircraft carriers.

“In addition, China continues to expand its nuclear forces and its ability to operate in cyberspace,” Mr. Kendall said. “We can expect all these trends to continue.”

The Air Force secretary declared that the U.S. needs to be prepared for a future potential conflict and listed several steps being taken by the Air Force to modernize its forces.

Mr. Kendall said conflict with China is not inevitable but “may be becoming more likely over time.”

“To prevent conflict, we must be ready; [and] to prevail in conflict, we must be ready,” Mr. Kendall said during a conference hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association.

China launches 1,000th satellite

China’s military recently launched new satellites that bring the total number of satellites in orbit to more than 1,000 — a landmark for Beijing’s rapidly expanding space program, the Space Force chief of intelligence said this week.

Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, the service’s chief intelligence officer, said the launch of a Chinese satellite about three weeks ago surpasses 1,000 orbiting systems, including 200 satellites orbited in the past year.

“And if you went back 10 years, in 2014, they only put 24 satellites up that year. So, you can see the rate of change is rapidly progressing,” Gen. Gagnon said during an Air and Space Forces Association conference.

The Washington Times reported Tuesday that a Space Force intelligence report from July stated that China had more than 970 satellites deployed for use in supporting attacks on U.S. aircraft carriers, expeditionary forces and air wings during a conflict.

Included in that number are 490 satellites that are used for military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, with sensors that include electro-optical, multispectrum radar and radar frequency technology, the report said.

• Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.