What's Brewin: The Cyber Command sweepstakes winner is ...

I have picked up strong signals that Pentagon leadership has decided that the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb., will create and run a joint cyber command, dashing any hopes the Air Force has to own all things cyber in the Defense Department.

I'm told STRATCOM will announce formation of the new organization by the end of October, with a formal stand-up of the group planned by spring 2009.

Putting STRATCOM in charge of a joint cyber command makes more sense, sources told me, than handing over the mission to the zoomies, because STRATCOM already has under its wing the Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, which is charged with defense of the military's Global Information Grid.

The new joint cyber command will have the responsibilities of network attack as well as defense, and it makes sense to put the two missions under one organization, sources told me.

England: No One Owns Cyber

Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England drove home this point in a May 12 memo in which hesaid, "Because all the combatant commands, military departments and other defense components need the ability to work unhindered in cyberspace, the domain does not fall within the purview of any particular department or component."

England directed the Pentagon policy shop and the joint staff to define cyber operations so Defense can staff, train and equip forces for operations in the new warfighting domain.

So, where do the forces come from?

Hope for Air Force Cyber Command

My sources tell me that STRATCOM will rely on the three services to provide personnel and equipment for the new joint cyber command, which may give a boost to the planned Air Force Cyber Command, the formation of which was abruptly halted by its leadership last month.

Since STRATCOM will need a new breed of cyber space warriors -- and the Air Force had planned to train them -- a new AFCYBER unit could definitely have a key role, along with the Naval Network Warfare Command and the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command.

I wonder if the Air Force will learn to play well with the other children in the new cyber schoolyard instead of conducting a last-ditch effort to keep all the toys to itself.

NIPRNet's Achilles' Heel

Scenarios of a future cyber war depict a technologically savvy adversary using all kinds of Internet attack tools to take down U.S. electric power networks, landing a hard blow to the economy and cyber bombing us back to the Stone Age.

A more realistic, but equally scary scenario, is selectively targeting Defense's Nonclassified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet), which James Mulvenon, deputy director for Advanced Studies and Analysis at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, which is operated by the Defense Group Inc., said the Chinese military views as the Achilles' heel of U.S. military operations.

Mulvenon, speaking in May at a little-noticed hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said the NIPRNet supports the automated logistics functions needed to shore up U.S. reaction to a Chinese incursion against Taiwan. Take down the NIPRNet, which rides on commercial networks, and the Chinese can frustrate U.S. operations in support of Taiwan, he told the hearing.

The JTF-GNO View

When Air Force Col. Gary McAlum was director of operations for the Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations (he's now a consultant with Deloitte & Touche LLP), he told the China panel that he agreed with Mulvenon. Defense uses the NIPRNet to pay bills, order spare parts, conduct contracting and manage deployments, so China's ability to exploit the network is a "huge concern," he said.

Oh well, maybe the Homeland Security Department can defend the NIPRNet along with everything else it's going to do as the lead agency in the Bush administration's national cybersecurity initiative.

I have friends in Defense who say giving DHS the lead in protecting the nation's networks from cyberattack could result in a revival of the carrier pigeon for transmitting secure messages.