When the Air Force formed Air Force Space Command in 1982, it marked formal recognition that space was a distinct operating arena. The first commander, Gen. James V. Hartinger, said, “Space is a place. ... It is a theater of operations, and it was just a matter of time until we treated it as such.”
Meanwhile, around that same time, sci-fi author William Gibson published a novel entitled Neuromancer, a work that gave the world a strange new term—“cyberspace.” The book didn’t call cyberspace “a place” but a “consensual hallucination” of billions of humans. Few military men gave it much thought.
Nearly a quarter of a century later, though, it’s deja vu all over again. The Air Force has come to recognize cyberspace, like “regular” space, as an arena of human activity—including armed activity. It is, to reprise Hartinger, a theater of operations.
Cyber Command has in place systems and capabilities for integrating cyber operations into other Air Force global strike options. All that is lacking, according to one top official, are the “organizational and operational constructs” to integrate cyber ops with those of air and space operations.
John Arquilla worries about a “wildcard” threat: “individual hackers of very great skill.”
Wynne said the American “information mosaic”—the sum of data from all sensors that can be “collected and downloaded and cross-loaded for use by all in the fight”—is the key target of Air Force adversaries and a key cyber vulnerability.
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At least one Russian official has said that a cyber-attack on Russia’s critical transportation or power infrastructure would warrant a nuclear response.
