May 4, 2016
A recent pilot to incorporate cyber into tactical training exercises is showing positive results, according to Army officials. Through the first-ever program, experts from Army Cyber Command provide training on offensive and defensive cyber operations.
The training is part of the Army’s larger Cyber Support to Corps and Below program, an effort to enhance soldiers’ skills in all aspects of digital communications. Planners aim to integrate tactical edge cyber tools, techniques and capabilities into home-station training and Army combat training centers.
“The cyber environment is something the commanders are going to have to face in the future, it is a fact of modern telecommunications,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Burnett, pilot lead for the Cyber Support to Corps and Below program. “Commanders must be able to maneuver and operate within the information environment.”
Launched in spring 2015, the pilot completed its fifth iteration in February, with the next installment due to take place in August. The pilot program includes two to three days in the classroom, along with two to three weeks of hands-on training. Course content covers a wide range of topics. Trainees learn the rules of cyber use, review demonstrations of potential capabilities, and study the fundamentals of network defense.
2nd Lt. Ian Reynoso, a student in the Army's first Cyber Basic Officer Leader Course at the Army Cyber School, uses a field computer to probe for a targeted wireless network signal during a field training exercise at Fort Gordon, Ga., March 1, 2016. (Photo: Capt. Sam Thode/Army)
The point of the program is not to make every trainee hands-on capable in a cyber scenario, but to introduce a base level of familiarity that could prove significant when cyber issues arise.
“We don’t expect brigade combat teams to become computer programmers and electrical engineers. We expect them to understand how to identify conditions on the battlefield where cyberspace operations can influence and affect outcomes within the combat operation,” Burnett said.
Some of the training focuses on cyber defense. During a training of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, for example, trainers demonstrated tools that can help to ensure network confidentiality, integrity and availability in the face of an electronic adversary.
The training also is designed to help commanders make proactive use of the assets inherent in cyberspace tools.
In another scenario, an offensive team nested within a platoon uses cyber capabilities to geo-locate an insurgent commander. As an offensive capability, a cyber implementation can engage in reconnaissance, disrupt enemy command nodes and perform a range of other tasks.
The instruction drills down to encounters often overlooked. “If you look at social media, for example, an adversary has the ability to conduct command and control, to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. That is already beginning to surface,” Burnett said. “It becomes essential for commanders to deny the enemy the ability to use that kind of environment.”
The Army training community has given positive reviews to the incorporation of such skills into broader training exercises. “By adding the cyber element …we can begin to replicate the problems a unit might have operating in contested cyberspace,” said Ken Drylie, a spokesman for the National Training Center, which hosted the pilot during a training session for the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division in January and February.
“The lessons learned here can assist leaders in making better decisions later,” Drylie said.
Organizers say they have been weighing feedback from those in the training community. One key change in the program has been a scaling back in the language of cyber training. “We have used terminology that was not familiar within the brigade combat team’s tactical terms, so we have made adjusts to that,” Burnett said.
The subject matter of the program has likewise retreated somewhat from an overly technical approach. “We were first utilizing some very complex systems, cyber capabilities that were just too complicated for commanders to engage in,” he said.
Such issues are slated to be addressed in the National Training Center’s August training session for the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kansas.
RELATED: Interested in learning more about how C2/Comms technology is being implemented at a tactical level? Col James Jenkins, Chief Information Commanding Officer, Marine Aircraft Group 29, U.S. Marine Corps, will participate in a panel discussion on how new satellite capabilities, on-the-move, and expeditionary communications are revolutionizing tactical communications. Register today for the C4ISR & Networks Conference on May 26 at the Renaissance Arlington.
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