Gen. Hyten: ‘No such thing as war in cyber’

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By: Aaron Mehta 

Washington (AFNS) -- Gen. John Hyten, Air Force Space Command commander, speaks to the audience on maintaining space and cyber capabilities during the Air Force Association's 2014 Air and Space Conference at the Gaylord National Convention Center Washington, D.C., Sep. 16, 2014. As AFSPC Commander, he is responsible for organizing, equipping, training and maintaining mission-ready space and cyberspace forces and capabilities for North American Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Strategic Command and other combatant commands around the world. 

The U.S. cannot fall into the trap of focusing on warfighting domains when debating responses to an adversary, said Gen. John Hyten, the head of United States Strategic Command.

“There’s no such thing as war in space; there’s just war. There’s no such thing as war in cyber; there’s just war,” Hyten said while speaking at the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium Aug. 8 in Huntsville, Alabama. “We have to figure out how to defeat our adversaries, not to defeat the domains where they operate.”

The general, who has led STRATCOM since November 2016, circled back on that point later in the speech, warning that America’s assured dominance in air and space over the past 15 years could lead the Pentagon into bad habits.

“You can’t fall into the trap of saying ‘There’s a space problem, so I’ll ask the space guy to go fix the space problem,’” he said. “It’s a problem with an adversary. I may not want to [direct] a response to a space problem in space. ... I may go a different direction. So, it has to be from an adversary perspective, not a domain perspective.”