Col. Mary O'Brien, USAF, Commander of the 70th ISR Wing, addresses the 12th Annual C4ISR Journal Conference on April 25. (Mike Morones/staff)

The Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency's entry into the service's top combat exercise was just a first step in the integration, with future exercises expected to test how the service can collect information in a contested environment.

Col. Mary O'Brien, commander of the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing at Fort Meade, Md., said today at the C4ISR Conference in Crystal City, Va., that the service fully integrated ISR assets into the most recent Red Flag exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., as a way to provide "more realistic training for ISR analysts, more training like we fight."

"We bring everybody together for Red Flag, so we thought we should do the same for ISR," O'Brien said.

The agency had the 526th Intelligence Squadron to take part in the exercise, with off-site support from the 566th Intelligence Squadron and the 70th and 480th ISR Wings. The group set up the first "ISR package commander" to plan and oversee the missions, which featured air frames including the MC-12 Liberty, RQ-4 Global Hawk and footage from U-2 spy planes. For three weeks, ISR analysts tested their capabilities in core Air Force missions, including close air support, global strike and air interdiction. The exercise ran from Feb. 25 to March 15.

"We really want to get a handle on that non-(counter insurgency) training," O'Brien said. "A lot of our ISR agents have only worked in a permissive environment, so we need to train for contested and integrated operations. It's the only way to guarantee that those wartime capabilities will be there when you need them."

One example mission focused on providing close air support in an area with a credible anti-air threat. ISR agents worked with an MC-12 Liberty crew to provide information to joint terminal attack controllers on the ground for close air support from friendly aircraft.

"That's one of the things that we need to figure out, how much risk would we have to take to fly airborne ISR assets," O'Brien said.

The first test was just a way for ISR to get their "foot in the door" into the exercise, and they worked around the original flying missions that are the focus of current Red Flag exercises. But going forward, the agency wants to test its assets and abilities in contested environments and ensure that their analysts can work with their equipment in missions other than the ones they currently face.

"I really want my analysts to know how to use the ISR capabilities we have already fielded and use them in a new environment," O'Brien said. "This was really focused on 'Are we using this to the best of our abilities?' "

The agency is looking at including ISR in future Red Flags and other exercises across the Air Force, O'Brien said. These exercises face an uncertain future, however, with sequestration canceling the next Red Flag-Alaska and other exercises such as the Air Mobility Rodeo.

Dale Meyerrose, founder of the MeyerRose Group, participates in a discussion, "Cyber Security, Threats and Responses," during the 12th Annual C4ISR Journal Conference on April 25. (Mike Morones/Staff)

The best way to fix the discrepancies in cyber defense facing the U.S. is to apply techniques used in other military and security realms and to cease viewing cyber as unique, several experts said during a panel discussion Thursday at the C4ISR Journal conference.

The panelists, who focused on cybersecurity and ongoing international threats, pointed to ways in which cyber has been separated from normal practices and as such removed from the lessons learned in other domains.

“Cyber is not an isolated domain,” said Dale Meyerrose, former associate director of national intelligence.  “Those of us in this business seem to get all wrapped up in the business of cyber this and cyber that.  Cyber is a means to human endeavor, we sometimes have trouble with that.”

Meyerrose, who now runs the MeyerRose Group, said that the development of cyber mirrors that of the domain of space, where ongoing debates lingered into the 1990s until it was integrated into traditional military planning.

“Maybe we need the discussion of cyber as a special topic in order for us to become more educated.” Meyerrose said.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of CrowdStrike, drew comparisons to law enforcement, saying that experts get too focused on the tools of the cyber trade as opposed to the general principle of apprehension and justice.

“When someone is shooting at you, you’re not asking ‘is that a 20 caliber or a 40 caliber bullet’ that’s flying at you,” he said.  “You don’t really care.  You care about who’s shooting at you, why they’re shooting at you, what you’re going to do to neutralize that threat.  The gun they use is only of interest after they’ve actually killed you and the police are going to arrive to determine from the forensics on the gun who the actor actually was.”

And the focus on tools has led to an exclusive emphasis on improving defense which, if one views cyber through the model of physical security, doesn’t work.  Improving locks or putting bars over windows doesn’t create perfect protection, Alperovitch said.  Instead, looking at the way an alarm system deters crime shows the limitations of our current cybersecurity approach which is largely unsuccessful in bringing an attacker to justice.

“An alarm system does absolutely nothing to secure your house, people can still break in,” he said.  “But what it does is it says, ‘we’ll concede that you can get into this house, but when you do maybe I have cameras that will take a picture of you and the alarm company will get notified and will call me at three in the morning and they’ll say sir or mam, your door was kicked in, we are sending who?  Not the locksmith to fix your door, we’re sending the police to catch the guy.”

Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) addresses the 12th Annual C4ISR Journal Conference on April 25. (Mike Morones/Defense News)

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, plans to introduce cyber legislation this summer that would codify the roles and responsibilities of agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and make DHS the lead for cyber information sharing with the private sector.

McCaul, who spoke Thursday at a C4ISR Journal Conference, said most of the bill has been drafted and could be introduced by July. Under the bill, DHS' National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) would be the primary hub for collecting and disseminating cyber threat intelligence shared with the private sector.

"We want to know what's out there in the private sector," McCaul said. "People think that NSA has all the threat information or Homeland Security, and the fact is it's a very small part of it. It's like a phone book, and the majority of that phone book is laying out there in the private sector"

The bill would include so-called safe harbors and liability protection for companies that share threat information. The criticism of the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which passed the House this month, is that citizens' private data would not be properly protected when Internet companies and other private firms share data with the government. Critics also said the bill was overly broad in describing how shared information could be used, such as for cybersecurity purposes.

McCaul said it's too early to comment on the liability protections his bill will including or the guidelines around what shared information could be used to do. He has been working with the White House, critical infrastructure companies and lawmakers in the House and Senate to hash out details of the bill and address their concerns, he said.

"I have no interest in passing a bill that isn't going to go anywhere," he said.

McCaul was one of 288 lawmakers who supported CISPA, but the White House has threatened to veto the bill.

"It's truly a win-win situation, if done right," he said of information sharing with the private sector. "If not done right, it can be very damaging. I want to do it the right way, so I can encourage a two-way street of sharing information."

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (Mike Morones/Staff)

The intelligence community did its job in handling information on the Boston Bombing suspects, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday at the C4ISR Journal conference in Crystal City, Va.

Despite the fact that one of the two brothers accused of the bombings was on a terrorist watch list prior to the attack, Clapper emphasized that the government handled the suspect appropriately.

“Being in the database is not necessarily indicative of plans for nefarious activity,” he said. “I don’t think it was (an intelligence failure).  There are half a million people on the watch list.”

Clapper said that there continues to be a great deal of difficulty in predetermining when an individual has become radicalized in advance of terrorist action.

“I think it would be a real good idea not to hyperventilate until we get the facts,” he said.  “I think the bigger issue here is what is the government’s responsibility for mindreading about the point at which someone will self-radicalize?”

In response to the bombings many have been pushing the notion of government surveillance, Clapper said, but protection of civil liberties has been an afterthought.

“There’s a bigger issue, and that is the extent to which you want the government to monitor U.S. citizens’ behaviors,” he said.  “I think at some point we have to come to a judgment here, on just how intrusive we want big brother to be.”

“I would liken it to a pendulum.  Of course the pendulum is going to swing now in one direction, and it will swing back later.”

November 2012

Each year, C4ISR Journal scans the world of network, sensors and intelligence looking for the new technologies and new efforts changing the way military forces and policymakers do their jobs. We find these candidates in many ways. Some are nominated by the manufacturers, some by their users, still others are in the news. We scrutinize each one — Is it new? Is it available? Is it useful? Is it being used? — and slim down the pool to a list of the best.

Arrayed in five categories — Sensors, Innovations, Network Systems, Organizations and Platforms — this year’s winners run the gamut from “app stores” that could put crucial mission information on an infantry smartphone to a reusable space plane that flies home from orbit. Last month, we revealed the entire Big 25 list; this month, we honor the Top Five.

• SENSORS:  Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the Imaging System

Awarded  for Immersive Surveillance. MIT’s multicamera video surveillance system can monitor an area the size of seven football fields and zoom in on people with enough resolution to identify them by their facial features up to 100 meters away in all directions. The system does this by seamlessly combining the views from 48 cameras. A prototype of ISIS has been tested at Terminal A of Boston’s Logan International Airport, where hijackers boarded two of the doomed flights of 9/11.

• INNOVATIONS: U.S. Army G-2 intelligence staff, the National Reconnaissance Office, the  Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate of the Communications-Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center, and Thermopylae Science and Technology

Awarded for:   Windshear, software that connects a soldier’s hand-held device to biometric data and intelligence products on the Distributed Common Ground System-Army network. Windshear is the brainchild of the late Pedro “Pete” Rustan, former director of NRO’s Mission Support Directorate, who sought to give small units the same ability to reach that civilians have on smartphones. Now Windshear officials are talking with managers of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s TransApps mobility project about how to integrate their effort. Rustan, who died in July, handed the project to his staff, saying, “It’s your responsibility to force change on a system that won’t want it. Your first approach should be the front door, but if your polite knocks go unanswered, go to the back door. ... Whatever you do, don’t give up until you have pulled the community forward.”

• ORGANIZATIONS: National Security Agency

Awarded for Project Fish Bowl, a pilot effort to create mobile devices that can securely handle top-secret conversations and data. The intelligence community needs to keep pace with mobile communications breakthroughs in the commercial world. Project Fish Bowl is doing that by letting intelligence IT workers test off-the-shelf cellphones programmed with special security features and extra encryption. Participants in the Fish Bowl pilot are allowed to engage in top-secret conversations tunneled through a commercial cellular network. For now, NSA is focusing on voice-over-Internet, but eventually it would like to give users access to data, too. For security, the data would not be stored on the device; users would view in the intelligence community’s private cloud.

• NETWORK SYSTEMS: Army’s Distributed Common Ground System-Army program and 42Six Solutions

Awarded for Coral Reef, an intelligence community computer application that lets analysts upload, search and perform analysis on data extracted from cellphones and GPS devices. The app increases the knowledge of analysts and tactical operators at checkpoints or forward operating bases or on intelligence collection missions. A user in the field acquires data extracted from an adversary’s digital communications, cellphone calls or GPS signals and uploads the information into the Coral Reef network for analysis. The technology helps operators identify suspicious individuals so they can access other intelligence associated with them.

• PLATFORMS Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office

Awarded  for the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, the service’s “space plane.” The Air Force has kept its X-37B operations largely secret, but what is known is that the vehicle allows the Air Force to test equipment in space for months at a time, then bring it home for inspection. Such capabilities raise the possibility that the U.S. could deploy sensors into orbits tailored to observe regional hot spots, although the government does not acknowledge this mission. The X-37B vehicle landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in June to conclude a mysterious 15-month stay in orbit.