Download - Foreign Military Studies Office - U.S. Army

date, military opponents have been Cold War armies, the armies of Third World
countries, or insurgents—all with outdated military equipment.
The US military does have an organization with tremendous cyber
capability. It is the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) that performs
many computer security functions for the armed forces. DISA’s website notes
that it is a combat support agency responsible for planning, engineering,
acquiring, fielding, and supporting global net-centric solutions to serve the
needs of the President, Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and other
DOD components, under all conditions of peace and war. The DISA website
states that the organization
Provides a seamless, secure and reliable web of communications
networks, computers, software, databases, applications and other
capabilities that meet the information processing and transport needs of
DOD. DISA also ensures the integration and interoperability of
command and control, communications, computers and intelligence
(C4I) systems. 38
This organizational mission does not mention responsibility for the
manipulation, perception, recruitment, mobilization, and fear and intimidation
capabilities of insurgents. Rather the focus is on CNO activities such as
processing information, integrating systems, and ensuring computer security.
Overall, the military’s approach is more specific than the civilian
approach, and it exploits traditional concepts (however the US military is
currently updating its information operations doctrine to include several new
components). Information security, the worldwide information grid and
infrastructure, information attacks, and information operations are part of the
information lexicon of the military. The US military does, of course, utilize
numerous cyber influence concepts in its day-to-day activities. They just don’t
refer to them as such. Before and during combat in Iraq these activities
involved the use of emails and the Internet to convey messages and intentions.
Still, the military would describe these events as information and not cyber
operations.
Over the past decade the definition of IO has evolved and taken on new
elements and new meaning. Even today, however, uncertainty as to what is
meant by the term and what it can do for the commander remains. This
38 See Defense Information Systems Agency website at
http://www.disa.mil/main/about/missman.html
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