Cyber Primer

Integrating cyber operations
Chapter 4 – Integrating cyber
operations
Cyber is vital to our national security, playing an integral role in protecting the UK
against external and internal threats. For this reason it is essential that cyber is
considered an integral aspect of military operations. This chapter also provides
details on cyber command and control and how it is coordinated, synchronised
and integrated within Defence and across government.
Integrating cyber effects
4.1. Military cyber operations must be coordinated, synchronised and
integrated across the strategic, operational and tactical levels of operations
with all other military capabilities. These activities are part of Defence’s
approach to full spectrum targeting processes. It recognises that other
nations or actors, both friendly and adversary, may use cyber capabilities to
enhance their own ability to achieve a degree of local, regional and/or
international influence, which may otherwise be limited through other
means.
4.2. Strategic effects. Cyber’s virtual and flexible properties mean that we
can potentially create a variety of effects in terms of complexity and severity,
and at a tuneable scale. Cyber is not affected by physical geography in the
same way as other conventionally-derived effects and may offer options
to hold strategic target sets at risk that otherwise would be unreachable.
The 2008 Stuxnet attack against the Iranian nuclear programme is a good
example of cyber enabling operations for strategic effect. 46
4.3. Operational effects. Integrating cyber capability into operational
level planning is a new and evolving process. We need a high degree of
integration and cooperation with units and organisations that routinely
operate at the strategic level to successfully create cyber effects within a
campaign. It is entirely possible that cyber operations will have been taking
place for some time, possibly years, before conventional forces are deployed.
46 More details of this case study can be found at Annex 4A on pages 76-77.
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