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  1. #1
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    WM, as an old Psyoper I thought that you were referring to Commando Solo rather than Compass Call. I Googled and found 3 versions of the EC-130 platform.
    1. The EC-130 ABCCC
    2. The EC-130 Compass Call for electronic countermeasures against enemy C2
    3. The EC-130 Commando Solo, airborne radio and TV station that can deliver its PSYOP message from on high.

    It is a great AF COIN mission but its low density - one unit - and location - the Pennsylvania Air National Guard - as part of the Air Force Special Operations Command gives an idea of USAF priorities. Even more than the Army, the USAF doesn't see PSYOP, let alone the rest of AFSOC, as part of the real Air Force

    Cheers



    John
    John,
    Thanks for refreshing my failing memory. As an old EW guy, I knew the Compass Call variant and knew it also came in a Psyop version, but I could not remember the name of the Psyop variant. I was thinking that a well-run Commando Solo effort might provide an interesting counterpoint to Al-Jazeera, et. al.
    I know what you mean about prioritizing mission capabilities. I think the "new" Air Force mission statement was largely an attempt to justify efforts to snap up more dollars in the POM process--insert snappy buzzwords to be able to ask for more money for systems that support precision strategic strike targeting / C2, not for systems that support a full spectrum joint warfighting capability.

  2. #2
    Council Member Ironhorse's Avatar
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    Default Yes, but....

    Commando Solo, great piece of gear that it is, is at the end of the day a delivery platform for a message. You still need to have the message to deliver. Tightly integrated with the whole operation. So maybe it's one aerial platform, but it is not an aerial op.

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    John,
    Thanks for refreshing my failing memory. As an old EW guy, I knew the Compass Call variant and knew it also came in a Psyop version, but I could not remember the name of the Psyop variant. I was thinking that a well-run Commando Solo effort might provide an interesting counterpoint to Al-Jazeera, et. al.

  3. #3
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ironhorse View Post
    Commando Solo, great piece of gear that it is, is at the end of the day a delivery platform for a message. You still need to have the message to deliver. Tightly integrated with the whole operation. So maybe it's one aerial platform, but it is not an aerial op.
    True, the EC-130 with its various payloads is simply a delivery mechanism, but then so is a B1 or an A10 (and so is a C-141 or C-130 loaded with a contingent of 82d Abn Troopers). With its revised mission statement, the Air Force has taken it upon itself to be the lead DoD Cyberwarrior. Cyberwar is, IMHO, Info War, and Infor War includes Psyop. I think I was suggesting that if we want to redivide the "mission pie," we might give the folks in blue the service proponency for IO/Cyberwar. If the new Air Force mission statement is more than just that service shooting off its mouth, this redivision has already occured. The rest of the services need to enable the USAF effort by supporting them in IO operations of all types. And that means working together to get a well crafted message that supports the operation, as you note, tightly.

  4. #4
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Default Always ready to fight the last war...

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    Within the last year or so, USAF redfefined its mission to include the cyberspacw piece you reacted to. I'm not sure it is statutory or reflrcted in any JCS/DoD literature however.
    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    3. The EC-130 Commando Solo, airborne radio and TV station that can deliver its PSYOP message from on high.

    It is a great AF COIN mission but its low density - one unit - and location - the Pennsylvania Air National Guard - as part of the Air Force Special Operations Command gives an idea of USAF priorities. Even more than the Army, the USAF doesn't see PSYOP, let alone the rest of AFSOC, as part of the real Air Force
    Anyone mind if I add an "oye vei!!!!" here . Television? Radio? Umm, how about Youtube and LiveLeak? Oh, yeah, and who legislates the RF transmissions in Iraq? If they want to play in cyberspace, then they need to get some really good hackers to teach them how.

    If the USAF is going to get into the COIN game in other than their "traditional" roles, the really do need to start thinking out of the box rather than trying to legislate the box. As a start, they may want to examine light cavalry tactics, especially those of the Khazaks and Mongols (probably best in Afghanistan.

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
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    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Honestly, I think itis a major mistake to task cyberwarfare to the USAF. Think about the mindset required to be a really good hacker and you will see that there will be a major culture clash. About the closest match I can think of, in cultural terms, would be with the Special Forces - although the relative differences in emphasis, physical vs. non-physical, wold be a problem.

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  6. #6
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
    Honestly, I think itis a major mistake to task cyberwarfare to the USAF. Think about the mindset required to be a really good hacker and you will see that there will be a major culture clash. About the closest match I can think of, in cultural terms, would be with the Special Forces - although the relative differences in emphasis, physical vs. non-physical, wold be a problem.

    Marc
    I would tend to agree, Marc. For all its talk, there's a fair chunk of the USAF that simply CAN'T think outside any box. Obviously that statement applies to other services as well, but the AF as it exists today isn't culturally suited for this kind of operation. For example, did you know that their standard (actually mandated) desktop setup requires people to use MS products exclusively? Never mind that many of them are very vulnerable to cyber-attack.

    Now before LawVol jumps me for AF-bashing ( just joking, LV), there are younger elements within the AF that see the need for change and a flexible response to world situations. The group we just commissioned here is well aware that the "next war" won't be the force-on-force run against the Chinese hordes. I do what I can with the exercise I've mentioned elsewhere to prepare them for a "fight as you come" world with lots of variables and no "school solution" or silver bullet systems. They face the same resistance to COIN that other services grapple with, but I think the difference here lies in the fact that the AF has no real COIN heritage that it chooses to remember. AFSOC is a dynamic organization, but it's really kept hidden from the main AF.

    As I've said before, hopefully this will all change. The AF has good systems and some good ideas to go with them. They just need to climb out of the shadow of the F-22 and B-2 and find some daylight and a good audience.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

  7. #7
    Council Member Ironhorse's Avatar
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    Default Lead?

    I might agree, or I might be even more freaked out, if I knew what "lead" or "proponency" meant in this context. What are the authorities and responsiblities of the lead? What can the non-lead expect, demand, or have to suck up?

    The information domain is mission critical across all services and most ops. We can no more give all of Cyber to the Air Force (or let them take it ), than we can give all FP to the Army or all beaches to the Marine Corps or all C2 to guys named Sparky. Hell, we don't even give the Air Force all the air or the Navy the water. And IO, whatever that is , is much more than Cyber.

    There sure are reasons to pin the rose on some folks to produce results needed by all or services available to all. But the Chinese walls behind an awful lot of lead and proponency have proved to be a lot higher and more dysfunctional than that.

  8. #8
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Hi Ironhorse,

    Quote Originally Posted by Ironhorse View Post
    The information domain is mission critical across all services and most ops. We can no more give all of Cyber to the Air Force (or let them take it ), than we can give all FP to the Army or all beaches to the Marine Corps or all C2 to guys named Sparky. Hell, we don't even give the Air Force all the air or the Navy the water. And IO, whatever that is , is much more than Cyber.
    That is an excellent point! I think it would be a very good exercise to break down the different forms of "cyberwarfare" into what Abbott called "Tasks" (think of that more as operations types). In general, we would have something like
    • Offensive capabilities
      • Standard (e.g. script attacks, viruses, agents, etc.)
      • PSYOPS
    • Defensive capabilities
      • Firewalls, blocking strategies, etc.
      • Anti-spyware, anti-virus, cleaning, encryption, etc.
      • IO
    • Tracking
      • Spiders, bots, agents
      • "Special ops" (think about the hunt for Kevin Mitnick)
    • Intelligence gathering
      • Site identification & Monitoring
      • User identification, etc.
      • Decryption
    • R&D
    Selil should add / modify this since he's the expert <grin>. However, even with such a limited a list, you can see that the type of mindset required is really quite different from most military groups (hence my comments about SF). If the USAF were serious, then they should hire back Jerry Pournelle to advise them aided and abbeted by William Gibson, Selil and yours truly .

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  9. #9
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Hi Steve,

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
    I would tend to agree, Marc. For all its talk, there's a fair chunk of the USAF that simply CAN'T think outside any box. Obviously that statement applies to other services as well, but the AF as it exists today isn't culturally suited for this kind of operation. For example, did you know that their standard (actually mandated) desktop setup requires people to use MS products exclusively? Never mind that many of them are very vulnerable to cyber-attack.
    Okay, that in and of itself should be enough to bar them from anything to do with cyberwarfare! Even MicroSoft doesn't require its people to use solely MicroSoft products!

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  10. #10
    Council Member LawVol's Avatar
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    Nice one, Steve. I don't see AF bashing here, but I think when the topic of the AF comes up here many start acting like politicians. Think about those pols you see on TV; they never have a good thing to say about the other side, there is always a negative (although curiously, I do have MS on my AF computer, hummm...). Oh well, we still like you guys.

    I think one of the benefits I have as a "retread" is that I'm not institutionalized into one specific service. I can see the benefits of them all. For example, I see that the AF constantly tries to justify new gadgets in its budget -- just as the Army was sold on the Future Combat System which, acording to a recent articel in Government Executive "has become on of the Pentagon's most costly and problem-plagued weapons programs." So there's blame to go everywhere. If we could skip all the parochial BS and look at what is needed to win now and in the future, we'd all be better off. Maybe we should just get a small group of NCOs from each branch to figure it all out. They'd get it done.

    One comment says that the AF is likely to be in (or above) Iraq for some time after the ground pounders leave. This is likely true and our airframes are already very old and taxed. It takes money to upgrade these things. We have planes that are 50 years old! And even with upgrades, keeping the technological edge is a constant battle--one we can't afford to lose. I bet the Army would have a problem using weapons and radios from the 1950's. All I'm saying is that in fighting this war, we can't forget about the next one and it will likely be different from what we see now.

  11. #11
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    For all its talk, there's a fair chunk of the USAF that simply CAN'T think outside any box. Obviously that statement applies to other services as well, but the AF as it exists today isn't culturally suited for this kind of operation. For example, did you know that their standard (actually mandated) desktop setup requires people to use MS products exclusively? Never mind that many of them are very vulnerable to cyber-attack.
    As I've said before, hopefully this will all change. The AF has good systems and some good ideas to go with them. They just need to climb out of the shadow of the F-22 and B-2 and find some daylight and a good audience.
    Honestly, I think itis a major mistake to task cyberwarfare to the USAF. Think about the mindset required to be a really good hacker and you will see that there will be a major culture clash. About the closest match I can think of, in cultural terms, would be with the Special Forces - although the relative differences in emphasis, physical vs. non-physical, wold be a problem.
    All I can say is that these comments reflect the old chestnut," The pot calling the kettle black." I submit that my proposal was thinking outside the box and was shot down by you guys using what I consider to be "horse and buggy" thinking and ad hominems.

    I suggest that the type of mindset it takes to be an effective fighter jock is probably much more similar to that of an effective hacker than you seem to want to admit--for example: self-reliance/operating independently or alone for extended periods, extensive multitasking and human-machine interfacing, reluctance to follow authority, etc. etc. In any case, cyberwarfare is much more than some punk hacking a system to find root or wardriving a wireless network. But, to adopt your tactics, why would we expect a sociologist and a historian to know anything about computers and information technology?

    BTW, I dispute the MS-only programs claim. I am looking at the programs listed in my Air Force issued desk top computer (I only contract to them--20 years as a Green Suiter). It includes programs from Roxio, Symantec, Adobe, and several no-name software companies as well as the basic MS Office Suite which is pretty much de rigeur across the entire business world. We just migrated our web design application from FrontPage (MS app) to Dream Weaver (non MS app) and no longer have any support for FrontPage.

  12. #12
    Council Member marct's Avatar
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    Hi Wm,

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    All I can say is that these comments reflect the old chestnut," The pot calling the kettle black." I submit that my proposal was thinking outside the box and was shot down by you guys using what I consider to be "horse and buggy" thinking and ad hominems.
    No intention to do so .

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    I suggest that the type of mindset it takes to be an effective fighter jock is probably much more similar to that of an effective hacker than you seem to want to admit--for example: self-reliance/operating independently or alone for extended periods, extensive multitasking and human-machine interfacing, reluctance to follow authority, etc. etc. In any case, cyberwarfare is much more than some punk hacking a system to find root or wardriving a wireless network.
    Actually, those are excellent qualities for a really good cyber warrior. I suspect that these could be morphed into something along those lines pretty quickly. Part of the point I was trying to make by saying the the SF would be a better match, IMHO, was that the organizational culture was more supportive of this type or "style" of activity. I suspect that the idea of a cyber-fighter-jock would, despite the mindset similarities, lead to a lot of organizational internal conflict - especially because a really good cyber-warrior needs to think like a sniper or an assassin. I tend to agree with both Pournelle and Gibson on this that the "best" model is closer to the Ninjas, at least for those operating outside of the "standard" computer security fields.

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    But, to adopt your tactics, why would we expect a sociologist and a historian to know anything about computers and information technology?
    Anthropologist, please (the specialization was in Social Anthropology) .

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    BTW, I dispute the MS-only programs claim. I am looking at the programs listed in my Air Force issued desk top computer (I only contract to them--20 years as a Green Suiter). It includes programs from Roxio, Symantec, Adobe, and several no-name software companies as well as the basic MS Office Suite which is pretty much de rigeur across the entire business world. We just migrated our web design application from FrontPage (MS app) to Dream Weaver (non MS app) and no longer have any support for FrontPage.
    I'm glad to see you are moving to a real web design application . Just out of interest, are you allowed to install programs on it? If you've got Dreamweaver installed, I assume that you are doing some design work and I know that I use a fair number of DW extensions and about 15-20 freeware programs in my own design work.

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

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