Air Force: Cyberwarfare could get physical
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
Geostrategy-Direct.com
A senior Air Force officer in charge of cyber warfare said last week that the service is prepared to use both electronic and explosive means to attack enemy information warfare systems.
Col. Tony Buntyn, vice commander of the Air Force Cyber Command, that computer-based military operations against cyber threats, from foreign militaries to teenage hackers, include traditional find, fix, track, target and engage methods.
“It could be a logical environment, a logical network, Buntyn said. “It may be virtual, you know, nodes across multiple networks for, you know, like a command and control system, or it could be physical with a geo-location assigned. But we need the technologies just like we have in kinetic warfare to engage targets when necessary.”
Further elaborating, Buntyn said cyber warriors use both “kinetic or non-kinetic” weapons.
“It depends on our rules of engagement,” he said. “Are we conducting open warfare with an adversary? If that's the case, then we really don't need to get in and be discreet about it. You know, when we drop a JDAM, we leave a big smoking hole.”
For Internet targets that are accessible “if we can take it out electronically, reliably, then that may be the preferred method,” Buntyn said. “But if I can geolocate it, and I need to take it out with a kinetic attack and that is the preferred method and meets the rules of engagement, then that may be the method we choose.”