USAF has a group of three specialists on a petroleum and oil infrastructure team, or POInT, whose mission is to check Iraqi pipelines for leaks and work with Iraqis to secure the pipes. They also check electrical infrastructure to try to ferret out whether a problem is insurgent-related or simply Mother Nature. The airmen from the 732nd Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron at Kirkuk, ride with a US Army convoy of the 555th Combat Support Battalion for protection throughout the region around Kirkuk Air Base, where about 40 percent of Iraq’s oil resource resides.
When the Space Force discusses the cyber threats faced by the service or the commercial satellite providers it uses, it typically frames the issue as a nation-state one. But for cyber defenders in the commercial space sector responsible for day-to-day operations, the reality is rather different: Like other providers of…