Just like the Navy must protect sea lanes for waterborne commerce, a military cyber organization must protect commerce that travels through Cyber Space, according to Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, head of 8th Air Force. Elder, who oversaw the efforts to start up the recently activated Cyber Command, noted that 80 percent of world commerce today is conducted in cyberspace. He emphasized that “cyber is a domain,” a place with terrain, obstacles, and innocent bystanders as well as enemies. The Air Force has to dominate cyber space, he said, because “if we lose cyber, we can’t do air and space.”
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
