US Cyber Command is slated to reach full operational capability next month, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads the new organization, told the House Armed Services Committee Thursday. Alexander said the infant command, which began initial operations in May, faces some daunting tasks, including protecting the Defense Department’s computer networks against 200,000 to 250,000 probes and scans every hour. He said the biggest threat so far has been hacker activity, or disruptive attacks. Although these activities are an inconvenience, it is possible to recover from their temporary effects. “What concerns me the most,” he continued “are destructive attacks” that permanently disable a system, forcing its replacement. “We are concerned that those are the things we will continue to see,” he testified. He added, “If that would happen in a war zone, that means our command and control would suffer. We’ve got to be prepared for that.”
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…