Shared situational awareness is the key to building combatant commanders’ confidence in US Cyber Command, Maj. Gen. David Senty, CYBERCOM chief of staff, said at AFA’s CyberFutures Conference last week. “Only through shared situational awareness” will commanders come to understand the extent to which the Defense Department’s newest command is going in order “to execute the things that are necessary for their operational plans,” he said. With the onslaught of smart data and data tagging filling up the cloud architecture, it’s imperative that cyber operators are able to determine where the information has been and where it came from so that they can figure out what information can and should be shared, Senty said. “Key terrain and command and control is something [about which] we are in constant discussion with our service components and the Cocoms and [Defense Department] policy [officials] because of the need to address the speed of cyber and the fact that we can touch anything from anywhere,” he said.
The U.S. military is maintaining a beefed-up presence in the Middle East, including fighters and air defense assets, following the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities June 22 and subsequent retaliation by the Iranians against Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
