Members of the 460th Space Wing at Buckley AFB, Colo., have successfully completed the wing’s first-ever exercise focused exclusively on cyber issues. “Cyber Lightning” was designed to test the wing’ s ability to operate in a contested cyber environment. Accordingly, wing personnel faced issues like network degradation and outages, hacking activities, phishing and other attempts to gain access to the base network, and intermittent land mobile radio capability. All the while, they had to respond to scenarios like a shooter on the base and maintain the capacity for command and control. “Overall the exercise went very well,” said Kevin Stocking, the wing’s plans and programs chief. Beyond just the wing, this was also the first exercise of this type for Air Force Space Command “and, as far as we know, across the entire Air Force,” he said. (Buckley report by MSgt. J. LaVoie)
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.
