More than 30 senior Air Force leaders, including Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, recently attended a cyber summit at JB Andrews, Md., to discuss the service’s role in cyberspace and work towards defining the path forward for supporting the US military’s cyber mission. These officials “are very interested in this,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Basla, the Air Force’s chief information officer, in a Dec. 11 release. The mid-November summit helped provide a baseline understanding of what the Air Force’s capabilities are in this mission area, its roles and responsibilities, and what the combatant commanders need the Air Force to provide, said Basla. The participants also reviewed the Air Force’s “cross-domain capabilities and interdependencies” with cyber, he noted. The summit concluded with initial guidance “to quickly review” Fiscal 2014 cyber objectives and develop positions for the Fiscal 2015 program objective memorandum to address the US military’s emerging cyber requirements, said Basla. (See also Cyber Summit and Defining the Air Force’s Cyber Role and Vexing Cyber Issues.)
While the Space Force is still making long-term plans to establish high-fidelity live and virtual test and training ranges in the coming years, officials say they're also working with operators to identify near-term gaps and quickly field capabilities to address them.
