Lt. Gen. Michael Basla, chief of information dominance in the Air Force Secretariat, thinks a centralized approach to the cyber theater will save the Air Force money and generate capabilities for the armed services at large. He said joint efforts were essential to this end during a July 20 Pentagon briefing. “We are going to provide effective [information technology] cyber capabilities,” he said. “Effective really gets at the point of the best bang for our buck,” he added. In the past, Basla said, cyber operations were distributed inefficiently across different services and commands. “We had 10 major commands developing their capabilities, acquiring their capabilities, and fielding their capabilities. Not the best way to run a railroad,” he said. Similarly, the different services develop various cyber capabilities, some of which are useful across all of the services, he said. Basla sees joint cyber coordination as an excellent way to keep development costs down; this coordination is a challenge worth undertaking, he said. “I’m a joint officer in an Air Force uniform and I believe in the joint war fight,” he said.
U.S. Northern Command plans to sign an agreement with its European and Pacific counterparts to enhance coordination and close security seams in the Arctic, a strategically vital region that spans all three commands. The agreement comes at an important moment in NORTHCOM's evolution, as its mission grows more complex.
