Air Force networks “face a continuous barrage of assaults” from state-sponsored actors, terror networks, international criminal organizations, individual hackers, and assorted threats in between, said Stephen Walker, USAF’s assistant secretary for science, technology, and engineering. Accordingly, the service is pursuing multiple research efforts to address cyberspace vulnerabilities, he said. Among them, “We’re looking at what we call cyber agility, which is having networks move and not be an [Internet Protocol] address longer than a fraction of a second, so it is very hard for the attacker to find out where you are,” said Walker in testimony this week before the House Armed Services Committee’s emerging threats and capabilities panel. Air Force researchers are also working “cyber security issues for cloud computing” to ensure that “data in the cloud” is secure, he said. (See also Walker’s prepared remarks)
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.