Page 66 - Australian Defence Magazine April-May 2021

66 CYBER OVERVIEW
APRIL-MAY 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
flow of information upstream from end users. Yet without government leadership, this approach is unlikely to become universal across Australian ISPs.
“In some sense, [the government] hasn’t accepted that lead- ing this kind of initiative is its job,” Uren said. “In the absence of an industry consensus that ISPs should be providing some level of default security, the absence of government leadership or direction probably means that this status quo will continue.”
THE ADF
As the ADF moves to a more autonomous and augmented intelligence future, driven in no small part by Plan Jericho, it is by extension opening new data transmission lines – and each is a vulnerability that adversaries may be able to exploit.
To keep ahead, the ADF is has inked a deal with the US to provide feedback to a virtual cyber training range, the Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE). The PCTE, developed by Raytheon, is a training arena for de- fensive cyber missions under the auspices of US Cyber Command. It allows operators from different services to train together and hone their skills against a simulated near-peer adversary.
“THE COMBAT CLOUD INVERTS THE PARADIGM OF COMBINED ARMS WARFARE— MAKING INFORMATION THE FOCAL POINT, NOT OPERATIONAL DOMAINS.”
Unlike older cyber range models, which were developed as single-use scenarios, the PCTE allows cyber forces to update and recycle content, saving months of work. The agreement to grant Australia the right to feedback into the PCTE is the first cyber-only arrangement between the US and an ally.
The growth of the F-35 fleet in Australia, and the system- of-systems capability that the aircraft provides, has also given added impetus to the mission of Plan Jericho; to use augment- ed intelligence – a conceptual fusion of human and machine – keep the RAAF ahead of sophisticated and morphing threats.
Central to this effort is the idea of a ‘combat cloud’, one of Plan Jericho’s four pillars of effort. The idea was cham- pioned in part by LTGEN (Ret’d) David Deptula in 2016, dean of the Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, who saw it as an entirely new framework for con-
ABOVE: Patching older legacy systems to current standards is not just a government issue.
ceptualising warfare. It has been described in some quar- ters as ‘collaborative combat’.
“Desired military effects will increasingly be generated by the interaction of systems that share information and em- power one another,” LTGEN Deptula wrote. “This concept can be envisioned as a “combat cloud”—an operating para- digm where information, data management, connectivity, and command and control (C2) are core mission priorities.
“The combat cloud treats every platform as a sensor, as well as an “effector,” and will require a C2 paradigm en- abling automatic linking, seamless data transfer capabili- ties, while being reliable, secure, and jam proof.
“The combat cloud inverts the paradigm of combined arms warfare— making information the focal point, not operational domains.”
The combat cloud environment has been described by Plan Jericho and Telstra team members as ‘not as easy as it sounds’ (if it sounded easy at all). In a joint presentation at MilCIS in Canberra two years ago, Wing Commander Alex Gibbs from Jericho headquarters and Lloyd Bennet from Telstra’s defence engagement team summed the problem up as one of timely data exchange, often heard as the phrase ‘the right information to the right people at the right time.’
Some of the R&D to solve these kinds of problems is com- ing out of a Lockheed Martin facility in Melbourne called the Science Technology, Engineering Leadership and Re- search Laboratory (or STELaRLab, almost undoubtedly a backronym). The Lab is the nerve centre for Lockheed Martin’s university-based research portfolio in Australia and collaborates with Lockheed’s US labs such as Skunk Works and The Lighthouse.
Efforts to train personnel and address a wider cyber skills gap are also underway. The School of Information Opera- tions (SOIO) in Adelaide – a collaboration between DEWC T&E and Leonardo – offers courses in electronic warfare, communications, maritime and cyber operations. In Febru- ary the School ran a 3-day short course on military cyber operations and intends to run three more this year.
In explaining the need for the course, SOIO chief Glenn Murray asked whether the current cyber workforce is large enough or prepared enough for the requirements they’ll face in the next 10 years.
“Does our current cyber workforce have the required knowledge or even basic knowledge in military cyber opera- tions?” Murray said. “Will the Australian Signals Director- ate be able to fulfill their requirement of over 500 new jobs in the next decade if there is a skills shortage in Australia?”
CHALLENGES REMAIN
So we end where we started – many challenges in the cyber domain remain unsolved. Critical infrastructure is still vul- nerable to exploitation. The government leads in some areas, as it keenly outlines in its cyber security strategy, but lags in others, such as providing leadership on the clean pipes con- cept for ISPs. The ADF is pushing ahead but may find itself constrained by the size of the Australian cyber workforce.
The underlying patterns here will be familiar to most readers. But progress is happening – even if, in some critical places, people are still using TeamViewer on Windows 7. ■
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