2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Cyber and Communications: Gaining the Edge in Great Power Competition

The “Cyber and Communications: Gaining the Edge in Great Power Competition” panel at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Dr. Wanda T. Jones-Heath, principal cyber advisor for the Department of the Air Force; Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and cyber effects operations; Lt. Gen. Susan Coyle, chief of joint capabilities for the Australian Defence Force; and Brig. Gen. Zachary Shay Warakomski, senior cyber officer for the U.S. Space Force. The panel, held on September 18, was moderated by Maj. Gen. Kim Crider, USAF (Ret.), founding partner of Elara Nova. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider, USAF (Ret.), Founding Partner, Elara Nova:

Okay, well, thank you very much for that opening hero that really kind of helped us set the stage for what we want to talk about today. Absolutely playing to win. Here is the focus. In the face of great power competition and the idea of leveraging technologies to that full extent, we are going to zero in on that topic, but we’re going to zero into it from the perspective of the importance of these technologies and their contribution to what we’re able to do and the decisive effects that we’re able to create in the cyberspace domain, both from the perspective of the US and our allies working together. We’re going to focus on how the Air Force, the Space Force and our allies are looking to leverage and protect protect our capabilities in cyberspace to deliver those effects, to assure communications and to extend our competitive edge in the face of Great Power competition. Please join me today in welcoming our panel of experts. Dr. Wanda Jones-Heath is the principal cyber advisor for the Department of the Air Force. Her duties include synchronizing and coordinating the implementation of the department’s cyber strategy and advising the Secretary of the Air Force on all cyber programs across the Air Force and the Space Force. Lieutenant General Leah Lauderback Is the United States Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, and is responsible for policy, planning, evaluation, oversight and leadership of the Air Force’s ISR operations, cyber effects and warfighting, communications operations and electromagnetic spectrum superiority. Air Commodore David Clyde is the commander for cyber forces group in the Australia Defense Force. His responsibilities include cyber defense of Australia’s military networks, systems and critical infrastructure. Offensive cyber operations to neutralize and disrupt hostile operations, intelligence gathering to identify and anticipate threats from cyberspace and support joint and allied cyber defense operations. And last but not least, Brigadier General Zachary Shay Warakomski Is the United States Space Force Assistant Deputy Chief of Space Operations for operations cyber and nuclear. He’s responsible for formulating policy that advances space operations, sustainment, cyber and nuclear related efforts for the service. Thank you all for joining us here today.

Okay, we’re going to jump right into this. I know that there’s an amazing audience here today that is very interested to hear about what’s happening in the realm of communications and cyber and how we’re really trying to leverage our capabilities more effectively across this this security environment we’re dealing with, Dr. Wanda Jones-Heath, Lieutenant General Lauderback, Air Commodore Clyde and General Warakomski. From each of your perspectives, how is great power competition affecting air force, Space Force and Australian Defense Force readiness and employment of combat ready forces to support operations in air and space.

Dr. Wanda T. Jones-Heath, Principal Cyber Advisor, Department of the Air Force:

First of all, thank you to AFA for the opportunity and to share the stage with my colleagues here, I would say that as we look at reoptimizing on the great power competition, it’s really about change understanding where the threats are. We know China, China, China is the threat that we want to engage and make sure that we understand great power competition is just a way to transform that it’s a cultural change. There’s a lot of change going on, not just in the cyber and IT realm, but across the entire department. Why are we doing this? Because we have to, if you hear the Secretary talk about it, we’re out of time. We have a lot of challenges. How do we integrate? How do we work through all the things that we know we’re going to have to do in a contested environment? The way we do it is we test it out. Now, you know, is it training? Is it our people? You know, is it our organizational structure? How do we look at our policies to make sure that the things that we have in our policy is not stopping us from innovating. You know, being taking some risk. You know the Secretary talks about all the time. You know, we have to make decisions that sometimes make us uncomfortable, and right now we’re getting uncomfortable, but that’s good. It’s really good to see him pushing. Us and asking those questions, are we ready? You know, what does that mean? Are we investing in the right things? We’re starting to push the envelope on a lot of things that we probably took as status quo. You know, just because we did it and it worked before, it certainly won’t work again for the cyber and IT community know that we are in the conversation. You heard the Secretary, General Allvin, you heard the CSO as well, talk about all the changes in our community, from people, from organizational changes. And I want to get a shout out with the cyber and it Warrant Officer Program that I mean, this is huge, and being the first community to do this, to reestablish it back into the Air Force is a monumental step forward. And it took an entire DAF team shout out to our army counterparts as well, because they really helped us, guided us, shared information. And so if you don’t know all about great power, competition, the operational imperatives, things that the Secretary is talking about, you need to know your role in how we make the department better.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Thank you so much. We’re going to delve into a lot of those topics here today. Thanks for setting that up. General Lauderback?

Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Deputy Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Cyber Effects Operations:

Yeah, I’ll just echo my thanks as well to AFA and Kim, it’s always great to see you, General Crider, okay, so the question is about impacting readiness. Hopefully you all have understood this, and you’ve heard it throughout the entire conference and over the last number of months, six months or seven months, this is about readiness. It is about the technological readiness, getting our equipment ready, getting our human capital ready, given that our airmen are our greatest advantage, and so specifically to to this question on impacting readiness, in my mind, that’s what this is all about. And I want because you have to ask yourself, and Wanda, I thought you were going here, but ready for what? So when we say ready, it’s a ready for competition, crisis and conflict, all right? We say GPC quite a bit as an acronym. It’s already all over everybody’s evaluations, right? GPC, but you really got to step back and think this is an era of great powers competing with one another, and if we if our deterrence fails, then we’re in crisis and conflict. And so we have to be thinking from a war fighting, war fighting aspect, whether that’s warfighter communications or if that is cyber operations, that we’ve got to be ready. To me, we are going to be ready for a home and away game. Oftentimes we talk about the away game and we understand what the away game is. It is against the People’s Republic of China. That’s what we need to be ready for, in case deterrence fails. However, I think everyone in here needs to understand what are the communications that we still need to be doing, or the cyber defense that we still need to be doing at our home locations, right? So this is that’s the home game we have to be ready in order to compete, or again, defend our bases and still fight those bases while deployed combat wings, go forward, that type of thing. So, so thank you again. I really am psyched, honestly, about competing for great power competition. This is absolutely the way that we need to go and appreciate our leaders pushing us in this direction.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Thank you, ma’am. Air Commodore.

Air Commodore David Clyde:

Thank you, and thanks. Thanks for everyone and the opportunity to be here today. And I have to say, a lot of the comments that I would have already been mentioned, but there’s a couple of topics that I’d just like to add to the conversation. The first one, from a strategic competition perspective, and the implications on readiness, I think one of the big takeaways for us is the loss of warning time, that sense that you can no longer have that ramp up period when a conflict or a potential conflict appeared on the horizon. You need to be ready. You need to be ready. To be ready now and then translating that, what that means, back into the force, and how we posture the force to respond to that strategic circumstance. The second part that I think, really, I take away from from the question is, you know, we talk about cyber communications and what have you, for most of my career, I guess you would say that was an enabling effort that supported the generation of power in the air domain, in the space domain, in other domains. But we’re now in a scenario where that’s recognized as being the cyber domain is recognized as being contested in its own right, and that’s forcing us to fundamentally rethink some of the notions we have around readiness and how we define that, how we measure and assess and assure against the need, so that when there is the call and there is the requirement to respond, the capabilities available. And I guess I’ll pause at that point.

Brig. Gen. Zachary Shay Warakomski, Senior Cyber Officer, U.S. Space Force:

Good morning Team. It’s a pleasure to be here with you this morning. I want to thank General Kreider and AFA certainly as well. You know, I tell you what you’re all tracking, that we’re. Coaching our fifth anniversary as a service, and as a result, we were born in the midst of great power competition with a watchful eye all the while toward our pacing challenge. And I will tell you, in terms of the home game and the away game, as General mentioned before, this for us, we fight the away game from home. We are employed in place, with very few exceptions, we are employed in place, fighting and operating day to day. 24/7/365, from our installations, which serve as the power projection platforms for the US Space Force. And I will tell you, in terms of getting after you know, the readiness side of this house, we’re doing it through our space force generation model. And if you’re not aware of that yet, the CSO has talked about it. This is an eight crew rotational model that goes through the prepare, ready, commit phases for our unit of action, our combat squadrons, which are encompassing of force elements that include space operations, cyber operations and intelligence. And I will tell you, this is a necessary balance that we’re having to strike to be able to meet combatant pan requirements, the personal and professional needs of our guardians, and that includes the training and certainly the reconstitution of our force for the well being of all of our guardians as well.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Thank you very much. So I want to pick up on this idea of training as a really important aspect of readiness. And I want to ask General Lauderback, Commodore Clyde and General Warakomski, to offer your thoughts on how are our joint and coalition exercises, integrating cyber and communications in delivering effects to really get after this competitive advantage. Ma’am?

Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:

Yeah, so, so I think back to my very first duty assignment. That was Kunsan Air Base. Anybody here from the Wolfpack? Yeah, a few. Okay, okay, all right. So what did we do there? We trained. We trained. We trained. The we had down at the squadron level. We had a large force employment exercise every Friday. On the last Friday of the month, if you will, we had a squadron readiness exercise. Then every quarter we had, this was bringing in the entire wing, the OSS, the all of the squadrons we had, we had our operational readiness exercises. And then, of course, once a year we had our inspection. Hopefully you have heard this from the from some of the other panels and discussions this week about getting back into that type of, that type of battle rhythm. So the the IG and working staff, IG up at the Air Staff, but working with all of the magic comm IGS, has developed a scheme of maneuver for inspections those absolutely have to happen, and that, because that is a forcing function to the folks out there, the Wing Commanders, the squadron commanders, the DOS who need to be driving exercises. And so I would say, I know the question is about like a larger exercise joint, as well as Coalition, which is absolutely necessary. But to the folks in this room, I would tell you that you can start small if you aren’t already. These are the things that as a squadron, com, squadron commander, right? Or a do out there, you need to be exercising elements, parts of your mission, every week, every every month, whatever it might be, you pick the battle rhythm. So the the actually, I was just out in Langley Air Force Base. I mean, here’s a perfect example. I was down at Langley doing a visit, and there was a unit that that deployed from Shaw Air Force Base and brought the tactical kit with them, right? And was able to set up an attempt, set it up out in the field. It was, it was exceptional for these five or six Airmen, because three of them had never deployed, right? They’d only ever been there to Shaw Air Force Base, and so the opportunity to be able to get into a plane and then come up to Langley and simply do that job. I guarantee they’re back at the squadron telling all of their the rest of the airmen how to do this. Exercising is about it’s about failing. It’s about getting better, right? It’s about Express or understanding TTPs and then, and then bettering those TTPs. So there is all kinds of goodness that we need to be getting from training, training, training. And I know you’ve heard it from the vice chief and the chief, the AFFORGEN model allows us to do that. To train together is even better. And so I’m excited about the future, but I will, you know, I just charge all of the leadership, squadron leadership out there that start small if you aren’t already doing this, this is what you need to do for that home and for the away game.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Thank you. Air Commodore, Clyde your thoughts on exercises and their impact on readiness.

Air Commodore David Clyde:

Thanks. Ma’am, thanks. Kim, I absolutely agree. Like the exercise program, the collective training program. So as part of the continuum from individual through to you know, operationally ready forces is absolutely critical, and we should take every opportunity we can to achieve that. I think my observation would be two things in relation to readiness. The first one is that we’re seeing, we’re seeing more and more prominence around exercises that are focused on actually testing and developing and training the effects in the cyber domain, whether that be from the provision of comms through to the offensive cyber effects. But the other piece being from my experience going through my career, early on in my career, most exercises I was involved in that went multi domain. They were they were predominantly about from a comms point of view about making the exercise work, there was a no fail element to it. There is definitely a trend towards a much more, shall we say, expansive approach, where we’re actually testing the capability to project power in the cyber domain itself. I think that’s something that we need to continue to foster within those multi domain exercise environments, whether that be sovereign, whether that be coalition, not in a way that disrupts or undermines the broader exercise of objectives. It needs to be reframed in the sense of this is how we enhance those broader objectives, how we increase the realism and ensure that that collective training benefit, not just focused on the communications and IT workforce, but focused on the whole of force and how it will need to fight and be and contest in a multi domain fight.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Yeah, and how is the Space Force tackling this war?

Brig. Gen. Zachary Shay Warakomski

Absolutely, so we we are witnessing an insatiable appetite in demand signal for not only cyber, but space. And I say that because this is in particular as we stand up our service components. And the intent is to stand up the service component for each of our combatant commands. But I bring up space and cyber because they are not only inextricably linked, but they are also mutually enabling, and they are also both contested domains. And as a result, I think there’s a broader recognition that you can no longer hand wave or assume certain things, certain capabilities will be there in the fight. And it’s an absolute requirement, I know Luke Cropsey was here earlier, absolute requirement that space and cyber, they are critical nodes in terms of closing the kill chain, and we need superiority in these domains in order to enable the success of CJADC2 and other related efforts.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Thanks so much. Great insights from each of you. Want to circle back here to you. Dr. Jones-Heath, on. Talk to us a little bit about this idea of the Air Force, cyber security, posture assessment. How is this designed to really help us get after us competitive advantage?

Dr. Wanda T. Jones-Heath:

Ooh, that’s a loaded question. Um, very complex. It’s really about readiness and being able to understand the specific posture of your critical assets from your weapons systems, your infrastructure, your networks, your defense critical assets that are attached to our operational technology in ICS SCADA, the Secretary, has asked this question a number of times we’ve provided a lot of data, and one of the issues is we have a lot of legacy. We’re investing, we’re upgrading, we’re modernizing throughout the enterprise. But it’s not enough. We can’t buy our way out of the technical debt. We can’t fix every vulnerability. One of the questions in the last session, I believe, General Slife, asked is, why do we need to invest that last dollar to fix this vulnerability? What does it do for us in the grand scheme of things, how does it help us to be resilient? And the question is, we need to do more work. We need to understand from a threat picture, work with our counterparts over in the eight to six to understand, is that vulnerability being exploited right now? Can it? Will it be exploited? And then figure out if it is. How do we mitigate it? Does it cost us to do anything with it. Do we invest in it? Do we determine new procedures, new TTPs? You know, what? What should we be doing to address all of these things that that will make a difference? One of it is, what is the risk to mission? You know, if it’s something that we can mitigate through other investment. We should document that and do it. But if it’s something that we know that the adversary is going to attack us and it’s going to impact the entire mission effectiveness, then we have to invest in it. But are we there? Yet? It’s going to take more work to really understand the entire posture. When you look at everything that we’re dealing with, you know, not just, you know, the people. We have different ways of assessing risk. That’s one of the challenges. You know, we have the RMF framework for a reason, you know, it’s a guide to help us at least have the conversation about risk on the same level. But we have other risk methods all. Just being used throughout the enterprise, and that’s okay, but we need to come together, collaborate, and then figure out what’s the next pathways we need to address all these things that we’re dealing with.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Yeah, that’s great.

So not only do we need to be able to assess our readiness and risk through our exercises, as we discussed, but we need these cybersecurity posture assessments to really understand the status of our our capabilities, our systems themselves, air cover, Clyde, does Australia have something similar to this?

Air Commodore David Clyde:

To be honest, there’s a great sense of deja vu listening to Dr Wanda speak. Because yes, we have a very, very similar perspective in terms of some of the challenges there. There are a range of initiatives that we have there’s a defense cyber security strategy that’s looking at getting after hardening the baseline. There is work that’s been done which has had various names, from cyber risk management framework, preparedness, assurance, cyber-worthiness, which it’s all aiming to do the same thing, which is to lift the discussion around cyber away from a technical focus on on how things work to something that is more contextualized by threat, and an understanding of how risk translates into the impact on mission, so that we’re not wasting our time pursuing that, that 5% answer on something that doesn’t have a meaningful impact on the outcome. We’re focusing on those elements that have the 50% impact, the 80% impact, or the go, no go issues on our ability to execute the mission that we’re that we’re given, or the task that we’re given. So we do have a similar challenge. I don’t have the answer, I’m sorry, and we’re very happy to copy it if you do have one. But to my mind, it all starts with recognizing that this is not a technical risk. This is not a technical challenge. It’s about lifting the discussion up to that operational level and focusing on the outcome.

Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:

Can I just say Kim? So I want to introduce you Air Commodore to Lieutenant General Hensley here. So from the from the 16th Air Force aft cyber perspective, absolutely what Dr. Jones-Heath had described is coming from the team down into down in San Antonio. So we’ll give you a partial answer, right? Because truly, we’re working on this, and it is. It is a very difficult and challenging problem. However, it’s a matter of, if you can’t see yourself and understand yourself and your vulnerabilities, then then you will not be able to see and understand the adversary and how you need to be victorious there.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Absolutely, I want to turn to a topic that a lot of people, I’m sure in the room want to hear about, because it comes up a lot in conversation, this idea of elevating the sixth community. So for General Lauderback and General Warakomski, what does this mean from an Air Force and a Space Force perspective, what changes are underway in how we are going to organize, train and equip and present forces with this idea of elevating the six? Want to start with you, Shay, yeah.

Brig. Gen. Zachary Shay Warakomski:

Thank you. General Crider, so for context and general Burt, the chief operations officer, is not here currently. However, I will tell you that within her, her portfolio, until very, very recently, she had the 3467, and 10, just, just a ridiculous amount of work to be done across the board there, in terms of juggling, I see general Hensley juggling here in the front row, a lot of work. And so as a result, what we’ve done is we’ve elevated the six to make its own DCS or l2 as part of that we were in currently in the hiring process for that SES, and we will achieve IOC in in the fall time frame. But right now it is, it is an interim S6 what I would tell you is that we have basically combined what is the Chief Technology and Innovation office, as well as critical mission functions that are that are being brought over from the chief operations side of the house to include spectrum management, satellite communications, the strategic cybersecurity program. For those who are know that we work that with osdans and a host of other missions across the board, we will maintain a small cadre for cyber-enabled effects within COO and what you’re seeing at the Phil-Comm level below, as a lot of those are already moving Toward a Napoleonic structure in terms of the organization is we are building out sixes at our field comms as well.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Thank you very much.

Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:

Yep, so from an A26 perspective, an Air Force perspective, I mean, this is, this is simple to me. This is a matter of understanding the vital nature of the six community and and elevating that expertise to become a three star military advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, right, and also to the secretary, if he asked for that. But this is somebody that will direct report to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, just as the A1, the A2, the A3, the four, the five. Five the eight as well, right? So this is, to me, this is absolutely long overdue. When we had an eight to six, or when we decided to combine the two six, it was really based out of management. You know, wasn’t so much the integration of the two in the six, though, of course, there is integration between intelligence missions and cyber operations missions, communications missions, down at right, down at the unit levels and operational level, however, at the staff, what we’re what we’re trying to do is provide expertise to all of those other three stars on the staff as to what, what should we buy? What? What are the policies that need to be written? What’s the guidance that we need to provide out to the field? And we in having a military officer, a three star having a seat at the table, that’s what it’s really right. Having that seated at the table, to be able to advise all of those other senior leaders in the room, I think it’s going to, it’s going to benefit, benefit us greatly in the future. So I’m excited. I’m am I excited today? Like I think I’ve said that a few times. I’m excited for this community to be able to have that voice now, whether or not the whether or not the match comes, decide to split their their sixes from their threes, most of that happens at the match, or at a few match comms, I don’t know, but we understood that in this reoptimization, we thought that this was a great opportunity to then decide to split the two in the six, so that the six has that voice. The two will continue to have the voice that it has. It will their organization. Our organization will look very similar. And then the last port part of that portfolio that that I have in the two six is the electromagnetic spectrum operations that will be combined with information operations as well as as well as cyber effects operations under the three. So the operations will be under the three. And then from the six perspective, it will be you’ll hear us say warfighter communications and cyber systems. If I can just say I, you know, this is I’ve been in the job for two years now, and right from the very start, I feel that while doctrine says cyber operations is this right? Cyber cyberspace operations, it’s offensive, it’s defensive, it’s cybersecurity, warfighter communications, or communications is under that to me. I think when we say cyber, we think of offensive or a defensive capability and and so I really wanted to continue with the communicators out there, who are those 17 deltas or the 1d sevens who are, who are working tactical communications, expeditionary communications, and they have a vital role. And so that’s why you’re going to hear the name of the A six will be war, fighter communications and cyber systems. But I’m, I’m really excited for the team we’ve we’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’ve done a lot of work to this point, and I would expect in the springtime is when we’ll be able to stand up that that DCS.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Outstanding. Thank you very much. Of course, there are some, you know, there’s a lot of civilians that are part of all of this too. So Dr Jones Heath, how is the Department of the Air Force rethinking cyber and IT Training Development for civilian professionals to further strengthen our talent base for GPC in light of these kind of changes we’ve been talking about.

Dr. Wanda T. Jones-Heath:

Now, this is the question I’m excited about. This is near and dear to my heart as a career civilian 34 years in working my way to this position, the development of the civilians is just as important as our development for our military corps, know that as civilian, you’re part of the total force that make this department great. So don’t ever think that you’re not part of the team, right? And so no matter what job you have, you know, to be a part of the team. One of the things I want to talk about actually, two things is, how many of you are familiar with the talent management framework that was signed out this year by the functional authority, Ms. Goodwine for the civilian career field, right? And you should know that document. It is a great opportunity to look at the career paths, recognition that there are two career paths now, one being a functional expert, and the other being an enterprise leader. Not everyone wants to be a senior leader in aspire to be SCS, however, we need your skills, your technical skills as a functional expert. So if you have not seen that document, I certainly suggest you read that, even if you are a military member that supervises civilians, I suggest you read that, because you’re the ones who are guiding and helping and supporting and developing. The civilian corps as well. The second thing is the DCWF, the way that we are now, along with a military counterpart, looking at your roles and responsibilities, your work roles, everyone should have a primary and perhaps a second in tertiary code that tells us and tells that position what skills and abilities and experiences you should have, right? And so if you don’t have one, and you don’t know it, now is the time to make sure you do that, because it’s going to mean something one day, when we look at incentives, when we look at recruitment retention, we’re going to look and see where our gaps are, you know, are we having a a problem recruiting or retaining a certain skill set? Then we’re going to look into the database and say, Hey, we’re short in this area. We need to do something different from a recruiting standpoint. So, you know, you need to make sure that you understand what those work roles mean, and they’re growing. I think we’re at 72-plus work roles, and so we’re continually looking at, you know, how do we acknowledge our work roles throughout the entire department? And the last thing is, if you are a civilian and you are part of the career field, there is an opportunity now called fall vectoring that is underway. It ends for October. Here’s an opportunity to have the senior leaders in the community look at your career give you career advice. Give you, you know, advice on development opportunities, training, things like that. So make sure you take advantage of that that’s open to GS-11, elevens through GS fifteens.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Wonderful. All right. So thank you very much. General Lauderback, we are excited to hear what you’re excited to tell us about this next topic, which is the reestablishment of the Warren officer ranks for cyber and IT professionals. What’s the reason behind this, and how is this going to help us address this GPC problem in a new way?

Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, the warrant officers. What are we looking for? We’re looking for technical expertise and technical leadership. I personally had worked with Warrant Officers from an intelligence perspective when I was down range just a number of years ago from the army and absolutely trusted. I was a one star. Then I had the CW twos, The CW threes, come forward to me and brief me on a regular basis. They knew their stuff, and they were constantly learning about the adversary. In that case, right from an Intel perspective, that’s what I expect out of our out of our warrant officers here in the cyber and IT career fields that they will be the experts, and they will continuously not the only experts. Okay, let me say that, because there is expertise certainly in our officer enlisted and our civilian corps. However, these Warrant Officers, we are expecting to be on the edge, consistently getting advanced training to ensure that they are, that they’re the newest technology that is out there, that they’re understanding that and bringing that to bear for us from an advantage perspective. So I know we’re going to run out of time here. I can talk about warrant officers all day, but I have to say, thank you, right? Really, the effort was led by Mrs. Goodwine And then Dr Jones Heath, from a service perspective, functional manager, Brigadier General, select case or and the entire team with AETC, AU, etc, to be able to get 400 applicants in a matter of a few months to work through a board to select 78 of these folks from a total force perspective, and then the first folks are going to training here in just a week or so. I mean, it was a phenomenal lift, and I’m so proud of the team for doing that. However, the next things that we have, two things that I’ll just remark is one, what are those advanced training courses that these warrant officers will need? And so we’re already working through that, because the they’ll go to warrant officer school, but we got to get some more training to to extend their expertise. And then two is, is what you know the next boards that will be coming up next year. At some point, we have a right a, POA&M, to figure out where it is that how many more warrant officers will we need in this, these career fields and and getting us to that place over you know, number multi year, multi year effort. And then, of course, we have to be able to sustain it. I am. I’m absolutely, 100% certain that we’ll be able to sustain this, given all of the work and the expertise that we’ve the analysis that we’ve put into it. So really a great job by the team, and I look forward to meeting some of those first warrant officers that we have soon.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Thank you so much. Now I know warrant officers have been a really important part of the Australian Defense Force for some time. Air Commodore Clyde, can you comment for a minute on what you’ve learned from this program?

Air Commodore David Clyde:

So I guess the comment I’d offer up. Mostly, I guess, warrant officers. In the Australian context, it’s slightly different. They’re our senior enlisted leaders. But if I take the sentiment of the program, we’re absolutely aligned in that recognizing that there is the segment of the workforce whose career path in the uniform workforce, whose career path will be around that deep technical expertise and providing that leadership in that technical domain. And we are updating our call it, our frameworks, our remuneration employment frameworks, to make sure people cannot, can, sorry, correction, can, progress their careers and not be disadvantaged because they chose to be a technical specialist, as opposed to achieve, as opposed to progressing a traditional pathway. And fundamentally, the capability can’t progress without that structure.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

Outstanding. General Warakomski, I’m going to shift this a little bit for you and ask you something that I know has been really underway in the space community for a while, and I think it’s important to the audience here to hear about is, how is the Space Force linking cyber, ew and space to really focus on creating some new competitive advantage opportunities?

Brig. Gen. Zachary Shay Warakomski:

No, great question. And for those of you who are here for the previous panel, Brigadier General Hawke here on the front row, did an excellent job of leading that. And I will tell you, you know, when you when you get around to it, it’s interesting, the nexus of space, cyber and EW in particular. And those of you that are may not be familiar with how we’re organized. We have a delta three, which does our ew fight that it that is the deployable or are the deployable units that we have in Del six is our cyber operations. I will tell you we’re working right now from the tackle to the strategic level on a whole host of things. One of them is a full spectrum cyber operations unit within delta six. At the tactical level, we’re working operationally on a host of things, and we have leadership out here this week meeting with the Joint directors out of us, CYBERCOM to talk through the service component. See we’re in the final throws of this in terms of course of action development, in terms of what we intend to present in the interest of time. I’ll stop there, though.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Kim Crider:

That’s outstanding. We are running out of time. So I’m going to give each of my panel members about 30 seconds to sort of give us your sort of closing remarks on what do you think the one thing is that we really need to keep a keep an eye on, keep our eye on the ball relative to how we’re going to drive cyber and communications to create effects for competitive advantage. Dr. Jones-Heath?

Dr. Wanda T. Jones-Heath:

I’ll just say it very simply, everyone has a role. Know where you fit into the big picture. Take action and just accept that. We do need to change.

Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:

I’ll say two things. One, the threat. Keep your eye on the threat. We all have to understand what it is. And Secretary Kendall has said the threat is now. It is here today. And so we need to be prepared for that so and I appreciate, of course, the opening remarks that we had to talk about the the technical threat, the techno the technical exploitation that the People’s Republic of China has already taken against many, many countries in the world. So number one, keep your eye on the threat, and don’t forget about it. Okay. Number two, there is a lightning bolt on like every PowerPoint chart out there that describes communications like it’ll just immediately happen. All right, you have to understand what’s behind the lightning bolt. And most of the folks that are in this room, if you’re of the communications or cyber ilk, then you understand everything that you’re doing to ensure that the lightning bolt is is successful. But then I also ask you to be teaching and teaching your your leadership, your operational leadership, to ensure that they are understanding what it is that’s behind that lightning bolt, and then we’ll be victorious together. Thanks.

Air Commodore David Clyde:

It’s always entertaining, because you know how many things get taken as you go along the line? I’ll offer up too and make life a little bit harder for you. My first one is a little bit of a soapbox. Ping for me is that we don’t do cyber for cyber sake. There is a purpose or an outcome that we’re here to achieve, and everything we need to do, we need to make sure we align ourselves to that purpose and that outcome. Which leads me to the second one, and it’s a little cliche, but there’s truth behind a lot of cliches. And this one is that cyber is a team sport, and whether we are talking about the relationship that exists between cyber operators, whether we’re talking about the relationship that exists between different parts of the cyber continuum, from communications through defensive through offensive, between domains, between defense, the military, and industry, or with our international partners. Cyber is a team sport, and it’s only by bringing our best efforts together and being able to understand each other and through that select best of breed solutions to be able to get after the challenge that we have in front of us, that we’ll be able to be successful.

Brig. Gen. Zachary Shay Warakomski:

In the spirit or in the interest of time, here 40 seconds left, I will tell you, one of the things that I’m most excited about, in particular, given the nascency of our service, is the force development. And if you look at the officer training course that just kicked off earlier this month, what we are doing across the board to be able to ensure that there is absolute. Foundational knowledge of space operations, cyber operations and Intel for each and every one of our newest sessions, regardless of their commissioning source, I think is going to be a game changer. Everybody will be well versed and will be at graduation, and will be able to be pushed out to an operational unit, and we will work from there. And I think from an officer standpoint, you’re going to see some of the parochial nature of what we do go away, as you alluded to. It’s not cyber for cyber’s sake. It’s toward a broader mission set in security of our nation, and so looking forward to that more to come.

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This transcript was auto-generated, and may not be 100 percent accurate. The source audio and video can be accessed above.