The U.S. Marine Corps is ramping up to conduct operations in cyberspace as part of its everyday capabilities. Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) will operate in cyberspace as they do on land, sea and air, according to the head of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific.

Lt. Gen. Keith J. Stalder, USMC, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific, allowed that cyberwarfare normally is not associated with the Marines. Nonetheless, the Corps is moving into training and making investments in cyberwarfare capabilities and facilities, he told the Thursday breakfast audience at TechNet Asia-Pacific 2009 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

A Marine cyber headquarters already has been established, and one company of Marines will serve there. Lt. Gen. George Flynn, USMC, will serve as a component commander to Lt. Gen. Keith G. Alexander, USA, director of the National Security Agency, who has been nominated for promotion to general and assignment as head of the U.S. Cyber Command.

The U.S. military by and large is taking the wrong approach to cyberwarfare by treating it as a separate entity without the innovation that should bring. The country needs to incorporate it with other military activities and turn loose creative leadership for U.S. cyberwar activities to prevail.

“What happens in cyberspace doesn’t stay in cyberspace; it affects the real world,” declared Jim Newman of the Navy Information Operations Command serving with the NSA CSS Hawaii. Speaking at a panel focusing on multinational operations at TechNet Asia Pacific 2009, being held in Honolulu, Hawaii, November 2-5, stated that all of the warfare areas have to be integrated together, and cyber is one of them.

Newman added that all cyber actions have a presence and a reality in the physical world in which we live. Accordingly, we need to structure the cyber part in the same way we structure the joint command world.

The U.S. military doesn’t need a cyber planning tool; it needs an integrated warfare planning tool. Information as a weapon and as a tool to further the commander’s capabilities will be much more powerful as a result, he said.

And, the nation must be less inhibited when it comes to planning for and waging cyberwarfare. Newman charged that the United States is risk averse when it comes to computer network attack. The country’s leaders are too concerned about getting caught, so they don’t stick our neck out. China isn’t worried about getting caught on the front pages of the Washington Post, but we are, he pointed out.

“There is no warfare area more important than cyber.”

That was the assessment offered by Vice Adm. Richard W. Hunt, USN, commander of the U.S. Third Fleet. Moderating a panel focusing on multinational operations at TechNet Asia Pacific 2009, Adm. Hunt outlined the challenges facing the United States as cyberwarfare increases in importance.

The resultant increased capabilities of cyberspace come with increased vulnerability, and successful operations in other areas depend on our ability to control cyber and to prevent an enemy from damaging it, he stated.

The admiral asked how we can protect and give assured communications flow across the board. He related that we were there 20 years ago with the Soviet Union, but when the Berlin Wall came down, we became lax. One solution might be to have an information system to appear changing all the time so that adversaries would have a hard time getting in or shutting it down.