Cyber is Inherently Joint

The cyber era requires partnerships and information sharing across the agencies, industries and nations, said Maj. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, USA, the new commanding general, U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence, Fort Gordon, during a keynote address at the AFCEA TechNet 2014 Augusta conference, Augusta, Georgia.

The Army’s Cyber Center of Excellence is intended to train, educate and develop a professional work force capable operating from the strategic to the tactical level. The cyber work force will work with the Signal Corps, not replace it, the general reassured he audience. “Cyber is a combined arms capability. It will require a strong and capable Signal Corps. It’s going to require a strong and capable intelligence corps. We’re going to have to integrate in our electronic warfare specialty,” he said. “That’s our aspiration—to be the experts for cyberspace.”

He repeatedly used the term “exquisite stovepipes,” referring to stovepiped systems or information that work exclusively for one community or function but are not shared. “What we’re going to have to do is make sure that we don’t end up with separate, expensive stovepipes that don’t support the commander’s requirements,” he stated.

But it is more than just the different communities within the Army that will have to work together. “The thing we have to guard against is making this an Army solution. This space is inherently joint. It’s interagency. It’s intergovernmental. It’s multinational. If we try to do this as the Army alone, if we start to isolate ourselves, we’ll fail,” Gen. Fogarty declared.

While partnering is vital, it has to be done correctly. “We have to do that lawfully. We have to do that ethically. And we have to do that at digital speed,” he said.