Affecting Change in the Information Warfare Domain

Brig. Gen. Bradley Pyburn, USAF, deputy commander, 16th Air Force (Air Forces Cyber), Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, opened the chapter's September virtual luncheon with a celebratory salutation recognizing the efforts of our young Airmen today and those that have paved the way before us. Gen. Pyburn took us back with a little history lesson as he explained how Sun Tzu used and defended information and disinformation to confuse the adversary. "Information warfare is not new and is not dead. What's new is the technology, global connectivity, and the speed with which you can counter and maneuver in and through the information domain to generate effects." That Information Warfare perspective looks at how to affect the adversary through the way operations are conducted. The way in which you conduct those battlefield effects may be either kinetic or nonkinetic to take down an adversary. Gen. Pyburn went on to explain Operation Fortitude as a key example that weaved history into what the Air Force is doing today. Operation Fortitude was a grand military deception that took years of planning and did not include any combat. It was an information deception strategy that 16th Air Force played a part in and that rolls right into the convergence of opportunities today. Bringing synergy to some of those opportunities include analysis and exploitation teams focused on the root cause of a problem and delivering that intelligence to the commanders to generate the proper effects to execute. 16th Air Force is also working to leverage the capabilities of the National Tactical Integration in support of Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) to gather intelligence and, through the appropriate means, push those effects that are to speed and scale to the warfighter's edge. And then there is the information operator whose job is to confuse the adversary in unique and different ways. The new J-39 team is employed to do just that. These are just a few of the capabilities 16th Air Force is leveraging to affect change in the Information Warfare domain.

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