Category: News

By Christopher Woody of Business Insider

April 1, 2021

Russian military activity around Alaska is increasing and getting more complex, the top US commander in the region said Wednesday.

The Arctic, especially around Alaska, has become a venue for competition amid heightened tensions between the US and Russia. One of Moscow's most visible gestures has been military flights into the Alaskan air-defense identification zone, or ADIZ.

Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, who leads US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, told senators in March that that US and Canada responded to more of those flights in 2020 than in any year since the Cold War.

"We're back into peer competition. Clearly Russia is trying to reassert on a global stage their influence and their capabilities," VanHerck said of the flights at a Defense Writers Group event Wednesday.

"The difference between the past and now is the intercepts are more complex — multi-axis, multi-platform, and oftentimes they'll enter the ADIZ and stay for hours," VanHerck added. "That would be the significant difference, but … it is playing out as the peer competition."

In an April 2020 interview, an F-22 pilot tasked with responding to those Russian flights told Insider that they were "part of an ongoing probe" for "gauging our response and our ability to go out and meet them."

Those Russian flights have been less frequent than in early 2020, but they have continued. NORAD said on January 25 and again on March 29 that it had tracked Tu-142 patrol aircraft in the ADIZ. (The ADIZ extends well beyond territorial airspace, which none of those aircraft entered.)

On February 18, NORAD posted a tweet attributed to VanHerck saying it was "aware of Russian military aircraft forward deployments" and that it "stands ready, as always, to respond appropriately."

VanHerck said Wednesday that the tweet reflected "how we're changing how we approach competition, candidly."

"When I talk about my strategy, it's getting further left in our messaging and creating deterrence options. It's about giving decision space to senior leaders," VanHerck said, using "left" as a military term for ahead of an adversary's action.

"The fact that you can tell a competitor that you're aware of their activities and potential intent gives us the opportunity to posture forces or use strategic messaging to create a deterrence effect," VanHerck added.

Climate change is making the Arctic more accessible to human activity, and military operations there are increasing.

US and NATO navies have been more active there in recent months — the British Navy completed its first Arctic exercise of 2021 in late March. The US Air Force has been flying more near Russian borders in the European Arctic, where Russia has sensitive military bases.

Russia, which has the world's longest Arctic coastline and hopes to benefit from more activity there, has for years been refurbishing and upgrading radars, airbases, and other facilities in the region, where aerial defense is a primary concern.

Russian Navy chief Adm. Nikolai Yevmenov said on March 26 that MiG-31 jets had for the first time flown over the North Pole and refueled in midair. Yevmenov also said three nuclear-powered submarines had surfaced through Arctic ice "in a limited space" for the first time the service's history. 

Such submarine exercises, like a unique US submarine's appearance in Norway last year, are often meant as messages.

"These combat training, research, and practical measures have demonstrated the Russian Navy's abilities and preparedness to operate in the harsh northern latitudes," Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month, adding that such work "must be continued."

Amid those Arctic drills, there was what NATO called "an unusual peak of flights" by Russian aircraft around Europe on March 29. Fighter jets from NATO militaries intercepted six groups of Russian planes in less than six hours.

"Within the last week or so, there's been significant activity in the Arctic" in the air, at sea, and undersea, VanHerk said Wednesday. "Again, I attribute that back to a competition ongoing."

That activity was outside of VanHerck's area of responsibility, but he said he was aware of it and emphasized his command's training and cooperation with NATO and US forces in Europe.

"We just recently recently completed our exercise Amalgam Dart. We have ICEX, another exercise, upcoming," VanHerck said, referring to a NORAD air-defense exercise and a Navy submarine exercise, both in the Arctic.

"We've closely partnered with NATO and [European Command] as far as ... conducting operations that show our capability," VanHerck added.

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By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor of Seapower Magazine

March 32, 2021

ARLINGTON, Va. — Two naval nuclear weapons deployed or planned are likely to survive cancellation efforts from Democratic members Congress, said the new ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). 

Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, speaking March 22 during a webinar of the Defense Writers Group, was asked by Seapower about the future of the W76-4 low-yield warhead deployed in 2019 on some Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles — carried on Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines — and the planned nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) called for in the Defense Department’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. 

The NPR said that “a low-yield SLBM warhead and SLCM will not require or rely on host nation support to provide deterrent effect. They will provide additional diversity in platforms, range, and survivability, and a valuable hedge against future nuclear ‘break out’ scenarios.” 

The review said the “SLCM will provide a needed non-strategic regional presence, an assured response capability. It also will provide an arms-control-compliant response to Russia’s noncompliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, its nonstrategic nuclear arsenal, and its other destabilizing behaviors.” 

The new HASC chairman, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, has stated his opposition to the low-yield warhead and SLCM as being destabilizing to the nuclear balance. 

“We’ll hold the line,” Rogers said, speaking of the congressional Republicans. “I’m sure there will be a big debate. We’ve got some people [opponents of weapons], as long as there are TV cameras in the room, they’re going to run their mouth, but I think we’ll have the votes.” 

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The head of INDOPACOM, Adm. Davidson, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. Hyten, seem receptive to a new Army role in long-range strike.

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. of Breaking Defense

March 12, 2021

WASHINGTON: The Army says its new long-range, land-based missiles will help Air Force and Navy strike planes, not compete with them — and despite traditional rivalries, some crucial Air Force and Navy leaders are listening.

By building new Multi-Domain Task Force units armed with long-range missiles, “what we want to do as a service is provide the combatant commander…multiple options,” the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. James McConville, told the Defense Writers Group on Thursday.

And arguably the most important combatant commander out there, Navy Adm. Philip Davidson of Indo-Pacific Command, welcomed those new options in recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“A wider base of long-range precision fires… enabled by all our terrestrial forces —  not just sea and air but by land forces as well — is critically important to stabilizing what is becoming a more unstable environment in the western Pacific,” Davidson told Sen. Tom Cotton. “Long-range precision fires delivered by the ground force, I think, are critically important.”

Even Davidson’s terminology is telling: “Long-Range Precision Fires” is the Army’s official term for the family of long-range weapons it’s developing. What are they? “They can range anywhere from hypersonic missiles to Mid-Range Capability to Precision Strike Missiles,” McConville said Thursday, “and these systems have the ability to penetrate anti-access/area denial [defenses and] in the future, to sink ships.”

It’s worth noting that “Mid-Range” in this context is at least a thousand miles; hypersonics would fly much farther. Even the shortest-range item on McConville’s menu, the Precision Strike Missile (PRSM), has a range of over 300 miles, which is greater than the longest-range missile in the Army’s inventory today, the Cold War ATACMS.

But wait a minute – isn’t it the job of tactical fighters and, especially, Air Force bombers to penetrate enemy air defenses and strike deep into hostile territory? Key Air Force leaders have pushed back, albeit obliquely, defending their service’s primacy in long-range strike and hinting a ground-based capability would be both redundant and inferior.

No less a figure than the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Charles Brown – a former commander in the Pacific himself – said last month he’d talked with McConville about long-range fires. “We both provide that capability, as well as the other services,” Brown said, “[so as] we look at gaps and seams and overlaps in capability, this is what the discussion has to occur on with [respect to] roles and missions.”

Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also used to want a review of the services roles & missions laid down by the Key West Agreement of 1948 – used to. But last month, he said he now considers it premature to try to lock down service roles when we’re still figuring out how they’ll work together in future Joint All Domain Operations.

“Four years ago … I advocated for a roles and missions discussion on those issues,” Hyten said when CSIS scholar Tom Karako asked him about long-range land-based fires. “As I came in and started working deep into the Joint Warfighting Concept, I realized that, number one, we actually don’t have to do that, and you don’t have to do that because of the way the nature of war is changing.”

“In the Joint Warfighting Concept, the critical structure is basically expanded maneuver – maneuver in every domain, every structure, every command,” Hyten told the CSIS webcast in February. “[Even] our ground forces have to move faster than the adversary, and they have to be able to defend themselves wherever they go and attack effectively.”

“As you walk through that expanded-maneuver concept… son of a gun, all the lines on the battlefield disappear,” Hyten exclaimed. While he didn’t explicitly mention it, many officers have said that includes the traditional boundaries – like the Fire Support Coordination Line – that leave targets on the far side for airpower and on the near side for artillery.

Among “my brothers and sisters in the Air Force,” Hyten said, “there’s a couple that are arguing pretty aggressively for a kind of a roles and missions look. But that’s looking at the world from 1948. We’ve got to look at the world from 2021.”

That’s as close to a rebuke for his own service as Hyten can publicly come. Karako, the general’s interlocutor at CSIS, put it more bluntly in an email to Breaking Defense:

“Given that the new Joint Warfighting Concept has yet to emerge, it seems premature to toss objections about roles and missions dating back seven decades,” Karako told me. “In this new missile age, this new era of standoff, multiple services may well need to field long-range hypersonic, supersonic, or subsonic strike. Admiral Davidson reaffirmed such a vision… by endorsing the utility of ground-based long-range fires operated by the Army and the Marines.”

“This might not fit the traditional roles and missions division of labor, but it probably shouldn’t,” Karako said. “As General Hyten put it, cautioning his own Air Force colleagues, it’s not 1948 anymore.”

Now, there’s absolutely a debate to be had about the advantages and disadvantages of airstrikes versus land-based missiles. A bomber is absolutely the most flexible efficient way of delivering munitions to multiple targets: Instead of building a one-use rocket that can fly hundreds or thousands of miles, you have a reusable aircraft that can fly overhead and fire large numbers of smaller, cheaper short-range missiles, or just drop precision-guided bombs that need no propellant besides gravity.

But that’s assuming the bomber can get through. China and Russia have invested massively in anti-aircraft defenses in recent decades. They’ve also invested in long-range anti-ship missiles as well to hold off American aircraft carriers and Tomahawk-missile-launching surface warships. (Submarines are a harder target). Land-based launchers, by contrast, can hide in jungles or tunnels on Pacific islands that – as McConville noted – no enemy can sink.

So, McConville and his camp argue, there will be times when Army weapons can open the way. If your long-range missile is intercepted and shot down, well, at least you didn’t lose the lives of expensively trained aircrew. If it gets through, it can blow up anti-aircraft defenses to open a path for airpower.

“We’re going to need in the future the ability to maybe suppress air defense, and we’re going to do it maybe from a strategic range,” McConville said – that is, with long-range, land-based weapons. The Army (and Marines) are also working to sink enemy ships with land-based missiles, he said. So, he summed up, “what we’re doing is providing an option that may in the future enable both air and maritime maneuver.”

But the Air Force, for its part, has very pointedly been prioritizing its modernization efforts aimed at overcoming higher-threat air environments. This includes the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, which is considering development of not just a sixth-generation fighter, but also lower-cost aircraft (known as “attritable” in Air Force jargon) to take on the suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) mission perhaps using AI pilots..

The related Skyborg program has been looking at the concept of teaming piloted aircraft with drones for various missions; and on March 5 the service issued a request for information (RFI) on a potential new family of Next-Generation Multi-Role Unmanned Aerial System Family of Systems (UAS FoS) that could include “expendable” drones. Among the mission sets foreseen, are “a new use for UAS FoS in anti-access and area denial environments while offering efficiencies in meeting capacity needs of combatant commanders.”

All this costs money, and there’s less to go around among the services. So the big question is going to be, can the Pentagon afford multiple long range options? “The cost is fairly reasonable for the capability that’s going to be brought,” McConville said.

It’s worth noting that the Army isn’t reinventing the wheel here. Its longest-range weapon, the hypersonic missile, shares both warhead (aka “glide body”) and booster rocket with the Navy version: They’re just packaged differently to launch from trucks instead of ships. And the modestly named Mid-Range Capability, with its thousand-mile range, will use a mix of existing Navy missiles, the subsonic Tomahawk and the supersonic SM-6, to handle different targets.

Davidson referenced this repurposing in his endorsement of the Army plan. “I’ve been encouraged by the enthusiasm by the Army and the Marine Corps to embrace some of the capabilities that the Navy and Air Force have already developed,” he said. “I think that is a low cost way to quick capability that can be fielded potentially in the region, and I think we ought to stay after it.”

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Senator Jack Reed said he favored seeking an extension of the May 1 deadline for withdrawing troops that President Donald Trump and the Taliban negotiated last year.

By Eric Schmitt of The New York Times

February 24, 2021

WASHINGTON — The new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said on Wednesday that the Biden administration should not withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan to meet a May 1 deadline negotiated by the Trump administration and the Taliban.

Instead, said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who took control of the panel this month, the United States should seek an extension of the deadline to give diplomats more time to negotiate an agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

“To pull out within several months now is a very challenging and destabilizing effort,” Mr. Reed told reporters on a video conference call organized by George Washington University.

Mr. Reed, a former 82nd Airborne Division officer who has visited Afghanistan 18 times as a lawmaker in the past two decades, added his voice to a growing number of national security specialists, including those on a bipartisan, congressionally appointed panel, who argue, in essence, for abandoning the May 1 timetable. They say that the Taliban have not met the conditions for a U.S. withdrawal as set by the Trump-Taliban agreement last February.

Supporters of an extension say it would buy time for the new administration to bolster the peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Qatar; rally support from other states in the region, including Pakistan; and conduct a new assessment of the future terrorism threat in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, however, have rejected the idea of a monthslong delay, and have threatened to resume attacks against American and other NATO forces if the United States unilaterally decides to keep its 2,500 troops in the country beyond the May deadline. The American forces are now hunkered down on about a dozen bases and perform two main missions: conducting counterterrorism operations and advising Afghan security forces at various headquarters.

Mr. Reed underscored that a top American national security priority should be to prevent terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, from using Afghanistan as a safe haven from which to carry out strikes.

“We’ve got to be able to assure the world and the American public that Afghanistan will not be a source of planning, plotting to project terrorist attacks around the globe,” Mr. Reed said. “That’s the minimum. I’m not sure we can do that without some presence there.”

The Taliban have recently issued orders to their fighters to stop foreign militants from entering their ranks. The orders, reported earlier by the Afghan channel ToloNews, are believed to be at least part of an attempt to show the United States that the Taliban are taking steps toward breaking from Al Qaeda, or propaganda to make it seem that is the case, according to experts.

By all accounts, President Biden will be guided by his own long, personal experience with Afghanistan, and he has yet to make a decision. “We remain committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again provides a base for terrorist attacks against the United States and our partners and our interests,” Mr. Biden said on Friday in virtual remarks at the Munich Security Conference.

Top Biden aides have said they are not rushing such a critical decision, and the administration is holding regular, high-level meetings on the matter, American officials said.

“I told our allies that no matter what the outcome of our review, the United States will not undertake a hasty or disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan that puts their forces or the alliance’s reputation at risk,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III told reporters on Friday after meeting virtually with other NATO defense ministers.

“At this time, no decisions about our future force posture have been made,” Mr. Austin said. “In the meantime, current missions will continue, and of course, commanders have the right and the responsibility to defend themselves and their Afghan partners against attack.”

Preparing for the possibility of renewed attacks against Americans, the military’s Central Command has been ordered to draw up a wide range of options to cover whether troops stay or go, and to counter even higher levels of Taliban violence, Pentagon officials say.

One option would be to increase the number of American airstrikes against Taliban targets across the country, including the fighters threatening major Afghan cities such as Kabul and Kandahar. This could require sending more strike aircraft to operate in the Middle East or ensuring that an aircraft carrier with its strike wing is operating in the Persian Gulf region.

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By Valerie Insinna of Defense News

February 18, 2021

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force could be in the market for a brand-new, advanced, fourth-generation fighter jet as it looks to replace its oldest F-16s, the service’s top general said Wednesday.

The Air Force has started a study that will describe its preferred mix of fighters and other tactical aircraft that will be used to help build the fiscal year 2023 budget. That result could include a brand new “four-and-a half or fifth-gen minus” fighter with capabilities that fall somewhere in between the 1970s era F-16 and stealthy fifth-generation fighters like the F-22 and F-35 joint strike fighter, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown.

“If we have the capability to do something even more capable for cheaper and faster, why not? Let’s not just buy off the shelf, let’s actually take a look at something else out there that we can build,” Brown told reporters during a Defense Writers Group roundtable.

Brown’s comments are the first time an Air Force official has spoken about introducing another fourth-generation aircraft into the service’s fighter inventory. In January, former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper disclosed that the service’s ongoing study will also weigh whether to buy new-build F-16s from Lockheed Martin.

“As you look at the new F-16 production line in South Carolina, that system has some wonderful upgraded capabilities that are worth thinking about as part of our capacity solution,” Roper told Aviation Week.

But Brown said he is still yet to be convinced that the F-16 is the right option.

“I don’t know that it actually would be the F-16. Actually, I want to be able to build something new and different that’s not the F-16 — that has some of those capabilities, but gets there faster and features a digital approach,” he said. “I realize that folks have alluded that it will be a particular airplane. But I’m open to looking at other platforms to see what that right force mix is.”

So what capabilities would this new clean-sheet aircraft have?

At the top of the list, Brown said, is an open mission systems with a computing system powerful enough that software code can be updated very quickly.

Brown also pointed to the approach the Air Force has taken with Boeing’s T-7A Red Hawk trainer and its secretive future fighter, known as Next Generation Air Dominance. Both aircraft have been designed using digital engineering practices, which have allowed the service to model the lifecycle of various designs and rapidly get full-scale demonstrators ready for flight tests.

“And so the question is, what is the son of NGAD?” he said.

The ongoing study will include modeling, simulation and analysis aimed at nailing down the right mix of aircraft, what capabilities they each have and how many of each type are needed in order to ensure the Air Force can be successful in future conflicts.

Although the Air Force is currently conducting the study without input from outside organizations, Brown said he would like to involve the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, an influential organization inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense that often pushes against service budget decisions and advocates lower-cost solutions.

“I can make a recommendation, but I don’t actually have the final vote because, again, I have to work with OSD and with the Congress. But that’s why the analysis to me is important and a dialogue is important,” he said.

Investing in another fighter type could be a hard sell for the Air Force to make to Congress, particularly with several fighters already in production.

The Air Force has not officially deviated from plans to buy 1,763 F-35A conventional takeoff and landing jets from Lockheed over its program of record, although internal documents from the Air Force’s future warfighting cell have indicated a plan to curb orders at 1,050 jets, Aviation Week reported in December.

Last year, the service placed its first order for Boeing F-15EX jets to replacing aging F-15C/Ds, and could buy more than 144 of the new planes. The first F-15EX completed its inaugural flight earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Lockheed’s F-16 line has pivoted to international sales since its move to Greenville, South Carolina, in 2019.

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By Lee Hudson of Aviation Week

February 1, 2021

At the end of January, the U.S. Air Force downgraded two previously unreported Category 1 deficiencies related to the KC-46’s auxiliary power unit (APU), according to the head of Air Mobility Command.

The two deficiencies with the brand-new tanker’s APU are maintenance related, Air Mobility Command chief Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost told reporters Feb. 1 during a Defense Writers Group event.

The first problem was with the APU’s duct clamps, which are used to join sections of the APU bleed duct, the APU supplying air, and the ducting inside the aircraft to the main engine, fuel system and cooling/heating system.

Van Ovost explained that the duct clamp was moving and was “causing some problems,” but the Air Force worked with Boeing and the company engineered a fix.

“They now only found the fix and tested it, but about 70% of the fielded fleet have already been retrofit and the rest will be done very shortly,” she said. “We’re confident that the clamp fix is the final fix based on their experience with the commercial aircraft and how it did the redesign on that.”

The second problem was with the APU’s drain masts, which are used to clear out condensation, fuel and oil from the aircraft. There were quality issues with the spot weld that could potentially cause a piece to break off the aircraft. Boeing has redesigned the drain masts and is working with the Air Force through the retrofit option, Van Ovost said.

Separately, the Air Force does not plan to increase the acceptance rate of the KC-46 to more than two aircraft a month because it is not operationally tasking the new tankers. “For right now, I don’t need to be in a hurry to take them at a faster rate than about two a month, Van Ovost said.

The service anticipates the fix for the tanker’s Remote Vision System will come online in late 2023.

Others:https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/02/01/the-air-force-has-a-fix-for-two-of-its-major-kc-46-problems/

https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/usaf-resolves-two-cat-1-kc-46-deficiencies-ties-progress-payment-plan-rvs-20-development

https://breakingdefense.com/2021/02/amc-hopes-to-wrap-analysis-of-next-gen-tanker-options-in-2022/

https://www.defensedaily.com/two-six-kc-46-category-deficiencies-resolved-amc-says/air-force/

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/2/1/air-force-looking-to-expand-role-for-tankers

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2021/02/air-force-hunts-ways-use-not-quite-ready-tankers/171785/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-01/boeing-tanker-s-flaws-irk-air-force-spur-336-million-holdback

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/biden-administration-ready-to-go-fast-on-iran-and-slow-on-afghanistan

https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/usaf-setting-parameters-study-commercial-refueling-services

https://www.govexec.com/defense/2021/02/air-force-hunts-ways-use-not-quite-ready-tankers/171789/

By Sara Friedman of Inside Cybersecurity

January 13, 2021

With the full impact of the SolarWinds attack still unknown, former DHS cyber leader Suzanne Spaulding says the government approach to cyber needs to change from shoring up systems to limiting damage and protecting critical information.

“My biggest concern from this massive hack is that we for some time are going to assume in government and many private industries that we have been impacted [and] the adversary is in our systems,” Spaulding said at event Tuesday hosted by George Washington University. “We are going to be spending a long time getting the adversary out of our system.”

Spaulding said the bad actors will not “just melt away” now that they are being discovered on federal systems and the U.S. should expect “hand-to-hand combat.”

One of the ways to limit the damage of future attacks is “to have a clear plan for what we are going to do when lines are crossed,” Spaulding said, and to operate with the “assumption” that more attacks will occur.

Standing up the Office of the National Cyber Director will play an important part in helping both government and industry understand SolarWinds impacts, according to Spaulding.

“There are pieces of the SolarWinds hack and our understanding of it spread out across government and the various departments and agencies doing battle right now that have been impacted and obviously many private sector victims and the cybersecurity firms that are helping them and companies like Microsoft that were also part of the technology deployed here,” Spaulding said.

On “day one” of the NCD’s term, Spaulding said they will have a “perfect opportunity” to start “operationalizing the kind of collaboration” envisioned by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission to bring “the private sector folks to the table as well as across the interagency and our allies overseas who may have insights for us and are working hard to share more information than we are normally comfortable sharing.”

Spaulding, a Solarium commissioner, said information sharing will play a critical part of the NCD’s role in the executive branch and to also allow for collaboration “on an operational basis” with a focus on “Who has the capability to do what and how do we empower them to do it?”

Retired Adm. Mike Rogers, former NSA director and U.S. Cyber Command chief, also spoke at the event highlighting how the U.S. approach to responding to attacks needs to change to meet new threats.

“What we have never said as policy across multiple administrations is the penetration of national security systems through espionage purposes is outside the acceptable rules,” Rogers said. “One of the challenges for the incoming Biden team is we need to step back and ask ourselves just what kind of behavior is unacceptable and if so what are the things we can use to set thresholds so to speak.”

In the defense and intelligence worlds, Rogers said “much of our authority is all predicated on external” threats from foreign adversaries and Russia “clearly saw” ways to exploit our “domestic infrastructure.”

“They have clearly pivoted into a different operational scheme, different operational methodology and they are using our structures and processes in some ways against us,” Rogers said. “We need to be thinking our way through what are the implications of that for us.”

Others: https://www.afcea.org/content/us-civil-unrest-may-move-cyber-realm