NO AIR: Cyber Dependency and the Doctrine Gap

摘要

Despite concerted efforts to defend them, military cyber networks remain vulnerable to attack. For the U.S. military to maintain operational agility, operational doctrine should expand to include methods designed to ensure unhindered operations in a degraded cyber environment. The need for expansion in cyber doctrine stems from four areas: the nature of the cyberspace domain, the military's growing dependency on it, the threat environment, and doctrinal gaps. At the operational level, shortcomings in doctrine affect training, planning, and the U.S. military's ability to seize and maintain the initiative. Because of current inabilities to protect much of its cyber network from attack, U.S. military dependency on the cyber domain becomes a critical vulnerability for an enemy to exploit. By training like it expects to fight, ensuring operational planning assumptions are accurate, and emphasizing decentralized execution of commander's intent, the U.S. military can better operate in a challenged or austere cyber network environment.