Air Force Meshes Info-War Capabilities.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin
• Position: Algorithmic Warfare

The Air Force is working to coalesce a number of its information warfare operations as great power competitors Russia and China make investments in their own digital warfighting tools.

Last year, officials began merging and integrating headquarters staff for cyber and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance effects under an office known as A2/6, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Mary O'Brien, deputy chief of staff for the organization.

While cyber and ISR are the "primary focus today in A2/6, they're not the only capabilities that we need to converge in order to deliver effects in the information environment of the future," she noted during a panel discussion at the Air Force Association's Virtual Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

There is also a need to influence the entire electromagnetic spectrum, O'Brien said. To get at that, the Air Force Spectrum Management Office will be integrated into the A2/6 team, she noted. The effort was slated to begin in October.

"Their mission is to defend and ensure electromagnetic spectrum access for the Air Force and DoD activities in support of our national policy objectives and global operations," she said. "With this realignment, A2/6 continues along a multi-year path to support--from a headquarters Air Force perspective--the synchronization of information warfare functions."

Information warfare is the employment of military capabilities in and through the information environment to deliberately affect adversary human and system behavior, O'Brien said. The convergence of several info-war functions within A2/6 is happening at the right time to influence a number of key initiatives such as the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System.

The service envisions ABMS as an "internet of things" for the military that will not only connect the Air Force and Space Force's platforms, but also those of the other services through a concept called joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2.

A2/6 is working on several aspects of ABMS, she said. This includes open software-defined mesh networks, open software-defined radios and other open systems that will enable translation and communication across platforms.

"Each one of these product lines enables an aspect of connectivity necessary for command and control," she said. "We will need to embrace modern technologies, especially those from our industry partners, to deliver the operational networks and threat information our joint warfighter needs to generate combat...