Army to Ramp Up Testing For Cyber Weapons.

* As the Army sharpens its cyber capabilities, the service is planning to increase its capacity for training and simulation at its facilities across the nation.

Task orders for the National Cyber Range Complex support contract will start dropping shortly, according to BAE Systems, one of the companies that was selected for the contract.

The firm is helping the Army look toward the future, including initiatives such as joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2, said Dan Snowdall, a program manager at BAE.

JADC2 is the Pentagon's ongoing effort to connect sensors and shooters at the tactical edge. That connection will give the military decision dominance--but not if the flow of data is exposed to cyber attacks, Snowdall said.

"If you don't start at the impetus of a weapon system... and seeing that weapon system is protected, then you're going to build something that's going to be vulnerable and will always be vulnerable going forward," he said.

The National Cyber Range Complex "will consist of an integrated and interoperable constellation of facilities designed to enable the planning and execution of large-scale, complex and distributed cyber training and evaluation, training and mission rehearsal events," according to the Army's program executive office for simulation, training and instrumentation.

The contract will enable cyber event planning, design, engineering, execution and...