Cyber Threats debut on the flightline at Nellis Air Force Base’s Red Flag

February 17, 2014 Information Security, Information Warfare, Military Aviation

David Cenciotti

Maintainers counter cyber threats for first time at Nellis’s Red Flag

“Train as you fight, fight as you train” has always been Red Flag‘s motto.

U.S. Air Force’s main exercise has to prepare aircrew and support personnel to fight modern war. In the air, on the ground, over the sea and in the cyberspace.

For the first time, the recent Red Flag 14-1 at Nellis Air Force Base featured a “contested, degraded or operationally limited” environment, or CDO, for maintainers, who were trained to cope with cyber vulnerabilities in the systems they use on the flightline.

Ground personnel are always using computers and brand new technologies that may be targeted by cyber attacks launched by tech-savvy adversaries: laptop used for aircraft maintainance and diagnosis, GPS systems, communication and network equipment are all high-value targets for enemy hacking teams. That’s why Red Flag maintainers receive academics on cyber vulnerabilities, information operations and other CDO-related threats.

Hence, along with “kinetic operations” conducted by fighter jets, attack planes and strategic bombers that must dominate a contested airspace or battlefield, a simulated “non-kinetic” war is fought by Red Flag participants to defend their critical systems from attacks coming from the cyberspace; attacks that may be as devastating as those using bullets, bombs and missiles.

Image credit: U.S. Air Force

About David Cenciotti

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

WinstonCDN says:

February 17, 2014 at 5:28 PM

Smart
John Williams says:

February 18, 2014 at 12:55 AM

How a maintainer defeats cyber threats: Paper TOs and forms.
Chris B says:

February 18, 2014 at 1:48 PM

“Cyber” vulnerabilities are caused by the contractor not doing their damn job isolating the plane’s systems from external networks. A plane should not have “cyber” vulnerabilities.

And putting “cyber attack” capabilities, whatever the hell the generals think those are, in sixth generation fighters is even more retarded.
- KenB says:
  
  May 20, 2020 at 7:22 AM
  
  LOL spoken like an outsider of technical acquisition and cybersecurity. Seems the FIRST cyber weapon “jumped” the isolation of the Iranian nuclear processing facility and communicated with its “mommy” to update instructions where there was no physical internet connection between the facility and outside world. The “air gap” behaved as a slow internet connection.