Information Operations
Newsletter
Compiled by: Mr. Jeff Harley
US Army Strategic Command
G3 Plans, Information Operations Branch
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Vol. 7, no. 12 (13 February – 1 March 2007)
1. Cyberspace Integral Part of War Operations, Head Says
2. Soldiers Work with Iraqis to Provide Medical Care
3. Blogs Are Centcom's New Target
4. Cyber Officials: Chinese Hackers Attack 'Anything and Everything'
5. B-52 Still Eyed As Platform for Stand-Off Jammer
6. Analysis: Shout It from the Mosques
7. Islamists Stage Jihad Attack for the Purpose of Psychological Warfare
8. Air Force Explores the Next Frontier
9. Army Upgrades Its Electronic Warfare Training
10. Cheney Attack Reveals Taliban Suicide Bombing Patterns
11. Facts Spin Wildly In Iraq’s Information War
12. Fighting In Cyberspace Means Cyber Domain Dominance
13. Lt. Gen. Boykin: Counterinsurgency Methods in War on Terror Produce Results
14. The Necessity for Values Operations as Opposed to Information Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
15. Flying and Fighting in Cyberspace
16. Cyberspace: The New Air and Space?
Page ii
Cyberspace Integral Part of War Operations, Head Says
By John Andrew Prime, Shreveport Times, 13 February 2007
Cyberspace Operations Command may be one of the youngest members of the Air Force's pantheon, but it has an active and growing role, its commander told a group of military communications and electronic experts Monday.
"It's about warfighting," Lt. Gen. Bob Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, told members of the Shreveport chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, or AFCEA.
Working to a large degree from the framework of a newly devised informational brochure on the new command, Elder spoke for a half hour. His manner was easy and sprinkled with dry humor, almost like a neighbor talking comfortably in a living room, rather than the way you'd expect a three-star general to speak to a gathering.
Elder said people have different ideas of what cyber warfare is, but stressed it is an active area of the service and not just people chasing electrons.
He said the command is a point where different facets of information warfare meet, and shared a chart that shows the cyber domain as a focus for the coordination of observation, assessment, decision-making and final action.
All this has to be done with the awareness that enemies hope to be able to use the same processes against us, and with an eye to being able to survive and operate, and to operate without artificial boundaries, he said.
It will require using and developing technologies, and creating a virtual community of like-minded people from AFCEA, similar organizations, academia, industry and the military, he said.
"This is a big undertaking and we'll need a real lot of help," he said.
The crowd of about 100 people in the Barksdale officers club was made up mostly of people in uniform. But still there were a fair number of civilians, many of them members of the Air Force's Scientific Advisory Board, which was invited to the talk.
"I loved that he gave us handouts," said Col. Paul Suarez, a member of 8th Air Force and president of the local AFCEA chapter.
He said that prior to Elder's talk, a lot of people in the room might have had differing opinions about what cyberspace and cyberwarfare are.
"They have a better understanding," he said.
He understood one thing after hearing Elder, he said.
"We all have a lot of work to do. This is one of many steps."
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Soldiers Work with Iraqis to Provide Medical Care
By Staff Sgt. Jon Cupp, 1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs, 13 Feb 07
SAB AL BOR, Iraq, Feb. 13, 2007 — Soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Company C, 414th Civil Affairs Battalion, and Iraqi civilian healthcare professionals helped the citizens here at the newly refurbished Sab Al Bor Health Clinic, providing medical care Feb. 10 during a community healthcare outreach project.
"It always makes us feel good to know we've helped the populace here. I hope my soldiers continue to see how what they're doing here is positively affecting someone's life."
1st Sgt. Uhuru Salmon, the top noncommissioned officer.
The coordinated effort involved medics and doctors from the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment and 115th Brigade Support Battalion. They worked with an Iraqi pharmacist and an Iraqi nurse to treat the patients. Civil affairs troops gave toys and candy to the children and toothpaste, tooth brushes, soap and other personal hygiene items to the families. They also handied out bottled water as patients upon their leaving the clinic.
More than 200 Iraqis from the village were treated for ailments ranging from common colds, minor burns, open wounds, aches and pains, allergies, to ear infections.
"We feel really good about getting to do this," said 1st Lt. Julio Sanchez, a medical platoon leader for Company C, 115th BSB and a native of Brownsville, Texas. "It gives us a way to show the people here that we're not trying to run their country, rather we're here just to help out and support them in every way possible including medical.
"It's kind of like a sick call, the people come to us with whatever illnesses they have and we help them out the best we can," Sanchez added.
Besides treating patients, however, the day offered the medical specialists an opportunity to educate Sab Al Bor residents about healthcare.
"It's been a good opportunity to teach them aseptic techniques, such as the importance of washing hands and other things to improve their health," said Kansas City native
Staff Sgt. John Crawford, a civil affairs specialist and U.S. Army Reserve member who works as a registered practical nurse in his civilian life.
"One of the best parts about working with the children has been educating their parents on ways to keep their children healthy so they can stay healthy," added Pfc. Tanya Elhaloui, a medic with Company C, 115th BSB and a native of Long Beach, Calif.
Recently, the civil affairs specialists from Company C, 414th CA Bn., worked with 1BCT soldiers and Iraqi contractors to refurbish the clinic. They painted the walls, replaced ceilings and re-stocked some needed medical supplies. Two generators were also given to the clinic for additional power in the event national electricity sources go down.
1st Sgt. Uhuru Salmon, the top noncommissioned officer from 1-7 Cavalry's B Troop, said helping the people in the village over the course of the medical operation was quite meaningful to him. Soldiers in Salmon's company have been working over the past few months in close coordination with civil affairs personnel and Iraqis to improve the quality of life for people in the village.
Other recent civil affairs projects in the village included work on the Sab Al Bor water treatment plant, school projects and improvements to the town's Joint Security Station, Salmon said.
"It always makes us feel good to know we've helped the populace here," said Salmon, a native of Miami. "I hope my soldiers continue to see how what they're doing here is positively affecting someone's life."
He said he can see a time when the Iraqis will transition fully to taking over their own security, healthcare programs and other government services independent of anyone's assistance.
"We've been working too with the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police at the JSS and they're showing that they're ready to take on more responsibility and being more proactive," Salmon said. "They're coming along and we're getting there, slowly but surely."
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Blogs Are Centcom's New Target
By William R. Levesque, St Petersburg Times, February 12, 2007
TAMPA - It begins almost imperceptibly, one lonely posting on a blog. It says that U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan use candy to lure children so they can be used as human shields.
Patently untrue.
But in an age when the lines between traditional media and the blogosphere are blurred, a dark rumor can spread like a kindergarten virus, unchecked and unchallenged.
U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa is taking notice.
Since 2005, CentCom officials have jumped into the blogging fray, facing the realities of a new electronic age in hopes of combating misinformation on the Web, or just getting its own news out.
A three-person team monitors blogs - Internet journals with commentary from ordinary citizens and, often, links to news articles - that concentrate on CentCom's area of responsibility, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan.
Team members contact blogs when inaccuracies or incomplete information is posted. They also ask bloggers if they can post a link to CentCom's Web site, or they offer access to CentCom information and news releases.
In the case of the story about children being used as human shields, CentCom posted a comment to the blog pointing out the mistake.
"It lets CentCom get information about soldiers directly to the American people," said Lt. Col. Matthew McLaughlin, a CentCom spokesman. "It allows us to bypass those traditional media business models that dictate what gets covered and what doesn't. It's not a story when a soldier does something that helps 50 people in Afghanistan."
He said it isn't about the media being biased. Instead, he said, CentCom recognizes that the media often has neither the time nor space to tell a complete story.
Army Reserve Maj. Richard McNorton, a former team member, told the American Forces Press Service, "Now online readers have the opportunity to read positive stories."
Some bloggers, especially those leaning to the political right, applaud the effort, saying CentCom is bypassing a bias imposed by the media. Others on the left, and some media watchers, question the effort.
"Information that comes from government in an unfettered way needs to be taken not just with a grain of salt but with a big bag of salt and a decoder ring and maybe special glasses," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Blogs, he said, don't operate with the transparency of the media. A blog may be backed by a political party, a candidate or a corporation without a reader knowing.
"Americans have traditionally had a great reluctance letting the government get involved in the news business directly," Rosenstiel said. "We've got a name for that. It's propaganda."
Hungry for truth
Don't tell that to Rosemary Welch, 47, a Long Beach, Calif., woman who blogs full time under a site called DoD (Department of Defense) Daily News, a blog that Welch describes as right-leaning. The site contains a link to CentCom and posts information provided by it.
"The media's not looking at the entire picture," she said. "The more they can reach out, the better, because we're not seeing this information on TV. We're hungry for the truth."
Capt. Anthony Deiss, who works on the CentCom blog team, said that its members don't engage in discussion with bloggers and that they offer CentCom's resources to those of any political persuasion.
"We don't tell anyone, 'You should or shouldn't say that,' " Deiss said. "We stay in our lane."
With terrorists using the Web as a tool, the military would be remiss if it didn't also use it to counter misinformation, he said.
After CentCom contacted a blog called Newsrack, which had posted stories critical of the war on terror, CentCom's blog team sent an e-mail offering access to its Web site so the blog could find out "what is really happening."
"It verges on propagandizing people," said Thomas Nephew, the 48-year-old research analyst in Washington, D.C., who runs the blog. He viewed the response as being critical of his site.
CentCom officials deny that they are trying to spin anyone.
"With the proliferation of information today, if you're not speaking to this forum, you're not being heard by it," McLaughlin said. "We don't want to cede this information arena to anybody. We think we owe it to the American taxpayer."
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Cyber Officials: Chinese Hackers Attack 'Anything and Everything'
By Josh Rogin, Federal Computer Week, 13 February 2007
NORFOLK, Va. -- At the Naval Network Warfare Command here, U.S. cyber defenders track and investigate hundreds of suspicious events each day. But the predominant threat comes from Chinese hackers, who are constantly waging all-out warfare against Defense Department networks, Netwarcom officials said.
Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication, said a senior Netwarcom official, who spoke to reporters on background Feb 12. The conflict has reached the level of a campaign-style, force-on-force engagement, he said.
“They will exploit anything and everything,” the senior official said, referring to the Chinese hackers’ strategy. And although it is impossible to confirm the involvement of China’s government, the attacks are so deliberate, “it’s hard to believe it’s not government-driven,” the official said.
The motives of Chinese hackers run the gamut, including technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD networks for future action, the official said.
A recent Chinese military white paper states that China plans to be able to win an “informationized war” by the middle of this century. Overall, China seeks a position of power to ensure its freedom of action in international affairs and the ability to influence the global economy, the senior official said.
Chinese hackers were responsible for an intrusion in November 2006 that disabled the Naval War College’s network, forcing the college to shut down its e-mail and computer systems for several weeks, the official said. Forensic analysis showed that the Chinese were seeking information on war games in development at NWC, the official said.
NWC was vulnerable because it was not part of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet and did not have the latest security protections, the official explained. He said this was indicative of the Chinese strategy to focus on weak points in the network.
China has also been using spear phishing, sending deceptive mass e-mail messages to lure DOD users into clicking on a malicious URL, the official said. China is also using more traditional hacking methods, such as Trojan horse viruses and worms, but in innovative ways.
For example, a hacker will plant a virus as a distraction and then come in “slow and low” to hide in a system while the monitors are distracted. Hackers will also use coordinated, multipronged attacks, the official added.
Chinese hackers gained notoriety in the United States when a series of devastating intrusions, beginning in 2003, was traced to a team of researchers in Guangdong Province. The program, which DOD called Titan Rain, was first reported by Federal Computer Week in August 2005. Following that incident, DOD renamed the program and then classified the new name.