To supplement my cyber lance post, this news, along with the attacks on L3 and Lockheed Martin or the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, all point to how important and dangerous this stuff really is. I will let the article speak for itself.
Also check out the Morgan Doctrine’s opinion about this story. The MD is a blog that promotes the concept of cyber privateers and tracks the world of cyber warfare and crime. –Matt
Cyber Combat: Act of War
MAY 31, 2011
Pentagon Sets Stage for U.S. to Respond to Computer Sabotage With Military Force
By SIOBHAN GORMAN And JULIAN E. BARNES
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.
WSJ’s Siobhan Gorman has the exclusive story of the Pentagon classifying cyber attacks by foreign nations acts of war. – News Hub
The Pentagon’s first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country’s military.
In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said a military official.
I want to thank Matt from Facebook for bringing up this quote from Starship Troopers. I found the movie clip of the quote and it clearly shows the weakness of cyber warfare. It shows why you must have a direct action/physical security component mixed with your cyber warfare/information operations unit.
The simple reason why is that all it takes for your enemies to ruin your ‘hacking’ ventures, is for them to kill your hacker and physically destroy his equipment. To ‘throw a knife into the hand of the guy that pushes the buttons’, to paraphrase the quote up top.
Or worse, that hacker could be tortured and key information could be extracted in order to conduct a larger attack. The value of what that hacker knows (a nation or company’s secrets), or what they know how to do (hacking a nation or company), makes them a high value target.
In other words, today’s freelance hacker or even government/military hacker, is a highly valuable asset to a nation or a company. That highly valuable asset must be defended, and have a highly evolved physical and cyber offensive capability in order to compete and survive in today’s world.
So in order to deal with this new reality I have developed and defined a new term that I wanted to share with the readership. Enter the ‘cyber lance’.
Basically, a cyber lance is a combined arms team within a privateer company or military unit. Or it could be an outsourced team. The lance part comes from the french term Lances fournies, or ‘lances fournished’. Here is the definition from wikipedia.
The Lances fournies (French: “lances furnished”) was a medieval army squad that would have surrounded a knight in battle, consisting of a four to ten man team built of squires, men-at-arms (usually mounted swordsmen), archers, attendants (pages) and the knight himself. These units formed companies under a captain either as mercenary bands or in the retinue of wealthy nobles and royalty. A Lance was usually led and raised by a knight in the service of his liege, yet it is not uncommon in certain periods to have a less privileged man, such as a sergeants-at-arms, lead a lance. More powerful knights, also known as a knight bannerets, could field multiple lances.
And of course the cyber is used to refer to anything to do with the internet or computing. I particularly like this etymology of cyber from wikipedia:
By the 1970s, the Control Data Corporation (CDC) sold the “Cyber” range of supercomputers, establishing the word cyber- as synonymous with computing. Robert Trappl credits William Gibson and his novel Neuromancer with triggering a “cyber- prefix flood” in the 1980s.
What’s cool about a cyber lance, is that a company can actually define it’s size to a client. They can say ‘we have 20 cyber lances’ or ‘cyber lancers’ (whatever sounds better to the user)
The other reason why I like the cyber lance concept, is that it mixes physical security with cyber security. It also mixes physical offense, with the cyber offense. You must have one with the other as the world of cyber warfare continues to evolve. The cyber lance defines that combined arms group of hackers and shooters. The way I envision it, it could be as simple as a protective detail assigned to a hacker, or as involved as a special forces type team that does both the protection of a hacker, and conducts offensive operations based upon the information gained by that hacker. It is a fusion of the cyber and the physical, and all the potential actions that can come out of that combination.
I also like the etymology of lance corporal. If you have ever served in the Marines, you more than likely were a ‘Lance Corporal”. Although the lance part refers to lancepesade.
From the Italian lanzia spezzata, which literally means “broken lance” or “broken spear”, but which was used to denote a seasoned soldier (the broken spear being a metaphor for combat experience, where such an occurrence was likely).
Or if you have ever heard of the term ‘free-lance photographer’ or ‘free-lancer‘ (etymology- medieval mercenary warrior) , then now you know the origins of the term. I think it works pretty nicely for cyber lance. So to me, cyber lance makes perfect sense in the context of what I am talking about here.
The cyber lance is also flexible in it’s usage. They could be all military units, or a private cyber lance contracted out to the government or companies. A cyber privateer or cyber pirate company would have several groups of cyber lances as an organizational idea. Each cyber lance is just a unit or term to describe this hardened ‘hacker team with teeth’. It also goes back to the idea of combined arms, or mutually supporting groups within a unit. This concept is very much a part of the building snowmobiles mindset.
Combined arms is an approach to warfare which seeks to integrate different branches of a military to achieve mutually complementary effects (for example, using infantry and armor in an urban environment, where one supports the other, or both support each other). Combined arms doctrine contrasts with segregated arms where each military unit is composed of only one type of soldier or weapon system. Segregated arms is the traditional method of unit/force organisation, employed to provide maximum unit cohesion and concentration of force in a given weapon or unit type.
A cyber lance also promotes the idea of ‘team’, as opposed to an individual. I believe cells or teams are far more capable for the attack and defense, as opposed to just an individual. The security of a nation or company, or the prosecution of that nation or company’s best interest would best be placed into the hands of a team, as opposed to just one individual. Primarily because teams would actually have the ‘teeth’ necessary to capture or kill ‘individuals’, or defend against an attacking force. A cyber lance could also be attacked by a cyber lance, or a group of cyber lances that would make up a cyber privateer company.
Another key component of the cyber lance is it’s ability to work within the borders of another country or navigate the complexities of the commons called cyber space. A small team can be surgical and have a light foot print. It also falls in line with the concepts of netwar, and offense industry which was a past building snowmobiles post.
Finally, as hackers become more valuable and more capable, it will be of national interest to protect these assets. The cyber lance could very well be the next chapter or paragraph in the world of combined arms and cyber warfare. It will also take the combination of the hacker’s mind and the tactical and strategic thinking of a special operations team to think of all the ways a cyber lance could be used for the defense or offense. The end result could lead to the destruction of a nation’s key national security assets, or the preservation of a nation’s vital national security assets. That is what makes a cyber lance a very important and lethal building snowmobiles concept. –Matt
This year I wanted to find an image that said more than anything I could ever say about what Memorial Day means. I do not know who the young lady is in the photo, but I do empathize and sympathize. I think everyone here recognizes what this photo says and what her loss means to her.
No matter what country you are from, no matter if you are a soldier or contractor, a man or woman, husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, son or daughter, or friend and comrade–the loss and this woman’s personal and private remembrance of her loved one is universally understood. It is one reminder of many, that sacrifice in war is profound and painful to endure for everyone. Te numquam obliviscar…. –Matt
Edit: 06/01/2011- One of my readers sent me a link to the obituary of the lost soldier that this women is mourning. He was a Ranger and rest in peace.
What I wanted to do here is to highlight some very important and historical statistics of this CRS report I posted a couple of weeks back. This gives a very clear picture as to how significant private security contractors are to the war effort in Afghanistan, and the sacrifice of PSC’s. Especially the sacrifice of local national PSC’s, which account for most of the deaths of this group.
Although I must emphasize ‘recorded’ here, because no one recorded the amount of US PSC use during our very early wars. I personally think that privateer usage was one of the highest number of PSC’s used by the US during times of war. Although a strong argument could also be made that the expansion of the west in the US would be the most impressive number of PSC’s used during time of war.
Pioneers, investors, the military, the railroads, cattle companies, shipping companies, banks, law enforcement etc. were all highly dependent upon on private security in all of it’s forms to protect lives and investments against Indian combatants and criminals. During this time period, there were 8 contractors awarded the Medal of Honor as well.
And of course this expansion of the west and resulting Indian Wars and land wars covered a very long time period of conflict in the US. For that reason, I would estimate that this time period would be the highest use of PSC’s by the US. It just wasn’t recorded by any government accounting office. Although Buffalo Bill did a pretty good job of bringing some attention to the matter with his Wild West Show. (which ran from 1883- 1913, a 30 year long show!)-Matt
Number of Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan
Since December 2009, the number of PSC personnel in Afghanistan has exceeded the number of PSC personnel in Iraq. According to DOD, as of March 2011, there were 18,971 private security contractor personnel in Afghanistan. This represents the highest recorded number of private security contractor personnel used by DOD in any conflict in the history of the United States. Local nationals made up 95% of all security personnel.
According to DOD, for the 15-month period of September 2007 to December 2008, the number of security contractors in Afghanistan increased by 16%, from 3,152 to 3,689. However, from December 2008 to March 2011, the number of security contractors increased from 3,689 to 18,971, an increase of over 400%. DOD has attributed the increase in contractors to increased operational tempo and efforts to stabilize and develop new and existing forward operating bases. Security Contractors Compared to Total Contractor and Troop Levels
From December 2008 to March 2011, the number of U.S. troops and DOD contractor personnel in Afghanistan increased. However, the number of security contractors increased at a much faster rate (414%) than total contractors (26%) or troop levels (207%). As of March 2011, security contractor personnel made up 21% of all DOD contractors and was equal to 19% of the size of total U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. Casualty Rates of PSC Personnel vs. Uniformed Personnel
According to DOD, from June 2009 to November 2010, 319 private security contractor personnel working for DOD have been killed in action in Afghanistan, compared to 626 U.S. troops killed in action over the same period.28 Adjusting for the difference in the number of PSC personnel compared to troops, a PSC employee working for DOD in Afghanistan is 2.75 times more likely to be killed in action than uniformed personnel. More contractor security personnel were killed in action providing mobile security (233 people or 73% of fatalities) than static security, even though those providing mobile security are only 25%- 30% of the total PSC workforce. Nationality of Contractors
According to DOD, since September 2007, local nationals have made up 90% or more of all security contractors in Afghanistan.
Link to report here.
I remember when the Blackwater Little Bird (MD 500) went down in Iraq, and it was a shock to all of us working in the industry at the time. This crash and the deaths that resulted, hit home to a lot of folks, to include the brother of one of the dead–Dan Laguna. Dan’s book goes into some of the details of this crash, and the life and sacrifices of this 160th SOAR pilot and contractor Little Bird pilot.
But the other thing I wanted to highlight here is that Dan represents the kind of sacrifice that contractors make and have given in this war. In this war alone, from 09/01/2001 to 03/31/2011, there have been 2,620 contractors killed.(Xe has lost 29 KIA according to the DoL statistics, 33 according to T. Christine Miller’s graph) That is 2,620 souls that had friends and families, all destroyed by the worst disaster they could ever experience–the loss of a loved one or friend. Not to mention entire towns mourned the loss of these men and women, and the memory of that loss is with everyone forever…
During this Memorial Day weekend, there will be many folks out there looking back on this loss and trying make sense of it all. For some, the pain and despair is a constant, and any and all sources of inspiration is needed to get through the days. That is why I recommend books like Dan Laguna’s. He is a military veteran and contractor veteran, and he lost his brother and comrades to war. If you want to learn how he copes, or understand his struggle to better understand how you can work through your loss and struggle, then this book is for you.
This book is also a testament to the kind of every day heroic deeds that contractors performed in these wars. It is also a testament to the heroic deeds of a 160th SOAR pilots. Which brings up another point.
A contractor is usually a military veteran. Most often, they are military veterans with incredible backgrounds, multiple deployments in the war, and have lost comrades. Not to mention the hard lives of the families of veterans who had to keep things going at the home front all of those years.
These veterans make up a large contingent of contractors. Some are even retired military veterans who definitely gave their pound of flesh to country….and then some. And yet these same men continue to serve and die as contractors, and to me, that is inspirational and something to admire. –Matt
Book Description from Amazon
On July 20, 1994, Dan Laguna and Carlos Guerrero of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment SOAR were in a devastating helicopter accident. Carlos died and Dan spent months in the hospital recovering from 3rd and 4th degree full thickness burns and several broken bones. His story of survival is miraculous, inspirational and motivating. He returned to duty a year later and served seven more years in his unit before retiring.
After retiring from the Army and moving to Utah, Dan took a job working as a contractor for Blackwater USA in 2004. On January 23, 2007 his brother, Art Laguna, and four of his brothers in arms were killed when their helicopter was shot down over Baghdad, Iraq.
Dan Laguna’s helicopter had extensive damage due to small arms fire and was forced to land but after inspecting the helicopter and noticing dozens of insurgents racing toward them, he decided to take the risk and fly back to the Green Zone.
This book is a tribute to his fallen brothers whose, courage, bravery, and patriotism are what make this country what it is today.
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Utah Helicopter Pilot Talks About Battle That Killed Brother
January 24th, 2007
First of all my brother is and was a HERO. All he ever wanted to do from the time I can remember as a child, was he wanted to fly. He became one of the most professional pilots you could have ever known. I recruited my brother to join us with Blackwater Aviation. We get a lot of resumes but only a few have the qualifications to join us. This is one of the most demanding jobs in Iraq. The military flies some every day, but we in Blackwater Aviation are up flying in the RED zone every day all day.
