General Martin Dempsey’s initiative to create the Joint Information Environment (JIE) is rooted in the recognition that the pace of warfare in the 21st century is accelerating so quickly that the organic and analog systems currently in place within the Department of Defense may not be sufficient to keep up. The nature of warfare also is evolving where potential adversaries are creating capabilities that either overmatch U.S. competencies in one domain or asymmetrically subvert them altogether. Electromagnetic waves or invisible strings of 1s and 0s have the potential to be as devastating to a warfare element as an air strike or a torpedo. Still, the DOD doesn’t have the resources to answer every threat with a singular, unique capability, and as such a streamlined and broad-spectrum approach is required. This is why the JIE is necessary; yet we cannot forget the lessons learned from past conflicts while trying to meet these needs.
The current vision of the JIE’s architecture is that of an advanced intelligent network (AIN), which has proven to have great success in the private sector for streamlining processes, reducing manpower and equipment costs, and increasing the flexibility of customers. The inherent characteristic of an AIN that allows for this streamlining and flexibility is the centralization of processes into service switching points and service control points, and the standardization of coding formats to ensure the ease of installment of digital applications for utilization by customers. This structure, while useful in an ideal environment, ignores the military necessity for decentralized control and redundancy of methods to ensure survivability. Furthermore, it doesn’t account for the vast array of requirements to be levied on this single AIN by the mission needs of four military branches and six geographic joint military areas of responsibility spread across the world.
So the question on hand is: How does the JIE remain efficient enough to enable military operations in the 21st century while remaining secure?
The current JIE construct calls for three steps to be taken in order to maximize the JIE’s efficiency and ease of access:
• the consolidation of service-specific communication centers
• broad-spectrum homogenization of data-processing standards and methods
• the conversion of data switching and control from analog to digital mediums.
From a purely administrative standpoint, these measures are hard to argue against. Consolidation of the physical information infrastructure reduces the cost of both system maintenance and personnel administration. Homogenization reduces development and training costs as all networks are essentially the same. Switching from analog-based switching and control to digital enable drastically faster data transmission and customization options. These concepts have been employed with great success in the private sector, where the threats faced are infinitesimal compared to the devastating array of physical and digital capabilities amassed worldwide against the DOD. Therefore, these three steps must be altered to deal with the harsh realities facing the military in order to ensure that we both improve efficiency while maintaining our security and combat effectiveness.
Limited Consolidation
Consolidation is a sound business plan and, in the digital world, a way of potentially increasing security by reducing the “cyber surface area” of an organization, but military organizations cannot afford to forget that an information environment has a physical as well as informational component. From a physical security standpoint, consolidation represents the reduction of a potential target deck to achieve a desired effect. Whether through clandestine operations, ballistic-missile strikes, vehicle-borne IED detonation, or act of God, the physical infrastructure and personnel of an Enterprise Operations Center (EOC) can be struck. Without proper physical redundancy and distribution of the physical infrastructure, an EOC’s destruction or degradation would potentially leave the entire regional defense network drastically crippled.
Even with the intervention of a Global Enterprise Operations Center (GEOC), it cannot reasonably be expected to have the same degree of familiarity, manpower, and awareness of the physical and cognitive dimensions of a regional information environment to adequately replace an EOC. Furthermore, intervention by a GEOC is an issue of concern. Even if one is to assume that a GEOC’s digital components were to remain untouched, the physical connections of that GEOC to a region still can be affected and connectivity could be lost.
Maintaining at least one service-specific communication center per service per region to act as a support unit to a region’s service commands and secondary point of connectivity to the regional and global network is absolutely necessary. Admittedly, this approach is not as administratively efficient as a single EOC servicing all customers in a region. Yet this redundancy is the only way to ensure the digital and analog tools necessary to maintain and reconstitute a regional network once an attack or disaster occurs.
Tiered Homogenization
Like the concept of consolidation, the homogenization of data-processing standards, methods, and coding is a very efficient and cost-effective means of networking a system. The approach is akin to ensuring that everyone in a fire team can speak a common language and is familiar with small unit tactics before sending them into combat. Unlike consolidation, however, the security issues inherent in the homogenization of data processing exist in the domain of the information environment and are digital in nature.
While the fear of cyber actors exploiting inconsistencies between local-network software standards is a cause for concern, the diversity of software and methods being used on local networks are themselves defenses. In order for a cyber actor to completely affect a network, he would first need to develop an operating picture of how these networks function. If every network is coded the same way and every data process standardized top to bottom, then a cyber actor’s task is much easier and the resources he needs to expend to define that operational environment are greatly reduced. Yet if a cyber actor needs to learn five different coding languages, seven unique system architectures, and the coding of the bridging software to ensure that his malware can evade detection and still have the desired effect, all the while keeping up with the target’s cyber-defense methods, the problem for said cyber actor is drastically complicated. Intrusions may still occur, but the complexity of the system itself acts as its own defense from rapid, broad-spectrum intrusions and attacks. Therefore, the JIE needs a way to keep some of this inherent defense from rapid expansion of a cyber-intrusion while also improving the defense network’s data-processing efficiency and flexibility.
Tiered data-processing standards, methods, and coding homogenization can allow a regional network to maintain some degree of compartmentalization while still enabling a more efficient flow of information through the defense network. This means that the standards, methods, and coding practices at the national, regional, and tactical levels are structured such that they are similar enough to enable easy bridging among said networks, but are not entirely homogenized. This means that in our fire team, everyone speaks English, but has their own pre-engineered accents and mannerisms to identify their point of origin. A cyber-threat actor, in order to affect a regional service network, would need to be familiar with the practices of the tactical service centers, their regional service-specific communication center, and the regional EOC. At the same time, these three entities, because they know their own practices and are able to focus specifically on their own piece of the network, would be able to recognize, defend against, and reconstitute a network more rapidly than under the current paradigm because of data-process homogenization.
Emergency Analog Response Capabilities
The advent of the smart phone and online apps has enabled users to possess a degree of autonomy and personal customization not previously seen in the information age. Everything from Face Time to Angry Birds is possible because telecommunication networks around the world have been transferring their networks from analog-oriented switching and control stations to digitally automated, wireless advanced intelligent networks. The result has been a seemingly endless boom in information-technology productivity and capability. That the JIE would begin to turn in that direction is not surprising especially when the potential advancements in the ease, flexibility, and pace of information flow is so astonishing. In order to ensure the JIE’s survivability and security, however, the JIE cannot afford to completely abandon analog capabilities and practices.
The fact that the message and processes in a digital network are entirely computerized makes them more prone to manipulation and far more problematic to detect when manipulation is taking place. Determining when a cyber actor has reworded a digital document is significantly more difficult than determining when someone has altered a printed document when said document has been signed.
Additionally, switched networks require controls to ensure that a customer using a function on one end of a network is able to access the other portion of that same function on the other side of the network, like an air traffic controller at an airport. These functions range from telephone calls to Internet applications.
Digitally switched AINs operate on preprogrammed coding sequences so that from the moment of transmission by the customer, the system already knows where the data for that function needs to go without oversight or intervention. This process greatly improves speed of transfer and efficiency, but ultimately places the entire switching-control process at the mercy of a cyber actor who can change the coding sequences. They completely remove the human pilot and air traffic controller from the process so that a hacker can cause planes to crash into the ocean, be sent to another airfield, or circle indefinitely.
These are the reasons that the different tiers of the JIE need to maintain or develop mission-critical analog switching and control capabilities to ensure that upon detection of an intrusion or attack, these analog capabilities can keep the network viable regardless of how quickly cyber-defense entities can respond. Analog capabilities can range from maintaining a backup analog-switching station, backing up closed-network hard drives storing individual command network information on site, or establishing training standards for all organic IT personnel in their command’s coding and systems architecture to ensure that personnel on site are capable of diagnosing, responding, and rapidly repairing damage to their networks without the need for intervention by an external center.
The aforementioned challenges are also the reasons that the proposed usage of devices with connectivity to both the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRnet) and the Nonsecure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRnet) is ill-advised. The physical separation of hardware processing information on the SIPRnet and NIPRnet is the greatest defense against network intrusion on the SIPRnet because an intrusion requires that a cyber actor either directly access a controlled SIPRnet terminal or develop enough awareness of the unique nature of the SIPRnet wireless encryption network to access the SIPRnet. To attempt to have accessibility to both digital networks on a single platform creates a potential vulnerability greater than any non-homogenized software network ever could. While unifying platforms in this manner would be convenient to the operator in the short-term, the potential dangers to that operator by allowing their equipment to act as a gateway into the intelligence and information network designed to keep them informed and therefore safe is far too great. Analog separation of the two networks, while potentially more costly and inconvenient, is the only way to prevent the world from accessing the SIPRnet.
JIE Version 2.0
The current JIE concept of operations is to have the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) maintain operational and tactical control over the JIE while the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) exercises administrative control under the direction of the Joint Staff; this setup is as seamless a command-and-control structure as one can expect at the national level. STRATCOM and CYBERCOM already are charged with the DOD’s strategic cyber mission set, and DISA is already the DOD’s national information network steward and operator. Codifying these facts under the JIE essentially confirms what the DOD already has recognized. The question then is how STRATCOM, CYBERCOM, and DISA operate in conjunction with the operational and tactical levels of the JIE.
Under the current plan, DISA would likely assume the role as the GEOC while the Joint Staff J6 would act as the primary national coordination entity for the national level of the JIE. IT standards and priorities would be developed in coordination with STRATCOM, CYBERCOM, Combat Support Agencies, Service Support Centers, regional EOCs, and COCOMs. These standards and priorities would include the homogenized data-processing standards, methods, and coding. Geographic COCOMs would be able to establish their regional IT requirements, but DISA and the Joint Staff J6 under this construct would necessarily need to have ultimate authority over standards, methods, and coding to ensure network functionality across the global JIE. The same could be expected of national IT acquisition standards and priorities as any piece of software being integrated into global JIE would first need to meet the JIE’s homogenized data-processing standards, methods, and coding.
The current command-and-control concept of operations can be found in nearly every baseline Joint Publication from Joint Planning to Joint Operations to Joint Logistics to Joint Intelligence. The only deviation in this respect is that the homogenous digital requirements of an AIN to be established under the JIE necessitate that a single national entity act as the ultimate authority for all JIE data processing—from the national to the tactical level of war—in order to ensure network functionality. This in turn creates the vulnerabilities previously mentioned, but if a tiered approach were to be enacted these security concerns could be addressed and the JIE could remain true to U.S. military joint doctrine.
A tiered homogenous approach would mean that DISA and the Joint Staff J6 would act as the entity responsible for coordinating and establishing national data-processing standards, methods, and coding while coordinating with geographic COCOMs and regional EOCs to ensure that their practices are compatible with the national and tactical JIE. The same would be true for software acquisitions, as software would need to be able to operate on the multi-tiered networks and coordination would be required among the GEOC, EOCs, service-specific communications centers, and tactical communications centers to ensure that bridging software could quickly and securely transfer information from one tier to the next.
DISA, STRATCOM, and CYBERCOM, as the three sides of the national JIE pyramid, also would be responsible for establishing and coordinating protocols ensuring that emergency analog capabilities and practices remained intact at the national level, and that these capabilities and practices were being exercised regularly to ensure functionality and expertise. These same entities also would be responsible for coordinating with geographic COCOMs, regional EOCs, service-specific communications centers, and tactical service centers to establish training requirements for IT personnel operating at the various tiers of the JIE.
Operational Tier and Tactical Tier
Geographic COCOMs, regional EOCs, and service-specific communications centers and regional commands— such as the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Marine Corps Forces, Pacific—would constitute the operational tier of the JIE. Those entities would be responsible for identifying their region’s and services’ IT requirements and providing them to the Joint Staff J6 and DISA for coordination with the national JIE. They also would be responsible for ensuring that their own tier’s practices remain compatible with one another as well as with the national and tactical tiers. Regional and tactical IT requirements would be passed by geographic COCOMs and regional EOCs to the GEOC and Joint Staff J6 for incorporation into the national JIE. These same requirements would be coordinated with service-specific communications centers, subordinate service components, and tactical service centers for incorporation into the operational JIE’s architecture. Requirements would include data-processing practices, emergency analog response needs, and national JIE support requirements for military contingency planning.
Tactical service centers, operational service commands, such as the U.S. 5th Fleet and the 13th Air Force, and their subordinate commands would constitute the tactical tier of the JIE. These entities would identify the tactical requirements for the JIE for coordination with the operational tier. Furthermore, they would be responsible for maintaining the tactical tier’s network functionality and ensuring that the tactical tier JIE remains compatible with its operational and national-tier counterparts, and be ultimately responsible for ensuring that their IT personnel are qualified to maintain the tactical digital network and emergency analog response capabilities and practices— independent of operational or national tier support.
Closed-network, on-site backups for network data processing and bridging functions would remain at the GEOC, EOCs, service-specific communications centers, and tactical service centers to ensure rapid reconstitution of the network remains viable at all tiers. Furthermore, these entities also could retain other tiers’ data processing and bridging function backups to ensure additional redundancy exists.
There can be no doubt that the digital age is here to stay, and with it all the promise and trepidation that an increasingly interconnected world can offer. The private sector has shown the power that a centralized and homogenous advanced intelligence network can offer to an organization. The choice to embrace this idea seems preordained, but as Stephen Hawking wrote, “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” Compartmentalization, redundancy, and decentralized command have been at the core of U.S. warfighting for centuries, specifically because the cost of doing otherwise has been deemed unacceptable and we recognize that the great strength we have as a military are our people. We must therefore ensure that these truths are incorporated into General Dempsey’s vision of the Joint Information Environment or else relearn them through the harsh and costly reenactment of the events that first brought them to the forefront.
Lieutenant Hunter is assistant China senior naval intelligence officer at the National Maritime Intelligence Center.