Infowar to shape DOD review

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/0611/web-qdr-06-15-01.asp

BY Bill Murray 
June 15, 2001

Information warfare will play a major role in the forthcoming
Quadrennial Defense Review and in the militarys challenges looking
into the next 20 years, a senior Pentagon civilian said Thursday.

The Pentagon will tell the military services to take information
operations and information warfare seriously in the review, which
should come out in draft form next month, the official said.
Information operations and warfare dont quite "have a home" within
national security because they are rapidly emerging areas, he said.

With that remark, he may have been referring to the Joint Task
Force-Computer Network Operations, which in the past two years has
gone from receiving its funding from the Defense Information Systems
Agency and its marching orders from the Office of the Secretary of
Defense to being part of U.S. Space Command.

To demonstrate how quickly technology moves compared with the
Pentagons seven-year budget cycle, the official said that the first
hacking tools appeared on Web sites in 1999 and within two years
hackers had gone through three major cycles of tool upgrades. "We go
through a major budget cycle in two years," he said.

The Pentagon will use the Quadrennial Defense Review, a
congressionally mandated review done every four years, to help it
shape its fiscal 2003 budget request, he said.

"We want a strategy-driven budget, rather than a budget-driven
strategy," he said, in a possible attempt to differentiate this years
attempt from the 1997 review.

To guide the review, the official said that Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld also will use studies on morale, readiness and quality of
life that he has requested, as well as a classified study of the armed
services by Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assessment
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The key issue for the review is measuring risk, such as the "risk of
losing people" in warfare, the official said.

Rumsfeld has attended 16 hours of meetings over a recent 13-day period
with senior civilian and military leaders to talk about the review,
the official said, and that included a half-day Saturday summit with
regional commanders in chief.



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