Aviation Week & Space Technology
February 26, 2001
Pg. 58

New Tools Emerge For Info War Battle

By Robert Wall and David A. Fulghum, Kelly AFB, Tex.

In a bid to aid efforts to make information warfare more operationally relevant, researchers are devising new ways to conduct various forms of cyber, electronic and psychological warfare.

But developing the technology to make information warfare effective is only part of the solution. Getting the proper people to conduct these missions, particularly in the emerging cyberwarfare arena, is proving as much of a challenge as the technology is.

Several organizations have sprung up to help address various aspects of the information warfare challenge. Among them is the Air Force's Information Warfare Battlelab which, since its inception in 1997, has examined more than 270 concepts. It now has 37 projects under investigation.

While many of the projects are unclassified, some of the most promising involve closely guarded secrets. Two of the latter are ''Coordinated Noise'' and ''Aimpoint.''

Both are information warfare tools using directed energy technology and are supposed to provide an ability to strike a target with extreme precision. While Coordinated Noise is seen as relying on microwave energy, the Aimpoint project could use either high-power microwaves or laser technology. The projects are sponsored by an array of organizations, including the U.S. Air Forces Europe, Special Operations Command, the Air Force Research Laboratory and Air Combat Command.

The battlelab initiatives span many technologies, which are reflective of the disparate fields that fall under the umbrella term of information operations. Almost half of the battlelab efforts fall into a category called information-in-warfare, an area encompassing intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation, weather and other activities. About 30% of the projects are in the general category of electronic warfare, with about 8% of initiatives associated with psychological operations.

EACH OF THE INITIATIVES is supposed to lead to a demonstration within 18 months. Most of them, about 70%, are proposed by industry, although a considerable number emanate from the Air Force.

The psychological warfare area has yielded one of battlelab's latest successes, a new leaflet bomb. The Air Force has been using the 200-lb. M129 leaflet bomb. But those canisters are aging and the inventory is being rapidly depleted. However, the battlelab realized that older cluster munitions were being phased-out of operational use, freeing up thousands of SUU-30 dispensers that could be modified to deliver leaflets.

Using the SUU-30 had several advantages, said Lt. Col. Dan Radcliff, deputy at the battlelab. For one, the weapon can actually carry about 1,000 leaflets, which is more than can be packed into the M129. Furthermore, because the weapon has already undergone stores separation testing, what the Air Force calls Seek Eagle, it can be fielded quickly.

The new device, designated the LBU-30, for leaflet bomb unit, recently completed flight testing at Eglin AFB, Fla. The weapon was successfully dropped from an F-16 flying at 20,000 ft. Several customers have already signed up for the system, said Col. Mark J. Nichols, the battlelab's director.

ANOTHER PROJECT UNDERTAKEN at the lab was the Raytheon-built Microglider, a 22-in. long, 8-lb. vehicle that can carry a 4-lb. imaging payload for battle damage assessment. The system would be dispensed from a tactical fighter and fly 9-10 min. with a 10:1 glide ratio. The aircraft would fly to its target at about 100-kt. speed, guided by GPS coordinates, said Lt. Jeremy Haas, of the battlelab.

In an operational configuration, the battle damage video would be relayed to an RC-135 Rivet Joint or transmitted through another unmanned aircraft, like Predator, or through satellites to an operations center.

On the navigation warfare front, the battlelab successfully demonstrated a small GPS jammer. It was built to deny an adversary access to GPS signals. The Air Force has retained the gear, which it is keeping ready for potential operational use or to employ in exercises.

Another tool the Air Force has developed to aid its information attack capability is called Sensor Harvest, which is built and managed by the Air Force Information Warfare Center's IW Target Analysis Program. The system essentially provides a repository of data on potential adversary countries to determine how best to launch information warfare attacks. It can be used to create ''target nomination files'' that war planners can draw on.

Constructing and maintaining a country file is time and personnel intensive, however, which is the main reason Sensor Harvest only supports about 10 active countries at one time. On average, it takes about eight people seven months to build a country file, using 500-1,000 data points from classified and unclassified sources. Another 2-3 people are needed to maintain a country. The tool also can be used against transnational threats, said one Air Force official, although that field is still deemed relatively new.

On the defensive IW front, Defense Dept. officials are trying to ensure they don't create possible vulnerabilities in systems they introduce. That's why the Joint Information Operation Center (JIOC), also located here, has set up a field demonstration team to do vulnerability analyses of the Pentagon's Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations. These demos are devised to use existing hardware to field new capabilities quickly.

Furthermore, the group is used to support exercises and emulate different IW threats in the field, said Navy Lt. Jeff Garcia, who oversees the team. This includes jamming which could be provided by a potential enemy. One feature of the unit is that is uses exclusively off-the-shelf gear any adversary can obtain. For instance, the hobby shop-like operation has been able to mount effective direction-finding and signals intercept gear in a sport utility and a recreational vehicle to clandestinely collect information on exercising forces.

On another front, USAF and other information warfare planners are attempting to address a serious personnel shortfall problem. Shortages of uniformed cyberwarfare experts has caused the Defense Dept. to rely, to some extent, more on contractors. As a result ''our contractor costs have gone up,'' said another JIOC official.

One strategy being pursued is that of wooing more civilian software developers, said Army Col. David C. Kirk, deputy commander of the Joint Information Operations Center. The organization has had some success enticing software engineers looking for a more steady lifestyle than the highly competitive pace of Silicon Valley. But that in itself isn't enough to fill the military's demands, Kirk acknowledged.

Another effort is to make sure all computer talent in the military is properly exploited. ''We found Washington Air National Guard Microsoft software employees working on diesel generators,'' said Maj. Gen. Bruce Wright, commander of the Air Intelligence Agency. They now have been reassigned and are instead supporting the Air Force's computer aggressor squadron. Similar initiatives are underway with the Texas, Vermont and Kentucky Air National Guards, Wright said.

THE PERSONNEL CRUNCH is being felt not only in the cyberwarfare realm. ''We are literally short of people much worse than we are of money right now,'' added Col. James C. Massaro, commander of the 67th Information Operations Wing. One area where the wing always is struggling to fill slots is in linguists, who fill critical listening positions on, for instance, the RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intercept aircraft. There are some areas where there are only two or three speakers of a language in the Air Force, which means they have to be deployed often and are difficult to keep in the service, Massaro noted.