Like the Navy, the Air Force years ago chose to integrate its intelligence function — known as the 2 — and its communications and network function, known as the 6, into the A2/6, led by a three-star general. It also added cyber to that portfolio, resulting in an official title of deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations.

This week the Air Force broke the 6 function away from the 2 on the Air Staff, creating the AF/A6 deputy chief of staff for warfighter communications and cyber systems, in what the service calls one of the most significant reorganizations in over 30 years.

The office will be led by Maj. Gen. Michelle Edmondson, who most recently was senior advisor to the undersecretary of the Air Force.

“Our mission is to ensure warfighters have the reliable, secure communications they need to succeed in a complex and contested environment,” she said. “We’re building an enterprise that connects people, systems and decisions at the speed required by today’s operational demands.” 

The new AF/A6 will serve as the functional authority and management for warfighter communications and cyber operations.

The move had been telegraphed for about a year, with officials explaining it was designed to elevate the role of operational communications and cyber needs within the force, providing a dedicated general officer, typically a three-star, to advise senior leaders.

The office will help the Air Force operate in and through cyberspace and compete against the growing threats presented by China and others, officials have stated in the past, given core missions are vitally dependent on secure and resilient communications, and require a deputy chief of staff singularly focused on that.

In future fights, U.S. communications networks are expected to be attacked and stressed by adversaries.

“We created the A6 to ensure communications and cyber systems are available, secure and aligned with warfighter priorities,” Gen. David Allvin, chief of staff of the Air Force, said. “This office will help us focus resources and oversight where it matters most — supporting the mission in contested environments.”

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Officials have teased in the past the split of the intelligence and cyber directorate on the Air Staff at the Pentagon — known as the A2/6 with “2” being intelligence and “6” traditionally referring to cyber, IT and communications. In shedding new light on that effort, officers noted it’s about making sure advocates for essential warfighting communications have a voice in high-level deliberations.

“Having a miliary officer, a three-star … that’s what it’s really about, having that seat at the table to be able to advise all those other senior leaders in the room. It’s going to benefit us greatly in the future,” Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, said at the annual AFA Air, Space and Cyber conference Wednesday. “I think when we say ‘cyber,’ we think of offensive or defensive capability. I really wanted to continue with the communicators out there … who are working tactical communications, expeditionary communications — and they have a vital role. That’s why you’re going to hear the name of the A6 will be warfighter communications and cyber systems.”

In 2019, the Air Force, like the Navy before it, decided to integrate its intelligence function and its communications and network function, led by a three-star general. It also added cyber to that portfolio, resulting in an official title of deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations.

While cyber was born out of the intelligence world and there are significant efficiencies between the two function — namely signals intelligence — the service feels it needs a distinct separation between the two going forward.

“When we had an A2/6 or when we decided to combine the 2/6, it was really based out of a management. It wasn’t so much the integration of the ‘2’ and the ‘6’, though of course, there is integration between intelligence missions and cyber operations missions, communications missions, down at the unit levels and operation level,” Lauderback said. “However, at the [Air] staff, what we’re trying to do is provide expertise to all of those other three-stars on the [Air] Staff as to what should we buy, what are the policies that need to be written, what is the guidance that we need to provide out to the field.”

The split is part of the Air Force’s overall effort to “reoptimize for great power competition,” a sweeping set of changes overhauling how the service is organized and creating new commands as it transitions from 20-plus years of counterterrorism operations and focuses on countering advanced adversaries such as China.

According to a spokesperson, the creation of a standalone “6” is expected to help the Air Force operate in and through cyberspace and compete against the growing threats presented by Beijing and others. In these future fights, communications networks will be under attack and stress. The spokesperson noted that top Air Force leadership recognizes the service’s core missions are vitally dependent on secure and resilient communications, and require a deputy chief of staff singularly focused on that.

The change is expected to ensure resilient comms capabilities are woven into all aspects of Air Force strategy, capabilities development and concepts of operation aligned with mission partners.

It’s still unclear if at the major command level the service will split off their “6” or communications functions, officials said.

In terms of where other functions will be headed, Lauderback noted cyber effects operations as well as electronic warfare will be combined with information ops and all moved under the “3” on the Air Staff, placing them under operations. The expectation is that office will have an official nominated and leadership in place by spring 2025.

This shift is Department of the Air Force-wide, meaning it will also affect the Space Force.

The Space Force is elevating its “6” as well in a similar deputy chief of staff role that is currently being held by an interim leader with the hopes of hiring a senior executive service official at a later date, according to Brig. Gen. Zachary Shay Warakomski, senior cyber officer for the Space Force. The goal is to have that position and office reach initial operational capability in the fall.

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Like the Navy, the Air Force years ago chose to integrate its intelligence function — known as the 2 — and its communications and network function, known as the 6, into the A2/6, led by a three-star general. It also added cyber to that portfolio, resulting in an official title of deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations.

Now, the service is dividing those functions to elevate the role of cyber and networks in a future conflict.

“The Chief of Staff of the Air Force needs a senior cyber officer to be his advisor. He can’t have a senior intelligence officer be that advisor,” Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, the A2/6, said Monday during a presentation at the annual DAFITC conference in Alabama. There should be a “three-star at the Air Staff who is advising the secretary of the Air Force, is advising the chief, is partnered with the [principal cyber adviser], partnered with the CIO, and we are well on our way to making that happen.”

While cyber was born out of the intelligence world and there are significant efficiencies between the two function — namely signals intelligence — the service feels it needs distinct separation between the two going forward.

Lauderback said the hope is to have a three-star confirmed by spring 2025 to establish this new A6. At that point, the A2 will go back to focus solely on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance matters.

She noted this is in line with Secretary Frank Kendall’s charge to elevate Air Forces Cyber as part of that reoptimization effort for great power competition. Details regarding that elevation remain vague, with top officials saying they want to take their time to ensure all the various equities are taken into account.

“Elevate AFCYBER. This goes along the same theme, as the secretary said when he thought that he needed an A6. The theme is: I need to elevate the 6 community, the cyber community,” Lauderback said. “It needs to be elevated so that it is on par with air superiority, with mobility superiority, with electromagnetic superiority, all of the other mission sets that we have in the service. I think that this elevation of both the 6 and then of AFCYBER is going to put this at the forefront of all of the senior leadership within the Department of the Air Force, so that they understand you can’t work without comms and you can’t work without cyber operations, attacking the enemy and defending from the enemy.”

The effort also appears to be part of a continued consolidation and emphasis on integrated information warfare capabilities. America’s adversaries have emphasized information warfare, a broad swath of related disciplines including cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence, communications and space, among others. They have prioritized these capabilities and organized to integrate them, making significant gains relative to U.S. forces.

Information warfare personnel could help deter actors such as China, according to officials.

“If 2027 is the planning date [for China to invade Taiwan], if we do IW correctly in the information environment and we’re able to deter the Chinese for something they are thinking about doing in 2027, maybe when 2027 rolls around there’s a recognition that it’s not the year to do it. Maybe [the Chinese will decide] ‘We’ll do it 2028, maybe we’ll do it 2029,’” Lt. Gen. Thomas Hensley, who took command of 16th Air Force less than three weeks ago, said at the same conference.

“16th Air Force, IW [numbered air force], we’re in the competition phase right now, where we’re doing things in multiple domains at a threshold below armed conflict to help shape that information environment so that we can deter the Chinese,” he added. “I think that’s the importance of engaging in the information environment with IW and using all the tools to be able to do that.”

However, the service still is not optimized for this fight.

“As the secretary has asked multiple times: Are we ready for a fight with China tonight? Clearly, he’s not comfortable with the answers that he’s getting, so that’s why we’re doing [great power competition] reoptimization, so that we get faster … and we need to do [that] to get ready for a fight with China,” Hensley said.  

Hensley noted that the Air Force needs to invest in more information warfare personnel, known as 14Fs in Air Force personnel parlance. There are currently only about 200. Plans call for having around 500 eventually across the entire service.

“If we’re serious about making information warfare a domain where we want to make a difference, then we’ve got to increase the number of information warfare warriors in our military,” he said.

A recent report from the RAND Corp. highlighted some of the Air Force’ shortfalls, noting it has failed to realize its ultimate vision and much of the reforms made remain largely aspirational.

Other officials pointed to how the reoptimization efforts — and particularly the changes between the A2/6 — will help establish better structures for operations in the information environment.

For example, the electromagnetic spectrum operations team will move out of the 2 function and into the 3 function, which is focused on operations to combine with the cyber effects and information operations portions to create a new directorate focused on IW ops.

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“One of the main reasons we started looking at that is, this has been territory that our adversaries have been operating in with impunity lately,” Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson, assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, A2/6, told DefenseScoop in a recent interview. “That blurring of competition, crisis and conflict … they’re operating in an area that’s below that threshold of armed conflict. Russia and China are doing this right now and not only are they doing it, they’re combining it with traditional military activities and trying to do it with impunity because there’s been no ramifications.”

Last summer, the Air Force created an information warfare (IW) strategy and in December, it finalized an implementation plan. However, both are classified and thus out of public view.

“What the Air Force IW strategy does, it gives us a path to advance our own IW capabilities in order to try and gain and then maintain, preserve our dominance,” Simpson said. “What we’re looking at … is critical resource and investment decisions to be able to organize, train and equip scalable, cross-discipline and integrated IW capabilities to get convergence or synergistic effect between those capabilities.”

Simpson said the classification is necessary because the strategy, and more so the implementation plan, get into specifics regarding organizing the force, modernizing infrastructure and utilizing cross-cutting tools and capabilities.

He also clarified that this is the Air Force’s information warfare strategy, and not that of the entire Department of Air Force, which also includes the Space Force.

Simpson explained that the proliferation of information technology has forced a paradigm shift essentially. The logic of war has sought to alter human behavior by imposing one’s will on leaders and the general population. That traditionally had been done through physical force. However, IT now provides the opportunity to instantly deliver tailored effects not just to populations, but also at the individual level, which is a significant change.

“It’s not a population that makes decisions. It’s an individual; and what do we know about the individual?” he said, adding that “the level of detail that you need to know your potential adversary or your target audience, the level of fidelity that you need now is much, much greater.”

“That individual may be an iron worker that lives in a city, that individual may be a national leader, that individual may be a battalion commander that is coordinating attacks in Bakhmut against Ukrainians,” Simpson said. “Those are the types of audience that you would like … to conduct influence operations against, but the level of intelligence you need to be able to shake that is much greater than you would need or you had needed in the past.”

Fundamentally, information warfare capabilities underwrite all of the Air Force’s core functions, Simpson said, referring to air superiority; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); rapid global mobility; global strike; and command and control.

Since there is no joint definition for information warfare, the Air Force made the decision to place five functional areas under the IW umbrella: ISR, cyber effects operations, electromagnetic spectrum operations, influence operations and public affairs. 

Over the past few years, the services, in one form or another, have sought to address information warfare in their own way, issuing strategies and their own lexicons based on how they fight.

Simpson said the Air Force did coordinate with the other services when crafting its own strategy to get as much broad guidance as it could, given the Air Force must fight as part of the joint force under a four-star combatant command. There was agreement in some areas and disagreement in others with the sister services, he explained.

To succeed in a future conflict, the Air Force and the greater military must adapt to changing tactics and modern approaches, Simpson said.

“I like how one of the folks on our team put it: If we fail to adapt and we hope to win with capabilities and tactics from the last war, then we are destined to defeat,” Simpson said. “If we do this right, and we get it right, we have an integrated employment of those IW capabilities … we’re going to have unmatched domain awareness with an information advantage to be able to drive that in the future.”

At the operational level, this has culminated with the foundation of the 16^th Air Force, the service’s first information warfare entity. Created in 2019, it combined the Air Force’s ISR and cyber units into an integrated formation that Simpson called the “competition force of choice right now because of the capabilities that they present.”

With a single commander overseeing all aspects of information warfare, Simpson said the force is realizing synergies they didn’t know were possible previously.

“One of the huge benefits is seeing opportunities that we didn’t know really existed before and then under one commander being able to quickly go, ‘Hey, I’ve got an authority shortfall in this area in being able to get after those,’” he said. “This organizational structure helps present forces in a way to be able to try and execute much more quickly, and then removing some of those barriers that have slowed us down.”

Developing information operations professionals

The Air Force has been working to integrate its cadre of information operations personnel more broadly across the force.

The 14F work role was developed for information operations officers. The deputy chief of staff for operations, or A3, technically owns the 14F as the functional authority, and the A2/6 loaned them a senior executive service civilian to be the functional manager for the information operations career field to lead developmental teams and do the talent management. That official is Elizabeth Chamberlain, associate director for cyberspace operations and warfighter communications, within the A2/A6.

While this is a small career field — officials in the past said it will only have around 500 or so personnel and Simpson said that hasn’t grown — it is having an impact already.

Simpson provided a couple of examples of how they’ve contributed to operations. In the first, 14F personnel examined how the Air Force was executing B-2 bomber operations to see how they could deceive adversaries to modify the true destination of the aircraft disrupting that nation’s intelligence against where the B-2 was going.

In another example, 14Fs along with U.S. Air Forces in Europe and European Command used exquisite intelligence developed messages about Russia’s military build-up ahead of its invasion of Ukraine last year and publicly discredited Russia’s narrative that it wasn’t planning anything.

“I’d say that actually had a pretty good effect, because look where Russia is now compared to where Russia was there when it comes to world opinion,” Simpson said, adding that it’s possible with more successes like these in the future to grow demand signal.

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“Electronic warfare has been something that we have tossed around in the Air Force and maybe in some of the other services too, so that it is finally landed on a good spot here on the Air Staff,” Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, A2/6, said Sept. 15 at the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit. “In the A2/6 we’re about to lead a sprint to do some analysis on what is it that we need, what are the gaps, what are the requirements, then how it is that we’d resource them.”

In 2018, the Air Force embarked on a multiyear journey under what it called the Electric Warfare Enterprise Capabilities Collaboration Team to study spectrum superiority. At that time it believed it was falling behind adversaries such as Russia and China.

That study produced three non-materiel solutions, to include the establishment of an EMS superiority directorate within the Air Force headquarters, consolidating EMS services and software programming into a single organization — which culminated in the creation of the 350^th Spectrum Warfare Wing — and creating education programs to develop an EMS “warrior ethos.”

Initially, the EMS superiority directorate was housed within the plans and policy division on the Air Staff, A5. It was later moved to the A2/6 under the electromagnetic spectrum superiority directorate, A2/6L.

With much of the dust settled following the 2018 study and creation of new organizations following the recommendations, the A2/6 is looking to move out further.

“The Electric Warfare Enterprise Capabilities Collaboration Team is a few years old and focused much more on strategic-level commendations (organization, prioritization), some of which have been implemented. The new analytic sprint to be pursued over the coming months will be executed through the lens of Secretary of the Air Force’s Operational Imperatives — and will thus be much more focused on operational-level recommendations,” an Air Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Officials in recent years have discussed the need to harness software in a more robust way as a means for not only cost savings, but achieving greater efficiencies.

“I think the name of the game is when we’re looking at electromagnetic warfare capability in the future, it needs to be software driven, artificial intelligence, machine learning, so that we have the ability to respond in a very fast, quick [way], in a lethal and resilient manner,” Brig. Gen. Tad Clark, then-director of electromagnetic spectrum superiority for the Air Force, said at a conference in April. “Those types of emerging technologies are the things that we’ve identified that we’d like to focus in on.”

The Air Force’s top officer, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., has previously said that electronic assets can be cost effective given their repeatable processes.

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