The Navy’s Brad Cooper will take over at Centcom and get his fourth star, succeeding Army Gen. Michael Kurilla in that role. The Air Force’s Alexus Grynkewich will lead Eucom and be promoted to four-star, succeeding Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli in that position. Grynkewich will be dual-hatted as NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe.

The officers were confirmed unanimously by voice vote along with a slew of other nominations.

Cooper previously served as deputy commander of Centcom. Before that, he led Naval Forces Central Command and 5th Fleet, where he oversaw Task Force 59, which was established to help the Navy better integrate uncrewed systems and AI into its operations to strengthen the service’s maritime domain awareness.

Grynkewich had been serving as director of operations, J-3, with the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. Prior to that, he led Air Forces Central and Combined Forces Air Component Commander under U.S. Central Command. As commander of AFCENT, he was a booster for Task Force 99, which was stood up to operationally evaluate new drones for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and other missions.

Cooper is taking the helm at Centcom amid heightened tensions with Iran following the recent U.S. airstrike on Iranian nuclear sites with B-2 stealth bombers and 30,000-pound “massive ordnance penetrator” (MOP) weapons during Operation Midnight Hammer. Earlier this year, the command was combating Yemen’s Houthis during Operation Rough Rider.

In written responses to lawmakers’ advance policy questions ahead of his confirmation hearing, Cooper said that as Centcom commander, he would “launch new initiatives that advance our overmatch through the employment of cutting-edge technologies, including AI-enabled, unmanned platforms and digital integration. Ultimately, we must protect our homeland, counter malign influence, ensure freedom of navigation, compete strategically, and ensure USCENTCOM remains a combat-credible force for security in the region.”

Similarly, Grynkewich will command Eucom as the Ukraine-Russia war — in which drones and counter-drone systems have played a major role — rages on and U.S. military leaders are drawing lessons from the conflict.

“Since the conflict in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, warfare has evolved at a pace unseen since the Cold War’s end. Ukraine and Russia have developed and deployed new technologies and tactics on an innovation cycle of months rather than years. As a result, the U.S. Joint Force has established multiple cells to consistently analyze advancements and integrate lessons learned from the battlefield into U.S. and NATO exercises. For example, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have rapidly innovated their use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and uncrewed surface vessels (USV). UAS and USV operations are now conducted at scale, with significant impact and continuous technological updates. This attribute of the modern battlefield is fostering a shift to a culture of innovation, agility, and lethality across all elements of the U.S. and NATO Joint Force, from industry to operators,” he wrote.

Grynkewich told senators that as commander of Eucom, he would be “a strong advocate for continued investment and prioritization of funding for the fielding and protection of innovative logistics capabilities, such as AI-enabled tools with predictive analytics and autonomous distribution systems.”

Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee still hasn’t scheduled confirmation hearings for several other Trump nominees for key positions at the Defense Department, including Marine Corps Gen. Christopher Mahoney, who was picked to be the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle, who was selected for chief of naval operations; Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson, who’s been tapped to command U.S. Africa Command; Navy Vice Adm. Frank Bradley, who was chosen to lead U.S. Special Operations Command; and former congressional candidate and Green Beret Derrick Anderson, who was put forth to serve as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict after the nomination of Air Force veteran Michael Jensen for the ASD SO/LIC job was withdrawn without explanation.

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On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich has been tapped by the commander-in-chief for appointment to the grade of general and assignment as commander of U.S. European Command. NATO has also agreed to appoint him as supreme allied commander Europe, according to the announcement.

Grynkewich is currently serving as director of operations, J-3, with the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. Prior to that, he led Air Forces Central and Combined Forces Air Component Commander under U.S. Central Command. As commander of AFCENT, he championed the work of Task Force 99, which was stood up to operationally evaluate new drones for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and other missions.

If confirmed, Grynkewich would assume the top military leadership role in NATO as the alliance is pursuing AI and other new tech as well as new relationships with non-traditional industry. The Trump administration is also pushing other members of NATO to shoulder more of the burden for defense of Europe, stating that the U.S. military needs to focus more on the Pacific and homeland defense.

On Wednesday, Hegseth announced that Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper was nominated for appointment to the grade of admiral, with assignment as commander of Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East region. Cooper is currently serving as deputy commander.

Centcom’s area of responsibility has long been a hotspot for U.S. military actions against militant groups and nation-state actors, including recently battling the Houthis and trying to thwart their drone and missile attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.

Prior to his current job, Cooper led Naval Forces Central Command and 5th Fleet, where he was a big proponent of Task Force 59, which was established to help the Navy better integrate uncrewed systems and AI into its operations to strengthen the service’s maritime domain awareness.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson has been tapped to become a four-star and command U.S. Africa Command. Africom earlier this year was given expanded authority by Trump to attack terrorist targets in its area of responsibility and is adjusting its posture as it tries to deal with growing threats.

Anderson has held a number of positions in the special operations community during his career, including as commander of Special Operations Command-Africa, among other assignments. He’s currently serving as director of joint force development, J-7, with the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, Hegseth announced that Vice Adm. Frank Bradley, who comes from the Navy SEAL community, was selected for appointment to the grade of admiral and to lead U.S. Special Operations Command. He’s currently serving as commander of Joint Special Operations Command.

SOCOM has been a leader within the Defense Department in adopting cutting-edge tech such as AI and other digital tools, including via its SOF Digital Applications program executive office. The command recently released an updated strategy dubbed SOF Renaissance, which laid out SOCOM’s vision for how the force needs to transform to meet future challenges by adopting new technologies and other reforms, including modernization efforts geared toward surface and subsurface maritime platforms; next-generation ISR; mission command systems; and collaborative and autonomous unmanned systems.

In other SOF-related personnel news this week, Trump on Monday nominated former congressional candidate and Green Beret Derrick Anderson to serve as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

The nominees must be confirmed by the Senate to take on those new roles.

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DIU — a Silicon Valley-headquartered organization which has embedded personnel at Indo-Pacom and Eucom to help tackle some of the combatant commands’ tech-related challenges.

On Wednesday, DIU announced that Scale AI was awarded a prototype contract for the new Thunderforge capability, which will include the company’s agentic applications, Anduril’s Lattice software platform and Microsoft’s large language model technology.

“The Thunderforge technology solution will provide AI-assisted planning capabilities, decision support tools, and automated workflows, enabling military planners to navigate evolving operational environments. By leveraging advanced large language models (LLMs), AI-driven simulations, and interactive agent-based wargaming, Thunderforge will enhance how the U.S. military prepares for and executes operations,” the unit said in a release.

DIU issued a solicitation for the program last year via its commercial solutions opening contracting mechanism.

“The joint planning process is complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. Planners and other staff members must synthesize large amounts of information from diverse sources, consider multiple courses of action (COA), and produce detailed operational plans and orders – often under significant time pressure. As the operational environment becomes more complex and dynamic, there is a need to accelerate and enhance joint planning capabilities while maintaining rigor and human judgment,” the document stated.

In a statement Wednesday, Bryce Goodman, Thunderforge program lead and contractor with DIU, noted that current military planning processes rely on decades-old technology and methodologies.

The U.S. military wants new tech that can quickly ingest, process and summarize large volumes of information relevant to military planning; identify key insights, patterns and relationships; produce draft operations plans, concept plans and operations orders; and perform automated wargaming of courses of action and provide comparative analysis of advantages, disadvantages and risks.

“Our AI solutions will transform today’s military operating process and modernize American defense. Working together with DIU, Combatant Commands, and our industry partners, we will lead the Joint Force in integrating AI into operational decision-making. DIU’s enhanced speed will provide our nation’s military leaders with the greatest technological advantage,” Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang said in a statement.

According to DIU, initial deployments of the system to Indo-Pacom and Eucom are expected to support “mission-critical” planning activities such as campaign development, theater-wide resource allocation and strategic assessment.

If the tech meets expectations, plans call for scaling the Thunderforge capability across the U.S. military’s combatant commands in the future.

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A major element of the hub’s new “DIU 3.0” strategic vision is to hone in on and confront the most critical capability gaps within the military by deploying members of the organization to work side-by-side with warfighters in their real-world operational environments.

DIU Director Doug Beck “believes in having embeds and representation at all the critical organizations that we feel that need to have an impact,” McCartan said.

In an interview with DefenseScoop on the sidelines of NDIA’s Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition on Wednesday, he shed light on some of the learnings he’s gathered and impacts he’s aiming for in this first-of-its-kind role as a defense tech “advocate.”

“A lot of times there’s a lack of understanding of what the technology can do, and just having and being a credible voice to say, ‘These are technologies and they provide real value.’ And it’s not coming from someone trying to sell it, but rather being a uniformed rep who says, ‘I’ve seen this. This is valid. You should really look at it.’ That gives you credibility to bring the technology to bear in that regard,” he said. 

A ‘real threat’

McCartan is DIU’s second-ever embed to be sent to an overseas combatant command, but more are expected to follow.

The first implant from the innovation hub was sent to Indo-Pacific Command, which is responsible for the U.S. military’s missions in a region that is home to China, the nation considered the top long-term strategic threat to the United States. While McCartan engages often with his colleague based in Indo-Pacom, their day-to-days are different.

“It’s hard to compare commands to the same thing, because there’s different missions, different focus, different adversaries. So the way I focus is specifically on Eucom needs, which is very squarely focused on the Russia threat, land-based area, and which is much different from Indo-Pacom which is very water based,” he explained. “So I don’t try to mirror everything that’s happening in Indo-Pacom. I try to glean lessons learned from just the solutions, to the structure, to what we recommend. So a lot of it’s just kind of not trying to repeat mistakes and to repeat successes.”

Innovators from DIU are being embedded in the combatant commands at a time when wars are being fought and conflicts are emerging in multiple regions around the world.

“Eucom is not Indo-Pacom. Eucom has their own problem set, and Russia is … a real threat. Really, it’s something I think about a lot,” McCartan told DefenseScoop.

“If you look at the trend lines, you look at what they’re saying in the media, the prime minister of Poland said this reminds him of 1939 [when World War II began in Europe]. And then you have NATO senior leaders all saying that we need to really think about this. Russia doubled their percent of GDP towards defense in the last few years, and you’ve got to follow the trend lines. And so while everything’s Indo-Pacom focused — rightfully so — there is also an active threat here that we cannot ignore. So we’ve got to think about the solutions for that,” McCartan said.

Leadership and service members from different Eucom teams also expressed that sentiment across a number of panels at the NDIA conference in Washington this week.

“The European theater is currently facing critical economic, social, and political and military challenges that are increasingly impacting global peace and stability,” Sally Pfenning, Eucom’s director for requirements and resource integration, J8, said during a presentation on Wednesday.

“Russia has massed and modernized air, maritime, space, cyber forces — posing significant threats to the United States, partner and allied national security. Eucom will continue to require resilient, lethal and scalable combat capabilities in each of these domains,” she noted.

Moscow has been steadily refreshing its nuclear force and other capabilities by developing and advancing intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, nuclear-powered underwater drones, anti-satellite systems and on-orbit nuclear weapons.

In the war sparked by the invasion of Ukraine, “only Russian land forces and the Black Sea fleet have suffered any meaningful losses. However, they are being reconstituted at rates faster than we originally estimated,” Pfenning said.

Simultaneously, she added, China continues to expand its influence in Europe by attempting to strengthen relationships with Russia and setting conditions to challenge security partnerships and destabilize the theater.

“We now have broader security concerns — both here in America and in the European capital[s] — that are provoked by Russia further increasing partnerships and willingness to share technology with China, Iran, North Korea, [which] creates the most powerful and dangerous threat the United States has faced in decades,” Pfenning said.

As an embed, McCartan said he’s working strategically to accelerate technologies that can help Eucom “counter that mass” that Pfenning spotlighted.  

“Those are the same problem sets — we’re just looking at it from nontraditional sources,” he explained.

Broadly, he organizes his job functions across four primary lines of effort.

“The first and foremost is to try to help the commands address their critical capability gaps, so Eucom’s needs, down to component level. That’s a big focus in my work,” McCartan said.

The second bucket involves operational support and crisis response.

“For example, I talk to Ukraine quite a bit about leveraging commercial technology in whatever capacity — whether it be physically showing them the technology, introducing them to venture capital, broadening their network, [etc.],” he said.

The third area encompasses work with allies and partners in the region, and particularly, members of the NATO alliance.

And “the fourth one,” McCartan noted, is all about industrial base engagement.

“I do a whole bunch of different things on any given day …” he told DefenseScoop.

Making it easier

At many points during the NDIA conference, speakers representing European Command pointed to seemingly dire needs for the Defense Department to speed up processes for buying and deploying innovative tech that is simple, rugged, and can be easily integrated.

“What we are really looking for, in many ways, is not as exquisite, not as excitingly cutting-edge or elegant as it is pragmatic, practical, affordable, scalable. Something that you can use to replace expensive cruise missiles on lesser target sets, something that you can — frankly, let’s just be honest — kill a whole lot of times, a whole lot of Russians very quickly. It doesn’t have to overcome the quantum radar, but you’ve got to be able to get in the theater and you’ve got to be able to sustain manufacturing and production,” Army Lt. Col. Timothy Hodge, chief of Eucom’s integration branch, J8, said.

When asked about the capabilities he’s getting the most requests for from the warfighters he’s working side-by-side with, McCartan immediately pointed to electronic warfare and counter-drone systems.

In terms of his impacts made for DIU in Europe so far, he discussed helping members of the command adopt artificial intelligence and computer vision technologies that were developed prior to his tenure for conducting rapid battle damage assessments in Ukraine and elsewhere.

“Normally it would take two to three weeks to do. And now you’ll be able to do this in a matter of 30 minutes. So you’re taking an analyst job and making it much, much easier. It really started with the humanitarian aid perspective — that’s the original use case for it. And what we did was just educate people to say, ‘Hey, these are solutions that you can use now that can just make your job a lot easier,’” McCartan said.

He’s planning to be “stationed” with Eucom for one or potentially two more years.

“It just depends on how things shake out — I’m a mobilized reservist,” he told DefenseScoop.

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Wednesday evening the Pentagon announced that Palantir landed a deal for its Maven Smart System led by the Army. On Thursday, company executives said the effort will significantly grow the user base and help the department’s Chief Digital and AI Office proliferate the technology to warfighters and pursue its vision for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which aims to better connect the platforms, sensors and data streams of the U.S. military and key international partners to improve decision-making, operational effectiveness and efficiency.

The IDIQ contract will help the combatant commands and the Joint Staff do CJADC2-related work, Shannon Clark, head of defense growth at Palantir, told reporters.

The tech is expected to facilitate battlespace awareness, global integration, contested logistics, joint fires and targeting workflows.

“This is taking what has been built in prototype and experimentation and bringing this [Maven system] to production,” Clark said. “The prototype began in 2021, we fielded that to a small set of users at each of these combatant commands. Now this is offering an enterprise capability with essentially no user limit at these combatant commands. So any individual that is focused on some of the workflows that [the technology is designed to aid] … will have access to the platform. That’s one of the things we’re so excited about, frankly, is because this means that an intel analyst or a user that’s doing work in the field has access to this platform, as do the combatant commanders themselves.”

Work under the new contract will initially cover five U.S. combatant commands: Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command/NORAD, and Transportation Command. The tech will also continue to be deployed as part of the Defense Department’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE), according to Clark.

“Users are going to span everyone from intel analysts and operators in, you know, some of the remote island chains across the world to leadership at the Pentagon. It’s going to reach thousands of users across the globe,” Clark said.

The company will be working with other vendors and U.S. government partners to integrate their technologies with Maven.

“We will be partnering with them to help integrate other AI capabilities, not just what Palantir brings to the table. So they will be able to build on all the data integrations that Palantir is doing, build on the pipelines and the applications within the platform or other platforms through open APIs and our ontology software development kits,” Clark said. “We want to be able to integrate with any data system, any new AI capability that the government procures and wants to be part of this ecosystem. So, you know, should tomorrow a new sensor come online, should … a new AI capability come online, we want to be able to integrate with that.”

The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office also awarded Palantir a $33 million prototype other transaction agreement “to rapidly and securely” onboard third-party vendor and government capabilities into a government-owned, Palantir-operated data environment, according to a CDAO release that went out Thursday afternoon.

The Maven system and the data environment will support the Defense Department’s plans for the Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) initiative that was announced Thursday.

The first task order under the $480 million Maven contract is worth $153 million. The funding will go toward licenses to deploy the company’s software, according to Clark.

“This task order kicks off on June 1 … Those licenses will be made available immediately to all those users,” she told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters. “That’s the beauty of commercial software. The beauty of the product that we built is that we can get it up and running in days and weeks, not months and years.”

The Maven tech can integrate data from a variety of reporting systems — such as satellite imagery, signals intelligence, electronic intelligence, human intelligence, or other sources — across multiple domains to provide users with better situational awareness of friendly and adversary forces. That info can be displayed for commanders and other personnel via easy-to-use maps and dashboards, Andrew Locke, DOD enterprise lead at Palantir, told reporters.

The system can also “layer in” AI capabilities, such as computer vision models that scan imagery and look for objects of interest.

“For the user, they can go immediately from kind of that tip and cue that something of interest is there and actually nominate, you know, targets from the platform. So, you know, when we think about the integration of AI into these workflows, it is very much like humans involved in the process … They’re providing their unique subject matter expertise to verify that, you know, what AI maybe suggested is there is actually there. And then go from that into what you know the next stage of a process might be,” Locke said.

That could include what he called a “targeting nomination workflow.”

“In this case, you can either nominate a single target or multiple targets. We help to augment the user where we take all the metadata associated with those detections and kind of package that in the … format that they’re familiar with as part of the target nomination. As they do that, that would then transition to a separate capability that we’re providing across target management where nominated targets would then pop up right into a board … And for a staff, they can really optimize a process, take like their standard operating procedures that are unique to that organization and then code that in software,” he explained.

Data from social media could also be integrated into workflows if the U.S. government asked for that, he suggested.

“On our side, [we’re] really agnostic, you know, to the data sources. And really no technical limitation,” he told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters.

Palantir will defer to the Pentagon in terms of providing specifics on the actual social media sites or programs that they might want to pull from, he noted.

“But basically … if the government were to be using a sort of AI to initially run off of social media, whether that’s computer vision against images or videos that are in posts, or some type of like geolocation or, you know, natural language processing, you know, over keywords … then we would provide, like, the integration of whatever those social media sources potentially look like. And then … move that into classified networks, and then provide that sort of information in conjunction with the other data sources that we’ve integrated on the government’s behalf,” Locke said.

Updated on May 30, 2024, at 5:20 PM. This story has been updated to include information about an other transaction agreement awarded to Palantir and the Pentagon’s Open DIGAR initiative.

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“It’s a daily effort to get readiness at a higher state … as we operate and maneuver the domain, how do we make it more effective and efficient for them to be more compliant, which leads to readiness?” Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, commander of Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network and the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, said at the annual DAFITC conference Wednesday.

JFHQ-DODIN is a subordinate headquarters under U.S. Cyber Command responsible for protecting and defending the Pentagon’s network globally.

Skinner noted that adversaries are still often using rudimentary tactics, and much of what JFHQ-DODIN is doing is to raise the bar so officials don’t have to worry about the easy intrusions anymore.

“You know what they’re using,” he said of adversaries. “They’re using basic stuff. Why go to really unique and really powerful [tactics, techniques and procedures] when you can use the basic ones getting in using misconfigurations and the sort?”

JFHQ-DODIN is piloting the third iteration of its Command Cyber Readiness Inspections (CCRI) at three places, Skinner said. A CCRI is essentially a technical inspection of an organization’s network and security practices.

The focus now is shifting to risk, he said, adding that he expects CCRI 3.0 to roll out to all the services and agencies in the next quarter.

The new concept focuses on forward-facing devices and terrain given that’s the easiest way an adversary can gain access.

“How are you controlling access, elevated privileges? How are you managing those who have elevated privileges? How are your system administrators?” Skinner said.

From there, leaders need to think about incident response.

“No matter what kind of protection and security you have, something’s always going to happen … Do you have a minimum defensive posture?” Skinner said.

Based on these areas, leaders will be assessed on how at risk they are and if they need to do something as an enterprise to mitigate or drive down that risk.

The second main focus area for improving overall reediness and security of the DODIN is training.

While U.S. Cyber Command has focused heavily on the training of the cyber mission force — the teams each service provides to Cybercom to conduct offensive and defensive cyber operations — the department will now turn its attention to cybersecurity service providers (CSSPs) for the first time. CSSPs are essentially the local defenders and maintainers of a network at any given organization or installation.

“The department just signed out two months ago the joint mission essential task for CSSPs. First time we’ve ever had that,” Skinner said.

Five CSSPs this month will be reporting readiness based on those essential tasks, and next month there will be even more.

Overall, there’s roughly 30 CSSPs across DOD. And in the next few months, they’ll be looking closely at how to understand their respective readiness levels.

Additionally, the department will be looking at training standards for the system administrators that have elevated privileges. Currently, there aren’t standards in this regard.

“Then we can holistically look at this thing we call the DODIN and go from a force posture standpoint and force training readiness [and say], ‘Here’s the standards, here’s how we’re going to assess against those standards based on readiness and then understand what the risks [are].’ So you got risk of the terrain and risk of the force to support that terrain and protect that terrain and secure that terrain all together,” Skinner said.

The last aspect of improving the DODIN that Skinner described is the ability to “maneuver” the cyber domain. The key aspect that sets that domain apart from the other four domains of warfare — such as sea, land, air and space — is that it’s manmade and can be completely changed in a split second.

“How do we virtually maneuver the domain itself? How do we use military deception or even deception writ large to [do] that if we do have a vulnerability that could be exploited but somebody who’s scanning from the external cannot see that?” Skinner said.

JFHQ-DODIN is looking at a few pilots within the maneuverability portfolio, including one focused on the boundary and security-as-a-service for the boundary.

“Everybody usually hears we have 10 internet access points. You think, ‘Well that’s not that tough to manage.’ There’s actually about 70 then that DISA controls. But there’s 60ish across the enterprise where there’s internet access into the broader internet. That makes it a lot more unmanageable,” Skinner said.

Security-as-a-service “takes a lot of the, I’ll say, convoluted and complex IP that we have today and makes it less complex, because it’s all packaged into one. You don’t have the collisions that you have today,” he added.

Another “powerful” pilot being worked by some of the services includes automation and validation of protection.

“The security appliances, the security apparatuses, all those capabilities that you have throughout the environment. Is it operating nominally? Because right now, we just say, ‘Well, yeah, it is because it’s on and it’s protecting some things.’ But is it protecting everything that you want?” he explained. “Leveraging the TTPs that our adversary uses and that we know that they use, we’re testing it through all the way from the boundary and all the way to the endpoint — that’s pretty powerful if we get that moving.”

Other changes for JFHQ-DODIN

JFHQ-DODIN has seen a few changes in the last several months. For one, its deputy commander, Rear Adm. William Chase, retired Aug. 18.

Brig. Gen. Heather Blackwel took over in that role the same day.

Additionally, JFHQ-DODIN recently inherited responsibility for coordinating authority of cyber operations on behalf of U.S. Transportation Command.

This coordinating authority provides each supported combatant command a single commander that is responsible for planning, synchronizing and coordinating cyber support and ops. Previously, the service cyber components to Cybercom — through what is known as their Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber — only had coordinating authority for combatant commands they supported.

Now, for the first time, JFHQ-DODIN assumed this and supports Transcom, which primarily conducts defensive cyber operations, not offensive ones like geographic combatant commands.

Sources indicated to DefenseScoop that JFHQ-DODIN was a natural fit to support Transportation Command given Transcom has a heavy requirement and focus on defensive cyber, which is part of JFHQ-DODIN’s core mission.

The shift in coordinating authority was done, mainly due to the standup of U.S. Space Command. In 2019, Cybercom assigned coordinating authority of Spacecom to Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber Air Force, which was already supporting European Command, Strategic Command and Transportation Command.

However, supporting four combatant commands placed a burden on Cyber Command, and the decision was made to give the authority for Transcom to JFHQ-DODIN.  

“In an effort balance the Coordinating Authority relationships and responsibilities across all CYBERCOM direct subordinate commands, CYBERCOM realigned Coordinating Authority for U.S Transportation Command from JFHQ-C Air Force to JFHQ-DODIN,” according to a Cybercom spokesperson.

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“In addition to that work we did with Ukraine, with Ukrainians, we also deployed Air Force and Army cyber teams to Europe to support U.S. European Command directly. Those teams worked on cyber defense, worked very closely with those commands to ensure that all the theater networks were hardened in case there was an escalation or intrusions directed at the U.S.,” David Frederick, executive director of Cybercom, said Wednesday at a virtual event hosted by GovConWire.

Frederick was initially referencing the work Cybercom did sending defensive cyber protection teams from its cyber national mission force to Ukraine ahead of the invasion to help secure Ukrainian networks, which also had the benefit of providing the U.S. government advance warning and information about the tactics of Russian cyber operations.

These so-called hunt-forward operations, in which U.S. teams are deployed to other nations at their request to look for malicious behavior on their networks, has been touted as a huge benefit to cooperative security with partners as well as aiding in domestic defense.

“Working with our partners and allies ahead of time in hunt-forward operations that we’re involved with, I believe that that has helped us significantly to be prepared for pushback against Russia in the war in Ukraine,” Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on cyber, innovative technologies and information, said at DefenseScoop’s DefenseTalks conference on Sept. 15. “I think [that’s] a significant reason why we haven’t seen more effective cyber operations on the part of Russia both in Ukraine and maybe any blowback we might have experienced here in the United States.”

Langevin said he’s satisfied with the achievements of these hunt-forward operations so far, but acknowledged there is still more to do.

“The early work that we’ve done with partners and allies to identify where the Russians were in networks and then be prepared for what they might do has helped better protect us and our partners and allies,” he continued.

While these hunt-forward operations for Ukraine have been widely publicized, what is less known was the response and preparation by the Department of Defense to harden its own networks from some level of potential blowback by Russia.

The Air Force is responsible for cyber ops within the U.S. European Command area of responsibility under what’s known as Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber Air Force. These organizations provide planning, targeting, intelligence and cyber capabilities to the combatant commands to which they’re assigned. The heads of the four service cyber components also lead their respective JFHQ-Cs and oversee the cyber teams that conduct operations for the combatant commands. Given the joint nature of cyberspace operations, the Air Force also oversees a small group of Army teams in Europe under this construct.

At the GovConWire event on Wednesday, Frederick also highlighted additional defensive cyber preparation done on a global level by Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Networks, Cybercom’s subordinate organization responsible for securing, operating and defending U.S. military networks globally.

“Joint Force Headquarters-DODIN took a look at our guidance for DOD networks writ large and took a number of actions to harden, reduce risks with some key mitigations, and just ensure that the core networks of DOD were well prepared to support U.S. European Command and resilient to any potential cyberattack,” he said.

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“We went from about zero to 100 of requirements … into the European theater. That demand signal for more and more connectivity via mil[itary] satcom has just been unbelievable,” Brig. Gen. Chad Raduege, director of the command, control, communications and computers/cyber directorate, and CIO of European Command, said in a webcast hosted by C4ISRNET Wednesday. “We have been very accustomed to dealing with mil satcom, military provided satcom, for a number of years. We know how to search for that, we know the processes, we know how to come up on links, we know how to manage all that.”

Raduege said one of the major lessons learned in the still early days of the conflict is getting requirements delivered and managing work through narrowband and wideband with Space Force and U.S. Space Command.

Raduege also noted that he’s also seen a proliferation of commercial technology, which he believes will continue to have great relevance in future conflicts.

“We have seen a massive flow of commercial satcom capabilities come into the theater and in many ways that that has enabled us to spread out our mil satcom capabilities, take advantage of those commercial satcom capabilities,” he said. “That have driven its own unique lesson learned in that we often don’t have quite the insight on the commercial side we have on the military side. How do you command and control commercial satcom? How do you understand the priorities? How do you understand the relationships that we are now having with commercial [providers]?”

Commercial partners have been able to keep up with the pace of technology development and add newer capabilities at a faster clip than the government in some cases.

SpaceX’s Starlink, a satellite constellation that provides internet coverage and has been used in Ukraine, was able to update its systems within a day following Russian jamming attempts.

“When we compare that to the kind of the latency of our ability to get capability out there, how long it takes us to make capability upgrades, the process we have to go through to do the analysis of what happened, what’s the appropriate way to fix it, how do we then acquire the system, how do we get the contract in place — we’re talking about a significant timeline to make those types of corrections,” Dave Tremper, director of electromagnetic warfare in the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment’s platforms and weapons portfolio management office, said in April.

In the way Starlink upgraded its systems in the face of a threat, the military needs to have that same agility to change its electromagnetic posture without losing capability, he said, stressing the importance of electromagnetic spectrum survivability in all systems.

“The constellations that our commercial partners are putting up, fill in a whole bunch of gaps and make us more connected than ever,” Raduege said. “This will be a lesson learned and one that we will go forward and continue to work with our commercial partners on. Absolutely, it’s going to increase.”

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NATO has enhanced its ability to detect, deter and respond to cyberattacks, Gen. Christopher Cavoli told lawmakers Thursday. But more effort is needed.

“Clearly, just like for all of our countries individually, there’s much work to be done for the entire Alliance collectively on this,” he said during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If I’m confirmed, it will be one of the things I turn my attention to first.”

NATO has taken a number of steps in recent years to strengthen its posture, including establishing a Cyberspace Operations Center to coordinate and synchronize cyberspace ops, and a Computer Incident Response Capability Centre to prevent, detect, respond and recover from cyber incidents.

“NATO’s cyber defense capabilities and capacity are improving, but continuous efforts will be required to reduce vulnerabilities across the Alliance,” Cavoli said in a written response to lawmakers’ advance policy questions.

In his current role as commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Cavoli is tasked with helping secure U.S. European Command’s (Eucom) communication networks.

“This is something I get briefed on literally every week, and I’m satisfied with the level [of security] we have right now. We have to work on it constantly, though, and we do work on it constantly,” he said. “The [NATO] Alliance is working in this direction also … We are initiating the conversations necessary to have collective policy and strategy on network defense, but I believe much more needs to be done.”

Ensuring further collaborative efforts among organizations such as Eucom, U.S. Cyber Command and NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence to improve training, rapidly disseminate best practices, facilitate information-sharing across the region, and strengthen cyber forces’ interoperability, will be top priorities.

Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of Cybercom, “has set up some great models throughout Europe in terms of defending forward, hunting forward, and doing it in collaboration with our partners or our allies. And I would very much look forward to pursuing all of those with him. It’s going to be of critical importance as we go forward,” Cavoli said.

Russia invests heavily in cyber-enabled information operations. Having more U.S. and allied military personnel specializing in information ops-related disciplines would help counter Moscow’s “malign influence campaign,” he added.

Eucom is expanding its online counter-propaganda efforts as U.S. military components seek to boost their information operations capabilities.

“Countering multi-domain activities below the threshold of armed conflict requires a whole-of government approach that is most effective when aligned with similar allied approaches,” Cavoli said.

The Department of Defense views the information space as a key arena of competition with adversaries such as Russia and China.

“It is imperative that the United States not cede this key terrain. U.S. Eucom’s operations in the information environment contribute to the command’s and the U.S government’s overall efforts to advance U.S. interests in Europe. If confirmed, we will continue to expand our interoperability with our allies and partners,” he added.

The U.S. and many of its European allies have been supplying weapons to Ukraine to help it fight Russian invaders, to the chagrin of Moscow. NATO’s logistics networks and other assets are at risk being attacked by Russia in the cyber domain as the war drags on.

“I think we’re correct to be waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Cavoli told lawmakers. “There is capability and capacity that could be used. And we are being very vigilant about that as a DOD,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to share more information about that in an unclassified setting.

One issue that has yet to be fleshed out is what level of cyberattack would trigger NATO’s Article 5 collective defense mechanism.

“This, of course, is a very active debate inside the Alliance … but it has not come to a conclusion inside NATO yet,” Cavoli said.

Lawmakers praised Cavoli during the hearing, and he is expected to be confirmed without any significant political opposition on Capitol Hill.

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Such efforts are part of Cyber Command’s broader operational concept of persistent engagement, which essentially boils down to being in constant contact with enemies to contest them through daily competition up through conflict. It also heavily involves working with partners to not only bolster their networks and security but also to gain insights on potential adversary actions as advanced intelligence to defend against.

“What we’ve learned over nine different hunt forward operations in 2021 is the fact that consistent engagement with a series of partner nations is really valuable,” Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Hunt forward teams are defensively oriented teams that physically deploy to foreign nations to search for threats on their networks at the invitation of host nations, helping to bolster their security and in turn, providing Cyber Command advanced notice of adversary tactics.

“We understand the networks, we understand the leadership, we understand what they care about most. Working with that in competition or crisis is much better than waiting until there’s a conflict. That’s what we’ve learned,” Nakasone said.

While declining to offer greater specifics in an open hearing, he told the committee that the command learned the value of deploying these types of teams early on and then working with the regional combatant command — in this case European Command — to ensure these experts go to the right places.

In his written testimony, Nakasone said these hunt forward teams sat side-by-side with partners to gain insights into threats. Since Russia’s invasion in February, Cyber Command has conducted additional hunt forward operations bolstering the resilience of Ukraine and other NATO allies, Nakasone said. This includes providing remote and analytic support to Ukraine and conducting network defense activities aligned to critical networks outside Ukraine.

“In terms of what the Russians decided to [do], I would anticipate that this was based upon a series of assumptions that they may have made, I think coupled with the defensive capabilities that we were able to work with a number of partners within Ukraine,” Nakasone told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier Tuesday regarding why there haven’t been many publicly successful cyber incidents on the part of the Russians. “Thirdly, I think is just a realization that a lot of times these are very, very difficult attacks to be able to conduct.”

Cyber integration with combatant commands

Nakasone also touted the success new cyber planning cells are having within the combatant commands, particularly with European Command.

The cyber operations-integrated planning elements (CO-IPEs), as they’re known, were established in 2018 as a means of better integrating cyber operations into the overall planning process. In the past, cyber was typically considered after the fact and not integrated into the military planning like air, land or maritime operations.

Now, with these planning cells, cyber planners, not actual operators, are physically embedded within various staff sections at the combatant commands to provide expertise on how cyber can be incorporated to their operations.

“The feedback that I’m getting from the commanders is that they really value this type of integration,” Nakasone said, adding that in the case of European Command, they are able to provide the commander’s staff options for defensive and offensive action. “What that provides the commander, are people that really understand cyberspace, that understand how we do our operations, how we do our planning, how we do our execution.”

Others have also lauded the progress and success of these planning cells.

“It has proved 10 times over its weight in effectiveness with the COCOMs. It’s the only way to do business,” Vice Adm. Ross Myers, commander of the Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command/10^th Fleet, said in a previous interview with FedScoop.

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