Cyber Situational Awareness Needed
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The US army is interested in cyberspace situational understanding. Situational awareness tools allow soldiers and commanders to track the progress and operations of cyber personnel in cyberspace. Now they want to have the ability to know if the cyber staff are bogged down at one point on their mission just as they’d want to know if an infantry company meets heavy resistance somewhere and will take longer than expected to reach the object.
Over this backdrop, the US Army is beginning work on a new program that would provide commanders a visual depiction of the invisible domains of warfare.
While to a certain extent, current programs along these lines already exist for the electromagnetic spectrum, the Army wants to include cyberspace. The Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool, or EWPMT, is a command-and-control planning capability that allows commanders and soldiers to visualize on a screen the effects of electronic warfare in the field.
“What we’re trying to get there is more understanding of what is actually happening in this invisible domain. Not necessarily for the S-6 and the cyber personnel, but for the commander and the battle staff,” Col. John Transue, capability manager for cyber at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said. This capability is geared specifically for Army tactical units and not the cyber warriors at U.S. Cyber Command.
Essentially, the Army wants to take programs from various staff sections, such as the EWPMT Tool, which helps coordinate and understand electronic signals across the battlefield, and connect those program to mission command platforms.
According to army.asc.mil, EWPMT supports the commander’s military decision-making process by providing the electronic warfare officer (EWO) with EW mission planning, EW targeting and robust modeling and simulation capabilities to support course of action development. Additionally, EWPMT adds the electromagnetic order of battle (EOB), deconflicts EW and communications assets, and visualizes or displays the electromagnetic operational environment.
first phase in the direction of cyber situational awareness is expected to help show friendly forces and help provide greater clarity of the operational environment, Transue said, according to fifthdomain.com.
