Popular Mechanics filed a nice PR story on the burgeoning new Air Force Cyberspace Command. Reporter Glenn Derene included this priceless observation:

There are no physical connections between [NIPRNET and SIPRNET] anywhere in the Defense Department’s 5 million–computer network, yet in the AFNOC, the Ethernet jacks are only 1½ in. apart. That proximity got me wondering. “What if someone connected them?” I asked information officer 2nd Lt. Mike Forostoski. He laughed in disbelief, as though I had asked him what would happen if a flaming nuclear blimp headed for the building. Then he answered with cautious understatement: “That would be bad. What would happen, of course, is a national-security breach that would probably be an act of treason.”

If you hold any Cisco certifications, then you know the absurdity of declaring a “national-security breach” if a sleepy Airman links two disparate networks with a patch cord. The routers at each end of the wire won’t know how to transfer packets. BGP, EIGRP, etc. will need a lot of tweaking and you’ll need administrator access to each router. You can theoretically do it, but it’ll take a lot more than just a piece of wire to commit treason. Ah, but I digress…

Derene goes on to abbreviate Air Force Cyberspace Command as “AFCC” — practically a four-letter word to the folks at Barksdale AFB. Seriously! Call them “AFCC” and they’ll act like you slapped them in the face. “We are not AFCC and in fact that agency will report to us when AFCYBER stands up in October…”

Yet there’s the rub: someone way high up in the Pentagon has put AFCYBER on hold. The Register quotes a story in NextGov that cites a leaked directive to suspend the big kickoff. NextGov then drops this bomb:

The Cyber Command hyped its capabilities on TV, in Web video advertisements and in a series of high-profile presentations conducted by [commanding general William T.] Lord. The hard sell may have been the undoing of the Cyber Command, which seemed to be a grab by the Air Force to take the lead role in cyberspace…

The decision to ratchet back the Cyber Command may have come from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wants to see a greater role for the Navy in cyberspace, said an Air Force source.

So, do I think AFCYBER is its own worst enemy? Actually, no — it’s the bureaucrats who want their agencies to reorganize under AFCYBER for self-serving reasons. Those bureaucrats used their muddled groupthink to concoct a pathetic marketing strategy best seen in the early 1980s when Air Force Communications Command pitched a self-serving idea to merge with Air Force Data Automation— oops!

—a pathetic marketing strategy best seen in Intercom magazine, a glossy news organ of the Air Force Communications Agency (the real “AFCC”). I quote myself from more than a year ago: “[their] award-winning ‘Intercom’ magazine perpetuates the notion of ‘cyber’ as a support function,” not an operational mission.

The photo at right is a perfect example of poor marketing. When you see airmen updating their antivirus software, does it inspire you to hunt down the terrorists involved in the World Trade Center attack? Of course not — this photo highlights a support function, not an operational mission.

If your daughter and your wife and your mother can update antivirus software on their PCs, then it’s not a military operation. That’s poor marketing.

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At the end of his story, reporter Glenn Derene admits “the awed kid in me” wanted to see the B-52 bombers sitting on the tarmac. “We drove out to the airfield, and there they were, perhaps the most massive attack planes ever created, the very symbol of American megapower, each one capable of devastating an entire city.”

Derene wrapped up by comparing the old days of air combat to the new days of cyber combat. But really, folks — if he had to choose between standing around in a computer room or flying around in a nuclear bomber, do you think he would have written about the short distance between those Ethernet connections? That’s poor marketing for you.

If you remember Air Force Communications Command in the early 1980s, then you know what I mean when I say “history is repeating itself with Air Force Cyberspace Command.”

So, kudos to whoever yanked the parking brake at AFCYBER. I said it before and I’ll say it again — their muddled groupthink has turned a “hot project” into a cancerous quest for an Einstein-ish unification theory that homogenizes Military Intelligence with Communications under a single major command.

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