A three-star general told a four-star general "you'll report to me someday"

I’ve written quite a bit of prose on the U.S. Air Force’s stillborn effort to launch a full-blown “Cyber Command,” one equal in stature to Air Mobility Command and Air Combat Command. To put it simply: USAF wants to win the race to codify a DoD-centric cyber mission.

(I feel it’s a testament to this website that USAF started using the phrase “codify a DoD-centric cyber mission” after reading about it here. But hey, let’s not digress.)

I obtained a docu­ment that may have con­vinced AFSPC bureau­crats to go to war against AFCYBER bureau­crats — a war that con­tri­buted to the death of AFCYBER as a major command.

If you believe the official story line, then you believe USAF aborted “AFCYBER” only at the eleventh hour after they suffered a string of embarrassing nuclear accidents. “You guys need to focus on the core missions you’ve already got,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the flyboys. He fired his top two Air Force officials and scolded a few others for losing sight of the big picture.

USAF’s newly installed top officials thought about it and said “maybe we should scrap the idea of converting our old nuclear bomber command to a newfangled cyber command. Maybe our nuclear bomber command should focus on nuclear bomber duties. And maybe we should let Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) handle the ‘cyber space’ duties, given the fact we only just realized that ‘cyber’ and ‘outer’ are exactly the same thing when it involves bits & bytes.”

That’s if you believe the official story line.

Some very interesting people in AFSPC might tell you a different story if you buy the first round of beers. They’ll say a bitter rivalry exists between the “space cadets” and the “comm weenies” — a rivalry accidentally revealed in this classified photo. I quote from my previous column:

The big screens in the far background reveal … which major commands fall under which regions of AFCYBER’s Integrated Network Operations Security Center (INOSC). Noticeably missing from the list is Air Force Space Command.

I did a bit of research on this rivalry. It ultimately led to a document some space cadets secretly despise — a document that may have convinced the AFSPC bureaucracy to wage war against the AFCYBER bureaucracy.

AFCYBER’s death knell may have come (in no small part) from the foreword to an innocuous “AFNETOPS Classification Guide” signed on 20 April 2007 by Lieutenant General Robert J. Elder, Jr., the commander of Air Force Network Operations. I finally obtained this document’s foreword on 17 June 2009 via the Freedom of Information Act. Note the highlighted portion that offends space cadets:

This guide establishes security procedures, guidelines and administrative controls to protect information related to Air Force Network Operations (AFNetOps) policies, programs, capabilities, assessments and activities and serves as classification guidance for exercises and operations relating to AFNetOps. AFNetOps is the global-level command and control for the Air Force’s provisioned portion of the Global Information Grid. The Eighth Air Force Commander (8AF/CC) is designated as the AFNetOps Commander and the Original Classification Authority. Currently, AFNetOps is limited to terrestrial networks (i.e., NIPRNET and SIPRNET) with the provision to include airborne and space networks in the future. This guide addresses computer networks only. Information noted as classified by this guide could be expected to cause damage or serious damage to national security if disclosed without authorization. The Original Classification Authority shall identify or describe the nature of such damage.

“What does the highlighted portion mean, Rob?” It means a three-star general told a four-star general “you will report to me someday.” Ouch!

As Paul Harvey would say: “now you know the rest of the story…”

Honestly? I don’t believe this little “oops” delivered the mortal blow to AFCYBER.

If we use Murder on the Orient Express as our analogy, then we can view the offending document’s foreword as the twelfth stab wound. The mortal blow in this case came from AFCYBER itself — or should I say, AFCYBER’s bureaucratic buffoons.

Better yet, let’s think of it as a Darwin Award rather than a murder mystery. This is what you get when bureaucrats take command of military operations…

(Memo to Lt Gen Elder: one word, Bob. “Groupthink.”)