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22 December 2014

U.S. Defense Industry Fears Cyber Spying by China and Other Countries

Aaron Mehta
December 19, 2014

Industry Fears Massive Losses Through Espionage

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the wake of what the FBI is now calling a cyber attack by North Korea on Sony, President Barack Obama has called for a renewed focus on government and industry working together to protect information from major cyber attacks. This story, which originally ran Dec. 8, covers how the defense industry hopes to work more closely with governments on cyber security.

WASHINGTON – To see the impact of cyber attacks on US industry and its Pentagon customers, one need look no further than last month’s Zhuhai Airshow, where China’s military showed off its J-31 stealth fighter and JY-26 “Skywatch-U” 3-D long-range air surveillance radar.

Analysts have pointed out that the two designs hew very closely to two Lockheed Martin products — the F-35 joint strike fighter and the company’s radar offeringfor the Air Force’s Three Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) competition, respectively. Reports of a major cyber breach of Lockheed’s programs by Chinese hackers have been around since April 2009, and a general consensus has emerged across industry that China’s military has benefited from that information.

That kind of infiltration is costing US industries billions of dollars, warned Brett Lambert, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for manufacturing and industrial base policy, during November’s NATO Industry Forum in Split, Croatia.

"No one has been hit harder on a seismic scale than US industry," he said, citing estimates that the US has lost $300 billion in intellectual property, with much of it coming from the defense industry.

"We need to protect the intellectual property of not just our companies, but the intellectual capital of our defense industries, and frankly, industry is ahead of this game more than governments."

Speaking on the same panel, Domingo Ureña Raso, Airbus Defence and Space’s executive vice president for military aircraft, agreed industry is ahead of government on these issues. He also said companies are starting to come together to work on cyber challenges because of the shared risk.

"It’s a common enemy today when you talk about the cyber attacks; none of those companies are willing not to cooperate to avoid these kind of things, because they attack to the pillars, to the basements of those companies," he said.

Raso argued that further cooperation among industry and government on cybersecurity will benefit both sides.

"In the last years cybersecurity has been drastically improved thanks to this cooperation," he said. "Industry in many cases will continue to evolve this technology because we need, and the market is requesting, this kind of capability. … We can do together, or we can do separately, but we are going to do anyhow because we need business and to export this knowledge because for us that is a market."

Can government catch up? The US Air Force, for one, is trying. In recent long-term strategy plans, the service has emphasized cyber capabilities and the need to grow the cyber workforce.

That includes creating what Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh has termed “cyber pilgrims,” individuals embedded across the service with cyber expertise, rather than being grouped under the banner of the 24th Air Force or a cyber command.

To drive that, the chief asked researchers at Air University to draft a strategy for cyber force development. That strategy will be briefed to the chief and others in January, said retired Lt. Gen. Allen Peck, who leads the Air Force Research Institute.

"The chief is concerned [about] the demand signal for cyber warriors — how much will this cost, what’s the best and most efficient way to do this," Peck said .

While plans for increasing the number of cyber warriors in the service are underway, Air University is also helping educate top leadership on cyber issues.

In November, a handful of top military officials attended a weeklong cyber course at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, that featured speakers from industry and academia. Among attendees, Peck said, were Gen. Darren McDew of Air Mobility Command, Gen. John Hyten of Air Force Space Command and top generals from the Navy, Army and Marine Corps.

At a lower level, Peck’s team is looking into starting a cyber center that would be a focus of research and an educational tool for officers who come through Air University at various points in their careers.

"We do not currently have a place I can take you and say, ‘this is our cyber center,’ but I can see that happening," he said. "When we get some fidelity on what the numbers will be, we may move in that direction.

"We have a cyber chair at the War College and we have cyber smart people around, so we have resources to leverage. But if we were going to have a center for cyber studies, we’d need a little bit more support," Peck added. "None of [this is] outlandishly expensive. If you slipped a spacecraft a week in production, you could pay for the whole thing."

Like Raso, Peck believes industry is ahead of the service.

"We cannot do this by ourselves," he said. "We have to leverage what industry, what business and universities are doing, because in many ways they are on the leading edge of technology and thought on these things. So I think it’s more important that we have collaborative relationships."

Lambert, however, remains pessimistic industry and government can come together in time.

"I fear that by the time everyone comes to an agreement on what needs to be protected it will already be gone," he said.

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