Shaun Waterman
The U.S. military’s ability to deploy troops across the vast Indo-Pacific theater relies on critical civilian infrastructure like airlines, railways, and ports that is vulnerable to disruption by enemy cyber attacks, a new report warns.
In a war with China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could seek to cripple America’s ability to fight with cyber attacks on civilian infrastructure it relies on to move forces across the continental United States (CONUS) and out into theater, said the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0, a non-profit successor to the original CSC, created by Congress to study how to defend the U.S. against large-scale cyber attacks.
Despite the threat, the Pentagon’s efforts to secure that infrastructure are inadequate and siloed off from the broader efforts of the federal government to protect the nation from cyberattack, the commission declared.
“We use the commercial rail, ports, and aviation system to move our troops, equipment, and supplies forward,” retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, the director of CSC 2.0, told reporters on a conference call last week.
Specific deployments like a Special Forces team going to Yemen might rely exclusively on military transportation like aircraft or naval vessels, Montgomery explained. But in any major mobilization, even troops being taken to the battlefield by military transportation would likely have to rely on civilian infrastructure to get to their port of departure.
“For broadly moving our forces, for generating the forces that we need to fight a major war, we’re going to use our commercial rail, port, and aviation systems 95 to 98 percent,” said Montgomery, a former staffer for Sen. John McCain and executive director of the original CSC.
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