The US Navy announced on Thursday it was consolidating intelligence gathering and other data capabilities under a single command in a bid to maintain an increasingly challenged US military supremacy in cyberspace.
Naval Intelligence chief Vice Admiral Jack Dorsett said the navy was creating an “Information Dominance Corps” bringing together more than 44,000 sailors — including an expansion of the navy’s cyberworkforce by about 1,000 people.
The move was part of a broader US effort to keep competitive advantage over adversaries like China.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead described the cyber world as a “battlespace” where attacks on US security and military systems are unlikely to wane.
“If we as a navy are to remain dominant in this information age ... I think that we have to take advantage of the new opportunities that exist, such as the vast stores of collected data — information and intelligence that often lie at rest, unrecoverable, unavailable and untapped,” he said.
The reorganization will bring intelligence networks, electronic warfare, encryption operations, cyberspace communications and information gathering, as well as meteorology and oceanography, under a Fleet Cyber Command, the navy component to a broader US Cyber Command.
Roughead said the changes will affect the entire operational chain of military intelligence gathering and subsequent action, “from that first tickle of intelligence that you need ... all the way to potentially a final kill.”
The shift will be complete by the end of this year and headed by a director of information dominance, Roughead told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Dorsett, the nominee for the post, warned that the US competitive advantage in the information age was at risk from “potential adversaries” working hard to end US cyber hegemony.
“Unless you frankly alter the status quo and take some leap ahead, and in some cases some risk, by developing more comprehensive approaches to how you manage the electromagnetic spectrum and how you manage the flow of information, there is the potential that the US and the US Navy will begin to lose that competitive advantage,” he told reporters.
The restructuring comes two weeks after the US singled out emerging superpower China and resurgent Russia as its main challengers in new intelligence guidelines that highlighted the rising scourge of cyberwarfare.
In this year’s National Intelligence Strategy document, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair singled out China as “very aggressive in the cyberworld.”
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