Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 25

CYBERSPACE UNDERSTANDING

Third, capability developers must determine the best
way to display the information. Cyber SU must provide adequate detail, but not too much. The Army can
neither defend all of cyberspace, nor can it display all of
it on a COP; otherwise, a commander’s thinking could
become obstructed by needless clutter. Commanders only
need to know what impacts their mission, which aside
from leveraging some joint cyberspace effects, consists
mainly of employing traditional forms of combat power. Therefore, cyber SU must also allow information to
be displayed contextually in order to facilitate broader
situational understanding. This can be achieved through
pictures, stoplight charts, gauges, ribbons, line-and-block
diagrams, and side-by-side comparisons (as exemplified
in the figure).
Fourth, capability developers must avoid writing
system requirements that attempt to replace human
judgment and decision making. Cyber SU must provide
understanding; but it is up to tactical commanders and
staffs to discern how to act on that understanding.
Fifth, and finally, the Army must think of ways to innovate and incrementally reform a constraining acquisition process. Army cyberspace requirements documents
should strive to foster innovation by describing an overarching framework, grounded in sound doctrinal concepts
that can be developed over time through successive software builds.29 This is, in fact, the goal of the IT-Box. The
challenge, therefore, is to identify the aspects of cyber SU
that will become quickly outdated and make them modular, so they can be rapidly replaced by new innovations.
In addition, Army capability developers must decide if
cyber SU will be combined with other proposed or existing systems, or if it will remain pure. Combining multiple systems increases the risk that they could become
bogged down for years in development. Meanwhile, the
Army would be no closer to a cyber SU capability than

it was in 2013 when the Army Cyberspace Operations
Capabilities Based Assessment named its number one
gap as commanders’ situational understanding.30

Conclusion

The other teams could make trouble for us if they win.31
—Yogi Berra
While several resources currently aid in providing
cyber SU, the Army lacks a well-coordinated capability development effort to define and aggregate cyber
SU-related requirements. Although the JCIDS process
provides capability development options with shorter
timelines, it still appears inadequate as evidenced by the
Army’s inability to bring neither cyber SU nor any other
cyber-related JCIDS document to approval.32 Whatever
the case, commanders cannot continue to relinquish key
operational decisions about their OE because they lack
situational understanding of the domain.
Cyber SU may not turn out to be a self-contained
tool or system. Rather, the answer might be an aggregation of multiple situational understanding enabling
capabilities. Therefore, the Army might be better off
with an improvised system that gives them some cyber
SU today, rather than a cure-all system that promises to
deliver the world tomorrow.
Many of America’s enemies have no bureaucracies
and no stovep ipes that hamper their ability to employ
new technologies in battle. So, while Army capability
developers are defining requirements, analyzing alternatives, and running the wickets of JCIDS documentation
and approval, potential adversaries will be playing “small
ball” and winning the cyber contest by utilizing commercial off-the-shelf technologies. To make a comeback, the
Army needs a game changing play. Because, let’s face it;
“the future ain’t what it used to be.”33

Biographies
Lt. Col. William Jay Martin, U.S. Air Force, retired, is a senior military analyst with Command Decision Systems
& Solutions, Inc. He received a BS from the University of Delaware and an MA from Louisiana Tech University.
He is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Weapons School, Air Force Air Command and Staff College, and Joint
Forces Staff College.
Emily Kaemmer is a senior military analyst with Command Decision Systems & Solutions, Inc. She specializes in
Army cyberspace capabilities development.

MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

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