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DIA and the Chinese Cyber Threat

In September, it sure looked like China launched a whole mess of cyberattacks against Pentagon networks and government computer systems in Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

But no Defense Department official was willing to publicly pin the blame on China -- probably because they did not want to irritate the Chinese and mess up the USS Kitty Hawk battle group's Thanksgiving port call in Hong Kong.

This official reluctance to call China on its adventures in cyber space goes back to at least 2003, when then Sandia National Laboratories analyst Shawn Carpenter determined China was gobbling up megabytes-worth of files of information, not only from Sandia but from a wide range of Defense and other federal agencies. It was considered one of the most pervasive attacks against U.S. networks and information systems in history.

I guess the reason Defense does not identify China as a serious adversary in cyber space has something to do with diplomatic niceties way above my pay grade, but it's good to know that the Defense Intelligence Agency has no problem in saying the United States faces a "Chinese Cyber Threat."

Or, at the very least, DIA has a nice set of PowerPoint slides on the topic, according to Appendix E of the Defense Science Board task force report, "Mission Impact of Foreign Influence on DoD Software," released a couple of weeks ago.

Turns out that the DIA gave a brief titled "Chinese Cyber Threat" to the DSB task force way back in February 2006. But since it was classified, I can't share any details. But it's good to know the folks over in the Darth Vader building seem to have no illusions about China's adversarial role in cyber space.

I'm glad the nuns at Holy Names Grammar School in Springfield, Mass., told me to always, always read appendices.

How About Some Enchiladas With That Cyber Command?

The Air Force has decided to look around for a home for its new Cyber Command, provisionally located at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson thinks my home state would make a dandy spot for Lt. Gen. Robert "Bob" Elder and his band of cyber warriors to set up shop.

We don't get to see much of Richardson here anymore except on television from some presidential campaign stop, but he did manage to drop into Santa Fe Nov. 28 to announce the formation of a statewide task force to lure the Cyber Command here.

Richardson touted New Mexico's advantages over Louisiana, including a wealth of scientific talent at Sandia (even if it did fire Carpenter), Los Alamos National Laboratory and three Air Force bases and the White Sands Missile Range. But the decision could come down to whether or not the person in the Air Force making the decision likes enchiladas with chile, the New Mexico secret weapon, versus catfish, crawfish and hush puppies.

The local press here played up the competition between New Mexico and Louisiana, but Capt. Robert Krause, a spokesman for the 8th Air Force, dodged the word competition and instead called it a "basing decision ... which will be made at the highest level of the Air Force."

One key question I had for Krause -- which is always the key question in New Mexico -- is whether Elder likes red or green chile. Krause, who is from Clovis, N.M., understood the importance of that question and said he will ask Elder for his preference the next time he sees the general.

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Cyber Command

Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, U.S. Air Force chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer, as well as a galaxy of folks with stars on their shoulders, will discuss the mission and direction of the newly formed Cyber Command, information operations plans and requirements, and other IT stuff at the annual AFCEA Northern Virginia IT Day at the Sheraton Premiere in Tysons Corner, Va., on Wed., Dec. 5.

This looks like a good opportunity for the New Mexico Air Force Cyber Command Task Force to educate some high-level folks on the difference between red and green chile.

DIHMRS Transition Plan Needs "Major Revision"

The Army-backed Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, which all four services plan to use, stands out as the largest Enterprise Resource Planning system ever attempted. So, I guess it deserves a truly Brobdingnagian deployment plan, which comes as a disk-splitting 6.2 MB file and totals 467 pages.

I must confess that I came down with a bad case of reader's cramp at about page 100. But I delved deep into the draft deployment plan released by the Army last month for the new pay and personnel system to come across a possible speed bump: The whole section dealing with legacy system migration has been grayed out and stamped "undergoing major revision," a rather scary conjunction of words.

The Army, according to the deployment plan, intends to turn on all of DIHMRS all at once for all four services. But now there appears to be a rather pesky problem with the migration of hundreds of legacy systems into the new one, and Defense does not have a stellar track record in migrating even a small number of legacy systems, let alone the mind-boggling number that will end up in DIHMRS.

ERPs are complex undertakings and sometimes end up eating the enterprises they are supposed to serve, which makes the "major revisions" for legacy system migration into DIHMRS truly worrisome.

The Pay-As-You-Go Army

A reader wrote in last week to inform me that his wife had to quickly deploy with a small team to a far-off place to do some good. But at the start, she had to support that mission on her own dime, paying for rental cars, hotels and food.

It seems that the Army could not advance her the funds to cover those expenses, so this military family had to tap into its personal checking account for about $2,000. That's far, far less than a rounding error from the Army comptroller's perspective - but a real hit on most family budgets.

That won't happen in 2009 when DIMRS is fully deployed as, according to the Defense Business Transformation Agency, the system will easily handle advances - pending any major revision, of course.

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