960th NWF Airmen deploy new tactical capability

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Mark Estlund
  • 960th Network Warfare Flight commander
Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. --  When you think cyberspace, images of computers, server rooms and "1's" and "0's" across monitors most likely come to mind.  Not often do you think about tactical aircraft, landing zones and dirt. Lots of dirt. 

The 960th Network Warfare Flight debuted the new capability of the Cyberspace Defense Analysis weapon system during United States Marine Corps Exercise Angel Thunder,
Leaving the comfortable confines of historic "Building D" on Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., a tactical team of intelligence and cyberspace professionals combined forces with the 23rd Combat Communications Squadron to provide operational security support to the Marines at Camp Pendleton, Calif. 

The airman provided tactical monitoring of voice communications to help evaluate the operational security posture of these mission-focused leathernecks.

Traditionally, the CDA mission is executed from the high-tech operations floors at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland; Ramstein Air Base, Germany; or in the 960th NWF's case, from Offutt. 

The nature of the mission and advances of technology allow access to the entire Air Force Network from our home stations.  However, when a rapid mobilization to an austere location requires a combat communications squadron to quickly build a deployed network, it may be outside the reach of traditional CDA operations. 

To address the issue, the 960th NWF has teamed with 23rd, 35th and 55th Combat Communications Squadrons to pilot the stand-up of "Tactical CDA" capabilities. Small and agile, these rapidly deployable teams will be able to provide our tactical partners with near real time feedback about any information that is being revealed that may be of intelligence value to an adversary.

While the capability has been tested during in-house exercises, Exercise Angel Thunder was the first time the system was deployed to the field during a live exercise. 
The team was led by Tech. Sgt. John Horton, an Oracle Cloud Architect; and Staff Sgt. John Clabaugh, a strategic cyber analyst with U.S. Strategic Command. 

The team was composed of intelligence analysts trained to understand the impact of losing key pieces of data.  Senior Andrew Ashmore, Senior Airman Donovan Mattea, and Senior Airman Hannah Panwitz are a new generation of intelligence analysts who operate solely on in the Cyber Domain.

Although the opportunity for these Airman to work directly with the combat communications units and the Marines has been instrumental to refining the operation of this new capability, operations security has been instrumental to successful warfighting since there has been warfare.

Protecting the vital information of our warfighters was formalized during Operation Purple Dragon during the Vietnam conflict.

To this day, OPSEC is associated with the purple dragon; as such, the 960th NWF shield bares a purple dragon and carries the   motto Tacentes Palmam Seremus or "Being Silent, We Will Win Victory."