On July 2, the US Army held a ceremony to activate its Network Warfare Battalion. The goal is to centralize the Army's computer network operations into a provisional battalion ready to provide mission critical cyber support across the Army and DoD.

Considering the prevalence of cyber attacks and impact they could have on telecommunications, banking and finance, energy, transportation, human services, government, and military operations, the Army's efforts are welcome and necessary. However, the limited media coverage I've seen about the battalion skews towards a potential Army Network Warfare Battalion vs. Air Force Cyber Command smack down, with both trying to one-up the other to gain position as DoD's lead network warfare unit. One Network World article was titled "U.S. Army challenges USAF on network warfare"and began with the sentence, "The U.S. Air Force's Cyber Command might have some competition on its hands... ." Somehow, I think there will be enough work to go around and keep both organizations busy.

The issue is not who's going to be the DoD cyber master, but how well information sharing between the two will occur. It's no secret that there is a great deal of work to be done to strengthen information sharing (both technically and culturally) within the federal government. The Air Force Cyber Command head, General William Lord, had this to say about coordination with other military, intelligence, and government entities:

Right now, it's a loose confederation of people who know that this is important work for the nation, and have to find their lanes in the road. We know that DHS, DoJ and NSA have missions, just like DoD, but all are different. In this business, they have become closely related, so our relationships with one another are much better. Not that it was bad before, but in some cases it didn't have to be as close, but now it does, because of the nature of the speed at which these types of activities can occur. Our relationships are good, but nascent, with many. It's an eclectic crowd that has gotten much closer in the past few years.

Make no mistake, we are partners with the other sister services--the Army, Marines, Navy--as well as with DISA, NSA and Homeland Security to name a few. We're all in this together.

Ideally, the Air Force and Army will make a concerted effort to tighten up the "loose confederation" of people finding "their lanes in the road" so that we don't find ourselves with a cyber gap big enough for our enemies to drive a truck through.