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05 Jan 23. China developing own version of JADC2 to counter US. China is pursuing a new military construct known as Multi-Domain Precision Warfare to align its forces from cyber to space, an effort U.S. officials say is fueled by a need to counter the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative.
Like JADC2, the MDPW core operational concept, as it’s known, relies on interlinked command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to quickly coordinate firepower and expose foreign weaknesses, according to the annual China Military Power Report, which the U.S. Department of Defense delivered to Congress in November.
“As we note in the report, this new concept is intended to help identify key vulnerabilities in an adversary’s operational system and then to launch precision strikes against those vulnerabilities, which could be kinetic or non-kinetic,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Nov. 28, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Basically, it’s a way that they’re thinking about looking across domains to identify vulnerabilities in an adversary’s operational system and then to exploit those to cause its collapse.”
The Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army, “refers to systems destruction warfare as the next way of war,” the official added. Under that premise, warfare is no longer solely focused on the destruction of enemy forces; rather, it is won by the team that can disrupt, cripple or outright destroy the other’s underlying networks and infrastructure.
The U.S. considers China the No. 1 threat to its national security, with Russia a close second. The two powers have long invested in military science and technology. Confronting them represents a sea change to the counterinsurgency operations that defined a previous — and lingering — American era in the Middle East.
“Clearly, the United States has been primarily focused on other threats for the last two decades. That has changed,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner said at a Dec. 8 event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. “In part, it started changing during the Obama administration. That accelerated under the Trump administration and really crystallized under this administration.”
To maintain an advantage over both powers and other technologically savvy adversaries, the Pentagon is attempting to realize JADC2, a connect-everything-everywhere campaign for communications and international collaboration. By linking once-disparate troops and databases across land, air, sea, space and cyber, defense leaders say the U.S. can strike faster, more efficiently and from farther away.
The notion, though, faces scrutiny from lawmakers and outside experts, who have expressed reservations about coordination between the Army, Air Force and Navy; how success will ultimately be measured; and its overarching price tag. The Navy alone wanted some $195 million for Project Overmatch, its contribution to JADC2, for fiscal 2023, a 167% jump over the $73 million it received in 2022.
Overmatch, specifically, is being executed behind closed doors, with service leaders reluctant to talk and details remaining skeletal. The clandestine route is taken to keep China off-balance and to stay out of range of its many ears and eyes, according to Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute.
“A key to that is not tipping your hand with regard to the things you’re actually trying to put together. They’re very careful on operational security for these Overmatch-related items,” Clark told C4ISRNET in early November. “Since we’re looking at this in the very near-term way, and since the Navy has failed to really field a wide variety and number of unmanned systems, the Navy’s only got a few tricks up its sleeve in terms of how it can combine different systems to create kill chains. Because of those limits, they’ve got to be really careful about showing which combinations they think are most valuable.”
Officials in Beijing have for years pursued an information-fluent force capable of dominating networks and bombarding targets from a sprawl of locations with a mix of weaponry.
“PRC military writings describe informatized warfare as the use of information technology to create an operational system-of-systems, which would enable the PLA to acquire, transmit, process, and use information during a conflict to conduct joint military operations across the ground, maritime, air, space, cyberspace, and electromagnetic spectrum domains,” the power report states. “The PLA is accelerating the incorporation of command information systems, providing forces and commanders with enhanced situational awareness and decision support to more effectively carry out joint missions and tasks to win informatized local wars.”
JADC2 leans on artificial intelligence and sophisticated computing to speedily sift through mountains of data and inform battlefield decisions. China’s MDPW — first teased in 2021, according to the report — and its other approaches to conflict do, too.
“As the PLA continues to focus on improving its ability to fight and win informatized wars, future information systems will likely implement emerging technologies such as automation, big data, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing to improve process efficiencies,” it states. “The PLA has already begun this process by embracing big data analytics that fuse a variety of data to improve automation and to create a comprehensive, real-time picture for warfighters.”
The Pentagon’s public spending on AI, including autonomy, mushroomed to $2.5 billion in fiscal 2021, after breaking $600 million 2016. The software-centric technology can help vehicles navigate, predict when maintenance is required and assist identification and classification of targets. The U.S. Air Force’s chief information officer, Lauren Knausenberger, in November said the service needs to “automate more” despite already “doing some very interesting things” with AI in the lab, on the battlefield and “in things that we are building today.”
At least 600 AI projects, including several related to major weapons systems, such as the MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, were underway as of April 2021, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog. At least 232 ventures are being handled by the Army. The Air and Space forces are together dealing with more than 80.
To thwart the increasingly international ambitions of China, the U.S. is forging information-sharing alliances with friendly nations in the Indo-Pacific region. They include Australia, India, Japan and South Korea. Such arrangements are a pillar of JADC2, which involves a so-called mission-partner environment where data from a spectrum of foreign sources can be collected, secured and distributed.
Senators earlier this year in a draft of the annual defense bill instructed the Defense Department to focus on the buildout of JADC2 at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command — a tacit recognition of China’s power amid a bloodbath in Ukraine. While lawmakers are concerned about Eastern Europe, and have supported the shipment of materiel to the frontlines, China remains a long-term, disruptive challenge.
The Pentagon’s Ratner said the China Military Power Report documents the “growing assertiveness, this growing coercion, as it relates to the East China Sea, as it relates to the South China Sea, on the line of actual control against India and, of course, against Taiwan.”
“We’re also seeing a more-global PLA,” he said, “one that is pursuing installations around the world, very ambitious aspirations to be projecting power, sustaining power, overseas.” (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
05 Jan 23. UK and US research labs conduct back-to-back AI demonstrations. Dstl and the US Air Force Research Laboratory carried out the first deployment of their jointly developed artificial intelligence toolbox in 2 military exercises.
UK suppliers Blue Bear, Fraser Nash Consulting and IQHQ provided the swarm and payload technology that underpinned the experiments
The state-of-the-art toolbox will allow the warfighter to rapidly select the best AI tools, from across the coalition, for their specific mission needs.
The goal of both exercises was to address the challenge of how to make AI agile, adaptable, trustworthy and accessible to the warfighter under different US and UK military use cases. Critically, this also included a process to ensure that the AI being developed and delivered is robust for the mission and that any limitations of the AI are understood by the user, key steps in developing user trust in the technology.
In November 2022, a team of 30 AI and autonomy experts from the UK and US deployed as a joint AI Taskforce to the Project Convergence 22 (PC22) experiment held at the US National Training Centre at Fort Irwin. Just 4 weeks later, a subset of the Taskforce reconvened at the British Army’s Salisbury Plain Training Area in Wiltshire England taking lessons learned from PC22 and rapidly applying AI into a new operational environment as part of the Dstl HYDRA project’s Integrated Concept Evaluation (ICE).
The focus of the joint AI Taskforce for PC22 was to deploy, for the first time, the jointly developed UK-US AI Toolbox. The toolbox draws together data collected from UK-US uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), data labelling, rapid AI training and retraining on deployed tactical high performance computers (HPCs) to deliver mission-specific AI.
The team has worked to make the AI understandable to the user, developing model cards to provide clear descriptions of the strengths and weakness of the AI algorithms being delivered by the toolbox so that users can select the algorithms they need for their mission and understand the risks of employing it outside of its planned use case to meet a mission outcome.
UK AI Toolbox lead Todd Robinson said: “The whole team across both nations came together to deliver this landmark trial for the collaboration. By deploying our AI Taskforce to PC22, we learned what this technology would mean to the warfighter and identified further challenges which require research and development to enhance a future operational capability. It is important we deploy AI into trials more regularly to drive the maturation and operationalisation of AI.”
US AI Toolbox lead Dr. Lee Seversky said: “It is becoming more and more critical to be able to adapt AI to meet changing mission requirements, operating environments, and accelerated decision timelines in-mission, all while ensuring it is trusted and understandable to the military users. The joint AI Toolbox, with its ability to adapt and deliver AI for different joint military missions is critical. AI flexibility and speed is key to moving us towards this goal.”
The second deployment of the AI Toolbox was on UK platforms as part of the Dstl HYDRA project’s Integrated Concept Evaluation (ICE) trials on Salisbury Plain.
ICE4 demonstrated that UK-US developed algorithms from the AI Toolbox could be deployed onto a swarm of UK UAVs and retrained by the joint AI Taskforce at the ground station and the model updated in flight, a first for the UK. This demonstrated how the AI toolbox can adapt to new data sources, platforms, and operating locations to provide rapid updates to the AI deployed onto Autonomous Systems.
HYDRA Project Technical Authority Dr Chris Jones said:
ICE4 has enabled us to consider the practicalities of how AI could be used to support swarming UAS operations in contested environments where processing at the edge will play a crucial role.
This is a fantastic example of our 2 nations working in close collaboration, learning from each other, to jointly accelerate our understanding of the kinds of novel technologies which will become critical for successful operation of autonomous systems in complex operating environments in the future.
UK Autonomy Programme manager John Godsell said: “It has been a hugely exciting year for the UK-US collaboration. Firstly being part of Project Convergence 2022, a US experiment at an epic scale and then rapidly redeploying the team to Salisbury Plain in the UK just 4 weeks later as part of our experimentation campaign on the key technologies of AI and Autonomy.”
These are rapidly emerging technologies that we must be able to understand and grasp to ensure that our warfighters have the tools they need to win on the battlefields of the future.
Background
The PC22 and ICE4 trials are part of a series of rotational events to be hosted by the joint, international signatories of the Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Collaboration (AAIC) Partnership Agreement. The AAIC Partnership Agreement effort is led by the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and the United States Department of the Air Force, with AFRL as the lead agency for the DAF, in partnership with OUSDR&E, the US Navy and Army.
The 5-year partnership agreement includes objectives to accelerate joint UK-US development and sharing of AI technology and capabilities, with the agreement spanning from foundational research in test verification and validation to AI algorithm research and development, to joint experiments advancing Joint All Domain Command and Control capabilities of both nations.
Led by the US Army Futures Command, Project Convergence is the Joint Force experimenting with speed, range, and decision dominance to achieve overmatch and inform the Joint Warfighting Concept and Joint All Domain Command and Control. A campaign of learning, it leverages a series of joint, multi-domain engagements to integrate artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomy to improve battlefield situational awareness, connect sensors with shooters, and accelerate the decision-making timeline. (Source: https://www.gov.uk/)
05 Jan 23. USAF’s 430th EECS receives new E-11A BACN aircraft. Also known as ‘Black Wolves’, EECS is the only USAF unit to operate an E-11A fleet with a BACN payload. The US Air Force’s (USAF) 430th Expeditionary Electronic Communications Squadron (EECS) has taken the delivery of a new E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) aircraft. The new aircraft arrived at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on 16 December 2022.
It has been procured by the USAF and Air Combat Command (ACC) to support the 430th EECS in delivering effective and consistent communication channels for ground, air and naval forces operating in the US Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR).
USAF 430th EECS commander lieutenant colonel Todd Arthur said: “The 430th supports warfighters who conduct around-the-clock operations in the CENTCOM AOR.
“We supply communication coverage to ground and air forces in active combat zones, who require consistent, clear communications to higher levels of leadership and other command and control assets.”
Also known as ‘Black Wolves’, EECS is the only USAF unit to operate an E-11A fleet with a BACN payload.
Other objectives of EECS are to provide communication coverage to the US warfighters, as well as to other allied nations’ forces and coalition partners.
The E-11A BACN aircraft primarily acts as ‘Wi-Fi in the sky’ or a low-Earth satellite to provide extended aerial command-and-control capabilities to both ground and air forces and their platforms.
Arthur added: “This new E-11A will relieve the pressure on the rest of our fleet and enable us to sustain a high mission capable rate.”
The USAF is also planning to establish a new squadron for the E-11A aircraft at the Robins Air Force Base (AFB) in Georgia, US, by next month.
Robins AFB has recently concluded environmental assessments to support new missions, one of which is the establishment of the E-11A BACN squadron. (Source: airforce-technology.com)
05 Jan 23. Smarter Technologies Complete Successful UK MoD GFE Asset Tracking Trial. Smarter Technologies, the leading British provider of Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions, has successfully completed a capability trial at His Majesty’s Naval Base (HMNB) Devonport on behalf of the UK MoD. They used their proprietary Orion IoT Data Network to track mission-critical Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) improving effective asset management, mission assurance and operational efficiency.
HMNB Devonport is one of the Royal Navy’s three operating bases in the UK, which also happens to be the largest naval base in Western Europe. Managing GFE on such a large and spread-out facility is challenging; even locating equipment quickly and reliably can be difficult. The UK MoD wished to trial how modern technology could increase operational efficiency and effectiveness, save money and point the way to other asset-management opportunities. Smarter Technologies, the only British provider of fully integrated end-to-end IoT solutions, was short listed for the trial via the UK Government’s Digital Marketplace and won the contract in an open tender using the Crown Commercial Services G-Cloud 12 Framework. This is a simple and effective procurement process that speeds delivery, is well-suited to SMEs and enables customer benefits to be realised quickly.
The UK MoD selected 200 mission-critical pieces of GFE to be tracked, such as, large mobile waterfront assets including Yokohama fenders, brows, pontoons, mobile cranes and WISE hoists. The trial also included specific tasks to facilitate the gathering of data to evaluate the system’s performance. In just one day, Smarter Technologies had installed 14 of their Orion gateways, providing network coverage across the 650-acre site, before fitting Orion GPS tracking tags to selected equipment’s. Smarter Technologies worked with UK MoD experts to ensure all necessary approvals and clearances were met for use in close proximity to common military hazards such as fuel and other MOD electronic systems.
The 15-week trial captured over 3.2 m performance records using real-time data available to view remotely ‘on demand’. A key operational benefit found from using Orion to support GFE management during the trial was efficiencies of 65.66%, most notably evident in time saved on completing physical checks. For example, the average time taken to physically locate and check items was reduced by over two thirds when using Orion, and all assets were visible in near-real time (every 30 seconds), via the platform. Feedback from MoD users reported the system was intuitive to use and enabled quick access to critical asset data via Orion’s cloud-based technology.
Other enabling benefits of the system included the ability to monitor contractor performance as well as the ability to capture trends in equipment and fleet utilisation. This contributed to better contract oversight and accountability, greater intelligent GFE planning and improved logistic efficiency. Users were particularly impressed by the range, signal penetration, power efficiency and reliability of Orion, which is a unique low power ultra-narrow low band 433 MHz UHF radio system that out-performs its competitors in every facet, for use cases of this sort.
Matt Walker, Product Manager for Orion at Smarter Technologies, said, “Smarter Technologies have been leading the way in complex, high-value and global asset-tracking solutions for years – our solutions are tried and tested. This trial is an excellent example of Orion’s versatile capability. It is well-suited to a large and complex estate, such as Devonport, and provides the data insight needed to improve logistics and save money.”
04 Jan 23. IronNet enhances its Network Detection and Response solution to provide broader visibility of cyber threats.
- Receives bridge loan financing from C5 Capital
IronNet, Inc. (NYSE: IRNT), an innovative leader Transforming Cybersecurity Through Collective DefenseSM, announced today enhanced capabilities of its network detection and response (NDR) solution, IronDefense. Recognized with the highest possible rating for Enterprise Advanced Security NDR Detection by SE Labs, IronDefense enables advanced and early visibility of unknown cyber threats that have slipped past endpoint and firewall detection and entered the network, whether on-premises or in the cloud.
With IronNet’s latest NDR updates, Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts can use IronDefense to detect VPN abuse such as high failed logins, password spray, and suspicious login times, any of which may be indicative of a brute force attack or unauthorized access attempts. Additional analytics updates enable detection of ongoing patterns of both fixed-interval and randomized-timing beacon activity as well as the detection of DNS tunnels using advanced encoding techniques being leveraged by attackers.
“We strive always to integrate best-in-class behavioral analytics to stay ahead of ever-changing tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) used by both nation-state adversaries and cyber-criminal organizations. Our goal is to deliver enhanced, broad, and early visibility of threats on enterprise networks–well before business impact,” said Raj Sivasankar, IronNet Vice President of Product Management.
The IronNet product team also has evolved IronDefense’s ease of use. Specifically, new sensors can now be auto-commissioned and auto-upgraded without requiring interaction from the SOC staff. From an ecosystem perspective, IronDefense enables customers using SentinelOne endpoint detection and response (EDR) to create and update network inventory as well as isolate a device in a SentinelOne-deployed network remotely from the Entity page in the IronDefense user interface. Similar capability exists for CarbonBlack and Crowdstrike endpoints.
IronNet continues to empower security teams to do more with fewer resources, especially as organizations struggle to find the level of security talent needed to secure the network against both advanced and less sophisticated cyber attacks. The IronDefense product updates, suitable for organizations with more cyber-mature teams, complement IronNet’s new proactive command and control (C2) threat intel feed, IronRadarSM. Developed by IronNet’s team of elite threat hunters, IronRadar scours the internet fingerprinting servers to determine whether they are C2 infrastructure while being stood up, even before a cyber attack, such as ransomware, is initiated.
Available now on AWS Marketplace for a free 14-day trial, IronRadar allows organizations with less sophisticated cybersecurity infrastructure to proactively and automatically update their existing cybersecurity tools to be able to block suspicious and malicious indicators of adversary infrastructure as they are being set up.
IronNet’s advanced threat detection technology and proactive threat intelligence allow the IronNet Collective DefenseSM platform, powered by AWS, to serve as an early warning system for all companies and organizations participating in IronNet’s shared defense approach to cybersecurity.
Bridge Loan from C5 Capital
IronNet today also announced it has received a loan from an affiliated fund of existing stockholder C5 Capital Limited (C5) in the amount of $2m. The terms of the loan from C5 are substantially similar to those of the loans from certain of IronNet’s directors and another lender in the aggregate principal amount of $6.9m that were previously announced on December 20, 2022. The loan from C5 bears interest at an annual rate of 13.8% and has a maturity date of June 30, 2023. The promissory note issued to C5 is secured by substantially all of the assets of the Company, excluding the Company’s intellectual property, pursuant to the terms of a security agreement entered into in conjunction with the promissory note. The Company, C5 and the previous lenders intend to amend and restate their promissory notes and security agreements to make certain adjustments so that all lenders have identical loan documents. (Source: ASD Network)
04 Jan 23. U.S. FCC proposes additional spectrum for drone communications. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday proposed new rules to make licensed radio spectrum in the 5 GHz band for the rising number of unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, in use. Currently, drones typically operate under unlicensed and low-power wireless communications rules or experimental licenses. The FCC also said it is seeking comment on whether current rules for various spectrum bands are sufficient to ensure co-existence of drones and terrestrial mobile operations. The FCC is also proposing a process for drone operators to obtain a license in the aeronautical VHF band to communicate with air traffic control and other aircraft.
“The FCC must ensure that our spectrum rules meet the current – and future – spectrum needs of evolving technologies such as unmanned aircraft systems, which can be critical to disaster recovery, first responder rescue efforts, and wildfire management,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said.
Because drones are usually operated remotely, they depend “critically on wireless communications between a ground-based control station and the (drone) to control the flight,” the FCC said.
The FCC said as drone flights “increasingly involve operations with a higher risk profile, such as flights that use large aircraft, carry heavy cargo or human passengers, or travel into the controlled airspace used by commercial passenger aircraft, operators have a growing need for the greater reliability that interference-protected licensed spectrum provides.”
Rules adopted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for small drones to fly over people and at night took effect in April 2021.
The rules gave manufacturers 18 months to begin producing drones with so-called Remote ID.
The drone identification rules require they broadcast remote ID messages via radio frequency broadcast but eliminated proposed earlier requirements drones be connected to the internet to transmit location data. Those requirements were upheld by a federal appeals court in July.
(Source: Reuters)
03 Jan 23. Macquarie Government, Fortem Australia partner to reskill first responders to join cyber industry. Macquarie Government confirmed that is has teamed up with Fortem Australia, pledging to support the recruitment and transfer of first responders into the cyber security industry as an employment partner. As part of the partnership, both organisations are expected to collaborate to reskill Australian first responders into cyber, cloud and data centre security roles. The new recruits will focus on national security and defence ICT.
To achieve this, the company has committed to developing its First Responder Recruitment Strategy, in collaboration with Fortem, to find internal opportunities for members of the first responder community.
Both organisations will further work together to provide training opportunities, resources and networking events to support those looking for a career in the cyber sector.
Fortem Australia was founded in 2019, with the organisation’s co-founder John Bale also co-founding Soldier On, a leading Australian veteran wellbeing charity.
“Australia needs to considerably increase its cyber posture right across the economy. To deliver this uplift we need, as a nation, to exponentially grow the available talent pool,” Aidan Tudehope, Macquarie Government’s managing director said.
“The nature of cyber security means we need to develop and nurture that talent through a sovereign lens — ensuring we have Australians learning and working to protect Australian data.
“Australia’s first responders are among the best in the world. Many of them possess the analytical, investigative, problem-solving, and pattern-recognition skills necessary for success in cyber, defence technology and related industries. In many cases, they already have the essential security clearances needed to work with sensitive data.
“We’re committed to continuing our goal of uplifting Australian sovereign capability in cyber security and ICT, and this important partnership with Fortem will help us in that effort.”
According to managing director and co-founder of Fortem Australia John Bale, the partnership will help members of Australia’s first responder community transition into their future roles.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Macquarie to the Fortem family,” said Bale.
“Partnering with the right companies to enable career transition for first responders and their families is central to our mission to provide specialised wellbeing and mental fitness support to first responder families.
“Macquarie has long championed Australian jobs and skills development and is a leading company in an industry where there is close values alignment with and strong mutual benefits for first responders.”
At the beginning of 2022, Macquarie Government, part of Macquarie Telecom Group, announced the appointment of Defence ICT industry leader and former chief executive officer of Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand Mike Foster as director of strategic growth.
The newly created position has been designed to lead Macquarie’s expanding defence and national security capabilities and pursuits, including vertically integrated cyber security, cloud, data centre and telecommunications services. (Source: Defence Connect)
22 Dec 22. US Cyber National Mission Force promoted to subordinate unified command. US Cyber Command announced last week that its Cyber National Mission Force has been elevated to the status of subordinate unified command.
The Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) operates within US Cyber Command to protect US elections, as well as undertaking counter-ransomware operations and working with international partners in cyber security.
“What this designation is really about is the maturity of the Cyber National Mission Force as a forward-looking organisation to defend the nation,” said Major General William J. Hartman, the commander of CNMF. “It’s about building a sustained readiness model that enables us to stay in a fight. It’s about our people: how we develop a dynamic model to recruit, assess, train and retain the world’s most talented cyber force.”
The CNMF was formed in 2014 when US Cyber Command needed a force that could directly engage with online threats. It began with 13 Cyber National Mission Teams and eight direct support teams, but this has since expanded to six complete task forces comprising over 2,000 staff drawn from across the US military and related agencies, including the NSA and DIA.
General Paul M. Nakasone was the CNMF’s first commanding officer, and he held the recent elevation ceremony.
“This Cyber National Mission Force command is so special because they’ve always been on the cutting edge in terms of the operations we’ve conducted,” General Nakasone said. “This is the command within US Cyber Command that has always taken that first step forward. The future holds a lot for the Cyber National Mission Force.”
Since becoming fully operational in 2018, the CNMF has taken part in hunt forward operations with international partners, a range of remote cyber operations, and assisted in many of the crises faced by the United States.
The CNMF was on the ground in Ukraine earlier in 2022 for a hunt forward operation — a defensive action to monitor hostile cyber activity — alongside Ukrainian cyber specialists. The operation ended days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and monitored Russia’s initial cyber operations against the country.
“Cyber National Mission Force was honoured to work side-by-side with our Ukrainian partners, hunting adversaries on their networks with them,” Major General Hartman said in November, when the operation was revealed in December. “This sort of mission was critical to both our nations’ defences in cyber space — particularly in the face of Russian aggression — and reflects our enduring partnership with Ukraine,” General Hartman added.
The elevation of the CNMF follows US Cyber Command’s own elevation to the status of combatant command. (Source: Defence Connect)
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Spectra Group Plc
Spectra Group (UK) Ltd, internationally renowned award-winning information security and communications specialist with a proven record of accomplishment.
Spectra is a dynamic, agile and security-accredited organisation that offers secure Hosted and Managed Solutions and Cyber Advisory Services with a track record of delivering on time, to spec and on budget.
With over 15 years of experience in delivering solutions for governments around the globe, elite militaries and private enterprises of all sizes, Spectra’s platinum and gold-level partnerships with third-party vendors ensure the supply of best value leading-edge technology.
Spectra was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Innovation) in 2019 for SlingShot.
In November 2017, Spectra Group (UK) Ltd announced its listing as a Top 100 Government SME Supplier by the UK Crown Commercial Services.
Spectra’s CEO, Simon Davies, was awarded 2017 Businessman of the Year by Battlespace magazine.
Founded in 2002, the Company is based in Hereford, UK and holds ISO 9001:2015, ISO 27001:2013 and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation.
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