4 September 1999. Thanks to Richard Lardner and Dan Dupont.
Inside the Air Force, September 3, 1999
Richard Lardner
The Air Force has called on House and Senate appropriators to restore nearly $500,000 to a highly classified program the service maintains is a key part of its overarching effort to protect military computer networks from electronic attacks.
While the amount of money at issue is modest when compared to other programs, an Air Force "budget/program fact paper" shipped to Capitol Hill and obtained by Inside the Air Force claims serious problems will result if the funding is left out of the fiscal year 2000 defense spending bill.
"Eliminating this funding line would entirely halt the planned development of sophisticated techniques and technologies for defending systems against sophisticated information warfare and computer network attacks that are beyond commercially available protection systems," the appeal reads.
In its FY-00 spending request, the Air Force sought $491,000 in research and development spending for the special access program, known as Panther Den. While Senate provided the requested amount in its FY-00 defense appropriations package, House appropriators did not, citing a desire to eliminate or consolidate budget line items with less than $1 million in funding.
But the appeal paper charges the House appropriations position is shortsighted. "The House position, which implies the $0.5 million is used for 'legacy programs that have long since transitioned from development to production to fielding,' should not apply to this program," the paper reads.
"This innovative project line is in its infancy in the emerging computer network defense field. . . . This program funds research and development in the Panther Den [SAP] which develops sensitive information operations technologies for the purpose of achieving information superiority," the document adds.
According to the fact paper, the Air Force planned to double the annual funding level for Panther Den to $1 million per year beginning in FY-01. The service says boosting Panther Den spending is consistent with previous congressional direction. Specifically, the paper cites the classified annex from a May 1998 House National Security Committee report that states, "Moreover, considering the importance attached to attaining information assurance, the committee questions the meager resources that have been provided to the Panther Den program office."
The House and Senate defense authorization committees fully funded the request.
Special access programs, better known as "black" programs, are tightly controlled efforts. SAP managers are able to determine who has a "need to know" about the program, an authority that permits their programs to sometimes bypass standard oversight and administrative requirements.
The appeal notes that in June the Air Force provided Congress with a "special access required" information paper, which the service says described "in detail" the projects it intends to pursue with the FY-00 funding.
The Air Force, citing the classified status of the program, declined to provide additional details on Panther Den.
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Inside the Air Force, September 3, 1999
Richard Lardner
Shortly after Operation Desert Storm concluded in 1991, defense officials began spending more time and money developing kinetic solutions for defeating what are known in military parlance as "hard and deeply buried targets" (HDBTs). The results have been promising: In a 1995 test conducted by the Air Force, for example, a specially configured ballistic missile penetrated 30 feet of granite.
Yet using missiles and munitions to defeat HDBTs can be messy, particularly if the target is in a highly populated area. In addition, special operations forces, already taxed on other fronts, are unable to deal with the growing number of HDBTs, which often house command and control facilities or chemical and biological weapons plants.
"It's a very hard problem, period," says retired Adm. Henry Chiles, former commander-in-chief of U.S. Strategic Command. HDBTs are "very tough to defeat."
Given these constraints, military officials are now beginning to examine how the world of information warfare can help produce more sanitary ways to disable targets encased in concrete or carved into mountainsides.
According to internal DOD budget documents, the latest Defense Planning Guidance directs the services, defense agencies and warfighting commands to develop concepts and doctrine to defeat "hard and deeply buried targets using the full range of capabilities, including . . . information operations."
The U.S. intelligence community typically assesses hard targets based on physical or structural characteristics. The idea underpinning the IO concept is to look at these facilities more from a functional standpoint; specifically, determining what activities are performed at the facility as well as how that facility relies on information, information systems and information processes.
"Planning and executing an IO-based capability requires detailed intelligence on, as well as access to, not only the target facility but the targeted system or technology -- more detail than is currently obtained to support physical or structural characterization," the documents state.
But the budget documents, obtained by sister publication Inside the Pentagon, indicate the department is largely unprepared from an IO perspective to handle the DPG's instructions. "DOD currently does not have a clear understanding of how IO can be used to defeat HDBTs, how to plan for use of IO-based approaches for maximum operational effect, and what optimum investment strategy to use in funding IO-based capabilities," the documents state.
Accordingly, the department is considering a proposal to spend $120.5 million between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 on a series of activities "to support planning and execution of IO-based approaches to defeating HDBTs." No final decisions on the funding have been made; however, the documents, prepared by Office of the Secretary of Defense staff for DOD's Program Review Group, make clear that meeting the DPG's instructions is an absolute must.
"Lack of access, political constraints, and collateral effects make use of kinetic weapons untenable in many cases," the documents read. "In addition, the rapid proliferation of HDBTs exceeds the capabilities of Special Operations Forces options.
"Without IO options, there will be no capability to defeat a significant amount of critical, strategic, HDBT threats."
The effort described in the documents involve a variety of agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Joint Staff.
The proposed effort consists of eight activities, all of which build upon an IO feasibility study begun in January and scheduled for completion in September 2000. The ultimate goal is a fully funded program that produces effective IO-based capabilities to counter HDBTs.
According to the documents, the first activity refines and further develops "functional HDBT target characterization models initiated in the feasibility study," to include ballistic missile, command, control, communications, and weapons of mass destruction HDBT facilities.
"Rather than focus on physical or structural characteristics of HDBT facilities, IO functional target characterization focuses on determining the reliance of HDBT facilities on information by identifying and characterizing the mission of the facility, functions required to perform the mission, supporting systems and processes, and critical information systems and processes," the documents state.
The second activity uses one of the models as a template for a proof-of-concept demonstration. "This will provide DOD an indication of the required 'surge' capability within DOD and the intelligence community to turn one of the models from a template into an actual operational mission planning target model," the budget papers read.
Activity three extends ongoing modeling and simulation development to provide additional analytic capability and "mature" evaluation tools. The fourth activity, the documents note, is aimed at determining how effective IO-based approaches are against HDBTs. The fifth element "determines and develops required capability to support software and hardware in the loop testing of IO-based capabilities against HDBTs," according to the papers.
The sixth and seventh activities lead to an analysis of alternatives and a cost and operational effectiveness analysis, which are to provide an investment strategy for future IO programs. The eighth activity "funds application, and where necessary development, of near-term, high-payoff capabilities and systems identified during the AOA/COEA and for the next two years until services and agencies" finance the efforts on their own, the budget documents state. "This will ensure an interim capability exists."
Given that DOD has no clear understanding yet of how to harness IO to take out HDBTs, the outcome of the proposed exercise is hard to predict. The concept, however, tracks with general philosophy of IO and, more specifically, information warfare. That is, some targets can be disabled without being physically destroyed.
"What we need to better appreciate is the effects of the targeting that we are talking about and how to incorporate zeroes and ones into that," Air Intelligence Agency Commander Brig. Gen. John Baker said at an IO symposium in March "If all I want to do is shut down a particular corridor for 24 hours so I can send in assets to take out a particular target, then maybe all I need to do is send a string of zeroes and ones to shut that down and confuse it for 24 hours or two hours or 30 minutes.
"I may not need to send somebody in there to blow it up," Baker concluded.
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