Flag Days

U.S. Cyber Command is gathering 200 "lessons learned" from a recent "Cyber Flag" exercise, Maj. Gen. George Allen, the command's director of plans and policy (J-5), said today. The week-long exercise took place earlier this month at Nellis Air Force Base, NV, according to a spokesman for the base.

"We had a force on force. We had all of the services play and integrate. And one of them played a bad guy who actually went after our networks. And then we counter-attacked to see how we could do that," Allen told an audience at a lunch sponsored by the Northern Virginia chapter of Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

"We're looking at how we do transitions and ranges," Allen said. "Ranges are built for dropping bombs and doing a lot of tactical things -- how do you take cyber into that? How do you do that and refine it? How do you measure readiness in cyber as a network operator?"

Allen also spoke about building up the cyber workforce across the services, noting that CYBERCOM was working on a 150-page document detailing 43 skills sets the workforce should have. That document is "very much in the early stages," he said.