Electronic warfare and information advantage added to Army principle cyber advisor portfolio

WASHINGTON — The Army secretary’s top advisor on cyber issues has now also been tasked with providing advice on electronic warfare and information advantage, elevating the focus on those topics at the highest level of the Army.

“From a civilian oversight perspective as it relates to cyber, EW, electronic warfare, and information advantage will now fall to our office,” Brandon Pugh, the Army’s principal cyber advisor, said in an interview this week. “That’s been a new addition as of two weeks ago.”

The move attempts to align civilian oversight with uniformed roles, Pugh said. Currently, the Department of the Army’s Management Office for Strategic Operations within the Army’s G-3/5/7 is tasked with overseeing cyber, EW and information advantage. Aligning these disciplines under the PCA isn’t meant to be duplicative, but rather, provide it with a civilian counterpart.

“Before they didn’t actually have a civilian or a secretariat counterpart to that. All of our functions at the Pentagon, we try to have a military leader in conjunction with a civilian leader, in realizing that the civilians ultimately play an oversight role, just like we have a chief and a secretary,” Pugh said.

The PCA position has been around for five years now, having been created by Congress in the 2019 annual defense policy bill. While there are statutory responsibilities each service PCA must fulfill, Pugh noted that each service performs their role a little differently. In this case, the addition of EW and information advantage to the Army’s role was directed by Dan Driscoll, the Army’s secretary.

Pugh is also the first political appointee in the job, providing some extra level of oomph to exercise the secretary’s priorities across the force when it comes to cyber.

“Ultimately, I report to the secretary, how are we enabling and supporting his effort in conjunction with the chief to get at Army continuous transformation,” he said. “What this chief and the secretary are looking to do when it comes to tech, cyber and EW, that’s a lot of what our portfolio is already dealing with.

“For us, it’s very easy to also meet our statutory responsibility and complement the work that our leaders are doing at the same time.”

There has been a growing convergence in recent years, especially within the Army, of cyber and electronic warfare. The Army’s 11th Cyber Battalion aims to blend these capabilities at the tactical edge providing cyber capabilities for commanders through radio frequency-enabled cyber.

Pugh has sought to proselytize cyber — and now electronic warfare — to a greater extent to make sure commanders know these capabilities exist and can be used by tactical commanders.

“I see myself as a champion. I’m supposed to be a champion for cyber, EW and even related tech efforts at the Pentagon. I realize there are so many priorities that the Army needs to focus on. But who is there is now saying, ‘how does cyber integrate into other efforts, who is there to help prioritize cyber,’” he said. “I see that as my role, not to duplicate [what] the G6 and CIO is doing, or [Army Cyber Command], but to be this standalone person that can have an independent evaluation of that. Same thing for EW now,”

Offensive Cyber Options

The Secretary of Defense sent a memo to the Secretary of the Army outlining five priority investment areas, with cyber being one of the five, Pugh said. Driscoll, in turn, has emphasized its importance going forward, which has resulted in Pugh seeking to ensure cyber options, including offensive cyber, are in the tool kit for the service.

“We’ve sometimes been at a disadvantage because we’ve been a little timid to leverage cyber capabilities of time. I think that’s something you see this White House not being shy about as a potential capability,” he said.

In his mind, the US has lost opportunities and ceded ground to adversaries by being too “timid” in the past to use offensive cyber capabilities.

For many years, there had been reservations for using offensive cyber due to restrictive rules of engagement and improper analogies. Previously, US military offensive cyber actions were considered on par with nuclear weapons in terms of requiring presidential sign-off for employment, for fear that effects could lead to escalation and possibly unintended consequences. These factors contributed to a bias for inaction in cyberspace.

“We see adversaries having no restraint when it comes to cyber. I’m not saying that we should take the minds of an adversary, necessarily, where they will use cyber without any bounds, without any respect to law and policy,” Pugh said. “We still are guided by law and policy here, but it should be a balance. We shouldn’t take one extreme, saying ‘no, law and policy forbids’ or we’re going to be very restrictive. But perhaps we don’t take the opposite extreme either. Where is that middle ground between allowing cyber to at least be an option and not shying away from it because of a potential fear that it might lead to escalation, or some fear a large conflict that could result.”

Any military action carries a degree of risk, Pugh added, saying commanders should have the responsibility to measure their level of risk, weigh the alternatives, and decide if cyber could be an addition or a stand alone capability they can use.

In practice, Pugh is trying to help commanders understand these cyber capabilities can be enablers, either at the combatant command level or a very in the dirt tactical level. And this extends not just to the high end cyber operators that are part of US Cyber Command’s cyber mission force, of which the Army provides 45 teams, but the emerging tactical instantiation that blends cyber and EW on the battlefield.

“Something I’m always thinking about is, how do we support our cyber forces, then, how can our cyber forces also support other elements of the Army? I want to get away from the mindset is that cyber just rests at Fort Gordon. While, yes, that is where a lot of the Army activity happens, there are benefits to our division and corps commanders that they should be thinking it through. Or if you’re a geographic or a combat commander, how can you leverage cyber,” he said.

“This should not be seen as a capability of last resort. Matter of fact, it should be considered, how do we infuse it across all of our potential plans and actions in conflict, either as a standalone capability or in conjunction with another, another capability?”