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Computers-Hacking Title: Cyber Command slips behind schedule (Pentagon Keyboard Comandos) WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Cyber Command, responsible for shielding 15,000 U.S. military networks and for being ready to go to war in cyberspace, has slipped behind schedule for becoming fully operational, the Defense Department said on Friday. The command is still putting necessary capabilities in place, said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. It was due to be declared fully operational no later than this month under June 2009 orders from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, an ambiguous deadline many read as October 1. Cyber Command leads day-to-day protection of all U.S. defense networks and is designed to mount offensive strikes if ordered to do so. It began operating in May 2010, seven months later than Gates had initially ordered. The unit was created to consolidate operations under a four-star general after Pentagon leaders concluded the cyber threat had outgrown the military's existing structures. More than 100 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to break into U.S. networks, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn wrote in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. Some "already have the capacity to disrupt" U.S. information infrastructure, he said. Whitman declined to name a new target for reaching full operational capability. An "artificial date" was not the important thing, he said. Lynn specified in his Foreign Affairs piece that Cyber Command was "slated to become fully operational by October." A Cyber Command official who requested anonymity said the goal was still to get there by the end of this month. The department blamed the failure to reach the target by October 1 chiefly on what it called a seven-month Senate delay in confirmation of Keith Alexander as head of the new unit located at Fort Meade, Maryland. Alexander, 58, was confirmed on May 7. Alexander, promoted to four-star rank, also heads the National Security Agency, the Fort Meade-based Defense Department arm that protects national security information and intercepts foreign communications. He told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee last week that putting cyber defenses fully in place was urgent. At the time, he voiced no expectation of a delay in reaching full operating capability. "The need is great and there is no time to lose," Alexander said in an opening statement to the panel on September 23. He cited the emergence of new tools that could damage or destroy systems and "have effects approaching those of weapons of mass destruction." A Senate Armed Services Committee staff member blamed the confirmation delay in the Defense Department's "failure to provide information to the committee in a timely fashion." Committee Chairman Carl Levin said in opening Alexander's April 15 confirmation hearing that the panel had moved "methodically to gain an understanding of what the Congress is being asked to approve and what the key cyberspace issues are that need to be addressed." The 24th Air Force, a Cyber Command component, was declared fully operational on Friday by General Robert Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command, the Air Force said.
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