National Guard Fights For Cyber Role In 2015 Budget

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http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/national-guard-fights-for-cyber-role-in-2015-budget/



National Guard Fights For Cyber Role In 2015 Budget
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on February 05, 2014 at 4:00 AM

Chinese and Russian hackers have everybody running scared. So whatever else happens with the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2015, we know it will include more money for things cyber, from purely defensive network security to black-budget “offensive cyber weapons” such as the Stuxnet worm. But one big thing remains in doubt: the role of the National Guard.

Cyber Command wants the Guard to help. Guard leaders want to help CYBERCOM. And the Army has at least considered a proposal to fund 390 positions in 10 new “Cyber Protection Teams” to be created in the Army National Guard. Whether this idea will get funded is being wrestled over behind locked doors and in the context of increasingly bitter fights between active-duty and reserve forces.

The budgetary question marks loom so large that one senior official at the National Guard Bureau emailed a warning to the Adjutants General, the Guard commanders of every state, territory, and the District of Columbia: Don’t get out in front of what the federal budget will support.

“We have entered a new normal called sequestration,” read the senior official’s email. “To fund ‘excess’ or ill-defined requirements out of hide is impossible. I continue to be concerned with further investments in Cyber and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) without definitive requirements documentation from COCOM/MAJCOMs (Combatant Commands and Major Commands). In my opinion this posture could put (Guard) force structure at risk depending on strategic choices being made by DoD leaders.” (We agreed not to identify the official.)