Air Force communications squadrons increase emphasis on cyber operations for manned and unmanned aircraft

Oct. 11, 2021
Requests for support can be from base units for cyber protection team support in which the teams will work together on response efforts to an incident.

WASHINGTON – In September, the U.S. Air Force announced the 55th Communications Squadron had met all objectives to be redesignated as the 55th Cyber Squadron. This means the service would add a specialized cyber team to defend missions and installations and computers related to manned and unmanned aircraft. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

11 Oct. 2021 -- The Air Force is redesignating communications squadrons with a refocus on cyber defense. Experts are doing this by outsourcing mundane information technology jobs to private industry.

While the technical tools of mission defense teams and cyber protection teams are similar, the mission is slightly different. Mission defense teams are for specific missions, while cyber-protection teams focus on cyber command priorities: mission defense teams serve as beat cops while cyber protection teams are SWAT teams.

Despite their differences, officials have said there are natural alliances between mission defense teams and cyber protection teams, such as enhanced training.

Related: Northrop Grumman to upgrade and provide cyber security for airborne SIGINT for manned and unmanned aircraft

Related: Unmanned systems vulnerable to the enemy, which makes trusted computing a critical cyber design challenge

Related: Army picks small UAVs with sensors and signals intelligence (SIGINT) payloads from Textron AAI for Africa

John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics

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