Army pushes cyber to the battlefield

Army Cyber Command plans to put cyber electromagnetic activities, or CEMA, teams on the battlefield and into every brigade combat team, division, corps and Army service component staff starting in June, Army Cyber Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty said at the AFCEA Army Signal conference March 13.

The effort is part of the pilot CEMA Support to Corps and Below that looks to advise commanders on how to integrate cyber and electronic warfare capabilities into operations. Within about two years, information warfare specialists will be swapped in for the cyber or EW people to transition to an information warfare cell, Fogarty said.

The move is all part of Army Cyber's shifting information operations capabilities from Ft. Belvoir in Virginia to Ft. Gordon, the command's headquarters in Georgia by 2020 and changing the command's name to something along the lines of Army Information Warfare Command by 2028 -- the same year the Army is due to complete its network modernization plan.

Fogarty said proposed new name wasn't yet set in stone.

On the acquisition front, the Army is implementing a new software management system and database to improve acquisitions. Army acquisition head Bruce Jette said during a presentation at the AFCEA Army Signal conference March 14 that the Assistant Secretary for the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Sustainment is putting in a new system to give project managers better control of their funding.

"In the Congress' effort to make sure they keep some constraints on management of funds within the executive branch, they've structured a financial process that works this way," Jette said.

"We're putting in a software management system and database for acquisition management. We're stealing a good number of the pieces for it from the Air Force and modifying the data mostly to be able to have a better handle on watching them ... so that we can make good decisions earlier."

An FCW request for more information was not immediately returned.