“Our adversaries don’t play by the rules that we want them to play by, they’re not going to follow the maze that we put before them,” said Ryan Roberts, senior manager cyber and strategic risk service for Deloitte. “We have to acknowledge in a cyber fight that we are going to be compromised, so our approach should be protection versus resiliency.”
Vice Adm. Jeffrey Trussler, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, discussed the potential vulnerabilities such as disruptions in supply lines, logistics, and equipment and explained how these capabilities could benefit from increased protections through “defense-in-depth” mitigation.
“Cyber protection and operations has to be culturally embedded in everything we do and that will take a bit of education,” said Trussler. “I think we have to get better at partnerships and putting creative teams together to test systems in order to tell you what’s safe and what’s vulnerable, using people who are capable of thinking like the adversary. We’ve worked really hard in the Navy at creating that resiliency and determining what happens if you get hit or disconnected so defense-in-depth mitigation is a constant loop.”
Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. John Nowell highlighted the Navy’s current inclusion and diversity efforts in the fleet including the Task Force One Navy program.
“Diversity is vital to our service and it’s not just race, gender, ethnicity, it's diversity of thought, experience and problem solving,” said Nowell. “Lethality is most imperative to solving the complex problems facing our maritime forces and we need a well-rounded, diverse population in our ranks capable of meeting those challenges. We started the Task Force One Navy a short time ago, but that program is ongoing and we’d love to see more ideas from the Sailors on how to improve policies. The best way to do that is through the 21st Century Sailor office.”
Sea service leaders from the Navy and Marine Corps also discussed leveraging maritime partnerships in the expeditionary warfare environment to enhance fleet capabilities.
“It’s an exciting time to be working in the expeditionary forces,” said Marine Corps Brig. Gen. David Odom, Director, N95 Expeditionary Warfare during panel discussions. “Our expeditionary forces have the ability to project combat power across the spectrum of competition right now.”
To illustrate this, Odom cited Talisman Sabre 2021, the largest bilateral combined exercise led by the Australian Defence Force and the U.S. military. The exercise includes 17,000 military personnel and seven nations participating on land, air and sea.
“We’re actively engaged with the fleet to maintain the learning continuum so we can feed that back into our personnel who are our most decisive, competitive advantage, and prepare them to think and operate in the strategic competition environment,” said Odom.
Navy Capt. Jeffrey Morganthaler, Maritime Operations Center director, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, shared the state of the sea services’ approach to unmanned technology and artificial intelligence in the expeditionary domain.
“The ongoing development of where unmanned underwater vehicles began to where we are today is incredible but we still have a ways to go,” said Morganthaler. “Yes, we’re able to send more things out autonomously but is it the right size, does it have all the capabilities that are needed to go out, do something, and come back? Because the more time we can give commanders to make decisions, the more we’re able to maintain that tactical advantage over the adversary.”