LandWarNet 2011: 'Geeks' required for Cyber Battalion

The US Army must establish a Cyber Warfare Ranger school in order to create a next-generation of elite soldiers, the LandWarNet conference has heard today.

Addressing delegates in Tampa on 23 August, founder of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center Vincent Viola described his aspiration for a 9 to 12 week course concentrating on psychological operations, network attack and defence, covert activity, signals and human intelligence, special operations doctrine, deceptive operations and disinformation.

'We need to find geeks that love their country,' he urged while warning that the Chinese government had between 200,000 and 300,000 hackers practising the art today. 'The wars of the future will not be fought in a fox-hole,' he stressed.

Outlining an ever evolving battlefield that he described as 'multi-dimensional and enormously complex', Viola said the army must now rethink the prototype of its future warfighters. He urged: 'When you get through with this training, you're going to be a stud who is dynamic and kinetic in support of the US Army'.

Describing how the army of the future would be reduced in size as part of Brigade Combat Team modernisation programme, Viola said: 'We must create a three-dimensional topology of the battlefield and more quickly identify the enemy and therefore more quickly destroy him or her.

'[The Cyber Warrior] has to have an elite mind. The stamina that we want demonstrated on a long range patrol has to be equally converted to a mental stamina. That is what is required for our Cyber Warriors,' he continued.

'The best way to protect against cyber intrusion is to discourage [it]. Being pre-emptive of cyber must be embraced by the army. Cyber has an extremely low barrier of entry and it is truly the fifth domain of warfare that can be used to extract political aims by disruption with intention to cause national trauma,' Viola concluded.