AUGUSTA, Ga. — In a couple years, cyber warriors in the military branches will use a single, new platform to deliver electronic fires over networks for offensive operations.

By fiscal 2024, service cyber components under U.S. Cyber Command will migrate to the Joint Common Access Platform, which will provide the infrastructure for those offensive missions. The service cyber units will move to the firing platform from separate tools they operate now, more tightly linking their efforts in cyberspace, one of the domains the military is trying to protect as a joint force.

“In FY24 we intend to take all the legacy QRC [quick reaction capability] components of those capabilities, sunset them and then move to JCAP,” Willie Utroska, deputy project manager for electronic warfare and cyber at Army Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, said last week at TechNet Augusta. “FY24 is our target to sunset the current offensive cyber tools.”

The tool, which the Army is developing for Cyber Command and the larger military, will deploy around four joint mission operation commands, he added, with memorandums of understanding signed so far by the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Late last year, the Defense Department awarded ManTech a $265 million contract to support the program over 3 ½ years. The software tool is part of Cyber Command’s Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, which guides major acquisitions.

The Army plans a series of minimum viable capability drops, incremental capability insertions that will build on each other, Utroska explained, with the seventh planned for the FY24 migration.

About Mark Pomerleau

Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.

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