Why is Oklahoma/Tinker NOT going after this Cyber Command Sweepstakes !

One has to ask why Oklahoma/Tinker is not going after this ?

Eighteen states are vying to become the home of the headquarters for the coveted Air Force Cyber Command. So, on May 15, William Anderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics, sent a letter to the governors, asking them to provide details that will help the service make its decision.

The letter, which a source was kind enough to send me, notes that the unique nature of the cyber domain dictates that the candidates have a complete understanding of the supporting capabilities of headquarters bases and their surrounding communities. Anderson included in the letter a checklist of requirements.

These included the ability of the new HQ to work easily with other Air Force commands near the Cyber Command that are engaged in activities such as intelligence and space operations. The new Cyber Command HQ also will require an extensive high-speed network, including state-of-art secure fiber networks and connections to unclassified and classified Defense networks.

The Air Force wants to locate the HQ in a low-threat environment that's close to new technology corridors and IT centers of excellence.

Anderson asked the governors to reply by July 1. The Air Force intends to tour cyber HQ sites this summer and to draw up a short list of locations by November. The process then will slow down (probably to hear from aggrieved members of Congress whose states did not make the short list), with a final selection made in September 2009.

States competing for the Cyber Command HQ are: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

It's About Cyber Attack,
Not Cyber Defend

The attachments to Anderson's letter make it clear that the key mission of the Cyber Command will be to cyber attack, not cyber defend -- a position the Air Force has emphasized during the past year. A paper, titled "Proposed Purpose and Need for Air Force Cyber Command," which Anderson sent to the governors, said the command will work to "influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision-making while protecting our own."

You can't set up a new command without doing the vision thing, and the vision for the Cyber Command is to "help secure our nation by employing world-class cyber capabilities to dominate the cyberspace domain, [and] create effects worldwide," the paper noted.

And, if you're doing the vision thing, make sure it's "through a holistic, agile and evolutionary approach to science and technology, research and development, systems acquisition, operations, force structure" etc. etc. I could really score high on buzzword bingo with these two paragraphs.