Australian CyberWarfare Battalion

Tom Worthington
on USS Blue Ridge

This is to propose the Australian Defence Force (ADF) raise an Australian CyberWarfare Battalion (ACWB) of 300 personnel, to protect Australia's national information infrastructure. All but a small cadre would be reserve military personnel who have full time jobs as computer security professionals.

After very basic military training, personnel would be issued with secure communications and return to their workplace. Personnel would remain in touch with each other monitoring computer security threats. In the event of a large scale attack, most of the Battalion would stay in their workplaces to protect  infrastructure,  while a small number would deploy to industry, government and military centers (including any Cyber Security Operations Centre) to coordinate operations.

Compared to an infantry battalion,  a cyberwarfare battalion would be fast to raise and inexpensive to maintain. Personnel would receive the minimum of military training, sufficient for them to be able to work alongside regular personnel in a headquarters. Use would be made of the facilities and expertise in Australia's universities, including the University of NSW Cyber Range and the Queensland University of Technology Industrial Control System Security Course.

There is provision for the ADF to work alongside the civilian administration, as described in: "Civil-Military Operations", Australian Defence Doctrine Publication (ADDP) 3.11, 1 April 2009.

Without an effective form of cyber-defence Australia could expect its government and civilian infrastructure to be crippled within a few hours of the commencement of a major on-line attack. The ADF would then be required concentrate on aid to the community, with a reduction in its capacity to undertake conventional military operations.