Members of the 460th Space Wing at Buckley AFB, Colo., have successfully completed the wing’s first-ever exercise focused exclusively on cyber issues. “Cyber Lightning” was designed to test the wing’ s ability to operate in a contested cyber environment. Accordingly, wing personnel faced issues like network degradation and outages, hacking activities, phishing and other attempts to gain access to the base network, and intermittent land mobile radio capability. All the while, they had to respond to scenarios like a shooter on the base and maintain the capacity for command and control. “Overall the exercise went very well,” said Kevin Stocking, the wing’s plans and programs chief. Beyond just the wing, this was also the first exercise of this type for Air Force Space Command “and, as far as we know, across the entire Air Force,” he said. (Buckley report by MSgt. J. LaVoie)
Amid NATO’s continued push to ramp up air defenses in Eastern Europe, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall swung by seven allied countries to boost relations last week, including those on Russia’s and Ukraine’s doorstep.