Air Force Space Command has successfully transferred 48 installations, including 34 main operating bases, 13 geographically separated units, and Air Force Reserve Command headquarters, to the service’s single, centrally administered computer network, the AFNet, said AFSPC Vice Commander Lt. Gen. Michael Basla. “Today, the AFNet migration is our number one cyberspace initiative,” he said in his speech on Feb. 24 at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla. With more than 187,000 users already transitioned to AFNet, the result is a “much more defensible construct,” he noted. Barksdale AFB, La.; Laughlin AFB, Tex.; Osan AB, Korea; Yokota AB, Japan; and Vance AFB, Okla., are currently shifting to AFNet and all Air Force locations worldwide are expected to complete the transition in 2013, he said. “For years, cyberspace systems and capabilities were acquired via ad-hoc methods by individual units and by the time we made our first moves toward a single Air Force network, we were dealing with a security nightmare,” said Basla. AFNet is “designed to address this issue.”
When Donald Trump begins his second term as president in January, national security law experts anticipate he may return to his old habit of issuing orders to the military via social media, a practice which could cause confusion in the ranks.