Civilian Life Has Appeal for 'Burned Out' Air Force Pilots | RealClearDefense

The cyber units force makup was design specifically around a flawed CONOPS, consisting of a number of operators and a handful of leadership roles outlined by the CONOPS, that's it. They failed to account for the supporting elements and used air doctrine and instructions to design the cyber team make up, training criteria, and operational execution (and failed to get actual cyber operator's perspectives). We're roughly three years into it and despite the fact they know the original CONOPS was very flawed, they still have yet to fix it effectively. They could have easily taken the same numbers and included the required support positions into the makup of a cyber ops squadron. Those numbers were built around squad positions which make no sense and effectively lead us to use too many operators on a given mission. I could go on and on about what works and what doesn't within the cyber ops community, but I will spare you of that. Put simply, the Air Force, with some credit to STRATCOM/CYBERCOM screwed up initially. We're working to fix it, but changing billets to perform the functions we need them to do is a big deal and very hard to do.

Regardless, I'm not whining about the additional duties. I've had my share and I've seen the perspective from both the operational side as well the the support side. The fact is, it is almost impossible to keep up with the 61 additional duties identified by the SECAF at the squadron level when those same people are out the door most of the time and unable to access the resources required for those duties. To make matters worse, the SECAF even noted this issue in the same report and ordered the Air Force to start elevating the duties up to the group and wing level. The problem is, they're not doing this and instead are removing official titles from the squadron members while still expecting the same work to be done. So sure, we don't have an official Records Manager in my unit, but we still have a POC who is still on tap to provide the same level of work up the chain. No one, including me, is saying we need to do away with the additional duties, as they are indeed a fact of life. It is the enormous amount tasked to the operational unit level which has pilots (and soon more of the cyber operators), looking for better pay and less work on the side.

I also get the budget issues and I've played countless roles in putting them together, POMing for my requirements, executing my budgets, and finding ways to save. In my years what I've noticed, it is the requirements issued from as high as the Congressional level to the services which need to be restructured for flexibility. Take for example, the Congressional requirement for COCOMs to conduct 2 major exercises to train on their Operational Plans. Sounds great up front right, and even reasonable too? The thing is, when that same COCOM is already executing those same plans in an actually contingency, why must we then still continue with the exercise of that same plan? This is where the Ops tempo is also affected because exercise or not, those pilots are still leaving their family for extended periods of time (after which they're expected to catch up with all the missed additional duty suspenses).

The article I posted is dead on and I've heard it from the operational community throughout my career (both while I was one of them and when I provided support to them). Throwing money at the problem is not working.

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin - I think we are doing better in the DoD USCyber....but Army Cyber needed a faster way to get cleared and more Poly guys.... lots of TDY money to get it moving quick.

TDY funding is great (hell, my year is about to get busy with travel), training and experience is key right now, but we also need to better define how we're going to do what we're doing. So far I see us going in the right direction (slowly but surely) and I'm encouraged DOD Cyber operators will start making some major impacts within the DOD. My concern is the national infrastructure and how we can enable the national CPTs to assess networks which may not be part of the DODIN or the government in general. Demonstrating capability is one thing, getting authorization and alleviating the privacy fears is another. Take for example the DNC networks, does anyone think the DNC (or RNC for that matter) would allow the US government to come in a hunt for enemy presence? This is all stuff for the lawyers and Congress to figure out, but ultimately it does not bode well for the minds of privacy advocates and those who have secrets they don't want to government discovering while looking for the bad guys.

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin - For non-DoD Gov, which is a lot more agencies outside of DoD....DHS has the lead....which is smart, since where does the national CERT or US-CERT work? DHS. DHS also has a program that commercial industry can request surveys and assistance. Most people think NSA houses the national CERT...not true.