January 5, 2000
Web posted at: 4:52 p.m. EST (2152 GMT)

By Jamie McIntyre
CNN Military Affairs Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon is preparing for a time in the near future when "cyber attacks" may take the place of manned bombers and cruise missiles.

The United States Space Command in Colorado has been given responsibility for protecting the United States against enemy computer attack.

Pentagon officials say later this year it will also likely get the mission of developing computer tactics that could, for example, disable an enemy's air defenses by "hacking" into computer system and planting destructive computer viruses.

"I think it's just going to be one more arrow in the quiver," the U.S. Space Commander, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon.

"If you can degrade an air defense network of an adversary through manipulating ones and zeros, that might be a very elegant way to do it as opposed to dropping 2,000-pound bombs on radars, for instance."

Pentagon officials say the technology that would allow the United States to mount a cyber attack is still in its infancy, but sources tell CNN that "very limited" computer attacks were mounted by the United States against Yugoslavia's air defenses, during last year's NATO air war.

Those attacks were judged to have little effect, largely because Yugoslavia did not rely on a sophisticated computer network to connect missile launcher and radars.

Myers said there are significant legal and policy issues that have to be resolved before the United States considers large scale attacks on computers systems of an enemy country.

Among the issues are questions about what constitutes a military target, and would such attacks prompt retaliatory attacks on civilian computers in the United States.

"Well, that's obviously a very big worry." Myers told reporters. "We are probably, I think without question, the country that is most dependent on information technology. So we know we have those vulnerabilities."

Myers says he is confident the United States can defend its military systems against so-called cyber-attacks.

"I think we're in reasonably good shape," he said. "But it's like everything else we do, you know, we come up with a defense, somebody else comes up with a different offense, and back and forth.

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