The Internet is turning into a real battlefield. The U.S. Air Force is establishing a temporary special command responsible for combat action in the world wide web.
In the future, the Pentagon intends to turn it into a fully-fledged Cyber Command of the U.S. Air Force. In other words, the world's strongest power's entire system of defense operations will also cover the Internet.
Frankly speaking, the Americans are doing the right thing. The net, which has reached out to all continents, determines the key parameters for the functioning of modern society - from salary payments to troop control. Not a single aircraft will take off or land, not a single plant will start working, and not a single military unit will begin moving without the matrix.
The control over the net is ultra-important.
It is believed that the cyberspace became a battlefield during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, when the international forces ousted the Iraqi occupants from Kuwait. At that time the Americans set up the Desert Special Net, an information network which guaranteed the precise targeting of Patriot missiles to protect Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The American local military network made it possible to create effective simulators for personnel training. Out of 36 crew members of the Apache fire support helicopters, which crossed the Iraqi border on January 17, 1991, only three had experience in firing air-to-surface Hellfire rockets. Others were trained on simulators.
Every achievement has a positive and a negative side, especially in the military sphere. It is clear that nowadays the Internet has become part and parcel of everyone's life. But there will always be people who would wish to virtually steal a real million from a bank, wreak havoc in NASA or neutralize a military unit, as it almost happened in 1991.
At that time Dutch hackers managed to break the codes of several computers which were part of the US Army logistic support information system. The fact that these guys preferred military information to tulips was not the worst thing. Military experts believe that because of this Dutch attack the American guys could have found toothbrushes in the zinc ammunition boxes.
Russian computer geniuses have mastered the net some 20 years after their Western colleagues but have left them far behind. It is enough to mention the unprecedented electronic robbery of the City Bank in the mid-1990s. Later on, St. Petersburg software expert Vladimir Levin was charged with this crime, arrested and convicted as a result of a joint operation by Russian and Western security-related services. Nevertheless, he is the only compatriot in the so-called Hacker's Hall of Fame. So far.
But today the Americans are expecting the Trojan Horse, a destructive virus disguised as a safe computer program, and they don't think it will come from Russia.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the military-information strategy of the Chinese armed forces provides for the formation of special cyber units capable of attacking enemy computer systems. It was way back in 2000 that the Pentagon spread the information about China's capability for invading poorly protected American military and civilian networks. Now combat computer training is a compulsory discipline in the Chinese army's military education program.
In turn, the Chinese authorities maintain that their domestic official servers are victim to large-scale hacker attacks, which seriously prejudice national security. To sum up, a respite on the new frontline is not expected for a long time to come.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
