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Defense planners speak on Information Operations

By Staff Sgt. Marilyn Holliday
HQ AIA/Public Affairs
Kelly Air Force Base, Texas

If you wanted to learn about basketball from the all stars of the NBA, you’d line up Michael Jordan, Shaq O’Neal and Patrick Ewing. But if you wanted to talk emerging vulnerabilities in the information age, you’d call on six prominent experts and defense planners named Brig. Gen. Bruce Wright, deputy director of Operations, Information Operations; retired Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, director, National Security Agency and chief, Central Security Services; Gen. Lloyd Newton, commander, Air Education and Training Command; Gen. John Jumper, commander, United States Air Forces Europe; Maj. Gen. John Baker, commander, Joint Command and Control Warfare Center and Air Intelligence Agency; and retired Lt. Gen. Charles Cunningham, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

The event – the Defense Colloquium on Information Operations, jointly sponsored by the Air Force Association and the Eaker Institute for Aerospace Concepts at the Lackland Air Force Base Gateway Club. Webster’s definition of colloquium is an informal meeting to exchange views or an academic seminar on a broad field of study, each meeting of which is usually led by a different lecturer.

This was the first defense colloquium outside of Washington, D.C.

“Today both organizations (AIA and JC2WC) are looking at information operations in a like way, Baker said. “What’s driving all of this is technology. As we move forward, it’s racing faster than we are.”

“In no other area is the pace and extent of technological change as great as in the realm of information,” AFA National President Thomas McKee said. “In an ‘information age,’ increasingly more complex information systems are critical to the conduct of military operations and at the same time they open the door to a wide range of new vulnerabilities for military commanders.”

A capacity crowd attended the two-day seminar. A question and answer period followed each speaker’s presentation.