WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- The U.S. armed forces are still pushing ahead with trying to implement former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's visionary Future Combat Systems programs to centralize command, control and firepower of land, sea and air high-tech weapons systems high-tech headquarters where enemy forces could be shattered with minimal U.S. casualties and even minimal human troop involvement, like the ultimate video game made real.
Rumsfeld committed the vast resources of the U.S. Department of Defense. So far, an estimated $160 billion has already been spent on the sprawling FCS programs with Boeing and the Science Applications International Corporation as the main contractors. The Congressional Budget Office -- at a time when Congress was still controlled by the Republicans -- estimated that the real cost over the next decade could be as high as $307.2 billion. And the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned three years ago that only one of the 50 technologies involved was even "mature," in other words, was even in practical use yet, at that point.
Serious progress has certainly been made since then. However, even if the FCS concept could be transformed into flawless use over the next decade, as its supporters, including Rumsfeld's neo-conservative lieutenants during most of his six year tenure as SecDef, still ardently argue, there is a far less discussed danger that could apply. The more the U.S. armed forces become dependent on efficiently integrated IT systems, as FCS requires, the more they could be vulnerable to being paralyzed by asymmetrical cyber-warfare attacks.
This is a by no means hypothetical danger. All major nations are working on such programs with China by far the most active.
The Department of Defense has acknowledged 79,000 cyber attacks on U.S. armed forces Web sites in period from mid-2004 to mid-2005, a disproportionate number of them appear to have been launched from Web sites located in China.
Indeed, Chinese military journals in recent years have even in public discussion given high priority to discussions of concepts of asymmetrical war whereby America's vast high- tech superiority in real time intelligence, weapons targeting and command-and-control could be disrupted and neutralized in the event of an all-scale conflict.
Even in peacetime, recent electronic viruses have shown a disturbing ability to disrupt U.S. military electronic systems and bases.
There are even suspicions among some U.S. cyber analysts that the Zotob computer worm that wreaked havoc on computer systems around the world in August 2005 may have been developed in China and that it was expressly targeted on a key U.S. military installation in the Western Pacific.
Even at the time, U.S. military officials publicly admitted that the Zotob worm infiltrated thousands of systems on the huge American military base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
In an August 2005 letter to the editor of Stars and Stripes, EDS Spokesperson Barbara Mendoza said "No (Navy, Marine Corps Intranet) computer systems were affected or compromised on Navy or Marine Corps bases globally."
However, U.S. Navy and Marine Corps systems on Okinawa did not then operate on the NMCI network. Okinawa systems were still operating on the older, less secure "Legacy network," Electronic Data Systems Okinawa Site Manager John McKnight told marine.com. in a report
McKnight said the Legacy network suffered "across the board infection of non-classified NIPRNET machines."
EDS discovered in the early morning hours of Aug. 18, 2005, a network infiltration by the "Zotob variant," a worm that exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows operating systems and propagates itself across networks, marine.com said in its report
Most Navy and Marine Corps systems on Okinawa use the Windows 2000 operating system, which is most vulnerable to the Zotob worm, McKnight said.
EDS shut down several area networks on Okinawa Aug. 18-19 in order to isolate the worm and identify vulnerabilities, the marine.com Web site said. At one point on Aug. 18, users were advised to physically disconnect their systems from the network temporarily, it said.
The afternoon of Aug. 19, EDS technicians sent out a mass e-mail to network users, instructing them to make sure their computers were connected to the network and left on throughout the weekend so patches and removal tools could reach systems.
EDS battled the worm throughout the weekend of Aug. 13-14, and McKnight said by Monday, Aug. 15 the network had been 70 percent cleared of the Zotob worm.
U.S. armed forces IT systems are unquestionably far more advanced now than they were then. But China's vast cadre of cyber-technicians will not have been standing still either.
Vast uncertainty therefore pervades the entire field of cyber-warfare defenses and potentially crippling attack resources.
What can not be in doubt is that by the time FCS is up and running -- if it ever is -- potential U.S. adversaries will also be far advanced in their efforts to turn what is intended as a decisive global military advantage into a crippling weakness.
