WASHINGTON — Units from the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps needed to deploy rapidly to respond to a threat. However, coordinated attacks on Fort Bragg, the Corps’ home station, and the surrounding region, created a slew of issues including: cyberattacks on Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems causing an E. Coli outbreak, a flurry of drones with explosive charges targeting commercial electric stations on post, and an accidental hit to a fiberoptic line causing command and control degradation.
This was the scenario the Army gamed out as part of its inaugural Defense Critical Infrastructure (DCI) Summit at Fort Bragg, where 14 external partners ranging from federal agencies to local leadership and utility companies gathered with the Army to workshop how to respond if these events unfolded simultaneously. The scenario — which was a tabletop exercise, meaning no physical assets were used — aimed to see how such events could effect a unit’s ability in time of crisis.
“My biggest priority, I’d say the secretary [of the Army] would share, is making sure that in a time of conflict or need our forces and our equipment can get to where they need to go as rapidly as possible without disruption,” Brandon Pugh, principal cyber advisor to the secretary of the Army, told reporters this morning.
