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Lt. Gen. William T. Lord, Air Force chief of warfighting integration and chief information officer, visited Ramstein in February to host a town hall style presentation in the Hercules Theater. His presentation was targeted at the cyberspace career field and how it would have to adapt in the Department of Defense’s current climate of downsizing and decreasing spending.
Directly after his presentation, Lord visited with Chapter 158 members of the Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association at the base golf course. There, he spoke on the ever changing cyberspace domain in a more personal setting. He started off his talk by identifying and thanking the contractors in attendance for their continued support and breadth of knowledge they bring to the Air Force mission. Lord continued the conversation with personal stories and insights into how he saw the cyberspace domain evolving and what would be expected in terms of technology.
His talk had recurring themes of increasing the efficiency of cyberspace and communication operations while demanding more as customers and providers.
He stated that the contracting and acquisition aspects of purchasing information systems are important but should be streamlined so that only one vendor supplies each type of system. As an example, instead of having multiple vendors for Voice Over Internet Protocol phones, one vendor could be chosen to maintain and, more importantly, train Air Force members on its functionality and proper use.
This single vendor solution would increase security as well as decrease the burden on Air Force members to learn specific vendor differences in each system. Lord stressed that configuration management control is as important for cyber and communications assets as it is to a multimillion dollar airframe.
After the talk, Lord welcomed questions and feedback from the members in attendance before leaving to visit with other groups and sites in the Ramstein community.
