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Curing today’s IT blues and building tomorrow’s cyber force

  • Published
  • By Robert Helton, HQ AFRC Public Affairs
ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga --  You have been at your desk for hours, typing away. Suddenly, your computer screen turns blue. Your palms start to sweat, knees grow weak, arms get heavy and heart starts beating faster than the speed of sound. You were so focused on the task at hand, you don’t remember if you saved your work. You think you did, but self-doubt fills every ounce of your being.

Some, if not most, of us have been through this nightmarish scenario. And most of us turned to the reliable and hard-working professionals of the Air Force Reserve Command’s A6 Communications Directorate for help.

AFRC A6 is there to provide assistance and solutions for every computer issue, from system migration and software updates to slow-running computers and log-in issues.

Perhaps the most well-known office in A6 is the Comm Focal Point, a help desk that assists customers in solving every computer problem imaginable. If you need help with SharePoint, A6 is there to help.

Headquarters personnel might think that A6 exists, for the most part, to help them.

Yet, there is more to A6 than meets the eye. The organization’s mission extends well beyond the headquarters at Robins Air Base, Georgia.

“The A6 Directorate helps the warfighter fly, fight and win domestically and in international operations through providing those highly equipped and highly trained cyber professionals to all the missions that the Air Force does globally,” said Col. David Schilling, director of A6 and chief information officer for AFRC.

In addition to the myriad of information assurance tasks and responsibilities A6 performs for 35 wings and approximately 70,000 personnel located throughout the United States, the Directorate also works closely with the 24th Air Force, developing the team to man, train and equip the cyber Citizen Airmen of the Air Force Reserve.

These cyber Citizen Airmen enable counter cyber operations against our nation’s adversaries, offensive cyber operations support to combatant commanders, and defensive cyber operations for Department of Defense and Air Force networks.

“We do our share of protecting the DoD information networks. So, as we begin to connect our network throughout the Department of Defense, there is an effort to inspect those networks to ensure that all the services are doing the best that they can to protect those networks,” said Schilling.

Currently there are 127 Airmen integrated in three cyber protection teams.

“Those cyber professionals, Reservists, are sitting right next to their active-duty counterparts, sitting on the cyber operations floor doing active missions within the cyber domain on a day-to-day basis, 24/7,” said Schilling.

The mission of A6 is to ensure cyber Citizen Airmen remain an integrated, flexible and combat-ready force.

“In today’s fight, data is power! And the data resides within the cyber domain. So we need to work vigilantly every day to ensure that we are doing everything we can to protect the data within the cyber domain,” said Schilling.

Whether troubleshooting and fixing information technology matters for the AFRC community or providing competent cyber Citizen Airmen to the active Air Force and the Total Joint Force, A6 is hard at work every day playing its part in building our future force to ensure the information security of our nation.

Stay tuned for more on how the information technology and communications professionals of this directorate ensure information assurance as well as offer cures for the case of the computer blues.