NORTHCOM’s Joint Task Force-Gold to coordinate cyber warfare for Golden Dome

WASHINGTON — US Northern Command’s (NORTHCOM) task force for coordinating Golden Dome homeland air and missile defense capabilities across the Joint Force has been newly charged with enabling related cyberwar capabilities, according to a senior official.

Col. Kevin “Stoney” Stonerook, deputy commander of Joint Task Force-Gold (JTF-Gold), told reporters here today at the annual Association of the US Army conference that cyber warfare “has become a new mission set for us.”

“We are helping put together the team of teams, all the different stakeholder communities — be that vendors and other government agencies — to really provide a cyber warfare capability for GDA, and that’s one of the main things that we’re really focused on,” he said.

In later comments to Breaking Defense, however, Stonerook stressed that task force’s cyber activities were focused only on defense against adversary attacks on Golden Dome capabilities, rather than offensive activities.

NORTHCOM announced JTF-Gold with little fanfare, and almost no information, in January. The announcement noted that the head of Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) — a position held since April by Lt. Gen. John Rafferty — would be double-hatted as leader of the the task force, and co-located with SMDC at Peterson SFB, Colo.

“This new command enhances the integration and synchronization of the homeland’s integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) enterprise,” the announcement said.

Stonerook explained that JTF-Gold was created “out of the ashes” of US Space Command’s former Joint Force Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense. That component command’s mission “was really to take all things … of the missile defense system and make sure that that was well coordinated and orchestrated across the joint force,” he said.

“JTF-Gold was stood up to operationalize Golden Dome for America (GDA) for USNORTHCOM,” Stonerook said, and now sports about 100 personnel.

One of the the task force’s first missions has been to help develop “some of the sites as we look at building out GDA across the country and other areas, and trying to integrate all those capabilities across the multiple layers of GDA,” he said.

Stonerook said JTF-Gold was involved in siting and construction activities for Golden Dome’s first operational site at Fort Story, Va., and will do the same at all future sites.

“But there’s a lot we still have to figure out,” he acknowledged.

For example, Stonerook said, Space Command’s integrated missile defense component command managed “all the assets across the missile defense system.” But now that JTF-Gold is under NORTHCOM, there is a need to figure out how to split those responsibilities.

“So, we’re still waiting to see where everything is falling out and whether those is needed redundancies. But our team is responsible for asset management, but the clear delineation of which assets are included and not included has not been completed.”

To that end, Stonerook said, JTF-Gold held a large “planning sprint” in February.

“We had over 300 people join us in Colorado Springs as we got a team of teams together to really understand who was doing what across the entirety of the GDA stakeholder community, and it was really beneficial,” he said. “It really kick started some of the planning, and we were able to develop concept of operations and continue on with a lot of the planning with things that were questions that were unanswered.”

Stonerook said that the next such planning sprint will be at the end of the month, focused on figuring out the respective responsibilities of the three “major” operations centers for Golden Dome at Peterson, Schriever SFB, Colo., and Tyndall AFB, Fla.

“What those roles and responsibilities are and where those lines are drawn, where there’s necessary redundancy, is still an active discussion. So, the planning sprint that we have at the end of the month, that’s one of the main topics of things that we’re going to get after,” he said. “[W]ho should be doing what, are we resourced to do those things, and what additional capabilities are there?”