[ISN] Air Force Cyber-Operations Wing to Go on Hiring Binge

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1026

By Stew Magnuson
National Defense
1/17/2013

In a time of hiring freezes and great budget uncertainty, the Air Force 
plans to hire more than 1,000 personnel at its wing devoted to 
cyber-operations.

The 24th Air Force, located at Lackland Air Force Base, in San Antonio, 
Texas, will “hopefully” add “well over” 1,000 mostly civilian new hires 
over the span of two years beginning in 2014, Gen. William Shelton, Air 
Force Space Command commander told reporters in Washington, D.C., on 
Jan. 17.

The mostly civilian new hires will be added to the approximately 6,000 
already serving there, Shelton said. The “hopefully” part of the 
equation has to do with current civilian hiring freezes that the 
military services are currently imposing because of the possibility of 
sequestration and the continuing budget resolution for fiscal year 2013. 
Shelton, however, is optimistic that these will all be in the past by 
next fiscal year.

He expects the office of the secretary of defense to order Space Command 
to add the new hires in its 2014 directions, Shelton said. The request 
to boost the number of personnel assigned there, however, originates at 
U.S. Cyber Command. The 24th Air Force is the service’s component that 
answers to the Cyber Command located at Fort Meade, Md.

“If it turns out the way we think it’s going to turn out, we think it 
will be on the order of 70 to 80 percent civilian,” hires, he said. They 
will be involved in all aspects of the 24th Air Force’s cybermission: 
defend, operate, exploit and attack, he said.

[...]


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