Pentagon ‘desperately short’ of specialists for cyberwar.

The Pentagon is conducting a major strategic review of U.S. capabilities to wage computer and network warfare and to defend U.S. networks against attack, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week.

Gates said following a speech to the Air War College in Alabama the review is being carried out under the National Security Council and one proposal he is considering is to create a sub-unified command at the U.S. Strategic Command that will include elements of the National Security Agency and other capabilities.

One problem with developing cyberwarfare capabilities has been a lack of trained cyber warfare specialists in the military. Currently, about 80 cyber warriors are graduated annually from training schools and by 2011 the number will increase to about 320 a year, he said.

“We are desperately short of people who have capabilities in this area in all the services and we have to address it,” Gates said. “This is going to be one of the significant new realms of conflict, in my view.”

China’s military disclosed in the late 1990s that it had created a separate branch of its armed services that will engage in computer and network warfare.

Russia’s military and intelligence services also have large programs to prepare to wage cyber warfare. Moscow’s forces are believed to be behind orchestrated military computer attacks on Georgia during last summer’s military attack on the former Soviet Republic.