Is Pentagon Working On Cyber Weapons?

According to former Pentagon officials and competing contractors, a military contract of around $460 million is expected to be developed and deployed if required, which focuses on computer code capable of killing adversaries, Nextgov reported.

Instead of the traditional explosives, with these “lethal cyber weapons”, U.S. troops would be able to launch “logic bombs” capable of directing an enemy’s critical infrastructure to self destruct.

Cyberspace is a new warfighting domain, just as land, sea, air and space are domains, according to an article published on U.S. Department of Defense website. The Cyber Command vision statement underscores the need to integrate cyberspace operations into all military plans and to develop “new ways of defending, fighting and partnering against learning adversaries in the contested cyber domain”, the article said.

Nextgov says that half-billion-dollar U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) Project will outsource to industry all command mission support activities, that includes “cyber fires" planning and "cyberspace joint munitions" assessments. 

The cyber fires would impact human life, according to former Defense officials and a recently released Defense Department "Law of War Manual." 

Cyber strikes are allowed even if “it is certain that civilians would be killed or injured -- so long as the reasonably anticipated collateral damage isn’t excessive in relation to what you expect to gain militarily," said retired Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, executive director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. "These are essentially the same rules as for attacks employing traditional bombs or bullets.”