Speeches and Statements

Thank you, General Cole, Colonel Haggerty, the entire Army team, and Team Orlando for inviting me to speak here today. First, I want to say that I’m so proud to represent Team Orlando in Congress. Central Florida has a competitive advantage over other regions in high-tech and innovation-oriented sectors, and the Team Orlando partnership is at the epicenter of growth in these areas.

I’m particularly excited to be part of today’s Persistent Cyber Training Environment Industry Day. As we all know, the wars of the future are happening today in the cyber environment. Cyber attacks intended to damage our government computers and information networks occur on a daily basis. The persistent nature of the threats in cyberspace means that our cyber workforce needs to be adaptable, and our networks must be resilient.

The PCTE program is important because it will fill a critical gap in the ability of the Department of Defense to effectively train our Cyber Mission Force. Our cyber forces must be prepared for cyber warfare operations in an environment that is constantly changing. Moreover, highly complex information technology systems and interdependent networks have accelerated technology advancements, but have also made us more vulnerable to disruptions in cyberspace.

For example, the network of Internet-connected objects that can process, send, and receive data – or the “Internet of Things” – creates multiple points of entry that increases our vulnerability to cyber attacks. At the Department of Defense, our most advanced weapons systems have been made more effective, accurate, and lethal because of the interconnected nature of their components and networked systems. However, the complexity of these systems means that any insecure piece of hardware or software presents an inherent vulnerability to an attack or intrusion.

Therefore, the reality of our networked, technology-enabled world means that our ability to fight and win the wars of the future will only be as good as our weakest link. This will require a level of understanding about how cyber impacts our operations at all levels – or what I like to call “cyber fluency.”

Cyber fluency is an awareness of our vulnerabilities and our advantages in cyberspace – from a planner’s understanding of how a cyber tool can be used to achieve a strategic effect, to a Soldier’s decision to open a phishing email on a computer connected to the DoD network that exposes the network to a larger attack. The only way we can achieve cyber fluency in the Department is to make cybersecurity an inherent part of our tactics, techniques, and procedures. And the only way we can execute that is with effective and relevant training.

Currently, cyber training scenarios are manually set up on a variety of ranges with varying capabilities that lack the interoperability, reusability, and ability to scale to support growing demands on our cyber force. To close this training and readiness gap, the Department of Defense will require a persistent cyberspace training environment that can rapidly deploy and redeploy high fidelity training scenarios into virtual environments.

This training environment will allow our cyber warriors to conduct on-demand training anywhere, with realistic cyber tools and capabilities. Importantly, the PCTE platform will also adapt. It will continue to evolve based on new requirements, and changes in technology, threats, and TTPs.

I’m excited to be here today because this program has so much potential for growth. I believe central Florida is poised to become one of the nation’s top innovative economies, and this cyber training mission will highlight the best our region has to offer.

To quote Admiral Rogers, the U.S. Cyber Command and NSA Director, "The challenges [in cyberspace] are so broad...it is going to take a true partnership between the private sector, the government and academia to address [them]." You’d be hard-pressed to find a better partnership ecosystem than right here in Orlando. I say that for three reasons:

First, the military and other government agencies, private industry, and the University of Central Florida have a long history of teamwork here in central Florida. The collaborative environment they’ve created around the modeling, simulation, and training industry serves as an outstanding model for leveraging state, local, federal, and private resources to create a thriving environment for innovation.

Second, the Army will be using an innovative contracting instrument to ensure that future PCTE capabilities will develop at the speed of relevance. As we all know, there’s a major disconnect between the federal contracting process and the tech life cycle. Most technology has a lifecycle of only 18 months. From my position in Congress, I’ve been working to help hotwire the car – so to speak – by supporting alternative contracting mechanisms that can get a project from requirement to contract award in less than two months.

To do this, the PCTE program office will field future prototypes through competitive Cyber Innovation Challenges. These Cyber Innovation Challenges will be run through the Training and Readiness Consortium – affectionately known T-ReX – and will be fielded through Other Transaction Authority agreements, or “OTAs”. OTAs are legally binding instruments used by the Department to engage industry and academia for a broad range of research and prototyping activities. OTAs allow for more interaction between the program office and their industry partners, provide for better communication about requirements, and expedite the delivery of technology.

Third, feeding all of this growth is a dynamic and diverse higher education system in central Florida. We have the second-largest research university in the country, a leading liberal arts college, and numerous other institutions that help students develop the precise skills they need to thrive in this brave new world, which is evolving at a dizzying pace.

For these reasons, I am thrilled that PEO STRI is creating a Central Florida Cyber Center of Excellence. As part of this effort, the PCTE program office has partnered with the UCF to support Cyber Innovation Challenges. In addition to capitalizing on the intellectual capital we have in our region, we are investing in infrastructure improvements to support the cyber mission, including making significant progress toward building a classified cyber facility and expanding the National Cyber Range (NCR) capability. All of these advancements will help shore up the success of the cyber cluster here in Orlando.

To close, when I got to Washington last January, I specifically chose my committee assignments and focused my legislative priorities to support the growth of this community in the best way that I could. I serve on the House Armed Services Committee, where we pass an annual defense authorization bill. The final version of this year’s the National Defense Authorization Act fully funded the PCTE, and through the legislative process, I secured a provision that expresses Congress’s support for this program.

I look forward to continuing to support the growth of this mission in Congress, and encourage all of you to view my office as a resource.

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