(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Air National Guard has activated new squadron that will help fend off cyber threats. Chief Master Sergeant Crystal Jordan is part of the 133rd Combat Training Squadron under the 132 Air Wing located at the Des Moines Airport. “We’re basically a total force cyber trainer. So, we train any branch of the military,” she says. Jordan says they set up “range environments” for training.

“Whether you are doing defensive cyber operations — so you are defending a network –that’s your mission. Or you could do offensive cyber operations, which means you are attacking some sort of network. So, that’s in this range environment,” she explains. Sergeant Jordan says they use cyber professionals to help set up scenarios for training. “An those cyber professionals will go out, and some of them can be our own professionals as well, where the trainer becomes the operator. And those missions can be all over the world,” she says.

Jordan says being able to fend off cyber attacks is a key skill in the modern military. “Every modern aircraft sensor and weapon, it is going to use a network of some sort. So the tanks, they use radio frequency and WIFI to communicate back with headquarters,” she says. “And everybody uses satellite communication for G-P-S. And so it doesn’t matter what the type of network is, that is what is all the different scenarios that we’re building.”

Jordan says they now have staff in place. “We currently have 72 members assigned. Of those 72, we have 12 that are fulltime and the rest are D-S-G, traditional guardsmen that come in. Everybody is used to hearing, one drill weekend a month, two weeks a year,” she says. Jordan says they expect to eventually expand to 130 to 140 personnel.