TUTONG CAMP, Brunei – While Soldiers maneuver through Brunei’s jungles during Exercise Pahlawan Warrior 26, another group of Oklahoma National Guard and Royal Brunei Armed Forces personnel are strengthening their defenses in a domain without borders – cyberspace.
Oklahoma National Guard cyber professionals are working alongside RBAF personnel during the bilateral exercise to develop foundational cyber incident-response skills and strengthen cooperation between the two forces.
“We are working alongside the RBAF to train on cyber incident response,” said Maj. Danny Huddleston, defensive cyber operations team chief with Joint Force Headquarters, Oklahoma National Guard.
The training begins with the fundamentals of how a cyber defense team responds to an incident, following industry-standard processes. It will progress to hands-on exercises, including a capture-the-flag event that places participants in a simulated environment where they can apply what they learned, followed by a tabletop exercise focused on procedures and policies.
“The [tabletop exercise] is similar to a range exercise,” Huddleston said. “You have a simulated environment where they can test everything that they’ve learned from the prior week.”
The cyber element expands the scope of Pahlawan Warrior beyond the exercise’s traditional ground-force training while supporting the same goal of strengthening interoperability and relationships between U.S. and Bruneian forces.
“In the past, [the exercise] primarily entailed an infantry element to it,” Huddleston said. “Now that cyber is a prevalent area in defense, we added that piece to help continue that cross-training and relationship building.”
OPTION 2: “In the past, [the exercise] was largely centered on infantry tactics and training, but the addition of cyber capabilities has broadened its scope even further.”
That cooperation also gives Oklahoma cyber professionals experience communicating outside their own organization, a skill Huddleston said is particularly important for National Guard Soldiers, who may work alongside other military units, government agencies and civilian organizations.
The training being conducted in Brunei could also have an impact thousands of miles away in Oklahoma. Huddleston’s team is developing blue-team incident-response training for Oklahoma that will include civilian state partners. Pahlawan Warrior provides an opportunity to test and refine portions of that training before conducting it at home.
“This training has allowed us to take a step back and ask ourselves, ‘What went well with this? What do we need to adjust?’ so that when we conduct the training back home in a couple of months, it’s more efficient,” Huddleston said.
The need for those capabilities extends well beyond military networks. From communications and GPS to power grids and water systems, Huddleston said modern infrastructure increasingly depends on interconnected technology.
“Everything is connected nowadays,” Huddleston said. “Electronics are everywhere. Connectivity is everywhere.”
For Huddleston, bringing cyber into a multinational exercise also helps demonstrate that protecting those connections is increasingly part of readiness in every operating environment.
“Cyber is still new, and getting our word out there and our name out there is critical,” Huddleston said. “Having this be part of an exercise that is multinational is a huge part of improving our overall mission set.”