Navy details command

Published 10:31 pm Friday, March 28, 2014

The Navy has explained further details about a technology-related command that will be established at Lake View Technology Park in North Suffolk.

According to public relations officer Matthew Klee, Navy Cyber Forces, one of three entire commands that moved to the site from Little Creek-Fort Story last year, while elements of Fleet Cyber also relocated, will be known as Information Dominance Forces Type Command beginning Oct. 1.

“There are no plans right now to have any significant changes in the personnel at the command itself,” Klee said, adding that 2013’s relocations brought 1,600 new personnel to the site.

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Essentially, Klee said, the change involves upgrading Navy Cyber Forces to a “type command” for its Information Dominance Corps.

“We are going to be a type command, and our main mission is readiness to the fleet for everything that has to do with information dominance,” he said.

Currently, he said, different information dominance commands exist for “manning, training and equipping under various organizations, and we are trying to bring all that responsibility under one roof.”

The Information Dominance Corps was formed in 2009, combining the intelligence, information warfare, meteorology/oceanography, information professional communities, and cadres of space and electronic warfare specialties, the magazine Seapower reported.

As reported by the Navy News Service, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert directed the establishment of the new command earlier this month. The new command will report directly to the Norfolk-based U.S. Fleet Forces.

Rear Adm. Diane Webber, Navy Cyber Forces commander, will now become commander of the type command.

Webber reportedly described the new command’s mission as “support(ing) combatant commanders and Navy commanders ashore and afloat by providing forward deployable, sustainable, combat-ready information dominance forces.”

The new command, which NETWARCOM Public Affairs Officer John Donaldson described in an email as “essentially a redesignation/renaming of the existing Navy Cyber Forces Command,” is yet another change at Lake View Technology Park after the U.S. Joint Forces Command was disestablished in August 2011.

After JFCOM left, and before the coming of the technology-related commands, Joint and Coalition Warfighting moved into the largest building at the site.

Mayor Linda Johnson had announced that the new type command was coming to Suffolk during the South Hampton Roads Mayors Forum on Thursday.