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APOJ 16-5F

Cyber Breaching

by Jonathan Bratten

Combat Engineer Operations in a Cyber World

They say that battles are planned by generals 

but won by lieutenants and sergeants. This ran 

through Lieutenant Nicole Hafford’s head as 

she heard her squad leader ask over the radio, 

“Ma’am, what’s the plan?” 

A kilometer away, Staff Sergeant Justin 

Albertson glanced back at his squad of sappers 

taking cover in a gully that provided cover from 

the periodic strafing of the enemy’s autonomous 

sentry guns to their front. He checked the headsup display (HUD) attached to his helmet to see 

if his voice message went through to Lieutenant 

Hafford. The display showed comms as GREEN, 

and a few seconds later he heard his lieutenant’s 

voice in his ear via their secure comms link.

“We’ve got one anti-armor obstacle to our front, 

about fifty meters across, and anchored into some 

pretty nasty rock outcroppings in the valley. It’s 

flanked by two guns which sound like they’re at 

least .50 cals,” crackled Lieutenant Hafford’s voice

FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS

T H E AR M Y PRES S

1st Lt. Jonathan Bratten, Maine Army National Guard, is the 

command historian for the Maine Army National Guard, as well as 

a platoon leader in the 251st Engineer Company (Sapper). He holds 

a B.A. in history from Franciscan University of Steubenville and an 

M.A. in history from the University of New Hampshire. Past assignments include platoon leader, company executive officer, and battalion 

assistant plans officer, with a deployment in support of OEF 13-14.

over the periodic thumping of the enemy guns. “No personnel visible, doesn’t mean they don’t have drone overwatch or live feed of this area.”

“Roger, ma’am,” replied Albertson. “We’ve got the explosive breaching assets here, but we’re going to need to take 

out those—” His transmission cut off; his HUD went completely black.

“Hacked!” he exclaimed. “Sergeant Wise, you got comms?” In the gully behind him, Sergeant Wise shook her 

head followed by the rest of the sappers. The whole squad was down. Albertson gritted his teeth; modern warfare 

sure wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 

The platoon was forward of their company and spearheading a brigade-sized, armored push against the enemy’s 

front. This in turn would relieve pressure on the main Coalition force attempting to wrestle Istanbul from the Russian forces holding it since 2028, over ten years ago. This new armored strike through Serbia aimed at the relatively 

undefended Russian defenses in Romania, where an assault force could then push straight through to the Black Sea 

and cut the Russian lines of supply and communication. If this breach proved successful, the brigade planned to be 

plussed up to division strength to open a new front.

But their brigade couldn’t do that because intel hadn’t noticed this part of Serbia was one giant obstacle. And boy

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did it have overwatch. Intelligence had correctly predicted that they would see no ground forces in the area; what 

they hadn’t counted on was the sophisticated area defense that the Russians had erected, with autonomous weapons systems and drone swarms providing overwatch. As if that wasn’t bad enough, hackers hundreds of miles away 

had continuously struck Coalition communications and targeting systems, causing no end of trouble. 

The squad had been subsisting on half an MRE a day for almost two weeks. Enemy forces had diverted one of 

the self-driving LOGPACs into a nearby river. This and the current comms outage had just been more examples of 

enemy cyber fires.

Albertson glanced at his watch, an analog, a gift from his father: 0410. H-hour is 0500, he thought bleakly. They 

had to move fast.

One kilometer away, Lieutenant Hafford worked on a fix. This, she thought, was not what grandpa talked about 

when he told stories of being a sapper in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

She joined the Army despite the protests of her vehemently anti-war father. Being the first female in her family 

to join the military—into a combat role, no less—was a matter of pride to her. Even though combat roles opened to 

women decades ago, she still felt the intense pressure to succeed. Now, comms failed, H-hour approached, and they 

sat strafed by enemy guns. She felt the same panic in her gut she felt in ROTC training exercises. 

She closed her eyes and took a breath. You’ve got time, she told herself. This is why you joined the engineers: to solve 

problems.

Hefting her rifle, she clambered down a low creek bed where she and her squad sheltered. Leaves and branches 

fell overhead as the enemy’s sensors occasionally caught movement or heat signatures and unleashed a fusillade of 

fire. She moved past a heavy weapons squad borrowed from the local infantry company and nodded to the squad 

leader from a sapper squad she had on loan from 1st Platoon before she arrived at the location of her support-byfire squad. This squad had two teams: one provided direct kinetic fire while the other provided direct cyber support to break enemy cyber obstacles. Hafford grabbed the shoulder of her cyber sapper team leader Sergeant Jones.

“Jones, I need comms back online,” she said.

“Roger, ma’am, already working on finding the node of the network attack,” said Jones. He nodded to two sappers typing away at portable laptops connected to small manpack servers they carried. This type of platform would 

be doomed against a larger enemy force, but was perfect for low-level operations such as this. After a few minutes, 

comms came back online.

“Just a simple denial of access attack,” explained Jones. “Suppressive fire from the enemy, so to speak. We’re all 

set.”

“Nice work, Sergeant,” said Hafford. “I guess they know we’re here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jones replied, “but they don’t know how many of us there are or what we’re doing.” 

Coalition made elaborate efforts to conceal operations through brigade cyber and scout assets.

Lieutenant Hafford checked her handheld device for any updates from the company. Six missed messages via the 

blue force tracker (BFT), all from her commander: all asking if they were in place to breach. She sighed. “Temporary halt due to enemy fire taking comms down,” she typed, pausing only briefly to consider that she had referred to 

a cyber attack as enemy fire. “Moving up now.”

“Albertson, you read me?” she queried. Brief pause. 

“Lima charlie, ma’am.”

“Roger.” She cued her HUD so she could communicate with the whole platoon. “We’ve got to assume we’ve been 

compromised,” she said. “But that obstacle has got to come down.” 

Attack the enemy’s obstacles and deny their intent, she heard her officer basic course instructor in her head as she 

briefed. But I assumed there would actually BE an enemy in sight, not some vague enemy that can kill you from another 

continent. 

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“SSG Albertson, you will announce breach clear by voice, HUD, and visual signal,” she said, concluding the mission brief.

“Star clusters, ma’am?” grinned Albertson. It had been a joke when he had packed some old green star clusters 

in his kit when they deployed. With the recent failures of their high-tech equipment, his flares, protractors, compasses, and maps had already gotten them out of quite a few predicaments. As had Hafford’s quick adaptation to 

changing situations. 

“Green star clusters it is,” agreed Hafford. She too smiled. 

It was a weird war, stranger than anything she could have ever predicted after commissioning through ROTC a 

year and a half ago. A blend of the old and the new.

“Let’s get at it, sappers,” she said. “Out.”

The platoon huddled down behind their cover, rounds from the enemy’s guns passed over their heads as the 

sensors detected human movement. At 0445, the cyber team began their support by fire in an effort to halt the two 

enemy guns by taking them offline. Heads down and furiously typing away, the two sappers began their assault. 

Nearby, the infantry grunts waited, poised to move into their overwatch position as soon as the guns were down. 

Once, they called the cyber sappers nerds--not anymore. The team’s cyber capabilities saved them from death 

multiple times in this campaign.

Hafford waited just below the crest of the creek bed. She went through this scenario dozens of times in her head. 

I’ve got to trust my troops, she thought. I’ve got to trust my equipment. I’ve got to trust myself.

0445. Enemy guns still fired. 

0448. Still firing.

0450. Still firing. Hafford began to sweat, thinking of the masses of main battle tanks sitting behind them, 

masked by screening cyber cav scouts that prevented enemy ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) 

assets from detecting their position. The guns shredded the trees overhead into splinters. Rocks and dirt splashed 

up in her face as the sensors detected her slight shift upwards to try to get a visual on the objective. Dropping 

down, she cursed these robotic enemies that seemed more fearsome than human adversaries. 

My God, if this doesn’t work, a whole brigade is going to be a sitting duck out here in the middle of nowhere and it will be 

my fault, she thought.

Then the guns stopped. 

Hafford glanced back. Sergeant Jones gave her a thumbs up. 

Now it was a matter of trusting that their cyber suppressive fire would hold long enough. She heard the infantry 

move out, leaves rustling and boots scraping as they moved their heavy weapons into position and got a clear line 

of site to the far side of the obstacle.

“SET.” The signal showed on her HUD. 

Albertson saw it as well. He motioned to the squad’s grenadier to fire an airburst 30mm pulse grenade over the 

target. If mines were present, the pulse would either short the fuse or cause them to detonate, depending on their 

age. The grenadier paused to ensure her XM25 counter defilade target engagement system was programmed for 

proper distance and munition, then poked the barrel over the lip of the gully and fired. 

The round sailed over the objective and detonated, emitting its electromagnetic pulse. As the squad tried to get 

even lower into the earth, a series of explosions tore the earth in front of them, leading all the way up and into the 

series of crossed metal pylons between that had been driven into the earth to form the anti-tank obstacle that was 

their objective.

Albertson gauged the obstacle from a distance, and calculated what he thought was the best explosive charge 

needed. He entered the calculations into the LGDEC’s (Linear Ground Deployed Explosive Charge: twice the 

power of a MICLIC in a manpack) fire controls, checked the line of sight to the target, switched the control to 

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Future Warfare Writing Program

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ARM, and motioned the rest of the squad back. He alone would stay during the breach, and he alone would proof 

it.

He checked his watch. 0455. Time to go. 

“Stand by for breach,” he radioed to his platoon leader.

“Breach confirmed,” she replied. Everyone got low. Especially Albertson. 

“Fire in the hole!” he muttered into the dirt. The line charge shot up and out of the LGDEC, guided by pre-plotted laser guidance to GPS coordinates. In a deafening roar, the obstacle vanished in clouds of smoke, fire, debris, 

and shattered steel as Albertson felt the overpressure from the blast wash over him. He waited for the shock wave 

to pass and the debris to fall, and then jumped up and sprinted through the smoke. Engaging the thermal vision on 

his HUD as he ran, he saw the glowing hot chunks of metal marking the base of the pylons were all that remained 

of the obstacle. He smiled, breathing in the smell of the blast. I love being a sapper, he thought, as he fired off a 

green star cluster.

BREACH CLEAR flashed green over Hafford’s HUD as she heard the pop of the flair. She breathed a sigh of 

relief and hammered out, “Breach clear, moving into security,” on her BFT to her commander. 

“Nice work, LT,” came back the reply. 

Hafford slowly got to her feet, heart hammering, as the ground began to shake with the thunder of the oncoming 

armor.

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Bratten Cyber Breaching

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