While Pensacola has long been known as the “cradle of naval aviation,” Corrie Station is considered by the naval crypto community to be the “cradle of cryptography.” Corry Station is beginning to be recognized within the Navy as “the birthplace of naval cyber,” Garvin explains.
Coppinger expressed interest in the Navy’s plans to split cryptography and cyber into separate ratings, and was told senior Navy leadership would continue to discuss the future of the ratings. Currently, cryptographer assessment has five specialties, including Interpretation, Maintenance, Networking, Collection, and Technology. All support a vital role within the Navy’s information warfare community.
Leaders also discussed future growth of cyber student throughput at Collie Station. Bryant said the CIWT is expanding its curriculum to meet the military’s growing needs for cyber he operators and to allow the base’s resources to accommodate the growing number of students.
Standardizing training to facilitate the consolidation of service and support staffing requirements is one issue Coppinger said he is actively looking at to improve efficiency.
Garvin explains how the Navy’s Ready Related Learning (RRL) program is changing as the Navy delivers training, where and how it is delivered, and how that training can meet the fleet’s actual needs. I’ve shared how it’s kept relevant as long as possible. Its learning centers, such as NETC and CIWT, have modernized many training deliveries of Navy enlistment assessments to include aspects such as hands-on virtual and augmented reality in their curriculum, while also incorporating advances in learning science. .
During a tour of several cryptography training classrooms at the Information Warfare Training Command Corry Station, Coppinger spoke with staff, instructors and students about the coursework and its background. Coppinger observed classes in the Intermediate Signal Analysis Course, received state-of-the-art demonstrations of her Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE), and interacted with students in the Joint Cyber Analysis Course (JCAC) Extended Training Collection. After his presentation, he said systems like the PCTE are a major change from training methods implemented in the past and are indeed the methods of the future.
Coppinger said in a JCAC class while talking to students that he joined the Air Force for the same reason many students joined. He encouraged his students to stay focused on their studies. Doing so will ensure a secure future for their chosen professions and keep national security networks safe.
With four schoolhouse headquarters, two detachments, and training sites in the United States and Japan, the Information Warfare Training Center trains more than 26,000 students each year and trains information warfare professionals for the Navy and Joint Serving the military. The Center for Information Warfare Training also offers over 200 courses for cryptographers, intelligence professionals, information systems engineers, electronics engineers, and officers in the information warfare community.
