The Rules Of Engagement For Cyber Wars.

While NATO jets attacked Yugoslavia earlier this year, Serbian computer experts attacked NATO systems in what a top Air Force general Tuesday called the world_s first ``cyber war.''``We detected several attempts to take down our (information) networks. Fortunately, the Serbs were no more effective at offensive information operations than they were at air defense,'' Gen. Lester L. Lyles, Air Force vice chief of staff, told a Dayton audience of information professionals. U.S. military officials have said U.S. forces made some attacks on Serbian computer systems, but few details have come out. Operation Allied Force, the 78-day, U.S.-led air offensive that ended in June, ``combat-tested our vision for the future of information in warfare,'' he said. Allied forces successully stymied the Serbian computer attacks, Lyles said, but added, ``We must consider Kosovo as the precursor to more sophisticated and relentless attacks against our information systems.'' That includes civilian systems, because the military relied heavily on commercial networks to move rivers of ``non-critical'' military information during the Kosovo conflict, the general said. Warfare is becoming increasingly an information war. Lyles said military operations in the Kosovo conflict required five times more ``bandwith,'' or communications capacity, than Gulf war operations. He said information technology is especially vital to the Air Force as it reshapes itself into an ``Expeditionary Aerospace Force'' with compact, self-contained combat units that don_t depend on prepared overseas bases.