UK develops cyber strike capability

AS new front lines emerge online, the United Kingdom has announced it has developed a cyber strike capability - and Australia is set to benefit.

New front lines online ... the United Kingdom is increasing its capacity to deal with cyberthreats. Picture: THINKSTOCK

AUSTRALIA is set to benefit from a "laptop army" being developed in Britain to fight future wars not on the battlefield but from banks of computers in bunkers.

Britain has become the first country in the world to confirm it has developed a cyber strike capability in what has been hailed the biggest military revolution since tanks replaced cavalry brigades 100 years ago in the First World War.

But while Australia has been developing its own capability, announced as part of its Defence White paper released earlier this year, it has been confirmed the British under "Five Eyes" arrangements with its Allies will be sharing their capability.

The United States, Israel and Iran are also believed to have developed such a deterrent technology.

After air, sea, land and space, cyber is the fifth frontline and Britain's Ministry of Defence has said clinical strikes had been designed to disable enemy communications, weapons systems or other hardware attacks remotely, from places like Pindar, an underground bunker below Whitehall in central London.

"It's about the counter attack capability so in the same way a nuclear deterrent would, you would have to have the ability to hit back," defence sources told News Corp Australia yesterday.

"Why you would want to send Typhoons, Tornados (aircraft) or whatever at great risk when you could just turn all the electricity off on an airfield, it's that kind of thing."

It is understood cyber warfare has been included in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance of Britain, the US, Canada, NZ and Australia.

The super secretive Australian Signals Directorate has already benefited from US development of defensive cyber attack tools. The opening up to the advanced British strike capability, being developed as part of a $750 million program, though potentially arms it with a greater deterrent to attack by crippling an enemy remotely first.

There have been more than 1200 cyber attacks against Australian government systems in the past year with just under half deemed to be serious and including a cyber assault on the Reserve Bank.

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