Maj. Gen. (P) Stephen Fogarty has been selected as the next commander of Army Cyber Command, Fifth Domain has learned.

Fogarty’s nomination was sent to the Senate April 9 and the Senate confirmed his third star April 26.

Fogarty’s position was confirmed to Fifth Domain by a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer.

Fogarty, currently the chief of staff at U.S. Cyber Command, takes over for Lt. Gen. (P) Paul Nakasone who was confirmed as the director of NSA and commander of U.S. Cyber Command. He takes the lead at those agencies May 4.

The commander of ARCYBER has historically also led the offensive cyber operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, going back to the special task force’s creation in 2016.

Fogarty, who has been at Cyber Command since 2016, will have unique insights into the ongoing offensive called Joint Task Force Ares.

Prior to his role at Cyber Command, Fogarty was the commander of Fort Gordon and the Cyber Center of Excellence – the cyber schoolhouse – in Augusta, Georgia.

New Army Cyber Command headquarters

While the current headquarters of Army Cyber Command is located at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the command is moving to Fort Gordon in 2020.

“To ensure the Army’s offensive and defensive teams are prepared to meet the challenge, the Army has funded a new cyberspace operations facility at Fort Gordon that will provide a cutting edge operational platform,” Ronald Pontius, deputy to the commanding general Army Cyber Command, said during a March keynote address at the AFCEA Signal Conference, adding this is part of the new facility.

“This facility will positively impact readiness by collocating disparate functions that are split amongst these posts and collocating with Fort Gordon so we will have both the operational and the institutional cyber enterprise at one place.,” he continued. “The … ground breaking we’re doing is to now have the operational force at the same place as the institutional force.”

The new facility, which Pontius said will be finished in June 2020 with a move in date around July/August 2020, will be collocated with NSA-Georgia.

“We’re building an Army facility inside an NSA security perimeter, physically attached to and integrated in an NSA facility … but we will be a separate Army facility that has its own accreditation,” he said. “We’re breaking some ground in that whole thought. It is such a relationship between cyber and intelligence that that is the ground breaking we’re doing.”

Pontius has previously told Fifth Domain that cyber and signals intelligence, the primary role of the NSA, has always shared an important relationship.

“There is a close working relationship between signals intelligence and cyber. One can inform the other, but also the other informs the other,” he said. “There’s things that we very much could see from a cyberspace operations point of view that could say: Here’s something we need to look at from a signals intelligence point of view. Or we may have indications and warnings from signals intelligence that says: ‘We believe adversaries are thinking about pursuing this kind of thing against our networks or our systems — you need to look in this area.’”

Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.

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