Center for Information Dominance gets new name

The Center for Information Dominance at NAS Pensacola Corry Station will now be known as the Center for Information Warfare Training.

Capt. Bill Lintz, Center for Information Warfare Training (CIWT) commanding officer, announced that the information warfare (IW) community’s training arm officially changed its name from Center for Information Dominance (CID) to CIWT, July 7.

In early 2016, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare and Director of Naval Intelligence Vice Adm. Ted Branch replaced the term “information dominance” with “information warfare.” This also resulted in Naval Information Dominance Forces, which identifies the requirements for the IW community’s training, also changing name to Naval Information Forces, to be consistent with naming conventions for other type commanders.

The evolution in terminology and command names is in response to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson’s Jan. 5 release of ‘A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority.’ The document emphasizes “information IN warfare” and “information AS warfare” and demands the delivery of information warfare as a critical capability of the Navy’s mission sets.

With headquarters at Naval Air Station Pensacola Corry Station, Florida, CIWT continues to train the IW community at 18 locations in the continental United States, Hawaii and Japan, as a learning center reporting to Naval Education and Training Command.

“We have come a long way from when the first class of communications technicians, later called cryptologic technicians, began training at Naval Communications Training Center at Corry Field in Pensacola in 1961,” said Lintz. “Eventually that command developed into what was most recently called CID, following a history of several schoolhouses, including information technology and intelligence, merging together.”

Today, CIWT teaches cryptologic technicians, information systems technicians, intelligence specialists, and even electronics technicians. For officers, CIWT provides training to cryptologic warfare, information professional, intelligence, and foreign area officers.

“Our largest locations at Corry Station, Virginia Beach, San Diego and Monterey continue to be full commands in their own right, led by senior IW community officers,” said Lintz. “Each of these commands is now called Information Warfare Training Command (IWTC), and each has very unique and distinctive histories of their own.”

Focused on producing the Navy’s linguists, IWTC Monterey remains the Navy component at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language School.

IWTC San Diego and IWTC Virginia Beach both originated as intelligence training centers, and IWTC Corry Station will always be thought of by the cryptologic community as the “cradle of cryptology.”

“Those three locations have broadened the scope of what they offer to the IW community, branching out beyond their original charters and making the training for all of the IW community more accessible when and where our Sailors and joint service customers need it,” said Lintz.

The additional 14 CIWT detachments and learning sites at Navy, Army and Air Force installations and commands in the United States and Japan likewise provide targeted training opportunities to meet the demands of the fleet, as well as the other military services and the national security establishment.

CIWT also continues to oversee two Navy-wide programs, Navy Credentialing Opportunities On-line (COOL) and the Center for Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture.

“I’m so proud of the entire team of staff and instructors throughout our CIWT enterprise,” said Lintz. “Our direction from the Chief of Naval Operations is clear, to deliver high velocity learning at every level and to further ingrain information warfare. The future of CIWT is bright, and we’re only going to continue to adapt and evolve as we prepare our students, the IW community’s professionals, to meet the mission.”

CIWT, with headquarters at Naval Air Station Pensacola Corry Station, delivers information warfare professionals to the Navy and joint services, enabling optimal performance of information warfare across the full spectrum of military operations.