"The Russian forces in Ukraine have integrated cyber operations and conventional military tactics in seamless fashion, current and former U.S. officials and experts say. As soon as Russian forces moved into Crimea, they took over the state-owned telecommunications provider and jammed cell phone signals and severed Internet connections between the peninsula and the rest of the country. Customers across the region lost phone and Internet service, effectively shutting them off from the outside world.

As commando troops took up positions in Crimea and seized official buildings, Russian naval vessels that carry radio and cell phone jamming equipment were spotted in the port of Sevastopol. Eventually, the Russians cut off Ukrainian forces in Crimea from their command and control systems. It was textbook operation that combined centuries old combat tactics with cyber-age assaults.

The occupying forces limited their use of radios and cell phones and went mostly undetected by the United States' surveillance networks

"It looks like the Russians learned from Osama bin Laden and used couriers," Joel Harding, a former military intelligence officer who worked for the Army's intelligence command and has experience in surveillance operations, said in a recent interview. "They held access to those with a need to know and exercised strict discipline in communications security. That is the best professionalism I've seen from them ever.

The Russian success is especially stinging for the U.S. because these types of blended attacks -- cyber strikes launched alongside military operations -- are what U.S. military and intelligence officials have for years said will be the hallmarks of America's future way of fighting a war.

The US military is spending billions of dollars to integrate cyber warfare into military combat and intends to train a force of 6,000 cyber warriors by the end of 2015"