System update: Army general takes over from Skinner as director of DISA, JFHQ-DoDIN

WASHINGTON — Gen. Robert Skinner today formally passed his responsibilities as director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Networks (JFHQ-DoDIN) to Army Gen. Paul Stanton.

“I leave this agency and command with a deep sense of humility, optimism, confidence and, most importantly, honor,” Skinner said during a passing of the flags ceremony today.

“I have truly been privileged to lead and be among our nation’s finest, working the most difficult problems, making the impossible possible. It is my hope today as I relinquish leadership of these two organizations, that I too have given more than I have received,” he added, according to a DISA release.

Skinner is retiring after a 40-year military career in which he started as an administrative supervisor for the Office of the Secretary of the Navy. He later worked his way up to an Air Force general and in 2015 became the chief of staff at DISA and deputy commander of the JFHQ-DoDIN. In 2021 he took over the post of director of DISA and JFHQ-DoDIN. 

In his final months on the job, DISA published a five-year strategy, with Skinner’s top three priorities: a “common IT environment,” more robust cloud computing and a push toward zero-trust cybersecurity.

In his last address to Augusta Technet in August, Skinner also set an ambitious goal for DODNET, shooting for getting 100,000 users within a few months.

“We’re going to collapse a lot of these [defense] agency networks that have been stovepiped and have legacy technology in them,” he said at the time.

Stanton, who moves to his current position after serving as the commanding general of the Army Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Eisenhower in Augusta, Ga., acknowledged that he’s taking over at an “unprecedented period of significant change in an unsettled word,” one that has an “insatiable appetite for data.”

“At the core of our responsibilities, we must securely and reliably get the right data to the right place at the right time to make a better and faster decision than our enemies, period. This is our business,” he said at the ceremony. “This is warfighting as it has been, it is today and will be in the future. This agency and command are critical to our nation’s warfighting success. Failure is not an option, and excellence is our standard.”

Other top DoD cyber and IT officials attended today’s ceremony, offering praise for Skinner and his replacement.

“This transition means not only a change in leadership, but also a change in perspective,” Leslie Beavers, acting DoD Chief Information Officer, said. “I can tell you [Skinner] was the right leader to take on the challenges that DISA faced coming out of COVID and setting a path for the future. It is going to take a warrior-scholar to take the handoff from Bob and move those and many other initiatives down range, and we found one. [Stanton] is the perfect person to take on this challenge.”

Gen. Timothy Haugh, CYBERCOM commander and director of the National Security Agency, said Skinner “enabled” the joint force’s success.

“This team, all of you, are engaged with our adversaries and our competitors on a daily basis, 24/7, and the very definition of success is nothing short of mission assurance for the joint force and for serving our nation’s decisive advantages,” Haugh said. “The mission has been accomplished by all of you over the past three years, enabled by Bob Skinner’s leadership. It is a fantastic way to wrap up a career of dedication serving our nation. JFHQ-DoDIN and DISA will be in terrific and very capable hands with Lt. Gen. Paul Stanton at the helm and all of you working missions. Paul was built for this job.”