Mark Pomerleau
The House and Senate are pushing for a potential shakeup in how cyber operations and forces are synchronized and conducted in the Department of Defense.The proposals are part of each chamber’s version of the annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026.According to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version, DOD must conduct a study on force employment of cyber in support of combatant commands and evaluate establishing Joint Task Force-Cyber elements across those geographic combatant commands.
A proposal in the House, offered by Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems chairman Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., requires a similar evaluation, though focused specifically on the Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility.
AdvertisementSince becoming Chairman of the Subcommittee, I’ve grown increasingly concerned that we are not correctly organized for the cyber fight we find ourselves in today, let alone a more complex and consequential future fight. Our Cyber Command does great working national threats, but I want to ensure our Cyber team is postured right for a potential fight with China over Taiwan,” he said in a statement.
He said he plans to push for the establishment of a Joint Task Force-Cyber — not merely an evaluation — when both chambers of Congress convene to reconcile their bills.If we accept the reality that we are already in hostilities with our principal adversary in cyberspace, then there is no time to waste,” Bacon said.Bacon also pointed to the fact that this is not a new issue. In the fiscal 2023 NDAA, Congress required the creation of a similar organization — a Joint Task Force — in Indo-Pacom to support joint operations in the kinetic space before conflict, because the military was not sufficiently acting jointly, in lawmakers’ view.
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