Building the Future U.S. Cyber Force

Dr. Erica Lonergan, RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

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The U.S. military has tried almost everything to fix its cyber problems — except for the one solution that would work: standing up a U.S. Cyber Force as a new branch of the armed forces. Today, the military lacks sufficient readiness to fight and accomplish other missions in cyberspace, and only a Cyber Force can generate the human and technical resources the nation requires to fight and win the conflicts of today and the wars of tomorrow.

This study builds on the authors’ previous report making the case for establishing a Cyber Force. Beginning with that conclusion, this study outlines the practical steps necessary to stand up the new service. It presents an adaptable framework to address the choices and challenges that will likely accompany the Cyber Force’s creation. It is imperative that the Cyber Force gets four fundamental elements right from the outset: personnel, leadership, capabilities, and culture.

The first steps toward the creation of the Cyber Force are to lay out its vision and mission and define its functions. The Cyber Force will be the nation’s principal military force for the cyber domain. Its purpose will be to organize, train, and equip the personnel the military requires to employ cyber power to achieve tactical, operational, and strategic objectives. How it achieves these objectives will change over time given the dynamism of technology and international politics. Still, its core mission will endure.

The Cyber Force will have the primary force generation responsibility for offensive and defensive cyber operations, as well as cyber intelligence. Force generation refers to organizing, training, and equipping forces for military operations. The roles that remain outside the Cyber Force’s core mission set will include generating capabilities for information operations, Department of Defense Information Network (DODIN) operations (securing the Defense Department’s networks and systems), and cyber-related emerging technologies (such as artificial intelligence).