Can the Latest Plan for CYBERCOM Stave Off Calls for a New Service?

Shaun Waterman

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In a brief email Nov. 6, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out a new Cyber Force Generation plan, meant to give U.S. Cyber Command more authority over the employment, training, and equipping of U.S. troops preparing for and waging cyber war. Former Air Force officers and national security officials say the plan is meant to fix longstanding problems that have beset the U.S. military’s cyberspace efforts—and to head off growing calls for an entirely new military service.

Yet to some experts who have spent years working in cyber and believe a new service is needed, the new plan is destined not to succeed. Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral, praised some of the ideas in the plan, but argued that “it’s like installing a 70 mile-long screwdriver at [Cyber Command headquarters at] Fort Meade and expecting to drive a bunch of screws at the Pentagon. This is not going to work.”

Montgomery runs CSC 2.0, a nonprofit focused on implementing the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where he previously served as executive director.

“It’s great that they [Pentagon leaders] are thinking about force generation,” he said, adding that the list of seven “core attributes” central to the plan is “a wonderful list.”

“There’s good ideas, but I believe they’re tasking the wrong person with it,” said Montgomery, who is also a member of the Commission on Cyber Force Generation, launched in September by CSC 2.0 and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The commission was set up to provide the White House and Pentagon with the policy framework they will need if the administration decides to go ahead and establish a separate cyber force, explained former White House national security staffer Lauryn Williams, commission co-director and a senior fellow at CSIS. It will report no later than June 2026, she added.

“The bottom line is, we’re not recruiting the right force,” Montgomery said. “We’re not training them consistently. We’re certainly not paying them consistently, and as a result, we’re not retaining them at the proper levels.”