Lauryn Williams
In 2018, Vice President and National Space Council Chair Mike Pence heralded a new era of “American dominance in space,” which would be led by a new U.S. Space Force. The service, eventually established in late 2019, would be a manifestation of the U.S. government’s heightened awareness that space was a domain of “national security significance,” as opposed to simply scientific exploration. This development acknowledged that the old, decentralized way of doing things—dispersing space professionals across the existing services—was no longer sufficient. Advocates argued that consolidating forces within a single service, led by empowered Pentagon leadership, was necessary to effectively recruit and organize, train, and equip personnel to meet the adversary space threats of a new day.
Enter 2025, and discussions are actively underway among U.S. experts about the need for a U.S. Cyber Force to own force generation for offensive, defensive, and cyber intelligence personnel. Advocates argue that a standalone Cyber Force, like the Space Force, would address acute challenges today in “recruiting, training, and retaining personnel for key cyber work roles and missions.” Skeptics question whether a new bureaucratic structure will resolve them. They argue that cyberspace operations are unique to each service and existing forces should remain integrated.
Today, the United States is debating taking another step toward a significant force design transformation to tackle twenty-first-century multi-domain challenges. Yet, China has been making moves of its own since 2015 to shape the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for modern warfare. The Pentagon’s 2016 annual report on Chinese military power first mentioned these changes: In late 2015, a then-new Strategic Support Force (SSF) was established under the Central Military Commission (CMC). Importantly, the SSF included space systems, network systems, and information warfare departments, which demonstrated the PLA’s desire for a single command structure dedicated to multi-domain warfare. The network systems department served as the hub for cyber forces pulled together from previously disparate parts of the PLA. Then, in April 2024, less than nine years after it began, the PLA abruptly dissolved the SSF. With the SSF structure eliminated, the newly renamed Aerospace (ASF), Cyberspace (CSF), and Information Support Forces (ISF) were shifted directly under the CMC.
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