Allison Pytlak • Dan Grazier
Recent efforts to progress thinking about how to operationalize a proposal to create an independent cyber force within the United States military are sparking a range of questions. These include questions about the necessity of such a force, what it would do, resourcing, and how it would interact with the cyber capabilities of other parts of the military. Proponents argue that amid a landscape of ever-increasing cyber threats from known U.S. adversaries, a focused force is necessary for the United States to keep up while others point to existing capabilities and structures as sufficient. Why now, and how, are among the questions examined in this commentary.
More than 72 years passed between the creation of the U.S. Air Force and the creation of the U.S. Space Force. Now less than a decade after the creation of the latter, Washington is abuzz with serious discussions about spinning off yet another military branch — this time a U.S. Cyber Force. The debates about an independent air force went on for more than two decades, and people talked about the merits of a separate space force for nearly as long. Calls for a cyber force may not have gone on for quite so long, but neither are they entirely new, having mirrored somewhat the establishment and evolution of the U.S. Cyber Command in 2010, aspects of the 2020 Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and ongoing parallel debate over a space force. In 2025, however, the topic is back in a big way with the publication of a new report presenting a blueprint for how to implement a cyber force, and the establishment of a new Commission on Cyber Force Generation.
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