The U.S. Department of Defense has unveiled a highly anticipated plan aimed at revitalizing the military’s cyber capabilities. The initiative seeks to attract and retain top talent in the field, better integrating US Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) with other military branches and establishing three new organizations dedicated to excellence in hacking and defense.
Three New Pillars for Cyber Supremacy
Announced late Thursday, the new effort, though still light on specific details, „fundamentally changes the Department’s approach to generating cyber forces, enabling increased lethality in our cyber forces and establishing a warrior ethos built on domain mastery, specialized skills, and mission agility,” stated Katie Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, echoing the priorities of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The three „enabling” organizations will be:
- A Cyber Talent Management Organization: Designed to „identify, attract, recruit, and retain an elite cyber force.”
- An Advanced Cyber Training and Education Center: Aimed at „developing mission-specific training and education to build expertise and mastery.”
- A Cyber Innovation Warfare Center: Intended to „accelerate the rapid development and delivery of operational cyber capabilities.”
A Cyber Warrior Ethos: The Seven Core Attributes
The plan is also based on seven „core attributes”:
- Targeted recruiting and assessments, seeking to assess recruits for the proper work role fit at US Cyber Command.
- Incentives to recruit and retain top cyber talent.
- Tailored and agile advanced training.
- Tailored assignment management aiming to adopt career paths that enable the development and retention of cyber mastery.
- Specialized mission sets.
- Presented with headquarters and combat support.
- Optimized unit phasing that will support a sustainable operational tempo.
„The War Department (Pentagon) is laser-focused on strengthening our military’s cyber capabilities to defend the homeland and deter China. The Department has implemented an updated cyber force generation model that will enhance our ability to respond decisively against evolving threats in the cyber domain,” announced Pentagon policy chief Elbridge A. Colby, using a secondary name for the Department of Defense.
From „CYBERCOM 2.0” to a Refined Vision
The new plan appears to be a revised version of what was initially called CYBERCOM 2.0, an ambitious effort first unveiled by then-US Cyber Command chief Gen. Paul Nakasone between late 2023 and early 2024. At the time, it was described as a way to respond to a variety of required congressional studies and to modernize the command, as its structure and forces have remained largely unchanged since its inception 15 years ago. The CYBERCOM 2.0 initiative was first approved at the end of the Biden administration and included four broad pillars, including the three newly announced organizations. The fourth was billed as a new force generation model for how each service provides cyber forces to CYBERCOM.
The Trump administration initially asked to speed up the implementation plan that the Biden administration approved, and then sent the plan back to the command to rework. The command’s top enlisted leader noted at a military cyber conference at the end of June that many of the components from the original effort would remain, but they planned to add to it. „We’re in the middle of re-looking at it… a lot of the components that we have within the original, it’ll still be there, but we’re adding a lot more into it,” said Chief Master Sergeant Kenneth Bruce, senior enlisted leader of CYBERCOM and NSA, at HammerCon.
Old Challenges, New Solutions? The Cyber Talent Dilemma
CYBERCOM’s cyber mission force, the 147 teams each service provides to CYBERCOM to conduct cyber operations, has been plagued by readiness issues almost from the start, according to former officials and experts. One of the core problems the command suffers from is its reliance on the services to provide trained and ready forces. Cyber has typically never been a huge priority for the services, despite pledges to the contrary, according to experts, congressional staff, and former military officials.
As experts and former officials have indicated, if a service chief doesn’t have enough forces to fill out their own units, be it an armored brigade or a squadron, the last thing they’re going to think about is getting more cyber personnel to CYBERCOM. In a revealing moment, when asked if he felt he prioritized the readiness of the cyber force on par with ships, aircraft, and submarines, former chief of naval operations retired Adm. Michael Gilday said in September that he’d done it „not as effectively,” adding he thought he could have done a better job.
The „Cyber Force” Debate: Autonomy or Optimization of Existing Authority?
Despite Thursday’s rollout, the question still remains of how much sway the commander of CYBERCOM has to compel the services to provide more forces or make changes to meet mission needs. When it comes to developing, maintaining, and retaining top cyber talent, the command and DoD have struggled. Promotions and assignments come from the services, not CYBERCOM. Oftentimes, the department would spend years training operators only to have them rotate out of those roles to go back to their service. This not only created gaps in work roles but frustrated personnel who wanted to be operators but lacked career paths and took salaries in the private sector that doubled or tripled what they made within the department.
In the background of the CYBERCOM 2.0 effort, there has been a harder push in recent years to develop a standalone cyber force, a seventh military branch specifically focused on cyber. Proponents of a new military branch believe it is the only way to solve the myriad problems that have plagued CYBERCOM and the cyber mission force for years. Opponents of a Cyber Force have said the command needs more time to exercise certain authorities to right the ship. Congress granted CYBERCOM expanded service-like authorities called enhanced budget authority, providing it authorization of the entire cyber operations budget, alongside its already existing acquisition authorities and joint force trainer role setting training standards across all the services.
These service-like authorities mirror how Special Operations Command is set up – with its own service-like secretary at the Pentagon, the assistant secretary of defense for Cyber Policy (created in the fiscal 2023 annual defense policy bill). The CYBERCOM 2.0 effort, now just dubbed „force generation,” really boils down to better leveraging the authorities the command gained from Congress in recent years, according to former officials. Much of the activity under the new planning would be necessary regardless of a new service or not.
