WASHINGTON — A possible new uniformed service focused solely on cyberspace operations would require an initial budget of at least $10 billion, according to a new report.
There has been a growing chorus in recent years calling for an independent cyber force to remedy readiness shortfalls with the underlying cyber personnel in the military and inconsistencies across each of those services. Currently, each of the military services — all with their own personnel polices, troop rotations, and pay scales — are responsible for providing personnel for a set number of teams to US Cyber Command, which then employs those forces in operations for the other geographic combatant commands.
That report was published today by the Commission on US Cyber Force Generation — launched in September by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in partnership with the Cyber Solarium Commission 2.0 (CSC 2.0) project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The commission is made up of several recently retired two- and three-star cyber commanders, former top Pentagon cyber officials, and mid-level cyber personnel.
The report operates under the hypothetical situation where a directive for a Cyber Force has been given, and provides a roadmap for what it could look like. The goal, according to FDD senior fellow Mark Montgomery, is to avoid the mistakes made when standing up the Space Force in 2019.
“When that go order comes, we have to be better prepared than we were for Space Force,” said Montgomery, who was a commissioner for the report. “You need to be ready to go. This report is going to be an important part of that ligature of how you get ready to go and how you don’t dork this up because this is going to be hard, and there will be antibodies to it, even when the president says do it, there’ll be antibodies to how to do it and so we’ve got to lay out the best possible course.”
The initial $10 billion to $11 billion budget recommendation would realign existing money Congress has already allocated to the military across the services to the Cyber Force, said Joshua Stiefel, vice president for government relations at software company Second Front.
“That would be an easy thing that a Cyber Force could take on to then be doled out to Cyber Command, et cetera. That’s for later. But that money exists in the budget today,” Stiefel, a former professional staff member at the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters. “By unifying that, by consolidating and then centralizing it, our proposition is you’re going to get a lot better return on your investment.”
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The prospect of a Cyber Force is still dubious. There was some optimism of its creation at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Efforts in the annual defense policy bill have failed or been watered down in years past.
However, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, is planning to introduce an amendment to the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act to create a Cyber Force, Defense One reported.
That proposal, and others that could be introduced in the House, must survive multiple rounds of negotiations and a presidential signature before becoming law.
What A Cyber Force Could Look Like
In terms of where the Cyber Force would exist within DoD, the commission studied two alignments outlining pros and cons of each, without offering an opinion: one within the Department of the Army — akin to the Marine Corps under the Department of the Navy and the Space Force under the Department of the Air Force — and one as its own military department called the Department of the Cyber Force, which would then require its own service chief and secretary.
Core focus areas for the new Cyber Force would be offensive and defensive cyber operations. The report recommends leaving efforts related to defending the DoD Information Network to the services, which is currently CYBERCOM’s number one mission area. Given the DoDIN is a federated system in which each service owns slices of to perform its missions, the commissioners believed the individual services would be best postured to take ownership of its maintenance and defense.
The proposed Cyber Force would take between 12 and 18 months to reach initial operating capacity, through a phased approach, the report states. As for the size of the Cyber Force, the report estimated a total of 33,000 troops, comprising 20,000 active duty, 3,500 to 5,000 part-time National Guardsmen, and roughly 5,000 to 6,000 civilian and contractor personnel.
A Cyber Force will look different than the current services do in terms of makeup and culture given the highly unique and technical nature of the work. For example, the report recommends its uniformed workforce consist only of commissioned officers and warrant officers — highly technical experts — with no enlisted cadre.
Stiefel drew parallels to other areas of great technical expertise, both in the military and the private sector. For example, the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment has personnel that are a mix of commissioned officers and warrant officers at the highest level of their discipline.
“What you’re going to see there is technical experts and managers who are also able to operate,” he said of the proposed Cyber Force makeup. “We believe that this is a mechanism which addresses that and especially for a force that’s so small it really has to be able to punch above its weight.”
Montgomery noted there will likely be a different mix of civilian and military personnel at operational units. While most services have almost entirely uniformed personnel serving in operational units, he said he “could imagine a world where it’s 50/50” military and civilian, similar to the National Security Agency.
The force will also require different echelons than traditional services, opting for task forces rather than squadrons and battalions, former Army Cyber Command commander Ed Cardon said.
“Having been the initial commander of Task Force Ares, which at the time was a top secret offensive cyber task force against ISIS, you need a lot of flexibility in organizational structure. So you see the widespread use of task forces. Now you’re going to have to have some sort of organizing principle, but the way that they’re presented does not have to be a 40 person team. It might be a three person team,” Cardon, told reporters, organized for the mission at hand with the requisite expertise.