The possible creation of a Cyber Force as an independent military service is making waves in Washington, including with a key House Armed Services Committee lawmaker.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies interviewed more than 75 active duty and retired military officers and said it discovered that an inefficient division of labor among the armed services is preventing America’s cyber forces from carrying out their mission.
The influential think tank published its findings this week and called for the establishment of a Cyber Force to stand alongside the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force.
The proposal grabbed Rep. Mike Gallagher, the outgoing leader of the House Armed Services Committee’s cyber panel.
The Wisconsin Republican, set to quit Congress next month, said he’s rethinking his skeptical view of the need for a cyber armed service because of the think tank’s report.
“Congress needs to have the Department of Defense commission an independent assessment of the force generation challenges to include some recommended ways forward,” Mr. Gallagher said Monday at an FDD event. “I think we need the department to have an outside assessor replicate this study, but at an even deeper level.”
U.S. Cyber Command has served as the combatant unit for the cyberspace domain for more than a decade and pulls together personnel from the armed services into a Cyber Mission Force.
The FDD’s Mark Montgomery and Columbia University’s Erica Lonergan authored the study that reported an alarming picture of cyber coordination problems among the armed services, plus recruitment and retention woes.
“Recruitment suffers because cyber operations are not a top priority for any of the services, and incentives for new recruits vary wildly,” the duo wrote. “The services do not coordinate to ensure that trainees acquire a consistent set of skills or that their skills correspond to the roles they will ultimately fulfill at CYBERCOM. Promotion systems often hold back skilled cyber personnel because the systems were designed to evaluate service members who operate on land, at sea or in the air, not in cyberspace.”
The report calls for the Cyber Force to be established within the Army, similar to how the Marine Corps sits in the Navy, and Space Force exists under the Air Force.
The FDD study envisioned the new force would need 10,000 personnel, which Mr. Montgomery on Monday said would likely grow and settle to about 17,000.
He said that growing the number of cyber personnel within the armed services has proved challenging and is part of his motivation for a new Cyber Force.
“We’ve noticed over the last 12 years trying to grow it by going to services and saying, ‘Could you man one less destroyer or one less F-35 squadron or one less battalion and give us the troop?’ They’re not going to do that,” Mr. Montgomery said. “And I understand.”
The Defense Department is considering changes to U.S. Cyber Command. John Plumb, principal cyber adviser to the defense secretary, said in January that efforts to shape America’s future cyber forces inside the Pentagon have led to a new policy push dubbed Cyber Command 2.0.
He told reporters that defense officials were creating options that would build on independent studies and coordinate with combatant commands and the armed services.
Mr. Gallagher said he’s not optimistic about the Pentagon’s approach.
“They recently had a commitment to create a vision for Cyber Command 2.0, which is kind of a tacit recognition that the status quo in force generation is not working, but I worry that it might not be an honest independent assessment of how we fix readiness,” he said.
U.S. Cyber Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment.