This is where I provide some commentary on commentary and originally appeared in Soldier Systems Digest, Vol 5, Issue 26.
The Pentagon knows its cyber force model is broken. Here’s how to fix it
The authors of this article revive the argument for establishing a US Cyber Force. I agree, except that the designation of Cyberspace as the fifth warfighting domain was myopic in the first place and establishing a “Cyber” force only gets part of the job done.
The reality is that Cyber is SIGINT by other means and that SIGINT is one of many elements of electromagnetic warfare. The EM spectrum is the true fifth domain.
To solve our current shortfalls, we must look to the past to face the future.
First, establish the US Security Service as the sixth military service with specialization in offensive Cyber, Electromagnetic Warfare, and SIGINT. This requires a fix to the Title 10 / Title 50 issues which caused this bifurcation of effort in the first place.
Second, reconstitute service level versions of the Security Service which were stood down and merged with other Intel organizations in the 70s and 80s. Like the USSS, these service elements will provide offensive Cyber, EW, and SIGINT capabilities to support their own service branch.
Third, merge the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command once again into a single entity with additional technical control over Electromagnetic Warfare and an understanding that this entity controls offensive actions in addition to collection. Once again, the tweaking of Title 10 / Title 50 issues is critical.
Fourth, leave cyber security to the services as they establish and manage their own networks.
The new US Security Service will provide the National Cyber Force as well as the lead on national level EMS collection efforts and EW policy and execution. It will also provide forces to support joint warfighting at the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Levels. Finally, it will establish a SOF component to support properly USSOCOM with a full seat at the table.
Unfortunately, cyber has become a generic term used by operations personnel to describe the full gamut of EW activities. While CEMA has been used here in the US as well as in the UK, Cyber ElectroMagnetic Activites seems to have lost favor even though it better describes the capability. As EW elements are embedded in Army formations under the Transformation In Contact initiative, Army combat arms Soldiers and Leaders will begin to use the term EW to generically refer to what is, EW. Unfortunately, they won’t be getting everything. The Army’s concept of EW is a stripped down capability which provides elementary direction finding and jamming, which makes it a hammer when it could be a scalpel. Signals will be geolocated without ample characterization and either jammed or passed to fires for destruction. This will invariably lead to the denial of exploitable nodes or the destruction of deceptive emitters while the real ones escape notice.
The Army is actually exacerbating the issue. The Army is combining USAREUR’s 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force with the 56th Artillery Command referring to “cyber” and traditional fires and defensive and offensive fires. The Army got the CEMA element correct in the 2nd MDTF, combining Cyber, EW, and SI in one organization. The danger is pacing all of that capability under a commander who only understands that targets get destroyed.
–Eric Graves
Founder
SSD
The danger is pacing all of that capability under a commander who only understands intelligence gain/loss.
These are revisited Hugh Trenchard and Billy Mitchell arguments. Only an airman can understand the magical new technology that is the airplane, and only the airman can advocate for and employ these new capabilities.
Electronic warfare and signals exploitation are inherent offensive and defensive design elements in modern ships, aircraft, and weapons. Shifting service and and operational authority to employ a system at the tactical edge to a unified service and combatant command headquartered at Ft. Meade means it will not be available for use to the ship captain or strike package commander without cross-combatant commander coordination. Which capabilities get shifted, and what’s retained by the current services? The empire builders say “everything” that is EW, SIGINT, or cyber related. Sorry captain, you can’t use EW to defend your ship against that inbound missile, we’re waiting for the review and approval process to be completed.
Creating service-level headquarters for new capabilities makes Washington DC bureaucrats happy, but does little to foster effective combined arms.
The system is currently broken, badly. I have been reading up on the creation of USSOCOM and what I’ve learned from it is that, without outside intervention (Congress making law) the military is incapable of fixing itself.
Every service has aircraft and every service has boats, just like they still have Space capabilities after the creation of Space Force. I believe that transitioning NSA and combing it with Cyber Command into a uniformed service rather than a command under DoD is what is needed for the 21st century.
Eric, we’re watching this play out among Space Force, National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Each agency has different charters, and each agency controls certain capabilities through distinct authorities. NRO has resisted Space Force acquiring and controlling certain types of satellites for future tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking (tacSRT), instead wanting to share control “shoulder to shoulder.” The Air Force has cancelled the AWACS replacement with the expectation that Space Force can provide equivalent coverage in the future. Will NRO be responsive to the needs of the battlefield commander? NRO has also complained to Congress that Space Force is not meeting its manning requirements to fill seats in NRO organizations.
If we have a Space Force, why do we need NRO and NGA? Space Force and SPACECOM are trying to become a “thing” but they are being relegated to a manpower pool. And NRO still wants space cadre augments from the legacy services.
NSA and CYBERCOM have different charters and different authorities. NSA has resisted CYBERCOM and the services acquiring certain types of capabilities for military purposes for many reasons. If you combine the two organizations, one mindset will override the other, and I suspect it will not favor combat effectiveness over intelligence collection.
All this means is that the services will give up a sizable portion of end strength to Cyber Force that will be relegated to a permanent party manpower pool for NSA with no gain in combat capability for the joint force. Yup, broken, but is the conventional wisdom “fix” solving something, or just rearranging the deck chairs.