Defense Business Brief: Cyber force, outlined; Shipbuilding game; USMC’s JLTV plea

The military could stand up a separate service branch to handle cyber operations by 2028— should Congress or the White House decide to do so this year, according to a new Center for Strategic and International Studies report released Wednesday. “Regardless of institutional alignment, reaching initial operating capacity (IOC) would take between 12 and 18 months and proceed through several sequential phases: setting conditions; fielding the IOC; iterative growth over several years; and institutional refinement,” CSIS’s commission on Cyber Force Generation wrote. “Following a presidential decision or legislative action to establish a new Title 10 service, this force generation model would address longstanding structural challenges and build the Cyber Force the United States needs for this critical domain of warfare.”The branch could have about 30,000 people, including around 20,000 active-duty troops and warrant officers from across the services, up to 5,000 National Guard members, and up to 6,000 civilians and contractors, states the report, which was co-written with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.The report arrives as lawmakers mull a proposal to order the creation of a cyber service, a topic that has been debated for the past decade. Mark Montgomery, who leads FDD’s cyber center and previously led the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said a new service is needed. In “the last six to 12 years, I would say that the performance of the services has been an obstruction to success. And that's a tough thing to say because services don't want to be an obstruction…they want to do the right thing,” Montgomery told reporters. “But our ability to recruit, train, maintain, and retain a cyber force has struggled. Our recruiting has never focused on—none of the services' recruiting efforts focus on: ‘Can you code Python?’”A separate service would allow cyber operators to have their own budget—and their own culture, said Lauryn Williams, deputy director of CSIS’ Strategic Technologies Program. And there’s a “similar need for a lot of deliberation and discussion around what a cyber force culture and doctrine should look like, not least because it would be drawing personnel from every other military service, so would be a mishmash of cultures, maybe, to start.” WelcomeYou’ve reached the Defense Business Brief, where we dig into what the Pentagon buys, who they’re buying from, and why. Send along your tips, feedback, and song recommendations to lwilliams@defenseone.com. Check out the Defense Business Brief archive here, and tell your friends to subscribe!Subbuilding game. GDIT’s Emerge event Tuesday came with a virtual training tool for new submarine shipbuilders. The technology imports all the design elements of the Columbia and Virginia class and renders them into a navigable learning experience. But the demo version used an older boat, the USS Holland, from the turn of the 20th century. Using an Xbox controller, new hires can tour the submarine class they’ll be working on, and point and click on a part to learn more about what it does and where it goes.

Raccontata dadefenseone.com