Cyber as Service Branch?

Taken from the April 14, 2015 issue of the NGAUS Washington Report, a weekly e-newsletter of the National Guard Association of the United States

Defense Secretary Ash Carter has suggested that cyber could become its own service branch. Military Times says the secretary’s remarks at U.S. Cyber Command headquarters in Maryland recently “raised eyebrows.”

“There may come a time when that makes sense,” Carter said in response to a question. “And I think you have to look at this as the first step in a journey that may, over time, lead to the decision to break out cyber the way you said the Army Air Corps became the U.S. Air Force, the way Special Operations Command was created.”

Military Times asked experts to weigh in.

“Would it look like the Air Force?” said Richard Bejtlich, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and an expert on cyber. “Or would it be more like the Coast Guard? Would it be a [Defense Department] service or a [Department of Homeland Security] service? Would the cyber corps have some sort of volunteer or civilian element?”

He said it might look much different from current services.

“The whole officer-enlisted stuff doesn’t really work well in cyber,” he said. “Some of the best people I’ve known in cyber were enlisted people, and the fact that they don’t have a college degree made no difference whatsoever.”

A new cyber service branch would hit the budgets of the current service, all of which have some cyber effort.

“The cyber mission has pretty much infiltrated everyone’s budget process by now,” said Trey Herr, a cyber warfare expert at George Washington University. “The existing services are going to fight tooth and nail to retain some of those mission sets.”