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.” 

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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.

• The Holland has about 20,000 parts, while the Columbia class has millions. The tool “goes down to each nut, bolts, screw, washer. We have all that detail, because we control the design database, we make the design. So with the modern era, we can take those same models that are made to build the boat, and then create tools to help the guys figure out what they’re doing,” said Eric Banach, a software engineer for General Dynamics Electric Boat. 

Buildsubmarines.com is pulling in thousands of new shipbuilders. The Navy’s slick ad campaign to attract shipyard workers is still going strong, said Josh Sturgill, the workforce development coordinator for the Submarine Industrial Base Program Office, at the GDIT event. He said the site gets about 75,000 application clicks a month and “somewhere between 5.7 and 6 percent of those that click ‘apply’ are going to continue on to a job interview and offer inside the submarine industrial base. That’s what, statistically, [I’ve been] seeing over the last five years.” 

• Background: The Navy-backed effort acts as a job portal across the shipbuilding industry and aims to attract new talent to an industry that has struggled in recent years with high turnover and green workers.  
• But things have improved, according to General Dynamics HR executives, who point to new initiatives in housing, wellness, and childcare as part of a broader plan to keep more workers. 
• “We broke ground this year on a housing project…housing in Maine is the single biggest barrier to growing this workforce in terms of attracting talent. So, we—General Dynamics and the Navy—we worked with a developer to put in 85 units of housing that are going to be focused on entry-level positions to have,” said Ray Steen, vice president of human resources at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, noting that attrition was previously in the high 20 percent range is now around 5 percent. “That’s a long play that didn’t affect [attrition] three years ago, but it’s going to help it going forward.”
• Steen said this workforce-forward approach, which includes higher wages, is what helped the shipyard deliver USS Patrick Gallagher two months ahead of schedule. 

MUSVs & more

• The Marines want a new JLTV supplier. The Marine Corps released a request for information seeking a new supplier for the JLTV—which is more than a year behind schedule. The Army canceled its JLTV program last year but the Marines requested about $245 million to buy 341 units according to the 2027 budget proposal. Responses are due June 10. 
• General Dynamics is spending $200 million to “unwind a partnership with Turkish defense contractor Repkon in a bid to finally start producing 155mm artillery shells at a Texas plant that’s been beset by delays,” Tony Capaccio writes for Bloomberg. Repkon acquired the Garland, Texas plant that manufactures metal parts for munitions from General Dynamics last year. The move also raised concerns about potential foreign influence in domestic defense supply chains. 
• Seaborne showcase. The Navy picked seven vendors to demonstrate their medium unmanned surface vessels at sea from June through October. Successful demos will receive $15 million and would be eligible for a production contract. Selected contenders are Birdon, Galliano Marine Services, HII, Leidos, PacMar Technologies, Saronic Technologies, and Sea Machines.

One last tech thing: Join us June 16 at our annual Tech Summit at the Pentagon City Ritz Carlton. Listen to key leaders discuss AI adoption, autonomous operations, the future of military technology—and, my personal favorite, the “backers of the battlefield.” See you there! 

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Cyber threats are an increasingly persistent national security concern supercharged by AI—and so is the industry built to help hospitals, financial institutions, and the Pentagon secure their networks. But unlike the defense industrial base overall, there’s no clear prime. Could that change with venture capital?

Joe Lin, co-founder and CEO of the VC-backed cyber firm Twenty, said private capital isn’t pouring into cybersecurity at the same rate as other defense tech areas in part because it’s unclear whether “true winners” will emerge. 

​​”This was an ecosystem [that was] very, very hard for outsiders to come in and join. So that barrier has gone down. That’s the good news,” Lin said during Second Front’s Offset Symposium earlier this month. “I think the question is still out as to whether or not a company that is able to take a lot of money invested into private R&D is able to actually be successful in the space where, historically, there’s been a lot of peanut-butter spreading in terms of awards—funding awards, contract awards—and whether or not there will actually be true winners that will come out of this.”

Make it work, make it malleable

The winners will make versatile technology that works as the customer needs, said Brian Carbaugh, ex-CIA turned co-founder and CEO of Andesite, a VC-backed defensive cyber data analytics startup. 

“There is a tremendous amount of noise. There are a lot of marketing dollars being spent,” Carbaugh told Defense One. “From a customer, from a buyer standpoint, you can see some elements of fatigue because they’re having to sift through just so many vendors and pitches that oftentimes don’t materialize.” 

Buyers’ expectations for cyber tools and services are extremely high, Carbaugh said, and  companies must deliver products that can “do all the things, all the time. Because, I think, what most of us in this space thought would be sort of innovative in terms of features and functionality—increasingly it’s becoming table stakes.”

That’s not a warning shot for nascent companies, it’s an opportunity, he said. 

“The warning lights are blinking red in a lot of these [security] operations centers. The work that CISOs and their teams put in are, it’s nothing short of heroic on a daily basis,” Carbaugh said. There’s technology now that can “optimize” and level up analysts “by wrapping this tech around them” and are auditable with a “very, very high security compliance.”

But as cyber threats and industry grow, the Pentagon may need a more tightly coupled relationship with the cyber industrial base. 

“There’s an assortment of different companies that provide tools or services that are the ones that build and operate the domain on which we fight. They build our battlefield. We need to start partnering together so that they don’t build the battlefield and we operate on it in a very disjointed way,” said Katie Sutton, the Pentagon’s cyber policy chief, during the symposium. 

That relationship must also leave room for tweaks and changes to cyber tools, said Maria Barrett, former commanding general of U.S. Army Cyber Command.

“It’s also got to be about the vendor being willing to work with us, and right side the operator, or whoever the user is, to tweak it. Because, I think, that quality of adaptability by the industry partner and the willingness to be able to do that and deliver it quickly…that’s the new normal,” she said on the panel.

Welcome

You’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!

HASC’s NDAA mark. The House Armed Services Committee dropped its draft of the annual defense policy bill this week. Two things that caught my eye are related to supply chains: 

• One provision seeks to boost the solid rocket motor industrial base by creating a Pentagon working group that “would require that certain covered munitions have more than one solid rocket motor supplier.” 
• Lawmakers urge the defense secretary to “obligate and expend funding that has been appropriated by Congress for this explicit effort” 
• They also worry about the Pentagon’s use of direct equity investments in an established industry, such as solid rocket motors. “The committee also remains concerned with the sole use of equity investments with regards to expanding solid rocket motor industrial base when there are other tools that could be used in a more expeditious manner given the importance of increasing munition production,” the draft said. 

• Another provision would require the Pentagon’s industrial policy shop create a “Defense Supply Chain Risk and Response Program” to “develop a common framework across the Department of Defense and with contractors to enable a holistic and coordinated approach for identifying managing risks,” including cyber vulnerabilities, foreign investments, financial distress, and supply chain disruptions. 

Around the horn 

• The Navy has created new leadership roles for information warfare: Jennifer Edgin has been appointed assistant deputy chief of naval operations for IW requirements and capabilities; and Rear Adm. Susan Bryer Joyner as IW director. 
• Deloitte landed a $249 million contract to support implementation of the Army’s organic industrial base modernization plan. It was the only bidder. 
• The Justice Department arrested two defense contractors for bribery and fraud related to Army Pacific Command’s innovation hub in Hawaii. 
• Someone robbed the SEC.
• SpaceX just landed a more-than-$2 billion satellite communications contract. 
• One more cyber thing: The Pentagon is updating its three-year-old cybersecurity strategy and implementation plan, which cyber policy chief Sutton said will “set a very definitive vision of where we need to go” with “a very detailed action plan” for attacking persistent challenges, such as building a skilled workforce and making sure cyber operators have the most current tools. 

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