Cybercom chief to Congress: Let us finish our study before directing an examination for a Cyber Force

The commander of U.S. Cyber Command has a message for lawmakers calling for independent studies on creating a new Cyber Force: let us finish our review.

Following a proposal in last year’s annual defense policy bill that was shut down, legislative provisions passed defense committees in both houses of Congress – and one passed the full House of Representatives – that would direct independent assessments examining the prospect of a new military service focused on cyber.

Congress has also asked the Pentagon to provide its own force-generation study, which has yet to be fully completed, briefed to the secretary of defense and delivered to Congress — much to lawmakers’ chagrin in the past and a big impetus behind the efforts to commission an independent study.

But the head of Cybercom wants to tap the brakes on those outside efforts until the command’s assessment has been completed.

“What I told each of those members of Congress when I spoke with them is just let us finish study one. Let us come tell you about it and then you can make a decision whether or not you need another study,” Gen. Timothy Haugh said Tuesday during a presentation at the annual DAFITC conference in Alabama. “Let’s finish the work you asked us to do. Because there’s one thing I really have learned in the last 10 years of being involved in this [is that] Congress is our partner. They have been the biggest advocate for cyber inside of the Department of Defense.”

Haugh noted that the legislative branch has asked for several studies and pushed new polices over the years in an attempt to advance cyberspace within the DOD, adding that they’ve been impactful and informed major decisions to make digital warriors more capable.

The issue of creating a sixth military service that is focused solely on cyber operations, while not new, has gained steam over the last year as threats have grown, the landscape is becoming more dynamic and readiness issues have plagued the forces that the individual services present to U.S. Cyber Command.

Each of the military services is responsible for providing personnel for a set number of teams to Cybercom, which then employs those forces in operations for the other geographic combatant commands. But detractors believe the services are too siloed in their approaches, leading to incongruent models for presenting forces to Cybercom and personnel maintaining their own service identities, which results in readiness issues, according to skeptics.

That congressionally mandated study — which is known as Section 1533 and was due to Congress June 1 – called for an examination of the current cyber enterprise, requested a look at how the services should man, train and equip for cyber, and inquired if a single military service should be responsible for basic, intermediate and advanced cyber training of the cyber mission force and if the Pentagon should create a separate service.

Previously, the DOD tapped the RAND Corp. to conduct a portion of a review that generated insights regarding challenges and opportunities of force presentation and design, mission essential tasks, civilian-contractor-military mix, training pipelines, talent management, career progression and pay.

Officials previously said alternative models presented in the study informed the Pentagon’s understanding of current and potential future constructs of the cyber forces and that DOD is exploring tradeoffs presented by the various models.

Haugh said they will bring the results of what the study found to the secretary of defense to choose a force-generation model to implement with the aim of optimizing the force.

“As we examine each of these options that are in front of us, we want to inform the secretary with both, here is what you would gain from each model, here’s what it looks like in terms of impacts to the overall department, and here are the impacts to the overall cyber force,” Haugh said.

A number of briefings across DOD have been conducted, Haugh added, saying officials expect to give their force-generation recommendations to the secretary “pretty soon.”

“Based on that, we’ll get guidance and then we’ll go back and talk to Congress,” he said.

Readiness improvements

Despite readiness concerns in the past, Haugh has noted recent improvement in how the services have presented their forces to Cybercom.

Last year, the first time the command was required to conduct a report on readiness levels, it reported to Congress recommendations on personnel polices that it expected to be most impactful if implemented across all the services.

This year’s report, by contrast, said while there are still the same priorities, the services have made progress and there is a commitment to cyberspace across all the services — something each service chief pledged to Congress during their respective confirmation hearings.

Haugh said the most impactful policy — and the one he’d like to see implemented across all the services — deals with incentive pay to retain talented cyber warriors.

“We just want to ensure [the services are] retaining the right numbers, because that’s really a service responsibility. But for me as the combatant commander, I want to be focused on the mastery of our force,” he said. “One of the ways that we can do that is a partnership with the services, so that our incentive pay is really focused on are you advancing in terms of your overall qualification and expertise? We should reward that. If someone’s a master at their work role, that’s what we would like to see rewarded. Proficiency and excellence is what we should be rewarding.”

Haugh pointed out that the Army is leading the way on that effort.