A CASE FOR AN INDEPENDENT CYBER FORCE

Although cyberspace is considered the newest warfighting domain, military analysts and scholars have opined the United States remains woefully behind its peers in cyberspace and have called for the creation of a separate cyber service component. Yet a cohesive and robust discussion on this topic has yet to emerge. This article proposes a general framework that builds on the Joint doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy (DOTMLPF-P) analysis to address questions of sufficiency and necessity. Such analysis reveals DoD cyber operations do not maximize the United States’ ability to fight a cyber war, especially when compared against near-peer and peer threats such as China and Russia. A separate cyber force would position the United States to meet these challenges head on.