US Military’s Cyber Force “Broken”: Report Calls for Dedicated Service

The report argues that the U.S. military’s cyber enterprise suffers from leadership mismatches and flawed recruitment, training, and promotion systems across services, and endorses creating an independent U.S. Cyber Force to address these systemic issues. Citing a Foundation for Defense of Democracies study, it highlights the lack of a unified force-generation authority despite CYBERCOM’s employment role, proposes consolidating cyber personnel under CYBERCOM (separate from NSA), standardizing talent management, accelerating acquisition of cyber capabilities, and operating with an estimated $16.5B budget, with congressional action deemed necessary to implement these reforms.