Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 119

CYBER FORCE

major networks, paralyzing many of that nation’s economic and government functions.3 Russia also attacked
Georgia through cyberspace in conjunction with its 2008
invasion of South Ossetia.4 Additionally, governments
are using cyberspace to penetrate networks routinely,
stealing missile plans, chemical formulas, and financial
data.5 However, similar to air power in 1920, cyberspace
operations played a relatively small role in the United
States’ latest wars, and some skeptics still consider cyberspace a hobbyist’s arena or the domain you can turn off.
Cyberspace activities increasingly impact the dayto-day operations of the U.S. military and the U.S.

approach to cyberspace will be punctuated, and a cyber
force will serve as the remedy.
Carl von Clausewitz noted that war requires the
maximum use of force a nation can muster: “If one side
uses force without compunction … while the other side
refrains, the first will gain the upper hand.”6 Bringing the
maximum force to the enemy, including effects through
cyberspace, is the surest guarantee of success, and inefficient organization will hamper that effort.
New wars, new budgets. It is an odd dynamic of
organizations that when budgets are large, leaders
prioritize growth over efficiency. Then, when budgets

(Photo by David Vergun, U.S. Army)

The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division’s brigade headquarters and tactical operations center at Fort Bliss, Texas,
participate in Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) 16.1. The exercise, which ran 25 September through 8 October 2015, evaluated a coalition
network that linked together the disparate networks of fourteen other armies that participated live or virtually in a simulated combat environment. New technologies assessed during NIE 16.1 included coalition network capabilities, expeditionary command posts, operational energy
capabilities, and manned/unmanned teaming (air and ground robotics).

economy, along with the operations of its allies and
adversaries (both state and nonstate). In the next war,
cyberspace will likely feature more prominently than
it has in previous conflicts. Whether the United States
wins or loses the cyberspace battles of the next war, the
importance of the battles will justify the creation of the
Cyber Force. If the U.S. cyberwarriors emerge victorious, as the airmen did in the skies over 1944 Europe,
cyberspace will have been proven as a legitimate warfighting domain, and the case for the independent U.S.
Cyber Force will be validated. If the United States fails
to achieve cyberspace superiority and suffers the stifling
consequences, the inefficiencies in the DOD’s current
MILITARY REVIEW  May-June 2016

are smaller and efficiency is truly necessary, the capital
required to optimize practices cannot be spared. With
a peace dividend as the goal, the expense required to
establish a new, more efficient military service is unavailable. As the wars of the last decade end, the defense
budgets will likewise shrink. Admittedly, the defense
budget shrank following World War II, and the Nation
still managed to establish the Air Force. In that situation,
national security policy leaders rightly identified the
rising communist threat as justification for the expense.
Today, following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no
single identifiable threat has emerged to convince the
Nation to delay the expected peace dividend. Therefore,
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