The cyber mission force began building in 2012, and the initial 133 teams reached full operational capability in 2018. In DOD’s fiscal 2022 budget request, U.S. Cyber Command proposed and was eventually approved for a phased approach to add 14 additional cyber mission force teams beyond the original 133. That request and authorization in 2021 was the first substantial effort to grow that force since it was designed almost a decade ago, long before modern and advanced threats had surfaced.

“In 2021, the Secretary of Defense directed the creation of 14 New cyber teams by September 2028. Of the 14 teams, 12 have been established. These teams are spread across Army, Air Force, and Navy Commands,” a Cybercom spokesperson said.

They declined to offer specifics regarding how many additional teams each service received or what types of teams those additional builds provided to each service — such as offensive, defensive or support teams — citing operational security.

The original 133-team cyber mission force included 41 Army teams, 40 Navy teams, 39 Air Force teams and 13 Marine Corps teams.

Those teams included 68 cyber protection teams, defensive teams focused on hunting threats on the DOD’s network; 27 combat mission teams that conduct cyber operations on behalf of combatant commands, mostly in the offensive sphere; 13 national mission teams that belong to the high-end Cyber National Mission Force, charged with defending the homeland from cyber threats; and 25 support teams that provide intelligence, mission planning and other necessary support work for combat and national mission teams.

For its part, the Space Force has noted that eventually, it plans to create a component to Cybercom, with mission analysis teams being established. However, a Space Force spokesperson said there’s no definite timeline associated with the standup of other service components, including the Space Force service component to Cybercom. The service will continue to identify requirements to meet the growing demands of combatant commanders’ space needs, they added.

The Air Force was slated to receive the bulk of the new cyber mission force teams as part of the buildup, with a total of six: two cyber protection teams, two combat mission teams and two combat support teams.

Late last year, officials noted they were ready to begin calculating the readiness for three of the new teams.

The Air Force supports cyber operations for European Command, Space Command and Strategic Command, under its Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber. Each service cyber component commander is also the commander of respective Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber organizations that provide cyber support, planning and operations to assigned combatant commands.

The Army was expected to receive four new teams, with two of them supporting the cyber mission force as of late last year.

The Army supports and conducts cyber operations for Northern Command, Africa Command and Central Command.

The Navy, for its part, was slated to receive four new teams as well: two combat mission teams and two combat support teams, according to a source.

The Navy supports and conducts cyber operations for Southern Command, Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Forces Korea.

The Marine Corps, for its part, supports Special Operations Command and Joint Task Force-Ares, which used to be the counter-ISIS cyber mission but now is focused on nation-state activity, primarily China.

Transportation Command is supported by Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Network.

The Cybercom spokesperson also noted that cyber mission force teams can provide operational value before reaching full capacity as their mission elements can function during the “build-up” phase.

Those mission elements break the larger teams up into smaller portions, allowing some elements to be available for tasking and others for training and reconstitution. For example, a 68-person cyber protection team has three elements, allowing them to rotate rather than employing or deploying all personnel.

As new teams are being built, the mission elements could be in different stages, allowing a team to contribute while it’s still holistically being built.

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During the committee’s markup of the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, an amendment offered by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc. — who chairs the HASC subcommittee on cyber, innovative technologies and information systems — would require the DOD’s principal cyber advisor, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness along with the principal cyber advisors of the services and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command to conduct a study on the personnel and resources required to enhance and support the occupational resiliency of the cyber mission force (CMF).

The CMF conducts cyber operations on behalf of U.S. Cyber Command. Each of the services are responsible for providing a set amount of teams to Cybercom to perform offensive and defensive ops. At the outset, there were 133 teams but the DOD has authorized growth to 147 in the next five years.  

There are three primary buckets the teams fall into: offensive teams that conduct cyber ops on behalf of combatant commands, defensive teams that defend and hunt on DOD networks for adversary activity, and support teams that provide intelligence, mission planning and other necessary assistance for combat mission teams.

Additionally, the Cyber National Mission Force — the command’s elite cyber warriors tasked with defending the nation from cyber threats — has teams that perform offensive functions under the guise of active defense, or acting outside of DOD networks to thwart a potential threat.

The provision in the House NDAA markup defines ‘‘occupational resiliency’’ as the ability of CMF personnel to mitigate unique psychological factors that contribute to the degradation of mental health and job performance under such assignment.

These personnel often work long hours and are always conducting operations. Officials frequently remind the public that cyber operators are in constant contact with adversaries in cyberspace — either defending DOD networks from daily enemy probes or carrying out offensive ops.

With the exception of so-called hunt-forward operations — which involves physically sending defensively oriented cyber teams to foreign countries to search for threats on their networks at the invitation of host nations — cyber warriors aren’t forward-deployed in the traditional sense, but report to their jobs and return to their homes following operations.

The study mandated by the House panel must include an inventory of the resources and programs available to personnel assigned to the CMF and their locations; an assessment of the risk to the occupational resiliency of personnel relative to their work role within the CMF and the number of such personnel available to perform operations in each type of team; an evaluation of the extent to which personnel assigned to the CMF have been made aware of resources and programs and the measures required to improve such awareness; and a determination by the commander of Cybercom regarding the adequacy and accessibility of such resources and programs for CMF personnel.

The House Armed Services Committee passed its version of the defense policy bill just after midnight on Thursday. The legislation must still be passed by the full House, reconciled with the Senate’s version of the NDAA and be signed by the president before becoming law.

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