James Stavridis, a columnist for Bloomberg, wrote about how the United States needs a cyber force more than it needs a space force. He said that while President Trump’s idea of implementing a space force isn’t all that farfetched, political energy would be better spent focusing on more cyber protection.
This is because the United States has been facing cyberattacks for some time, including attacks by Russia and the Ukraine, and even now, but haven’t faced any attacks from space yet.
“Military activity in the cyber realm is currently a pick-up game, with each of the services offering a small cadre of cyber warriors on a temporary basis to the Pentagon’s newest combatant command, U.S. Cyber Command,” Stavridis says. It has “done a good job of marshalling these individual service contributions, but it is a cumbersome process and those assigned to the command usually return to their parent service after their tour of duty…”
Stavridis also says that the time and manpower that would be put into serving a cyber force would be minimal compared to what is currently being put into the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Plus, each of those branches do not have the adequate amount of time to focus on cyber attacks, since “they are very busy training, equipping and organizing their force to do the traditional warfighting tasks in the land, sea and air.”
A cyber force would only need about 5,000-10,000 employees, Stavridis says, as opposed to the 500,000 plus personnel and Army and Navy have. All these worker would need is some clear guidance: “The key is putting them under a unified command with a unique service culture and keeping them working in this sphere indefinitely, just as we do with a nuclear submariner or a fast-attack jet pilot or any other specialized military occupation,” he says.
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