Cyber Force provision moves ahead in House and Senate defense policy bills

Story updated noon Eastern time with details of the Senate Armed Services Committee bill.

Proponents of creating a U.S. Cyber Force received a boost on Friday, as House and Senate lawmakers took actions that significantly advanced the idea.

The Republican-led House narrowly passed its version of the $895 billion annual defense policy bill, 217-199, with a provision that would mandate the Defense Department to commission an outside study on the viability of creating a separate, uniformed digital service.

The House Armed Services Committee overwhelmingly approved the legislation last month, right after members unanimously added an amendment mandating the outside assessment. 

The Senate Armed Services Committee also indicated Friday that its version of the bill — the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act — includes a Cyber Force study provision, for the second consecutive year.

The proposal was made this week by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) during the panel’s closed-door markup of the measure and adopted unanimously. She added a similar provision to the Senate draft of the legislation last year but it was ultimately cut from the final, compromise bill.

It was not immediately clear Friday if Gillibrand’s amendment was identical to the language in the House bill, which was backed by Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX). Recorded Future News first reported last month that Luttrell would push for the provision, which would require the Pentagon to tap the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent evaluation of establishing a seventh, cyber-specific military service.

While a summary of the Senate bill has been released, the actual text might not be public for weeks. 

Inclusion in the House and Senate bills bodes well for the provision’s chances of surviving final negotiations between the two chambers, which typically happen in the fall.

The Pentagon’s view

The creation of a Cyber Force would follow the formation of the Space Force in 2019. It was the first new branch of the U.S. military in 72 years.

DOD leaders have long rejected the idea of establishing such a service. They argue U.S. Cyber Command, which stood up in 2010, is still maturing and should be given time to use the service-like authorities it has been granted in recent years — including direct control over equipping and training personnel as budgeting and buying for the digital mission — before a new branch is created.

“My sense is, at the end of the day, what we need is we need the Department of Defense to design, deliver and deploy the most capable cyber forces that can deal with the threats today and in the future. And they should do it in the fastest time possible,” recently retired Cyber Command and National Security Agency chief Paul Nakasone said earlier this month.

“I don’t think a service is the fastest time possible,” he told reporters before being presented the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s William Oliver Baker Award.

“How we get better is doing operations. We don’t get better, necessarily, forming a service and thinking about a uniform and what’s the song and all these things. There is a huge tail in that.”

The retired four-star demurred when asked if a cyber branch is inevitable.

“I don’t know. I don't know,” he said. ”Let’s first of all deal with the end state that we need to do, which is design, deploy, deliver the best force today and for tomorrow. We get that right, do we really need a service?”

Earlier this year, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies issued a study that urged the creation of a military service for cyber, calling the current model for providing forces to the command “clearly broken.” It recommended the branch be placed under the Army, with 10,000 personnel and a $16.5 billion budget.

Other House-passed provisions

Here’s a rundown of some other notable cyber measures that made it into the House’s version of the must-pass policy blueprint:

• The bill directs the Defense secretary to designate the Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Network as a subordinate unified command under Cyber Command. The organization is responsible for defending the Pentagon’s global network.

• The bipartisan would establish a “Department of Defense Hackathon Program” under which the service secretaries and combatant command chiefs would carry out no less than four such events annually.

• The legislation fences off 25 percent of the Defense secretary’s travel budget until the Pentagon delivers a backlog of cyber-focused studies required in previous defense policy bills.