The only way that we can help our community and our enterprise customers continue to check their coverage against adversary activity and new threats is to keep our platforms fresh. In the last week, the Tidal Cyber Adversary Intelligence Team added significant content to the platforms to help them do just that. Beyond mapping to MITRE ATT&CK^®, the team also continually applies its own tools, research, and deep understanding of the current cyber threat landscape to create and maintain threat profiles most relevant to enterprises. Enterprise users can gain an even richer view by enabling Tidal’s new integrations with popular threat intelligence vendors, ensuring their view of the landscape is as complete as possible.

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A U.S. Cyber Force moved a step closer to reality this week after the House Armed Services Committee approved language authorizing a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study of the issue. The amendment, proposed by Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX), was included in the committee’s markup of the fiscal 2025 defense bill, which now goes to the full House for a vote. The amendment – which can be found as log 4401 in the Chairman’s En Bloc – gives the Defense Department 60 days after enactment to engage the Academy, which then has 270 days to submit the report to Congress, so the U.S. is unlikely to get the new armed services branch before fiscal 2027 at the earliest, if it happens at all. But as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) unsuccessfully pushed a similar measure last year, the study appears to have a better chance of approval this year.

CYBERCOM Under Siege

Cyber defense has been under the U.S. Cyber Command, or CYBERCOM, since 2010. CYBERCOM brings together personnel from the separate service branches, but that arrangement has come under increasing scrutiny as an inadequate solution to a growing global threat. A 2022 GAO study noted problems with cyber training, staffing and retention across the service branches, and a Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) study in March of this year detailed problems with the lack of a singular approach to cyber defense.   “The inefficient division of labor between the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps prevents the generation of a cyber force ready to carry out its mission,” the FDD report said.

“Recruitment suffers because cyber operations are not a top priority for any of the services, and incentives for new recruits vary wildly. The services do not coordinate to ensure that trainees acquire a consistent set of skills or that their skills correspond to the roles they will ultimately fulfill at CYBERCOM.”

Promotion systems often hold back skilled cyber personnel because the systems were designed to evaluate service members who operate on land, at sea, or in the air, not in cyberspace. Retention rates for qualified personnel are low because of inconsistent policies, institutional cultures that do not value cyber expertise, and insufficient opportunities for advanced training. “Resolving these issues requires the creation of a new independent armed service – a U.S. Cyber Force – alongside the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force.” The FDD report concluded, “America’s cyber force generation system is clearly broken. Fixing it demands nothing less than the establishment of an independent cyber service.”

CYBERCOM Retools for the Future

CYBERCOM, which was elevated to a unified command in 2018, is taking its own steps to address the growing cyber warfare threat. In testimony last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Air Force General Timothy D. Haugh, who serves as CYBERCOM’s commander and director of the NSA, noted some of the ways CYBERCOM is addressing those challenges. “CYBERCOM 2.0” is an initiative under way “to develop a bold set of options to present to the Secretary of Defense on the future of USCYBERCOM and DoD cyber forces,” Haugh told the committee. “To maximize capacity, capability, and agility, we are addressing readiness and future force generation.” Enhanced Budgetary Control (EBC) authority granted by Congress gave more than $2 billion in DoD budget authority to CYBERCOM for the current fiscal year, and “streamlines how we engage the Department’s processes,” Haugh said. “EBC is already paying dividends in the form of tighter alignments between authorities, responsibility, and accountability in cyberspace operations. Greater accountability, in turn, facilitates faster development and fielding of capabilities.” It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will get a seventh military service branch – after the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Space Force – or if current initiatives will be enough to address cyber defense challenges. But it seems likely that the issue will get a lot more scrutiny before it’s settled. Media Disclaimer: This report is based on internal and external research obtained through various means. The information provided is for reference purposes only, and users bear full responsibility for their reliance on it. The Cyber Express assumes no liability for the accuracy or consequences of using this information.

The new U.S. approach to cyberthreats comes as early optimism about a “global internet” connecting the world has been shattered.

© Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

“We will be attacked,” the official responsible for fending off cyberthreats said. To prepare, organizers have been hosting war games and paying “bug bounties” to hackers.

© Pierre-Philippe Marcou/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Fascinating analysis of the use of drones on a modern battlefield—that is, Ukraine—and the inability of the US Air Force to react to this change.

The F-35A certainly remains an important platform for high-intensity conventional warfare. But the Air Force is planning to buy 1,763 of the aircraft, which will remain in service through the year 2070. These jets, which are wholly unsuited for countering proliferated low-cost enemy drones in the air littoral, present enormous opportunity costs for the service as a whole. In a set of comments posted on LinkedIn last month, defense analyst T.X. Hammes estimated the following. The delivered cost of a single F-35A is around $130 million, but buying and operating that plane throughout its lifecycle will cost at least $460 million. He estimated that a single Chinese Sunflower suicide drone costs about $30,000—so you could purchase 16,000 Sunflowers for the cost of one F-35A. And since the full mission capable rate of the F-35A has hovered around 50 percent in recent years, you need two to ensure that all missions can be completed—for an opportunity cost of 32,000 Sunflowers. As Hammes concluded, “Which do you think creates more problems for air defense?”

Ironically, the first service to respond decisively to the new contestation of the air littoral has been the U.S. Army. Its soldiers are directly threatened by lethal drones, as the Tower 22 attack demonstrated all too clearly. Quite unexpectedly, last month the Army cancelled its future reconnaissance helicopter ­ which has already cost the service $2 billion—because fielding a costly manned reconnaissance aircraft no longer makes sense. Today, the same mission can be performed by far less expensive drones—without putting any pilots at risk. The Army also decided to retire its aging Shadow and Raven legacy drones, whose declining survivability and capabilities have rendered them obsolete, and announced a new rapid buy of 600 Coyote counter-drone drones in order to help protect its troops.