A Reserve Component Initiative to Defend DoD and National Cyberspace
The United States is under increasing threat from both nation state and non-nation state cyberspace domain aggressors. An effective attack against vulnerable elements of our critical infrastructure could produce major and lasting damage to our national economy, military capability, and our cultural way of life. The ability to conduct Cyberspace domain operations is a predicate to both successful military operations and successful private sector operations such as in the economic/financial, health, telecommunications, logistics, and energy operations sectors. Therefore, dominating this domain is critical to a functioning economy, national security, and to ensuring success in the other warfighting domains (air, sea, land, and space). Identifying, defending, and (potentially) reconstituting cyberspace key terrain is an essential task for dominating this domain.
The military (DoD and the Service’s) approach to defending the cyberspace domain, while considerably better than any other US government (USG) entity: is still fragmented, unorganized, and not under effective command and control (C2) ; requires integrated individual and collective training; and lacks effective inter-agency national policy to achieve full effectiveness. The establishment of US Cyberspace Command (USCYBERCOM) is a very effective start toward resolving many of these shortfalls. Another shortfall: the extensive capabilities of the military’s Reserve Components are not effectively utilized to conduct and support cyberspace domain operations. For example, other major military powers use their reserve component forces to support full-spectrum military and national operations in cyberspace domain. (see Figure 1) In response, there are several initiatives to utilized DoD’s RC forces to support national cyberspace objectives. So while we have considerable cyberspace capability in both the Active and Reserve Components, much of it is unorganized, fragmented, the training is non-existent or uneven, and cyberspace domain oriented C2 is primitive if not non-existent.
