The Marine Corps has created a cyberspace career track that will focus on enhancing the service\u2019s ability to compete on the information battlefield, the Marine Corps announced March 1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The creation of a cyberspace military occupational specialty is part of an ongoing modernization effort<\/a> by the Marines to peruse a multi-domain approach to warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Cyberspace Occupational Field provides the Marine Corps with a professionalized, highly skilled workforce that can effectively employ cyberspace defenses, capabilities, and effects across the Marine Air Ground Task Force and support joint requirements,\u201d the service said in a release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Marines Corps will employ both offensive and defensive cyber officers as well as general cyberspace operators charged with \u201csupervising and directing\u201d cyberspace capabilities, according to an announcement. The program will enlist approximately 1,100 total Marines, said Capt. Amanda Anderson of the Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe spend so much time training these Marines, and they enjoy so much what they do in this cyberspace domain, that we need to build a cyberspace MOS so that we can retain them on the teams, keep the experience that we\u2019re gaining, and continue to get better,\u201d Maj. Gen. Lori Reynolds, commander of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command told C4ISRNET<\/a> in May 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The announcement of the cyberspace occupational field first came from Gen. Robert B. Neller on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018Trigger fingers turn to Twitter fingers\u2019? Not exactly, but this is the next step in professionalizing our cyber force, which will be critical to our success, now and in the future,\u201d Gen. Neller tweeted Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with a cyberspace workforce, the new occupational field incorporates a \u201cstandardized training continuum\u201d designed to retain and train qualified Marines in the cyberspace field. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the West 2018 conference in San Diego last month, Neller said retaining cyber workers was a top priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re at the point now, if you make it through all the wickets, and you become a cyber Marine, if you will, and you\u2019re qualified to do mission protection or attack or cyber mission force stuff, you\u2019re not leaving,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re going to be like [special operations command]. You\u2019re in, you\u2019re doing special missions, you\u2019re done. Because it just doesn\u2019t sense from a business case to invest two years to do something else \u2026 We can\u2019t afford to keep these people. The only thing we can do is \u2018I\u2019m going to leave them alone and let them do their job.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n