The 29 series EW force will transition to the 17 series MOS, the career field that is the baseline of Army cyber, said Maj. Gen. Patricia Frost, who leads the Army Cyber Directorate at the Pentagon.

The 29 series soldiers will begin training to give them a foundation in cyber. Effective Oct. 1, 2018, they will transition to the 17 series.

The Army also will be expanding cyber training in the new year. The service will introduce troops to the new Persistent Cyber Training Environment, which was due to be rolled out at the end of 2017, said Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the commander of Army Cyber Command.

The new virtual environment is designed to be a joint training capability across the Defense Department to fill gaps in cyber training platforms available now.

It will essentially be military cyber’s own firing range, supporting multiple training events across the services.

The Army took the lead on developing the Persistent Cyber Training Environment.

The Army is also planning a new combined exercise for February at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Frost said.

At the exercise, soldiers will interact with Marines to share information in a tactical environment so they all can understand what is happening in that space, Frost told Army Times.

Army Forces Command will designate which unit will participate in the exercise, she said.

Candidates who are accepted for the Army’s new Cyber Direct Commissioning Program will enter active duty as first lieutenants after taking two courses that total 16 weeks of instruction.

A major incentive for civilians with four-year degrees and high-demand technical skills to enter the Army as junior officers is the scale of the mission they will do, said two generals who lead Army cyber and spoke to reporters about the program on Tuesday.

“The most critical incentive that I think will be most attractive to this group of people is every single day you’ll go toe to toe with the best hackers in the world, and you’re defending our nation,” said Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of Army Cyber Command. “Whether it’s a nation state or whether it’s a non-nation state actor or it’s a terrorist, if you want that opportunity, come join us in the Army. We have that opportunity every single day.“

The talent the Army wants to attract may come from academia or industry, has experience operating in cyberspace, and has the “drive, dedication and inclination that they want to serve the nation,” said Maj. Gen. Patricia Frost, director of cyber for the Army’s G-3/5/7.

How it works

The five-year pilot program will commission up to five cyber operations officers per year into the active component, Nakasone said. After the first year, the program will expand to the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, he said.

The first board to consider applicants will take place in about a week, and the first class is anticipated to begin in February, Nakasone said. The Army has more than 50 applicants and “we anticipate we will continue to have great interest,” he said.

Once the candidates are accepted into program, they are sworn into the Army Reserve as second lieutenants. Upon training, they enter active duty as first lieutenants, which has been the case with direct commissions into other branches in the past, Nakasone said.

The Army already offers direct commissions to bring officers into medical, legal and chaplain career fields.

“This is a new way of doing business,” Nakasone said about the cyber program. “Like building a school and a career field together, this is another initiative that we think holds great promise.”

Filling the gaps

Direct commissions for Army cyber are intended to fill a number of capability gaps and make sure Army cyber teams can accomplish their missions, Nakasone and Frost said.

The officers will do a range of tasks such as building tools and devices, writing algorithms, ciphers and programs, and doing research to support Cyber Mission Force teams.

Their skills are needed now, but it takes time, even several years, to build cyber operators, Frost said. So the Army is looking to bring in experienced people laterally to add to the service’s technical skills.

Both Congress and the Defense Department see the program as an opportunity to bridge the capability gaps, she said.

Applicants can expect to hear from the Army and be invited for an in-person interview at the U.S. Army Cyber School at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Army cyber leaders see the interview as critical to determining if the applicant is someone who will meet the security needs of the force. The applicants also will be asked to articulate the skills they will bring to the Army. This is a different approach than with typical, conventional accessions, Frost said.

If the interview goes well, the applicant will be sworn in as a second lieutenant and go to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for a four-week direct commissioning course, then on to Fort Gordon for an abbreviated 12-week Cyber Officer Basic Leadership Course. Then comes their first assignment as first lieutenants, most likely at Fort Gordon or at Fort Meade, Maryland.

The expedited schedule will allow them to bypass the Army’s Basic Combat Training Course, give them fast promotion to first lieutenant as 17A cyber operations officers, and priority for getting the necessary security clearance.

It will take an estimated five months to go from the first look at an application packet to getting the applicant through courses and putting the new officer to work, Nakasone said.

How to qualify

Requirements for becoming an officer through the program include having at least a four-year college degree, ability to complete an Army physical, meet basic fitness standards and hold U.S. citizenship. They will serve a total of eight years in the service, at least three of those on active duty. Applicants must be less than 41 years old and be able to get and maintain a top-secret security clearance.

The direct commission into cyber differs in several ways from getting a commission through Officer Candidate School. Candidates at OCS will have completed Basic Combat Training before attending 12 weeks of tactical and leadership training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and they must not be older than 32. They are not guaranteed to be commissioned as cyber officers even if they request it, but those selected through the direct commission program are guaranteed to become 17A cyber operations officers.

In addition, OCS candidates are commissioned as second lieutenants and typically serve 18 months of service before making first lieutenant.

Bringing in cyber professionals as lieutenants, rather than a higher rank, was determined in the National Defense Authorization Act as the level for each service, Nakasone said.

After the first year of the program, Army cyber will review to see if the program was able to attract the talent hoped for, Nakasone said. The Army also will see if any changes need to be made, including whether to offer monetary incentives such as special pay or bonuses to sign up or stay in.

Learning curve

Once in uniform, the new officers will be paired with mentors, Nakasone said.

“We find that an effective way of developing talent … any time you have that buddy program, we’ve found great success with it,” he said.

Because direct commission officers are a small population, it will be easier to make sure they are taken care of, Frost said. They will be going through the initial course with other directly commissioned officers in other career fields, so they can talk with those officers as well.

“We’ll be able to prioritize what their needs might be,” Frost said. “Having that mentorship program will be key. “

The Army’s program is a pilot for all the services, Frost said.

“We will share lessons learned across the services. How we recruit in the Army may not necessarily be how we recruit in the Marine Corps,” she said, although the types of skills needed may be similar from service to service. “Of any of our joint warfighting functions, I don’t think it gets any more joint than what you’re executing day to day,“ she said.

To find out more about the program and to apply, go to the Army’s cyber direct commission website.

“For those of you in the military who are 25 years old or younger, captains or below, this is going to be a fundamental, significant change that you are going to have to come to grips with, and you are going to have to lead the way,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Tuesday at the International Conference on Cyber Conflict in Washington, D.C.

Milley spoke directly to the many young soldiers in the audience, including West Point cadets, at the conference presented by the Army Cyber Institute at the United States Military Academy and the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. The audience also included military leaders, government civilians and innovators from the cyber industry.

“People my age do not have the answer,” Milley said. “We have enough brains, I suppose, to recognize the fact that we are in the midst of change. But we are not savvy enough, we are not smart enough, we are not sophisticated enough, and, frankly, we may not be around long enough to implement the actual changes that are going to take place.”

“That rock is going to go in your rucksack, and we are counting on you for the future,” he said.

The talent and technical ability in Army units is going to reside at the lower level for the next generation as they cycle through, Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the commander of Army Cyber Command, said at the conference.

“I don’t know too many Army units where you go in and you say ‘hey, I know that the E-6 knows more about what they’re going to do than the O-6,’ “ Nakasone said.

Those at the O-6 level and above do still have a job, and they have a responsibility in terms of leadership, synchronization and vision, he said. But he keeps thinking of the talent on the way up.

“It’s very interesting to command an organization where the true talent and brain power is certainly not at the top, but at the beginning stages,” Nakasone said. “It’s the lieutenants, it’s the sergeants, the young captains that have this remarkable talent.”

Best and brightest

To recruit cyber talent into the military, Milley pointed to a pilot program that taps the country’s vast pool of brilliant cyber minds to bring them into the officer ranks through direct commissions, which usually have been reserved for doctors and lawyers.

“What we need to do, we the Army, we need to track those best minds,” Milley said.

They may want an opportunity to serve, but the military has not reached out to them effectively, he said.

Rather than bring in a cyber expert as a private, in the old “linear industrial model of promotions,” he said, why not bring them in laterally, and have them serve for 24 or 36 months.

“Let them serve this country, let them do some good for us, and they’ll feel good, we’ll feel good,” Milley said.

The power of the “super empowered individual” is one of the things Nakasone said he has learned about the people component of cyber in the last 12 to 18 months.

Among those doing critical jobs on the teams, “our best ones are 50 or 100 times better than their peers,” Nakasone said. “Is there a sniper or is there a pilot or is there a submarine driver or anyone else in the military 50 times their peer? I would tell you, some coders we have are 50 times their peers.”

For example, a common narrative a year ago was that ISIS could operate in virtual space uncontested. They could push their message and share their propaganda rapidly, Nakasone said, and “there wasn’t much we could do about it.”

But in the past nine to 12 months “we have taken that on, and that narrative is no longer true,” he said.

Army Cyber is contesting their message every day, and behind an Army cyber team is an individual, the one Nakasone calls “that 50-x coder.”

“He’s the one who has come up with the ideas about social media and how to get after ISIS in that space,” he said. “That’s the power of the super empowered individual.”

The Army has moved quickly to stand up its cyber career branch, with nearly 20,000 soldiers so far, and 41 cyber protection teams.

An “incredible amount of work” has gone into creating Army cyber forces, doctrine and strategy in the last few years, and the pace is faster than expected, Nakasone said.

“We are running faster than our headlights,” he said. “We are learning so much we are well forward of where we thought we’d be.”

Machine speed

Warfighters in the cyber domain are operating at a time when the battle space is becoming more lethal, more complex and with machines on the rise.

The military is seeing a convergence of a variety of technologies, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, and, “in combination, I guarantee that they are changing and will change the fundamental character of warfare,” Milley said.

Machine learning opens up potential applications not just for defense but offense, Nakasone said.

“It’s easy to get on a network and look for vulnerability,” he said.

But he can envision a machine that can find a vulnerability, rapidly identify it, work with persistence and do all that at machine speed.

The potential for cyber warfighting may involve a self-healing network, working at machine speed to lock out adversarial persistent threats with a fraction of the workforce used now, Nakasone said.

“Think of the implications for the Army and the nation,” he said.

For the military, it’s not just about the technologies, “but how you use them,” Milley said. It’s a matter of the doctrine, the organizations and the talent, and how you bring them all together, he said.

“We’re not going to get it right,” he said. “What is important is that we get it less wrong than the enemy.”

The key, Milley said, is to have innate ability to innovate faster than the opponent can in the moment, to rapidly adapt and innovate when in contact with the enemy.

The potential adversaries of the U.S. are moving “very, very rapidly,” he said.

“If we, the United States military, are going to preserve this experiment in freedom for the next generation and the generation after, then we too will have to move up smartly, and you can’t move up alone,” Milley said.

The U.S. military is one component of the effort, which will depend on academia, industry and allied and joint partners working together, Milley said.

“This is going to take teamwork and the best minds that America can bring to bear,” he said.

The Army is working on how it will train and equip soldiers to deal with an adversary they can’t see, said Maj. Gen. Patricia Frost, who leads the Army Cyber Directorate at the Pentagon. The directorate, which opened last summer, is integrating the Army’s cyber, electronic warfare and information operations.

As the Army builds its organizations and capability in the cyber domain, “where I think we need to go next is the understanding by every soldier,” Frost told Army Times in an Oct. 5 interview at the Pentagon. “Every soldier knows ‘I have to fire my weapon.’ Does every soldier realize that they’re the first line of defense in cyberspace? Between what you have at your work station or your warfighting platform, your iPhone or your Blackberry or all these end-point devices, the adversary only has to have one vector in.”

The Army needs a strong and capable cyber mission force, but responsibility for cyber defense belongs to all soldiers, she said.

“They need to understand what their responsibilities are when they log on,” Frost said. “That can’t just be Army Cyber’s problem. Everyone is a defender in this space.”

Soldiers also need to know how to react when the electromagnetic environment in which they work is compromised, just as they need to know how to fire their weapon when wearing protective gear during a chemical, biological or nuclear event, she said.

“We’re talking about this integration with electronic warfare,” Frost said. “You also need to know how to operate, depending on what your MOS is, in a degraded or denied environment, due to what could happen in an electromagnetic environment.”

The answer is not putting an electronic warfare soldier in every squad.

“You can’t scale that across the Army. That’s not realistic,” she said. “You need to know as a soldier, how do I operate, and you need to understand what vulnerabilities you may open up for your squad, company, battalion, brigade, division or corps, by your cyber hygiene on the network.”

A new type of training

Soldiers may see a change in their training at combat training centers across the Army.

Cyber education and training needs to take place not just at the Cyber Center of Excellence “but at all the centers of excellence to understand how this electromagnetic environment is affecting us and also how the cyber domain impacts us,” Frost said.

“We’re looking at how do we change the training environment within our combat training centers to show the environment we’d like to project,” she said. “We’re working very closely with the Combined Arms Center, with FORSCOM [Army Forces Command], on how do we create the right environment that brings in these different aspects,” Frost said.

A new exercise

In recent weeks the Army has been teaming up with the Marine Corps to look at training in signals, cyber and EW, and now a combined exercise is planned for February at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

“Because we are all very invested in a land component view, there’s a lot of synergy between us and the Marine Corps and how we want to emulate this type of environment,” Frost said.

FORSCOM will designate which unit will participate in the exercise, Frost said. The soldiers and Marines would interact to share information in a tactical environment so they can understand what’s happening in that space.

The Army in September conducted an exercise called Cyber Blitz at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. Marines came to observe and industry partners took part to see what’s needed for EW and cyberspace capabilities.

Soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division were there to try out prototypes of tools and also capabilities now available, then gave the industry partners their feedback.

Growing the force

The Army has made a “very significant” investment in its cyber force, and in its manpower, organizational constructs, resourcing and acquisition, Frost said. The Army has achieved more than other services have so far, she said.

“I feel very strongly that the Army is truly leading the way in this space,” Frost said. “I think we’re really seeing that come together now in how we’re equipping the cyber mission force, the operational capabilities we’re putting in our support to our geographic combatant commands we’re aligned to.”

As of Sept. 30, the Army was the first service to deliver all of its 41 active component teams at full operational capability, ahead of the other services and a year ahead of schedule, Frost said. The cyber teams were supposed to be at FOC by the end of 2018, so they were ready a year ahead of schedule, she said.

The Army’s reserve component teams are building up and expected to reach FOC by 2024, she said. Reserve component teams are already supporting critical missions in support of U.S. Cyber Command, under the operational control of Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the commander of Army Cyber Command.

Frost says she sees the progress as “a huge win.”

The Army has opened the Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and is growing that center and its manning. The Army also has a cyber brigade at Fort Meade, Maryland.

“Generating an operational force at Fort Gordon is just tremendous, and we hope we are setting the foundation to maybe be that joint service school … not just cyber but electronic warfare as well,” Frost said.

Priorities ahead

One of the priorities for Army cyber now is to assess how secure and resilient its weapons platforms are, Frost said, and the same goes for installations and systems.

“We’re doing a lot of mission analysis of what does the Army need,” she said, including what type of cyber expertise is required at echelon as staff and as operators.

Another priority for the year ahead is supporting Army Cyber Command, the Army’s only operational command in the cyber space, Frost said.

“I want to ensure that Gen. Nakasone is successful in what he is trying to achieve for ’18 and beyond, and we’re helping him achieve that,” she said.

One of his missions is defending the Department of Defense Information Network. The cyber directorate works to ensure his command is resourced and has the capabilities for that mission, which extends across every command to strengthen and secure the DODIN, Frost said.

Warfighting in cyberspace

As soldiers develop and mature in the Army, they should understand “at the base level of their tradecraft” how the different domains — land, air, sea, space and cyber — affect their warfighting function, Frost said, “and how we integrate across all the centers of excellence and how we integrate operationally across the Army,” she said.

Soldiers and commanders need to understand the battle spaces and visualize the invisible ones.

“One of the things we’re working on not just in the cyber domain but in the electromagnetic environment is how do you visualize this space that is not tangible,” Frost said. “We have right now a capability requirement for cyber situational understanding which would provide a visualization tool for commanders all the way down to the brigade combat team.”

Commanders would also have a planning management tool to allow them to see the electromagnetic environment and their own unit’s energy signatures as well as the enemy’s.

The goal is to give the commander tools to achieve mission success, and as the threat evolves, the capabilities evolve as well.

“Everyone says it’s about the technology and the hardware, but the Army is a people-focused service, we’re about our people,” Frost said. “The 8th Infantry Division was my first unit when I came into the Army and ‘Soldiers are our credentials’ was our motto. That truly is how were going to advance in this space.”