The Chinese intrusion affected organizations spanning the communications, utilities, education and government sectors including in Guam, a key foothold for American forces in the Indo-Pacific. The incident was disclosed in May 2023, with Microsoft describing the years-long operation as hard to detect and malicious.

The attack is likely to inspire copycats, said Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock, the commander of the Cyber National Mission Force. The CNMF, part of Cyber Command, deploys around the world to unearth malware and fortify digital defenses.

“I think we’re seeing Volt Typhoon activity continuing to persist. That’s in open source. We’re also seeing other actors using the tactics, techniques and procedures,” Mahlock said April 30 at the Modern Day Marine defense conference in Washington. “The greatest form of flattery is to copy.”

U.S. officials have long considered China a serious cyber hazard, with the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank placing it in the second tier of its cyber powerhouse rankings alongside Russia. The Pentagon’s 2023 cyber strategy warned both Beijing and Moscow are prepared to unleash cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and defense networks should war break out.

The groundwork is being laid today. Volt Typhoon relied on so-called living-off-the-land techniques to lurk around vital systems and go largely unnoticed.

Attacks on critical infrastructure — food and water delivery, health care services, defense contracting and more — could jeopardize U.S. military response across the world as well as a sense of stateside calm. A ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in 2021 resulted in a run on fuel across the Southeast and aggravated concerns about energy security.

“Open-source reporting talks about this actor, out of China, who has access to our critical infrastructure and some of our key capabilities. Why? Not just for foreign intelligence-collection,” Mahlock said.

“We’ve seen this actor, China, grow in scope, scale and sophistication,” she added. “We’ve also seen that they’re undeterred.”

Army Gen. Michael Kurilla told lawmakers on March 7 that he would “love” to have the Navy deploy more directed-energy arms capable of downing drones. Having supplemental directed energy on hand, he added, would also mean expending fewer U.S. missiles, which can cost millions of dollars a pop. Iranian drones being funneled to extremist groups can cost thousands of dollars each.

“The bigger concern is if you start talking about swarms. We need to continue to invest in things like high-power microwave to be able to counter a drone swarm that is coming at you,” Kurilla said during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington. “Nothing is 100%. At some point the law of statistics will come up. You have to have a layered defense.”

High-energy lasers and microwave weapons are capable of zapping overhead threats in ways dissimilar to traditional munitions and at a fraction of the cost. Lasers can fire at the speed of light and punch holes through material, while microwaves can fry electronics at a distance, rendering tech obsolete. Both are considered a critical element of layered defense, or having multiple countermeasures ready to thwart different threats in different situations.

The Defense Department has for decades pitched money into directed-energy weapons, an average $1 billion annually in the past three years, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog.

At least 31 directed-energy initiatives are underway across the department, with some more mature than others. Among them are Lockheed Martin’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, or HELIOS, installed aboard the Navy destroyer Preble in 2022, and Epirus’ Leonidas, delivered to the Army in 2023 in furtherance of its Indirect Fire Protection Capability.

Bringing such systems to fruition — let alone mass production — has proven tricky. Aside from their technological complexity, laser- and microwave-based weaponry demand precious components and materials such as germanium and gallium.

Kurilla on Wednesday said the Army “sent us some directed-energy mobile short-range air defense” that are being experimented with. He provided no details about initial results. The service dispatched four Stryker-mounted 50-kilowatt laser prototypes in February, Breaking Defense reported.

Militants across the Greater Middle East have in recent months conducted more than 175 attacks on U.S. and allied forces. A drone strike in Jordan, at the Tower 22 installation near al-Tanf garrison, killed three troops in January. A Houthi missile attack on a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden this month killed three crew members, as well, and forced an evacuation of the vessel.

“This is not the same central region as last year,” Kurilla said. “Iran’s expansive network of proxies is equipped with advanced, sophisticated weaponry, and threatens some of the most vital terrain in the world with global and U.S. implications.”

The new primary military occupational specialty ― called the command and control interface control officer ― will be responsible for coordinating the use of networks and ensuring insights derived from battlefield data are shared between commanders no matter the domain, according to a Marine administrative message published Tuesday.

To be eligible for the job, listed as the military occupational specialty 7216, enlisted Marines must have expertise in existing and emerging communication practices and technologies. That includes Link 16 ― a secure, jam-resistant network used by NATO.

The Corps specifically wants Marines who also have a background in managing airspace.

The warrant officer job is open to enlisted Marines who hold the military occupational specialties low altitude air defense gunner (7212), tactical air defense controller (7236), air support operations operator (7242), air traffic controller (7257) or senior air traffic controller (7291).

The Corps is establishing the job as part of an effort to update command and control amid the sweeping revamp known as Force Design. The service has expressed interest in adapting the aviation community’s command-and-control approach more broadly.

“Our aviation C2 organizations and tactical employment concepts are well-defined and recognized by the joint force,” the service wrote in a 2022 planning document on Force Design. “We are considering new C2-specific formations using our approach to aviation C2 as a model.”

The new role arrives as the Defense Department pursues what’s known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2.

The multibillion-dollar concept envisions an interlinking of land, air, sea, space and cyber forces’ networks, allowing the best-positioned and best-equipped unit to strike first. For now, many of the military’s databases and applications are siloed or service-specific, impeding what defense officials have said are critical exchanges of information.

The proliferation of advanced communications equipment and digital threats prompted the creation of the new warrant officer position, the Marine Corps said.

Once Marines are selected as command and control interface control officers, they must complete the warrant officer basic course and attend the joint interface control officer course, according to the administrative message. More advanced command-and-control and air-operations courses are “recommended” for these warrant officers.

Marines who are interested in the promotion should look out for a future Marine administrative message called “Fiscal Year 2025 Enlisted to Warrant Officer Regular Selection Board MARADMIN,” according to Tuesday’s message.

After more than five years atop the country’s premier intelligence agency and cyber-fighting organization, Army Gen. Paul Nakasone was scheduled Feb. 2 to pass the torch to Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh.

The change-of-command ceremony at Fort Meade, Maryland, was not livestreamed, and a request for comment made to CYBERCOM was not immediately answered. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks was scheduled to attend and speak at the event, according to a Pentagon travel advisory.

Haugh previously served as the deputy at CYBERCOM, tasked with guarding sensitive Defense Department information and coordinating digital operations. He also served as the commander of the Cyber National Mission Force, which has deployed more than 55 times to 27 countries — including Ukraine, ahead of Russia’s invasion, and Albania, in the wake of Iranian hacks — to identify network weakness.

President Joe Biden tapped Haugh for the post in May. The process, though, was paralyzed by a hold on all senior military nominations enacted by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican.

CYBERCOM stands at a pivotal point as Haugh takes over. Now more than a decade old, the command is undergoing what officials have described as a holistic review.

The U.S. is increasingly focused on countering Russia and China while also juggling extremist groups in the Greater Middle East and Africa. Each poses unique challenges to offense and defense in the virtual world.

“In the cyber domain, we’re undergoing several efforts to shape the future of our cyber forces, including how we generate, train and organize for maximum effect, what some of us have started calling ‘Cyber Command 2.0,’” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb told reporters in January.

“We’re starting to think this could be a really great opportunity for us to go to that next level of evolution for Cyber Command,” he added.

While the department investigates what type of drone slipped past air defenses and hit a desert installation known as Tower 22 near Syria, preliminary evidence suggests the attack was the workings of Kataib Hezbollah, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh. The group emerged in the early 2000s and has since been blamed for violence across Iraq.

“In terms of attribution for the attack, we know this is an [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]-backed militia. It has the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah, but not making a final assessment on that,” she said during a Jan. 29 briefing at the Pentagon. “Our teams are continuing to do the analysis, but we know Iran is behind it.”

The Iranian government denied involvement but has long supplied combatants in advancement of its own goals.

Assets from the regime have been used by Houthi rebels in Yemen to harass ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, deployed by Russian forces in their continued invasion of Ukraine and were reportedly exported to Ethiopia and Sudan.

“There are a whole host of airframes and systems that Iran-backed militias in Iraq have been parading for the past few years that show telltale signs of Iranian support,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told C4ISRNET. “Via these parades, we have seen Iran-backed groups tip their hand as to new capabilities made available by their patron in Tehran.”

Such armaments include reusable Mohajer unmanned aerial vehicles capable of dropping bombs and smaller one-way attack drones such as the Shahed series.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, a principal source of foreign intelligence for U.S. military endeavors, in August showed reporters charred remains of Shahed-101 and Shahed-131 drones and at least one defused warhead with a shaped charge, meant to punch through armor, and fragmenting cubes designed to harm personnel. The pieces were recovered from fighting well beyond Iran’s borders and assembled stateside for accountability.

“As has been the case in other theaters, one-way attack UAVs, popularly known as suicide drones, function as the poor man’s cruise missile. This means a lower and slower threat with a different flight profile compared to rockets and missiles that can take various angles of attack,” Taleblu said. “They are also cheaper to produce and exemplify the phrase ‘quantity has a quality of its own.’”

The attack on Tower 22, close to the al-Tanf garrison, is among the latest in a barrage targeting U.S. forces. The Defense Department has since mid-October logged at least 165 attacks in the region, including 66 in Iraq and 98 in Syria.

What casts the Tower 22 bombardment in such sharp relief is the fact that it “was so tragically successful,” according to Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank. That difference could be seen as a significant escalation in an area already inflamed.

“I think it also foot-stomps the fact that these militias have been trying to kill Americans for months. These aren’t shots across the bow, these aren’t warnings or demonstrations of might. They’re trying to kill people,” Lord said in an interview. “I think what is under debate right now is who’s going to bear the brunt of that response, and where will that be borne.”

The U.S. military has successfully countered overhead threats like rocket fire and explosive unmanned systems for months, including in the Red Sea. The guided-missile destroyer Carney in December batted down 14 drones that U.S. Central Command described as a wave.

In some cases, exemplified by the DIA display, scraps can be retrieved and studied. Engines, exhaust pipes, wing stabilizers, circuitry, landing gear and more can all aid experts in identifying make, model or origin.

“There may be recoverable parts. There could be radar reflections the military has that might give them a better sense. They might have more signature information,” Lord said. “I’m certain that CENTCOM knows, exactly, where this originated.”

The Wall Street Journal reported the drone that hit Tower 22 may have been mistaken for an American drone that was in the air at the same time. Defense officials said the circumstances are under investigation.

No maintainers milled about, no drills whirred and no hammers clanged. But the steady hum of spinning blades echoed through the chamber at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, as a drone autonomously maneuvered around the transport aircraft.

Its movement, aided by digital models and crash-avoidance capabilities, was punctuated by occasional hovering as it stabilized to capture with a high-resolution camera photos of the plane’s exterior. The images then flashed onto a nearby display, with potential issues organized for expert review.

“This is what young technicians live in the Department of Defense, the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, whoever it may be,” Scott Belanger, a Boeing executive, told reporters gathered at the base Jan. 23. “This is their environment, where they are charged with generating aircraft, like the C-5 here, that are old and hard to keep on the flight line.”

Last week marked the first time Boeing and small-business partner Near Earth Autonomy cataloged a C-5 for their Autonomous Aircraft Inspection project. By feeding photos snapped by an unmanned aerial system through automated damage-detecting software and then uploading the results into a secure database accessible across the world, the two companies hope to slash the time it takes to evaluate and repair aircraft, ultimately boosting Air Force readiness.

While Boeing and Near Earth Autonomy have worked together for months previously, assessing and digitally archiving the status of Boeing C-17 cargo planes at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, the work on the East Coast marks “a big moment” for the AAI initiative, according to Belanger.

Not only did it push Boeing outside its own portfolio — handling an aircraft made by competitor Lockheed — but the work itself was executed in conditions unlike Hawaii.

“You just can’t do this stuff in a simulated environment. You’ve got to have an airplane, got to have a hanger, … got to get a little bit dirty and dive in to effectively do this,” Belanger said. “There are very few hangers in the United States where you can park a C-5 inside. There just aren’t many of these.”

Dover Air Force Base is home to both C-17 and C-5 aircraft. Traditional inspections relying on trained crews can take hours, with harnessing and clambering required. (A ladder in the tail of a C-5 brings airmen to a six-story perch.) The 34-point review conducted Jan. 23 via drone took roughly 10 minutes.

Looking ahead

As the Defense Department prepares for potential fights in the Indo-Pacific and Europe, the Air Force is pursuing what’s known as Agile Combat Employment. The ACE concept envisions a hub-and-spoke layout of bases — some larger and fixed, some smaller and mobile — that will scatter supplies, manpower and knowhow.

Only two people are needed to run the Automated Aircraft Inspection, and training takes a few hours. The process helps overcome the tedium associated with conventional assay, according to Ken Jones, an Air Force maintenance official.

“This is best, because what we have to do with our system is actually go out and then review the imagery and look for things,” he told reporters. “Their artificial intelligence is drawing little boxes around the things that the computer thinks, ‘This isn’t what it’s supposed to be.’”

The drone-and-software combo deployed at Dover Air Force Base discovered missing paint, chips and other possible irregularities. Reporters observed the review process, in which experts quickly sorted the images and flagged what needed fixing.

“It’s pretty easy to be able to do that,” Jones said. “If you’re working over a year’s time, we could be talking about saving a week or two, and, on top of that, is the safety thing. We’re definitely interested in the time, and we’re definitely interested in the quality of the product of the inspection.”

For future examinations, Boeing and Near Earth Autonomy are eyeing additional drone payloads, to potentially catch subsurface damage, and are moving the drone outdoors, requiring weatherization upgrades to the hardware. Boeing, the fifth largest contractor in the world when ranked by defense-related revenue, committed to getting the UAS operating outside within the next year and a half.

Additional aircraft could also join the inspection roster. Near-term candidates include the KC-135 and KC-46 tankers. Both are made by Boeing.

But applause from Vice Adm. Brendan McLane and other leaders has been paired with frustrations that ships like the Carney, Gravely, Mason, Laboon and Thomas Hudner are fighting without a potential key asset: the long-planned and ever-elusive laser.

High-energy lasers, or HELs, and high-power microwaves, or HPMs, would offer the surface fleet another weapon for countering overhead threats, including unmanned aerial vehicles and rockets. Despite decades of research and development, as well as billions of dollars spent for a threat like the one the Navy now faces in the Red Sea, such systems have yet to enter the surface fleet and the broader military in a meaningful way, according to analysts and service leaders.

McLane called the glacial pace of development “frustrating” in a call with reporters this month.

“When I was in Bahrain as [the Destroyer Squadron 50 commanding officer] 10 years ago, the afloat staging base USS Ponce had a laser on it,” McLane told reporters ahead of the Surface Navy Association conference this month. “We’re 10 years down the road, and we still don’t have something we can field?”

To date, only a smattering of ships have laser capabilities on board. Few directed-energy tools have made the successful leap from science fiction to real life, with outside experts and government reviews saying the development of such futuristic weaponry is as challenging as it is worthwhile and potentially game-changing.

Directed energy could complement the panoply of weapons a U.S. destroyer in the Red Sea has at the ready, and their widespread fielding would signal a revolution in military affairs on the level of fighter jets and missiles, according to analysts.

McLane suggested that lasers, including today’s versions, would be helpful in batting down Houthi bombardments.

“Against some of the targets that have been shot, some of the systems that we have can be effective,” he said.

Directed energy could also help crews conserve finite munitions supplies while on station, analysts say. The 60-plus confirmed intercepts of drones and missiles hurtling toward Navy ships and commercial vessels in the Red Sea have largely relied on the Standard Missile-2, or SM-2, although service officials have declined to say precisely what was fired in each engagement.

‘The way of the future’

The Defense Department is spending on average $1 billion annually to develop HEL and HPM weapons, with the goal of deploying them aboard ground vehicles, aircraft and ships. It requested at least $669 million in fiscal 2023 for unclassified research, testing and evaluation, and another $345 million for unclassified procurement.

But bridging the so-called valley of death — the lag between private development and the military procuring and fielding technology — has proved difficult, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Defense Department has struggled to get “these technologies out of the lab and into the field” for a number of reasons, including difficulty in determining how the force would use them during missions, according to an April report by the federal watchdog.

“Without early transition planning and drafting transition agreements, the Navy risks developing technology that is misaligned with operational needs,” the report warned.

Outside analysts note that developing such capabilities is not easy. The full realization of deploying directed-energy weapons is “something of a holy grail,” according to Eric Wertheim, an author, defense consult and U.S. Naval Institute columnist.

The lack of HEL or HPM systems aboard ships is less of an acquisition failure, he said, and more of a hardware- and software-based jigsaw puzzle left unsolved.

Finding a power source for directed-energy weapons as well as space for such systems on board a ship that is full of energy-hungry sensors and combat management systems is a serious roadblock, he said.

While lasers can punch holes through a variety of material, certain atmospheric conditions, such as fog or wind, can impede or distort the shot. High-power microwaves can have near-instant frying effects on electronic guts, but they’re less effective at greater ranges.

“It’s incredibly challenging technologically, and the technology is always a step, or a few steps, away from where we would like it to be,” Wertheim said in an interview. “We’re pushing the barriers, in many ways, along with our allies, and I think that our adversaries are very focused on overwhelming the defenses, as you see in the Red Sea right now.”

Destroyers have already featured Lockheed Martin’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) and the Navy’s own Optical Dazzling Interdictor. The former was specifically designed to interdict drones and small, agile boats — the kind of threats with which Houthi militants are peppering shipping channels.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told reporters at the Surface Navy Association’s conference that he understands McLane’s vexation. He also said the HELIOS system, installed on the destroyer Preble in 2022, is now “a bit beyond” the experimentation phase and primed for growth.

“This is the way of the future,” Del Toro said, “and we are going to be looking in the fiscal years ’26, ’27 and into the [five-year] Future Years Defense Program on how to accelerate deployment of HELIOS and HELIOS-like capabilities on our DDG-51 [Arleigh Burke-class destroyer] platforms.”

The Navy tested a high-energy laser on another type of vessel, the amphibious transport dock Portland, in 2020 and 2021. The ship has more available power to support larger laser weapons, and it went on to disable targets in the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, the service said.

The good, the bad and the trade-offs

Laser and microwave setups have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Neither requires mechanical reloading like a rifle or a tank; that’s particularly important in a wartime scenario, when Navy resupply lines would be under threat.

However, they do have limits.

“Lasers are pretty effective, but they take time,” Bryan Clark, who leads the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute think tank, said in an interview. “You’ve got to have the laser shoot the drone for several seconds, which means it can only shoot one at a time.”

To be successful, especially in a swarm scenario with multiple kinds of threats overhead, Clark said, a ship’s sensors would have to differentiate between higher-end targets that demand a kinetic hit and lower-end targets that a laser can manage. The crew aboard the Carney in December intercepted more than a dozen drones that U.S. Central Command described as a “wave” originating from Yemen.

“I want to use an SM-2 to shoot down the C-802 [missile] or maybe a bigger, more dangerous drone,” said Clark, who in years past served as a special assistant to the chief of naval operations. “But I don’t want to use an SM-2 to shoot down smaller, less capable drones.”

Dispatching one-way attack drones that often use cheap, off-the-shelf parts presents an uncomfortable cost-benefit analysis for the Navy. Sophisticated interceptors used by the U.S. can cost millions of dollars each, while a Houthi drone furnished by Iran, like the Shahed and its derivatives, can cost a few thousand.

The French Navy has defended its use of Aster 15 missiles to destroy drones, saying what mattered was not the cost of the ordnance but rather the value of ships and people saved from the attack.

Indeed, a ship’s captain must be free to use whichever weapons keep the ship and crew safe, multiple retired surface warfare officers told Navy Times.

Munitions and more

Military officials and outside observers see directed energy as a way to save resources and reduce strain on munitions manufacturers. But fielding such futuristic systems will require buy-in by fleet commanders who are used to the tried-and-true conventional arms they have handled for years.

“The threat is constantly adapting. There are some threats that lasers are very well suited for, and some [for which] you might want to have more hard-kill missile defense,” Wertheim said. “We’re going to have a layered defense that will hopefully include directed energy, and I think we’re seeing that. The directed energy percentage will increase over time.”

“There are going to be situations where you can’t shoot the archer, so to speak,” he added. “That’s always the optimal solution — take out the launchers before they launch. But when you can’t do that, then directed energy has potential.”

The Navy understands the need to increase its conventional weapons inventory and is attempting to do so with industry’s assistance, according to Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, the director of surface warfare on the chief of naval operations’ staff. But the service is also on the lookout for “cost-effective ways to neutralize threats,” he said at the SNA conference.

The Navy’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint, totaling $255.8 billion, up 4.5% from the year prior, backed multiyear procurements for four long-range weapons: the Standard Missile, the Naval Strike Missile, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile.

Firing a directed-energy weapon is advertised as costing pennies to the dollar when compared to a missile or other traditional weapon. The DragonFire laser, developed by British industry and government, typically costs less than £10 (U.S. $13) per shot, according to the Defence Ministry.

But tapping contractors to build laser or microwave systems, installing them aboard ships, training crews to use them, and then operating them is less cut and dry.

“We continue to invest in directed-energy capability — it’s hard,” said Pyle, who helps shepherd money for the development and purchase of new ships and their weapons.

“[Surface warfare officer] boss [McLane] has talked about this. We’re still working on that technology,” he added. “It requires space, weight, power and cooling, which can be a challenge on our current surface combatants.”

WASHINGTON — The testing of sophisticated software aboard an XQ-58A Valkyrie drone will influence how the U.S. Air Force develops and deploys autonomous technology in the near future, according to a service official.

The Kratos-made UAV flew a three-hour sortie in July near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, relying for the first time on artificial intelligence algorithms. Its programming was matured over millions of hours in simulation and digital environments; in flights with an experimental F-16 jet known as the X-62 VISTA; and other events, according to the service.

Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, chief of AI testing and operations, on Jan. 16 said the Valkyrie proved to be “a great test bed” and one capable of illuminating novel approaches to traditional tasks.

“We have to give it some space as it’s doing its maneuvering and just recognize that it is a computer-controlled … aircraft, and it may do things differently than a human,” Hamilton said during a livestreamed event hosted by C4ISRNET. “We need to recognize there’s a huge benefit there — some things we are doing right now may not be the most efficient, most effective way of doing things.”

Tinkering with the Valkyrie builds upon years of the Air Force’s Skyborg program and is closely linked to its more recent effort for collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA. The service in the coming years wants to pair human pilots with CCAs to afford greater flexibility and firepower.

The uncrewed aircraft could execute a variety of assignments: conducting reconnaissance, gathering intelligence, jamming signals, serving as decoys and striking targets with their own missiles. Officials have said CCAs could range in cost and complexity, with some being expensive and precious while others could be easily sacrificed in combat.

“If I’m flying around in my fighter, I can imagine a world where I have multiple drones able to conduct some missions,” Hamilton said. “The key, though, is we’ve got to get the human-machine teaming right. It’s all about that. AI and this autonomy — it’s got to empower the decision-maker.”

Robert Winkler, a vice president at Kratos, said in September that the Air Force and the Defense Department have communicated their desires for a fleet of robotic wingmen. David Alexander, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which makes the Gray Eagle and Reaper drones, has said the same thing.

The Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint included at least $392 million for CCA work. Billions of dollars are forecast to be spent in the long term.

Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock succeeded Army Maj. Gen. William Hartman at the helm of the CNMF during a ceremony Jan. 5. Hartman, who led the force since 2019, is taking another post as Cyber Command’s deputy chief.

Mahlock in a statement said she felt humbled to serve alongside “our nation’s elite cyber warriors, competing daily against a threat that is very real, but which few can comprehend, quantify or see.”

The CNMF was established in 2014 and has since deployed more than 55 times to 27 countries — including Ukraine, ahead of Russia’s latest invasion, and Albania, in the wake of Iranian cyberattacks — to identify network weaknesses and unearth malicious software. Its elevation to a subordinate unified command within CYBERCOM in 2022 was recognition of its critical role in stateside election defense and overseas sweeps.

“CNMF has always been the ‘go-to’ force when our nation has a challenge in the cyber domain,” Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, the CYBERCOM and National Security Agency boss, said in a statement. “These joint cyber operators are a powerhouse that punch above their weight against some of the world’s most reckless and determined foreign malicious cyber actors.”

Nakasone presided over the change of command Friday.

Mahlock previously served as the deputy director for combat support at the NSA’s cybersecurity directorate. She was also the first Black woman to serve as a two-star general in the Marine Corps, and was its first female chief information officer and director of command, control, communications and computers.

A prior-enlisted Marine, Mahlock received her commission in 1991. She holds multiple master’s degrees, plus a master’s certificate in information operations from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Marine Corps Times reporter Irene Loewenson contributed to this article.

The service’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S, on Nov. 29 named Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman as the winners of other transaction authority deals for a launched-effects program “within the infrared and electronic warfare realms.”

Further details about the planned payloads were not provided.

The initial awards are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and are aimed at maturing existing technologies, according to the office, which helps develop everything from biometric tools to surveillance aerostats. Tens of millions of dollars are up for grabs in the long run.

The Army is exploring launched effects — previously divided into camps, ground-launched and air-launched — to extend its reach without putting additional lives on the line.

After spending decades in the Middle East waging counterinsurgency campaigns, the U.S. is now focusing on potential large-scale conflicts with Russia and China. The two powers have constructed anti-access and area-denial infrastructure to keep at bay U.S. weapons or forces that could overwhelm.

Launched effects, hurtling outward from tanks or helicopters or something else, are meant to complement existing equipment soldiers rely on to scout, target, jam and kill. The technology is considered a critical part of the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft endeavors.

Launched effects have been successfully tested by the Army in the past, including at Project Convergence, its emerging-tech crucible. In January, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems announced its Eaglet launched-effect flew for the first time, dropping off an Army-owned Gray Eagle Extended Range Unmanned Aircraft System during a demonstration in Utah.

Lockheed is the largest contractor in the world when ranked by defense-related revenue, according to Defense News Top 100 analysis. The Maryland-based company earned $63 billion in 2022. Northrop is the third largest contractor by the same measure, reaping $32 billion in same period.