Navy establishing task force along with new cyber career field

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Following the establishment of a dedicated work role for cyber personnel, the Navy is beginning to focus on building a full career path for sailors in that field — all the way up to flag officer — which also involves the creation of a new task force.

For years, the Navy was the only service that didn’t have its own work role for cyber warriors conducting operations as part of its contribution to the cyber mission force, the teams each service provides to U.S. Cyber Command. Its cyber personnel were primarily resourced from its cryptologic warfare community — which is also responsible for signals intelligence, electronic warfare and information operations, among several mission sets — leading to a neglect in cyber and having a lack of institutional expertise both in the operations community and at top echelons of leadership, according to critics.

The fiscal 2023 annual defense policy bill directed the service to create a “designator” — the service’s parlance for officer work roles who are now maritime cyber warfare officers or MCWO — and a “rating” — the service’s terminology for enlisted work roles who are now cyber warfare technicians — solely for cyberspace matters.

With those work roles in place, and readiness of those forces beginning to improve, the Navy is now focusing on building out those roles and establishing a culture for which someone in the cyber field can rise all the way up to flag officer.

“The plan is to … start creating the baseline and the foundation for these officers to achieve a flag rank at some point, have the right schooling, have the right career paths to be able to command,” Vice Adm. Michael Vernazza, commander of Naval Information Forces, told reporters at the annual WEST conference.

Vernazza, as the “I-Boss,” is responsible for what the military calls the man, train and equip role for information warfare sailors, a category which cyber falls into.

He and other officials said as part of this career build out, the Navy created a new organization in Hawaii for its cyber operators, a task force that is still in the works and will have two task groups beneath it.

The task force will take the majority of cyber missions that are currently carried out under Navy Information Operations Command (NIOC) Pacific and move them to a dedicated cyber task force, according to a Fleet Cyber Command spokesperson.

Under the construct for how the Defense Department conducts cyber operations, each service cyber component commander also commands a Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber that is subordinate to Cybercom and is responsible for conducting and coordinating cyber operations for assigned combatant commands. The Navy, for example, is responsible for Indo-Pacific Command, Southern Command and U.S. Forces Korea.

The creation of the new task force will allow greater focus on both cyber operations and getting NIOC Pacific back to its traditional missions, the spokesperson said, which include a wide range of information warfare support to the Navy and the National Security Agency, such as signals intelligence.

The reason for the change, they added, is to allow greater focus and expertise to be applied to each mission.

“MCWO now aren’t going to do what cryptologists used to do. Cryptologists did EW, they did SIGINT, they did all kinds of RF analysis, and then, oh, by the way, you guys also go command the cyber teams. Can you imagine being a lieutenant or lieutenant commander and every single one of your tours is in a completely different domain and we expect you to be an expert? Not particularly helpful,” Vice Adm. Craig Clapperton, commander of 10th Fleet and Fleet Cyber Command, said during a presentation at the WEST conference. “Great job by the Navy and working with Congress, and now we have MCWOs. Well, MCWOs are going to do cyber and then they’re going to do cyber, and then right after that they’re going to do cyber.”

When Cybercom was first created it was closely nestled with NSA to rely on its infrastructure and expertise, locating many of the service operations centers along with the spy agency’s cryptologic centers spread throughout the country.

As the military cyber enterprise has matured, DOD has sought to let it stand more apart from its NSA and signals intelligence origins, albeit remaining closely linked for intelligence support.

The new task force, an organization change that won’t affect team operations and structures and will only impact cyber mission force teams and operations that previously reported to NIOC Pacific, will help build the career of MCWOs.

Clapperton said he is working with Vernazza on beginning to screen leaders for the offensive and defensive cyber teams.

The two task groups beneath the task force will have O-5s – or commanders in the Navy – with O-4s – or lieutenant commanders – screened working for them. Then there will be an O-6 – or captain – major command screened MCWO, Clapperton said, noting those personnel have already been identified and will be there by the summer.

“We’re building a career path for MCWO that they’ll do cyber and then cyber and then cyber, and they’ll be experts by the time they’re an O-5 or O-6 doing nothing but cyber with command and increasing responsibilities up the path. They’re going to be steely eyed killers,” he said. “Then we pick from that group of very talented post major command O-6s to be one-star MCWOs.”

Vernazza noted that there will be good movement on the cyber career field in 2025 with the creation of the task force and greater progression of the MCWO and cyber warfare overall.