Last week, the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill in its first reading to establish cyber forces in Ukraine. While debates continue at home over whether such a force is truly necessary, the United States is already charging ahead with its own cyber branch.
In September 2025, the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies unveiled a concept for a new U.S. military branch — the U.S. Cyber Force. It’s being called the most radical shake-up in American national security in a decade. War today is no longer purely “hot” or conventional. It plays out across multiple domains — on land, in the air, in space, and increasingly, in cyberspace. That’s where the fight over critical infrastructure, communications, data, and even perception is happening. Countries that fail to adapt risk falling behind — strategically, and potentially fatally.
The U.S. has taken note. The Cyber Force is designed as a fully-fledged military branch, built to operate in the digital domain not just on equal terms with adversaries, but ahead of them.
When digital threats turn deadly in the real world
The idea of dedicated cyber forces in the U.S. has been brewing for years. In the 2010s, specialised units began to appear inside the Pentagon — most notably the Cyber Mission Force under U.S. Cyber Command — but those capabilities were fragmented across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps and largely treated as auxiliary. No single branch claimed cyberspace as its primary domain, and the consequences of that fragmentation have become painfully clear.
In 2024, a major cyber campaign attributed to China, later labelled Volt Typhoon, exposed how serious the risk is: hackers maintained prolonged access to U.S. critical infrastructure — energy, communications and water systems among them. That incident was only one example of how adversaries can penetrate the country’s most vulnerable points without ever setting foot on its soil.
The threat picture is widening. Cyber campaigns from Russia, Iran, and North Korea aren’t just about espionage or sabotage — they’re laying the groundwork for open conflict: paralysing command systems, taking down power grids, and corrupting critical databases. These are exactly the scenarios the Cyber Force is built to confront.
In February 2025, former Cyber Command chief General Paul Nakasone openly acknowledged that the United States is “falling further behind in cyberspace.” The issue, he explained, isn’t a shortage of technology but poor coordination, weak personnel structures, and the lack of a single, unified body responsible for full-scale cyber defence.
It was to address precisely these gaps that the idea of a separate service — the U.S. Cyber Force — was born, designed with clear authority, a defined mission, and a long-term strategy.
Inside America’s new cyber forces: what the Cyber Force will really look like
The U.S. Cyber Force will be the first entirely new branch of the U.S. military since the Space Force was created in 2019. But unlike the Space Force, which was built from the ground up, the Cyber Force is more about reorganising and consolidating existing cyber capabilities into a single, specialised structure.
It won’t replace U.S. Cyber Command, which will continue to serve as the operational hub for cyber missions. Instead, the new service will act as a “force generator,” handling the training, equipping, staffing, and development of cyber specialists — much like the Army prepares its infantry or the Marines train their landing units. These specialists will then be deployed by combat commands as needed.
The Cyber Force will fall under the Department of the Army but operate independently, with its own leadership and internal structures. The move makes sense both politically and practically: the Army has the deepest experience in the cyber domain of any branch and the greatest capacity to bring the new service online quickly.
Cyber Force will have a clear, tightly defined remit that spans both offensive and defensive cyber operations. It will be charged with infiltrating enemy systems, paralysing infrastructure and waging information warfare, while also defending military networks, spotting intrusions and knocking back attacks. Its brief will include cyber intelligence — getting into adversary systems, analysing threats and supporting other commands — and developing new technologies, software and operational protocols. Equally important will be creating unified training, standards and personnel evaluation. This won’t be an “IT helpdesk” (those functions stay with DISA and the DoD CIO); Cyber Force is meant to be a full combat arm in cyberspace. It won’t replace the NSA, which remains the primary intelligence agency, but it should give the NSA a deeper talent pool and stronger technical backing. Operating solely in the digital domain as a combat-ready service, Cyber Force is intended to end the messy interservice rivalries over cyber capabilities and deliver a single chain of command and sustainable career paths.
How artificial intelligence is shaping the military of the future
Every key piece of building the Cyber Force — from understanding modern warfare to overhauling personnel — comes down to one thing: AI. It’s no longer just a nice-to-have or a promising technology; it’s becoming the foundation of this new U.S. military branch.
AI will be woven into every part of the force. In offensive operations, it will automate attack vectors, model scenarios, and predict enemy moves. On the defensive side, it will spot intrusions, analyse network anomalies, and respond to threats without waiting for human input. For intelligence, it will process massive datasets at speed, identify enemy behaviour patterns, and integrate signals from multiple sources. In training and personnel development, AI will power simulators, generative trainers, and personalised learning pathways. At the command level, it will support decision-making, risk assessment, and coordination across operational units.
This means building AI platforms and dedicated teams with real autonomy inside the service. Cyber Force won’t just rely on off-the-shelf tools — it will create its own AI ecosystem, designed specifically for military use. Its structure will include roles for AI engineers, machine-learning specialists, and operators of autonomous systems, forming the backbone of this high-tech branch.
AI will also be fully integrated into personnel reform. The Cyber Force will recruit civilian experts with technical backgrounds — developers, hackers, engineers who’ve previously worked outside the military — and create a system where AI talent isn’t just welcomed, but becomes the backbone of combat effectiveness.
The Pentagon is already pouring money into defence AI. In 2025 it signed contracts with four major companies — Google, Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI — each awarded roughly $200 million to build “agentic” AI platforms for combat use: automated decision systems, scenario modelling and generative tools for intelligence and communications. OpenAI, in particular, is working on generative models to support data analysis and strategic modelling for the defence sector, while firms such as Anduril are partnering with industry to fold AI into combat platforms and operational command.
Under the plan, Cyber Force would get direct access to these technologies and, over time, stand up its own research and engineering centres. Put simply, AI in the Cyber Force becomes a digital double of the conventional army — a headquarters, analyst, operator and fighter rolled into one system.
From military bureaucracy to a digital meritocracy
The boldest — and perhaps most revealing — move in creating the Cyber Force is the break from the traditional personnel model of the U.S. Army. For the first time in modern American military history, a service will promote people based not on years of service or rank, but on real expertise, technical skill, and measurable results.
The new branch will put a premium on recruiting civilians, with the share of “civilian” specialists far higher than in any other service. This opens the door for people who don’t plan to pursue a conventional military career but bring top-tier cyber skills to the table. Hackers, analysts, programmers, AI specialists, cryptographers, and social engineering experts will all have meaningful career paths and opportunities to advance based on talent, not tenure.
In addition, the Cyber Force will roll out its own training and certification system, blending military and civilian standards. In today’s U.S. Army, the “up or out” rule still applies — if you don’t get promoted, you’re out. That won’t be the case here. Specialists will be able to stay in their roles if their skills are unique or critically important. It’s, without exaggeration, a revolution in how the military manages personnel. And it makes total sense: success in cyberspace doesn’t come from physical endurance but from unconventional thinking, flexibility, speed, and deep technical expertise — the very qualities that will shape the service’s new organisational culture.
Why the U.S. is building a cyber force — and what it means for the world
Surprisingly, the U.S. still doesn’t have a military that can fully operate in cyberspace as its own combat domain. The Cyber Force is designed to change that — building a new type of service where cyber operators can think creatively, act independently, and operate seamlessly both in remote cloud environments and on the physical battlefield.
Cyberspace is no longer just an “add-on” to war. It has become a full-fledged arena of conflict, where a cyberattack can strike ahead of a physical assault, disrupt logistics, crash financial systems, cut off communications, or paralyse essential services like healthcare.
Ukraine’s efforts to move alongside the U.S. and other countries are a positive sign. Those who hesitate risk leaving themselves exposed in a completely new dimension of modern warfare, no matter how strong their conventional forces may be.
