Defense Business Brief: Cyber force, outlined; Shipbuilding game; USMC’s JLTV plea

The military could stand up a separate service branch to handle cyber operations by 2028— should Congress or the White House decide to do so this year, according to a new Center for Strategic and International Studies report released Wednesday. 

“Regardless of institutional alignment, reaching initial operating capacity (IOC) would take between 12 and 18 months and proceed through several sequential phases: setting conditions; fielding the IOC; iterative growth over several years; and institutional refinement,” CSIS’s commission on Cyber Force Generation wrote. “Following a presidential decision or legislative action to establish a new Title 10 service, this force generation model would address longstanding structural challenges and build the Cyber Force the United States needs for this critical domain of warfare.”

The branch could have about 30,000 people, including around 20,000 active-duty troops and warrant officers from across the services, up to 5,000 National Guard members, and up to 6,000 civilians and contractors, states the report, which was co-written with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The report arrives as lawmakers mull a proposal to order the creation of a cyber service, a topic that has been debated for the past decade. 

Mark Montgomery, who leads FDD’s cyber center and previously led the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said a new service is needed. 

In “the last six to 12 years, I would say that the performance of the services has been an obstruction to success. And that’s a tough thing to say because services don’t want to be an obstruction…they want to do the right thing,” Montgomery told reporters. “But our ability to recruit, train, maintain, and retain a cyber force has struggled. Our recruiting has never focused on—none of the services’ recruiting efforts focus on: ‘Can you code Python?’”

A separate service would allow cyber operators to have their own budget—and their own culture, said Lauryn Williams, deputy director of CSIS’ Strategic Technologies Program. And there’s a “similar need for a lot of deliberation and discussion around what a cyber force culture and doctrine should look like, not least because it would be drawing personnel from every other military service, so would be a mishmash of cultures, maybe, to start.” 

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Subbuilding game. GDIT’s Emerge event Tuesday came with a virtual training tool for new submarine shipbuilders. The technology imports all the design elements of the Columbia and Virginia class and renders them into a navigable learning experience. But the demo version used an older boat, the USS Holland, from the turn of the 20th century. Using an Xbox controller, new hires can tour the submarine class they’ll be working on, and point and click on a part to learn more about what it does and where it goes.

• The Holland has about 20,000 parts, while the Columbia class has millions. The tool “goes down to each nut, bolts, screw, washer. We have all that detail, because we control the design database, we make the design. So with the modern era, we can take those same models that are made to build the boat, and then create tools to help the guys figure out what they’re doing,” said Eric Banach, a software engineer for General Dynamics Electric Boat. 

Buildsubmarines.com is pulling in thousands of new shipbuilders. The Navy’s slick ad campaign to attract shipyard workers is still going strong, said Josh Sturgill, the workforce development coordinator for the Submarine Industrial Base Program Office, at the GDIT event. He said the site gets about 75,000 application clicks a month and “somewhere between 5.7 and 6 percent of those that click ‘apply’ are going to continue on to a job interview and offer inside the submarine industrial base. That’s what, statistically, [I’ve been] seeing over the last five years.” 

• Background: The Navy-backed effort acts as a job portal across the shipbuilding industry and aims to attract new talent to an industry that has struggled in recent years with high turnover and green workers.  
• But things have improved, according to General Dynamics HR executives, who point to new initiatives in housing, wellness, and childcare as part of a broader plan to keep more workers. 
• “We broke ground this year on a housing project…housing in Maine is the single biggest barrier to growing this workforce in terms of attracting talent. So, we—General Dynamics and the Navy—we worked with a developer to put in 85 units of housing that are going to be focused on entry-level positions to have,” said Ray Steen, vice president of human resources at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, noting that attrition was previously in the high 20 percent range is now around 5 percent. “That’s a long play that didn’t affect [attrition] three years ago, but it’s going to help it going forward.”
• Steen said this workforce-forward approach, which includes higher wages, is what helped the shipyard deliver USS Patrick Gallagher two months ahead of schedule. 

MUSVs & more

• The Marines want a new JLTV supplier. The Marine Corps released a request for information seeking a new supplier for the JLTV—which is more than a year behind schedule. The Army canceled its JLTV program last year but the Marines requested about $245 million to buy 341 units according to the 2027 budget proposal. Responses are due June 10. 
• General Dynamics is spending $200 million to “unwind a partnership with Turkish defense contractor Repkon in a bid to finally start producing 155mm artillery shells at a Texas plant that’s been beset by delays,” Tony Capaccio writes for Bloomberg. Repkon acquired the Garland, Texas plant that manufactures metal parts for munitions from General Dynamics last year. The move also raised concerns about potential foreign influence in domestic defense supply chains. 
• Seaborne showcase. The Navy picked seven vendors to demonstrate their medium unmanned surface vessels at sea from June through October. Successful demos will receive $15 million and would be eligible for a production contract. Selected contenders are Birdon, Galliano Marine Services, HII, Leidos, PacMar Technologies, Saronic Technologies, and Sea Machines.

One last tech thing: Join us June 16 at our annual Tech Summit at the Pentagon City Ritz Carlton. Listen to key leaders discuss AI adoption, autonomous operations, the future of military technology—and, my personal favorite, the “backers of the battlefield.” See you there!