Pentagon weighing groundwork for new Cyber Posture Review

Soldiers with the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade conduct cyberspace operations at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California. (US Army)

Senior US Department of Defense (DoD) officials are weighing how to cement cyber capabilities and operations into the larger strategic fabric of national defence and military power, in an effort to meld the Pentagon's offensive and defensive cyber capacities into more traditional modes of warfare.

“We need to think about [cyber] in full planning contests, just as we think about what adversaries are likely to do. They have certainly incorporated that into their thinking and our understanding of their thinking. So, we need to make sure that we're not just looking at these things in silos,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy Mieke Eoyang.

The evolution of cyber-warfare capabilities, cyber security, and network defence has accelerated dramatically since the Pentagon's inaugural Cyber Posture Review in 2018.

“We're coming up on ... working through that next Cyber Posture Review and understanding our current posture, understanding the capabilities that delivers for us, and then making an assessment about that,” she said.

“Obviously, that has to be made in the context of a balance of all the capabilities across the department because we are just one capability in the department of many capabilities. But I think that understanding what we have delivered so far, what our current posture enables us to do, is a really important baseline from which we can draw a better sense of how to go forward,” she added.