Air Forces Cyber Is Shaping Up as Major Command, Ex-Officials Say

The Department of the Air Force is working on a plan to elevate Air Forces Cyber to a major command, with the likelihood that the unit will be directly under the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff or the department secretary, former cyber officials of the service branch told DefenseScoop. 

AFCYBER was established in 2019 as part of the 16th Air Force, which is under Air Combat Command.

Its elevation is one of the DAF measures to re-optimize the service branch to maintain U.S. air and space superiority announced at the AFA Warfare Symposium in February. As a command, AFCYBER could raise awareness of cyber and non-kinetic technologies’ role in future warfighting capabilities, DefenseScoop reported Friday.

Bill Marion, Accenture Federal Services’ defense and intelligence managing director, a 4X24 member and former Air Force deputy chief information officer, sees cyber warfighting capability as “transcending all the mission areas,” citing the technology’s impact on the Ukrainian war. 

Marion also noted that AFCYBER as a command faces a budgetary challenge, with competition from such counterparts as the Air Combat Command and the Space Command.