While many details remain classified, top officials are starting to share more about how cyber and electronic warfare played a pivotal role in the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month.
In the immediate aftermath of the operation, dubbed Absolute Resolve, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters that U.S. Cyber Command provided “effects” for the mission and noted that Navy EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft were among the 150 aircraft that participated. The operation also included Air Force F-35s, whose powerful EW capabilities have been known to help suppress enemy air defenses.
The groundwork for those contributions was laid far in advance, Air Force Brig. Gen. Ryan Messer said Jan. 29. Messer, deputy director for global operation on the Joint Staff, was testifying before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee when he was asked how cyber played a role in the Venezuela operation.
“Leading up to the events in Venezuela, over the last six months, we’ve been developing something new on the Joint Staff called a ‘nonkinetic effects cell.’ This is designed to integrate, coordinate, and synchronize all of our nonkinetics into the planning and then, of course, the execution of any operation globally,” Messer said.
Messer’s comments come on the heels of a New York Post interview with Trump on Jan. 24 in which the president revealed that the U.S. military used a secret weapon he called “The Discombobulator” to disrupt Venezuela’s defenses, as well as a New York Times report on Jan. 27 that CYBERCOM was able to attack the electrical grid, disable radars, and disrupt radios.
Both Messer and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy Katherine Sutton declined to say more in a nonclassified setting about specific capabilities, but taken together, the recent revelations point to the growing importance of nonkinetic weapons like directed energy, cyber effects, and spectrum jammers.
Messer emphasized that point, saying that cyber recruits need to know “you will be at the forefront of everything we do in both now and in the future.”
“One of the things that I’ll point out is, growing up in the Air Force, there was always a nonkinetic effects cell at an air operations center, but it usually existed back in a backroom,” Messer added. “It was a very dark place, and usually we didn’t ask for many inputs from that team until we wanted to sprinkle what we call the ‘lightning bolts’ onto some form of operation. The reality is that we’ve now pulled cyber operators to the forefront.”
Given that new importance, there has been a growing debate as to whether the U.S. should establish a dedicated military service for the cyber domain. Proponents of an independent “Cyber Force” argue that cyber is its own domain and is underprioritized by the other services when it comes to recruiting, training, and equipping forces. But others counter that the logistical, bureaucratic, and cultural legwork necessary to create and integrate a new service into the joint forces would be costly and distracting.
For now, Pentagon officials are focused on implementing what they call “CYBERCOM 2.0,” a series of reforms that will give the combatant command more authorities for recruiting, training, and executing budgets.
Yet while former CYBERCOM bosses—and its future commander—have argued that the reforms need time to work before any decisions is made on a new service, Sutton didn’t shut the door completely on the idea.
“Cyber Command 2.0 is really that talent management model, and we’ve been very careful as we’ve built that model that it’s agnostic to the organizational model and that it would support both the current model where five services present [forces] as well as other organizational models such as the establishment of a cyber force,” Sutton said.
Hartman, meanwhile, argued that the command’s current reforms are what’s necessary to ensure nonkinetic effects are fully integrated into operations—just as they were in Venezuela.
“I fundamentally believe the ability to integrate across the joint force is best suited to the model that we are developing here in CYBERCOM 2.0, and that is fundamentally important,” Hartman said. “Our ability to integrate not just left of conflict but during a conflict in all phases of the operation, just like any other traditional military capability, is absolutely essential to us delivering the capability that the nation needs. And I think CYBERCOM 2.0 is really the best course to do that.”
