Dave Ortiz

The Air Force and other services are having difficulty manning cyber operations and intelligence professionals for US Cyber Command’s Cyber Mission Force (CMF) teams. The problem of finding qualified applicants for the cyber training programs may be exacerbated by the services’ self-imposed rules on career codes such as Air Force specialty codes and military occupational specialties. The CMF has dozens of teams requiring dozens of cyber professionals, so the demand signal for these low-density,… Show more

The Air Force and other services are having difficulty manning cyber operations and intelligence professionals for US Cyber Command’s Cyber Mission Force (CMF) teams. The problem of finding qualified applicants for the cyber training programs may be exacerbated by the services’ self-imposed rules on career codes such as Air Force specialty codes and military occupational specialties. The CMF has dozens of teams requiring dozens of cyber professionals, so the demand signal for these low-density, high-demand cyber skills places a great deal of strain on the services’ cyber pipelines. The Air Force in particular is having considerable trouble finding Airmen qualified to train as exploitation analysts, an important operational work role on each team. This article proposes reasonable steps to position the Air Force and other services to meet cyber operational readiness requirements for exploitation analysts and other cyber work roles through more flexible applicant searches, skill tracking, and a reexamination of what it means to be “operational” in cyber. Show less