When the Unblinking Eye Closes: Digital Feast and Famine in the Marine Corps

"The Marine Corps recently recognized the importance of the digital battlefield. Yet the language describing Marine cyber operations is couched in defensive terms. The cyber force operates at higher command echelons — in the realm of generals, not sergeants. A modern cyber force needs to be tactical, pushed down to the smallest combat units like the fire team or squad. It must be offensive in nature, not simply protecting one’s own networks but wreaking havoc on the adversary’s. And, as I wrote previously in the Marine Corps Gazette, it needs to be expeditionary: a deployable, standalone capability, with the MAGTF commander delegated authority for its use. It does not assume persistent global connectivity or air superiority, but creates a localized bastion providing some electromagnetic freedom of action in the immediate area. Furthermore, federal cyber organizations like the National Security Agency have potent tools that they don’t share, but they must. A MAGTF deploying with those tools could still spread digital chaos and confusion when the invisible war cuts the networks in the skies above.

The real solution is more fundamental: To paraphrase Gen. Scales, building superior capabilities into our marines as opposed to their machines. Individual marines cannot be hacked, spoofed, or jammed. They can be hardened. This hardening will not be physical but mental. And here, I think, the authors have missed the most crucial point from Gen. Scales’ book. He described a “virtual gym,” an immersive training environment where warfighters can train against a thinking enemy before stepping on the future battlefield. This idea is the hub around which the other possibilities in Gen. Scales’ book, the authors’ future MAGTF, and the Marine Corps Operating Concept truly revolve. It is where the Marine Corps could build a maneuver warfare force capable of dominating “in an environment of chaos, uncertainty, constant change, and friction,” as our own doctrine demands."