Winning in the Cyber Frontier: Developing Cyber Targeters and Military Daring

In developing cyber personnel for national security functions, including air power, no single role may be as important as that of a targeter. This view has been expressly shared by two Chinese military specialists who see the role as the ‘fundamental work in [a] cyberspace operational plan’ (Zhang and Yao, 2015). The United States Air Force (USAF) also has strong advocates for the view that cyber targeting should be at the centre of its strategy and development plans for full-spectrum cyberspace operations (Anderson, 2016).

These sentiments, although not often encountered in open-source discussions of cyber-military operations, can be easily justified. Targeters can take on deeply complex tasks, breathtaking military ambition, and heavy responsibilities given evolving warfighting concepts. These concepts have been expressed in various ways over two decades. China’s cyber forces have been tasked to undertake operations to ‘paralyse the enemy’s operational system-of-systems [… and] sabotage the enemy’s war command system-of-systems’ during the early stages of hostilities (Costello and McReynolds, 2018). U.S. leaders have talked about ‘global strike in milliseconds’ (Cartwright, 2009) or cyber options for all phases of operations (Cyber Command, 2015). The most ambitious U.S. concept has been to achieve ‘penetration and then disintegration of an adversary’s systems and decision-making, thereby defeating their offensive capabilities’ (Pacific Command, 2020).

This 2024 article looks at what is needed to marry a cyber targeter’s talent to the goal of system penetration and profound disabling effects that can defeat adversary kinetic capabilities. The discussion suggests that a long-standing orthodoxy on the limited value of cyber operations in war will, in time, be overcome by the realisation of just how military daring and ambition can help realise the full potential of cyber warfare.