Dan Grobarcik

In January 2024, the F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Office (PMA-265) fielded an urgent call from a squadron in the Red Sea supporting Operation Prosperity Guardian. It wanted to carry more AIM-9X missiles on its Super Hornets to bolster its capability against Houthi attacks on merchant vessels.

Cyber operations are inevitable in future warfare. What roles they will play, however, and to what effect, are hotly contested. Over the past decade, U.S. cyber forces have engaged in numerous operations, but they have yet to be tested in high-end conflict against a technically sophisticated adversary, leaving defense planners with limited information from which to design a force structure to confront the varied character cyber conflict may take.

Cyberspace has moved from the realm of political competition to a domain permanently involved in warfare—a battlefield on which actors generate combat power to combine with forces in other domains. Theorists have speculated on the nature of cyber warfare and how it will affect future wars, but the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine provides an important look into how cyber operations actually integrate into a conventional war.