DOD mulling future of U.S. Cyber Command

The Pentagon is examining whether U.S. Cyber Command should be elevated to the status of combatant command, meaning it would no longer be subordinate to U.S. Strategic Command, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday.

As Inside Cybersecurity reports:

The current arrangement, in which CYBERCOM is a sub-unified command to STRATCOM, "works now, but it's not necessarily optimal, which is why we're looking at it," Carter said at a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.

"We do have a reluctance about adding new headquarters staff, because one of the things that we're doing in this budget is cutting headquarters staff, and so we need to be careful about that," he said. "But whichever way that turns out, the command structure of CYBERCOM has an important future."

The head of CYBERCOM, Adm. Michael Rogers, is currently dual-hatted as the commander of the National Security Agency. The two organizations should remain "in the same place" so "they can interchange talent and draw on one another," Carter said.