According to military leaders of the UK, their armed forces are preparing to commence significant advantages regarding their cybersecurity capabilities in the following years. Cyberspace being confirmed as the fifth warfare domain together with land, air, sea, and space forces the defence authorities to improve their operations all across the West.
The range of the reevaluation starts from the prioritization of digital communications’ protection by boosting both the defensive and offensive capabilities of cybersecurity in forming skills.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, alongside the UK military, is investing in artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems, synthetic training, and a new term called ‘military Internet of Things (IoT)’. The roll-call of these sci-fi technologies at the DSEI conference in London included a pledge in developing a directed energy laser weapon.
The UK Ministry of Defence and the armed forces have found the new operational priorities poses a significant challenge.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of Strategic Command in the UK, has mentioned to its agents at DSEI that he is looking for people capable of operating throughout all the five dimensions of warfare or called ‘Penta-phibians’.
As explained by cybersecurity researchers, they are seeing investments in skills, multi-domain incorporation, and an acknowledgment that this change is needed throughout the five defences of domains and the UK government following the discussions from the Integrated Review. They also added the armed forces of the UK have a good reputation for adaptability. The latest challenge in moving to the digitally-enabled forces can make them hold their own in land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace.
However, another researcher stressed that the defence sector struggles with the cyber skills supply and demand problems similar to any other existing industry. A more significant factor to this challenge is the shortage, as the military forces would have to reskill and refurnish to prepare for a technology-driven battlefield.
But despite this challenge, they mentioned that one key solution to solving it is to expand the choices of candidates for the positions in military defence and to attract a more diverse set of people with a mission in mind that can likely grow towards cybersecurity roles and can provide many different outlooks to the work landscape.
