Building the Best Offensive and Defensive Cyber Workforce: Volume II, Attracting and Retaining Enlisted and Civilian Personnel

Abstract

The U.S. military's success in cyberwarfare hinges in part on the capabilities of the cyber personnel the military brings to the fight. Given that cyberwarfare is considered a core element of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) mission and a core capability that USAF provides to combatant commanders, USAF needs to ensure that its personnel are trained and developed in a way that best suits the cyber mission. With this in mind, USAF has been looking for ways to revamp and improve the training and development of its offensive and defensive cyberwarfare workforce to develop the best fighting force possible. USAF is also cognizant of the importance of recruiting and retention in realizing the full potential of any training and development efforts and has sought to better understand some of the drivers of attraction to and retention in the cyber field.This report, the second of two volumes, summarizes RAND Project AIR FORCE's work exploring the views of the enlisted and civilian workforce on these topics. Our study builds upon similar recent RAND Corporation work focused on understanding the views of the officer cyber workforce (see Hardison et al., 2019). The results from this study are intended to inform policymaker decisions about changes to USAF offensive and defensive cyber training and development efforts, as well as USAF efforts to recruit and retain the best personnel for the job. In this volume, we present our findings on recruiting and retention; in Volume I, we present our findings on training and development . Some of the material presented in this volume-such as the impetus for our research and our overall approach-is repeated in This report should interest cyber community leadership, USAF and U.S. Department of Defense leaders concerned with the management of the cyber workforce and the effectiveness of the cyber warfare mission more broadly, and USAF and U.S. Department of Defense senior leaders responsible for managing USAF career fields.