For decades, military practitioners and academics have come up with theories, evidence, and examples that indicate that offensive cyber operations might revolutionize modern warfare. Others have made an equally impressive case that refutes that such operations would even be relevant, making it hard to reach any definite conclusions. This paper introduces a novel analytical framework to assess offensive cyber operations based on the circumstances of their use across the different phases of war, from shaping operations prior to the conflict to the actual battlefield. This framework substantially simplifies the key questions of practitioners and academics in order to pose the more direct question: Where, when, and how might offensive cyber operations affect warfare outcomes, both today and in the future?
Within 15 years of the invention of powered flight, nearly all of the doctrinal missions of an air force had been not just discovered but integrated under a single commander in battle: Billy Mitchell at the 1918 battle of Saint-Mihiel.1 The pressure of extended high-intensity combat drove innovations in the use of airpower that were hard to imagine before World War I, when planes seemed fragile and of limited use on the battlefield. During that war, airpower started to come into its own, due to technological improvements, doctrinal advancements, and coordinated use by a single commander charged with integrating airpower with other combined arms to triumph in a major battle.
Adversaries in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine have similarly been pushing offensive cyber operations, discovering new relevance and missions — driven by those same pressures of combat — and hinting that there are more possibilities to come. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raises a critical question: Where, when, and how might offensive cyber operations impact the outcomes of war?
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