US Army Doubles Down on Tactical Cyber with Second Expeditionary Battalion

Multiplying the Non-Kinetic Force at the Tactical Edge

The United States Army is moving aggressively to institutionalize cyber and electromagnetic activities as core front-line combat multipliers. Speaking at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank confirmed that the service will soon stand up a second expeditionary cyber battalion. This incoming unit will serve as an exact operational replica of the 11th Cyber Battalion—affectionately known as the Leviathans—which pioneered scalable cyber and electronic warfare deployments at the tactical edge.

According to the head of Army Cyber Command, the new organization will begin standing up in earnest within the next couple of months. The service has charted an aggressive timeline, projecting that the unit will achieve initial operating capability within a single year before marching toward full operational capability. This structural duplication reflects an urgent institutional recognition that single-source tactical cyber assets are wholly insufficient for a multi-domain operational environment.

Proving Ground Realities and Border Operations

The operational necessity driving this expansion is not hypothetical. The prototype 11th Cyber Battalion has already been actively deployed on domestic and regional missions, most notably working on behalf of Joint Task Force–Southern Border. In this capacity, operators provide critical radio frequency-enabled cyber effects directly as directed by division commanders, validating the utility of non-kinetic capabilities in non-traditional security domains.

Tracing its lineage back to the June 2018 activation of the 915th Cyber Warfare Battalion, the Leviathans were formally restructured on October 16, 2022, to anchor the Army's contemporary cyberspace objectives. The overarching force-generation blueprint originally outlined a goal of fielding 12 specialized expeditionary teams under the 11th Cyber Battalion umbrella by September 2027. Doubling the parent battalion structure effectively doubles the throughput of specialized personnel capable of denying, degrading, and manipulating adversary command-and-control networks.

"Just as Gen. Patton led the modernization of tank warfare into WWII, the leaders and soldiers of the 11th Cyber Battalion spearhead concept development for the delivery of CEMA combat power to the tactical edge of the contemporary battlefield."

Accelerating Innovation Through Transforming in Contact

Beyond traditional cyber-attack and electronic defense missions, these expeditionary battalions serve as crucial testing grounds for the Army's 'Transforming in Contact' modernization paradigm. Developers from Army Cyber Command have operated alongside the Cyber Solutions Development unit within the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade to engineer and refine novel drone technologies. By placing experimental software and unmanned systems directly into the hands of operators for real-time feedback loops, the service dramatically compresses the acquisition cycle.

This hands-on methodology was further underscored during a rigorous multi-technology demonstration at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. During the evaluation, operators simultaneously deployed three nascent Army technologies, proving their collective efficacy in neutralizing incoming electromagnetic threats from sophisticated adversaries. Standing up a second battalion ensures that these operational feedback loops can scale concurrently across multiple geographic combatant commands without diluting front-line readiness.

Institutionalizing CEMA for Peer-Level Conflict

The race to institutionalize cyber electromagnetic activities at the lowest tactical echelons directly mirrors lessons learned from high-intensity conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In a modern battlespace saturated with cheap sensors, automated SIGINT collection, and relentless electronic jamming, brigade and division commanders cannot afford to wait for strategic cyber assets to clear bureaucratic hurdles. They require embedded, responsive CEMA operators who speak the language of both division artillery and tactical network routing.

By mirroring the 11th Cyber Battalion, the Army is signaling a permanent shift away from centralized, strategic-only cyber warfare toward distributed, tactical-edge dominance. As this second battalion stands up and scales toward full operational capability, it will provide combatant commanders with the resilient non-kinetic bandwidth required to fight and win in congested, contested electromagnetic environments.