NATO Members' Organizational Path Towards Conducting Offensive Cyber Operations: A Framework for Analysis

NATO member states are starting to talk more openly about the incentives and opportunities to conduct offensive cyber operations for military purposes. This growing interest in `offensive cyber' is most clearly expressed in the creation of cyber commands, branches or services within the armed forces. Little research, however, has analyzed these organizational developments. This article provides a conceptual framework to facilitate empirical analysis across military cyber organizations (MCOs). The framework distinguishes between five stages of organizational development: i) seed, ii) startup, iii) growth, iv) expansion, and v) maturity. Our empirical analysis reveals that a significant number of NATO members started to carefully consider establishing MCOs from 2008 onwards, and some states had already started significant organizational efforts in the 1990s. However, I also reveal that the MCOs of most NATO members are still at the early stages of organizational development, and even those at the growth stage still have limited budgets to address the different workforce, capability, strategic and other requirements.