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Friday 6 December 2013

Cyber Force UK?

I was doing some research for an idea that I had that involved the Norwegian Army, and found out that Norwegian Armed Services has five branches (in order of seniority):
  • Norwegian Army (8,800 personnel)
  • Royal Norwegian Navy (3,700 personnel)
  • Royal Norwegian Air Force (2,300 personnel)
  • Home Guard (56,200 personnel)
  • Norwegian Cyber Force (1,500 personnel)
The country has a population of 5,096,300 and mandatory conscription, although only a small percentage of those eligible for service are actually conscripted. Conscripts have a nineteen month term of service with a twelve month service obligation, and approximately half of them enrol in the Home Guard, in which the service obligation is for a total of seven months spread out over many years.

I did a comparison with the UK (based on figures obtained from armedforces.co.uk), and if the same percentages were applied the UK armed forces, they would look like this:
  • British Army: 109,120 personnel (Actual = 104,900 personnel)
  • Royal Navy: 45,880 personnel (Actual = 35,430 personnel)
  • Royal Air Force: 28,520 personnel (Actual = 40,090 personnel)
  • Reserves: 0 personnel (Actual = 37,600 personnel)
  • Home Guard: 696,880 personnel (Actual = 0 personnel)
  • Cyber Force: 18,600 personnel (Actual = 0 personnel)
This is an interesting comparison and reflects the different strategic outlooks that the two countries have … but the provision of a Cyber Force is something that the UK has not – at present – replicated.

With the way things seem to be developing in the modern world, perhaps it should.

6 comments:

  1. Isn't Cyber 'Warfare' part of GCHQ's remit in the UK?

    Cheers,

    Pete.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aren't 'Cyber Warriors' the animated troops in Rome:Total War?

    Regards,
    Arthur

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pete,

    I think that it is part of GCHQ's remit, but I doubt if they have that many employees working purely on Cyber Warfare or Cyber Crime.

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  4. Arthur1815,

    I have no idea what they are called ... but I know that they are not toy soldiers!

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your post triggered memories of announcements made earlier in the year. At the risk of looking a little nerdy if you look here http://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/joint-forces-command/about/recruitment you will see an announcement about the Joint Cyber Reserve being set up under the MoD's Joint Forces Command, while the UK's cyber security team across Whitehall can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/policy-teams/office-of-cyber-security-and-information-assurance.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Martin Sheppard,

    It is good to see that the UK has at least made some sort of effort to create such an organisation.

    Thanks for sharing that information with me and my regular blog readers.

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete

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