America’s longest frontline

OPINION:

This week, thousands of U.S. Army soldiers, industry partners, policymakers, and defense leaders will gather in our nation’s capital for the Association of the United States Army’s 2026 Annual Meeting. They will spend those days talking about the future of the Army, the technologies changing the battlefield and what our soldiers will need to win the wars of tomorrow.

This is, without a doubt, the most transformative time in military history. Historically, the “king of battle” has been artillery. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we could not produce enough 155mm howitzer rounds. Now, artillery is essentially obsolete. Historically, the most feared weapon of the modern battlefield has been tanks. In short order, tanks now have to hide. The advent of cheap, disposable drones has changed everything and has been well covered.

But while those conversations take place in Washington, another fight will continue around the clock a fight that never lets up.

Every hour of every day, the brave men and women serving as our nation’s cyber warriors are facing down adversaries and malicious actors in cyberspace. They stand atop the castle walls surrounding our military information networks, thwarting attempts to penetrate the digital infrastructure that undergirds nearly every aspect of modern life and modern military operations.

I spent 20 years serving in the United States Marine Corps and Navy. When I joined, the military was already becoming increasingly reliant on technology, but the transformation since then has been extraordinary. Today, nearly every tool our warfighters use to defend this country relies on massive, exquisite software suites, sophisticated information and communications networks and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.

Those systems connect the entire joint force and serve as force multipliers across all five domains of modern warfare: land, air, sea, space and cyberspace. That means military superiority today is not simply about possessing the best aircraft, ship, weapon, sensor or satellite. Increasingly, lethality depends on systems integration.

Our systems are only as good as their integration.

Modern warfare produces an almost incomprehensible quantity of data. Our military must constantly sense the battlefield, make sense of that information, and transform it into something commanders and warfighters can actually use. Done correctly, that allows American forces to identify threats, make decisions and reach out and kill our enemies before they even see us coming.

But collecting information is only part of the equation. That information must move.

Our networks allow it to travel seamlessly across the different echelons involved in an operation, giving our forces a shared picture of the operational environment and the threats within it. A sensor detecting something hundreds or thousands of miles away can contribute to a decision made elsewhere by a completely different platform or commander.

Look no further than the Aegis Combat System, produced by Lockheed Martin, aboard our Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers. Aegis brings together the systems necessary to sense, process, communicate, and respond to threats.

In many ways, it is the digital backbone of the modern carrier strike group. But that incredible technological advantage also creates an enormous responsibility. Every piece of software that allows one of these systems to operate, and every single node connected to one of these networks, represents surface area where cyber operations can occur.

Every new capability we integrate, every network we expand, and every software-enabled system we field gives the American warfighter another tool. At the same time, it creates another piece of digital terrain that must be defended.

Our cyber warriors defend a battlefield most Americans will never see, but one that increasingly touches every battlefield on which American forces operate. Their mission is not separate from the tanks, aircraft, ships, satellites, and weapons systems we traditionally associate with military power. It is what helps make those systems work together.

As soldiers, defense leaders, innovators and policymakers gather at AUSA this year to discuss the future of American land power, we should remember that the next generation of military dominance will depend on more than what we can build. It will depend on whether we can connect it, integrate it, protect it and keep it operating when an adversary tries to take it away.

America has spent generations building the most capable military force the world has ever known. Maintaining that advantage in the modern era means recognizing that the front line no longer begins at the edge of a battlefield. It runs through every network, every system and every line of code our warfighters depend upon. And every day, America’s cyber warriors are standing watch.

• Dr. Rich McCormick is a decorated veteran and emergency room physician who proudly serves Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. Rep. McCormick serves on the House Armed Services Committee, Oversight & Government Reform Committee, and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, where he serves as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. As a former AI Task Force member, he is a leading voice on emerging technology policy in Congress.