A full year elapsed between the establishment of the Cyber Corps as a basic branch of the United States Army and the approval of the branch insignia used for the collar devices of Cyber Corps Officers and Enlisted personnel.
September 2015 marks the date that members of the Army’s youngest branch were authorized to wear the Cyber Corps insignia of two crossed lightning bolts behind a dagger. In heraldry, lightning bolts symbolizes speed and worldwide reach, and they’re used in the design of branch insignia for both Public Affairs and Psychological Operations. They are particularly fitting for the Cyber Corps because attacks in the cyber realm can be delivered literally at lightning speeds.
The groundwork for the Cyber branch was laid in October 2010 when Army established U.S. Army Cyber Command, or ARCYBER, as one of the four service components to support U.S. Cyber Command, which was established in 2009. Its counterparts in the other three branches of the Armed Forces of the United States are U.S. Fleet Cyber Command, Twenty-Fourth Air Force, and Marine Corps Cyberspace Command.
In July 2016, the Army designated ARCYBER as an Army Service Component Command (ASCC). ASCCs are organized based upon a geographical Area of Responsibility (U.S. Army Africa, U.S. Army Europe, U.S. Army Central, etc.) or function (U.S. Army Special Operations, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command / Army Forces Strategic Command). With the announcement, ARCYBER became an ASCC of United States Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.
For the first four years of its existence, Cyber Command perpetuated the lineage and honors of Second Army, but in 2014 the Army activated a new unit with the designation of Second Army; the new Second Army was given the lineage and honors previously assigned to Army Cyber Command. Second Army was inactivated in 2017 and its colors cased on April 3 of that year at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
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