Although it did not acquire its current designation until 1976, the basic premise upon which the Cryptologic Technician (CT) rating is based—intercepting and decoding enemy communications while protecting your own from such a fate—has been around as long as warfare itself. It was during the Civil War that Signals Intelligence, or the gathering of communications sent and received by the enemy, began to be recognized as an important wartime function. The arrival of wireless radio transmissions—the U.S. Navy employed this technology for the first time in 1899—not only made it relatively easy to hear the enemy’s communications, but also made it clear that safeguards needed to be taken to ensure your own transmission did not meet the same fate.
The first training class of Navy and Marine radio-intercept operators was launched in 1928; over the next thirteen years, over 175 enlisted Marines and Sailors graduated from the school and became the “godfathers” of modern Naval cryptology. The increasing important of Signals Intelligence led to the formation in 1935 of the Communications Security Group, which eventually became the NSG, or Naval Security Group.
With the almost meteoric rise of digital communications and the importance of computer networks as a means of communication and information-sharing, the Navy quickly grasped the need to re-evaluate the way it thought not only about Signals Intelligence, but how information and data could be leveraged in a 21st-century warfighting environment. The result was the 2005 transfer of the Naval Security Group to the Naval Network Warfare Command, where it became known as the Information Operations Directorate.
Simply put, the Navy now “views the electromagnetic spectrum-cyber environment as a primary warfighting domain.” To that end, the Information Dominance Corps was created in 2009, and subsequently redesignated it as the Information Warfare Community (IWC) in 2016. Within the IWC, Cryptologic Technicians and their corresponding officers are one of four sub-communities, the others being centered around Intelligence (IS), Meteorology/Oceanography (AG), and Information (IT). Of these four groups, it is the Cryptologic Technicians—and those in the Networks service rating in particular—who not only are working almost exclusively in cyberspace, but also are tasked with launching attacks there and defending against cyberstrikes by the enemy.
Related Items
Cryptologic Technician Rating Badge
Cryptologic Technician Ball Cap Device
CWO Cryptologic Warfare Technician Hard Shoulder Boards
CWO Cryptologic Warfare Technician Soft Epaulets
CWO Cryptologic Warfare Technician Sleeve Device
CWO Cryptologic Warfare Technician Collar Device
CWO Electronics Technician
Hard Shoulder Boards
Soft Epaulets
Sleeve Device
Collar Device
CWO Operations Technician (CTT only)
Hard Shoulder Boards
Soft Epaulets
Sleeve Device
Collar Device