Pentagon memo calls for more support for Fort Meade’s Cyber Command after suicides

In the wake of five suicides in five weeks this summer by workers associated with U.S. Cyber Command at Fort George G. Meade, a Pentagon memo ordered the command to take a series of steps to support the well-being of its workforce.

The document, sent by the Pentagon’s top cyber official to Cyber Command’s leader, Army Gen. Joshua Rudd, orders the agency to create a framework by the end of October to address the psychological factors that are harming the mental health of personnel and their ability to perform.

First reported by online cybersecurity news site The Record, the memo was confirmed by a senior Defense Department official, who declined to be named, citing department policy. The Pentagon declined to share the memo with The Banner.

People working for the Cyber Mission Force, the command’s operational arm, can spend long hours in windowless, secure rooms, called SCIFs, which are designed to store classified information. Their work intensified this year amid the war with Iran and the race to integrate artificial intelligence.

According to The Record, the memo acknowledged that the “continuous, high-tempo nature of ongoing active cyber operations imposes a unique cumulative, cognitive and psychological toll.”

“Unlike traditional kinetic forces, cyber teams lack standardized periods of operational restitution, reconstitution between deployments which impact retention and long-term analytic performance,” read the memo written by Katherine Sutton, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for cyber policy and principal cyber adviser to U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

The memo came after five people working with Cyber Command took their lives between June and July. Work-related stress is considered a significant contributing factor to suicidal ideation, though it is unclear whether it played a role in the five deaths.

According to the memo, the command had to provide four years of exit interviews and surveys to the Defense Department within 30 days to help establish a health baseline for the mission force, The Record reported. Within 60 days, the command had to modify policies addressing how cyber operators serve tours consecutively by including either new career opportunities or new educational opportunities between missions to reduce stress.

The agency also must review and reprioritize its digital warfighting campaigns and finalize a memorandum of understanding with the National Security Agency, which is also headquartered at Fort Meade, to share behavioral health practitioners.

All the practitioners are required to have high-level security clearances that can take extended periods to obtain.

In recent years, the Defense Department has echoed longstanding concerns over the lack of mental health resources available to people within the agency and the mission force.

In 2024, the National Defense Authorization Act, which controls congressional military spending for the fiscal year, asked the Pentagon and Cyber Command to study the risks to those working in the mission force and their access to mental health resources. The goal was to improve the ability of personnel to “mitigate the unique psychological factors that contribute to the degradation of mental health and job performance,” according to the legislation.

The report found that the resources available were inadequate and that additional planning and investment were needed. Cyber Command promised to create a governance and cyber wellness working group as part of its response to the defense bill. Now, Sutton’s memo asks Rudd to appoint someone to co-lead the group and serve as the primary liaison between Fort Meade and Sutton’s office on wellness efforts.

The memo accelerates some initiatives in the Cyber Command 2.0 plan, launched in 2025 to improve the recruitment and retention of the cyber force and ensure the mission force is resilient, the Pentagon official told The Banner.

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or behavior, call or text 988 to contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.