Military readiness is the ability of armed forces to sustain and carry out operations with the support they need. In practice, that support includes power, water, communications, transport, logistics, maintenance, and industrial services. From a cyber-security perspective, readiness is not limited to defending a base network or perimeter; it also depends on the availability of the civilian systems that keep military missions running.
Attackers can affect readiness indirectly by disrupting utilities, telecom providers, transport networks, or industrial control environments such as SCADA, DCS, and PLC systems. A service outage or cyber incident in those sectors can delay repairs, interrupt movement, or degrade base operations without any direct breach of military systems. Defenders reduce this risk by mapping off-base dependencies, hardening third-party suppliers, building redundancy, and coordinating incident response with civilian operators and local authorities.