Cyberwarfare has been heralded as the coming frontier and you can be sure that the United States wants to be at the forefront. Enter the National Security Agency (NSA), which is training a new breed of cyberwarriors for use in the frontlines

An NPR report reveals that the NSA is actively training cyberwarriors that can relentlessly pick at a network.

"So we're the guys kinda pounding at the front door," Marine Capt. Robert Johnston says, "finding all the open holes that we can, and beatin' down the door." Johnston heads what he dubs a "reconnaissance and initial access team."

The NSA is also involved in cyberwarfare training scenarios with military institutions such as West Point and Annapolis. One such instance is a CDX three-day hackathon where NSA's red-cell hacking team out of Columbia, Md. attacked networks run at Annapolis and West Point

"We want to make this clear: This is not a game," NSA red-cell team leader Shawn Turskey says. "We're training our future leaders to fight through network adversity to conduct their mission and keep our nation safe."

"We're in this for the long haul," Turskey continued. "We'll get immediate return, but down the road is what we're looking for to have that bigger payoff."

The main goal of such programs, for the NSA and other arms of the military, is to have a respectable cyberwarrior force in the future. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has said in the past that he aims to triple the size of Pentagon's Cyber Command.

"The United States Government and the private sector grasp cyber threats far better than we did just a few years ago. And thanks to General Alexander's visionary leadership as the first commander of U.S. Cyber Command, the Department of Defense is on its way to building a modern cyber force of really true and tremendous professionals," Secretary Hagel said at a speech during General Keith Alexander's retirement ceremony late March.

"Even though we can respond to cyber attacks in any domain, this force is expanding the president's options with full-spectrum cyber capabilities that can complement other military assets."

Of course, all of this hasn't been easy thanks to the revelations by Edward Snowden last year that the NSA had been overstepping its boundaries. Morale at the agency has been said to have hit new lows, but the NSA is still confident that those who get a chance to work with them will love it.

"Once you try NSA, you buy NSA," NSA recruitment marketing manager Lori Weltmann says. "The work is exciting, and you can do things here that you can't do anywhere else."