U.S. Marines formed as an Electronic Warfare Support Team with 2nd Radio Battalion, II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, near Setermoen, Norway, March 14, 2020. (US Marine Corps)

Tomorrow's military conflicts will be won by the most agile and adaptive military forces. How can the U.S. retain its competitive advantage in a challenging new age for military preparedness? 

Three new reports by Hudson's Center for Defense Concepts and Technology examine how the U.S. military and allied forces must adapt to maintain the battlefield advantage. In these reports, authors Bryan Clark, Dan Patt, and Tim Walton argue that the growing use of Artificial Intelligence, 5G, and other forms of technology have changed the nature of military competition, and that it’s time for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to  jettison strategies shaped by Cold War-era thinking. 

Explore our new reports and see key takeaways below:

Top 3 Takeaways from Implementing Decision-Centric Warfare: Elevating Command and Control to Gain an Optionality Advantage

1. China and Russia’s new warfare strategies focus on decision-making as the future battleground:

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) concept of System Destruction Warfare and the Russian military’s New Generation Warfare are representative of the new approaches being employed against the United States and its allies. Both concepts share a focus on information and decision-making as the main battlegrounds for future conflict. They direct attacks on an opponent’s battle network electronically and physically to degrade its ability to obtain accurate information while introducing false information that erodes the opponent’s ability to orient.

2. The U.S. is at risk of losing its decision-making advantage:

 Without dramatic reforms to DoD’s requirements and force development processes, the US military risks falling behind adversaries in the competition for decision-making advantage, thereby threatening its ability to protect US interests and allies against great power aggression…. DoD’s force design changes or command, control, and communication (C3) initiatives will need to go further for the U.S. military to sustain an optionality advantage against peer adversaries that have already made the leap to decision-centric warfare and have a home field advantage from which to employ it.

3. The disaggregated and AI-driven forces of the Mosaic concept are the future of warfare: 

The Mosaic Warfare concept, developed by DARPA, is based on the idea that disaggregated manned and autonomous units guided by human command with AI-enabled machine control could use their adaptability and complexity to prevent adversaries from achieving objectives while disrupting enemy centers of gravity to preclude further aggression… A U.S. military force built on the Mosaic Warfare concept would complicate the opponent’s decision-making, narrowing its options and imposing a potentially insoluble set of dilemmas. 

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Top 3 Takeaways from The Invisible Battlefield: A Technology Strategy for US Electromagnetic Spectrum

1. Electromagnetic spectrum use is accelerating worldwide and the U.S. military must adapt its EMS operations:

Addressing challenges to U.S. EMS operations will become more difficult as defense budgets come under pressure from costs to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, respond to economic recession, and service the growing national debt. Given the growing variety of adversary countermeasures and diverse demands for commercial spectrum, attempting to modify or replace Department of Defense (DoD) EMS systems so they avoid specific threats and civilian encroachments is likely to be unaffordable and continually late to need.

2. China and Russia are exploiting asymmetries in the U.S. military’s EMS governance:

Significant asymmetries exist between the DoD and its competitors regarding the organizations that govern EMS capabilities. The PLA developed a unified governance structure for EMS policy and capability requirements, which parallels the Russian Armed Forces’ EW Commander and staff. The US military, in contrast, divides responsibilities for doctrine and strategy between US Strategic Command, the EW Executive Committee (EXCOM), and the EMSO Cross-Functional Team (CFT). Moreover, DoD does not give any of these bodies the authority to direct EMS-related spending or acquisition, reducing their ability to implement policy.

3. The U.S. military needs to shift to a more dynamic approach to EMS operations:

DoD is at a crossroads in development of EMS-related technologies. Making the shift to more dynamic, agile, and flexible EMS operations, however, will require accepting risk in traditional methods of controlling the spectrum. The U.S. military lacks the time and resources to gain EMS superiority against PRC and Russian forces using a symmetric system vs. system approach. By the time DoD catches up, the PLA or Russian Armed Forces could exploit their EMS advantage to support aggression against their neighbors. DoD’s choice is whether to accept continued erosion of its edge in the  EMS or to make bold bets on the technologies most likely to circumvent or reverse the inherent advantages enjoyed by its great power competitors.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Top 3 Takeaways from Competing in Time: Ensuring Capability Advantage and Mission Success through Adaptable Resource Allocation

1. The Pentagon does not have the luxury of time:

Since the 1960s, time has been deemphasized as an incentive for defense invention while values such as cost, technology maturity, fairness, and perceived efficiency have been overemphasized. As a result, system development time increased and time-based constraints to innovation were lost, and the U.S. ability to adapt has been damaged. Time became a "schedule issue" that could be measured as an engineering and cost estimation problem, not as the ultimate driver of adaptable innovation.

2. DoD reform has been too focused on the acquisitions process:

While there have been dozens of acquisition reform efforts, the DoD's budgeting process has been nearly untouched since 1961. The budgeting process, not acquisition, is the keystone of the DoD’s institutional architecture. It governs the DoD’s ability to allocate funding to achieve national security objectives, links together requirements and purchasing, sets the calendar of the department, controls changes to investment priority, and serves as the mechanism for Congress to exercise its constitutionally granted appropriations powers.

3. Next steps should include a pilot program and commission to study expanding the Pentagon's resource allocation adaptability:

Congress and the DoD should cooperate to promptly launch a limited-scope pilot project on an alternative resource allocation process, designed to foster adaptability in capability delivery and aligned around a high-priority national security operational challenge. [They should also] sponsor a commission to study changes to the PPBE and appropriations process. This commission should include expert members with an understanding of current equities and limitations, and explore emerging concepts potentially including portfolio, organization, mission, and trusted-agent budgeting. 

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.