From Unity of Command to Unity of Effort
Quick Read
The Department of War advances with unmistakable momentum and pride as we mark the 250th. At the same time, senior leaders signal urgent concern: will Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems undermine or enhance our superiority? The Drone Dominance Working Group, Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, and $54+ billion in FY27 proposals alongside the 2026 AI Strategy seek an “AI-first” force. Yet history reminds us that ambition and funding alone do not suffice.
Every disruptive technology from longbow to tank has met countermeasures, driven doctrinal adaptation, and restored balance through combined arms. The character of war changes; its nature does not. The decisive factor is vision: not narrow focus on technology, but a clear destination that invites the entire enterprise to adapt.
The power of vision is that it defines the destination with enough clarity and humility to invite the entire enterprise into the journey. A vision for AI/AS can’t be built on assumptions; it must assert the conditions to adopt and adapt to the innovation that keeps the United States Armed Forces as an unmatched keeper of peace and prosperity. A vision that centers the human platform, the warfighter backed by the Department’s people, culture, and industrial base, turns disruption into organic capacity that endures.
Ready to go deeper? Continue below for historical context, organizational insights, perspectives, and closing reflections.
Deeper Dive (10 minutes)
Why Clear Vision Must Shape This Moment of Transformation
The Department of War is operating with unmistakable momentum. America’s armed forces have demonstrated decisively that their will and capability to defeat the threats against the American people is unmatched. This year, even as we celebrate the 250th year of our Union, the military is flexing the strength that ensures its enduring peace and prosperity. Amid high confidence, senior leadership is signaling a restless and even urgent concern: Will Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems undermine or enhance our superiority?
The Drone Dominance Working Group (DDWG) and Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG) are two very public initiatives positioned to answer that question, with budget proposals exceeding $54 billion in FY27 to action a shift toward autonomous systems in mass, integrated with AI capability across domains. The 2026 Artificial Intelligence Strategy is a clarion call in this direction, calling for an “AI-first” warfighting force that reimagines how people, processes, and technology come together. A strong historical perspective will recognize that this advocacy among senior leaders is not new, with autonomous systems garnering wartime-urgency prioritization during the Great War on Terror, as well as criticism for failures to acquire and integrate new capabilities effectively.
This Time Will Not Be Different
History shows that ambitious direction and funding alone does not guarantee outcomes. The Future Combat Systems (FCS) initiative, conceived amid the Global War on Terror, offers just one reminder of how innovation-driven military transformation challenges the Department. It was a bold proposal for a technological leap, imagining a fighting force unified with modern digital communications and networked software-defined capabilities. It yielded valuable conceptual advances in system-of-systems integration and foreshadowed the adaptation of Full Spectrum Operations with Net-centric Warfare to Multi-Domain Operations. However, it reminds us of the power and strategic necessity of a vision for continuous transformation against emerging realities. The proliferation of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was the straw that broke the camel’s back of FCS, with fixed assumptions resulting in a cascading failure. Deeply rooted problems were temporarily concealed by wartime budgets, but were soon thrust into open congressional hearings as $49.3B in today’s dollars evaporated.
Today, as we observe the Russo-Ukrainian War, social media feeds and journo blogs sing a chorus of voices declaring that the age of “traditional” warfare is over. Small drones, they argue, have become the indispensable weapon of modern combat, dominating the battlefield with cheap and relentless capability that renders infantry and armor assaults irrelevant. Loitering munitions, meanwhile, are portrayed as the ultimate equalizer, swarming in numbers that overwhelm defenses and turn rear areas into vulnerable targets. Tanks, once kings of the battlefield, are dismissed as expensive, slow-moving liabilities; manned aircraft, critics insist, are unsurvivable in contested airspace where low-cost drones and air defenses rewrite every rule. Their position is clear: one theater’s experience has revealed the future, and those who cling to legacy systems do so at their peril.
Yet history tells a more nuanced story of arms and combat technologies. From the longbow that upended feudal cavalry to the machine gun that birthed trench warfare, from the tank that shattered static lines to the guided missile that forced aircraft into new altitudes and tactics, every disruptive innovation has reshaped the battlefield only to trigger countermeasures, doctrinal adaptation, and restored balance through combined arms. What appears decisive in one conflict often proves an incomplete picture when viewed across the full spectrum of combat the Department of War must master. Narrow focus on any single technology or scenario risks missing the enduring truth: the character of war changes with technology, but its nature, driven by the human condition and adaptability, never does.
Transformation that endures this adoption of technology and adaptation of operations over time is the essential condition for success. When leadership’s vision is myopic to choices in technology, timelines for innovation, or the cost of change, the result is a brittle initiative. When the vision provides clarity for an organization to rally around change, to understand risk, and to inspire progress, the outcome is inevitable.
The Interplay of Innovation and Organization
Innovation does not transform organizations, it disrupts them. Organizations must transform to adopt and adapt to innovation. This plays out across the uneven frontier of technological and organizational change. The Department of War’s immense scale amplifies every shift: no other organization matches its global reach, scope of specialized value areas, layered value chain, or the weight of legacy frameworks built by competent predecessors confronting yesterday’s challenges. Those legacy policies, processes, and procedures carry genuine value but are at the heart of the heated discussion on the path forward for transformation. Each “fence” exists for reasons forged in prior generations to manage risk, ensure accountability, concentrate skilled competencies, and preserve hard-won lessons. The tension is unavoidable when established ways, while still solving real problems, collide with the expanse of today’s technological possibilities. Disengagement can quietly follow, not from lack of commitment, but from the friction of change. Only clear vision can light the way to overcome these challenges.
A common assumption is that adoption patterns from other organizations or historical scenarios will map neatly onto our own. Contemporary conflicts offer vivid illustrations, yet the deeper lesson widely discussed in strategic circles is not replication. It is the imperative of active participation. Organizations that remain “in the fight” of transformation to test assumptions, adapt in real time, and build new competencies together as technology is adopted, develop organic capacity and competitive advantage that static observers miss. A longitudinal view of the Department of War, and the current era of reform, is key. This is one in an unending succession of organizational reforms, both in recent years and the distant past to varying degrees of success; changes that have kept the US Military on top for 250 years.
Soldier Feedback and the Human Platform
At the heart of a meaningful vision for the Department of War lies the warfighter. Warfighter feedback reveals whether new technology integrates as effective warfighting capability in the formation or remains mere “kit.” But when technology challenges the very formation itself, how it is organized, equipped, and conducts the fight, the Warfighter is the “tip of the spear” of the holistic transformation that must occur. Vision must therefore look beyond today’s choices to how the enterprise must be empowered to change. The essence of this challenge is captured in Henry Ford’s observation that if he had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said “a faster horse.” Transformation arises not from selecting among available alternatives, but from imagining the outcome the formation truly needs, informed not only by those closest to the fight, but the entire enterprise needed to recruit, arm, train, and enable that warfighter as the fist of the United States Armed Forces.
There is no technology that is a platform for change: the platform is the Department of War itself — its people, its culture, and the American industrial base that sustains them across Services and Commands. Hardware and software find their meaning here, in the context of missions, constraints, and human judgment. When vision centers this human platform, the organization can escape the iron cage of bureaucracy and can function as a conduit for discovery rather than a barrier. Top-down strategic clarity and bottom-up initiative reinforce each other. Legacy fences are rebuilt thoughtfully, respecting their original purpose while adapting to new demands.
The Quiet Power of Vision
The quiet power of vision is this: it is less about predicting the outcome and more about defining the destination with enough clarity and humility to invite the entire enterprise into the journey. Organizations that cultivate this kind of transformation create resilience. They honor the competence of prior generations while shaping the competence of the one now unfolding, to carry that tradition forward.
Closing Reflection
- Where is your program already acting on a clear, outcome-oriented vision for AI/AS?
- What assumption about adoption might benefit from fresh examination in light of your own formation’s realities?
- How do you communicate the imperative to adapt and enable the workforce to do so?
- Does your vision mistake technology as the platform for transformation, or does your vision demand that the organization transform to achieve the technological outcome?
These shared reflections are where Systems Intelligence takes root to unify people, policy, and technology for mission outcomes that endure.
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