Joshua Suthoff | 05.16.25
Sometime in 2027, two US Air Force C-17s are on final approach somewhere in the Pacific’s first island chain. Over the last week, tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan have reached crisis level. Forty-eight hours ago, the US president gave the order to build combat power in the Indo-Pacific theater. The pair of C-17s are carrying key enablers and personnel to build and protect the growing intermediate staging base. However, US intelligence has missed indicators and warnings that Beijing intends to escalate to conflict, and the crews onboard the C-17s are not aware of the screen of small, one-way attack drones loitering near the airfield where they intend to land, just outside its protected ring and directly in the aircrafts’ flight path. The almost undetectable and nonattributable drones detonate in close proximity to the airframes, scattering aircraft debris and cargo—a cargo of personnel and equipment that was exquisite, expensive, and not quickly replaceable. The conflict has begun, Beijing finally turning its years of rhetoric and aggressive posturing vis-à-vis Taiwan into action.
Three weeks into the conflict, an infantry fire team on Taiwan is strongpointed in a destroyed building overwatching an abandoned open-air market that is now the team’s engagement area. Two of the team members are constantly wearing their first-person view goggles searching for an enemy target to strike or call for fire on. A third member lays wounded in the corner, sustained only by the medical expertise within the team because conditions are not right for a medical evacuation. The team leader knows he has to get other enablers in the fight as soon as the enemy appears. Remnants of the team’s company are spread in a defense across a wide frontage. A day ago, the company tried to mass to clear a building to initially establish a defense and paid dearly in casualties even before the commander could initiate the assault. For now, the teams continue to hunt with drones and fires assets all while trying to avoid the swarms of Chinese drones. Most of the core strengths the US Army once relied upon are now weaknesses. Night movements, tactical assembly areas, and causality evacuation operations are all quickly noticed by persistent enemy drones. Warfare has changed.
This is a very real scenario that the US military could face in the alarmingly near future. Since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War and through conflicts in Ukraine, the Red Sea, and Israel and Gaza, there has been a clear evolutionary arc in the development and use of drones and counterdrone efforts. Two emerging characteristics of this evolution are particularly noteworthy. The first is illustrated by the recent shootdown of a Russian Su-30 Flanker fighter aircraft over the Black Sea by a Ukrainian missile-equipped, sea-based drone. Cheap drones and missiles are now threatening once dominant—and astronomically more expensive—traditional platforms like ships, aircrafts, and tanks. The Su-30 shootdown—along with previous aerial drone attacks against Russian ships and the persistent drone threat faced by ground combat forces in the war—signals the powerful effects of combining multiple drones and missiles to threaten a target across domains.
The second factor indicating another leap forward in the evolution of the character of warfare is represented by the enduring drone threat and the way it requires the constant disaggregation of forces. Trenches are now giving way to small teams of concealed and protected infantry to avoid patrolling drones. These infantry units are mined in and provided overwatch by their own set of drones. These small formations, when paired with drones, have unprecedented situational awareness and can leverage a larger strike complex against the enemy.
In short, how the US Army fights going forward will be significantly different than anything it has experienced in the past, and it must match this evolutionary arc to ensure it is best positioned to win the first battle of the next war. The recent release of the Army Transformation Initiative is an important first step. Signed by the secretary and the chief of staff of the Army, it directs the service to transform into a “leaner, more lethal force by infusing technology, cutting obsolete systems, and reducing overhead to defeat any adversary on an ever-changing battlefield.” It also charges all Army leaders to drive the necessary change to ensure units are ready.
The operative question, however, is ready for what? Even though the modern operational environment seems to be perpetually in flux, it is important that leaders attempt to frame certain principles to guide how the US Army will fight going forward. These truths will serve as waypoints as we move from the familiarity of the Army’s current-day construct.
Five Principles for Army Transformation
There are five fundamental facts that the US Army must consider as it transforms warfighting and formations going forward. Each will affect different warfighting functions and different types of Army organizations in unique ways. But no warfighting function or organization can afford to assume immunity from these realities.
1. Drone Primacy
Drones in all domains are here to stay and in the future they will be the primary tool for maneuver warfare. Throughout a conflict drones will remain a critical asset. The effects and dominance of any individual counterdrone system on the battlefield will be short-lived. These systems will be the highest-priority target for an enemy’s strike complex. At least in the opening engagements of a conflict, drones will be the main effort, and as the main effort they require the correct allocation of resources and the right personnel to ensure conditions are set for success. Other branches and enablers will support drones to allow the systems to set conditions for follow-on forces. Drone warfare will be an enduring capability and threat on the future battlefield.Drones are cost-efficient, simple, and quickly produced. They allow individuals and states the ability to compete with larger adversaries. People will find a way to keep drones in the fight. Drones and missiles allow smaller nation-states to gain relative parity with more powerful states. If managed correctly, however, these more powerful states—like the United States—can leverage their industrial capacity to scale drones at levels that were until recently unimaginable. The belligerent that enters the next conflict with a deep magazine of drones and effective tactics, techniques, and procedures for their employment will have a significant advantage.
The large number of drones that will be present on any area of the battlefield will create areas of extreme high-intensity combat, especially when paired with other enablers that amplify the effects. Manned forces cannot operate or maneuver in these conditions. Countries or nonstate actors will find a way to use AI to maximize the effectiveness of drone swarms. Effective use of AI will increase efficiency, lethality, and minimize manpower requirements for drone operations and targeting. The belligerent that leverages the above factors with a reconnaissance-strike complex will have the advantage.
2. The Disadvantage of Mass
The proliferation of drones, missiles, and especially hypersonic missiles will continue to threaten the once dominant mass of the US Army and the joint force. This threat applies from the power projection of carrier strike groups, to Army divisions and brigade combat teams as they deploy and array to fight, all the way down to platoons in the once semiprotected last covered and concealed positions. Timing and setting conditions for any type of mass formation will be a major challenge, and any such activities will have to be resourced and deliberate events. It will take significant joint resources and the Army’s reconnaissance-strike complex to set and hold these conditions to allow formations to mass on the offensive. The vulnerability will exist not only in the air and ground domains, but also for the mass of formations within the electromagnetic spectrum.
3. Leader Development
The US Army’s leader development is one of its greatest strengths, and the service is well positioned due to the existing professionalism of its officers and noncommissioned officers. However, education and training will still need to be adjusted. Leaders will have to learn how to operate in extreme high-intensity combat. The constant drone threat will require US Army forces to operate and fight in small, decentralized teams until conditions are set for a convergence of forces on an objective. Leaders from the squad to the battalion level will have to be comfortable with fighting in isolated units with minimal communications. This requires leaders at the team and squad level to have the confidence and knowledge to operate accordingly. They must be able to recognize survivable hide sites and covered and concealed positions. Training must have a dedicated focus on the basics, like extended medical care, land navigation, and the ability to understand and execute commander’s intent in a manner optimized to any given situation. Education must also include the doctrinal employment of tactical drones and integrating echeloned fires. Leaders at echelon will need to train on how to manage the large number of drones and quickly sort through data for priority intelligence requirements. At the same time, as leaders learn to manage the increase in data, command posts, especially at the brigade through corps levels, must become uncomfortably small. The overarching goal is that leaders at the lowest level know how to survive in an enemy’s kill web and leverage their own to allow their small units to go on the offensive. The training will need to apply to any military occupational specialty with the smallest possibility of operating close to the front line. These training objectives will require a significant increase in available drones to meet the intent prior to conflict.
4. Risk
The future environment will force leaders to adapt the ways they think about and manage risk. For units, it will call the viability of existing standard operating procedures into question. An example of changing procedures is the use of a Moses pole during trench clearing. Does a formation want to clearly marks its lead position with the every present drone threat? And for the Army as a whole, as well as for the joint force, the evolving operational environment and drone and missile advancements will require a reevaluation of risk management. Since World War II, the United States has used its industrial power to send a bullet instead of a service member and use overwhelming firepower to achieve relative advantage in conflict. The abundance of drones in all domains will present an opportunity to buy down risk, while simultaneously creating additional risk across the spectrum of operations. As capabilities increase, multipurpose air or ground drones will be able to execute extremely high-risk operations like a deliberate breach with minimal human forces forward. A mechanized deliberate breach was once the gold standard for brigade combat teams to train for, but will involve an unacceptable risk going forward, given drone technology on either side of the obstacle in the offense or defense. Why send an engineer into a breach when you can send a robot to provide support by fire, another to breach, and a swarm for the initial assault? The same logic applies to other high-risk operations like mine emplacement, causality evacuation, and sustainment operations.
Conversely, the enemy drone threat—like that in the imagined scenario described at this article’s outset—will require a shift in how the US military deploys and arrays forces. The threat that Chinese hypersonic missiles pose to US carriers requires additional analysis in how the US government will assume risk when projecting combat power. Drone formations like the recent Ukrainian one credited with downing the Su-30 will need to clear the way for manned and protected assets like carrier strike groups. The assumption that there is safety in numbers will have to change until the joint force can shape the environment and reduce risk. Commanders will have to become comfortable with their forces operating in a decentralized manner. Just like the Louisiana Maneuvers of the interwar period, this is a mindset change that must be rehearsed prior to conflict to fully understand and experience the nuance.
5. Landpower Will Remain
Regardless of drone and missile development in the future, there will always be a requirement for landpower formations on the ground to maximize system effects. Drones will not replace soldiers. An army is still required to impose will and hold terrain. Additionally, technology can always fail, weather has a vote, and it will require human thought to fill the gap or compensate for shortfalls in technological tools like AI. What is imperative is to get the right mix of personnel and drones within these formations. Airpower and seapower will be challenged by enemy antiaccess and area-denial capabilities during opening engagements. It will be the Army that holds terrain in a disaggregated manner and survives through the periods of extreme high-intensity combat until the joint force can achieve relative advantage. Army forces forward prior to conflict is key to this success. Unlike the air and sea domains, a ground force trained well in reconnaissance and strike tactics can survive for an extended time. The soldier remains the all-weather node at the center of a kill web.
Uncomfortable and Unclear
Although the threats that characterize the modern operational environment continue to evolve, their combined lethality and the challenge they will pose to US forces are clear. There is no time for professional hubris. The decisions the Army makes today to drive its transformation will determine its success in the opening engagements of the next conflict. These changes will require a whole-of-Army approach, from range operations at home station to the doctrinal template a division staff uses to initially array its forces. The required adjustments will be uncomfortable for some and should make all leaders reevaluate their decisions. But they are necessary. Using the five principles above and the Army Transformation Initiative as guideposts, Army leaders at echelon must train and evolve to ensure victory in a war in 2027 and beyond.
Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Suthoff recently served as the commander of 3-4 Cavalry. He currently serves in Colorado with his wife and five children.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Pfc. Matthew Keegan, US Army
