The Aviation Combat Element (ACE) is the most lethal arm of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force. As such, Marine Aviation remains in high demand as proven multiple times over the past year. From the Middle East to Africa to the Western Pacific and closer to home, Marine Aviation remains highly requested by the Joint Force and we remain ready.
Our core challenge moving forward is daunting but clear—we must simultaneously balance the readiness demanded for today’s crises with the urgent need to continue to modernize our equipment, training, and procedures to meet tomorrow’s threats. The recently released 2026 Marine Aviation Plan, nested within Project Eagle, serves as our strategic blueprint for delivering that balance while ensuring the ACE not only remains combat-credible today, but also fully prepared to defeat the adversaries of tomorrow.
A central theme of our 2026 Aviation Plan is our decisive shift toward Distributed Aviation Operations (DAO) to enhance our survivability and lethality in contested environments. Foundational to this is the elevation of Aviation Ground Support (AGS) to the seventh function of Marine Aviation, a long-overdue recognition that our ability to sustain operations from austere, expeditionary sites is the very backbone of the distributed fight. DAO is not just a change in tactics; it is a fundamental change in how we think about generating combat power and will challenge all elements of the MAGTF to execute at scale.
The concept of Decision-Centric Aviation Operations (DCAO) underpins our plan. We will harness data and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to make faster, smarter decisions than our adversaries. We will incorporate it in all we do on the flightline, at the MALS, in the S-shops, and eventually in the cockpit. This effort is fully aligned with Project Dynamis and will allow us to integrate aviation seamlessly into the larger MAGTF and Joint Force.
While we invest in next-generation platforms and cutting-edge technology, we reaffirm that our people remain our decisive advantage. Our Aviation “TEAM” will be our guiding principle that calls on us to: Take Care of our Marines, Execute the Basics with Brilliance and Precision, Attain and Maintain our Readiness, and Mitigate Risk in everything we do. It also demands that we relentlessly pursue improvement. Innovation—what I refer to as “More Cowbell”—is not optional. It is the expectation that every Marine, Sailor, and Civilian looks for better ways to fight, sustain, train, and lead. Cowbell is not about recognition; it is about improving your position and, if replicated, improving our entire TEAM. We will continue to encourage and reward those who find ways to improve our processes, enhance readiness, and sharpen our combat edge.
That same commitment to disciplined improvement must also define how we approach risk and safety. We will protect our aviation assets through a campaign entitled “26 in 26,” which aims to reduce our Class A through D mishaps by 26 in fiscal year 2026 through education, engaged leadership, and ruthless adherence to standards and procedures. This focus on safety is inseparable from our professional obligation to “Execute the Basics with Brilliance and Precision.”
This edition of the Marine Corps Gazette offers us a unique opportunity to focus on the “A” in MAGTF to expand our collective knowledge of the air domain—regardless of specialty. I hope the articles herein will ignite spirited discussions in ready rooms, in the field, and aboard ship about how we get better every day and where we need to go in the future.
In conclusion, by transforming our aviation sustainment model, deliberately sequencing our modernization efforts, and relentlessly focusing on the development and well-being of the individual Sailor and Marine, we are building a more lethal, resilient, and data-driven ACE. This will ensure Marine Aviation remains ready to generate decisive combat power to fight and win whenever the Nation calls.
Semper Fidelis,
William H. Swan Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Aviation
Balancing crisis response with modernization for the future fight
“Aviation provides the lion’s share of killing power on the battlefield … we must maximize this critical MAGTF capability.” —39th Commandant of the Marine Corps, 2026 Marine Aviation Plan
The Commandant’s directive is both affirmation and mandate. Marine Aviation is not a supporting arm of the MAGTF; it is the principal source of combat power that enables maneuver, sustains distributed forces, and delivers decisive effects across the battlespace. In an era defined by contested logistics, precision fires, and persistent sensing, maximizing this capability requires more than platform modernization alone. It demands a deliberate balance between sustaining crisis response readiness today and transforming the Aviation Combat Element (ACE) for the fight of tomorrow.
The central challenge facing Marine Aviation is unchanged but increasingly complex: we must remain ready to fight tonight while modernizing for the future fight. The 2026 Marine Aviation Plan (AVPLAN) deliberately balances these imperatives by sequencing modernization without sacrificing crisis response capacity. It operationalizes distributed aviation operations (DAO) as the central warfighting concept and aligns platforms, sustainment, data, and talent management. The result is a more survivable, more distributed, and more lethal ACE that remains combat credible today and prepared for the future.
Balancing Readiness and Modernization
Readiness remains Marine Aviation’s most important measure of success. The 2026 AVPLAN reinforces funding and prioritization of sustainment, flight hours, and training to ensure mission-capable aircraft, proficient aircrew, and expeditionary enablers are ready to respond to global contingencies. A global presence remains essential for deterrence and crisis response. Modernization efforts described in the AVPLAN are deliberately sequenced to avoid creating capability gaps during platform transitions.
This balance also requires disciplined risk management as we integrate new technologies and operational concepts. The Safety North Star, “26 in 26,” establishes a measurable commitment to reduce Class A through D mishaps by 26 in fiscal year 2026. Readiness and safety are inseparable. As we modernize the enterprise, brilliance in the basics, strict adherence to standards, and engaged leadership remain foundational to sustained combat power.
At the same time, the character of warfare demands transformation. Strategic competition, contested logistics, complex sensing networks, and precision fires require a more agile and distributed aviation enterprise. The 2026 AVPLAN positions modernization as a readiness enabler rather than a competing priority. Through Project Eagle, initiatives are aligned across three Future Years Defense Programs (FYDPs) to ensure coherence, affordability, and operational relevance.
The accompanying figure illustrates this deliberate balance, which depicts Marine Aviation’s progression across successive FYDPs. It shows how platform transitions, sustainment modernization, and next-generation capabilities are sequenced to preserve today’s crisis response capacity while accelerating transformation for the future fight. The visual reinforces the plan’s central premise: Marine Aviation must remain combat credible now while deliberately building the Next Generation ACE required for tomorrow.
2026 AVPLAN lines of operation. (Figure provided by author.)
Aviation Ground Support: The Backbone of DAO
A defining shift in the 2026 AVPLAN is the full elevation of aviation ground support (AGS) as the seventh function of Marine Aviation. While the 2025 plan expressed intent to codify AGS doctrinally, the 2026 AVPLAN institutionalizes AGS as the backbone of DAO. Expeditionary fuel distribution, airfield damage repair, forward arming and refueling points, and resilient aviation logistics are decisive capabilities rather than supporting enablers. This shift strengthens the ACE’s ability to persist and generate combat power from austere and dispersed locations. By aligning AGS modernization with platform transitions and digital interoperability initiatives, the 2026 AVPLAN ensures sustainment capabilities evolve in parallel with operational concepts.
Transforming Sustainment: From Reactive to Predictive
The 2026 AVPLAN marks a fundamental evolution in aviation sustainment philosophy. Where the 2025 plan emphasized traditional sustainment and incremental supply chain reform, the 2026 plan integrates predictive maintenance, dynamic aviation supply, and optimized operations as core components of a transformed sustainment system. These initiatives anticipate readiness trends, reduce downtime, and increase aircraft availability across distributed environments.
The figure illustrates this transformation through three deliberate lines of operation (LOO): LOO 1, Dynamic Aviation Supply, shifts the enterprise from reactive resupply toward demand forecasting, reduced logistical footprint, and resilient distribution networks capable of supporting distributed operations. LOO 2, Predictive Maintenance, leverages AI-enabled data analysis to anticipate component failures, reduce maintenance hours, and increase readiness. LOO 3, Optimized Operations, integrates maintenance, supply, and operational data into a unified decision-support framework that improves scheduling and planning. Together, these lines of operation move Marine Aviation from a reactive sustainment culture toward a proactive, predictive, and data-informed enterprise aligned to the demands of the future fight.
The challenge is balancing crisis response and modernization in a fiscally constrained environment. (Figure provided by author.)
Decision Advantage and AI/ML Integration
Decision advantage is foundational to success in distributed operations. The 2026 AVPLAN elevates artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) from conceptual discussion to an active modernization effort. Artificial intelligence/machine learning initiatives are now integrated into aviation decision-making processes, consolidating enterprise data, and enhancing operational visualization.
Through decision-centric aviation operations, Marine Aviation seeks to sense, process, share, and act faster than any adversary. The AI/ML-enabled tools reduce cognitive burden on commanders, provide predictive readiness insights, and enable faster, more informed decisions. Data architecture, sensing networks, and Digital Interoperability/MAGTF Agile Network Gateway Link integration receive significantly greater depth in the 2026 AVPLAN, reflecting the increased emphasis on networked warfighting and kill-web integration.
This approach transforms data from an operational byproduct into a decisive warfighting capability. By integrating digital tools across maintenance, logistics, and operations, the ACE strengthens its ability to rapidly close kill webs and operate effectively in contested, denied, and degraded environments.
Platform Modernization and Future Force Design
Platform modernization in the 2026 AVPLAN is more detailed, sequenced, and explicitly aligned with DAO requirements. The Tactical Aircraft Transition Plan advances F-35 integration while deliberately sequencing the sundown of legacy platforms to prevent capability gaps. The CH-53K transition continues, alongside modernization of the MV-22, H-1, and KC-130J fleets. Digital upgrades, survivability enhancements, and expanded unmanned capabilities further strengthen operational flexibility.
The unmanned aerial systems enterprise grows substantially, with increased focus on collaborative combat aircraft and manned–unmanned teaming. Platform roadmaps are tied to distributed operations and kill-web integration rather than being viewed as isolated modernization efforts. Additionally, the 2040+ future force design is more clearly articulated, providing a long-term vision for the Next Generation ACE beyond the immediate FYDPs.
This deliberate sequencing ensures modernization remains coherent and operationally grounded. It aligns resources, capability development, and concept evolution across the aviation enterprise, reinforcing that transformation is cumulative and strategically synchronized.
Marines Remain Our Decisive Advantage
Despite the emphasis on digital integration and advanced platforms, the 2026 AVPLAN underscores that Marines remain the decisive advantage. Mission readiness depends on properly manned, trained, and equipped Marines who execute with discipline and initiative. Talent management, instructor quality, technical training, and leadership development are priorities to sustain world-class aviation professionals.
As new technologies emerge, the plan deliberately aligns subject-matter expertise with these capabilities. Immersive training environments and standardized best practices empower maintenance professionals, aircrew, and support personnel. A culture of trust and a team-of-teams approach strengthens integration across squadrons, wings, and headquarters elements.
Modernization without leadership is fragile. The 2026 AVPLAN reinforces that technology enhances, but does not replace, disciplined Marines capable of exercising judgment in uncertainty. By investing in people alongside platforms and data systems, Marine Aviation ensures its competitive advantage endures.
Conclusion
The 2026 AVPLAN represents the maturation of Project Eagle from strategic blueprint to operational execution. Distributed aviation operations is no longer emerging; it is central. The AGS is no longer aspirational; it is institutionalized and recapitalized. Additionally, AI/ML is no longer conceptual; it is embedded in sustainment and decision-making processes. Platform modernization is sequenced across FYDPs and tied explicitly to distributed warfighting requirements.
Through this deliberate balance, Marine Aviation ensures it remains combat credible today while building the Next Generation ACE required for the future fight. The 2026 AVPLAN and Project Eagle provide the roadmap to do both, strengthening the MAGTF’s principal source of combat power and ensuring that the lion’s share of battlefield lethality remains firmly in the hands of Marine Aviation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
>LtCol Carlson is a UH-1Y Pilot. She is currently assigned as the Aviation Strategy and Plans Officer for Headquarters, Marine Corps Department of Aviation.
The character of war is changing, and the speed of decision making has become the critical axis of victory. To maintain its edge, Marine Aviation is embarking on a transformative journey—an evolution, not a revolution—to accelerate its operational tempo to machine speed. Marine Aviation’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy is a comprehensive plan to embrace, equip, and enhance the force by integrating cutting-edge AI and machine learning (AI/ML) into aviation sustainment, maintenance, and operations. This effort complements broader modernization initiatives outlined in the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan and supports the Service’s transition toward a more data-centric and data-informed force.
The problem is a familiar one: a reactive culture in maintenance and supply, labor-intensive manual processes, and disconnected data systems that hinder readiness and the ability to sustain distributed aviation operations. Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy tackles this head-on, aiming to shift the enterprise from a reactive posture to a predictive, data-informed force capable of generating sustained combat power on demand.
The Vision: Meet “Agent Alfred”
At the core of the transformation is Agent Alfred, an AI-powered warfighting teammate that integrates seamlessly into a Marine’s workflow. Named in honor of Alfred A. Cunningham, the first Marine Corps aviator, this AI agent serves as a pathfinder, starting with back-office tasks and progressively earning its place in more complex and critical environments. By rapidly synthesizing large volumes of operational, maintenance, and logistics data, Alfred enables Marines and commanders to make faster, more informed decisions in increasingly complex operational environments.
“Agent Alfred.” (Photo provided by authors.)
The vision for Alfred is not to replace Marines but to augment them. As described in the initiative’s foundational documents, Alfred is envisioned as a multi-modal, ambient, contextual, and emergent teammate. Automating repetitive, data-heavy tasks frees Marines to focus on what humans do best: critical thinking, leadership, and complex problem-solving. The end state is a force where AI-driven decision support is ubiquitous—operating in the ready room, on the flight line, in the field with our enablers, and ultimately in the cockpit.
The Blueprint: Initial Lines of Operation
The theory of victory for Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy is to sustain combat readiness and increase lethality by transforming the aviation enterprise from a reactive system into a predictive, data-informed force capable of generating combat power at the speed of modern warfare. This strategy is broader than any single initiative. The lines of operation (LOO) described below represent the initial focus areas where AI-enabled capabilities can begin delivering immediate operational value while the broader strategy continues to mature across the aviation enterprise.
• LOO 1: Dynamic Aviation Supply. This effort aims to transform the logistics footprint from a reactive system to one that anticipates demand. By leveraging AI to analyze historical data and operational tempo, we can forecast the need for parts and resources.
• LOO 2: Predictive Maintenance. This approach focuses on moving beyond the current reactive maintenance culture. Instead of fixing aircraft after a component fails, AI will analyze a longitudinal history of aircraft behavior to forecast failures before they occur. The failure prediction allows maintenance officers to proactively schedule what is typically unscheduled maintenance ahead of detachments and cross-country movements, or in conjunction with phase maintenance, reducing maintenance hours and increasing readiness.
• LOO 3: Optimized Operations. This LOO focuses on using AI to enhance every facet of operational planning, from optimizing daily flight schedules to managing pilot training. Artificial intelligence will provide commanders with data-informed insights to accelerate and improve decision making.
• Future LOOs. Additional development efforts for aviation workflows will be added iteratively as technology improves and appropriate use cases expand to areas such as enhanced maintenance staffing, improved command safety, and other future use cases. The intent of all such efforts is not adoption of technology for technology’s sake, rather they are part of our deliberate approach of adopting a digital data culture advancing our decision-making advantages at speed.
The Rollout: A Phased Approach to Integration
The implementation of Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy is a deliberately phased, iterative journey, designed to build trust and demonstrate value at each step. The approach ensures that technology is adopted in a way that enhances, rather than disrupts, existing processes.
• Phase 1: Aggregate Data. The initial, foundational step focuses on identifying, accessing, and cleaning maintenance, supply, and operations data from the myriad of disparate systems where it currently resides. The outcome is clean, analysis-ready data, the essential fuel for any AI system.
• Phase 2: Apply AI. With aggregated data, we can begin applying AI algorithms for analysis. This phase involves creating the predictive capabilities central to the vision, such as forecasting part demands and identifying aircraft likely to experience component failures. This provides the data-informed insights necessary for dynamic aviation supply and predictive maintenance.
• Phase 3: Ensemble AI Tools. The final phase integrates these individual AI tools into a comprehensive, user-friendly solution. The goal is to deploy Alfred on a common compute platform, creating a comprehensive operational planning tool that provides a holistic view of aviation operations, from sustainment and maintenance to staffing, ultimately yielding improved readiness with the capacity for future growth of other agentic workflows.
Together, these phases enable Marine Aviation to transition from fragmented data environments to an integrated decision-support ecosystem that improves readiness forecasting and operational planning. This rollout will begin with Alfred assisting with low-risk, high-impact “back-office” tasks in the ready room, such as drafting training plans and flight schedules. Alfred will “earn its quals” by demonstrating value and reliability. From there, its capabilities will expand to the flightline, assisting maintainers with failure predictions and parts tracking to the field, where it will act as a collaborative planning partner in complex, distributed exercises. This crawl-walk-run methodology ensures a smooth, effective, and trustworthy integration of a powerful new teammate into the MAGTF.
Machine learning has multiple applications. (Photo provided by authors.)
Marine Aviation’s ability to generate and sustain combat power has always depended on the ingenuity and professionalism of its Marines. Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy builds upon that foundation by providing Marines with the tools necessary to operate at the speed of modern warfare. By integrating AI/ML into aviation sustainment, maintenance, and operational planning, Marine Aviation is creating a more predictive, data-informed enterprise capable of supporting distributed aviation operations and enabling faster decision making. This evolution ensures that as victory becomes a race of decision making, Marine Aviation is not merely keeping pace but setting the pace, delivering lethal effects for the Marine on the ground at the speed of relevance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
>Ms. Elizabeth Ruggles is an Aerospace Engineer. She is currently assigned as the AI/ML Integration lead for the Deputy Commandant for Aviation.
>LtCol Carlson is a UH-1Y Pilot. She is currently assigned as the Aviation Strategy and Plans Officer for Headquarters, Marine Corps Department of Aviation.
IC4’s Strategy for Transforming Network Resourcing and Cybersecurity
In an era defined by peer competition and ubiquitous information, the ability to decide and act faster than the adversary is the central requirement for victory. Recognizing this, the Information Command, Control, Communications, and Computers (IC4) for Headquarters Marine Corps drafted a Deputy Commandant of Information strategy to transform the Marine Corps’ approach to network operations and cybersecurity. The blueprint for this transformation is the Marine Corps Cyberspace Environment (MCCE) Convergence Strategy, a focused effort to build a communications and cybersecurity ecosystem that is more lethal, connected, and capable of enabling command and control in the most complex and contested environments.
For years, the Marine Corps has operated a collection of purpose-built networks and information systems. While effective for their intended functions, these systems often created information silos, fragmented environments where data could not be easily defended. This stove-piped architecture limits situational awareness, slows decision making, and inhibits the Corps’ ability to fully leverage its information-gathering assets. In a modern conflict, where victory is measured in seconds, these limitations present an unacceptable risk.
The MCCE Convergence Strategy directly addresses this challenge and is IC4’s contribution to Force Design and Project Dynamis Pillar 1. It is not a single program or a new piece of technology but rather a guiding vision for a multi-year effort. The strategy aims to converge the disparate elements of the MCCE into a single, data-centric ecosystem. The goal is to ensure that critical information is visible, accessible, understandable, and trustworthy for any Marine, on any device, in any clime and place. This article, based on the drafted foundational strategy, will outline the core logic, guiding principles, and intended outcomes of this essential transformation.
Defining the MCCE
The Marine Corps Information Environment Enterprise is an ecosystem of people, processes, and systems that together provide capabilities that connect users with data to accomplish a mission, unifying organizations, data, and processes across both classified and unclassified networks. The MCCE is the Marine Corps’ specific portion of the larger DOD information network. The MCCE encompasses all Marine Corps information systems used for collecting, processing, storing, and transmitting information on all network classifications, and it includes the cyber elements of the Marine Corps Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Enterprise. This enterprise is composed of various components, including programs of record, tactical networks, the Marine Corps Enterprise Network, extensions to commercial cloud providers, and Commercial Solutions for Classified, among others.
Flexibility, survivability, and unity of effort in cyberspace are undermined by our current approach. (Figure provided by authors.)
The Strategic Imperative: Why Convergence is Necessary
The modern battlespace is information-saturated. Adversaries employ sophisticated methods to contest the electromagnetic spectrum, cyberspace, and the information environment itself. To succeed, the Marine Corps must achieve and maintain information advantage, a state where the friendly force can exploit a persistent and decisive information superiority over the enemy. The current C4 architecture, however, was not designed for the speed and complexity of this environment.
The Marine Corps’ ability to provide assured command and control (C2) is at significant risk due to a fragmented MCCE management approach. This fragmentation creates a cascade of problems that jeopardize Service-level compliance and resourcing, and it fuels misaligned investments and engineering efforts that hinder operational success. When seconds matter, our forces struggle to share common operating pictures and targeting data, creating self-imposed limitations that our pacing threats are positioned to exploit. This challenge is set to intensify, as departments increase mandates for advanced capabilities, such as artificial intelligence and Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control.
The Vision: A United, Federated Information Environment Poised to Support Global Operations
The central vision of the MCCE Convergence Strategy is the creation of a unified digital ecosystem with assured access to capabilities spanning from undersea to orbit. By integrating diverse networks, from garrison to the tactical edge, into a seamless platform, it will connect Marines across every warfighting domain. This comprehensive approach is aligned with five strategic themes.
(Figure provided by authors.)
The Five Strategic Themes
The MCCE Convergence is built upon five interconnected themes that guide its implementation. First, it will provide commanders assured C2 across warfighting functions, enabling rapid decision-making at every echelon. Second, it will adopt modern cybersecurity principles and capabilities by increasing visibility and automation to allow for timely incident response. Third, the plan will standardize governance for C2 and the operation of the MCCE with clear lines of authority. Fourth, it will optimize the application of resources to provide ready and mature capabilities to the total force by realigning personnel and funding. Finally, it will modernize communications forces and training to ensure Marines and their formations are prepared for the future fight.
The Way Forward: End State and Immediate Action
The end state is clear: a unified, federated information environment poised to support global operations. Whether coordinating fires, sharing data, or enabling supporting establishment functions, Marines will have secure, reliable access to the digital capabilities they need to fight and win. While detailed implementation guidance is forthcoming, the work has already begun. Critical initiatives to modernize transport infrastructure, implement the Zero Trust Framework, unify the Marine Corps Enterprise Network, and modernize the communications occupational field and its formations are already being executed to secure immediate gains while the full transformation roadmap is developed.
The ultimate outcome of this strategy will be a Marine Corps that is better equipped for the challenges of the 21st century. By breaking down information silos and creating a united, data-centric C4 ecosystem, the MCCE Convergence Strategy will empower Marines at every level. It will shorten the kill chain, enhance situational awareness, and provide commanders with the information advantage needed to out-maneuver and defeat any adversary. It is a foundational effort that will ensure the Marine Corps remains the Nation’s premier expeditionary force in readiness for years to come.
The MCCE Convergence Strategy. (Graphic provided by authors.)
>As the driving force behind MCCE Convergence, this Information Command, Control, Communications and Computers branch develops the vision, strategy, and policy for future communications, governs the Marine Corps Tactical Grid, and serves as the primary interface between Headquarters Marine Corps and Operational Force Communicators, ensuring MAGTF’s continued command, control, communications, and computers operational effectiveness.
Sgt Jones is a member of a Marine littoral regiment reconnaissance team, operating deep within the adversary’s weapons engagement zone. He identifies a time-sensitive surface threat. The targeting data is perfect, captured with high fidelity, yet it remains a fleeting digital image on a single screen. To act on this intelligence requires Sgt Jones to exit one application, manually transcribe coordinates into another, and then pray that a voice call can find its way over a strained satellite link so he can verbally pass information that there was no option to enter digitally. In the precious minutes this takes, the opportunity is lost, and Sgt Jones’ transmissions have compromised his position.
This is not a hypothetical scenario; it is the central warfighting challenge of our era. It is the precise reason that Marine Forces Cyberspace Command, by direction of the Commandant, has issued the MCCE Battlespace C2 Execution Order, formally operationalizing the Marine Corps’ transition to a new way of thinking about and codifying major subordinate commands’ boundaries and responsibilities across secure, operate, and defend missions. It is the reason that the Deputy Commandant for Information published the Marine Corps Transport Strategy in 2025, and the reason that Information, Command, Control, Communications, and Computers is developing the Marine Corps Cyberspace Environment (MCCE) Convergence Strategy. We are moving beyond the theory of data-centricity and into the hard, practical work of execution.
The Problem
The problem is clear; data silos degrade operational effectiveness in a multi-domain conflict. Limited means of data transport outside the silo degrade effectiveness by creating artificial limitations within command-and-control systems. The Service’s traditional approach to acquisition and procurement of weapon systems, command-and-control platforms, sensing capabilities, and data systems has built data stovepipes into the ecosystem, where manual transcription is still sometimes the solution for passing data between systems. Proprietary hardware and software for prototypes and programs of record do not seamlessly integrate into the larger Service transport, and the data ecosystem’s slow transmission of information to speeds renders even the most exquisite sensing and engagement systems useless in denied, degraded, intermittent, or limited connectivity environments. The lag, as online gamers would call it, that this creates in the chain from sensed to targeted to engaged will only continue to degrade the effectiveness of kill webs.
The Solution
The solution is two-pronged. To enable concurrent, decentralized operations envisioned by our (not so) future operating concepts, the Marine Corps must re-architect its digital battlespace from a collection of disconnected systems into a cohesive environment where information moves across systems and enclaves at machine speed. These strategies are not static concepts; they are being actively implemented by the Service. The Marine Corps is already making this a reality through two key, interconnected strategies. The MCCE Convergence Strategy provides the blueprint for a seamless hybrid cloud ecosystem, the destination for our data and the home for our warfighting apps. The Marine Corps Transport Strategy builds the foundational highway to get it there, creating a single, agnostic transport layer to fuel the entire ecosystem with data. Together, they provide the vision to enable decision dominance.
Simultaneously, the Marine Corps must adapt its acquisition and procurement strategies to reinforce this vision. Internal progress is not enough; the Service must ensure that every dollar spent and system procured actively align to and supports a data-centric model. This will require sending a clear, consistent demand signal to our industry partners.
For Marine littoral regiment reconnaissance teams to report in real time without compromising themselves requires the Corps to remove artificial limitations within command-and-control systems. (Photo by Cpl Ernesto Lagunes)
Demand Signal for Change
The Marine Corps cannot achieve this vision alone. Efforts and progress made through efforts like Marine Corps Enterprise Network Unification, Sensing the MCCE, and other Deputy Commandant for Information and Marine Forces Cyberspace Command initiatives demonstrate the Service’s resolve. Despite this progress, the problem requires a demand signal to be sent to the Service’s industry partners. The statement is this: To achieve decision dominance and fight and win, this is what we need and this is what we will prioritize.
We need to embrace data sharing. We will prioritize and procure systems that serve as nodes within our broader ecosystem. Systems that silo their data and require additional effort to integrate into our enterprise will be at a competitive disadvantage.
We need to embrace agnostic transport. Your systems must be engineered to connect seamlessly to our unified transport infrastructure. We are building the highway; your products must be able to use the standardized on-ramp, fit in the lane, and comply with safety and operational requirements. Cars without blinkers, headlights, and seatbelts will not be allowed.
We need to compete on capability, not on data hoarding. We need applications and analytics that work together to build situational awareness and accelerate decision-making. Your competitive advantage will now be judged by how well your system shares and enriches data for the entire kill web, not by its ability to perform a single function in isolation.
Conclusion
With the principles from this statement in mind, we are moving this vision from theory to practice. The question for our industry partners is no longer about understanding our vision but about having the agility and foresight to align with its implementation. The partners who embrace their new role as application providers on a common platform will be the ones who help us deliver victory in the information-driven conflicts of the future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
>Maj Raymond is is a Supply Officer serving his Data Systems Management Officer payback tour at Headquarters Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant for Information, Information Command, Control, Communication, and Computers.
>Maj Wleklinski is is a Cyberspace Warfare Officer and Data Systems Management Officer currently serving at HQMC, Deputy Commandant for Information, Information Command, Control, Communication, and Computers.
A task force staff deployed a workflow agent to reduce friction across planning and sustainment. It lived in a developer’s toolchain, connected through a remote tool server, and could pull data, draft products, open tickets, and route approvals. For weeks, it worked flawlessly until an urgent sustainment action arrived during a high-tempo period.
The agent read the plan, selected a task, and initiated a chain of actions: vendor research, draft language, routing, and packet generation. The packet arrived looking complete, the routing looked normal, and the staff trusted the system’s prior performance. Under pressure, reliable substituted for verified. The agent was not malicious. It was over-permissioned.
Months earlier, broad roles were granted to get the prototype working. They were never removed. Credentials were cached. Privileges were inherited. When the agent encountered a compromised input, it did not need sophistication. It needed only standing access. The resulting actions were technically successful and operationally damaging because no one could answer the continuous accountability question: who authorized this action, on whose behalf, with which privileges, at that moment?
The command paused execution to validate outputs. Intelligence provenance became suspect. Sustainment actions were rolled back, and then the audit questions arrived, simple questions with no defensible answers about ownership, authorization basis, and least-privilege evidence.
The lesson landed: warfighting credibility and financial credibility now rise and fall together, and both depend on identity governance.
Argument
Multi-domain operations depends on decision advantage at machine speed, but machine speed also amplifies the oldest problem in warfare: authority without accountability. Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) introduces a surge of non-human identities, delegated tool calls, and cross-domain connectors that make identity and access the new control plane of operations. Winning in this environment requires treating human and non-human identities as warfighting infrastructure and governing them through an identity-centric approach anchored in Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM), Zero Trust, and continuous auditability.
Supporting Argument 1. The Pattern: Same Attack, New Control Plane
Across technology waves, the exploit pattern stays consistent. Adversaries don’t break in, they login. What changes are where “login” occurs and how fast it propagates.
Evidence 1. Agentic AI accelerates non-human identity sprawl: one “agent” becomes many identities across platforms, toolchains, and workflows.
This is not a niche cyber issue; it is an operational risk because permissions become the fuel that turns benign automation into uncontrollable action. The risk is not intelligent agents. The risk is agents with forgotten permissions.
Evidence 2. Agentic AI does not introduce a new class of threat so much as it compresses multiple historic lessons into one operational reality:
• The insider-risk lesson (Snowden as a reference model): Trusted access plus weak governance yields catastrophic data compromise, often with no “break-in.”
• The corruption-and-oversight lesson (Fat Leonard as a reference model): Opaque processes and weak accountability create seams where influence, fraud, and mission distortion thrive.
Agentic systems widen both seams simultaneously because delegated, tool-driven actions can look procedurally valid while bypassing the intent of policy.
Supporting Argument 2. What Changed: Agents Behave Like Non-Deterministic Operators
Agents are AI systems that can autonomously plan and execute complex tasks. Unlike workflows (defined paths), agentic behavior is open-ended and difficult to predict. That unpredictability collides with traditional identity and access management, which was designed for humans, static roles, and session-based tokens.
Evidence 3. In an agentic environment, three things are consistently true:
• The identity surface area explodes. Agents call tools, tools call services, services call APIs—each hop can carry a distinct credential.
• The delegation chain becomes the attack chain. If provenance and authorization basis aren’t captured, accountability collapses.
• Static identity and access management breaks down. Coarse permissions cannot express runtime intent, and audit trails fail to capture the true authorization basis.
This is why governance must shift from point-in-time access to continuous validation: identity behavior over time, contextual access decisions, and enforcement that follows the agent.
Supporting Argument 3. Identity-Centric Warfare and the Warfighting Functions
Identity-centric warfare is the deliberate use and governance of identity, credentials, and access as operational instruments.
Evidence 4. It maps cleanly to the warfighting functions:
• Command and Control: Identity determines who can see, decide, and direct at speed. If identities are not governed, command and control devolves into “trust me” operations.
• Intelligence: Collection and dissemination depend on assured identity and authoritative sources. Agents that pull, summarize, and route intel must be attributable and constrained.
• Fires: Digital authorities gate kinetic and non-kinetic effects. Uncontrolled delegation becomes uncontrolled fires, especially where target data and authorities traverse tools.
• Movement and Maneuver: Access to navigation, timing, logistics systems, and mission apps depends on trust signals that increasingly must be machine-speed.
• Protection: Zero Trust is protection doctrine for the digital fight, never trust, always verify; least privilege; micro-segmentation; real-time monitoring.
• Sustainment: Identity governs contracting actions, supply workflows, and service access. Sustainment is where speed meets accountability and where fraud exploits seams.
Multi-domain operations require convergence across domains and partners; convergence requires trust at machine speed; identity is how the Joint Force measures and enforces trust.
Supporting Argument 4. ICAM: The Governance Spine for Warfighting and Auditability
Identity, Credential, and Access Management is the set of enterprise capabilities that establish trusted identities (human and non-human), issue and manage credentials, and enforce auditable access decisions across systems.
Evidence 5. In the Agentic Age, ICAM enables:
• Identity proofing and authoritative identity data (people, Services, agents, non-person entities).
• Credential issuance and lifecycle management (including revocation).
• Federation and interoperability across organizations and environments.
• Audit-ready logging and accountability that ties actions to authority.
This is where an “additional element” becomes equal to warfighting: the ability to pass an unmodified audit opinion. Auditability is not administrative overhead; it is institutional legitimacy. If the Department cannot prove who acted, with what authority, for what purpose, it cannot credibly govern itself under stress. In today’s climate of transparency and accountability, that is a strategic liability.
A workflow agent—an AI identity—with improper permissions can lead to technically successful but operationally damaging actions on the battlefield. (Photo by Cpl Ryan Ramsammy.)
Conclusion
Multi-domain operations demands convergence at speed, but speed without governance is a liability. Agentic AI is forcing a return to fundamentals: authority, accountability, and control. Identity-centric warfare recognizes that identity is now the control plane of modern operations—and ICAM is the governance spine that makes trust enforceable across humans, systems, and agents.
The decisive advantage will not belong solely to the force that automates fastest. It will belong to the force that can prove continuously who is acting, with what authority, for what purpose, and under what constraints. That is how the Department preserves operational trust and earns an unmodified audit opinion in the agentic age.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
>Capt Rosario is a Cyberspace Warfare Officer and is currently serving at Headquarters Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Information, Information Command, Control, Communications, and Computers–Compliance Chief Information Officer Section as the Technology Integration Officer overseeing Identity, Credentialing, and Access Management across the Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps Gazette is well-known for providing generations of Marines with a virtuous push-pull cycle of learning through which they can both share their ideas and arguments with other Marines through publication, and further benefit from those same Marines’ divergent thoughts and conclusions each month. While traditionally focused on tactical-level challenges and tactical excellence, the Gazette has never engaged in intellectual caution or retreat when confronted by larger operational or strategic issues and challenges—most memorably the Maneuver Warfare debates all across the 1980s, or discussions on Dr. Strange’s Center-of-Gravity Analytic Model in the late 1990s. It is in a spirit consistent with those broader operational-and-strategic-level discussions that this month’s edition is focused, and that logisticians and campaign planners across the force remain focused.
At the strategic level, logistics (sustainment) is a key component of deterrence. According to former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, the key to deterrence is that “it cannot be a bluff; it must be credible.” In the context of modern warfare, particularly against a peer adversary, deterrence credibility and prospects for prevailing are largely attained by solving three core challenges of operational employment: force mobilization and deployment, force closure, and force sustainment of operations.
• Force Mobilization and Deployment: This is the rapid aggregation and initial movement of forces from their home stations to the theater of operations. It sets the clock for the entire campaign. As maneuverists, we seek to create temporal warfighting advantages for the FMF via rapid deployments.
• Force Closure: This is the systematic assembly and compositing of the force, linking personnel with their equipment and initial supplies in actions that enable reconstitution of the force within the theater. It ensures the commander has the complete, ready force required to restore the pre-conflict status quo or terminate the conflict to our advantage.
• Force Sustainment of Operations: This is the continuous flow of everything needed to maintain and prolong operations—fuel, ammunition, spare parts, medical services, and personnel support. It is the most challenging and enduring problem when all domains will be actively contested.
Taking a page from Chinese naming conventions, I refer to these steps collectively as The Three Principal Moves, and they encapsulate the actions necessary to deliver comprehensive operational effectiveness.
The advent of modern warfare, however, has significantly complicated the execution of The Three Principal Moves. Unlike in the past, all actions of the force in each move will be contested simultaneously across all domains. As I stated in last year’s “Focus on Logistics” edition of the Marine Corps Gazette, successful operations in contested environments require us to think, act, and operate differently. Our historical successes are undeniable, but at the strategic and operational levels, those methods of deployment, force closure, and sustainment were effectively conducted in permissive environments; we could fly, sail, offload, and operate anywhere we wanted with minimal concerns about enemy impediments to those actions—and we did just that. Modern warfare does not offer such luxuries. Each domain will be contested to varying degrees throughout our conduct of The Three Principal Moves.
At the heart of this construct is a strong, resilient, and responsive logistics enterprise that enables equal success across all At the heart of this construct is a strong, resilient, and responsive logistics enterprise that enables equal success across all domains. Without the ability to sustain protracted fires through the creation of an inexhaustible magazine afloat, ashore, or in the air, then there is no combat credibility. If there is no combat credibility, then there is no deterrence. Yes—deterrence requires more than just advanced weaponry; it requires a demonstrated ability to sustain those forces in a fight, and the reality of modern war involving major power peer adversaries is that such a fight will most likely be protracted. A force’s ability to sustain operations in a protracted conflict will be the deciding factor in enabling that force to prevail.
At the operational level, logistics is the indispensable bridge that connects strategy to the tactical realities of the modern all-domain battlespace. It is the lifeblood that sustains combat forces, providing the necessary resources to project power, maneuver, and sustain the fight with endurance; logistics drives strategy, and it enables operations, particularly protracted operations. Far from being a mere administrative or secondary function, logistics is the determinant warfighting function. Logistics ultimately determines the success or failure of any military campaign, and well before that, it determines whether a force is ready. I support the conclusion of GEN Dwight D. Eisenhower, who observed, “you will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.”
The Marine Corps Installation and Logistics Enterprise, including global prepositioned stocks and resilient infrastructure, directly prevents the FMF from reaching its culminating point in conflict. The culminating point is the point in time and space where a military force no longer possesses the superiority in combat power to continue its advance, forcing it to assume a defensive posture or retreat. This point is almost always reached due to the exhaustion of resources that drains a force’s will or depletes its ability to fight long before it is defeated in battle.
The true measure of Joint Force and naval power is not the total inventory of our equipment, but the ability to deliver that equipment at the decisive place, when needed, and keep it functional over time. When logistics is seen as robust, resilient, and redundant, it signals to an opponent that any initial tactical success will be fleeting, as the opposing force has the capacity to absorb losses and continue fighting indefinitely. As such, a strong logistics footprint is itself a deterrent effect.
I would like to thank all our authors and contributors, and encourage all consumers of the Gazette to continue to use it as a marketplace of ideas. I have repeatedly challenged you to “Think, Act, and Operate differently,” and I am greatly appreciative of how many have truly embraced that necessity. Over the past year, some tremendously innovative ideas have been developed across our Corps—by all ranks. This is the perfect venue to share how you have been thinking differently with your peers, and to challenge them to reconsider their assumptions, and further, ask themselves—what if I am wrong? Keep thinking. Keep writing. Keep challenging yourselves and each other. The time to act is now.
Stephen D. Sklenka Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics
There is a conversation we must have as a Corps. It is a difficult, uncomfortable conversation that strikes at the heart of our culture, our expectations, and the future of our warfighting readiness. In my estimation, there is a perfect storm gathering on the horizon, a storm that is now approaching our bases and stations. The collision of our necessary and ambitious modernization with the brutal reality of our fiscal constraints has brought us to a breaking point with facilities. We can no longer afford what we have, let alone what we say we need.
Installations serve as the crucible where Marines are forged and prepared for combat, providing the critical infrastructure for training, equipping, and deploying our forces. Failure to invest in these platforms directly compromises our ability to project power and deter aggression. Realistic training environments that simulate the complexities of modern warfare are essential, including ranges equipped with advanced targetry, urban training facilities, and cyber ranges. Investment in live, virtual, and constructive training capabilities allows Marines to hone their skills across varied, realistic scenarios, preparing them for the multi-domain battlefield they will face. This is the reason we exist; however, none of this can be accomplished without power, water, wastewater, and other basic utilities. Likewise, our commitment to warrior and family readiness through adequate housing, healthcare, and support services is not a luxury. A positive living environment is a necessity that directly impacts training, morale, and our ability to recruit and retain the high-caliber Marines and families that our Nation requires.
For two decades, as a Corps, we made the right and necessary choices. We prioritized the immediate needs of the warfighter in Iraq and Afghanistan, ensuring they had the weapons, armor, and technology to win on the battlefield. We consciously accepted risk in our installations portfolio, leveraging sustainment, restoration, and modernization funds to pay for urgent operational requirements. This was the correct answer at the time, but the installations bill is now due. The accumulated debt from years of deferred maintenance has collided with a perfect storm of external pressures: staggering inflation, a strategic pivot to the highly expensive Pacific theater, and the necessary, but costly, demands of accelerated Force Design modernization. The result is a fiscal crisis that threatens the very foundation of our readiness. As Marines, we must face this problem, attack, and win.
The challenge before us is not academic; it is a clear danger to our warfighting ability. The gap between what our installations require and the resources we receive is no longer a gap; it is a chasm. Analysis reveals an average shortfall of 55 percent between the requirement and the budget received for our facilities. Compounding this, military construction costs have exploded by an average of 30 percent since 2020, while unpredictable budget cycles and continuing resolutions have made long-term planning an exercise in futility. We are being asked to do more with less, but the laws of physics and finance are unforgiving.
The consequences of this resource crisis are not abstract. They are visible in the crumbling interior conditions of our barracks and the at-risk electrical grids that threaten our high-tech training simulators. The Marine Corps faces a $28 billion backlog in deferred maintenance, with a significant portion concentrated in the Pacific region, that grows each passing day. In a recent Naval Facilities Command analysis of 200 buildings in the East and National Capital regions, eleven percent were found to be at moderate to severe risk of structural failure. This is about operational risk. An F-35 is a museum piece without a powered hangar. A cyber warrior cannot train for network defense on a system that is constantly down. A Marine cannot maintain focus on their mission when their barracks room has mold, and the chow hall is closed for emergency repairs. For too long, we have viewed our installations as sanctuaries, administrative rear areas separate from the fight. That view is now dangerously obsolete. Our installations are operational platforms, integral to every phase of conflict, from deterrence to high-end combat. Continued underfunding is no longer a budget problem; it is an operational failure in the making.
But in this crisis lies our opportunity. This is not a time for despair; it is a time for action. The future we envision is one of operationally ready, resilient, and lethal installations that directly generate readiness, but more importantly, are ready to fight. Imagine our bases not as liabilities, but as unsinkable aircraft carriers and forward logistics hubs—the very springboards of power projection. From the shores of Camp Lejeune to the forward-deployed positions of Camp Hansen, our installations are part of the battlespace. This must be reality in today’s environment, and it is within our grasp if we have the courage to shed the institutional habits of a bygone era and forge a new, more disciplined path.
First, we must have the discipline to fund what is foundational. These are the must-pay bills: the minimum set of infrastructure, services, and security measures necessary, regardless of the installation’s mission, to sustain assigned personnel, protect assets, and support training. Think protection, power, water, barracks, and chow halls. These are not discretionary items to be traded away; they are the bedrock that underpins all other capabilities. This funding must be incorporated into every Program Objective Memorandum and remain untouchable—similar to the manpower account.
Second, for every new requirement, we will relentlessly pursue the concept of Minimum Viable Project. This is not about building cheap facilities; it is about building smart. It is the architectural equivalent of our “fight light” ethos—stripping away every non-essential feature and every square foot that does not directly contribute to putting rounds on target.
Third, we will attack our own footprint. We have too much aging, inefficient, and costly infrastructure. Our goal is to execute an aggressive, deliberate, and conditions-based demolition plan that reduces our total facility footprint by more than ten percent of the existing square footage. Every square foot we take off our books is a recurring cost we no longer must pay, freeing up resources to invest where they matter most. This is not retreat; it is shedding dead weight to become faster and more lethal.
Fourth, our first question for any facility requirement will no longer be where do we build new? but what can we renovate or repair? We must pivot from a reliance on new military construction to a smarter, more sustainable model of restoration and modernization. A well-renovated maintenance bay that is back in the fight in eighteen months is far superior to a new MILCON project that will not break ground for five years.
This is not just a theory; we at Marine Corps Installations Command are already on the attack. We have declared war on inefficiency. We are developing a portfolio of standardized facility designs, challenging the outdated Unified Facilities Criteria, and using more advanced construction methods. And we are leveraging new Other Transaction Authorities granted by Congress to accelerate project delivery. These are our proof points—concrete actions that demonstrate a faster, leaner, and more affordable model is not just possible but is already being implemented.
This brings us to the final, unavoidable truth. The principles of Minimum Viable Project, demolition, and renovation will make us far more efficient, but they cannot reverse decades of underinvestment by themselves. Efficiency alone cannot blunt a $28 billion maintenance backlog and simultaneously modernize our bases to support the exquisite and complex equipment of Force Design. To do that, the Service must make a committed, sustained investment in its platforms.
The professional, data-driven standard for maintaining a large and complex infrastructure portfolio is to fund Facilities Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization at a set percentage of the total Plant Replacement Value. The Marine Corps must commit to funding our installations at a sustainable and consistent rate of Plant Replacement Value annually. This level of investment is not for building monuments. It is the fuel required to work off our crushing maintenance backlog, to execute our plan of targeted demolition, and to resource a sustainable cycle of repair and renovation that will ensure our platforms can support the warfighter.
The path ahead requires a unified effort and a profound cultural shift. It demands that our leaders champion the 80 percent solution that can be delivered now over the 100 percent solution that may never arrive. Our mission is to defend the force and our families, support the MEF, and improve the lives of our warriors. By embracing this new, leaner approach, and resourcing it appropriately, we are not diminishing our capabilities; we are sharpening them. We are converting fiscal discipline into a strategic advantage, ensuring our installations are the resilient, operational platforms our Corps requires to meet any challenge, anywhere on the globe. The storm is here, but we have a plan. We are Marines. We will attack this problem, and we will win.
That path forward, the bridge from our current crisis to our future vision, is built on a ruthless return to our core identity as a frugal and expeditionary force. It is not about simply asking for more money—though we must; it is about fundamentally changing how we spend every dollar we get. This new model is built on four unwavering principles.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MajGen Woodworth currently serves as Commander, Marine Corps Installations Command; Commanding General, Marine Corps National Capital Region; and Assistant Deputy Commandant, Installations and Logistics, Facilities and Services.
The Marine Corps has mastered the kill chain—finding, targeting, and engaging threats—through constant innovation in fires and maneuver. Yet, the logistics chain that sustains those operations remains underdeveloped. The Corps still lacks the doctrine, culture, and training mechanisms to command and control sustainment with the same rigor as combat functions.
Logistics too often becomes an afterthought. Resupply plans go unrehearsed, timelines drift, and the tempo collapses when sustainment fails. The absence of standardized logistics control measures and overlays on the Common Operational Picture (COP) prevents timely decisions about resupply, risk, and the protection of critical units. Meanwhile, the logistics combat element (LCE) generally operates without a clearly enforced training and readiness sustainment, leaving Marines underprepared for convoy operations involving live-fire and night maneuvers. This reflects a lingering bias that treats logistics as secondary to combat arms—an assumption incompatible with modern war.
As the 39th Commandant warned, contested logistics is now a top priority: the Corps must “close and sustain the force” in a communications-degraded, threat-heavy environment. We must move beyond merely supporting maneuver to making logistics a driving force that enables it. As Col Angell and Mark Schouten wrote, “Tactical prowess is irrelevant for a force that cannot get to the fight or lacks the material to endure.”1
This article proposes four lines of effort (LOEs) that will better enable logistics units and logisticians to catch up to other elements of the MAGTF we are supporting in all phases of an operation—from planning throughout execution. The purpose is to conduct business as deliberately, rehearsed, and agile as the kill chain itself: • Rehearse sustainment as you rehearse fires. • Make sustainment visible and controllable on the COP. • Train the LCE like an aviation squadron. • Institutionalize the logistics support playbook.
Together, these efforts will transform the sustainment of the MAGTF from a passive tail getting proverbially left in the dust into the proactive combat system as designed.
LOE 1: Rehearse Sustainment as You Rehearse Fires
In the Marine Corps, nothing is “ready” until it is rehearsed. Fire-support teams walk through calls-for-fire; maneuver units practice schemes of maneuver to friction-proof execution. Yet, logistics rehearsals remain rare. During MAGTF Warfighting Exercise 1-25, for example, the LCE operations officer was told to “hurry along” so more time could be given to the fires discussion. The result was brilliant maneuver plans that faltered when fuel, water, or medical evacuation failed to align. A concept of logistics support written in an order is meaningless unless commanders and logisticians walk through it together. Rehearsing sustainment at confirmation briefs and rehearsal of concept drills exposes critical gaps: Where are the resupply points? What are the unmasking criteria or decision authorities for redirecting support? How do logistics units conduct link-ups in a communications-degraded environment? Such questions belong at every rehearsal table.
Every field exercise should integrate sustainment rehearsals alongside tactical ones, using realistic injects such as casualty evacuation, link-up between supporting and supported units, and no-communications plans. Commanders should discuss the criteria to unmask logistics and make this known across the formation. Is it the supported company commanders’ authority to push forward a low-density, high-value logistics formation? Is
“The history of war proves that nine out of ten times an army has been destroyed because its supply lines have been cut off.” –GEN Douglas MacArthur
survivability more important than supporting the supported unit—how and who makes these risk-based decisions? These questions must be addressed with commanders across the MAGTF discussing decision-making criteria and authorities. Rehearsing sustainment with the same intensity as fires signals a cultural shift: logistics is part of the fight, not an administrative detail. The outcome is a MAGTF that fights with confidence, knowing the logistical links will hold fast and or support across is understood.
LOE 2: Make Sustainment Visible and Controllable on the COP
Today’s operations centers display impressive digital maps of maneuver units and fires. Yet, too often, logistics is invisible—convoys, refuel points, casualty collection sites are absent from the picture. Without that visibility, commanders are having difficulty with command and control of logistics formations as evidenced by the Marine Corps Logistics Operations Group during MAGTF warfighting exercise and other collective training events. Further, MAGTF headquarters often struggled to locate dispersed convoys or distribution sites. Leaders could not answer the simplest questions: How much water remains? When is the next resupply mission scheduled? This uncertainty paralyzed tempo. As MCDP 4 reminds us, “Logistics visibility provides insight on reach and endurance … shaping decisions to adjust tasks, priorities, and resources.”2 You cannot protect or maneuver what you cannot see or control—or it becomes unnecessarily difficult to communicate perceived air superiority to desperate units.
A logistics overlay—updated and layered onto the main COP—turns sustainment into a controllable system. Logistics-oriented tactical control measures, like rapid resupply points, ambulance exchange points, and other critical areas, should appear on every COP. When an infantry commander can plan around their next resupply, they can develop courses of action that are feasible and prevent culmination, as logistics is intended. In one MAGTF warfighting exercise instance, once LCE movements were plotted, the GCE coordinated fires to shield a convoy under threat—saving the sustainment flow from interdiction.
Technology can help. Emerging “LOGCOP” tools fuse data on convoy locations, stock levels, and maintenance status using real-time data. The goal is secure, near-real-time sustainment visibility without revealing positions to the enemy. However, the procedures matter more than the software: standardized logistics tactical control measures, clear update cycles, and mandatory log-status reporting must become habitual across the MAGTF. Commanders must enforce the importance of Logistics Status, akin to positional reports, to support the timely application of fires.
Once visible, sustainment becomes controllable. Commanders can dynamically redirect convoys, shift resupply priorities, or activate contingency routes. Logistics thus becomes a maneuver system—one that sets the fight’s tempo rather than merely trailing behind it.
LOE 3: Train the LCE Like an Aviation Squadron
While deployed as part of the 13th MEU embarked aboard the USS Makin Island on the WESTPAC 23.1 deployment, we observed the strict training and readiness standards, deck qualification landings, or night qualifications of the air combat element and asked why this does not exist in the LCE? This discipline ensures combat readiness. Yet, no equivalent culture exists for logistics formations. Too often, LCE units spend training time on administrative or garrison tasks rather than tactical proficiency.
Doctrinally, “effective logistics depends on continuous, challenging, integrated training.”3 However, many logisticians reach major exercises having never executed a live-fire convoy or having conducted night convoy operations. Yet, we can generally all agree that there is a need for logistics units to conduct force protection and conduct movement using the concealment of night. Why is it that we can track individual training like combat and physical fitness tests or cyber awareness, yet we do not know if our sustainment interval is maintained for operating crew-served weapons and driving vehicles at night? Both are critical individual tasks required to accomplish the collective tasks associated with the assigned mission of the LCE. The LCE formations must treat logistics as a warfighting formation, not a service provider, and begin tracking these intervals during weekly command meetings—like command and staff or review via existing systems such as the Marine Corps Training Information Management System. When logistics Marines train like aviators—constantly evaluated, continuously improving—the result is a force that can maneuver, survive, and sustain under pressure. In a peer fight, there will be no safe rear area.
LOE 4: The Logistics Support Playbook
Even with rehearsed plans and trained units, combat chaos will disrupt communications and command. To thrive amid that friction, logisticians need tools that enable rapid, decentralized execution. The logistics support playbookis one such tool: a menu of pre-planned, flexible sustainment “plays” that can be executed with minimal comms—analogous to a fire-support matrix for logistics.
MCDP 4 emphasizes that maneuver warfare demands “flexibility and agility in our logistics plans … ensuring logistics itself does not become a critical vulnerability.”4 The playbook builds that flexibility by pre-deciding how to act when the unexpected occurs. It also enables the discussion between the supported and supporting units to conduct quick and detailed planning to enable link-up during execution.
Each “play” is a predetermined package of support or contingency action, rehearsed and encoded for quick execution. Suppose a battalion burns through ammunition repelling an ambush. Instead of drafting a long request, it transmits a simple code: “7-Eleven Option 1 execute.” Everyone already knows what that means—perhaps a six-pallet resupply of 155 mm, water, and MREs.
The LCE immediately launches the designated convoy “Lucky” to the pre-set linkup grid. A single burst transmission accomplishes what would normally take multiple messages.
These plays compress decision cycles, sustain tempo, and enable initiative at the lowest level. They embody mission tactics—allowing subordinate leaders to act within the commander’s intent even when cut off. Developing the playbook requires deliberate staff work. MAGTF planners identify likely sustainment challenges—emergency casualty evacuation, mobile fuel runs, alternate routes—and craft shorthand solutions. Each play includes triggers, responsibilities, and code words. Plays are standardized, disseminated, and rehearsed across the force. Used in the same manner as we observe any given Sunday.
The Marine Corps can perfect its kill chain, but without an equally disciplined sustainment chain, combat power will grind to a halt.
Like immediate-action drills, playbook codes do not restrict flexibility—they empower it. Because decisions are front-loaded, Marines can act faster when friction strikes. Training cycles should validate these plays, including emission control and degraded-comms scenarios. RAND analysis supports this approach: distributed operations require sustainment forces to “operate effectively with inconsistent communications.”5 The playbook provides precisely that capability. It also aligns with Force Design 2030 and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concepts, emphasizing distributed, autonomous sustainment. Commanders, depending on the command relationships, must trust subordinates to execute playbook codes without seeking permission. That trust converts logistics from a centrally managed process into a responsive network. Like a well-drilled football team executing an audible, a MAGTF using its logistics playbook can adjust instantly—maintaining tempo given the anticipated fog and friction as part of the nature of war.
Logistics is commonly referred to as the linchpin of maneuver warfare. The Marine Corps can perfect its kill chain, but without an equally disciplined sustainment chain, combat power will grind to a halt. The four LOEs outlined here chart a path forward: rehearse sustainment like fires; make it visible and controllable on the COP; train logisticians to the same warfighting standard as aviators; and institutionalize the Logistics Support Playbook to thrive in degraded conditions.
These reforms rely upon and demand leadership emphasis, doctrinal updates, and cultural change. They require time, resources, and persistence. But their payoff is immense: a MAGTF capable of sustaining itself in any clime and place, with logistics functioning not as a vulnerability but as a decisive weapon system. To win tomorrow’s fight, the Marine Corps must go beyond the kill chain—and command and control logistics as deliberately as it commands and controls firepower.
Featured Photo (Top):An accurate logistics COP can ensure visibility of critical classes of supply including bulk fuel.(Photo provided by Cpl Eric Allen.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Col Zimmerman is a Logistics Officer and is currently serving as the Commanding Officer of Combat Logistics Regiment 17, 1st Marine Logistics Group.
Maj Zimmer is a Logistics Officer currently serving as a Faculty Advisor at the Marine Corps Logistics Operations Group.
NOTES:
1. Col Aaron Angell and Jeff Schouten, “Leveraging Logistics above the MAGTF,” Marine Corps Gazette 107, No. 3 (2024).
Drones have provided significant tactical advantages to both sides during the three years of brutal fighting in the Russo-Ukraine war. So, it is not surprising that uncrewed autonomous and first-person view drones and other uncrewed platforms are being heralded as the war-winning technology of the future.1 This euphoria was magnified by Ukraine’s June 2025 Operation SPIDERWEB, which masterfully employed drones to attack Russian air bases approximately 2,500 miles from the static front.2 This led some commentators to declare that the attack was Kiev’s Pearl Harbor.3
Moreover, two authors have proclaimed that the “drone era” is a military revolution and will remove the element of fear from war.4 This is an astonishing statement given that human beings fight wars to intentionally inflict violence on others out of “greed, fear, and ideology,” making it unlikely humans will disappear from tomorrow’s battlefields.5
This article contends that drones and artificial technology (AI) will continue to transform how future wars are fought; however, technology alone is unlikely to generate the required vic-tories to qualify as the next revolution in military affairs (RMA).
Evolution or Revolution?
Drones have transformed the battlefield in Ukraine, but in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary fashion, as their impact falls short of the truly disruptive change that constitutes an RMA.6 Neither side has been able to decisively break through their opponent’s fixed, layered defenses and transition to sustained offensive operations necessary to achieve their respective political aims and “theories of victory.”7 A recent RUSI study concluded between 60–80 percent of Ukrainian first-person view, tactical drones failed to reach their target in 2024.8 Those that did were unable to destroy the armored vehicles they were trying to kill due to Russian electronic warfare jamming, poor weather, unfavorable terrain conditions, and operator error. A lack of Ukrainian artillery often prevented suppressive fires from being effectively employed with drones against Russian air defenses and dismounted soldiers protecting key targets. All told, first-person-view drones have proven most effective against enemy troops in the open. However, armies that disperse, conceal, maneuver with stealth, and deceive will likely lessen the effectiveness of adversary kill chains in the future.
… two authors have proclaimed that the “drone era” is a military revolution …
Revolutions in military affairs occur when a new technology is combined with innovative operational concepts and organizational adaptation to fundamentally alter the character and conduct of conflict.9 The RMAs dramatically increase the combat potential and military effectiveness of fighting forces relative to a specific adversary, but these three ingredients must be amalgamated before a true RMA is born.10
Revolutions in military affairs are rare occurrences—Andrew Krepinevich cites only ten since the 14th century.11 Nevertheless, premature pronouncements that a new RMA has arrived are not new. In 2004, Stephen Biddle cited six such examples: the inventions of dynamite, the machinegun, the naval torpedo, the airplane, strategic bombing, and the atom bomb.12 Biddle believed these new technologies led military thinkers of their day to overestimate the impact they would have on warfare.
This trend continues today and, on one level, it makes sense. War’s inherent brutality has long incentivized humans to seek short wars and “silver bullets” that can reduce its cost in casualties and national treasure. Moreover, the reliance on advanced technology has been a central pillar of the American Way of War since at least World War II, as the United States places greater emphasis on technology in planning and waging war than any other nation.13
Yet, in the context of the Russo-Ukraine War, drone performance has been exaggerated despite compelling evidence otherwise. Amos Fox argues that drones in protracted land campaigns, like Ukraine and Gaza, have proven strategically irrelevant given their inability to take or retake territory, hold ground, seal borders, and protect populations.14 Other studies question drone reliability and effectiveness.15 Thus, claims that drones have revolutionized the character of war deserve closer scrutiny.
Generating Leap-Ahead Combat Capabilities
As noted above, RMAs change the character of war because they generate an asymmetrical advantage in combat capabilities vis-à-vis one’s adversary. What is revolutionary is not the pace of change, but rather, the character of the change and the degree of overall improvement in military capabilities.16
Such improvement can occur absent new technology, as was the case with the 18th-century French “levee en masse” (i.e., forced conscription) that tripled the size of Napoleon’s Army in less than a year.17 It can also result from repurposing and imaginatively using old technology, as Germany did with tanks—first employed by the British in the 1917 World War I battle of Cambrai—by integrating armor with radio communications, airplanes, and mechanized infantry to generate a potent combined-arms team that became the blitzkrieg.18
Yet, it is important to acknowledge that the introduction of new technology is a key incubator that can alter the character of war, as witnessed with the precision-strike revolution that came of age in the 1991 Gulf War.19 Some three decades later, the precision strike RMA enabled the United States to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER.20 But battlefield context matters, as it took eleven weeks of bombing from fourteen NATO nations (some 40,000 aircraft sorties flown) along with the threat of ground invasion during Operation ALLIED FORCE before Serb leader, Slobodan Milosevic, backed down.21
Coming of Age
In almost all cases, new technologies mature more slowly than military planners and operators desire. The 1972 Linebacker II bombing campaign against North Vietnam expended approximately the same number of laser-guided munitions as the 1991 Gulf War.22 The qualitative improvements that allowed the same number of munitions to be exponentially more effective than their forbearers took nearly two decades.
The same is true with ground-launched anti-tank weapons systems. What started in the late 1970s with the Dragon and family of wire-guided missile systems eventually matured into the “fire and forget” Javelin that proved so effective against Russian armor in 2022.23
… RMAs change the character of war because they generate an asymmetrical advantage in combat capabilities vis-à-vis one’s adversary.
Drones, too, have a long lineage that traces back to 1917–1918 when the British and American’s respectively, developed the Aerial Target and Kettering Bug pilotless aerial platforms.24 Yet, it was not until the Vietnam War that drones were deployed in relatively large numbers.
In sum, a lengthy maturation process ensues before new technologies, innovative warfighting concepts, and organizational adaptations successfully combine to ignite revolutionary, leap-ahead combat capabilities. This time-consuming process is not exclusively the fault of tech developers, engineers, and an unwieldy defense acquisition process. Rather, lengthy, but essential, military experimentation must also occur to provide the Services and Joint Force practical insights into how its concepts and organizational design should be adapted to effectively campaign with the new technologies.25
Maintaining Asymmetrical Advantage
The competitive asymmetrical advantages new technologies bring to warfare are fleeting. Being a “first mover” or early adopter of enhanced capabilities incentivizes competitors to counterbalance, especially if the new capabilities are widely proliferated.26
Today’s rapid diffusion of technology means smaller powers and non-state actors can easily and cheaply manufacture or commercially acquire drones, satellite imagery, global communications devices, and a host of other technologies for battlefield use. The Houthis recently demonstrated this with their drone attacks against Red Sea shipping.27 Thomas Mahnken describes this phenomenon as one of “emulation,” which will continue to erode, if not eliminate, the comparative asymmetrical advantage drones and other emerging technologies afford the U.S. military.28
When the barriers of emulation are too high, adversaries will attempt to develop countermeasures to thwart new combat methods.29 As an example, to offset U.S. firepower and mobility advantages in Iraq and Afghanistan, the enemy’s weapon of choice was the improvised explosive device (IED)—the legacy “boobytrap.”30 Decades earlier in Vietnam, the Viet Cong used the low-tech entrenching tool to turn the Cu Chi area outside of Saigon into 155 miles of underground tunnels and mini-subterranean cities to counter America’s air power advantage.31
Thus, smart adversaries will rapidly emulate or develop countermeasures to negate the asymmetrical advantages afforded by real or faux RMAs. In Ukraine, the world has watched this process play out in realtime, which makes the Russo-Ukraine conflict a revolution in adaptation war vice a universal RMA.32
Weighing the Risk of Military Innovation
Military innovation is a “balancing act between destroying traditional ways of war and creating new ones,” a gamble that risks losing more by abandoning legacy capabilities than is created with new innovations.33 Past, but flawed high-risk bets about the changing character of future wars include the development of British armored doctrine before World War II;34 the U.S. Air Force embracing the long-range nuclear bombing mission in place of close air support and air superiority competencies needed in the Korean War; and the U.S. Army restructuring itself into Pentomic formations to fight on a nuclear battlefield.35 According to Kendrick Kuo, in each case, militaries divested themselves of critical capabilities and competencies they needed in the next war.36
… prudent observers of modern war are right to question any technology being championed as a “war-winner”…
Fear of missing the next military revolution and being relegated to “second mover” status can seductively entice force planners to bet and invest in the wrong RMA. Sir Lawrence Freedman argues that Ukraine’s drone environment is context-specific and may not be germane to future battlefields that are not characterized by static front lines and slow-moving, long-range drones that have trouble penetrating well-defended targets—in need of more effective integration with other traditional military capabilities such as aircraft, armored vehicles, and artillery—to prove decisive.37 Freedman is not alone in his thinking, which makes it risky to adopt the drone tactics, techniques, and procedures from the stalemated Russo-Ukraine War as a perfect template for future conflicts.
The Pitfalls of Technological Determinism
Historians Williamson Murray and McGregor Knox believe the lessons of history demonstrate that technological superiority does not guarantee success in war.38 In World War II, U.S. materiel and technological dominance still required grueling battles across the Pacific to the Japanese homeland before an exhausted and starving adversary ultimately capitulated.39 More recently, technologically-backward states like North Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan denied the United States its war aims, notwithstanding the latter’s overwhelming firepower advantage.
Clausewitz argued that war is fundamentally a contest of human wills, which means there is more to war than simply “blowing up targets.”40 Ultimately, human factors such as leadership, training, discipline, and doctrine—not weapons—are the final arbiter of battlefield success or failure. Thus, underestimating the tenacity and staying power of a technologically inferior underdog comes with a high price tag.
Forward into the Unknown
Until the Russo-Ukrainian War ends, both sides will continue to rapidly adapt. Lessons observed during the war’s early years may provide new insights that will help inform how the United States and other nations transform their militaries for future conflicts. However, rushing to judgment about the efficacy of specific technologies in a protracted war that has no clear end in sight only impedes this learning process. Thus, prudent observers of modern war are right to question any technology being championed as a “war winner” until the war being used as an exemplar is won.
The late British historian, Sir Michael Howard, remarked in a 1973 lecture on Military Science in an Age of Peace, “that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have got it wrong. I am also tempted to declare that it does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives.”41
Hopefully, Sir Michael’s prescient words will stimulate continued sober analysis of the strengths and limitations of drones and AI on the modern battlefield. This will require some intellectual humility that we may all be wrong, including this author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Col Greenwood is a Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He was an Infantryman who commanded the 15th MEU (SOC), served as Director of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and completed multiple assign-ments in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council staff.
NOTES:
Tomas Milasauskas and Livdvikas Jaskunas, “FPV Drones in Ukraine are Changing Mod-ern Warfare,” Atlantic Council, June 20, 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrai-nealert/fpv-drones-in-ukraine-are-changing-modern-warfare.
Kateryna Bondar, “How Ukraine’s Operation ‘Spider’s Web’ Redefines Asymmetric Warfare,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraines-spider-web-operation-redefines-asymmetric-warfare.
Roger Boyes, “Kyiv’s Drone Attack is a Pearl Harbor Moment,” The Times, June 3, 2025, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2025/06/02/ukraine-drone-strike-at-tack-russia-pearl-harbor/83987304007.
Antonio Salinas and Jason P. Levay, “Military Revolutions from the Spanish Tercio to First-Person View Drones,” War on the Rocks, May 15, 2025, https://warontherocks.com/2025/05/military-revolutions-from-the-spanish-tercio-to-first-person-view-drones.
Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (New York: Random House, 2020).
Stacie Pettyjohn, “Evolution Not Revolution: Drone Warfare in Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine,” Center for a New American Security, February 2024, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep57900.
Thomas C. Greenwood, “Why Ukraine’s Breakthrough Operations Are So Difficult,” The National Interest, December 31, 2022, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-ukraines-breakthrough-operations-are-so-difficult-207815; and J. Boone Bartholomees, “Theory of Victory,” Parameters 38, No. 2 (2008).
Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, “Tactical Developments During the Third Year of the Russo-Ukraine War,” Royal United Services Institute, February 2025, https://www.rusi. org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/tactical-developments-during-third-year-russo-ukrainian-war.
Andrew F. Krepinevich, “Calvary to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions,” The National Interest, No. 37 (1994).
James R. Fitzsimonds and Jan M. Van Toll, “Revolution in Military Affairs,” Joint Forces Quarterly (Spring 1994).
“Calvary to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions.”
Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Thomas G. Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
Amos Fox, “Drones Are Game-Changing, But They Are Not the Answer to the Inherent Challenges of Land Warfare,” Small Wars Journal, August 6, 2025, https://smallwarsjournal. com/2025/08/06/drones-are-game-changing.
Jakub Jajcay, “I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck,” War on the Rocks, June 26, 2025, https://warontherocks. com/2025/06/i-fought-in-ukraine-and-heres-why-fpv-drones-kind-of-suck.
Andrew W. Marshall, “RMA Update,” Memorandum for the Record, Office of the Secretary of Defense (Washington, DC: May 1994).
Williamson Murray, “Thinking About Revolutions in Military Affairs,” Joint Forces Quarterly (Summer 1997).
Mark Cartright, “Blitzkrieg: The Lightning War Tactic of Combined Arms,” World History, November 28, 2024, https://www.worldhistory. org/Blitzkrieg.
David R. Mets, The Long Search for a Surgical Strike: Precision Munitions and the Revolu-tion in Military Affairs (Montgomery: Air University Press, October 2001).
Joseph Rogers, “What Operation Midnight Hammer Means for the Future of Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 23, 2025, https://www.csis. org/analysis/what-operation-midnight-hammer-means-future-irans-nuclear-ambitions.
Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: Nato’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2000).
“Calvary to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions.”
Charlie Goo, “American Dragon: This Missile Launcher Turns Tanks to Dust,” The National Interest, June 30, 2021, https://nation-alinterest.org/blog/reboot/american-dragon-missile-launcher-turns-tanks-dust-188853.
John F. Keane and Stephen S. Carr, “A Brief History of Early Unmanned Aircraft,” Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab Technical Digest 32, No. 9 (2013).
Tom Greenwood and Jim Greer, “Experimentation: The Road to Discovery,” Strategy Bridge, March 1, 2018, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/trecms/AD1223471/index.html.
John D. Maurer, “The Future of Precision-Strike Warfare: Strategic Dynamics of Mature Military Revolutions,” Naval War College Re-view 76, No. 3 (2023).
Alison Bath, “Navy Fired More than 200 Missiles to Fight Off Red Sea Shipping Attacks, Admiral Says,” Stars and Stripes, January 16, 2025, https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2025-01-16/houthis-navy-red-sea-missiles-drones-16500246.html.
Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The Growth & Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime,” Daedalus 140, No. 3 (2011).
“Weapons: The Growth & Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime.”
Jason Shell, “How the IED Won: Dispelling the Myth of Tactical Success and Innovation,” War on the Rocks, May 1, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/05/how-the-ied-won-dispelling-the-myth-of-tactical-success-and-innovation.
MSW, “The Cu Chi Tunnels,” WarHistory. Com, July 15, 2020, https://warhistory.org/@ msw/article/the-cu-chi-tunnels.
Mick Ryan, “The New Adaptation War,” Substack.com, April 16, 2025, https://scsp222. substack.com/p/adaptation-war-with-mick-ryan.
Kendrick Kuo, “How to Think About Risks in US Military Innovation,” Survival, February-March 2024, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2024.2309077.
Kendrick Kuo, “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness,” International Security 47, No. 2 (2022);
“How to Think About Risks in US Military Innovation.”
“Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness.”
Lawrence Freedman, “Are Drones the Future of War?” Substack.com, July 29, 2025, https://samf.substack.com/p/are-drones-the-future-of-war.
MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, The Dynamics of Military Revolution, (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Colin S. Gray, Weapons Don’t Make War: Policy, Strategy, and Military Technology (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993).
Pat Garrett and Frank Hoffman, “Maneuver Warfare Is Not Dead, But It Must Evolve,” Proceedings, November 2023, https://www.usni. org/magazines/proceedings/2023/november/maneuver-warfare-not-dead-it-must-evolve.
Michael Howard, “Military Science in the Age of Peace,” The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Journal 119 (1974).
2025 LtCol Earl “Pete” Ellis Essay Contest: First Place
As a Chinese amphibious task force advances toward a narrow chokepoint in the Western Pacific, a Marine littoral regiment positions itself to deny access. Traditionally, combat engineers relied on labor-intensive minefield emplacement. Alternatively, they used scatterable systems such as the Family of Scatterable Mines, which often had unreliable timers. Both methods left hazards that outlived their purpose and slowed friendly maneuver.1
Instead, a coordinated operation unfolds. A swarm of drones—ranging from small first-person-view (FPV) platforms to larger attritable aerial and ground vehicles—launches from cover. Carrying anti-tank (AT) and anti-personnel (AP) charges, they create a precise, reversible minefield in minutes. Command and control of the operation is meticulously structured; commanders authorize deployments after thorough assessments and monitor drone movements through secure communication channels. Support drones sustain concealment and command links, ensuring continuous oversight. Commanders maintain the ability to reseed or recover mines as the fight evolves, adjusting operations dynamically in response to battlefield developments. The enemy halts long enough for fires and maneuver to destroy the force.2
What once required days is now achieved with tempo and accountability, setting the stage for new operational approaches. Drone-delivered minefields—leveraging commercial swarms, quantum navigation in GPS-denied environments, and human-in-the-loop autonomy—transform mines into adaptive tools for distributed operations.3 By imposing disproportionate costs at minimal expense to Marines, they embody asymmetric warfare and deliver the “unfair fight” envisioned by Force Design 2030.4
Background
Minefields have long shaped combat. In World War I, belts of barbed wire and mines slowed offensives across no man’s land, forcing attackers into corridors exploitable by machineguns and artillery.5 During World War II, vast mine belts were used in North Africa, where both British and German forces emplaced hundreds of thousands of mines to control maneuver across the open desert.6 These examples demonstrate how obstacles amplify combat power by channeling an adversary into predetermined kill zones.
Legacy systems carried significant costs. During the Gulf War, scatterable mines produced high dud rates—over 1,900 unexploded mines were recorded at Al Jabar Airbase sector alone, with similar patterns across six other sectors in Kuwait—leaving hazards that risked civilians’ safety and delayed reconstruction.7 In Kosovo and Iraq, unexploded ordnance likewise undermined legitimacy and fueled political backlash. To mitigate such risks, the International Committee of the Red Cross codified restrictions in Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.8 As Marines consider innovations in mine deployment, it is essential to anticipate how humanitarian backlash could shape future rules of engagement. Building reversibility and accountability into mine warfare ensures operational effectiveness while preserving political credibility.
Recent U.S. policy shifts provide an opening. Executive Order 14307, Secretary of Defense guidance, and the revocation of National Security Memorandum 17 collectively restored authorities for drone integration and limited landmine employment.9 Together, these measures provide Marines with both the legal authority and strategic mandate to reinvent mine warfare. The challenge is to adapt these restored authorities responsibly, balancing combat effectiveness with humanitarian considerations.
Discussion
Drone-delivered minefields offer Marines decisive advantages over legacy systems. First, they provide precision and accountability. Using realtime kinematics Global Positioning System or quantum-enabled navigation, aerial and ground drones can emplace mines exactly where doctrine requires while producing digital logs that ensure accountability.14 Human operators play a critical role throughout this precision workflow, ensuring oversight and control. During deployment operations, human authorization occurs at key decision nodes, such as the initial activation of the system, confirmation of target coordinates, and upon any reseeding or retrieval of mines. This human-in-the-loop approach aligns with the emerging Department of War autonomy policy, providing reassurance to those skeptical of fully autonomous operations. In Europe, Marines supporting NATO could seed a river crossing in under an hour, delaying adversary armor long enough for fires to strike.15
Second, these minefields deliver dynamic control. Unlike fire-and-forget scatterables, drone-delivered obstacles can be armed, disarmed, and redeployed in minutes.16 This allows commanders to deny an avenue, reopen it for maneuver, and then reseed it as the fight evolves. Such reversibility ensures Marines preserve tempo while denying it to the enemy.
Third, drones enable doctrinal versatility. They can mass mines across a chokepoint to block reinforcements or cluster AT and AP mines to disrupt breaching efforts.17 This flexibility provides commanders with a scalable toolset for shaping enemy movement.
Fourth, drones create opportunities for deception and camouflage. Spray drones can obscure emplacements with terrain-colored coatings, while decoy mines generate false signatures.18 In practice, false fields force hesitation at critical moments and complicate adversary decision making.
Finally, drone-delivered minefields integrate seamlessly into the MAGTF and Joint Force. Obstacles become dynamic elements that complement fires, maneuver, and electronic warfare. Small FPV drones, such as the Neros Archer, offer an affordable near-term option for testing terrain-shaping tactics at the company level.19 By employing FPVs today, Marines can validate doctrine and reinforce the engineer community’s role as the Marine Corps’ countermobility specialists.
Technology Enablers
Civilian industries already demonstrate the feasibility of drone-delivered minefields. Drone swarms, such as those by companies like Verge Aero, synchronize hundreds of aircraft with centimeter accuracy during public light shows.20 These algorithms can be adapted for military use, enabling engineers to deploy mines with doctrinal precision. Proven swarm techniques provide Marines with an immediate advantage, eliminating the need for lengthy research cycles.
Commercial logistics proves scalability. Companies such as Zipline operate fleets of drones that navigate complex airspace and deliver payloads with precision and accuracy.21 These operations show drones can reliably carry ordnance-sized weights, providing confidence that swarms can sustain repetitive sorties in contested environments.
Artificial intelligence (AI) further enhances swarming potential. Vision-based AI allows drones to recognize terrain and optimize mine placement, while machine learning enables swarms to adapt mid-mission.22 This autonomy allows commanders to designate intent—“fix armor here” or “block this pass”—while swarms execute with minimal supervision.
Command-and-control resilience remains a decisive challenge. Army experimentation during MSPIX 2025 revealed that stacked drone swarms and RF decoys generated significant com-munication demands and integration challenges.23 Marines must learn from these lessons by prioritizing mesh networks, relay drones, and training in degraded environments. Building trust in autonomy and resilient communications will ensure these systems function under electronic warfare pressure. To mitigate electronic warfare threats, Marines will implement advanced electronic warfare training programs that simulate electronic attacks, equipping personnel with the skills to rapidly adapt and sustain operations. Regular drills will integrate electronic warfare scenarios with standard procedures, ensuring that Marines are adept at maintaining operational capability and communication integrity even when contested by adversarial electronic tactics.
Finally, quantum navigation and sensing offer a breakthrough. Recent demonstrations using magnetometers and gravimeters achieved centimeter-level accuracy without satellites, proving navigation without GPS is no longer theoretical.24 Russia and China have already been jamming and spoofing GPS in Ukraine and the Pacific, but ruggedized systems from companies such as SandboxAQ, Q-CTRL, and Infleqtion are being accelerated by DARPA and allied militaries.25 For Marines, quantum-enabled navigation ensures drone-delivered minefields remain accurate and accountable even under electronic attack.
Employment Options
Drone-delivered minefields enable doctrinally precise obstacle deployment. Using realtime kinematics Global Positioning System or quantum-enabled navigation, unmanned aerial system swarms can seed mines in fixing, turning, blocking, or disrupting patterns with each emplacement digitally logged for accountability.26 A commander could seed a river crossing in under an hour, delaying an adversary long enough for long-range fires to attrit the lead elements. Such speed and precision impose dilemmas without committing large forces.
Separate or clustered mines expand tactical flexibility. The AT mines delay armored formations, while AP mines deter dismounted infantry and breaching engineers. When clustered, these systems magnify effects, as engineers clearing AT lanes are disrupted by nearby AP threats.27 This layered approach forces adversaries to expend time and resources while Marines preserve tempo.
Reversibility provides commanders with dynamic control. Drone-emplaced mines can be armed, disarmed, and redeployed in just minutes rather than days.28 For instance, commanders have historically faced delays stretching up to 48 hours to reposition traditional mine systems. This rapid redeployment enables Marines to close a corridor to delay an advance, reopen it for friendly maneuver, and reseed it to deny pursuit. Such flexibility directly addresses long-standing criticisms of minefields as static liabilities by significantly reducing response times and enhancing operational tempo.
Drones also enable deception and counterattack facilitation. False mine-fields and decoys can create uncertainty across the battlespace, while commanders can predesignate corridors to allow counterattacks and then reseed behind them.29 These techniques transform obstacles from static hazards into adaptive enablers of maneuver.
Combat engineers must remain the primary operators of these systems. Countermobility, demolition, and terrain shaping are core engineer tasks and already own the training and readiness standards and demolition authorities.30 Anchoring these systems in the engineer community ensures doctrinal integrity and synchronization with fires. If the capability scales, a dedicated military occupational specialty for unmanned aerial system obstacles may be explored, but initial investment must remain engineer-led.
Lessons from Current Conflicts
Ukraine highlights both the utility and costs of legacy mines. Russian scatterable mines disrupted maneuver but left farmland contaminated for decades.31 Dud rates and the absence of digital control created hazards that slowed civilians and friendly forces long after combat. By contrast, Ukrainian forces adapted commercial drones to deliver precision charges against armored vehicles, demonstrating the potential of adaptive drone-enabled obstacles.32
Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 underscored the vulnerability of static defenses. Armenian mine belts slowed Azerbaijani advances, but swarms of Turkish-supplied drones systematically destroyed armor and artillery supporting the defense.33 The lesson for Marines is clear: without adaptability and synchronization with fires, modern reconnaissance-strike complexes will render fixed minefields ineffective.
Adversaries are rapidly innovating with unmanned deception. Russia has combined decoy drones with live systems to saturate defenses, while China’s precision drones demonstrate the potential for swarm deception at scale.34 These experiments show that adversaries are already exploring the same technologies Marines must adopt, and delaying risks ceding initiative in countermobility.
Coalition partners also highlight the importance of accountability. NATO allies in Eastern Europe and humanitarian groups in post-conflict zones face heavy clearance burdens from unexploded ordnance.35 Drone-delivered minefields, equipped with digital emplacement records and remote disarmament capabilities, could alleviate these challenges, reducing political costs while enhancing alliance interoperability.
Doctrine
The Marine Corps should update MCWP 3-17, Engineer Operations, and MCWP 3-12, Combined Arms Countermobility, to codify precision, reversibility, and deception as core tenets of mine warfare. Engineer units must add scalable “drone obstacle platoons” capable of supporting MLRs and MEUs. MARADMIN 416/25, which announced the fielding of the Neros Archer FPV drone, illustrates both the opportunity and the challenge of integration—momentum toward low-cost drone employment, but also the risks of dependency and doctrine lagging behind capability.36
Organization
The pioneer battalion provides the ideal structure for experimenting with drone-delivered minefields. Its littoral engineer reconnaissance teams and littoral explosive ordnance neutralization sections are already tasked with countermobility and terrain shaping.37 Embedding drone-enabled obstacle platoons within this formation would align with its campaign of learning mandate and validate swarming minefields in littoral terrain.
Doctrine and Concept Alignment
The Maritime Terrain Shaping and Area Denial (MTS-AD) Functional Concept emphasizes that the Marine Corps is not currently organized, trained, or equipped for scalable terrain shaping.38 Drone-delivered minefields directly fulfill these requirements by providing reversible, deception-enabled, and recoverable obstacles that assure friendly maneuver.
Joint Integration
The Army is investing heavily in terrain-shaping prototypes through the Army Applications Laboratory and MSPIX. Experiments have shown that stacked drone swarms, RF decoys, and autonomous unmanned ground vehicles are viable engineering tools.39 Marines should observe and shape these efforts while avoiding redundant costs—“let the Army spend, Marines adopt”—and focus resources on doctrine, naval integration, and operational tactics, techniques, and procedures.
FPV Options
The FPV drones, such as the Neros Archer, provide a near-term, affordable method to validate terrain-shaping tactics. They can deliver explosive charges, reinforce countermobility lanes, and be integrated into Service-level training exercises. By employing FPVs now, Marines can refine doctrine, build trust in autonomy, and accelerate field adoption without waiting for larger programs of record.40
Operator Ownership
Combat engineers must remain the primary operators of drone-delivered minefields. Countermobility and demolition are core engineer tasks, and the community already owns the training standards and authorities required for safe and effective obstacle employment.41 Anchoring these systems in the engineer community ensures doctrinal integrity and synchronization with fires. If the capability scales, a dedicated unmanned aerial system obstacle military occupational specialty may be explored, but initial investment must remain engineer-led.
Training
The Engineer School curriculum should incorporate swarming, digital accountability, and AI-enabled planning. Training must include degraded communications scenarios and integration into Service-level and coalition training exercises. Reserve units, drawing on civilian drone expertise, are particularly suited to accelerate adoption.
Materiel
Attritable drones with modular mine kits should be prioritized, supported by 3D-printed components to reduce logistics burdens. A pilot program fielded in both an active-duty and a reserve engineer unit within 24 months would validate the concept and refine tactics, techniques, and procedures.42
Facilities and Policy
The Marine Corps should establish ranges for inertly emplaced drone minefields. Current executive guidance permits experimentation, but accountability and coalition releasability must remain central. Early NATO integration will ease interoperability and strengthen legitimacy.43
Roadmap
Implementation should follow a phased approach. Year 1: demonstrate commercial swarming, Year 2: equip pilot units, Year 3: integrate into exercises, Year 4: establish a program of record. Future systems must incorporate resilient command and control, deception, and reversibility as mandatory features while framing employment as compliant and humanitarian focused.
Conclusion
In the 1950s, basketball slowed until the introduction of the shot clock forced tempo and creativity back into the game. Legacy scatterable mines have created a similar problem in maneuver warfare. They are static, unreliable, and strategically costly—slowing friendly operations, creating enduring hazards, and undermining legitimacy.44 Without reform, the Marine Corps’ countermobility capability risks irrelevance in an era defined by tempo and adaptability.
Drone-delivered minefields are the shot clock for maneuver warfare. They enable Marines to emplace, camouflage, arm, disarm, and redeploy obstacles in minutes. The opening scenario illustrates the point: a Chinese amphibious force was delayed for 36 hours, then destroyed in a withdrawal kill zone. The same logic applies globally: NATO shaping Russian maneuver in Europe, FPVs denying approaches in the Middle East, or drones rapidly seeding choke-points in the Arctic.45
The Marine Corps cannot afford to lag behind adversaries already experimenting with swarms and deception. Maintaining tempo and adaptability will determine whether Marines impose costs or suffer them. Drone-delivered minefields impose disproportionate costs on adversaries at minimal expense, embodying the essence of asymmetric warfare.46 Just as the shot clock revitalized basketball, these systems will revitalize Marine Corps obstacle warfare—ensuring engineers deliver the unfair fight envisioned by Force Design 2030.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Capt Trossen is a prior-enlisted Combat Engineer Officer with over 22 years of experience in the Marine Corps engineer community, serving in both enlisted and officer capacities. He has previously served as a Company Commander in an engineer company within a Marine Wing Support Squadron and as a Company Inspector-Instructor in South Bend, IN. He currently commands Company B, 8th Engineer Support Battalion.
NOTES:
U.S. Government Accountability Office, Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War, GAO-02-1003 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2002).
David Hambling, “Mine Craft: Ukrainian Drones Add a New Dimension to Mine War-fare,” Forbes, April 3, 2025, https://www.forbes. com/sites/davidhambling/2025/04/03/mine-craft-ukrainian-drones-add-a-new-dimension-to-mine-warfare.
Army Applications Laboratory, Engineer Operations: Autonomy Cohorts and Terrain Shaping Experimentation (Austin: May 2025); and Headquarters Marine Corps, MARADMIN 416/25, Guidance for the Fielding of the Neros Archer (Washington, DC: September 2025).
Headquarters Marine Corps, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: 2020).
Gary Sheffield, The First World War in 100 Objects (London: Imperial War Museum, 2017).
Ian Gooderson, A Hard Way to Make a War: British and German Minefields in North Africa, 1941–43 (London: Routledge, 2001).
Government Accountability Office, Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War.
International Committee of the Red Cross, Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices (Amended Protocol II to the CCW) (Geneva: October 1996).
The White House, “Executive Order 14307: Expanding Drone Integration to Increase Efficiency and Productivity,” June 6, 2025; Secretary of Defense, “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance,” (Washington, DC: July 2025); and The White House, “Revocation of National Security Memorandum 17 on Anti-Personnel Landmine Policy,” (Washington, DC: July 2025).
Timothy L. Thomas, “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and the Military,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17, No. 2 (2004).
Staff, “China Celebrates Lunar New Year with 3D Dragon Drone Display,” South China Morning Post, February 2021.
U.S. Army, Final Report–MSPIX 2025: Deep Terrain Shaping and Remote Breaching of Obstacles (Fort Leonard Wood: Army Applications Laboratory, May 2025).
Engineer Operations: Autonomy Cohorts and Terrain Shaping Experimentation.
Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War.
David C. Isby and Charles Kamps, Armies of NATO’s Central Front (London: Jane’s, 1985).
Emma Dodd and Caitlin Welsh, “Demining Ukraine’s Farmland: Progress, Adaptation, and Challenges,” CSIS, December 5, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/demining-ukraines-farmland-progress-adaptation-and-needs.
Headquarters Marine Corps, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: 2020).
Staff, “Operation False Target: How Russia Plotted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine,” Associated Press, November 2024, https://apnews.com/video/ukraine-drones-russia-aerospace-and-defense-industry-war-and-unrest-76742f121c4d-4081a87b504b1a48afc7.
Force Design 2030.
Staff, “Flight Control System,” Verge Aero, n.d., https://verge.aero.
Paul Scharre, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018).
U.S. Army, Final Report–MSPIX 2025: Deep Terrain Shaping and Remote Breaching of Obstacles (Fort Leonard Wood: Army Ap-plications Laboratory, May 2025).
David Hambling, “GPS Just Became Optional for Military Navigation. Quantum Sen-sors Are Why,” Forbes, September 2025, https://www.forbes.com.
U.S. Department of Defense, “DARPA’s Robust Quantum Sensing Program,” Defense. gov, 2025, https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/roqs-robust-quantum-sensors.
Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War.
International Committee of the Red Cross, Anti-Personnel Landmines: Friend or Foe? (Geneva: ICRC, 1996).
Emma Dodd and Caitlin Welsh, “Demining Ukraine’s Farmland: Progress, Adaptation, and Challenges,” CSIS, December 5, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/demining-ukraines-farmland-progress-adaptation-and-needs.
“Operation False Target: How Russia Plot-ted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine.”
U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Task List (MCTL), Engineer Section (Washington, DC: 2023).
Anti-Personnel Landmines: Friend or Foe?
“Mine Craft: Ukrainian Drones Add a New Dimension to Mine Warfare.”
Michael Kofman and Leonid Nersisyan, “The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War: Lessons for Future Conflict,” War on the Rocks, December 2020.
“Operation False Target: How Russia Plotted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine;” and “China Celebrates Lunar New Year with 3D Dragon Drone Display.”
International Committee of the Red Cross, Amended Protocol II to the CCW (Geneva: October 1996).
Headquarters Marine Corps, MARAD-MIN 416/25, Guidance for the Fielding of the Neros Archer (Washington, DC: September 2025).
U.S. Marine Corps, Pioneer Battalion Concept of Employment (Quantico, VA: Capabilities Development Directorate, February 2024).
U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Func-tional Concept: Maritime Terrain Shaping and Area Denial (Quantico, VA: Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration, July 2022).
Final Report–MSPIX 2025: Deep Terrain Shaping and Remote Breaching of Obstacles.
MARADMIN 416/25.
Marine Corps Task List (MCTL), Engineer Section.
U.S. Department of Defense, “Drone Operator Career Field Development,” Defense. gov, 2025.
“Executive Order 14307: Expanding Drone Integration to Increase Efficiency and Productivity”; Secretary of Defense, Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance (Washington, DC: July 2025); and Revocation of National Security Memorandum 17 on Anti-Personnel Landmine Policy.
Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War. Force Design 2030.
“Operation False Target: How Russia Plot-ted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine”; and “China Celebrates Lunar New Year with 3D Dragon Drone Display.”
