A 2026 report by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies contended the U.S. Air Force needs 200 B-21s and 300 F-47s “to deny enemy sanctuaries,” which contrasts with the current plan of buying 100 B-21s and 185 F-47s.[1] The Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command recently told Congress, “I would favor 200 B-21 bombers… Not just for the nuclear deterrence mission, but for penetrating strike capabilities,” and the Secretary of War similarly stated, “We believe we’ll require a lot more, over 100, in the future.”[2] This doctrinaire focus on quantities of exquisite stealth platforms (and their missions) frames American military strategy as an inventory issue, not emerging battlefield realities.
But this is the wrong argument, because it reflects a deeper strategic malaise. M.L.R. Smith has warned of this type of “bad strategy” formulation due to a fixation on platforms and technology, which masquerades as actual strategy.[3] Similarly, Lawrence Freedman has noted how many policymakers are seduced by visions of clean, technological revolutions while ignoring the messy, enduring nature of war itself.[4]
America’s fleet of stealth platforms is facing a crisis of relevance. The West is hurtling towards a ‘stealth cliff’ by pouring resources into platforms like the F-35. Planned for service until 2070, this aircraft will become detectable and obsolete decades sooner. This dismantles the foundation of modern American power. For decades, power projection was an unfair fight, built on stealth. Enabling America’s command of the commons, it allowed U.S. forces to kill adversaries who could not effectively shoot back.[5]
That era is ending.
Advances in sensing, particularly in quantum technologies and networked sensors, are challenging assumptions that sustained the radar age.[6] An F-35 or B-2 may have a radar cross-section smaller than an insect, but its atoms cannot ‘hide’ from an optical sensor, quantum measurement device, or a satellite.[7] Similarly, China claims to have developed quantum sensors capable of detecting the most silent American submarines.[8] The reality is that detection is becoming more persistent, distributed, and less dependent on traditional radar cross-section tools. Stealth’s technological overmatch is shrinking, a vulnerability made obvious by Iran damaging an F-35 in 2026 with a simple, optically-guided munition immune to electronic countermeasures.[9] This “358” loitering missile also managed to shoot down an F-15E and 24 MQ-9s.[10]
This shift marks the beginning of a post-stealth era defined by pervasive exposure. As detection capabilities converge, survivability becomes temporary and precision, while lethal, is no longer rare. Effective warfighting now depends less on avoiding detection and more on the ability to absorb losses, regenerate combat power, and sustain a high operational tempo, especially as American-made precision weapons are jammed in the Russo-Ukraine War.[11]
In this new reality, building more exquisite platforms is not a strategy; it is a blind bet that the conditions which made them dominant will persist. They will not. The U.S. military and its coalition saw how quickly years of stockpiled high-end munitions were expended in the 2026 Iran War, a stockpile that will now take years to replace.[12]
This argument builds on, but moves beyond, longstanding debates over the “high-low mix” in force design. These usually focused on procurement tradeoffs, such as how to balance smaller numbers of exquisite platforms with larger quantities of cheaper systems.[13] The emerging reality is more demanding than just another purchasing strategy. The United States and its allies face a grim operational condition: a form of composite warfare in which expensive and attritable systems, human operators and machine-enabled scale, are forced into continuous interaction under conditions of persistent detection and attrition.
Success in future warfare depends on getting the Dirty Mix right: a combination of expensive and cheap systems, manned and unmanned forces, and high-end capabilities integrated with masses of attritable platforms across all domains. This concept embraces a messier, more brutal reality of combat where the future battlefield will be a mixture of oil and blood, where effective warfighting depends on a contextually calibrated combination of machines and humans. An over-reliance on either pure automation and high-tech systems or too much manpower and low-tech capabilities is a recipe for catastrophe. The “dirty mix” becomes the only logical force design for survival in the age of persistent detection and attrition.
This article makes the case for the “dirty mix” in four parts. First, it diagnoses the coming post-stealth era of pervasive exposure and attrition. Second, it demonstrates why the “dirty mix” is the necessary operational concept for survival in this new reality. Third, it outlines the industrial and organizational reforms needed to build a force with “dirty endurance.” Finally, it provides a practical framework for planners to design survivable yet lethal warfighting units.
The Post-Stealth Condition: Pervasive Exposure and Attrition
For decades, decisive military advantages depended on managing what sensors saw. Radar defined that bargain, and stealth was its masterstroke. By minimizing radar cross-sections, electromagnetic emissions and other signatures, the United States built a generation of platforms designed to operate in enemy airspace or waters with little to no risk. That asymmetry advantage is now eroding as layered sensing, from quantum devices to networks of radars and satellites, is creating a persistent, cross-domain sensing web. Such systems can infer platform presence from a variety of signatures, rendering the pursuit of ever smaller radar cross-sections and similar ‘silent’ tech with diminishing returns. It means the end of uncontested access and the return of attrition.
The recent conflicts in the Red Sea, Iran, and Ukraine reveal two facets. First, defense is becoming economically ruinous. In the Red Sea, U.S. Navy destroyers expend $2 million interceptor missiles to destroy Houthi drones worth only a few thousand dollars.[14] Second, offense has been commoditized and is overwhelming. The 2026 Iran War proved that even robust air defenses can be saturated by missile and drone swarms, ensuring that ‘leakers’ will always get through, a modern echo of the classic axiom, “the bomber will always get through.”[15] This new offensive power is now being perfected in Ukraine, where agile teams use cheap FPV and ground drones to hunt tanks and seize Russian-held positions.[16] This dynamic, where defense is ruinously expensive while offense is cheaply overwhelming, is not new. It is a modern echo of the strategic dilemma recognized by early airpower theorists like Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, who concluded in World War One that a defensive posture against an overwhelming offense was a path to industrial exhaustion. The result today, as it was then, is a parity of shared vulnerability, where traditional military capability becomes a secondary factor.[17]
This shift marks a fundamental challenge to the premises of the post-Cold War Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). The RMA premise is that information technology, combined with stealth and precision strike, would deliver rapid, low-cost victories.[18] RMA assumptions are collapsing as pervasive surveillance, drones, and attrition become a defining feature of Russo-Ukraine War.[19] This doctrinal collapse is on par with the 1973 Yom Kippur War, where the myth of the invincible tank was shattered by widely available, cheap anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). In days, hundreds of tanks were destroyed, proving that a dominant platform could be rendered a high-risk liability by a cheap, distributed threat.[20] Today, the proliferation of cheap sensors and expendable drones is doing to stealth platforms what the ATGM did to the tank.
The “Dirty Mix”: A Force Designed for Exposure
If the post-stealth era makes attrition a battlefield reality, then the “dirty mix” is meant for survival. It means distributing risk by rejecting the legacy ‘silver bullet’ model of believing that a single, perfect weapon system can substitute for sound strategy.[21] This model becomes fatally brittle when pervasive ISR becomes normalized.[22] Unlike traditional “high-low mix” thinking, which treated systems as substitutable procurement trade-offs, the post-stealth environment forces their integration.[23] The mix is not a design preference, because the changing character of warfighting requires a ‘dirty adaptation’.
This ‘dirty’ hybrid architecture functions across three integrated layers. The exquisite layer of stealth bombers and sixth-generation aircraft are enablers. The attritable layer, is a vast ecosystem of low-cost drones, missiles, and artillery designed to trade survivability for scale, imposing costs through saturation.[24] Finally, the human layer provides adaptation under uncertainty. In a contested environment of jamming and cyber-attacks, human operators are harder to ‘trick’ and can improvise and make complex decisions in a way that AI, algorithms, and machine learning cannot.
However, Ukraine’s frontlines reveal a growing “cyberpunk war”: a gritty fusion of advanced technology and brutal, muddy warfare, where soldiers manage drone swarms from trenches using iPads.[25] In this environment, the old problem was keeping humans in the loop; the new problem is managing the AI-enabled scale and its immense cognitive strain. Such systems identify thousands of targets, far exceeding what human operators can meaningfully process, pushing them toward supervised autonomy. It means human oversight risks becoming purely procedural, with operators reduced to “rubber-stamping” machine recommendations they cannot fully evaluate.[26] The result is not a clean handoff to autonomy. This creates a contested middle ground where the chokepoint of future warfare shifts from technology to the capacity of the human mind to decide fast enough to matter.
The effectiveness of this force depends on seamlessly integrating these layers to wage a dirtier form of a systems-of-systems warfare. For instance, this requires a shift in command and control, from directing discrete operations to managing flows of combat mass, maneuver, and dispersion over time.[27] It presents dilemmas to an adversary and shatters their entire decision-making cycle. By forcing them to choose between being saturated by a low-cost swarm or being struck by a high-end enabler, the “dirty mix” paralyzes their ability to act, unless of course the enemy has mastered a “dirty defense” if you will. Regardless, this is the crucial transition from platform-centric thinking to a decision-centric approach, where tactical success is less about a single asset surviving, and is more about the resilience and speed of the overall combat network.
Operationalizing the “dirty mix” means creating dilemmas for an adversary across every domain. In the air, this means a sixth-generation fighter acts as a command node, directing EMP-hardened ‘low-tech’ aircraft like A-10s and A-29s alongside swarms of cheap plastic and wooden drones whose low-metallic and thermal signatures evade and overwhelm enemy sensors and air defenses. At sea, a submarine coordinates a distributed network of autonomous, semi-submersible vessels; some lay mines, others provide ISR, while still others act as torpedo pods or electronic warfare decoys to hunt and ambush enemy fleets. On the ground, small infantry teams become nodes in a larger kill web; they 3D-print FPV drones for precision strikes, employ quadcopters for ISR and strikes, and direct swarms of armed ground robots to breach obstacles and attack fortified positions.[28] And in space, instead of relying on a few exquisite, high-orbit satellites vulnerable to Russian nuclear EMP or Chinese high-power microwave weapons, the “dirty mix” ensures resilience by augmenting them with a layered network of thousands of cheap, disposable satellites and high-altitude balloons that saturate the ‘space littoral.’[29] This creates a constellation where some assets provide ISR, others act as expendable ‘bodyguards’ for defensive maneuvering, and still others are simple ‘kamikaze’ interceptors for offensive counter-space, ensuring the network can absorb losses, hold enemy assets at risk, and win the war of attrition in orbit.
Rebuilding the Arsenal for “Dirty Endurance”
An underappreciated danger of the post-stealth era is the systemic risk of fielding weapon systems that are obsolete before they are even operational. Long acquisition timelines, as exemplified by the F-35 program, are dangerously incompatible with the accelerating technological pace of sensing and AI.[30] This mismatch creates a strategic vacuum when a capability that was supposed to be decisive arrives on the battlefield already countered or irrelevant. Any force design conversation that ignores this reality is not strategy; it is an expensive act of institutional optimism.
The war in Ukraine has served as a brutal corrective to what David Betz and M.L.R. Smith call “Western strategic delusions.”[31] The assumption that ‘smart weapons’ could bypass industrial realities has been shattered by consumption rates that are difficult for NATO planners to comprehend. Russia has fired as many as 60,000 artillery shells in a single day, a rate that dwarfs the United States’ entire monthly production of 56,000 shells as of February 2026.[32] This new reality is defined by ruinous cost-exchanges. A $2,000 drone that forces the expenditure of a $1 million interceptor is more than a tactical nuisance; it is a mechanism for waging economic and industrial warfare. The U.S. military and its coalition in the Iran War have discovered why their magazine bins are empty. Air defense doctrines led to 12 interceptor missiles being expended against Iranian missiles – and still missing – and shooting 8 Patriot missiles against one Iranian Shahad drone.[33] This validates calls for a renewed focus on tactics like dispersion, hardening, camouflage, directed energy weapons (e.g., lasers and microwaves), and even nets, to complement expensive defenses.[34]
To counter this, recent debates over “affordable mass” risk oversimplifying the problem by equating it with low unit cost. The critical variable is more than price; it is a function of industrial throughput over time, measured by rates of consumption, production, and replacement under wartime conditions.[35] A force built solely around a naïve conception of mass risks a different kind of fragility: a quantity that looks impressive on paper, but in reality it is paper thin with no endurance.
Sustaining a “dirty mix” force design, therefore, requires a two-track industrial model. The first, a frontier track, must keep developing exquisite, high-end systems that provide a warfighting edge, but these platforms must be employed with precision. The second, an industrial mass track, must be engineered to rapidly produce the attritable systems (e.g., drones, robots, sensors, munitions, etc.) at a scale that can cheaply absorb combat losses. This track cannot be judged by peacetime efficiency; its design principles must be short production cycles, modularity, and redundant supply chains, all geared towards wartime surge capacity.
Crucially, this ‘frontier track’ cannot repeat the F-35 template of designing a single exquisite platform to last for 50 years. Instead, as proponents of the “Digital Century Series” argue, the frontier track must be retooled for rapid, iterative development, where new fighter, bomber, tank, munitions, and various weapon system variants are designed and fielded every few years. This approach, which mirrors how the U.S. rapidly evolved various aircraft variants throughout World War Two, trades large-scale monolithic production for constant relevance, ensuring that a portion of the force is always on the cutting edge of the real (not projected) threat environment.[36]
This same logic of rapid iteration applies with even greater intensity to the ‘industrial mass’ track to the “cyberpunk” warfighting reality. For Russia and Ukraine, there is a relentless cat-and-mouse game of electronic warfare and countermeasures, where a drone variant that is dominant one week is rendered useless the next by an enemy’s adaptation.[37] To put all production eggs in one basket to achieve a “perfect” drone design is to guarantee it becomes a golden paperweight. As AI accelerates OODA loop learning and implementation on the battlefield, survival depends on constantly fielding new, adapted, and unexpected systems, ensuring that your own rate of innovation is always faster than the enemy’s ability to counter it.[38]
This two-track model cannot function without a disciplined combination of demand and strategy. Industry will not build surge capacity it is not paid to; therefore, the sustained procurement of attritable systems must become a peacetime priority. Military strategy must also align with production reality: when exquisite platforms are treated as consumables, the industrial base cannot keep pace, meaning scarce capabilities must be reserved only for decisive missions.
Industrial realignment also needs a ‘dirtier’ force design for its personnel. The military needs operators who can function in degraded environments, remote crews to manage distributed systems, and technicians who can adapt evolving capabilities on the fly. Ultimately, this represents a fundamental shift in the philosophy of the ossified defense establishment, moving away from a focus on efficiency toward a new emphasis on endurance. A force that is efficient in peacetime but brittle in war is nothing more than an expensive liability.
Conclusion: A “Dirty” Framework for Survival
Debating stealth platform numbers is institutional denial. It reflects a nostalgic belief by policymakers chasing ‘silver bullets’, while simultaneously framing hypersonic systems as the next decisive, war-winning capability, repeating the very same logic that created the current stealth cliff. This is a dangerous delusion. Russia has hyped its Kinzhal hypersonic missile as a “super weapon,” and yet Ukraine has been able to jam and shoot them down.[39]
In the post-stealth era, pervasive exposure and detection becomes the new norm. This requires a focus on resilience, regeneration, and an acceptance of attrition as an operating principle. The two guiding realities of this era are simple: mass that cannot be sustained is an illusion, and precision that cannot be replaced is a liability. Stealth is a capability, but survival is the new strategy.
Planners and strategists must move beyond optimized high-low mixes for peacetime efficiency. There is no perfect weapon system. Instead, a composite ‘dirty’ force must endure sustained combat. The military’s own DOTMLPF-P framework is the ideal tool for this task, as it forces a holistic, institution-wide perspective to assessing needed updates and reforms.[40] To apply this framework, Table 1 below translates the “dirty mix” logic into a practical decision tool that helps planners confront the brutal tradeoffs imposed by the new character of war.
| DOTMLPF-P Elements | “Dirty Mix” Requirement | New Metric for Success | Risk if Ignored |
| Doctrine | Develop principles centered on systems warfare that prioritizes the coordinated application of mass, maneuver, and dispersion.The goal is to shatter the enemy’s OODA loop through the orchestrated application of mass, maneuver, and dispersion. | The ability to sustain favorable loss-exchange ratios over a prolonged military operation, measuring success by the rate of enemy system degradation, not just physical destruction. | Over-investment in high-value, low-density assets creates critical vulnerabilities. |
| Organization | Restructure large, hierarchical formations into smaller, disaggregated, and more autonomous combat teams capable of rapid manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) to create unpredictable, multi-axis threats. | The speed and fluidity with which forces can disaggregate for survivability and then reconsolidate to generate decisive mass, all while under enemy surveillance and fire. | Reliance on rigid command structures and functionally-aligned units, which are too slow to react, becoming easily paralyzed by the speed and complexity of a distributed battlespace. |
| Training | Update standards for operations in a communications-degraded or -denied environment. Ensure operators can execute mission command with degraded network access and excessive cognitive load. | The quality and speed of human decision-making when faced with saturated ISR data, conflicting AI recommendations, and persistent electronic warfare. | The force’s technological overmatch paradoxically becomes a critical vulnerability. |
| Materiel | Implement a two-track acquisition model that mandates modular, open-architecture designs; one track for rapid, iterative development (Frontier), and one for at-scale production of attritables (Mass). | The rate of regeneration of the force’s combat power (e.g., munitions expended vs. replaced per week), measuring the industrial base as a weapon system in its own right. | A hollow force with insufficient mass and/or lacks high-end enabling capabilities. |
| Leadership & Education | Reform Professional Military Education (PME) across all levels to prioritize attrition calculus, industrial reality, and risk distribution. | Senior leaders making strategically sound decisions based on industrial capacity and attritional exchanges. | Senior leader decision-making remains optimized for short, technology-driven conflicts, leading to strategic surprise. |
| Personnel | Establish new career paths for remote/robotic systems operators and forward-deployed expeditionary maintenance teams. | The speed and institutional agility with which new operational skills (e.g., remote systems operation, expeditionary maintenance) are developed and fielded across the force. | Lack of specialized talent to operate, maintain, adapt, and execute the “Dirty Mix.” |
| Facilities | Harden and diversify the industrial base by building geographically dispersed, redundant, and allied production lines, especially for the ‘industrial mass’ track. | The resilience of the production ecosystem, measured by its ability to continue and surge output even after suffering direct kinetic or cyber attacks. | A brittle and hyper-concentrated industrial base that has various material chokepoints that can become a point of failure, especially if it can degraded by enemy actions and/or weak supply chain security. |
| Policy | Reform Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) policies to prioritize speed and iteration. Deepen industrial co-production and interoperability with allies. | The speed and scale at which the entire allied network can co-produce, share, and sustain combat power, moving beyond a national industrial base to a global network. | Archaic acquisition policies and a lack of allied integration create an industrially brittle coalition. |
Table 1: Applying DOTMLPF-P to the “Dirty Mix”
Sole property of the author
Applying this framework inevitably leads to uncomfortable choices. It compels a shift away from optimizing individual platforms and toward designing a force for systemic resilience. The result will be a force that looks ‘dirty’ on paper. Perfection of platforms will no longer be the metric; success will be measured by its calibrated mix of oil and blood, making it far more survivable and lethal in practice.
This “dirty mix” framework should be viewed as an opening shot for an urgently needed public debate. Avoiding this debate risks repeating the same blunders of the “Cult of the Offensive” before World War One, where generals wedded to theories of the offensive spirit sent infantry charging against machine guns.[41] Planning for large-scale armored assaults today without accounting for the new reality of pervasive sensors and swarming FPV drones is the modern equivalent of ordering a bayonet charge across no-man’s-land. Then, as now, military leaders are clinging to a cherished theory of victory while ignoring a new technological reality; to continue this institutional inertia by clinging to the primacy of stealth and other advanced technology is madness. Hard questions must now be asked: What are the right force mixes for the Pacific versus Europe? How do escalation scenarios shift the mix? How do allied industrial capacities change the equation? Answering them is the only way to ensure the West avoids learning the new realities of war the hard way.
[1] Mark A. Gunzinger and Heather R. Penney, “Strategic Attack: Maintaining the Air Force’s Capacity to Deny Enemy Sanctuaries,” Mitchell Institute Policy Paper 64 (February 2026): 1-26, https://www.mitchellaerospacepower.org/app/uploads/2026/02/Strategic_Attack_Denying_Sanctuary_Policy_Paper_64.pdf.
[2] Ryan Finnerty, “US Pacific commander supports increasing B-21 acquisition to 200 aircraft,” Flight Global, 1 May 2026, https://www.flightglobal.com/archive/2026/05/us-pacific-commander-supports-increasing-b-21-acquisition-to-200-aircraft/.
[3] M.L.R. Smith, “The Roots of Bad Strategy,” Military Strategy Magazine 9, no. 1 (summer 2023): 10-18
[4] Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History (New York: Public Affairs, 2017).
[5] Barry R. Posen, “Command of the commons: The military foundation of US hegemony,” International Security 28, no. 1 (2003): 5-46.
[6] Jahara Matisek, Katrina Scweiker, and Morgan Bazilian, “Quantum Sensing and the Future of Warfare: Five Essential Reforms to Stay Competitive,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, 9 October 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/quantum-sensing-and-future-warfare-five-essential-reforms-stay-competitive.
[7] Sujita Sinha, “China claims new space radar can detect US stealth jets even through clouds,” Interesting Engineering, 17 October 2025, https://interestingengineering.com/military/chinas-space-radar-may-track-f-22s.
[8] Christian Orr, “China is now Trying to use Fancy Quantum Sensors to Unstealth U.S. Navy Nuclear Attack and Missile Submarines,” National Security Journal, 2 May 2026, https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/china-is-now-trying-to-use-fancy-quantum-sensors-to-unstealth-u-s-navy-nuclear-attack-and-missile-submarines/.
[9] Tarique Anwar, “How did Iran nearly take down an ‘untouchable’ F-35? The night a tiny missile exposed hidden weakness of US stealth icon,” Bureau, 4 April 2026, https://zeenews.india.com/world/how-did-iran-nearly-take-down-an-untouchable-f-35-the-night-a-tiny-missile-exposed-hidden-weakness-of-us-stealth-icon-3033595.html.
[10] “U.S. Loses Over $3 Billion Worth of MQ-9 Drones During Strikes on Iran,” Military Watch Magazine, 10 April 2026, https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/us-loses-over-3-billion-mq9-strikes-iran-24
[11] Clara Le Gargasson and James Black, “Electromagnetic Warfare: NATO's Blind Spot Could Decide the Next Conflict,” RAND, 24 November 2025, https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/11/electromagnetic-warfare-natos-blind-spot-could-decide.html.
[12] Macdonald Amoah, Morgan D. Bazilian and Jahara Matisek, “Over 11,000 munitions in 16 Days of the Iran War: ‘Command of the Reload’ Governs Endurance,” RUSI, 24 March 2026, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/over-11000-munitions-16-days-iran-war-command-reload-governs-endurance; Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, “Last Rounds? Status of Key Munitions at the Iran War Ceasefire,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, 21 April 2026, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2026-04/260424_Cancian_Park_Last_Rounds.pdf?VersionId=JbVbjtv2ywN4avgN_9KSGw.kbdz8Ettl.
[13] Connor Keating, “Mass drones to save missiles: A High-Low Mix for the Pacific,” CIMSEC, 6 March 2026, https://cimsec.org/mass-drones-to-save-missiles-a-high-low-mix-for-the-pacific/; Scott Bledsoe and Mike Benitez, “Rethinking the High-Low Mix, Part II: Complexity’s Death Spiral,” War on the Rocks, 21 March 2017, https://warontherocks.com/rethinking-the-high-low-mix-part-ii-complexitys-death-spiral/; Laura Heckmann, “Military Searching for Right ‘High-Low’ Munitions Mix,” National Defense Magazine, 24 March 2026, https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2026/3/24/military-searching-for-right-balance-for-low-cost-munitions.
[14] Alison Bath, “Navy fired more than 200 missiles to fight off Red Sea shipping attacks, admiral says,” Stars and Stripes, 16 January 2025, https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2025-01-16/houthis-navy-red-sea-missiles-drones-16500246.html
[15] British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said this phrase in 1932 to warn the public about airpower and the difficulty in trying to use air defenses to prevent a bomber from getting through to wreck economic and industrial damage. Antonio Calcara, Andrea Gilli, Mauro Gilli, and Ivan Zaccagnini, “Will the drone always get through? Offensive myths and defensive realities,” Security Studies 31, no. 5 (2022): 791-825.
[16] Ivana Kottasová,Daria Tarasova-Markina, and Victoria Butenko, “‘Robots don’t bleed’: Ukraine sends machines into the battlefield in place of human soldiers,” CNN, 19 April 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/20/europe/robots-ukraine-battlefield-drones-intl-cmd.
[17] Michael Molkentin, The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War, vol. 1, Australia and the War in the Air (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
[18] Jeffrey Collins and Andrew Futter, Reassessing the Revolution in Military Affairs: Transformation, Evolution, and Lessons Learnt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US and Israel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
[19] James J. Wirtz, “Colin Gray, the RMA, and the Rise of Drone Warfare,” Military Strategy Magazine 10, no. 3 (Fall 2025): 34-39.
[20] David Rodman, “Eagle's-eye View: An American Assessment of the 1973 Yom Kippur War,” Intelligence and National Security 31, no. 4 (2016): 490-508.
[21] Glenn E. Bugos, “Chasing the Silver Bullet: US Air Force Weapons Development from Vietnam to Desert Storm,” Technology and Culture 45, no. 3 (2004): 630-631.
[22] Benjamin Buchholz, “Dispersion as Uncertainty: Rethinking Survivability in the Era of ISR-Enabled Targeting,” Military Review (Online Exclusive), December 2025, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/Online-Exclusive/2025/Dispersion-as-Uncertainty/Dispersion-as-Uncertainty-ua.pdf.
[23] Brendan Flynn, “The coming high-tech Sino-American War at Sea? Naval Guns, Technology hybridity and the "Shock of the Old",” Defence Studies 21, no. 3 (2021): 312-333; David Kirkpatrick, “Trends in the Costs of Weapon Systems and the Consequences,” Defence and Peace Economics 15, no. 3 (2004): 259-273.
[24] Vitaliy Goncharuk, “Cheap Missiles, Not Drones, Will Win the Next Air War,” War on the Rocks, 4 May 2026, https://warontherocks.com/cogs-of-war/cheap-missiles-not-drones-will-win-the-next-air-war/.
[25] Jahara Matisek, Will Reno, and Anthony Tingle, “Weathering the Storm: Western Security Assistance on the Defensive in Ukraine,” RUSI, 23 February 2024, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/weathering-storm-western-security-assistance-defensive-ukraine.
[26] Candice Bryant and John Pennell, “Human vs. Machine: Operational Realities from Ukraine’s Frontline,” The Cipher Brief, 1 May 2026, https://www.thecipherbrief.com/human-vs-machine-operational-realities-from-ukraines-frontline.
[27] Robert O. Work, “A Joint Warfighting Concept for Systems Warfare,” Center for a New American Security, 17 December 2020, https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/a-joint-warfighting-concept-for-systems-warfare.
[28] Vlad Sutea, “Fiber-optic drones have emerged as critical kit for both Russia and Ukraine,” The Atlantic Council, 24 February 2026, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/fiber-optics-drones-have-emerged-as-critical-kit-for-both-russia-and-ukraine/.
[29] The ‘space littoral’ is the area between 18.2 km up to 450 km above Earth. An article on this idea is forthcoming in Spacepower Magazine in July 2026.
[30] The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program began in November 1996. Boeing and Lockheed Martin eventually fielded their variants by 2001, with Lockheed’s X-35 selected. The first flight of the F-35 was in 2006 with operational capabilities first achieved by the U.S. Marine Corps in 2015, Air Force in 2016, and Navy in 2019. See: Jennifer DiMascio, “F-35 Lightning II: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, 11 December 2024, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R48304/R48304.4.pdf.
[31] David Betz and M.L.R. Smith, “Smart Weapons, Dumb Assumptions: Western Strategic Delusions Meet Industrial Reality in Ukraine,” Military Strategy Magazine (Exclusive Article), 26 June 2025, https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/exclusives/smart-weapons-dumb-assumptions-western-strategic-delusions-meet-industrial-reality-in-ukraine/.
[32] “Russia fires up to 70,000 artillery shells daily, Ukrainian source says,” The New Voice of Ukraine, 26 April 2024, https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia-fires-up-to-70-000-artillery-shells-daily-ukrainian-source-says-50413712.html; Carley Welch, “Army official ‘not happy’ as Mesquite facility’s 155mm production lags,” Breaking Defense, 25 February 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/02/army-official-not-happy-with-gds-handling-of-155mm-contract-as-production-lags/.
[33] “Israel’s Air Defence Questioned: 12 Interceptors Fail Against Iranian Missile | NewsX,” YouTube, 3 April 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3ywOrSshT4; Ivan Khomenko, “"Eight Missile for One Drone?" Ukrainian Instructors Shocked by US Drone Defense Tactics,” UNITED24 Media, 20 March 2026, https://united24media.com/latest-news/eight-missile-for-one-drone-ukrainian-instructors-shocked-by-us-drone-defense-tactics-17085.
[34] William Mayne, “Missiles, Guns, Lasers . . . and Nets: The Case for Passive Drone Defenses,” Modern War Institute, 29 April 2026, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/missiles-guns-lasers-and-nets-the-case-for-passive-drone-defenses/.
[35] Mike Benitez, “From Slogan to Standard: How the Pentagon Should Define Affordable Mass,” War on the Rocks, 27 April 2026, https://warontherocks.com/cogs-of-war/from-slogan-to-standard-how-the-pentagon-should-define-affordable-mass/.
[36] Ben McNally, “It’s Time to Build the Digital Century Series,” War on the Rocks, 5 March 2025, https://warontherocks.com/its-time-to-build-the-digital-century-series/.
[37] Oleksandra Molloy, “Drone Warfare in Ukraine: From Myths to Operational Reality – Part 1,” Australian Army Research Centre, 11 March 2026, https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/land-power-forum/drone-warfare-ukraine-myths-operational-reality-part-1; Oleksandra Molloy, “Drone Warfare in Ukraine: From Myths to Operational Reality – Part 2,” Australian Army Research Centre, 11 March 2026, https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/land-power-forum/drone-warfare-ukraine-myths-operational-reality-part-2.
[38] Michael Kofman and Ryan Evans, “Update from the Battlefield: Drones, Distance, and Diminishing Returns for Russia,” War on the Rocks, 9 April 2026, https://warontherocks.com/update-from-the-battlefield-drones-distance-and-diminishing-returns-for-russia/; Michael Raska, “Will AI-Driven "Super-OODA Loops" Revolutionise Military Strategy and Operations?” S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 20 January 2025, https://rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/CO25011.pdf.
[39] Cameron L. Tracy, “Technological Surprise and Normalization Through Use: The Tactical and Discursive Effects of New Precision-Strike Weapons in the Russo-Ukrainian War,” Texas National Security Review 9, no. 2 (Spring 2026): 84-101. doi: 10.1353/tns.00035; Kollen Post, “As Patriots run low, Ukraine may have invented a new way to down Russia’s 'unstoppable' Kinzhal missiles,” Kyiv Independent, 29 April 2026, https://kyivindependent.com/patriots-or-no-patriots-ukraine-may-have-solved-the-problem-of-russias-kinzhal-missiles/.
[40] For an example of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, Facilities and Policy (DOTMLPF-P) being applied, see: Hassan M. Kamara, “Tenets of Army Modernization,” Association of the United States Army, 24 February 2023, https://www.ausa.org/publications/tenets-army-modernization.
[41] Stephen Van Evera, “The cult of the offensive and the origins of the First World War,” International security 9, no. 1 (1984): 58-107.