Matthew Revels and Eric Uribe
The US Army remains anchored to an era when its technological and qualitative superiority ensured dominance on the battlefield. Yet battlefield losses and grinding attrition in the Russo-Ukrainian War reveal the growing vulnerability of platforms such as the Big Five, which have long defined the Army’s approach to land warfare. The Department of War’s recent drone dominance initiative reflects the growing sense that small drones have reached a critical demonstration point—one capable of transforming the character of land warfare and challenging the conceptual foundations of the Army’s preferred way of fighting. As potential challengers for land dominance integrate small drones into their arsenals, the Army must determine whether to adopt or counter the ongoing innovation to help it maintain its asymmetric advantage in maneuver warfare.
As the world’s leading military power and defense spender, the US armed services are actively working to adopt drone innovations diffusing from Russia and Ukraine, driven by their technophile military culture. But the quest to rapidly adopt small drones and make the attendant organizational changes to optimally employ them ignores the capital required to do so and fails to recognize that Russian and Ukrainian employment methods are misaligned with the US Army’s preferred way of war. Unfortunately, the assumption that the United States must adopt the innovation misses the alternative—one far more aligned with the American way of war—of countering the drone revolution to restore maneuver to the battlefield. Reestablishing the Army’s land dominance and tilting the balance of power in America’s favor will require pursuing counterinnovations in the form of counterdrone integrated air defense systems that restore tactical and operational maneuver. Succeeding on the future battlefield does not necessitate the blind acceptance of new technologies and concepts, but rather a consideration of which innovation response leverages the state’s advantages and mitigates its strategic limitations. Seeking to counter recent drone innovations will provide the US Army with the capabilities to restore its asymmetric advantage on the battlefield—rapid maneuver, sustained by a high operational tempo and massed armored penetration forces.
The Drivers of Diffusion: Assessing the Impact of Critical Task Focus on Organizational Capital
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