DefenseScoop | Rear Adm. (Ret.) Lorin Selby
The United States military's operational plans (OPLANs, CONPLANs) are largely obsolete, built on assumptions from five to ten years ago that fail to account for the rapid evolution of warfare driven by autonomous systems and artificial intelligence. Ukraine's conflict demonstrated compressed kill chains, the vulnerability of million-dollar platforms to cheap FPV drones, and the critical role of electronic warfare, rendering fixed assets and predictable basing liabilities. Companies like Anduril, Palantir, and Shield AI are now providing AI-enabled logistics, autonomous ISR, and software-defined weapons that reshape battlefields faster than current plans can adapt. The author, a former Chief of Naval Research, argues that institutional resistance, slow acquisition timelines, and risk aversion prevent the necessary transformation. Meaningful change requires rewriting plans from first principles, shifting significant funding from legacy programs to autonomous capabilities, updating doctrine (e.g., Air Force's Agile Combat Employment, Army's excavation methods), and empowering new leadership trained in the realities of modern, distributed warfare. The institution must adapt or face obsolescence in future conflicts.
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