Military Aviation Operations

FY2026 Signals Joint Defense Tech The Pentagon isn’t looking for more tech. It’s looking for tech that fits the fight. What wins? interoperable, multi-domain, coalition-ready tech that aligns with how the U.S. and its allies will fight. Hear me out… 1. Integration Is the Mission PE 0604826J is the COG for CJADC2. It funds interoperability pilots with NATO, secure data sharing across services, and cross-domain C2 experiments like Bold Quest. Your tech needs to plug into this joint ecosystem. 2. Multi-Domain C2 Is Non-Negotiable The budget holds firm on digital datalinks, secure comms, and allied data exchange. Your tech must talk across domains and allies, don’t expect traction. 3. Rapid Prototyping Isn’t Dead—It’s Evolving RDER may be gone, but its intent lives on. The budget still backs prototypes that can shape joint force design. Demo utility in a joint context and watch your TRL skyrocket. 4. Congress ‘All In on Joint Tech’ is a buying signal. • $400M → Joint Fires Network • $400M → Joint battle management tools • $1B → Accelerated tech fielding • $2B → DIU scaling commercial tech 5. AI/ML, Autonomy, C5ISR—Joint prioritization isn’t just lip service. Budget lines explicitly call out: • Multi-service unmanned systems • Maritime robotics • Coalition-ready EW and ISR

The Strategic Defence Review has been published. The space domain is recognised as “a critical national infrastructure sector, a site of growing competition, and a domain that is central to warfighting.” Some key space recommendations: 🛰️ MOD should invest in the resilience of military space systems, with a focus on space control, decision advantage, and capabilities that support ‘Understand’ and ‘Strike’ functions. 🛰️ Space should be a priority technology portfolio for the new National Armaments Director, creating closer links across the military, civil, and industrial space complex. 🛰️ A reinvigorated Cabinet sub-Committee - or equivalent ministerial group - should set the UK’s strategic approach to space to maximise policy, operational, and capability synergies between the UK civil space sector and military needs. 🛰️ MoD should periodically review the SKYNET 6A and SKYNET 6EC satellite communications programmes to ensure this capability will be resilient and operationally relevant upon entry into service. 🛰️ MoD should seek partners to develop a next-generation, overhead, persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability to support Integrated Air and Missile Defence in the Euro-Atlantic 🛰️ Defence and DSIT should work together to ensure Defence requirements are reflected in cross-government efforts to deliver resilient space-based PNT systems Also, well done to the UK Space Agency's Anu Ojha and MDA Space's Anita Bernie who contributed their space expertise to the Review and Challenge phase of the Strategic Defence Review. https://lnkd.in/e3_6vsYp

C2 Miniseries – Part 11: Training for Degraded Truth There is a dangerous assumption still embedded in too many command structures, procurement programmes, and training environments: that systems will work as designed, communications will hold, and information will remain reliable. Ukraine has shattered that assumption completely. Modern conflict is not fought in clarity. It is fought in denial, deception, and disruption. GPS lies. Communications disappear. Data is poisoned. Sensors mislead. The adversary is not only attacking your forces, but your perception, your decision-making, your confidence in what is real. This changes fundamentally what commanders must train for. Not perfect visibility but degraded truth. Not constant connectivity but operational isolation. Not system reliability but system survivability. Because decision advantage no longer belongs to the side with the most technology. It belongs to the side that continues operating when technology degrades, fails, or deceives. This is not theoretical. Across Ukraine, electronic warfare, cyber intrusion, spoofing, spectrum denial are daily realities. Systems that perform flawlessly in laboratories fail quickly in contested environments. Solutions that look impressive in slides often collapse under pressure. Survivability, not sophistication, has become the defining criterion. This forces uncomfortable but necessary questions at every level: Are our commanders trained to operate when communications disappear? Are our systems survivable in contested spectrum environments? Are we building muscle memory for degraded operations or dependence on fragile connectivity? Are we integrating capabilities into a modular backbone or accumulating isolated technological liabilities? Are we asking innovators and industry the hard questions about survivability, integration, sustainment, operational reality? Training must change. Doctrine must change. Command assumptions must change. This is not about rejecting innovation but grounding innovation in survivability. It requires rethinking from the bottom up from platoon-level decision authority to strategic command architecture, embedding degraded operations into muscle memory, not treating them as edge cases and commanders to demand answers beyond buzzwords, beyond slides, beyond promises. Because in modern conflict, survivability is not guaranteed by technology. It is built through architecture, delegation, training, the ability to continue operating when certainty collapses. This article unpacks parts of the uncomfortable realities of degraded truth, why training for survivability not perfection has become one of the defining command responsibilities of our time. #C2 #MilitaryLeadership #DefenceInnovation #EW #HybridWarfare #ModernWarfare #MissionCommand #DecisionAdvantage #MilitaryTraining #SituationalAwareness #DigitalBackbone #DefenceTransformation #OperationalReadiness #NATO #EuropeanDefence #Resilience #Survivability #Doctrine

OODA Is Dead. Long Live UDA. When Charles Darwin delayed publishing On the Origin of Species, it wasn’t because he doubted his science. He hesitated because he understood the magnitude of what he was about to overturn. I have felt something similar for more than a year. As a military officer, I was educated in the gospel of John Boyd’s OODA loop — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — the elegant model that explained why adaptability wins. Like many of my peers, I built strategies, training, and doctrine on that foundation. OODA was truth. But over the past decade, our battlespace has changed faster than our doctrine. Information no longer flows in neat sequences. Machines decide, sensors reason, and the human act of orientation—once our advantage—has become our bottleneck. In an era of AI, edge fusion, and distributed command, OODA no longer scales. The Heresy My forthcoming paper, “OODA Is Dead, Long Live UDA: The Necessity of a Decision-Driven Command Topology in the Algorithmic Age,” argues that we must replace OODA entirely. Not update it. Not extend it. Replace it. The new operating logic is Decide – Understand – Act (D-U-A), powered by Integrated Decision-Driven Intelligence (IDDI) — an ISR-T enterprise that begins with command intent, drives sensing, and delivers tailored understanding at machine speed. It is the difference between reacting to reality and defining it. Why This Matters • Observation is no longer neutral. Data is contested, manipulated, and overwhelming. • Orientation is no longer fast enough. Human cognition cannot keep pace with algorithmic tempo. • Decision must become the driver. Intent, risk, and purpose must pre-condition every act of understanding. IDDI does not make the commander obsolete — it makes the commander’s intent executable through an integrated, decision-centric enterprise that links sensors, analysts, and effectors in real time. The Faith Question Boyd’s philosophy remains sacred to many — and rightly so. But as Darwin discovered, reverence for the past cannot override evidence of the present. Holding to OODA in the algorithmic age is like navigating by the stars when satellites can give you a live map. What Comes Next In the coming weeks, I’ll be releasing the full paper — a doctrinal argument for why OODA must give way to D-U-A and how Decision-Driven ISR-T achieves tempo dominance without sacrificing ethics or human judgment. This isn’t an attack on Boyd’s legacy. It’s his evolution — the next necessary step in understanding how we fight, decide, and win. Because the future battlespace will not reward those who observe fastest, but those who understand first and act with certainty. ⸻ #OODA #ISR #CommandAndControl #ArtificialIntelligence #DecisionDominance #360iSR #MilitaryDoctrine #Boyd #Innovation #Leadership #DefenceThinking

Military leaders involved in designing, integrating, and delivering threat-informed warfighting capabilities often lament a lack of service guidance on priorities -- ideally, priorities that are aligned with the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Planning Guidance. Marines don’t have that problem. Our guidance is crystal clear. “My observations over the last year reinforce my belief that command and control, as well as our ability to share data, will play an outsized role in future conflict…especially seamlessly aggregating and disseminating high-fidelity targeting information.” “Marines will act as the “JTAC of the Joint Force” “We will continue to invest in capabilities and refine tactics that allow us to act as the forward element of the Joint Force – sensing, making sense, and communicating that information to any shooter.” “We will continue to pursue smaller form factor C2 nodes, field expeditionary ICD-705 compliant shelters capable of providing access to higher levels of classification at the tactical level, and leverage advances in artificial intelligence to enhance decision making at the tactical edge.” “As the Marine Corps continues to invest in increasing the lethality and capabilities of our MAGTFs, in a joint warfighting context, we must ensure appropriate linkages to the Combatant Commanders who possess the authorities to employ these forces.” It’s an exciting time to be a U.S. Marine!

🎖️ COMMANDERS: Your Mission Doesn’t Work Without a Multi-TDL Network (MTN) Let’s get straight to the point. You can’t command what you can’t see. You can’t direct what you can’t reach. And you absolutely can’t synchronize effects across air, land, sea, cyber, and space without a Multi-TDL Network. 🧠 What is MTN? It’s not just “comms.” The Multi-TDL Network is the digital nervous system of your battlespace. It links every sensor, shooter, commander, and coalition partner into a single, real-time, common operational picture. Link 16. Link 22. JREAP. VMF. TAK. You name it. All fused. All filtered. All flowing across SATCOM, WANs, and BLOS pathways. From the TOC to the tactical edge. From the JTF to the JTAC. 🚨 Why Should You Care as a Commander? Because without MTN, you will face: • Fragmented decision-making • Slower kill chains • Friendly force confusion • Fires deconfliction failures • And worst of all, operational irrelevance in a pan-domain fight 🛑 Here’s the Risk: You train for joint and coalition operations. But if your network isn’t integrated and multi-link capable, you are the friction in the plan. Your ship can’t talk to that jet. Your SOF team can’t push targeting to fires. Your HQ is making decisions off of an outdated picture. And while you’re catching up… Your adversary is already moving. ✅ What You Get with MTN • 📡 Real-time track sharing across platforms and services • 🛰️ BLOS command and control via HF and SATCOM • ⚔️ Fully synchronized multi-domain effects • 🤝 Seamless integration with NATO and allied C2 • 📊 Trusted, fused situational awareness across the force It turns data into decision. Intent into action. Command into combat power. 🧭 What You Need to Ask Today: • Is my unit part of a functioning MTN? • Can I operate in a denied or BLOS environment using HF or JREAP? • Are my operators trained to manage and exploit TDL data across domains? • Do I know where the gaps are and who’s closing them? 📍 Bottom Line for Command: 🧠 The Multi-TDL Network is not a comms issue. It’s not a tech toy. It’s a warfighting requirement. No MTN = No shared awareness. No shared awareness = No control. No control = No victory. You don’t win modern wars with just weapons. You win with networks that move faster than the enemy can react. 👊 So if you’re serious about leadership in the modern fight, Demand the MTN. Fund it. Train for it. Use it. Because when the fight starts, you won’t get a second chance to connect.

Admiral Daryl Caudle’s recently released Fighting Instructions for the United States Navy introduce something that deserves far more attention than it’s getting: the Enhanced Mission Command Framework. This is more than updated guidance. It is a recognition that the character of naval warfare has fundamentally changed. In an era of distributed maritime operations, autonomous systems, contested communications, and real-time data flows, centralized control is a vulnerability. Enhanced Mission Command pushes authority, decision advantage, and accountability to the edge — while demanding clarity of commander’s intent and shared understanding across the force. That sounds intuitive. It is not simple. To make this framework real, three things must happen simultaneously: 1. Technical integration — resilient networks, interoperable data architectures, and autonomy that can operate in degraded environments. 2. Organizational alignment — structures that empower subordinate commanders rather than constrain them. 3. Cultural adaptation — leaders who are comfortable delegating authority while retaining strategic coherence. This is where I believe orchestration engineering becomes essential. Enhanced Mission Command is not just about better communications. It’s about designing systems — technical, organizational, and human — that work together under stress. It requires deliberate engineering of how sensors, shooters, platforms, AI, logistics, and commanders interact. It requires designing for degraded operations, not assuming perfect connectivity. It requires aligning incentives, acquisition timelines, and doctrine so they reinforce — rather than undermine — decentralized execution. In short: you cannot bolt mission command onto a force built for industrial-age control. You must architect it. If we get this right, the Navy becomes faster, more resilient, and more lethal in a contested environment. If we get it wrong, we risk creating distributed fragility instead of distributed strength. Enhanced Mission Command is a strategic signal. The hard work now is operationalizing it. That is not just a doctrinal challenge. It is an orchestration challenge. #MissionCommand #Seapower #NavalInnovation #Autonomy #Leadership #NationalSecurity

The Secure World Foundation has released its 2026 Global Counterspace Capabilities report. My comments here reflect the policy and strategic implications of what SWF has compiled from open sources, not an assessment of any specific capabilities. Here is what I think policymakers, military leaders, and the broader national security community need to understand: our society's way of life and our military's way of war are built on the assumption that space will be available when we need it. Every time you use GPS to navigate, check a weather forecast, make a financial transaction, or communicate across oceans, you are relying on space. Every precision-guided munition, every ISR feed to a deployed commander, every missile warning that protects the homeland depends on space-based capabilities. That assumption of assured availability is increasingly at risk. The SWF report documents counterspace developments across 13 countries in five categories: co-orbital, direct-ascent, electronic warfare, directed energy, and cyber. Without commenting on specifics, the trend lines are clear. More countries are developing more ways to contest, disrupt, or deny access to space. The barriers to entry are dropping, particularly in electronic warfare and cyber. And the capabilities being developed are not just theoretical. They span the full spectrum from reversible disruption to permanent destruction. This is why senior U.S. leaders have been increasingly vocal. Gen Stephen Whiting has told Congress that winning the space fight is foundational to defending the nation. Gen Chance Saltzman has stated that space superiority is a necessary precondition for Joint Force success. Admiral Pierre VANDIER has called for NATO to transition from passive consumer of space services to active guardian. These are not aspirational statements. They reflect a recognition that adversaries are actively working to take away the advantages we have long taken for granted. For NATO Allies, this report reinforces why the work described in NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT)'s recent article on safeguarding freedom of access to space is so urgent, and why NATO Secretary General Rutte's broader message about moving from commitments to capability delivery applies every bit as much to the space domain as it does to any other. Space is not a niche technical issue. It is a foundational element of how we live, how we compete economically, and how we fight. Ensuring we can operate in, from, and through space while denying those advantages to adversaries is one of the defining security challenges of our time. This report is a good place to start understanding why.

Historically, strategic power was measured across land, sea, and air. Today, space is the fourth domain of military power and the invisible backbone of national security. Yet across much of the Western defence ecosystem, space domain awareness is still discussed as a technical engineering challenge, launching payloads faster or managing satellite failures. That’s just not how it works on the ground. In orbit, state actors actively track, rendezvous-manoeuvre, and deploy electronic warfare against critical assets. When jamming or spoofing degrades a communications payload, it is an act of counter-space aggression designed to test resilience and erode leverage. Historically, when a half-billion-dollar asset goes dark during a strategic window, the default has been to blame cosmic radiation, file the paperwork, and move on. Operating national security on that level of ambiguity carries catastrophic risk, no matter how comfortable it keeps insurance models. Adversaries disrupt services under plausible deniability because ground models struggle to prove intent. If commanders cannot distinguish ionospheric disturbances from deliberate interference, they risk responding on wrong evidence or hesitating when action is required. Deterrence requires attribution. It is a deeply geopolitical challenge, and the coalitions that own the evidence layer in orbit will hold the leverage on the ground.