The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have exposed a harsh reality: the U.S. military, built for a bygone era of technological supremacy and short conflicts, is ill-prepared for the age of autonomous drones and contested battlefields.
In an interview, Chris Brose, former policy adviser to Condoleezza Rice and John McCain and now president of defense tech firm Anduril, argues that the Pentagon's assumptions are outdated. For decades, the U.S. assumed it would enter any war with overwhelming technological dominance, fight a short campaign, and suffer minimal losses of expensive platforms like ships and planes. Today, peer competitors have adapted to disrupt American warfighting, and conflicts like Ukraine show a future of high attrition, constant weapon consumption, and reliance on cheap, autonomous systems.
"We have built and sized our military around very expensive, exquisite, hard-to-produce systems. The future is almost the opposite."
Drones, from small hand-carried attack quadcopters to larger loitering munitions, are already central to combat. In Ukraine, both sides use them for reconnaissance and strikes, transforming battlefields into "hider/finder" contests where hiding is nearly impossible. Brose notes this trend has been evident since 2017 in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria.
Key takeaways:
- The U.S. military is designed for a 20th-century conflict, not the drone-heavy, attritional warfare of today.
- Autonomous systems and low-cost tech are replacing legacy platforms.
- The shift is not future hypothetical but already happening in Ukraine and the Middle East.
As Brose warns, the Pentagon's current rules on autonomous weapons don't forbid automating kill chains, a gap that will define future warfare. America must adapt or risk being left behind.