It’s a simple idea but one that’s far more complex in practice: Create an “unbelievable” level of chaos on modern-day battlefields so that America’s enemies are overwhelmed, overmatched and unable to mount an effective counterattack.
One senior U.S. military commander framed it as a “hellscape” in which the sky is so populated with small drones, weapons and other craft that it’s too crowded and chaotic for an enemy to operate in.
Those rapidly evolving concepts of 21st-century warfighting, especially as they could apply in a Pacific theater confrontation with communist China, are dominating discussions inside the Pentagon and in influential national security circles across Washington.
At the highest levels of the American defense industry, companies’ attention, time, and investment dollars are in many cases shifting away from large, expensive systems and weapons to small, relatively cheap, attritable unmanned assets that can be produced and deployed in bulk.
L3 Harris, a