The doctrine is shifting downward
DARPA's MOSAIC warfare concept proposes replacing exquisite, monolithic platforms with modular functional nodes that can be mixed and matched via AI-enhanced networks. Instead of a single $100M platform doing everything, dozens of cheaper nodes each contribute a capability, and the system composes mission plans from whatever is available. The 2026 DARPA RFI (DARPA-SN-26-33) requests autonomous drone warfare networks with large-scale unmanned constellations and containerized support systems for exactly this kind of distributed operation.
The January 2026 DoD AI Strategy memo mandates AI that operates 'on-board, in real time, and often without any sort of connectivity or centralized compute resources.' Admiral Paparo's April 2026 INDOPACOM posture statement calls for 'AI-enabled autonomous systems' as 'significant and affordable asymmetric advantage.' Dr. Alex Miller, the Army CTO, put it plainly in October 2025: 'Automate the mental tasks up to the decision to shoot or not shoot. Let commanders focus on human judgment.'
The direction is clear across every service and combatant command: push intelligence, decision support, and autonomous capability lower in the formation. The question is what platform enables that.