You could have, for example, America’s fighter jets, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and massive cargo aircraft, which require elite crews to operate. Although these weapons could turn the tide of war, they were also a message of deterrence; we have better machines, therefore we are harder to defeat.

As of 2026, all that’s changed, and new technology is defining how wars are fought and how goods are moved around the world.

The Old Ways Of War

The old ways were about creating the perfect machine. According to defence analysts, Western militaries were obsessed with building ’exquisite platforms’. This means they wanted to create technically flawless, ultra-capable, and expensive weapons to deter their adversaries.

Serhiy Goncharov, the CEO of the National Association of Ukrainian Defence Industries, which represents about 100 Ukrainian companies, told Business Insider that the West’s philosophy of fielding limited numbers of cutting-edge systems could be a serious disadvantage in a prolonged war. He claimed that those systems are good to have, but mass is key.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, the former defence minister of Lithuania, a NATO ally bordering Russia, said that while the West focused on new and expensive weaponry that takes a long time to manufacture, Russia had been ’building something cheap, that’s expendable, that’s fast’.

The F-35 Lightning II fighter jet and the C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft are some of the best examples of this policy. They are extraordinary machines and a testament to incredible feats of engineering. Both cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate.

However, they have major weaknesses. They are too expensive to be lost in battle, very complicated to replace quickly, and entirely dependent on human beings to fly them.

This last point matters more than all the others because humans are organic. They get tired, they experience fear, and they need food, rest, and the psychological will to keep moving. If a C-130 is shot down, you lose an expensive aircraft, the crew, the supplies they were carrying, and the ability to resupply the troops waiting at the other end.

In a world where missiles are AI-driven with deadly accuracy, and modern battlefields are expanding their theatres into the Indo-Pacific, Ukraine, and the Middle East with dense networks of radar arrays, surface-to-air missiles, and electronic jamming equipment, these kinds of aircraft are sitting targets.

Defence planners call these areas ‘Anti-Access Area Denial’ (A2/AD) zones. To keep things simple, these are regions where your expensive, irreplaceable aircraft can be shot down as soon as they enter. The exquisite platform now turns out to be a single point of failure dressed up as a super-weapon.

Losing Is Now Part Of The Plan

Nobody wants to lose a billion-dollar piece of equipment at the first sign of trouble. So, a new, radically different military philosophy is taking hold at defence ministries across the world. They call it the ’economy of attrition’.

The idea is simple, yet counterintuitive. If assets are very likely to be destroyed in a modern war, the best course of action is not to prevent it, but to build systems that can be destroyed by the dozen while the mission continues anyway.

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Instead of one colossal and invincible aircraft, it may be better to deploy hundreds of cheaper, autonomous ones. If the enemy shoots down 10 of them, the other 90 can still complete the mission. If those units cost less to build than the enemy’s resources used to destroy them, you eventually win the war of attrition by turning the enemy’s military strength into a financial liability.

Governments and militaries are building networks of self-piloting aircraft, ground robots, and underwater vehicles, all connected by a centralised artificial intelligence. These systems are capable of sustaining military operations without putting a single human being in direct danger.

Equipment is now designed to be lost in battle.

The Drones That Could Replace A Fleet Of Cargo Planes

There is a new doctrine at the Pentagon, and even at allied and enemy HQs. Militaries have decided to replace cargo planes with drones. A primary example of this doctrine in action is the Grid Aero Lifter Lite, built by a California-based startup. It is an autonomous cargo drone without a pilot, a co-pilot, or life support systems. It is built with minimal moving parts, can be assembled quickly in remote locations, and is priced at a fraction of what a single C-130 costs to procure and operate.

Aero CEO Arthur Dubois, “We’re focused on solving major problems for the warfighter, starting with contested logistics. Those same challenges of range, resilience, and operating in constrained environments also define many commercial, humanitarian, and remote operations. This funding allows us to rapidly field autonomous aircraft to deliver scalable capability into real-world operations to meet growing demand across missions.”

The rapid fielding is catching the attention of major investors. Ben Hemani, founding partner at Bison Ventures, pointed to Grid Aero’s execution speed, “What Grid Aero has accomplished in less than 18 months is rare. Not only have they already built their flagship aircraft, but they are also building a logistics capability that operates where traditional systems can’t. We’re excited to fund the next phase of their growth, as they move from rapid development to real-world scale.”

The Grid Aero approach to logistics is very different from the old method of hub-and-spoke logistics, where goods flow from a central warehouse outward along fixed delivery routes. It is replaced by what Dubois calls ’the grid’, a distributed mesh network where hundreds of thousands of nodes operate simultaneously across a wide area.

The Grid Aero Lifter is a drone carrier that features advanced self-healing capabilities, ensuring that if drones are lost, the AI instantly reroutes the remaining units to cover gaps and maintain network integrity. To operate effectively in contested military zones where GPS is routinely jammed, the system utilises visual odometry, which allows the drones to navigate by reading the landscape much like a human does. Furthermore, the entire swarm benefits from real-time learning, as every drone continuously shares its data with all other units to ensure they learn and adapt together as a single entity.

Regarding the shift toward these swarms, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said, “You know, if I can have one guy command and control 100 aircraft, that’s a lot easier than having to have a pilot in every single one. It puts a lot fewer American lives at risk.”

Advent Of The Mechanical Foot Soldier

There are drones in the air, but there is something even more dramatic on the ground. In February 2026, a San Francisco startup by the name of Foundation Robotics delivered its first Phantom MK1 humanoid robot to Ukraine for combat testing on the front lines. These machines are somewhat similar in concept to a prototype T-800 model from the Terminator movie.

The Phantom MK1 is science fiction coming to life. The MK1 stands at 180 centimetres, weighs 80 kilograms, and is encased in jet black steel with a tinted glass visor where its face should be. It’s not a remote-controlled toy operated by someone at a comms station. It’s a completely AI-powered machine designed to replace a human infantryman. There are currently 2 Phantom MK-1 prototypes in the Ukrainian theatre.

“You should really work hard to give the US military smarter tools so that they can be more effective,” Sankaet Pathak, founder of Foundation Robotics, told TechFirst.

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He is not shy about giving the Phantom an M4 Carbine, adding, “If you’re first body in and you’re docile, then the enemies are not going to really expose themselves. So, you have to be the first body in and deadly.”

The 20 internal electric motors provide the ability to climb stairs, navigate rubble-filled urban environments, and enter low bunkers that wheeled military vehicles cannot reach. It’s also designed to emit a thermal heat signature indistinguishable from a human being, deliberately tricking enemy sensors into firing at it instead of the real soldiers nearby. In short, it’s a decoy and a grunt.

The psychological effects on the enemy are clear. The robots do not feel pain, they are not afraid of anything, and they do not get shocked or confused. A human soldier, on the other hand, would flinch if he got hit in the chest, and might drop and stop fighting. A Phantom humanoid robot hit in the chest still keeps shooting. This relentlessness is deeply demoralising to human opponents in a way that no weapon was fully anticipated to be.

However, the model is not perfect. The battery drains rapidly under the immense energy demands of 20 motors running simultaneously, while the complex joints remain highly vulnerable to damage. Foundation is already addressing these issues through the release of the Phantom MK2, which was expected to come out by the end of April 2026, featuring a waterproof chassis and improved battery life.

Foundation proclaimed that it will produce 50,000 Phantom MK-1 units by 2027. Hordes of robot soldiers might flood Ukraine by this time next year.

However, these humanoid robots also have civilian applications with a foundation aiming to sell them at $100,000 per unit as warehouse and industrial logistic workers. They can perform in conditions that are hazardous for humans, and can work almost around the clock without wages, protest or exhaustion.

Ground Robots Already Saving Lives

There is a robotic ground vehicle operating in Ukraine called the Milrem THeMIS, which is built in Estonia. It is a heavily built, tracked robot designed for endurance and heavy lifting.

Running on a hybrid diesel-electric engine, it can operate for up to 15 hours straight. It is mostly used for casualty evacuation, rolling forward under fire to retrieve wounded soldiers and carrying them to safety, which spares human medics from being shot while doing so. The vehicle has the capability to carry up to 750 kilograms, extendable to 1,200 kilograms, and can climb 60-degree slopes.

The long-term vision for these machines is expanding. “In the future, robotic systems will take over soldiers’ tasks on the battlefield,” notes Raul Rikk, the Capability Development Director at Milrem Robotics. “We envision robotic systems that can respond to verbal commands, similar to traditional military units.”

Like aerial drones, the dual-use potential is massive.

“While our current focus is primarily on defence due to the ongoing war in Ukraine,” Rikk added, “we have a strong track record of developing unmanned prototypes for civilian applications, including firefighting, street cleaning, and forest planting.”

The Rheinmetall Mission Master SP, built in Germany, operates on a completely different philosophy from the Milrem THeMIS. It is fast, quiet, and ultra-powered, leaving no heat or sound signature for an enemy to detect. It uses the Wolfpack software, which allows multiple units to coordinate autonomously so that they can surround a perimeter or scout ahead without any human giving moment-to-moment commands.

Japan’s Ground Self-Defence Force is currently testing both these technologies, pointing to a future where THeMIS handles brute, sustained work while the Mission Master executes stealth and precision.

The Kill Web

Autonomous robot armies utilise technology to integrate logistical carriers for effortless troop transport, resilient robotic foot soldiers capable of enduring heavy fire, and robot medics designed for evacuations, strikes, and reconnaissance.

They are all tied together with an even more powerful technology. In 20th-century military communication, the process worked in a straight line. A radar spots a target and notifies a command centre, which then sends a pilot to destroy the target. This was known as the ’kill chain’. Before the kill chain could be completed, the target often moved.

The kill chain is now being replaced by the ’kill web’, a decentralised AI network that connects every drone, robot, soldier, satellite, and radar into one seamless system. Software platforms like Anduril’s Lattice serve as the brain of this web by processing data from thousands of sources simultaneously and identifying threats in fractions of a second.

This autonomy extends into the deep ocean. The navies of the world are deploying autonomous underwater vehicles to protect the 1.39 million kilometres of fibre optic cables on the ocean floor that carry 99% of global internet traffic and the kill web’s foundational data. Companies like Anduril are already building for this domain with autonomous submarines like the Dive XL.

“It’s not remote-controlled by this computer. It’s doing it on the brain, on the submarine itself. If I told it to go off and perform some mission that’s months long, like, ‘Go to this target, listen for this particular signature, and if you see this signature, run; if you see this one, hide; if you see this one, follow it’, it could do that all on its own without being detected, without communicating with it,” Palmer Luckey explained.

Bloodless Wars

The singular, expensive, irreplaceable weapons of the past are giving way to a vast, self-healing, intelligent network of expendable machines, which keep fighting, delivering, and communicating no matter what is thrown at them.

The Pentagon’s traditional contractors, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, are slowly losing ground to startups that focus on the economy of attrition. The US Air Force’s autonomous wingman drone programme was recently awarded to Anduril and General Atomics, bypassing Boeing and Lockheed entirely.

Not so long ago, venture capitalists were not too keen on defence investments, but now they’re flooding into these ’new primes’ with the reasoning that autonomous defence capability and supply chains are prerequisites for global stability. It represents a massive geopolitical shift. As Palmer Luckey puts it, “I’ve always said that we need to transition from being the world’s police to being the world’s gun store.”

The drone that resupplies soldiers under fire today will be the same technology delivering packages to your doorstep next year. Similarly, the software currently coordinating robot soldiers will soon be managing warehouse inventories, while the underwater robots guarding fibre-optic cables will simultaneously protect military communications, and your ability to stream videos or read this article.

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Although there is a high threat level in the city, the details are unclear and the team wants to keep their profile low in case a firefight brings known hostile elements down on them. Americans choose to be more circumspect in evaluating possible dangers. An operator ventures out into the main road of the area, preferring to blend in with possible crowds rather than wear visible tactical gear, to see what he may see.

A single button press grants the operator complete visibility. His head-up display has an intricate set of sensors attached to it that begin collecting data from his surroundings. An integrated artificial intelligence engine quickly gathers and routes body language, pulse rates, facial expressions, and even ambient snippets of conversation in regional dialects through his backpack supercomputers for analysis.

Instantaneous analysis, simplification, and regurgitation of the data back into the head-up display occur. The tactical AI sidekick of the operators provides a clear assessment: several seasonal events are approaching the town, and most onlookers are happy and enthusiastic, posing no threat to the crew. For now, the crisis is over.

When talking about the future of United States special operations forces, those elite soldiers tasked with acting as the “tip of the spear” of the United States military, defence department officials have put forth several possible scenarios, this being just one of many. While science fiction writers and defence officials may have imagined a world where brain implants, performance-enhancing drugs, and powered armour akin to Starship Troopers would shape warfare in the future, US Special Operations Command believes that the next generation of armed conflict will be fought (and hopefully won) using a relatively simple concept: the “hyper enabled operator.”

Less strength, more brains

The hyper-enabled operator (HEO) concept was first made public in 2019 through an essay written by officials from SOCOM’s Joint Acquisition Task Force (JATF) for Small Wars Journal. The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) effort, which was started in 2013, aimed to provide US special operations forces with a suit known as the “Iron Man.” TALOS, the most recent development in the Pentagon’s decades-long effort to create a powered exoskeleton for infantry troops, was designed to increase operators’ survivability in combat by making them virtually resistant to small-arms fire through additional layers of sophisticated armour. The programme was inspired by the 2012 death of a Navy SEAL during a hostage rescue operation in Afghanistan. Even though the TALOS project was deemed ineffective in 2019 because of difficulties combining its various systems into a single, coherent entity, the HEO was an obvious successor to the programme because of the lessons it taught.

Giving warfighters “cognitive overmatch,” that is, “the ability to dominate the situation by making educated decisions faster than the opponent,” on the battlefield is the clear primary goal of the HEO concept, according to SOCOM officials.

The future operator will enter combat with technologies intended to increase their situational awareness and pertinent decision-making to superior levels compared to the enemy, rather than giving US special operations forces a tactical advantage through next-generation body armour and exotic weaponry.

John Boyd, an Air Force colonel and former fighter pilot, proposed the “OODA loop” (observe, orient, decide, act) as the fundamental military decision-making model for the 21st century. The HEO concept aims to use technology to “tighten” that loop to the point where operators are making faster and more intelligent decisions than the enemy.

In 2019, SOCOM officials stated that HEO aims to ensure that the appropriate information reaches the right person at the right time.

By replacing the powered armour at the centre of the TALOS effort with sophisticated communications equipment and a robust sensor suite built on advanced computing architecture, the HEO concept aims to accomplish this goal. This will enable the operator to gather pertinent data and turn it into actionable information using a straightforward interface similar to a head-up display, and to do so “at the edge,” in locations where traditional communications networks might not be available.

As previously noted, if TALOS was intended to be akin to an “Iron Man” suit, then HEO is effectively Jarvis, Tony Stark’s internal AI assistant who continuously provides him with information via the head-up display on his helmet.

According to SOCOM spokesperson James O. Gregory, who is quoting the programme’s general description from the command’s website, WIRED was told, “[JATF] is targeting technologies to deliver cognitive overmatch to SOF operators working at the edge in austere and contested environments in coordination with and working through partners and allies.”

With the use of these technologies, SOF operators’ tactical teams will be able to quickly develop situation awareness by using data from next-generation sensors, networks, computers, and communication systems in an easy manner. It will also assist in making prompt, well-informed decisions and acting before an enemy has a chance to respond.

Step into the gray area

Five years after the HEO was first included in the tactical lexicon of the US military, what does it look like today? Due to the effort’s confidential (and partly theoretical) nature, few details are known, and SOCOM authorities have not said anything about its advancement. Gregory of SOCOM, however, claims that the situation and idea the HEO is attempting to solve have “evolved” from what programme officials initially told reporters.

SOCOM officials envision something more akin to a casually dressed operator collecting information on a busy urban avenue through an eyepiece resembling Google Glass and assessing the situation, more James Bond than Tony Stark, rather than augmenting warfighters deployed to active combat zones.

According to Gregory, “The JATF’s present operations are taking place in permissive or semi-permissive environments throughout the competitive phase of combat.”

The HEO is not just another tool for kinetic assault. It will support elite troops operating in the “gray zone” between peace and conflict. A permissive environment is generally defined as an operational environment where US forces have the backing of a host country’s security apparatus, according to the US Army.

The JATF is pushing for cutting-edge technologies that improve situational awareness, as detailed in a SOCOM broad agency release (a general call for research and development proposals from the defence sector) that was published in 2020 and updated as recently as November 2023.

These technologies include low-visibility communications systems; sophisticated sensors capable of “iris, facial, anatomical measures, gestures, gait, heartbeat, electromagnetic signals, deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA], and microbiome recognition”; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities “without substantial manning or networking resources” (the previously mentioned “at the edge”); and “data visualisations” that “permit [operators] to receive and intuitively understand networked information from communication, computing, and sensor systems,” among others.

To put it briefly, the HEO envisions systems that allow for the continuous, real-time capture of data and its subsequent distillation into actionable intelligence that may, in an unpredictable circumstance, make the difference between life and death.

Case with edges

Regarding the creation of new goods, Gregory states that throughout the past few years, the HEO effort has concentrated on three key experimental technological domains: language translation, architecture and analysis, and sensing and edge computing.

“Sensing and edge computing” encompasses both the gathering and analysis of data from diverse sources as well as the specialised processing power required by operators to operate both “at the edge” and the AI-enabled software that will serve as the HEO’s core.

According to Gregory, “Conventional CPU-based devices are insufficient for emerging technologies and solutions in artificial intelligence/machine learning, which require specialised ‘computing’ hardware. Our goal is to include a manpack device that can function as a tensor processing unit, neural processing engine, or graphical processing unit. This will give the required foundation to make use of cutting-edge technologies, such as language translation and other edge solutions, even when the cloud is not available.”

This processing capacity serves as the foundation for the “architecture and analysis” component, which focuses on quickly evaluating and presenting data to field operators.

Gregory stated that the command has created “a flexible [system] architecture that fuses data from diverse sources and media kinds” into an understandable format that operators can evaluate and act upon to accommodate this element, as reported by WIRED.

Regarding language translation, that should go without saying. According to Gregory, SOCOM thinks that “clear communication may considerably increase the development of our long-term partnerships before any conflicts ever occur.”

Instead of depending on the frequently insufficient interpreters in the field, operators can communicate more successfully when they use voice-to-voice translation. SOF soldiers, despite being multilingual, are often deployed to regions with different languages or dialects.

According to C4ISRNet, SOCOM has reportedly focused on six main areas of product development in line with these experimental technology areas: the “operator-worn kit,” which consists of sensors and onboard computer processing power; application development resources; a distinct, mission-agnostic system architecture; the “human-machine interface,” which is typically thought of as a digital head-up display; a product dubbed “information realisation,” which probably entails the clear presentation of data; and beyond-line-of-sight (BLoS) communications meant to maintain troops’ communication with their commanders (and each other) in environments denied satellite service.

Gregory claims that in recent years, the command has progressively released a few new capabilities resulting from the HEO initiative.

According to Janes’ assessment at the time, SOCOM declared in 2021 that two products, a BLoS communications system, and an unidentified “integrated situational awareness tool,” would be converted into formal programmes of record.

Gregory confirmed to WIRED, that the BLoS system comprises “a steerable gimble antenna system that boosts the functionality” of the command’s SOF deployable nodes, which are a suite of cutting-edge satellite communications equipment. It’s unclear if the latter is related to the “automate the analyst” effort the command kicked off in 2020 to provide operators with an autonomous AI assistant.

The spokesperson also confirmed that the situational awareness tool, known as SEEKER, is an app that “enables advisers to build advanced situational awareness, thereby allowing them to select actions with an eye toward the broader situation rather than just the immediately apparent problem.”

The “visual environment translation” system translates inputs in foreign languages into understandable English in real-time. This system is called the Versatile Intelligent Translation Assistant (VITA) and is considered “the most mature” of the JATF’s experimental technology areas, according to SOCOM. It has voice-to-voice and visual environment translation capabilities.

Not only has VITA successfully demonstrated Russian, Chinese Mandarin, and Ukrainian language translation capabilities during testing, but the system has even been deployed to two undisclosed theatres of operations.

Gregory describes VITA as essentially “a voice-to-voice translation engine that functions offline on GPU-enabled devices,” small enough to be carried in the field on a laptop-tethered smartphone or wearable device and “engage in effective conversations where it was previously impossible.”

According to Gregory, “The visual translation component improves situational awareness by translating video pictures in real-time, such as street signs, graffiti, and other written texts. Users may instantly grasp other languages by using their phone’s camera to scan their environment.”

“A high-quality translation capability that is not dependant on the cloud or local interpreters, therefore considerably decreasing risk and logistical expenses while enhancing operational range and effectiveness for USSOF and our allies,” according to Gregory, is what VITA offers US special operations soldiers.

And that language translation may not be limited to a mobile device for long: according to SOCOM’s fiscal year 2025 budget request published in March, the command is still pushing ahead with head-mounted sensors and an augmented-reality HUD to present these functions right before operators’ eyes. The JATF is currently working with industry partners to reduce the size of the hardware and transition it into an SOF Programme Executive Office for eventual fielding.

Field operations

The HEO concept appears promising to US military planners: an Army assessment suggests that a successful implementation of the system might improve operator survivability well beyond what the TALOS programme’s extra body armour can do.

However, like with other potentially game-changing technological endeavours, HEO may prove to be a science fiction fantasy that crumbles under the weight of its technological intricacy. Furthermore, there’s no assurance that operators will accept the new technology with ease: while VITA has demonstrated operational promise, it remains uncertain whether other HEO products will be sufficiently intuitive to support operators in the field rather than burden them with a new and complex system.

“If you load a mud foot down with a bunch of gear that he needs to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped—say with a stone ax—will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier,” as Heinlein so eloquently stated in Starship Troopers.

Like TALOS, military engineers may find it too ambitious to completely achieve the promise of a tactical AI helper akin to Jarvis, Tony Stark’s sidekick. However, the HEO initiative will still provide a significant capability boost for US special operators stationed overseas, even if it merely manages to produce, say, the VITA language-translation tool. The day is slowly giving way to night, but American commandos control the night and will continue to do so well into the following fight with the assistance of the HEO.

The HEO concept represents a bold leap into the future of warfare, emphasising cognitive superiority and situational awareness over brute strength and advanced weaponry. As the US Special Operations Command refines and implements these technologies, they stand poised to redefine the capabilities of elite soldiers in the field.

By integrating cutting-edge AI, advanced computing, and real-time data analytics into a cohesive and intuitive system, HEO aims to empower operators with unparalleled decision-making abilities. While the full realisation of this vision remains to be seen, the strides made thus far suggest a promising enhancement of US special operations forces.

The future of warfare will be shaped by highly skilled soldiers who can make rapid decisions and gather crucial data. As the nature of conflict continues to change, these technologically empowered operators will lead the way, using their intelligence and agility to overcome the challenges of modern warfare.

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