Strategic Issues

By Colonel John Campbell, Lieutenant Colonel Emmaline Hill, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Medina, Dr. José de Arimatéia da Cruz, and Dr. Michele Devlin. China is quietly turning the world’s last frontiers—the Arctic, Antarctica, and outer space—into interconnected arenas of strategic competition, using a sophisticated blend of psychological, public-opinion, and legal warfare to expand its influence while avoiding open conflict. This monograph reveals how the Chinese Communist Party exploits the volatility and legal gray areas of these isolated, contained, and extreme (ICE) environments. Using the 2025 Fram2 polar–space mission as a case study, it shows how state power, private capital, and emerging technologies are converging in the polar–space nexus in ways that favor Beijing’s “active defense” strategy and threaten core U.S. national security interests. The monograph concludes by arguing that traditional U.S. diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) tools are no longer sufficient on their own and proposes a new framework to help strategic leaders compete and deter more effectively across domains in ICE regions without allowing great-power rivalry with China to spiral into crisis or war.

C. Anthony Pfaff; Fighting with Data examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping military decision making by changing both the speed of command and the structure of cognition within mission-command systems. Rather than treating AI as a tool that merely accelerates existing staff processes, this monograph recognizes AI redistributes cognitive labor across a network of people, data, tools, and operational processes. In this new environment, commanders and staffs spend less time assembling information and more time interpreting meaning, judging uncertainty, and deciding how to act. This shift in the human role requires a new way of thinking about trust in military AI. Traditional standards based on reliability, transparency, or past performance cannot sufficiently evaluate systems that operate probabilistically and often opaquely. Instead, this monograph proposes an ecocognitive approach that evaluates whether AI-enabled systems fit the operational environment well enough to produce useful understanding and support sound judgment. Drawing on military doctrine, cognitive science, and epistemology, this study develops a framework for assessing representational, inferential, and adaptive fit in AI-enabled command systems. This monograph concludes, in the future, decision advantage will depend less on systems that can process more information than on human-machine systems that are designed to turn data into understanding under conditions of uncertainty. ©2026 C. Anthony Pfaff

The Academic Year 2026–27 Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment provides a framework for those aspiring to tackle the Department of War’s most pressing challenges. This year’s authors highlight trending challenges and identify potential tension points across 10 sections organized under the broad themes of 1) Regional Challenges and Opportunities and 2) Institutional Challenges. This assessment represents the collective expertise of the US Army War College. The narrative is supplemented by a tailored list of 105 command-sponsored questions from 47 different Army and Joint organizations from across the Department of War. Combined, the distinct yet complementary narrative and question list offer unique insights into the vital matters impacting defense organizations and provide aspiring researchers with a necessary starting point.

Edited by Dr. Michele Devlin, Dr. José de Arimatéia da Cruz, Ms. Nancy Martin, and CDR Travis Pantaleo; Layout by Ms. Nancy Martin. The environment is the ultimate domain in which the warfighter operates. Whether land, sea, air, or space, Environmental Security is a defense specialty that better equips warfighters in the fight to respond to the unique physical, atmospheric, ecological, and human terrain of their operating environment. The Academic Year 2025 Environmental Security Scholars Program (ESSP) at the U.S. Army War College prepares students to become lethal and effective senior leaders in cutting-edge specialty areas within this field. ESSP team members at the Army War College conducted cutting-edge research on critically important projects sponsored by organizations across the Department of War. They participated in specialized courses on environmental security, collaborated with an innovative network of subject matter experts, explored remote regions, and developed essential skills to serve as senior leaders in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. This publication summarizes their research and activities throughout the year.

by COL Edward Kim, COL Cory Reiter, COL Charles Diggs, LTC Eric Giannaris, and LTC Robert Blome. The team conducted their research under the direction of Professor Samuel White (Faculty Advisor, USAWC). This USAWC student team, Project Leo (AFRICOM Futures), prepared this report answers a strategic question posed by Gen Dagvin Anderson, the Commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM): “What innovations will alter the balance of power across Africa by 2045?” The report finds that by 2045, the balance of power in Africa will likely depend not on any single innovation but on who can leverage converging innovations. The same innovations that might strengthen states will instead empower their rivals wherever institutional capacity is weak. Non-state actors are likely to exploit this convergence faster because they face fewer barriers to adoption. Five key findings frame the analysis: (1) non-state actors are building parallel governance, (2) service delivery, not warfare, decides outcomes, (3) state financial sovereignty is eroding from multiple directions, (4) China is building structural dependency, and (5) the outcome is still contested but the window is closing. The study concludes that the outcome is genuinely contested. But the window in which it remains is closing. The irreversibility threshold between 2028 and 2031 marks the point at which VEO governance roots, Chinese infrastructure lock-in, and African fiscal sovereignty erosion converge beyond the reach of feasible policy reversal.

by COL Joseph Kaminski, COL John Seitz, LTC Matthew Barwick, LTC Tanner Dunlap, LTC James Sye. The team conducted their research under the direction of Professor Matt Rasmussen (Faculty Advisor, USAWC). This USAWC student team, Project Quantum Advantage), prepared this report answers a strategic question posed by Major General Rhett R. Cox, Deputy G2 on behalf of Lieutenant General Michelle A. Schmidt, Army G2,: “What are the likely quantum sensing technologies that will shape the strategic operating environment between the United States and the PRC by 2035?” By 2035, the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are likely to compete in a strategic environment in which quantum sensing is likely to change the character of war by reducing the effectiveness of concealment. Quantum sensing is likely to make previously undetectable signals and structures visible to both US and PRC collection enterprises. This change is likely to undermine stealth, subterranean concealment, and low-observable operations. Five key findings frame the analysis: (1) U.S. likely to maintain Quantum sensing lead through 2035, (2) Q-PNT, RYDAR, and Gravimetry likely fielded by 2035, (3) PRC dual-use Quantum sensing likely to evade standard indications and warnings by 2035, and (4) ecosystem integration like to decide Quantum advantage by 2035. The study concludes that Quantum advantage is likely to go to the actor that commits to promising technologies, avoids the implausible ones, and best integrates the complete quantum ecosystem across workforce, manufacturing, data fusion, and fielding pipelines.

by COL Thomas M. McInnis (USAR), LtCol Jordan Bathen (USMC), LTC Joshua Meador (USA), LTC Anthony Allen (USA), Mr. Lance G. Critchley (DAC), Mr. Kevin Boyce (Faculty Advisor, USAWC). This collective strategic research project examines the People’s Republic of China’s pursuit of decision advantage through military intelligentization by 2035. Developed by Futures Seminar Team Proxima Horizonte at the United States Army War College, the study synthesizes analysis from 276 open source materials and applies Intelligence Community Directive 203 estimative probability standards to assess the likelihood that China’s investments will translate into sustained battlefield advantage. The report finds that while the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is likely to achieve episodic decision advantage in discrete operational windows, structural constraints make sustained decision dominance over a peer adversary unlikely within the forecast horizon. Four key findings frame the analysis: (1) infrastructure built on unsecured foundations, (2) human and institutional constraints on intelligentization, (3) the emergence of automated active defense producing temporary advantages, and (4) biotechnical enhancement as a compensatory pathway. The study concludes that China is likely evolving beyond intelligentization toward a post intelligentization concept of warfare—termed cognitivization—that prioritizes manipulation of adversary perception, interpretation, and decision making rather than decisive technological overmatch.

John A. Nagl, Project Director, and Michael T. Hackett, Chief of Staff; Integrated Research Project from the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, School of Strategic Landpower, US Army War College Press; Following the 2024 A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force, which explored military lessons learned from the first year of the Russia-Ukraine War, this book examines the changing character of war as the second year of the war unfolded. This year’s authors explore the conflict from four different angles: information advantage (intelligence, information operations, and cyber); landpower operations (fires, maneuver, force protection, mission command, and mercenaries); multi-domain operations (air and maritime); and crosscutting themes (diplomacy, sustainment, and innovation and adaptation). The second year witnessed the innovative approaches to combat of the first year—drones, unmanned aerial systems, and electronic-warfare offensive and defensive capabilities—combined with entrenched warfare not seen at the current scale in Europe since World War I. The use of mercenary private military companies like the Wagner Group generated moments of high suspense (with a failed mutiny in July 2023) and led to changes in Russian force structure and tactics. Delays in continued allied support tested the resolve and operational capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which nevertheless kept up the fight and held Russia back. Through it all, the conflict offers a compelling picture of the war of the future, along with lessons for the US Army Training and Doctrine Command to prepare the Joint Force to meet the challenges of the large-scale combat operations of tomorrow. ©2026 John A. Nagl. All rights reserved.

by Brennan Deveraux; Monograph from the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College Press; This monograph challenges the Department of War to reframe the conversation about humans’ involvement in lethal autonomous weapons systems by codifying a human-centric framework built on the employment pillars of certification, authority, restriction, and accountability. Although an ample body of literature discusses lethal autonomous weapon systems, this monograph takes a novel approach by proposing a theoretical framework and applying it to historical and hypothetical practical scenarios involving weapons with autonomous characteristics. In terms of methodology, the monograph relies heavily on primary sources, including UN documents and Department of War publications, which are augmented by secondary sources from experts in the field and creative speculation about the characteristics of future warfare. The study’s conclusions will help US military and policy practitioners manage and integrate lethal autonomous weapon systems. This study is designed to spark a necessary and likely uncomfortable conversation about when relying on lethal machines is appropriate. The monograph provides tangible recommendations to help shape future policy decisions about developing and employing lethal autonomous weapon systems.