Speed to decision is a weapons system.
We are entering the era of Agentic Warfare.
The era of Agentic Warfare
has begun.
The first nation to fully operationalize agentic systems in military decision-making will determine the course of the 21st century.
This defining shift moves beyond the development of large language models toward agency: systems capable of not only responding to human prompts, but actually executing and accomplishing complex tasks at paradigm-shifting speeds.
These systems consist of multiple AI agents, each performing specific and coordinated tasks, forming constellations of immense computational power. Harnessed by the Department of War, these systems enable U.S. forces to outpace and outmaneuver even our most capable opponents.
When fully developed, agentic systems realize the imperative put forward by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford that “our decision-making processes...deliver options at the speed of war.”
By coordinating autonomous agents to adopt strategies at machine speed, they supercharge human cognition and respond to battlefield changes in real time. To probe for vulnerabilities, they run millions of physics-based simulations, optimizing precise courses of action to maximize the probability of victory.
By compressing the time required for analysis and making that analysis more accurate, they enable commanders to execute nimble, decisive maneuvers that far outpace the capabilities of current command, control, and planning structures.
Simply put, agentic systems deliver every option, and help us understand optimal solutions, before the enemy has had their say.
This paper provides a blueprint for how the Department of War can harness agentic systems to achieve new degrees of decision advantage, and in so doing, revolutionize the American way of war.
Dan Tadross
Head of Public Sector
Jared Jonker
Senior Director, Agentic Warfare of Public Sector
Overview
1Decisional Advantage
Why "speed to decision" is the defining weapons system of the 21st century, and how the "Second Wave" of AI agents differs from the LLMs of today.
2Agentic Warfare Today
A technical look at two systems in action: Agentic Planning (Revolutionizing Joint Planning) and Agentic Alerting (The nervous system of the force).
3Reimagining The Way of War
How to navigate the shift to "On-the-Loop" command and the critical role of Test & Evaluation (T&E) in ensuring trust.
4Recommendations
A roadmap for the Department of War, Congress, and the White House to secure America’s first-mover advantage.
Continuous improvement with human decisions
Decisions today are communicated via voice and email, and the data is lost. In this new paradigm, every human decision is captured and fed back into an adaptive learning system to continuously improve future decisions. Data informs these systems while staying within the strict guardrails that prevent data leakage.
