Building the Hybrid Force 

A platform that can draw information from other sensors, pass targets to the best weapon, receive protection from another domain and keep operating when the network is disrupted is more effective than one that merely senses, communicates and strikes alone. 

The UK’s Royal Navy describes this through six functions: sense, decide, effect, connect, host and enable. A hybrid force distributes these across crewed and uncrewed systems rather than concentrating them in a few platforms.

That is a change in force design, not merely fleet composition. Integration cannot be added after the force has been designed. It must be the organising principle. This requires several shifts: 

• From fixed organisations to modular forces built around the mission. 

• From concentrating platforms to concentrating effects. 

• From sequential service coordination to joint, multi-domain integration. 

• From centralised control of information to distributed execution. 

• From periodic modernisation to continuous adaptation. 

The aim is not to replace established crewed, heavy or costly capabilities. Many remain essential. It is to integrate them into a wider system that extends reach, improves protection and reduces unnecessary exposure. 

An armoured vehicle, ship, aircraft and the individual soldier are more than platforms or equipment users. Each is a networked node, able to sense, decide, share information, carry systems and contribute to coordinated effects. 

Much discussion about autonomy focuses on whether a human is ‘in the loop’ or ‘on the loop’. This is too narrow. The real questions are these: who sets the purpose? Who decides acceptable risk? Who has authority to employ force? How many systems can one person supervise? What happens when the network fails or the machine is wrong? 

AI can process data, identify patterns and recommend actions faster than a human staff. Autonomous systems can navigate, search, monitor and perform dangerous tasks without constant manual control. Their greatest value is accelerating analysis and coordination, not replacing human decision-making. The objective is clear: command by humans, enabled by machines and governed by defined authorities. 

Human control does not require a person to fly every uncrewed aircraft or approve every navigation decision. That wastes the speed and scale autonomy provides. The human role is purpose, context, risk, ethics and accountability. 

Involvement levels vary by mission. A logistics vehicle on a cleared route presents a different problem from a weapon searching for a target in a populated area. Doctrine and command authorities must recognise that difference.

AI can produce a confident answer that is wrong. Sensors can be deceived, data corrupted and communications jammed. Autonomous systems can behave unpredictably outside their design assumptions. The force must challenge machine-generated advice and continue operating without it. Commanders remain accountable for the employment of force. Doctrine and training must make that clear before an incident, not after one. 

As a result, mission command will become more important, not less. Distributed operations require junior leaders who understand the commander’s intent and can act when disconnected from higher headquarters. Faster machines do not remove the need for judgement; they place more pressure on it. 

One early force-design question is where autonomous capability should sit. One model gives tactical units direct access to drones for reconnaissance, attack, electronic warfare and logistics. The other concentrates specialist personnel and systems for development, training, certification, maintenance and operational support. Both are needed, but the sequence matters. 

New and complex capabilities should first be concentrated. This builds technical competence, safety and operational standards, doctrine and configuration control. Once these foundations are sound, capability can be distributed to the formations that need it. Ukraine shows why. Necessity drove it to distribute equipment before the supporting institution was mature. That gave frontline units speed and adaptability when neither could wait. It also produced fragmented training, incompatible systems and weak configuration control. We should adopt Ukraine’s pace of adaptation while building the institutional coherence that war did not allow it to establish first. 

The answer is to concentrate expertise while distributing operational access. Specialist organisations develop, integrate and certify capability. Mission-tailored teams support formations. Tactical units own common systems used daily. Scarce expertise and complex capabilities remain in specialist pools and are assigned by mission. 

The same applies to multi-domain effects. A formation need not own every capability, but it must access the effects it needs at operational speed. This can create smaller, more dispersed formations with greater reach and lethality. It will not create a cheaper force. Such formations need better people, stronger communications, deeper technical support and more demanding training. Technology may reduce some manpower requirements, but it creates others in software, data, maintenance, electronic warfare and systems integration. 

Dispersion also creates a sustainment burden. Batteries, components, software updates, replacement airframes and repair capacity become operational requirements. A force that can launch hundreds of systems but cannot maintain or replace them does not possess sustainable mass. 

Hybrid operations will fail if each service, platform and agency maintains a separate picture of the fight. The force requires a common operational understanding, interoperable data, clear command relationships and the ability to combine effects within the time available. This does not mean placing every organisation under one commander. Military services, intelligence bodies, civil agencies and national institutions retain their legal responsibilities and chains of command. The requirement is shared warning, common planning, agreed authorities and a disciplined operational rhythm. Integration does not mean institutional ownership. It means connecting organisations so they can act together under pressure. 

The digital architecture is central. Defence cannot afford separate data, AI and command-and-control systems that cannot exchange information. It requires one coherent digital spine, designed, governed and assured at enterprise level. Common standards, secure interfaces, interoperable data and clear ownership must apply across the force. 

This matters especially for AI. An uncoordinated race to field isolated tools will create duplication, incompatible data and uneven assurance, undermining interoperability and transformation. AI must move at pace, but within a unified architecture, common governance and a shared data foundation. 

Traditional readiness measures remain necessary but are no longer sufficient. The availability of units, crews and platforms does not show whether the hybrid force can operate as one system. 

A formation may report high equipment availability while its software is outdated, data links incompatible, operators uncertified and electronic signatures easy to find. On paper it is ready. In combat it is not. 

Hybrid-force readiness should test: 

1. Data and network interoperability. 

2. Human-machine teaming. 

3. Cross-domain targeting and effects. 

4. Operations under electronic attack and network loss. 

5. Rapid reconfiguration of modular forces. 

6. Repair, replacement and software support. 

7. Decision-making across military and relevant national agencies. 

8. The ability to challenge and override machine recommendations. 

The force cannot be certified one platform at a time. It must be tested as a fighting system. We also need a harder measure of adaptability: the time from battlefield feedback to a fielded correction. This may be a software update, new sensor, modified tactic, countermeasure or change in authority. If it takes years, it will arrive too late. If an opponent can identify a weakness, develop an answer and field it faster, nominal technological advantage will disappear. 

Exercises should include deception, disrupted communications, inaccurate machine recommendations and heavy equipment losses. Opposing forces must be allowed to adapt. Industry and technical partners should participate where that shortens the learning cycle. Readiness is not the absence of failure. It is the ability to detect failure, learn from it and correct it before the opponent can exploit it. 

The acquisition system must also change. Complex aircraft, ships and strategic systems require disciplined, long-term procurement. Drones, counter-UAS systems, electronic warfare, sensors and software operate on a different cycle. Buying all through the same process guarantees that many will be outdated before they enter service. 

We need two speeds. The first supports major platforms where safety, integration and long service life demand extensive testing. The second supports technologies that must be developed, tested and fielded in months, if not weeks. 

For the second, operators, engineers, procurement staff and industry must work together around operational problems. Requirements cannot remain fixed while the threat and technology change. Short development cycles, field testing and rapid feedback must become normal practice. 

National industry must be treated as a warfighting partner, not a vendor at arm’s length. This does not mean weakening accountability. It means involving industry early, sharing operational problems, setting open standards and judging results in realistic conditions. Sovereign capability is not achieved merely by assembling a foreign design locally. It depends on control of data, interfaces, software,
integration knowledge, supply chains and the capacity to repair and modify systems without external permission. 

Attritable systems require adequate stocks and production lines that can replace losses. In the UAE, the emphasis of the Tawazun Council for Defence Enablement on aligning national requirements, industrial capability and long-term outcomes is directly relevant. Institutional coherence changes how quickly defence, industry and research organisations can respond. In the hybrid era, readiness must include what a nation can modify, manufacture and replace during the fight. 

Defence leaders should prepare for six requirements. First, build the integration architecture before buying fleets of disconnected systems. Common standards, data ownership and command relationships must come first. 

Second, redesign forces around missions and effects. Crewed and uncrewed systems should be combined through modular groupings, not attached to legacy structures without changing how those structures fight. 

Third, invest in people as seriously as in technology. The force needs commanders, operators, engineers, maintainers, data specialists and acquisition professionals who understand the system as a whole. Recruitment, training, education and career development must build the technical literacy, cross-domain understanding and adaptability needed to operate, sustain and evolve an integrated force. 

Fourth, delegate authority within clear boundaries. Hybrid operations will move too quickly for every decision to return to a
central headquarters. 

Fifth, make experimentation part of force generation. Testing, red teaming and adaptation cannot remain occasional activities outside the operational force. 

Sixth, prepare the industrial base for endurance. The opening days of conflict will consume systems, munitions and components at a rate peacetime planning often underestimates. 

Above all, leaders must build intrinsic adaptability into their organisations. We should not design a force merely to copy what is working in current conflicts, or even the next conflict. 

By the time that force is delivered, the technology and countermeasures will have moved on. The purpose of transformation is not to produce one final design. It is to create a force that can keep changing. 

The hybrid force is already emerging. Crewed platforms will remain essential, but they will operate within a more distributed system of sensors, autonomous systems, software, networks and joint effects. 

The decisive contest will not be between the human and the machine. It will be between forces that can integrate and adapt, and those that cannot. That demands a force-wide mindset. Capabilities must be developed and employed for the effectiveness of the whole force, not protected as separate institutional domains. 

This is first a senior leadership responsibility. Transformation will fail if leaders defend individual budgets, platforms or institutional interests. Senior leaders must act as one team, set a common direction and accept collective accountability for the force that emerges. 

Technology will continue to move quickly. Organisational change will remain harder. Command authorities, doctrine, training, procurement and industrial relationships must all keep pace. 

Those that succeed will not necessarily possess the greatest number of platforms or the most advanced system. They will be the forces that combine human judgement, machine speed, distributed action and industrial capacity into one coherent fighting system. Integration is the capability. Adaptation is the advantage.