Nex-Gen Software is Needed to Stay Ahead on the Battlefield: Communist China poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security in generations. Under President Trump, defense planners are rightly prioritizing this threat. As Secretary of Defense Hegseth underscored at the Shangri-La Dialogue earlier this year, the threat China poses is real and it could be imminent. It is imperative that the U.S. military and defense industrial base be fully prepared to meet this challenge.
Our military is in dire need of exquisite hardware, including next-generation platforms, long-range munitions, as well as the introduction of low-cost, autonomous, attritable systems. These capabilities are essential to deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. But importantly, rebuilding our military will require more than new and advanced hardware. In today’s evolving and high-tech battlefield environment, our troops need the software necessary to out maneuver and out think our adversaries.
In a conflict with China, the United States will need a widely accessible Common Intelligence Picture/Common Operating Picture (CIP/COP) that will allow commanders and intelligence officers to see, understand, and act with speed and confidence. The ability to sense, know, decide and act has always been at the heart of warfare, but in the modern era, the nation that can do this better than others will be the one to prevail through competition, and if need be, crisis and conflict.
In a real conflict, the operations center at Indo-Pacific Command will receive intelligence from various sources, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) inputs from satellites in orbit, our forces on the ground, our submarines underwater, and numerous others. The ability to intake and synthesize this information into actionable insights will be the most consequential challenge for U.S. commanders.
But until recently, producing a timely, relevant, and broadly accessible picture was merely aspirational. Without one, these data streams form disjointed puzzle pieces that are difficult to assemble within the compressed decision timelines of modern war. Many civilians might be surprised to learn that even history’s most powerful military often operates without a full understanding of where its own assets are in time and space, let alone where our adversaries’ assets may be. There are many reasons for this, but at its core, every combatant commander has longed for a single, unified picture to help pierce through the fog of war. For the first time in our nation’s history, we finally have the tools to produce it. Software makes that possible.
Breakthroughs in AI and data fusion by companies like Palantir succeed where decades of prior efforts have failed. Tools like Maven seamlessly integrate a bewildering array of intelligence feeds and open-source data into one digestible, dynamic, and actionable view. Instead of a carrier strike group, a Marine Expeditionary Force, and the combatant command back at HQ all operating off different depictions of the battlespace, Maven makes it possible for them to operate from the same living map—one that updates in real-time, across echelons and domains.
Critically, in conflict, there’s no time for reconciling competing feeds or translating between incompatible systems. Successful Joint All-Domain Command and Control depends on unity of action—and unity of action depends upon unity of understanding.
That means the tool chosen by the Pentagon should be the same one used by our intelligence agencies, combatant commands, and warfighters at the edge. Everyone must be looking at the same picture. The commercial world has already solved this problem.
But it is not enough to invent these tools. We must implement them.
As Sun Tzu famously once said, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” Now is the time to invest in cutting edge software that will bring our military into the future.
Doing so will enable our leaders to deter conflict, and our warfighters to fight and win if necessary.
About the Author: General Lee Levy
Gen. Lee Levy (USAF Ret.) was Commanding General of the Air Force Sustainment Center from 2015-18. He is currently a Senior Vice President at American Global Strategies LLC. Levy brings distinguished military service as well as unparalleled global leadership and expertise in national and international security policy, acquisition, sustainment, logistics, global supply chains, advanced manufacturing, civil engineering, strategic planning, strategic deterrence/nuclear weapons and munitions, and joint/multinational military operations as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
D-O-Y-L-E
July 23, 2025 at 1:06 pm
Heh, the greatest threat is the big massive ring of steel already, already, already already put in place starting right after 1945.
But the real bona fide ‘arms race’ is the quality of leadership seen in the two capitals of the two countries.
One country seens (most of the time) able to ‘order’ the other to dance to its tune.
The other thinks it’s okay to be sucking at that other fella’s tits.
That difference between the two is THE REAL ARMS RACE.
WHO DO YA THINK GONNA WIN ?
Jim
July 23, 2025 at 1:26 pm
Yes, it’s all about coordination & precision.
We all know what China’s biggest military buildup in its modern history and last 500 years is about:
Taiwan.
And computer sophistication and autonomy in decision making is crucial in today’s modern military forces.
Can it be disrupted or blocked?
That may lead to space warfare against satellite connectivity.
But getting back to Earth, Taiwan sits one hundred miles off mainland China. Taiwan is roughly 7,000 miles from Los Angeles and 5,000 miles from Hawaii.
So, Taiwan sits within interior lines of logistics for defense & attack for China’s military to practice on, and they have been regularly.
Instead of spoiling for a fight, the United States needs to take the lead and get the best deal for Taiwan and the United States relationship with Taiwan and China that we can.
Peaceful reunification with a date-certain handoff.
It can be done. Let’s not repeat what happened when the last (newly industrialized) Asian Power went to war. Japan in the 20th Century and a World War.
Now, we’re solidly staring war in the face in the 21st Century from another Asian Power… for what, a postage stamp sized island province with 23 million people as opposed to the largest country in Asia, population 1.2 billion with possibly the largest manufacturing base on Earth.
Which we have already agreed should be reunified with China, see official One China Policy at State Department.
Back in the war against Japan, the enemy had roughly 10% of U. S. manufacturing capacity and long logistics lines to the sinews of war, natural resources.
Every objective, military affairs analyst knows fighting China over Taiwan is the equivalent to the U. S. S. Titanic sailing straight ahead at the Taiwanese Iceberg…
… with plenty of time to steer clear… get the best deal we can for the sake of the American People.