The Evolution of Combined Arms Warfare
Shoot. Move. Communicate
“War is increasingly complex.”
So goes the line from hundreds of military writers, leaders, politicians, and that podcast bro at the bar. And yet in war, the simplest things are hardest: accurate shooting, coordinated movement, clear communication…hell, even deciding where to sleep.
Shoot, move, communicate.
These three actions lie at the heart of all warfare. For all the drones in the sky and electrons fired in anger across the internet, all of warfare can be simplified to three functions (four if you’re a logistician). But not if you listen to the endless barrage of pundits, grifters, and know-nothing staffers. A lot of people who should know better want to pick their favorite weapon of the week as a magic victory button and a lot of people who want to sound smart parrot those talking points. You’d think we’d discovered a new dimension with unknown physical laws every time we build a shiny new toy. Blood and bone still hold ground, soldiers still die in the mud, and the end game is still to close with and destroy the enemy. That’s the nature of warfare. The shape that takes as culture, tactics, and technology evolve is what’s known as the character of warfare. But what does that all mean in 2025? Well, I thought I’d take the time to lay out a 101 brief on modern warfare, our ongoing technological evolutions, and what it means for the next battlefield.
What is combined arms warfare?
For the uninitiated, combined arms warfare is a symbiotic, team effort. Rather than just infantry (what you think of when you think of soldiers) marching through a battlefield to meet the enemy or long-range missiles rocking targets to break the population’s will, we synchronize these operations with others to make them more effective. Tanks with their armor and big guns work with nimble infantry to seize and hold ground, engineers clear gaps in minefields or other obstacles to open a new path for the tanks and infantry, helicopters and planes provide cover from above and strike deep in enemy territory to incite chaos, artillery blows up large formations of all of the above. Combined arms warfare is a symphony of destruction. When we work together, it’s a beauty like no other. When someone plays out of tune or misses a note, the enemy notices and tries to exploit it with their own music.
The Road So Far
Prior to the 20th Century, you had direct-fire cannonry, cavalry, and infantry working in concert from the perspective of a field general. But that wasn’t quite combined arms warfare as we think of it. Infantry stayed in infantry formations, artillery with artillery firing on their own targets, and cavalry either acting as reconnaissance or to flank the enemy and cause chaos in the rear by themselves. These groups still perform versions of these functions today, but beginning with the development of the wired and then wireless communications you begin to see experimentation with more synchronized effects. Rolling barrages of artillery from miles behind the front lines march forward ahead of infantry, horse cavalry is replaced with armored cavalry (tanks) as they cross trenches and push through other obstacles, and the first airplanes conduct reconnaissance and even limited bombing missions. These effects are coordinated and synchronized, forcing the enemy to have to deal with multiple challenges at once at the most opportune time, instead of sequentially or simultaneously in a way that is easier for the enemy to manage. Imagine the difference between getting jumped by two kickboxers in an alley vs someone punching you and saying “ok, your turn!”.
What you think of when it comes to combined arms warfare really comes into being through the experimentation of the interwar period between WWI and WWII, and implementation on the fields of global battlefields of WWII. Through wireless communications (radios), infantry and tanks begin to work in concert. Infantry clear buildings and take and hold ground while providing security for tanks (tanks can only see and shoot in so many directions at once). Tanks meanwhile provide additional firepower and security for infantry. Scouts, infantry, and anyone else with authority and a radio can call in artillery on enemy targets and even guide friendly aircraft on target with strafing and bombing runs. What people often get wrong about early German successes in WWII is that it wasn’t their superior tanks that won them the battles against the French, Poles, and Soviets alone. The elite German panzers we think of actually came a little later. The Germans were able to execute their blitzkrieg against the Allies in France so well in 1940 because they were early, large-scale adopters of radio communications so they could coordinate fires and maneuver on a much larger, faster scale than their early opponents! This, combined with their emphasis on mission command (allowing small units and lower commanders and NCOs to take initiative without detailed direction) gave them an early edge against the Allies. Up above, bombers are escorted by fighter planes and conduct strategic bombing of critical targets behind enemy lines to weaken their ability to get to and support the front lines. While air defense cannons fill the air with flak and lead as they try to down their prey.
After the war, we see various improvements to the capabilities of air, armor/cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Aircraft getter better engines, payloads, and guidance systems. Tanks get better optics, firepower, and armor, along with the mass adoption of mechanized infantry to keep pace with tanks. Artillery grows more powerful, becomes more mobile, guided missile and rocket artillery complements the traditional cannonry, and air defense artillery begins to develop capable surface to air missile (SAM) systems. We also see large-scale adoption of a few others: special operations forces (SOF), helicopters, electronic warfare, and of course, nuclear weapons. SOF provide exquisite capabilities from the ability to support targeting ahead of friendly and behind enemy lines, sabotage, direct action raids, and more. Helicopters provide improved medical evacuation, reconnaissance, airlift of troops and materiel, and close air support against tanks, vehicles, and soldiers. Nuclear weapons inspire a thousand nightmares and are the subject of separate but still relevant conversation. Over the last 50 years, weapons become more precise with guidance systems ranging from lasers to GPS to now emerging self-targeting capabilities (what you may think of as a *component* of autonomy). Digitization, various telecommunications technologies, and of course the internet all add to evolution of combat. Satellites provide intelligence and early warning, and strike at each other with lasers, electronic warfare, and even kinetic attacks. Yes, even the proverbial blue-haired hacker is a part of combined arms warfare in the 21st century, writing code for pre-packaged battlefield programs meant to take down drones via unprotected datalinks or striking deep in the rear on enemy infrastructure via a string of zero days to delay a counterattack as our forces seize an objective. And for all those ones and zeroes, the billions in R&D to create the perfect kill chain, the shiny toys on display at your local defense conference, we’re still beating each other to death in the mud over inches of ground and the person beside us.
Shoot, move, communicate.
The Character of Warfare in 2025
So where are we in 2025? Well, that’s the thing about the character of combined arms warfare: it builds on each past evolution. Infantry and tanks still communicate via radio on the move just like in WWII. Just now we have real-time map displays on internal computers, encrypted radios, thermal optics, and small UAS to throw up to improve situational awareness. Aircraft fire missiles from hundreds of miles beyond the target, led on target by internal software or third party guidance. Artillery still kills by the bushel, and even in an age of precision, massed fires are still the King of Battle…particularly in GPS and communications denied or degraded environments. If you’d like a brief read on what combined arms warfare looks like in Ukraine, I recommend this post that includes an interview with a Ukrainian commander.
In 2025, a hypersonic missile can fly thousands of miles to strike a single target built on the backs of days’ worth of intelligence collection, analysis, deception, and SOF-enabled targeting behind enemy lines…and simultaneously, a few blocks away one guy can beat another guy to death with a shovel in the same war for the same piece of ground.
The Future Starts Slow
But like, where are we going? I was promised my warbots. YOU, Tony, promised me my warbots.
To be fair, I told you how to build a robot army. And we’re working on it. You will get your warbots. You just won’t get your sanitized version of war to compliment the fiber optics and silicon. So as we build our warbots, as we put them in the field, toss them in the mud, and slam them into the enemy…we are doing this in concert with the flesh and blood of soldiers, the steel and advanced energetics of a 155mm artillery barrage, and the synchronized airstrikes of an F-35 squadron paving the way for the advance on the ground.
Enter Combined Minds Warfare.
I’ve written about this before, in fact, I coined the term. Where combined arms was about the different mechanical functions of war working together, this is about those functions linking in with the machines that have the ability to observe, orient, decide, and act for themselves. It’s not about replacing human with machine, but rather maximizing the speed and efficiency of each when they work together.
Warbots for enablers
At its least complex, the warbot is a sensor package. It can sit and observe, it can hunt, and it can collect on everything from weather to the presence of WMDs. These sensors already exist, you’re just throwing them on something that doesn’t require a human to sit bored for hours, days, weeks. Or you can use it to perform tasks, like large-area reconnaissance, that would take a human team a lot longer (though you still may need humans to confirm the results of that reconnaissance, sensor collection is not perfect and warbots break.) You also don’t have to constantly monitor or fly it like you would a Predator drone. Tell it where to go, what to look for, and report back when able. Analysis of what it sense may be on board, it might be in the rear with a larger processing system. Humans interpret this data and the results and feed it into their larger analysis. This data then goes into human decision-making at the tactical, operational, or strategic level. In other words, warbots are able to stay out in the field longer and in harsher (or more boring) conditions, collect data, and use that to enable how the larger force can shoot, move, and communicate.
But collection missions aren’t the only support function: Ukraine has used unmanned vehicles for casualty collection and there has been talk of using unmanned construction equipment to build fighting positions and the US is actively discussing how to make these work for their own formations. Why is this so important? Because the security required (bodies and guns) to protect construction missions and evacuation teams is significant, and for MEDEVAC, two to four soldiers are needed to carry every one injured soldier. If the warbot can do these jobs, that places a lot less stress on the frontlines, particularly while they’re under fire from the enemy.
Warbots as Fires.
Most famously you may think of the the First Person View (FPV) drones in Ukraine by both sides that seek out targets from on high, track them, and come screaming down for the kill. Some of these are human operated, some simply require humans to arm the warhead or sign off on the kill, some not at all (though these are very crude at the moment). The US Army actually classifies (for a few reasons) these sorts of drones like the Switchblade 300 as munitions, not UAS. And I think this is correct, FPV and other UAS carrying warheads (either internally or like traditional bombers) are just the latest evolution in a form of tactical fire support. They exist somewhere in the triangle between close air support, long-range missiles, and artillery depending upon capability and mission set. Fires support both the shoot and move functions. Obviously, they shoot and kill things. But they can also enable maneuver through the suppression of enemy fire and disruption of enemy maneuver. The warbot that can loiter on station and send back reconnaissance data to other warbots while it hunts a target is an extremely effective form of fires, the Russians have used it to great effect for both long-range strike and direct support ahead of ground maneuver in Ukraine.
For example, imagine an operation where UAS go forward and identify priority targets for more traditional artillery, once identified and passed back to the gun teams, the UAS go into attack mode and strike at counter-battery radar systems, preventing enemy artillery from striking back once your artillery hits its targets. This isn’t a drone replacing traditional artillery or aircraft, but making their existing functions more effective.
Warbots for Maneuver
The purpose of the infantry is to close with and destroy the enemy, seize and hold ground. Blood and bone hold ground because if your people aren’t on the ground the enemy didn’t want you to have, then why are you fighting? Human presence is the physical representation of the political change sought in war. A warbot is just a machine, and does not carry with it the same socio-political significance of a human marching down your street. Though it can still kill you.
The warbot in maneuver is the least developed of these three lines of effort. It is the very embodiment of “shoot, move, communicate” and so it requires the most complex tasks in the most complex and challenging terrains from the open oceans and littorals to urban hellscapes and swamps. You are also expected to survive the maneuver fight so you can push deeper into enemy territory or hold your own ground for longer. This requires the warbot in maneuver to be more rugged, durable, maintainable, and to carry a larger magazine. In order to build, test, and deploy these at scale on land, air, and sea, you need to build on the fires and enabler lines of effort and combine them into a single system. And the larger you build, the more complexity you introduce. That’s why you have to start small first. That’s how we evolved and war is no different.
The most common image of the warbot in maneuver in media is the Terminator robot, or something akin to it, but we’re far from that. Unmanned tanks and gun trucks are the most immediate innovations on the ground in the now and near future, and their counterparts at sea are also growing in firepower, range, and complexity. We’re also seeing combat engineers adopt these systems readily, as Sappers have some of the most dangerous missions in combined arms/minds operations: entering and opening the breach.
Imagine using using unmanned systems to clear paths in minefields, reducing human exposure in the breach and drawing enemy fire, while sappers finish clearing and marking paths for the rest of the formation to pass through and attack the enemy.
The Ukrainians have launched small raids with their new warbot forces with some success. Although the cost of these individual systems is quite high, and getting them to the reliability of manned systems will take time. War is the ultimate innovation lab, and the Ukrainians have led the way in a lot of novel and evolutionary progressions in all three major domains of warfare. But they’re not the only ones.
How do we win the age of combined minds?
Defense primes and startups in the US and around the world are chasing the evolution of the warbot, but there is a gap between our present and near-term abilities and the public’s understanding of those abilities. The challenges of technological maturity, ruggedization, mission relevancy, and production at scale keep planners awake at night, but overconfidence in a shiny toy makes me just as nervous. No matter how shiny the tech or extensive the lines of code, all serve the basic functions of shoot, move, communicate. If we lose sight of that, if we choose to chase silver bullets, we will open ourselves up to the kind of failure we cannot easily recover from when the shooting starts. The priority for the US is preparing for a war over Taiwan, something I’ve covered extensively in this blog. And so the priority of warbot research is focused on that fight, and it covers every domain. The high-tech fight may get the news coverage, but on the ground and at sea, it will be the bloodiest of knife fights that can only be won by the successful coordination of man and machine.
In war, the simplest things are hardest. The elements make them harder. Rust, moisture, dust, cold, heat, etc. are things that annoy humans but they don’t deadline our bodies on their own. These evolutions also don’t replace exquisite systems, but rather augment them. Why burn an F-35 for a mission that a few bots worth 1/5 the cost of a single F-35 can achieve under the same conditions? And why burn hundreds of bots when the stealth, payload, and range of an F-35 can do the same damage?
Threats come and go, war and people evolve, but no matter the challenge, if we can focus on mastering the triad of “shoot, move, communicate" in all that we build; then the age of combined minds warfare can still be won.
If you would like to read more about the future of US-China conflict or what happens when we unilaterally disarm from the AI arms race, check out my novel, EX SUPRA, about the world after the fall of Taiwan, an isolationist and hyper-partisan America, and World War III. It was nominated for a Prometheus Award for best science fiction novel and there’s a sequel in the works! If you have any suggestions for topics for future newsletters, please send them my way on BlueSky @tonystark.bsky.social. And don’t forget to subscribe!