Recommendations for Implementing Acquisition as a Warfighting Function
Practical implementation of acquisition as a warfighting function requires recognizing technology as a key warfighting domain, operationalizing the lessons from history, and enabling technology maneuver as the doctrinal framework across all levels of war.
Tactical Warfighting in the Technology Domain
The new integrated innovation ecosystem designates the Defense Innovation Unit and Strategic Capabilities Office as field activities, along with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, the Test Resource Management Center, and the Office of Strategic Capital. However, this construct does not sufficiently resource the tactical level of war in the technology domain. The services should establish technology reconnaissance detachments to pair technical forces with operational units. Technology maneuver elements at the tactical level must have clearly defined tactics, techniques, and procedures to enable frontline technology adaptation. The employment of technology combined arms teams should be institutionalized by continuing the integration of technical and operational forces in combatant commands and major exercises. The new integrated ecosystem and other defense experimentation units should link to operational units through these teams to demonstrate feasible entry points for new technologies.
The Air Force requires technology to access its primary warfighting domains and should therefore lead the way for the department by improving the integration of technical and operational forces across all levels of war. Technical officers and Futures Airmen should develop tactical adaptation experience early, empowered by the principle of decentralized initiatives to solve technological challenges at the point of need. A Technology Integrator Course should be established to produce Technology Integration Officers, who will serve as the Air Force’s tactical experts in the technology domain and will be empowered as both frontline problem solvers and instructors in the art of technology maneuver.
Operational Warfighting in the Technology Domain
Critically, responsibility for executing the operational level of war in the technology domain must be defined. The technology centers in each service—the Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, or Army Research Laboratory—are best postured to serve as technology operations centers. Living at the nexus of past, present, and future, with relationships across academia, industry, and government, they are best postured to quarterback the information flow between tactical innovation and strategic procurement, consolidating gains at scale across the Joint Force.
Federal technology centers must continue to unapologetically imagine new futures and execute the discovery and technology development work required to bring them to fruition. Federal research and development de-risks future technology and product innovation through constant interactions across discovery, development, delivery, and adaptation. Improving feedback loops between the tactical and strategic levels of war is required to maneuver at speed.
Strategic Warfighting in the Technology Domain
Technologists across the nation—in academia, industry, and federal research centers—must incorporate modularity, adaptability, and learning fast by failing faster into their ethos.
Acquirers should fully integrate technical forces into systems integration and development programs to mitigate technical risk and deliver new capabilities at the speed required by tactical-level warfighters.
Conclusion
The United States excels at maneuver warfare because it is most closely aligned with the American military ethos, which has always prioritized initiative, adaptability, and innovation. It is time to bring this concept into the digital age by establishing technology as a warfighting domain and adopting a maneuver approach to win against the United States’ adversaries. The United States’ historic ability to mobilize national treasure and talent across academia, government, and industry toward a war-winning technological vision is its asymmetric advantage. The United States has ceded key technological terrain, but a maneuver approach can help take it back.
Col. Katrina Schweiker is an active duty Air Force Officer. She is a 2025 military fellow with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
The author would like to thank the Department of the Air Force Pathfinder program and members of Project Doolittle for their active support and engagement in the development of this concept and their thoughtful review of this article.
The views expressed in this article represent the personal views of the author and are not necessarily the views of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Air Force, or The Air University.
