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Future force development must work across many contingencies, not just one. The FFS is not trying to recreate a model. It is working to identify patterns that are likely to persist, through analysis of strategic foresight work and hundreds of rounds of modelling and simulation, and to convert them into Force Design Options (FDOs) that decision-makers can use.

How the FFS turns intelligence into options

The Future Force Study follows a simple pipeline:

• Collect and refine intelligence from credible sources, handling attribution and sensitivity carefully.
• Translate intelligence into testable hypotheses (statements that can be challenged, not just repeated).
• Test hypotheses through war-gaming, modelling and simulation, and structured expert engagement.
• Shape the implications into FDOs, defined as coherent packages of choices, each with explicit trade-offs.

In other words, the FFS is not “trend-spotting”. Instead, it is a method for converting what is seen into decisions that can be defended.

Two areas shaping current work: uncrewed systems and electronic warfare

Among the most consequential observations from the conflict in Ukraine are the rapid evolution of uncrewed systems and the contested nature of the electromagnetic spectrum (often experienced as “electronic warfare”). These are not separate stories; they are tightly linked. Uncrewed systems rely on sensing, communications, and navigation, all of which depend on access to the electromagnetic spectrum and are therefore highly vulnerable to disruption.

1) Uncrewed systems: contact is extremely hard to avoid

A recurring observation is that tactical contact is increasingly something that happens to you, not something you choose to establish. Small, cheap, and numerous uncrewed systems can expand sensing and compress the time between detection and engagement.

Several implications follow for future force design:

• The battlefield is more transparent, but unevenly so. Visibility fluctuates with environment, weather, countermeasures, and competence. Forces must be able to operate under variable visibility: sometimes seen, sometimes not, often uncertain.
• “Mass” can be generated in new ways. Effects can be massed through combinations of distributed sensors, rapid targeting, and relatively low-cost strikes, changing how formations concentrate, manoeuvre, and protect themselves.
• Adaptation cycles are fast. Techniques and counter-techniques evolve quickly. A future force must be designed to adapt at pace, not just procure at pace. That is as much about training, authority, and learning loops as it is about equipment.

The FFS is therefore treating uncrewed systems less as a shopping list and more as a set of design characteristics which include: the ability to sense and strike at scale, to protect manoeuvre under observation, and to regenerate capability rapidly if degraded.

2) Electronic warfare (EW): disruption is normal, not exceptional

Another enduring observation from Russia’s war in Ukraine is that the spectrum is contested almost by default: communications are jammed, navigation is degraded, and emissions can betray positions. In this environment, a force that assumes uninterrupted connectivity is brittle.

The FFS is drawing out several implications:

• Resilience must be built from the start. Connectivity cannot be treated as an always-on utility. Forces need redundancy, alternatives, and the ability to keep functioning as systems degrade.
• Operating “quiet” is a practical skill. Electronic signature management is not only camouflage and movement discipline, it is also how units use radios, radars, and data links, and how they deceive. These behaviours must be trained and rehearsed, not left to improvisation.
• Distributed decision-making and enablement are essential. When higher headquarters cannot reliably direct, coordinate or support, mission command becomes a requirement. This is a force design question about training, authorities, and confidence to act under uncertainty.

Here, too, the point is not to elevate EW as a specialist niche. The observation is that spectrum contestation is now woven through manoeuvres, fires, air defence, and sustainment, so the response has to be built into how forces plan, train, and operate.

What “Force Design Options” (FDOs) look like in practice

The value of these observations is that they force clear choices. The FFS is working to express those choices as FDOs that are understandable, testable, and useful to planners, not as single-point solutions, but as coherent packages.

The trade-offs tend to look like this:

• Protection vs agility: hardening key nodes and formations versus dispersing and moving – and the sustainment implications of each.
• Centralized control vs distributed execution: reliance on connectivity for co-ordination versus designing to act effectively when it is degraded.
• Platform-centric vs system-centric investment: exquisite platforms alone versus the sensing, deception, connectivity, and logistics that make them survivable and relevant.
• Peacetime efficiency vs wartime adaptability: optimizing for steady-state processes versus building the institutional capacity to integrate new tools and tactics quickly.

A careful reading of what is happening in Ukraine suggests that no single answer works everywhere. What matters is that the options are clear, the assumptions behind them are understood, and the force can still operate when disrupted.

Designing for a contested future

The Future Force Study is using observations from the conflict in Ukraine as a catalyst – not to chase novelty, but to sharpen what is becoming more common: pervasive sensing, rapid targeting, contested spectrum, and accelerated adaptation. The task is to convert those observations into tested hypotheses and, ultimately, into Force Design Options leaders can adopt with confidence.

At its core, this is about building a future force that remains credible when the environment is uncertain, communications are contested, and adaptation is the difference between success and failure.