Blind, Burn and Blast: Lessons for Today’s Department of War
The fighting concept known as “blind ’em, burn ’em, blast ’em” was a practical assault technique for reducing Japanese fortified positions in the fight-to-the-death Marine campaigns during WWII. It was taught to us at The Basic School (TBS) at Quantico during the Vietnam War.
Blind with smoke grenades, burn with a flame thrower and then blast with munitions, often a satchel charge of TNT. This combat lesson was learned up close, point by point, and ultimately, we won.
Now it is time to return to first principles but expand the engagement concept to a global one, probably again in the Pacific Theater, with U.S. air, sea, space and land warriors employing and engaging in our 21st Century Kill Web, “fighting at the speed of light,” an evolving doctrine.
In our 2022 book, A Maritime Kill Web Force in the Making: Deterrence and Warfighting in the 21st Century, we describe the kill web as part of an integrated, distributed force, where sensors, decision-makers, shooters, autonomous systems, networks, and allies can be combined differently according to the combat situation.
The fundamental question is now simply this: Which combination of distributed capabilities can generate the required effects?
- A fighter can contribute sensing rather than weapons.
- A ship can contribute weapons without being the sensor.
- An F-35 can contribute targeting information to another shooter.
- An unmanned system can extend sensing.
- Electronic warfare can alter the enemy’s ability to perceive or communicate.
- A Marine unit can contribute a sensor to a joint engagement.
- An allied platform can become part of the same operational web.
Consequently, there is a profound difference in scope and complexity, but the fundamental concept of engagement can be extrapolated from the WWII fight to a 21st Century force-on-force engagement. This is because the Pacific bunker fight was fundamentally about reducing a physical position, and the kill web is increasingly about reducing an enemy system.
A bunker might be only one node in that system. The modern kill web force can potentially attack the enemy’s:
- sensing,
- communications,
- command and control,
- maneuver,
- logistics,
- air defenses,
- fires,
- electromagnetic spectrum,
- cyber systems,
- and physical forces.
The underlying logic is surprisingly continuous.
Today’s Marines and other services don’t ask “How do I attack this thing?”
Rather, they ask “What combination of capabilities creates the required effect?”
The difference is that the WWII Marine had a flamethrower and satchel charge, whereas the modern kill web potentially has an enormous distributed collection of sensors, networks, electronic warfare, aircraft, ships, missiles, artillery, cyber capabilities, unmanned systems, and allied forces to draw upon.
Why is this evolving lineage of successful combat important in today’s warfighting?
Two new warfighting capabilities are now developing rapidly: Super-Intelligence (SI) and drone warfare. Both are hugely significant yet modestly understood, but make no mistake, both are revolutionary in their future impact on the battle space.
To say that both SI and drones (shorthand for R&D developments across air, sea, land and space) are revolutionary may understate such a seminal, step-function advance in supporting, equipping and training our military to fight and win.
Distinguishing SI from drones is simple. SI is the “blind ’em” enabler: it confuses the enemy while enhancing Kill Web effectiveness, whereas drones fit more into the kinetic burn-and-blast part of the saying. One caveat: SI can also make the things that burn and blast more effective. However, both are also stand-alone R&D technology challenges: get it first and get it right.
This is our Department of War’s current blind spot.
Architect Louis Sullivan wrote in 1896 that “form ever follows function.” His original idea was that a building’s physical form should arise from what it is meant to do, rather than imposing an arbitrary form first. From an architect’s blueprints to an organization’s top-down wiring diagram, the principle is the same.
Form must follow function, so both SI and drones have specific functions.
SI is an easy technological case to make for reorganizing the current Department of War structure.
United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is the U.S. military command responsible for conducting and coordinating cyber operations for the Department of Defense. Established in 2009 and headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, it focuses on three core missions:
- Defending Department of Defense networks
- Supporting military operations worldwide through cyber capabilities
- Defending the United States against significant cyber threats
The defensive dimension of Cyber Command centers on protecting information integrity and the perpetual encryption competition: can we break our adversaries’ encryption while protecting our own?
The Current Organizational Framework: CDAO and JADC2
AI currently sits organizationally within the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), which now serves as the central AI coordination office for the Pentagon. As of 2025, the office was realigned under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E)).
The principal applied AI engine remains Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), which aims to connect:
- Aircraft
- Ships
- Satellites
- Ground forces
- Cyber assets
- AI systems
All of these capabilities are being fused into a unified “kill web” way of fighting, representing a substantial advantage over the People’s Liberation Army and its forces.
Embedding AI within the emerging U.S. kill web architecture, developed and protected by Cyber Command, is a strategically sound move. Kill webs involve fighting at the speed of light within a multi-domain payload utility function, connecting sensors and shooters across platforms for target acquisition and engagement.
The value of information, what the Navy once called “the poop,” remains paramount. Maintaining laser focus on the quality, trustworthiness, and integrity of AI-assisted information flowing into life-and-death decision-making at every level of engagement demands a rigorous quality assurance process. A fused AI/Cyber Command can provide exactly that.
Now enter a proposed new “drone” four-star command:
The Pentagon is creating a new four-star command to oversee the military’s push into autonomous warfare, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the technology is advancing faster than the military’s acquisition system can keep up.
His solution to this problem is conceptually correct but “bigly” wrong organizationally.
The legislated mandate of the Services is to organize, train and equip. The Services are better at that than any four-star, top-down effort at unity of purpose.
It is simple: the Services know their warfighting domains. They have brilliant research labs and field-testing organizations (think air, sea, space and land ranges, all geographically diverse test ranges) AND they report directly to the Secretary and Congress. Why create a four-star command to interfere with a process that is always stress-tested on the range and in combat?
Ironically the Secretary has already solved the problem of oversight:
The announcement comes three months after Hegseth consolidated the Defense Department’s unmanned and autonomous systems under a new Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, or DRPM-UxS. The office reports directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steven Feinberg and was established to oversee the development, procurement, fielding and sustainment of unmanned and autonomous systems across the department.
Let that stand and have the DRPM-UxS coordinate with the Services. It will bring much more creativity through inter-service competition and some rivalry. Rivalry is not a throwaway word, because warfare technology development has both an offensive and a defensive component. The more the merrier: having the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force address research, development and testing independently, but with unity of purpose, is a good thing.
I will quote former CJCS General Milley, which in this Administration may not make me any friends, but he made a very astute point about leadership and buying weapons, which is fundamentally what a drone is:
“I think the best methods of management are to empower and decentralize,” he said. “I think that I should be able to look at somebody and say here’s your task, here’s why you are doing it, here’s the purpose, here’s the end state that I want you to achieve by such-and-such a time. Go forth and have at it. If you succeed at it, you’re promoted and I’ll give you a medal. If you fail, you’re fired … you are operating off intent and purpose and you hold people accountable to it. That applies in acquisition just as it applies on the battlefield. That’s what I would like to do.”
Since the current leadership wants to move drones to an independent four-star command, while already having a well-thought-out senior OSW office, why don’t they make a much smarter move: keep that office, while concurrently moving their SI “thinkers” into the preexisting four-star Cyber Command and, oh by the way, simply add SI to the name?
Form follows function.
Secretary Hegseth might not agree, but Congress might seriously consider the options presented in this article.