[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist launched its CALLING ALL CREATORS Multi-Media Contest on 10 December 2025 with the following Army Transformation Challenge:
Contemporary conflicts around the globe have demonstrated the ever-increasing speeds at which warfighting innovations are being fielded — granting a combatant decisive battlefield advantage — until effective 
counter-measures are fielded by an adversary. These rapid cycles of innovation and counter-innovation currently provide only a few weeks (at best) of advantage.
How can the U.S. Army and Joint Force break this cycle and field robust and resilient capabilities that provide enduring battlefield advantage?
We received a total of 29 contest entries, running the gamut of multi-media — from haikus, illustrated poems, and riddles; images and posters; comics and graphic stories; a video, illustrated essays, Fictional Intelligence (FICINT) stories/scenarios, an interactive web experience, and even a strategic decision game! To everyone who took the time to consider our challenge, then craft and submit an entry, please accept a hearty Mad Scientist “Thank you!”
Today’s post features two entries that tied as the contest’s first runner-up (“silver”) submissions, as scored by our panel of T2COM G-2 judges against the following rubric:
R1. Does the submission address the Army Transformation Challenge writing prompt (identified above)?
R2. Does the author make a clear, coherent, and compelling case for why the topic is important to the Army?
R3. Did the submission explore this topic in a creative, novel, and innovative way?
R4. Is this submission “edgy” (i.e., does it broaden and expand our understanding of the Operational Environment in a new way)?
R5. Should the submission be featured as a blog post (i.e., is it “blog-worthy”) or publishable?
R6. Is this submission a contender for being selected as the contest’s winner (i.e., “the best of the best of the best”)?
Taken together, these two submissions provide us with vital insights into the rapidly evolving Operational Environment and how we can build enduring battlefield advantage — by bringing machine speed to the cognitive domain, augmenting human capabilities through Human-Artificial Intelligence (AI) Teaming, and integrating resilient, layered, and distributed defenses against swarming Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) — Enjoy!]
The first of these “silver” submissions was the interactive web experience entitled The Autonomy Dial: Breaking the Innovation Cycle by Keeping Humans in the Fight, submitted by a team consisting of:
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- Demetrius Hernandez, PhD Student, University of Notre Dame (Computer Science)
- Tomas Sousa Pereira, PhD Student, University of Notre Dame (Computer Science)
- Eleanor Frederick, Undergraduate Student, University of Notre Dame (Computer Science)
- 2d Lt Tristan Hernandez, United States Air Force
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This experience shows how adjustable autonomy and Human–Artificial Intelligence (AI) teaming can build enduring advantage by keeping operators cognitively ready when AI is disrupted in contested and degraded 
environments. Check out this insightful submission here and cycle through several iterations to experience the conditions leading to our understanding that “Any single capability gets countered. The way to break the cycle is to make the advantage architectural — AI that accelerates decisions while keeping operators sharp.”
Our second “silver” submission is a FICINT piece entitled Vermin, Terriers, and Transformers, authored by Colin Steele. This insightful piece explores the challenge UAV swarming presents — “When your adversary’s strike capability costs $500 and your countermeasure costs $3,000,000, you don’t have a defense problem. You have an infestation problem.” Mr. Steele proposes a sea-change in how we understand and counter this threat capability — not with one defense, but a layered, adaptive, and responsive set of counter-measures — and provides us with four vital, hard-hitting Operational Environment implications.
Vermin, Terriers, and Transformers
San Francisco Bay. Tuesday Morning. 4:47 AM.
The containers start surfacing a half-mile off Crissy Field.
They’ve been on the ocean floor for three years, dropped from a cruddy no-name fishing vessel that never raised suspicion. Pressure-sealed. Ambient cold keeping battery self-discharge near zero. Waiting for an encrypted acoustic trigger that arrived sixteen seconds ago.
The first wave breaks the surface at 4:47. By 4:52, there are dozens of drones in the air, flying low, heading for the Marina District. They’re not fast. They don’t need to be. They settle onto rooftops, into heavy vegetation, onto the flat gravel of parking structures. Solar panels kick on. They wait.
This scene has been repeating itself, up and down both coasts, for almost six months. Thousands and thousands of drones. Undetected.
The next morning, they hop again. Inland. Presidio. Pacific Heights. Some make it to SoMa [South of Market Street].
They move in short bursts. Five minutes of flight, maybe ten. Maybe a whole hour. Then, hours and sometimes days of waiting and recharging.
By Thursday, there are drones perched on rooftops in the Financial District. The Transamerica Pyramid. Salesforce Tower. UCSF Medical Center.
The rest of this cohort is farther inland. They might not even be using GNSS – navigating by sight by popping up to 2,000 feet from time to time. Eventually, some of them make it over the mountains.
A few weeks later, a handful from this group are as far inland as Idaho.
Their target isn’t hospitals or schools (terror targets). The target is Large Power Transformers (LPTs). These transformers are massive (300+ tons), custom-built, 
and mostly imported. There is no strategic reserve of spares. If they blow up one, it takes weeks to replace. If they blow up 50 simultaneously, the manufacturing lead time is years. If they blow up a few hundred of them, things are bad. For a long time. Without firing a single shot, or killing a single person, and by spending less than 100 million dollars.
This is a logical extension of public, non-classified information. The tech exists and the strategy is obvious. Upward falling payloads from 2013. Edge AI from 2025. Lilypadding. Ukraine. The only question is whether someone is already doing this.
We’re vulnerable. The traditional playbook, the “Rule of Steel,” collapses against this threat.
Every Current Strategy Fails
Kinetic (Shoot It Down)
You’re firing weapons over the Marina District. A Patriot missile doesn’t 
care that there’s a preschool downrange. Neither does the debris from the drone you just exploded. “We successfully defended Salesforce Tower but killed 135 people in North Beach” is not a press release anyone wants to write.
Kinetic defense assumes a front line. A perimeter. Somewhere “over there” where engagement is acceptable. When the “phone call is coming from inside the house”, that’s way different.
Electronic Warfare (Jam It / Fry It)
These drones are HOLO, or Human Out of the Loop. Not FPV. No operator. No command link to jam. No GPS to spoof. They navigate by sight, make decisions on-board, and execute pre-programmed missions. Your jammers are screaming at nothing.
And even if they were RF-connected, the FCC has opinions about flooding the spectrum over downtown San Francisco. Strong opinions. Only DOD/DHS/DOJ have statutory authority to operate jammers domestically. The power company cannot legally do this. Neither can the hospital, or SalesForce tower, or a packed-to-capacity football stadium.
Nets (and Other Clever Low-Tech Solutions)
“Just put nets around everything.”
I mean, it’s not the worst idea.
But you’re not netting the Transamerica Pyramid. You’re not netting 200,000 miles of power transmission lines. 
And a net doesn’t stop a contact-fused payload. It just gives the attacker a predictable detonation point directly above your asset.
Point-Targeted Directed Energy Weapons
The defense wonks will say: “Modern DEWs are surgical. Point-targeted. Not cones of death.”
Sure. In a desert. In a theater of war, with military authorization.
But in a city, even surgical beams have a “downrange”. What’s behind the drone you’re targeting? Buildings full of electronics. People with pacemakers. Airliners on approach to SFO. And even if you fry it cleanly, it still falls. Ten-pound brick, tumbling out of the sky, over a crowded sidewalk.
Hope
This is the current strategy for most civilian infrastructure. Cross your fingers and assume the bad guys haven’t figured out how cheap drones are.
Spoiler: they figured it out.
The Vermin Problem
I hope that somewhere in a Pentagon briefing room, there’s a slide deck with the word “Vermin” on it.
Not “enemy combatants.” Not “hostile actors.” Vermin.
It’s a silly analogy, fine. But it’s not that far off.
I hope our military has started using pest control language to describe drone swarms, because that linguistic shift tells you something vital. When your adversary costs $500 and your countermeasure costs $3,000,000, you don’t have a defense problem. You have an infestation problem.
The math doesn’t “math.” You can’t shoot million-dollar missiles at thousand-dollar drones and call it a strategy. You might say this is defense, but I’d just call it slow-motion bankruptcy. But there’s another way to think about this. We can’t kill the infection by amputating the limb. The body doesn’t work that way.
The body has an immune system.
Onion Defense
Cue the Shrek music. You need layers. The full stack:
1. Detection: Radar, acoustic, thermal. Know what’s coming, or what’s already here, perched on a rooftop, solar-charging.
2. Classification: AI-driven threat assessment. Delivery drone or threat? RF-connected or HOLO? What’s the vulnerability profile?
3. Cognitive Kill (RF): For drones that are talking: protocol exploitation, malformed packets, induced crashes.
4. Cognitive Kill (Visual): For drones that are looking: adversarial projection, SLAM disruption, sensor saturation.
5. Terriers: Autonomous interceptors. For when cognitive kill fails or there’s no time.
6. Hard kinetic: Last resort. Human-authorized. For the ones that get through everything else.
This is what an immune system looks like. Not one defense. Layered defense. Adaptive. Responsive to the actual threat.
The Punchline
The body doesn’t fight infection with explosives. It uses skin, mucus, antibodies, T-cells, fever. Each layer raises the cost for the pathogen. Each layer buys time for the next.
If their swarms are vermin, we need terriers. If their eyes are hobbyist neural nets, we need optical illusions. If their radios are open, we need RF transmitted poison.
The front line isn’t a line anymore. There’s no “dome,” there’s no “perimeter.” It’s everywhere. It’s your city. Containers might already be on the ocean floor.
The only question is whether we build the immune system before they send the trigger.
Implications for the Operational Environment
Perimeter-Based Air Defense Is Obsolete
Autonomous systems can be pre-positioned inside the homeland — aka “stand-in” — rendering traditional border and A2/AD and IADS concepts insufficient.
Economic Inversion Favors the Attacker
For at least the next decade, attritable threats defeat exquisite defenses through cost asymmetry rather than technical superiority.
Cognitive Surfaces Are a Vital C-UAS Domain
Vision, autonomy stacks, and firmware represent exploitable attack surfaces analogous to RF spectrum in prior conflicts.
Defense Must Be Distributed and Autonomous
Effective counter-swarm defense requires low-cost, autonomous systems operating at machine tempo with humans-on-the-loop
If you enjoyed this post, check out the T2COM G-2‘s Operational Environment Enterprise web page, brimming with authoritative information on the Operational Environment and how our adversaries fight, including:
Our T2COM OE Threat Assessment 1.0, The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations
Our China Landing Zone, full of information regarding our pacing challenge, including ATP 7-100.3, Chinese Tactics, T2COM OE Threat Assessment 1-1, How China Fights in Large-Scale Combat Operations, T2COM OE Threat Assessment 1-1.1, How China Fights Against a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team, 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the PLA, and BiteSize China weekly topics.
Our Russia Landing Zone, including T2COM OE Threat Assessment 1-2, How Russia Fights in Large-Scale Combat Operations and the BiteSize Russia weekly topics. If you have a CAC, you’ll be especially interested in reviewing our weekly RUS-UKR Conflict Running Estimates and associated Narratives, capturing what we learned about the contemporary Russian way of war in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023 and the ramifications for U.S. Army modernization across DOTMLPF-P.
Our Iran Landing Zone, including the Iran Quick Reference Guide and the Iran Passive Defense Manual (both require a CAC to access).
Our North Korea Landing Zone, including Resources for Studying North Korea, Instruments of Chinese Military Influence in North Korea, and Instruments of Russian Military Influence in North Korea.
Our Irregular Threats Landing Zone, including TC 7-100.3, Irregular Opposing Forces, and ATP 3-37.2, Antiterrorism (requires a CAC to access).
Our Running Estimates SharePoint site (also requires a CAC to access) — documenting what we’re learning about the evolving OE (including Russia’s war in Ukraine war since 2024 and other ongoing competitions and conflicts around the globe). Contains our monthly OE Running Estimates, associated Narratives, and the quarterly OE Assessment Intelligence Posts.
… as well as previous T2COM G-2 and Mad Scientist Laboratory content, exploring this aspect of the Operational Environment:
Ukraine Conflict UAV Evolution, by Colin Christopher
The Stray Dog Protocol: Deconstructing the Monolith for Enduring Advantage, by Rouge Studios
The New Rules of the Game: 10 Key Lessons on Great Power Competition
Expendable Drones: Appreciating the Evolving Technology – and Character – of War, by proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Giordano, Elise Annett, and John Bitterman
Do Androids Dream of Electric War: The Reality of Autonomous Weapons and associated podcast, with Dr. Mark Bailey
On the Ground and In the Air in Ukraine and associated podcast, with Wolfgang Hagarty
Insights from Ukraine on the Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Warfare
Learning from LSCO: Applying Lessons to Irregular Conflict, by Ian Sullivan and Kate Kilgore
Asymmetric Warfare across Multiple Domains, by Ethan Sah
“Own the Night,” as well as Former Deputy Secretary of Defense and proclaimed Mad Scientist Mr. Bob Work‘s presentation from the Disruption and the Future Operational Environment Conference on AI and Future Warfare: The Rise of the Robots (and Army Futures Command), and his Modern War Institute podcast assessing the future battlefield.
Unmanned Capabilities in Today’s Battlespace
Revolutionizing 21st Century Warfighting: UAVs and C-UAS
Death From Above! The Evolution of sUAS Technology and associated podcast, with COL Bill Edwards (USA-Ret.)
The Operational Environment’s Increased Lethality
Top Attack: Lessons Learned from the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and associated podcast, with proclaimed Mad Scientist COL John Antal (USA-Ret.)
Jomini’s Revenge: Mass Strikes Back! by proclaimed Mad Scientist Zachery Tyson Brown
Through Soldiers’ Eyes: The Future of Ground Combat and its associated podcast
The PLA and UAVs – Automating the Battlefield and Enhancing Training
A Chinese Perspective on Future Urban Unmanned Operations
China: “New Concepts” in Unmanned Combat and Cyber and Electronic Warfare
The PLA: Close Combat in the Information Age and the “Blade of Victory”
“Once More unto The Breach Dear Friends”: From English Longbows to Azerbaijani Drones, Army Modernization STILL Means More than Materiel, by Ian Sullivan
Insights from the Robotics and Autonomy Series of Virtual Events and associated video playlist
How Big of a Deal are Drone Swarms? by proclaimed Mad Scientist Zak Kallenborn
About the Author: Colin Steele is a technology executive and serial entrepreneur. He has experience delivering safety-critical software for real-world, high-variance environments. As a Vice President at Dexcom, he conceived of the company’s first digital therapeutic, SmartBasal. He led its development, driving through regulatory approval for this algorithm-driven, safety-critical system for insulin dosing. His work focuses on the intersection of domains: customer, business, technology, culture and real-world problems.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of War, Department of the Army, or the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM).
