JULY 1, 2025 – Current conflicts across the globe prove that the way we engage in war is changing daily – and that winning requires scalable, attritable systems that can adapt to evolving mission landscapes in real-time.
Captain Colin Corridan, Acting Director, U.S. Navy Disruptive Capabilities Office (DCO), heard this live from the watch floor of the Maritime Operation Center in Bahrain, where he was stationed 2022-2024. As he listened to the Captains of U.S. Navy ships take Houthi drone fire, “Hearing the urgency in our warfighters’ voices – I realized everything was changing, and that we have to continue to focus on mastering this attritable side of warfare,” he said.
On 21 May, Rear Admiral Michael Mattis, Director, Strategic Effects, Commander U.S. Naval Forces Europe/Africa Commander, Task Force-SIX SIX, and Corridan joined a panel discussion to discuss these lessons learned.
Industry partner Insitu hosted the panel, “UxS Exquisiteness to Attritability: How Ukraine has provided insight into how UxS should be deployed for the next conflict in INDOPACOM,” as part of the Combined Naval Event (CNE) 2025. CNE brings together international navies, the defense industry, and academia to power the future of naval environments by helping align the strategic, operational, and technological opportunities and demands of the future.
Three major themes emerged from the panel:
1: “We must get to autonomous systems at size and scale,” Mattis said. Accelerating testing, fielding, and scaling of these new technologies will help the U.S. Navy maintain its critical edge. By leveraging existing platforms that industry partners can advance quickly, we will get to that next level of autonomy. “Ukraine has been an evolution, autonomous will be a revolution,” said Mattis.
2: “Low-cost. Attritable. No regrets,” Mattis said. Rather than thinking in terms of lifetime investment, the Navy should consider these new weapons in terms of their short-term use. A symbiotic relationship with industry partners is critical here. Innovation is happening in the private sector, and the Navy can benefit from their speed, agility, and ingenuity. On the other side of the coin, the Navy should be able to provide feedback to industry partners to generate real-time iteration.
3: “The whole ocean may soon be a weapons engagement zone,” Corridan said. Our allies and partners are important now more than ever – because no one Navy can or should keep every sea safe. Information is power, and we need to be able to quickly and easily speak with and share data with our allies. We have the technology – the next step is to enable interoperability. When drones can talk to each other – and allow us to talk to our partners – we will have upper hand.
Simply put: if we are not conquering the attritable space as well as the exquisite, we are not doing enough.
The DCO was stood up to marry these three major themes. With the mantra that “speed in this space is our new reality,” DCO takes specific challenges provided directly by the Fleets and accelerates the acquisition of technology to address them. DCO is focused on a minimal viable product that delivers one capability at a lower cost. While speed is in DCO’s DNA, a careful assessment process considers everything from the engineering design and costs of a proposed solution to its legal and policy implications. Along the way, DCO is gathering lessons learned that can be applied to improve the entire Navy’s capability.
From Anna Eisenberg
Disruptive Capabilities Office