The drone is not the weapon. The software commanding it is | CSIS
DoD Directive 3000.09 defines lethal autonomous weapon systems by what the munition does, anchoring the category to the effector rather than the decision layer above it. Kateryna Bondar and Matt Mande, in their CSIS brief “Defining Autonomy: Why Software, Not Drones, Will Decide the Next War,” argue that this definition misses where autonomy actually lives.
Ok. What does this actually mean?
The AI orchestration software that fuses sensor feeds, assigns targets, and sequences fires across hundreds of platforms is already selecting and engaging in the functional sense. In other words, the software pulling the strings is where the autonomy lives, not the projectile. Leaving this software aspect– the decision layer– outside of the regulatory definition, they underline, is a policy gap and a failure in terms of accountability.
Look at Ukraine to see what this picture looks like
The Delta battlefield management system, built bottom-up from frontline demand rather than top-down acquisition theory, integrates drone feeds, ISR, electronic warfare data, and allied intelligence into one operational picture. When software-driven drones are behind 80 percent of strike missions, it’s that software that is the warfighting system. Take this one step further: whoever commands that layer wins engagements faster.
The U.S. approach inverts this picture
Here, separate services are building competing orchestration stacks, each solving the problem for their own platforms and compounding fragmentation. For example, Maven Smart System was designated the backbone of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) in March 2026, but every service is continuing to build alongside it. This is bad, the authors argue.
They propose five principles to correct this problem:
- Government ownership of the orchestration layer,
- Integration into training from day one,
- Genuine vendor agnosticism,
- AI evaluation built into the system, and
- Immediate experimentation.
They say the Drone Dominance and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG) is the closest institutional vehicle the Pentagon has to deliver this before the next conflict forces the decision.
Bottom Line
The US is stressing the procurement of effectors while its adversaries are mastering the software commanding them.
In the twentieth century, the country that built the first nuclear weapon held the strategic advantage for a generation. In the twenty-first, the country that builds the orchestration layer for autonomous warfare first will hold a comparable kind of advantage, one defined not by yield but by the speed, scale, and tempo with which it can act.
While you’re here…
Check out our recent Discourse on NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-11, the Trump Administration’s most comprehensive statement yet on integrating artificial intelligence into U.S. defense and intelligence operations: “Speed Over Caution: What NSPM-11 Means.”
