Future Tech

What a Destroyer XO Should Demand from Onboard AI in 2027

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By John Babick

The Pentagon’s artificial intelligence strategy documents promise decision advantage at scale. Defense contractors pitch predictive logistics and machine-speed targeting. The narrative is seductive… and largely irrelevant to a destroyer executive officer (XO) at sea.

At the deckplate level, the questions are fundamentally different. To the degree that an XO has time to think, the question is not “How transformative is AI?” but, “Will it work when the satellite link drops? Will my sailors trust it enough to use it, but not so much that they stop thinking for themselves? Will its absence during a high-end fight create a liability I haven’t trained for?”

These are practical, even deadly realities that determine whether a technology earns its place aboard a warship or becomes dead weight in a server rack. If artificial intelligence is to earn a place aboard surface combatants, it must be evaluated against operational reality, not against a PowerPoint brief delivered in a climate-controlled conference room. By 2027, the destroyer XO should expect onboard AI that is bounded, transparent, and resilient. They should be equally prepared for the moments when it is not.

The Environment AI Must Survive

A destroyer is a paradox. It is an austere and unforgiving operating environment that continuously produces more data than practically any other platform. Engineering systems generate continuous data streams across propulsion, electrical, and auxiliary plants, which go mostly ignored today. Combat systems fuse inputs from multiple sensors simultaneously, each with its own refresh rate, classification level, and failure modes. Administrative demands, from supply chain management to personnel qualification tracking, compete with operational demands for the crew’s every available hour. Within this data-rich environment, watch standers work under sustained fatigue, often standing six-on, six-off rotations for weeks on end.

The intuitive response is off-platform connectivity, but connectivity cannot be assumed. Even during routine steaming, communications bandwidth is finite and intermittent at best. Emissions control requirements, satellite geometry, adversary interference, and occasional equipment failure can all degrade or eliminate communications without warning. In a contested maritime environment, the very scenario the United States Navy should and is preparing to fight in, network access may be deliberately denied by the adversary for extended periods, making AI capability that depends on persistent cloud reach-back operationally irrelevant. Even without deliberate electronic interference, transmitting can be a beacon for enemy targeting. Cloud-based AI is a peacetime tool wearing a warfighting costume.

The baseline requirement is therefore unambiguous. Onboard AI must run locally, on ship-approved hardware, without external dependencies. If a system fails when the network drops, it has no place at sea. This is not some abstract aspirational standard. It is the minimum threshold for credibility in combat environments.

What Onboard AI Should Actually Do

A destroyer XO is responsible for, among other things, the standardized training of every division across the ship. By 2027, a destroyer XO should expect AI to assist the trained warfighter in all aspects of naval warfare, not as a replacement for judgment, but as a force multiplier. The most promising applications reduce friction for existing processes, freeing the crew’s cognitive bandwidth for the decisions that actually require human expertise. Applications with immediate value fall into several broad categories.

Maintenance triage. Engineering departments manage a continuous flow of discrepancies, preventive maintenance actions, and corrective work orders across complex, interdependent systems. A gas turbine engine does not fail in isolation. Rather, its degradation cascades through reduction gears, lube oil systems, and electrical generation in patterns that are difficult to track manually across thousands of maintenance entries. A mature onboard AI tool should analyze historical maintenance logs, identify recurring fault patterns before they escalate, and recommend actions based on the ship’s own operational history, not a generic baseline developed from fleet averages that may not reflect a ship’s specific material condition.

This does not displace the engineering team’s expertise. It structures information that already exists but is nearly impossible to synthesize under time pressure. The ship already has the data. AI makes the data useful. The difference between a well-maintained warship and a materially degraded one is often not a lack of information but a lack of time to process it. Critically, the tool must be transparent about its reasoning. When it flags a discrepancy as high-priority, watch standers need to understand why. They need to understand the historical pattern that drove the recommendation and how confident the model is. This is what makes an maintenance AI agent question is not a diagnostic tool. It is a black box wearing a maintenance hat.

Log and report synthesis. Warships generate an enormous quantity of written records. This includes deck logs, engineering logs, operational reports, casualty reports, and administrative correspondence, all of which accumulates daily. An effective AI assistant should compress and synthesize that data, summarize logs into concise operational briefs, flag negative trends, and cross-reference issues across departments that would otherwise remain siloed. When the combat systems officer’s maintenance trends correlate with the chief engineer’s power generation anomalies, the XO needs to see that connection without manually reading two hundred pages of logs. The value is not novelty. It is time recovery. Hours currently spent reviewing administrative records become minutes, and those recovered hours translate directly into training time, rest, or tactical planning. The caveat, as with maintenance AI, is transparency and the consequent trust: a synthesis tool that obscures the source data behind its conclusions cannot be trusted, because the XO has no way to assess whether the summary has missed something operationally significant.

Procedural recall under stress. When a flooding boundary is expanding, smoke is filling a space, or the repair locker team needs to know the location of the nearest fire main valve, cognitive load is at its highest and error tolerance is at its lowest. An AI system should rapidly surface relevant instructions and present structured guidance tied to approved technical documents. It should not generate novel doctrine on the fly. Instead, it should organize what already exists and make it accessible under pressure. The caveat here is critical: the system must draw exclusively from verified, configuration-controlled source documents. A tool that synthesizes procedures from multiple sources, or worse, generates plausible-sounding guidance from training data rather than authoritative technical manuals, introduces risk precisely when the stakes are highest. The value of procedural AI is speed and clarity, not creativity.

Distributed training support. Training time is scarce and constantly competed against by maintenance demands, watch rotations, and administrative requirements. AI can assist by generating scenario-based prompts, tracking qualification progress across divisions, and reinforcing procedural understanding between formal evolutions. A junior officer preparing for a professional knowledge board, or a damage controlman reviewing casualty procedures between drills, benefits from on-demand support that does not require pulling a senior sailor off watch. The limitation worth acknowledging is that AI-assisted training is a supplement, not a substitute, for the mentorship and direct observation that develop genuine competence. Scenario prompts can reinforce knowledge. They cannot replicate the judgment that comes from working alongside experienced petty officers over time.

The Dependency Trap

The more subtle risk of onboard AI is that sailors stop performing without it.

If the Combat Information Center (CIC) watch relies on AI-generated track correlation, if the engineering watch relies on AI-prioritized maintenance queues, if the quarterdeck watch relies on AI-drafted reports, then their absence during combat operations will create friction at exactly the wrong moment. This is not a hypothetical. It is the predictable consequence of any capability that integrates faster than the training culture adapts. Every augmentation is an amputation. History offers ample precedent. GPS navigation degraded celestial navigation skills across the fleet within a generation, and the Navy is still working to recover that competency. AI presents the same risk at greater scale and speed.

A destroyer XO must treat onboard AI as an augmentation layer, not as infrastructure. The distinction is critical. An augmentation layer improves performance when present but does not create a capability gap when absent. Infrastructure, by contrast, is load-bearing. Its removal causes structural failure. Before fielding any AI tool, the XO should ask three questions: “What manual processes exist if the system fails?”,  “Are watchstanders trained to operate independently of AI assistance?”, and “Does institutional knowledge live in the crew, or has it migrated into the tool?”

Redundancy in mechanical systems is standard practice at sea. The same logic must apply to cognitive systems. If AI becomes a silent dependency, its failure will produce operational surprise, and operational surprise is the one thing a warship cannot afford in a contested environment.

When AI Gets It Wrong

Probabilistic models generate confident outputs. They also generate confident wrong outputs. Even mission-specific, locally deployed AI systems can misinterpret data, surface misleading correlations, or fail silently in ways that are not immediately apparent. A maintenance prediction model trained on peacetime steaming patterns may produce dangerously inaccurate recommendations during high-tempo combat operations where equipment is driven well beyond normal parameters. The architecture of modern machine learning does not provide natural safeguards against this, though deliberate architectures can mitigate some risks. The real safeguard, however, is the human in the loop.

An XO should expect any onboard AI system to offer transparent reasoning pathways, traceability to source data, and clear articulation of uncertainty. A system that presents conclusions without exposing its basis is a liability, not an asset. The correct operational posture is disciplined skepticism, neither blind acceptance of AI output nor reflexive dismissal of AI insights. Watch standers should be trained not only to use AI tools, but to interrogate them. What data drove this recommendation? What is the confidence interval? What was excluded from the analysis?

That training is not optional. It is the difference between AI as a capability and AI as a vulnerability. The fleet has always understood that a tool is only as good as the sailor operating it. AI does not change that principle. It raises the stakes.

Command Authority Does Not Transfer

Artificial intelligence should compress cognitive load. It cannot compress accountability. Onboard AI must remain subordinate to command authority at every layer. It can assist with pattern recognition and information synthesis. It cannot bear responsibility for the decisions that follow. Final authority must always rest with the accountable officers.

The Navy’s culture of command responsibility did not emerge arbitrarily. It reflects hard-earned understanding, often paid for in lives, of what happens when accountability diffuses. AI does not change that calculus. If anything, the introduction of capable AI tools makes the deliberate preservation of command culture more important, not less. When a machine recommends a course of action and a commanding officer accepts it, the responsibility for the outcome belongs entirely to the officer. Technology should reinforce that culture, not erode it by degrees through the gradual normalization of deference to algorithmic output.

The Standard

Artificial intelligence aboard a warship should not look like a revolution. It should look like a well-trained petty officer who never sleeps, never tires, and never lets a maintenance log fall through the cracks.

By 2027, a destroyer XO should demand AI that operates fully offline without degradation, exposes transparent and traceable reasoning, integrates without destabilizing shipboard networks, reduces administrative and cognitive burden measurably, and fails gracefully, loudly enough that watch standers notice before the gap becomes a hazard.

If a system meets those criteria, it earns a place aboard. If it promises transformation while depending on perfect conditions, it is not yet ready for sea. The Navy does not field systems that only function in permissive environments. Neither should it field AI that does.

The decisive variable in AI adoption is not model sophistication. It is operational fit, and operational fit is proven at sea, not in a vendor demonstration. The fleet’s standard has always been simple: perform when conditions are imperfect, and give commanders the tools to succeed. That standard does not change because the technology is new.

John Babick is a retired naval officer and defense technology professional with experience in edge AI deployment for maritime operations. He currently works for EdgeRunner. The views expressed are his own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the United States Navy.

Featured image: Jim Blesse, standing, from the Office of Naval Research, explains project BlueShark to Lt. Col. John Moore from the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. Project BlueShark is an ONR effort to create a high-tech, futuristic environment to demonstrate what operational work environments might look like and what emerging innovative technologies might provide in the next decade. (U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams) 

Ocean Governance

Vanished Lobsters, Devastated Reefs: The Question of Chemical Fishing in the Caribbean

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By Dr. David Soud and Dr. Ian Ralby

Law enforcement officials are accustomed to interdicting shipments of precursor chemicals used in drug production. The chemicals used for illegal fishing, however, tend to go unchecked. This is partly because those substances, from bleach to cyanide to fertilizers, have no immediately obvious links to fishing. Yet maritime authorities need to attend more closely to the dangers posed by chemical fishing. The practice is extremely hard to detect, and it inflicts lasting damage on marine environments, both to specific species and to coral reefs. To understand this dynamic, one might begin with the lobster.

The spiny lobster, also known in various places as the rock lobster, Florida lobster, langosta or langostino, sea crayfish, or crawfish, is one of the premier high-value seafood catches in the Caribbean. In the Bahamas alone, the spiny lobster industry is worth nearly USD 100 million, providing employment for thousands of fishers.1 Extrapolate that across the region, and the incentives for illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) lobstering become obvious.

Though there have been efforts at conservation and management, numerous indicators suggest that pervasive overfishing of Caribbean spiny lobsters occurs throughout the region. One recent study identified the spiny lobster as “fully exploited in The Bahamas, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and Anguilla…[and] overexploited in Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia.”2 Another found that in Jamaica, gaps in reporting and enforcement had led to overfishing.3 And a 2019 OPESCA/CRFM/COPACO report concluded that “IUU fishing is one of the major factors contributing to unsustainable fishing of spiny lobster. However, IUU fishing has not been systematically and reliably quantified in the region.”4

Within this larger issue, a particular form of lobstering merits heightened vigilance: using noxious chemicals to subdue lobsters or force them from hiding and make them easier to collect. While other chemicals have been identified, including a blend of household detergent and gasoline, the most common chemical used in illegal lobstering by far is bleach.5 If one can use chemicals to stun lobsters or force them into the open, one’s catch rate, and hence profits, will grow. Prolonged dipping of lobsters in bleach solution is also used to remove eggs from illegally harvested female lobsters.6 The practice of using chemicals to increase yield appears to have been found nearly everywhere lobsters are harvested and is not limited to the Caribbean. In 2022, the governor of North Carolina issued a proclamation banning the practice, but given the uncertain health of lobster fisheries in the Caribbean, the practice poses a particular challenge in that region.7

Although this technique has been used by poachers for quite some time, the range and scale of bleach lobstering in the Caribbean is impossible to calculate from available data. Certainly, this issue has been deemed significant enough to warrant specific legal measures since the 1980s, as with the Bahamas’ 1986 Fisheries Resources Regulations.8 A 2003 study pronounced the use of bleach and detergent to harvest lobsters in Turks and Caicos as “widespread” but offered no granular data.9 Unfortunately, the activity itself is extremely hard to detect, as only small quantities of bleach or other chemicals, often deposited from small plastic bottles into reef crevices where lobsters den,  are sufficient to force the crustaceans into the open or stun them for easier capture.10 Cases in recent years include the 2021 arrest of three Haitian fishers caught using bleach in Turks and Caicos waters. They were fortuitously caught in the act by Fisheries officers who were taking the Minister of Tourism, Environment, Heritage, Maritime, Gaming and Disaster Management for a tour of the country’s lobster fisheries.11 Social media, however, provide sometimes alarming anecdotal accounts, such as a 2019 Facebook group post by a Florida boater who claimed to have seen bleaching activity in the waters around Bimini: “Another year, another 50 bottles of bleach floating around the ocean during lobster season….we saw about 5 mother ships and dozens of small boats all over Bimini and no BDF (Bahamas Defense Force) to enforce the laws. All our usual spots cleaned out before the season started.”12 Though uncorroborated, anecdotal accounts such as this paint a concerning picture of unchecked illegal lobstering.

Bleach lobstering has negative impacts beyond the detrimental effects it causes on lobster populations and the ability of Caribbean nations to regulate lobster harvest. While bleach has been used fraudulently to conceal spoilage in seafood, placing consumers at risk of potentially deadly bacterial infections, the residual amounts of the active ingredient in liquid bleach, sodium hypochlorite, in a lobster caught using bleach are below that threshold, and well below the levels required for human toxicity.13 Far more problematic is the effect of even modest amounts of bleach on marine environments.

Bleach is devastating to the coral reefs that form the main Caribbean habitat of spiny lobsters. It kills coral and other crucial organisms in reef systems, leading to takeover by algae in what is called a coral-algal phase shift.14 The vibrant, colorful life of a flourishing coral reef gives way to suffocating algae blooms. Worse yet, the effects tend to be long-lasting. One fisheries officer in the Bahamas said that, in 18 years of work with marine ecosystems, he had never seen a reef recover from being chemically bleached.15

It is for this reason that some Caribbean nations have taken steps to dissuade the practice. For example, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), the two Caribbean jurisdictions where bleaching lobsters has historically been most pervasive, have instituted identical, and steep, penalties for the practice: a fine of USD 50,000 and/or one year in prison, or both. In the Bahamas, Fisheries Act 2020 categorizes bleach as a “noxious substance” that requires written permission from authorities to even possess aboard a boat, while in TCI the possession of bleach while in a fishery, with any intent to use it for capturing marine life, is expressly illegal. Given that lobsters can be field-tested for bleach quickly and reliably, fishers using bleach in particular can be caught after the fact rather than in the act.16 Yet bleaching still occurs.

Despite the efforts of the Bahamas and TCI to address this unlawful practice, these are merely two jurisdictions among many throughout the Caribbean region. Spiny lobsters inhabit the entire Caribbean. The question therefore becomes whether using bleach, a technique known to generate a higher success rate, is limited to only these fisheries where it has gained some attention, when it could be practiced in any area in the region. Jurisdictions such as Venezuela, which far outranks any other state in Latin America and the Caribbean in the IUU Fishing Index and has reportedly hosted rapacious fishing of protected marine species, largely remain opaque.17  Heightened vigilance for instances of bleach lobstering is therefore warranted. But indicators and evidence of this practice can be challenging to discern.

The reality that coral reefs in the Caribbean are succumbing to a different sort of bleaching due to rising seawater temperatures is one such challenge.  Thus, global warming can serve to conceal the traces of chemical fishing. Another challenge is that the ingredients for this practice are ubiquitous. Tracing supply chains of bleach or gasoline will uncover nothing; nor is a bottle of bleach on a boat likely to draw unwanted attention when relatively few authorities think in terms of its possible use on lobsters. After all, boats need cleaning and disinfecting, too. As a result, the use of bleach, detergent, or gasoline is distinct from other forms of destructive chemical fishing, such as the use of cyanide to stun tropical fish for capture, which kills not only fish but coral, or of phosphates and nitrates to make explosives for “blast fishing,” which kills marine life indiscriminately.18 The latter two are also practiced in the Caribbean, but cannot be easily concealed.

In an ideal scenario, there would be no bleaching of lobsters in the Caribbean. The next best option would see the practice of bleaching limited to one or two fisheries, where competent authorities are aware of the practice and trained to identify and stop it. That appears to be the consensus on the current status of the practice. But given the poor state of monitoring and data collection throughout Caribbean lobster fisheries, the potential profits involved for fishers facing depleted stocks, and the difficulty of catching perpetrators, we cannot truly be sure of the extent of bleach lobstering, any more than we can be certain of the extent to which other forms of illegal chemical fishing are devastating marine ecosystems throughout the Caribbean. Stakeholders in monitoring, enforcement, and conservation across the region should keep this type of destructive fishing activity on their radar screens, and, in consultation with those jurisdictions whose fisheries have already suffered from bleach lobstering, develop effective measures to track and counter its practice.

Dr. David Soud is Head of Resource Responsibility at Auxilium Worldwide, a charitable nonprofit focused on good and just governance, sustainable development, resource stewardship, and human security. He is a leading expert in the criminal exploitation of natural resources, with special expertise in countering illicit activities linked with extractives and fisheries.

Dr. Ian Ralby is President of Auxilium Worldwide and head of its Ocean Governance arm.  He is a globally recognized expert in maritime law and security with particular expertise in identifying and countering threats at sea.

References

1. Marine Stewardship Council. 2025. “The Bahamas Spiny Lobster Fishery.” https://fisheries.msc.org/en/fisheries/the-bahamas-spiny-lobster-fishery/

2. FAO. 2019. Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission/FAO Comisión Central de Pesca para el Atlántico Centro-Occidental. 2019. Report of the second meeting of the OSPESCA/WECAFC/CRFM/CFMC Working Group on Caribbean Spiny Lobster, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 21–23 March 2018/Informe de la segunda reunión del Grupo de Trabajo de OSPESCA/COPACO/CRFM/CFMC sobre la Langosta Espinosa del Caribe, Santo Domingo, República Dominicana, 21-23 de marzo 2018. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Report/Informe de Pesca y Acuicultura. No. 1264. Bridgetown. 68 pp. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

3. Sharon Hutchinson and Alexander Girvan, ‘Jamaica Caribbean Spiny Lobster Value Chain Analysis Report’, CANARI, 2021,  https://canari.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Jamaica-CbeanSpinyLobsterVCA_StewardFish_Final.pdf

4. Joint Report on Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries for the Caribbean Spiny Lobster, June 2019, https://www.fao.org/fi/static-media/MeetingDocuments/WECAFC/WECAFC2019/17/Ref.35e.pdf

5. Wilson, David T., et al. 2006, “A Preliminary Assessment of the Efficacy of a Chlorine Bleach Detection Method for use in Spiny Lobster (Panulirus argus) Fisheries,” 57th Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute, https://proceedings.gcfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/gcfi_57-61.pdf

6. Ibid.

7. North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Proclamation Re: Spiny Lobster – Commercial and Recreational, April 1, 2022, https://www.deq.nc.gov/marine-fisheries/fisheries-management-proclamations/2022/spiny-lobster-commercial-and-recreational/open  

8. Government of the Bahamas, Fisheries Resources (Jurisdiction and Conservation) Regulations, Section 19, 1986, https://laws.bahamas.gov.bs/cms/images/LEGISLATION/SUBORDINATE/1986/1986-0010/1986-0010.pdf

9. Rudd, Murray A. “Fisheries Landings and Trade of the Turks and Caicos Islands,” Fisheries Centre Research Reports (2003), https://www.seaaroundus.org/doc/CatchReconstruction/EEZ/TurksCaicos-Rudd-2003.pdf

10. Wilson et al.

11. Hamilton, Deandrea, “Three local fishermen caught bleaching coral reef by Minister & Deputy Premier,” Magnetic Media, August 9, 2021, https://magneticmediatv.com/2021/08/three-local-fishermen-caught-bleaching-coral-reef-by-minister-deputy-premier/

12. Bahamas, Land and Sea, “Ocean pollution during lobster season in Bimini,” Facebook, August 5, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/groups/bahamlandsea/posts/1349017365280115/

13. Chung et al., “Health effects of sodium hypochlorite: review of published case reports,” Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology 2022; 37(1): March 2022, https://eaht.org/journal/view.php?doi=10.5620/eaht.2022006

14. Ibid.

15. Hamilton.

16. Wilson et al.

17. IUU Fishing Risk Index, “2025 Results,” n.d., https://iuufishingindex.net/ranking; Byrd, Nicole, et al. Operation STELLA MARIS: Investigating Shark Fin Trafficking Networks in Latin America and East Asia Through the Lens of Environmental Crime Convergence, Investigative Report, Earth League International, 2024, https://earthleagueinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ELI-Operation-STELLA-MARIS-Investigative-Report-22-April-2024-1.pdf

18. Waddell, J, and A. Clarke, The State of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States: 2008, 2008, NOAA/NCCOS Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment, https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/data_reports/the-state-of-coral-reef-ecosystems-of-the-united-states-and-pacific-freely-associated-states-2008/

Featured image: A Caribbean spiny lobster. (NOAA Fisheries)

Culture

The Curious Rise of Military Bullshit

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This article was originally published at The Cove, the Australian Army’s professional military education platform, and is republished with permission.

By Benjamin Gray

Clarity of purpose is a combat multiplier and central to mission command, yet anyone who has spent time in a large headquarters knows that language in the modern Army can sometimes resemble a map overlaid with too many graphics.1

Each symbol intended to clarify, but collectively obscuring the ground truth and making it harder to see what matters. We are using more words to say less, and sometimes nothing at all: orders, briefs, and discussions increasingly seek to synchronize effects, leverage partnerships, and optimize potential across a complex and challenging strategic environment while enabling teams to operate whenever, wherever, and with whomever required. The result is polished language that signals alignment and intellectual weight – but regularly obscures meaning. This paper offers a deliberately tongue-in-cheek look at that phenomenon: the proliferation of empty metaphors, inflated concepts, and managerial phrasing, and what it might mean for warfighting effectiveness.

The inspiration for this reflection comes in part from Harry Frankfurt’s 1988 essay On Bullshit, a short but rigorous philosophical treatment of a word not particularly common in academic journals.2 Frankfurt argues that bullshit is not the same as lying. He asserts that the liar remains tethered to the truth and deliberately departs from it, whereas the bullshitter is indifferent to whether statements are true or false; this indifference is the defining characteristic. In reading Frankfurt, it becomes difficult not to recognize echoes of his idea in contemporary military discourse, where the obligation to brief and conceptually frame problems can outpace genuine understanding. That realization provided the motivation and starting point for this paper.

One way to approach the issue is to develop a taxonomy of military bullshit. The first category is the empty metaphor.3 These are phrases that gesture toward complexity without offering testable meaning: operating in uncertainty, shaping conditions, or delivering effects at scale. Often, they combine convincingly with approved institutional language, producing formulations such as: ‘Army will leverage integrated partnerships to shape conditions across all domains in order to deliver decisive effects in an increasingly complex environment’. It is difficult to disagree with such statements, which is precisely the problem, as they are expansive, adaptable, and largely immune to disproof.4

The second category is concept inflation.5 This occurs when ideas are repeatedly repackaged and elevated through modifiers such as joint, integrated, partnered, and multi-domain. Army operates ‘on the land, from the land and onto the land, across all domains’ as part of the joint team, while Defense must continually adapt and evolve to meet a changing strategic environment. Yet when every activity is framed as integrated and adaptive, the terms risk becoming descriptive wallpaper rather than analytical tools.6 A plan quickly becomes an effort to ‘optimize capability across an integrated enterprise to enable outcomes’, suggesting transformation while describing little that is new.

A third category comprises hollow constructs.7 Terms like targeting, culture, and potential are central to institutional thinking and genuinely important and yet are often described or misapplied in ways that expand rather than clarify. Targeting must be both precise and adaptive across domains; culture must anchor behavior while simultaneously enabling change. In practice, these formulations tend to expand until they are capable of meaning almost anything, while specifying almost nothing about what is actually to be done differently in the next activity or task. When a concept can comfortably describe everything from barracks discipline to joint fires synchronization, it risks becoming less a guide to action than a reassuring slogan; one that sounds authoritative, travels well in briefs, and leaves just enough ambiguity for everyone to quietly interpret it in their own way. Yet such formulations often stop short of specifying how they translate into action. When a concept can accommodate anything and everything, it risks guiding nothing in particular.

Closely related is the overuse of tactical terminology for rhetorical effect. Words like decisive, synchronized, shaping, and effects once had precise analytical meaning (and doctrinally still do). When used liberally, they become verbal amplifiers. Army is a ‘versatile, decisive force’ that ‘integrates capabilities and delivers results’ through ‘teaming behaviors’. Entire passages can read like a synchronization matrix converted into prose, with each activity decisive and every effect coordinated. The reader is left reassured that something important is happening, without being entirely sure what.

Finally, there is the seepage of corporate and managerial language into military discourse. As one critique observes, jargon often emerges to make simple ideas sound sophisticated, spreading across organizations. Defense writing increasingly reflects this tendency: capability is leveraged, outcomes are delivered, and potential is optimized across the enterprise. The cumulative effect is to replace directness with abstraction. Tasks become outcomes, action becomes effect, and responsibility becomes diffused.

At its extreme, this produces a kind of linguistic symphony that is as impressive as it is incomprehensible. I recall, as a commanding officer, a briefing from a higher HQs that confidently stated something along the lines that we would ‘synchronize cross-domain effects by leveraging joint and partnered capabilities to shape the operational environment in advance of decisive activity, while simultaneously enabling adaptive team-based innovation across the enterprise’. I remember looking around the room, half expecting someone to translate. No one did, and we all nodded, which seemed the safest course of action.

On another occasion, a draft planning directive informed subordinate units that they were to ‘generate readiness by optimizing human capital to deliver capability outcomes aligned to evolving strategic objectives in a contested environment’. After a moment’s reflection, someone quietly asked whether this meant ‘train hard and be ready to deploy’. There was a sense that something important had just been lost in translation, possibly the entire paragraph. I would like to claim detached amusement at these moments, but the truth is less flattering… I have written versions of these sentences myself.

Now, it would be unfair to suggest that this problem exists only in conversation or informal briefings; it is also evident in some of our more formal strategy and concept documents. Consider the language of recent training and operational concepts, which describe the need to ‘unlock the full potential of our people’, ‘generate a qualitative edge’, and ‘synchronize multi-domain effects to create windows of advantage’. Each of these phrases is gesturing toward something important, yet none easily translates into a clear task for a junior commander. As previously mentioned, I have, on more than one occasion, been the author of sentences not entirely dissimilar. It is remarkably easy to be swept along by the current; by the newest concept, the latest popular phrasing, or the most compellingly branded idea. There is a professional gravity to phrases like integrated, multi-domain, or effects-based that is difficult to resist. They promise sophistication, alignment, and intellectual relevance. In reality, they often promise far more than they deliver. Recognizing the problem is one thing; avoiding it is another entirely.

One is left wondering what this might look like in battle. It is difficult to imagine a section commander in the midst of a fighting withdrawal or attack turning to their team and confidently announcing ‘righto, we’re now going to synchronize cross-domain effects to generate a window of local advantage’. More likely, they would default to something short, aggressive, and directive; clipped fire orders delivered at volume and punctuated with the kind of colorful language that leaves no ambiguity about either the task or the urgency. The underlying ideas in these documents are often sound, but the language used to express them frequently expands beyond the point of practical utility. The result is not nonsense, but a kind of polished abstraction that works perfectly on a slide or in a paper yet becomes noticeably less helpful when translated into action at the point where clarity matters most.

Recently, the Deputy Chief of Army has warned that ‘managerial and advertising logic and double speak’ have ‘polluted the profession’, with jargon used to obscure ignorance and detach soldiers from war’s violent reality.8 He criticized euphemisms such as ‘deliver effects’, reminding us that the role of the Army is to ‘seek out, close with, kill, capture, seize, hold and repel attacks’.9 That contrast (between abstraction and reality) goes to the heart of the issue, and there is a larger professional risk. As one Army Journal article argues, unclear writing reflects unclear thinking, and in a military context, that has direct consequences for action.10 Orders must be simple enough to be understood immediately: who goes where, when, and what they are to do when they get there. If officers think in phrases such as ‘interoperability frameworks’ and ‘persistent optimization pathways’, the concern is not literary, it is operational. In many ways, this is also a sort of performative lexicon and informal acceptance of buzzword bingo, in which directors and staff ritualistically ‘circle back’ and ‘touch base’ and ‘pivot’ towards a ‘synergized paradigm shift’ to avoid direct expression. Such jargon serves less to clarify meaning than to signal competence, free up time, or obscure collective uncertainty. The humor and discomfort inherent in this mode of communication emerge most clearly when translated into plain English; for example, a directive to ‘strategically cascade the bandwidth to maximize blue-sky thinking’ is, in practice, an instruction to distribute loosely defined tasks in the hope that some marginally useful outcome eventuates.

Why does this flourish? Frankfurt suggests bullshit emerges when individuals are required to speak beyond what they know. This is a familiar condition in headquarters, where officers must brief complex issues under time pressure while projecting confidence. There is also a signaling function, as language demonstrates alignment and intellectual currency. To speak using the popular terms and phrases of the time signals membership in the institutional mainstream. Yet language fluency can be mistaken for depth of understanding. This matters because military language is operational. It is broadly acknowledged that culture, leadership, and behavior shape capability and performance outcomes. If the language underpinning those functions becomes vague or performative, it risks degrading shared understanding. Unlike a lie, which can be challenged, inflated language is difficult to contest because it is rarely specific enough to be wrong. Military doctrine affirms the requirement for meaningful human control in the use of violence, and this mustn’t become indistinct because terminology fails to specify how decisions are produced or who is accountable. Words decide who is responsible, who can act, and who is blamed when things go wrong.11 Unlike other institutional discourses, military discourse should be shaped by the demands of operational activity, where urgency, hierarchy, and consequence place a premium on clarity, efficiency, and the unambiguous exercise of authority.

A modest response to this issue is not to abandon higher-level concepts, but to impose discipline. There is an enduring story attributed to Napoleon, who would ask a corporal whether his plans made sense after briefing his commanders. If the corporal did not understand them, the plan was reworked. This works, and historical evidence is that if a plan cannot be understood by those expected to execute it, it is unlikely to succeed. If ‘leveraging integrated capability to deliver decisive kinetic and non-kinetic effects to achieve relative asymmetry in a complex environment’ cannot be translated into a clear direction for a junior leader, it may not be useful language at all.

Ultimately, the Army is not uniquely afflicted, but the consequences are uniquely serious. Warfare punishes ambiguity, as such, if we lose discipline in language (and I include myself squarely in that risk), we risk losing discipline in thinking. And in the profession of arms, reality has a way of cutting through language with remarkable efficiency.

Colonel Benjamin Gray is the Director of Training Futures and has served in a range of operations and training appointments within the Australian Army, including overseas service in the Solomon Islands and Afghanistan. He has a Bachelor of Arts, a Masters of Strategy and Security and a Masters of Military and Defense Studies.

Notes

1. ADF-P-0 Command, Edition 1, Commonwealth of Australia, 2024, 26-31

2. Frankfurt H, ‘On Bullshit’, Raritan Quarterly Review, 1986.

3. Empty Metaphor: A phrase that sounds meaningful but no longer explains anything, such that it signals meaning without substantively clarifying the concept it purports to describe.

4. Buckley R, ‘Fuzzy writing and fatalities’, Australian Army Journal, Vol 7 No. 2 Winter, 2010, 10.

5. Concept Inflation: Progressive expansion and rebranding of a concept’s scope beyond its original bounds, such that it loses precision and explanatory utility while appearing to encompass an ever-widening range of use.

6. Patrick A, ‘The military is losing the war again business jargon’, Financial Review, 25 Feb 2025 

7. Hollow Constructs: Term, phrases or concepts that appears meaningful but lacks clear definition, real grounding, or explanatory value, serving mainly as a verbal placeholder rather than a substantive idea.

8. Smith C, Keynote Presentation – Chief of Army’s History Conference, 19 Nov 2025.

9. Smith C, Keynote Presentation – Chief of Army’s History Conference, 19 Nov 2025.

10. Buckley R, ‘Fuzzy writing and fatalities’, Australian Army Journal, Vol 7 No. 2 Winter, 2010, 12-13. 

11. Annett E, Bitterman J, and Giordano J, ‘Precision in Words, Precision in Warfare: Terminology and Control in Military Discourse on Unmanned Systems’ Strategic Insights, Institute for National Strategic Studies, 11 Mar 2026.

Featured image: The Pentagon Press Briefing Room before Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper briefs the media about the department’s COVID-19 response, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., March 17, 2020. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)

Antarctic, Arctic

Polar Primer: Arctic and Antarctic Governance

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By Jake Brantley

As great power competition expands into new domains and climate change alters global geography, the Arctic and Antarctica have become central pieces of the national security conversation. However, the conversation around these strategic regions often lacks a nuanced understanding of the distinct governance frameworks that regulate each polar region. There is a frequent, yet flawed, tendency to view “the poles” as a single, uniform operational environment.

While both the Arctic and Antarctic regions are remote, extreme, and unforgiving maritime environments characterized by a history of cooperative scientific exploration, their legal, political, and geographic structures are fundamentally different. Navigating these regions requires more than just icebreakers and cold-weather gear; it requires a clear understanding of rules-based order that governs them.

This article provides a comprehensive yet concise overview of the primary governing mechanisms for both the Arctic and Antarctica, aiming to equip national security practitioners with the foundational knowledge necessary to operate within and strategize for these regions. For a deeper understanding, readers are encouraged to dig into the authoritative legal documents governing the Arctic, Antarctic and global maritime trade.

Why Governance Matters

Before analyzing the specific legal mechanisms, it is important to understand why these frameworks matter to the modern national security expert. Both polar regions are transitioning from peripheral zones of scientific curiosity to central arenas of geopolitical competition.

In the North, receding sea ice is opening new trans-polar shipping routes—such as the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage — that drastically reduce transit times between Asia and Europe. Simultaneously, the region is rich in untapped hydrocarbons, critical minerals, and migrating fish stocks. Commercial shipping, resource extraction, and emerging military opportunities will shape the future Arctic geo-strategic environment. These factors have already prompted renewed militarization by Russia and the assertion of “Near-Arctic State” status by China, as both countries seek to secure economic and strategic advantages.

In the South, Antarctica remains a demilitarized global commons, but it is not immune to strategic competition. The proliferation of scientific research stations has raised concerns regarding “dual-use” technologies, where scientific infrastructure—such as satellite tracking facilities—may be leveraged for military intelligence and space operations. Furthermore, the increasing demand for marine resources has tested the limits of Antarctic fisheries management. Understanding how to counter malign behavior in Antarctica requires a firm grasp of the legal architecture that defines norms and acceptable state behavior.

Adding to complexity, revisionist state pressure to undermine the rules-based order is increasing while region-specific enforcement options remain geopolitically limiting. Physically, extreme weather, logistics, and remote geography limit access and response time for nations to protect their interests in both regions. Legally, the Arctic affords relatively broad enforcement choices rooted in sovereign maritime jurisdiction. Conversely, Antarctica’s strict demilitarization restricts enforcement options primarily to diplomatic means—deviations from which risk validating Russian and Chinese “salami-slicing” tactics. To effectively project presence and achieve strategic priorities, security practitioners must account for the tyranny of distance, global narrative control, and legal nuance.

The Arctic

Geographically, the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by the sovereign landmasses of eight nations (the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark/Greenland, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland). Consequently, it is governed primarily by national sovereignty and a multi-layered framework of maritime law and executive agreements.

Given the region’s fundamental nature as a maritime domain, Arctic governance is dominated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS dictates territorial seas, Exclusive Economic Zones, and the rules for defining the extended continental shelf (Article 76)—the mechanism by which many Arctic states lay claim to the seabed and its resources. While the United States has not formally ratified UNCLOS, it recognizes its navigational and maritime zone provisions as customary international law. Alongside UNCLOS, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL)—including the specialized IMO Polar Code—are critical to regulating maritime traffic and safety.

At the policy level, the Arctic Council serves as the preeminent high-level intergovernmental forum. It promotes cooperation, coordination, and interaction among the eight Arctic states, six Indigenous Peoples’ organizations (Permanent Participants), and 38 non-Arctic observers. Notably, the 1996 Ottawa Declaration that established the Council explicitly excludes matters related to military security. Although the Council does not discuss military matters, there are no legally binding agreements to prohibit military activity. While the Council is highly influential in drafting policy and fostering diplomacy, it is not a regulatory body and does not supersede the authority of sovereign states or legally binding agreements.

The tangible governance of the Arctic is heavily reliant on three principal executive agreements negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council:

1. Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) in the Arctic (2011): This 20-article agreement represents the first legally binding instrument negotiated among all eight Arctic states. The vast tyranny of distance and lack of infrastructure in the high north make SAR a daunting operational challenge. Key provisions establish specific regions of SAR responsibility, mandate the development of national capabilities and coordination centers, and provide vital guidelines for joint operations, information sharing, and cross-border assistance during mass-casualty events.

2. Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic (2013): As maritime traffic increases, so does the risk of environmental disaster. This 22-article agreement strengthens mutual assistance for oil spill preparedness and response. It requires parties to maintain a robust national response system, proactively notify other nations of pollution incidents, and provides operational guidance for joint response efforts, including the cross-border movement of cleanup assets.

3.  Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation (2017): This agreement aims to facilitate the movement of researchers and equipment across borders. It protects intellectual property, ensures access to research infrastructure and data, and promotes the integration of traditional and local knowledge into scientific endeavors, ensuring that indigenous populations have a voice in the region’s future.

Antarctica

In contrast to the Arctic, Antarctica is a massive continent surrounded by the Southern Ocean. It is a global commons, governed by a single, comprehensive legal regime known as the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS).

Originally signed in 1959 at the height of the Cold War by twelve nations (including the US and the Soviet Union), the Antarctic Treaty was a masterclass in diplomatic pragmatism. Today, adhered to by 56 parties, the treaty establishes the legal framework for the entire continent. It is built upon three foundational principles:

1. The use of Antarctica for peaceful purposes only.

2. The absolute freedom of scientific investigation and cooperation.

3. The mandatory free exchange and availability of scientific observations and results.

The treaty consists of 14 articles. For the national security practitioner, the most consequential are:

Article 1: Explicitly prohibits any measures of a military nature, such as the establishment of military bases and fortifications, the carrying out of military maneuvers, as well as the testing of any type of weapons. (Note: It does allow for the use of military personnel or equipment for scientific research or for any other peaceful purpose, which is how militaries operate logistics in the region today).

Article 4: Freezes all historical territorial claims (asserted by seven nations) and prohibits the assertion of new ones while the treaty is in force.

Article 5: Prohibits nuclear explosions and the disposal of radioactive waste.

Article 7: Establishes a rigorous system of observation. It grants designated observers’ complete freedom of access to all areas, stations, installations, and equipment in Antarctica, as well as to all ships and aircraft discharging or embarking cargoes or personnel, ensuring compliance with the treaty’s demilitarization provisions.

The broader ATS includes subsequent additions that carry immense strategic weight. Most notable is the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection (The Madrid Protocol), which designates Antarctica as a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science” and outright bans all commercial mining and mineral resource activity. Furthermore, the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources governs the region’s fisheries, attempting to balance conservation with the growing global demand for marine resources, such as krill.

Conclusion

Effective planning requires a clear understanding of the operating environment. Without a foundational knowledge of polar legal governance, defense professionals will be unable to develop acceptable and fully informed strategies.

The Arctic is a sovereign maritime domain bordered by the territory of eight nations. It is governed by a multi-layered framework of international maritime law and targeted executive agreements. Security and sovereignty are paramount, and the region is an active theater for great power competition. In contrast, Antarctica is a vast, unpopulated landmass governed by a single, comprehensive treaty system that explicitly prohibits military activity, freezes territorial claims, and bans resource extraction.

This distinction dictates operational legality, the rules of engagement, and informs the strategic approaches required to protect U.S. and Allied polar interests. Both regions demand highly specialized assets to project presence, conduct scientific research, and ensure safety of life at sea. However, presence alone is not enough.

You cannot secure a domain you do not fully understand. As the strategic environment evolves, a working understanding of these complex legal and political landscapes is no longer an academic luxury, but an operational prerequisite for the modern national security professional.

CDR Jake Brantley currently serves as Deputy Chief – Coast Guard Office of Future Plans and Operations (CG-35) at CG Headquarters where he develops CG solutions to global maritime missions. Prior to staff, he served as a CG rescue pilot, civil engineer, and ships officer throughout North America.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the the U.S. Coast Guard or any other organization or official with which the author is affiliated.

Featured image: The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Storis transits to Johns Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.(U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ashly Murphy)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.