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Review: Understand. Decide. Act. These three tasks—to gather information about a situation, determine an objective and the means to complete it, and execute a strategy—make up the kill chain , a concept that has sat at the core of warfare for the breadth of human history. It also sits at the core of Christian Brose’s 2020 book of the same name. In The Kill Chain , Brose utilizes his insider’s perspective as former Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee to shed light on the thought processes that power the U.S. Defense industry. He ruminates on the past, present, and future ability of the U.S. Military to “close the kill chain:” to successfully link these vital tasks together and generate a desired outcome. The Kill Chain paints a sobering picture of the current state of U.S. military development. The dimensions of the issue are myriad, but they largely boil down to inertia. In the U.S. military, Brose identifies a reticence to risk the growing pains of change, shying away from the potential risk of innovations in favor of well-trod (but increasingly obsolete) military systems. He portends an ominous future for the United States—one where it not only loses its status as global hyperpower, but finds itself no longer able to steer cultural discourse, acting at the whims of a country with a more modernized fighting force. Among these potential competitors, Brose places the People’s Liberation Army at the forefront. There is a noticeable tilt to which threats the author lends credence— the loss of dominance and dangers presented by a great power peer, for example, are amplified, while misgivings about the use and misuse of autonomous weapons systems are largely downplayed—but given recent international economic and diplomatic strain, particularly with China, it is difficult to raise significant issue with Brose’s prioritization. While this potential reality is daunting, Brose is by no means resigned. Rather the opposite; in fact, he insists that there is a way forward, a way to right the ship and drag the U.S. Military into the future. Brose makes the following recommendations: • Be more willing to take risks; find innovative “mavericks” and hack through the bureaucratic red tape that binds them. • Revamp the military’s kill chain philosophy from one centered on large, exceptional, but expensive and difficult to replace platforms, to a large network of lower-cost, “attritable” systems.
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Defense ARJ, Summer 2025, Vol. 32 No. 2
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