The only thing as important as winning the last war is winning the next one. At the Institute of Future Conflict, we focus on understanding oncoming threats, identifying solutions for them, and ensuring our future leaders will conquer them. As our motto states, Omnes Somniant Sed Non Aequales—all men dream, but not equally. The few that dream and predict with precision become the strategists who shape tomorrow’s battlefields.
In our inaugural Threat Horizon report, we asked our military fellows the following question: what is the most pressing issue facing the national security community over the 2026 fiscal year? Our Fellows are specialists drawn from across the Air and Space Forces. They are mentored by academics, industry experts, and retired senior leaders. In this report, they responded with topics covering silicon to soldiers, from Ukraine’s trenches to the high heavens of space.
Most importantly, we promise our audience follow-through. In one year’s time for our second Threat Horizon report, not only will we provide a look at what’s coming in 2027, but we will also assess how our 2026 predictions fared and reflect on what reality offered instead. We will be wrong about some threats, right about others, and ready for both.
Major R. Jake Alleman
IFC Fellow, Class of 2025
Cyberspace Operations Officer, USSF
Precision at Scale: The Industrialization of Influence Operations
The war against American minds will open a new front in 2025. The convergence of China’s massive personal data collection efforts with AI capabilities will create an unprecedented national security threat in the next year: automated social engineering at scale. Countering this threat requires an extensive overhaul of defensive training for US government personnel to recognize and react to industrialized influence operations.
China is responsible for some of the most significant data breaches in history. In 2014, they breached Office of Personnel Management networks and stole personnel files of 4.2 million active and former government employees and security clearance information on 21.5 million people. As part of their digital dragnet efforts, Chinese hackers infiltrated every major US telecom operation and siphoned off data for years, theoretically collecting data on every American with a cell phone.
They have our personnel files. They have our communications. But they’re also harvesting our digital footprints to complete the picture. TikTok is the most widely used PRC-based data collection tool, building profiles on its 1.59 billion global users (roughly 135.79 million from the US) from “information that [the users] provide, information from other sources, and automatically collected information.” The PRC-based AI company DeepSeek has an estimated 125 million global users, with an enormous market inside the US. Since Chinese law requires companies to provide their data to the government on request, the CCP likely has access to all commercial data as well.
This data collection has been ongoing for years. What has changed is AI’s ability to perform social engineering—cyberattacks using psychological manipulation to trick or coerce people into giving up sensitive information or performing actions that compromise security. Historically, social engineering meant choosing between scale (Nigerian Prince emails) or precision (targeted CEO fraud). AI now chooses both.
Personal data has become precision munitions. The result transforms social engineering from an art into an assembly line. Once trained, an AI agent can engage on this new front en masse 24/7, 365, learning from its failures and iterating to find the most successful tactics for any category of target at silicon speeds. Personal information uploaded to Chinese apps, old security clearance questionnaires, text messages between family members—imagine an attack that can leverage all of this. Determining what’s real from what’s fake becomes unlikely, if not impossible.
Current DoD security theater does not inspire confidence. A one-hour cyber refresher course with minimal social engineering coverage was already insufficient. In this new environment, it will be like trying to stem a flood with a sieve when we need seawalls. To protect their people—and the security interests they represent—US government agencies need to prioritize anti-social engineering training.
The PRC has gathered human intelligence through breaches. They’ve collected signals intelligence through telecom infiltration. Now they’re poised to weaponize artificial intelligence to turn our own data against us. The war against American minds is about to go industrial, and we’re still drilling with wooden shields.
Major Joseph “Paveway” Bledsoe
IFC Fellow, Class of 2025
F-15E Fighter Pilot, USAF
The Airpower Paradox: Enforcing a Ukrainian Peace
The most significant national security challenge for the coming fiscal year will not be a new conflict, but the fragile task of enforcing a potential ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. Should hostilities pause, the international community will demand a robust enforcement mechanism. In this context, US and NATO airpower will be presented as the primary tool—a seemingly clean, decisive, and standoff solution. However, this reliance on airpower alone is a strategic trap, creating a paradox where the very instrument of enforcement could become the catalyst for a wider war.
An air-centric enforcement strategy would likely involve establishing a No-Fly Zone (NFZ) over designated Ukrainian territories, enforced by NATO combat air patrols operating from allied bases. The mission would be to deter or destroy any Russian military assets violating the terms of the agreement. On the surface, this plays to overwhelming Western strengths, leveraging superior western platforms to dominate the airspace and provide persistent surveillance.
The problem with this strategy lacks ground-level credibility and possesses an extremely high potential for miscalculation. An NFZ is not a passive shield; it is an act of continuous aerial combat. Every Russian sortie near the line of demarcation, every surface-to-air missile system activation, and every drone flight would become a tactical decision with strategic, even nuclear, implications. Who determines hostile intent? What are the rules of engagement when a Russian aircraft is escorting a “humanitarian” convoy? A single shoot-down, whether accidental or deliberate, could collapse the peace and trigger a direct NATO-Russia conflict—the very outcome many have spent years trying to avoid.
Furthermore, airpower alone cannot verify complex ceasefire terms, such as the withdrawal of specific ground forces or the disarmament of militias. It cannot build trust or separate intertwined populations. This creates a hollow enforcement shell where violations can occur under the cloud cover of a radar screen, breeding resentment and inevitably leading to a resumption of conflict. The central challenge for the next year, therefore, will be resisting the alluringly simple solution of applied airpower and instead focusing on the messy, difficult, but ultimately more stable work of building a peace that doesn't solely depend on a pilot’s trigger finger at 30,000 feet.
Major Jacob Draszkiewicz
IFC Fellow, Class of 2026
C-17A Pilot, USAF
A New Era of Air Defense: America’s Golden Dome and the European Sky Shield Initiative
In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of drone warfare on the battlefields of Ukraine and in the Israel-Hamas war. The US homeland has also become subject to drone incursions. This year, the congressional Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs found that in 2024 there were over 350 drone incursions at 100 different military installations. Most recently, in September, NATO countries Poland and Romania also reported drone incursions, with 19 Russian drones entering Poland’s airspace, prompting Warsaw to invoke NATO’s Article 4, requiring emergency consultations. The increased use of low-cost drones is quickly becoming a preferred tool in hybrid warfare. Not only can drones be used to deliver low-cost kinetic strikes, but they are also effective in surveillance and information gathering, disrupting civilian infrastructure, and inciting public fear and political tension. Moving forward, low-cost hybrid drone warfare, complemented by advancements in artificial intelligence, poses a real and immediate challenge to air defense in the US and our European allies. This has sparked a renewed effort to review current air defense system capabilities and modernization efforts to effectively and efficiently counter drones and other threats.
America’s Golden Dome
Earlier this year, President Trump issued Executive Order 14186 stating, “The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.” Although drones are not explicitly mentioned, the broader message regarding increased aerial and space-based threats from next-generation strategic weapons underscores the urgent need to overhaul our existing missile defense capabilities with a next-generation missile defense shield. Specific details regarding the Golden Dome initiative are limited, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost to be between $161 billion and $542 billion. America’s Golden Dome initiative could become our generation’s Manhattan Project and demand an unprecedented collective effort by US private defense contractors to develop new technologies and capabilities. The Golden Dome initiative should focus on all domains and threat levels, including counter-drone capabilities. We should use this opportunity to design multi-layered defense architecture that includes modernizing our small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) and drone defense capabilities.
European Sky Shield Initiative
Since its inception in 2022, the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) has aimed to bolster NATO’s integrated air and missile defense capabilities. Originally led by Germany, the initiative now includes over 20 NATO members, including Poland. The ESSI has quickly become NATO’s collective effort to reinforce and modernize Europe’s air defense. Although this effort is a step in the right direction, the ESSI remains more of a concept than a reality. Germany has made the most progress with its US-approved $3.5 billion deal to purchase Israel’s advanced Arrow 3 missile defense system. Signed in 2023, the deal is the largest defense sale for Israel and provides Germany with a battle-tested air defense system that has showcased its effectiveness in Israel’s robust Iron Dome and in countering Iranian ballistic missiles. However, the Arrow 3 system is less effective against low-flying projectiles like drones and will likely take several years before it is fully operational and integrated into Germany’s air defense. Additionally, Germany and Poland’s current layered air defense systems rely heavily on the US Patriot system, which is neither the most cost-efficient nor practical for countering drones.
Hybrid drone warfare poses a significant challenge to US national security both at home and abroad. Modernizing air defense systems that are cost-effective and efficient is critical to countering the evolving threats posed by hybrid drone warfare. The Golden Dome and ESSI initiatives provide the guiding frameworks to address these challenges and maintain a strategic defensive posture at all levels.
Lt Col Melissa “Sharpie” McLain
IFC Fellow, Class of 2023
Intelligence Officer, USAF
Cognitive Combat Training
Foreign Malign Influence (FMI) and propaganda are not new forms of warfare. What has changed since the mid-to-late 2000s is the technology available to broadcast these messages; the amount of time users spend captivated by these technologies; and the surgical precision to curate the messages to trigger the audiences’ emotions across multiple mediums in the attention economy. Cognitive manipulation is the next 'big threat' to our way of life and National Security.
Adversaries leverage these new technologies and platforms at a speed, scale, and an incredibly affordable price-point to export their mass media manipulation tradecraft to US citizens. These narratives exploit openness in the US democratic system, Americans’ way of living, and the freedoms provided by the US Constitution. Adversaries masterfully craft emotionally charged social media content, driving wedges, sowing chaos and confusion on critical issues. For example, leading up to the Foreign Aid Package approval in April 2024, Russian actors flooded the media with carefully curated content to polarize decision makers and American support. These narratives ranged from comparing US involvement in Ukraine to Vietnam and Afghanistan, while at the same time creating media to amplify the border crisis within the US. These narratives trigger strong emotions like shame and anger, dampening senior decision makers’ initiative to reframe the narrative, while stoking concern amongst citizens of all generations. At the same time, Russian actors amplified border crisis incidents with partially fabricated video content showing increased crime rates as well as food and job shortages. The border crisis narrative stoked chaos within the population, driving citizens into a feeling of scarcity, which triggered survival responses and fueled a distrust in governmental decisions. The change in technology now affords the adversary the ability to incessantly target and shape the subconscious thoughts of individual US citizens.
In response to this problem, we investigated what skills need to be developed to thwart the threat from FMI and propaganda proliferation on media platforms. The answer resulted in developing a concept like the risk management process foundational to Operational Security (OPSEC) but with a twist. Instead of protecting mission critical information Cognitive Security (COGSEC) strives to protect the cognitive processes of the individual from cognitive manipulation.
COGSEC refers to practices, methodologies, and efforts made to safeguard cognitive processes ranging from awareness, perception, sensemaking, all the way to decision making. Misinformation and disinformation fueled by addictive social media design to capture attention pose the most significant threats to cognitive security and global stability, with increased calls for education programs to better prepare the 21st century workforce to build resiliency against dis- and misinformation. Media literacy and critical thinking programs have emerged as a promising avenue for building out such resiliency, but the research community has yet to reach consensus on key tenets of successful media literacy programs, and the efficacy of such curriculum has proven difficult to assess. To address this research gap, we developed Wellness and Independence in the Social Media Era (WISE), which is a human factors-based educational program that equips individuals with Cognitive Security skills to recognize and mitigate the effects of disinformation. WISE is an experiential-based curriculum that educates participants to identify, systematically evaluate, and counter disinformation in their environment.
The Wellness and Independence in the Social Media Era (WISE) education program equips students with Cognitive Security skills, providing frameworks and toolkits for how to deliberately think through controversial topics commonly steeped in dis- and misinformation. The ‘attention economy’ we live in today profits from the time users spend on a given social media application, thereby motivating the designers to leverage human factors principles for bad purposes, namely addictive design features referred to as ‘dark patterns’. By recognizing how ‘dark patterns’ use HF-principles and the associated cognitive consequences, the WISE program developers created a holistic approach beyond media literacy skills to include metacognition, emotional intelligence, civil discourse, and storytelling.
Major Matthew “Niner” Smokovitz
IFC Fellow, Class of 2026
Space Operations Officer, USSF
The Commercial Sky is the New High Ground
In February 2022, commercial satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed Russian armor massing on Ukraine’s border—and then driving toward Kyiv. These images were available to journalists, allies, and civilians alike. Moscow lost the element of surprise not because of classified intelligence, but because of commercial space. That moment revealed something profound: the commercial sky has become the decisive high ground of modern security.
Ukraine makes this reality clear. Its forces rely daily on commercial satellites for imagery, communications, and targeting. Without them, Kyiv would be blind. In early 2025, when the US briefly paused Maxar’s imagery support, Ukrainian drone strikes and artillery fire faltered almost immediately. Analysts called the pause “catastrophic,” linking it to battlefield failures and rising casualties. Commercial partnerships are not supplemental—they are essential. But dependence cuts both ways. Starlink sustained Ukraine’s communications when Russian cyberattacks crippled national networks. At the same time, Moscow struck Starlink ground terminals and jammed uplinks. Commercial space became both shield and target, lifeline and liability.
Taiwan is the next test. Its defense hinges on spotting Chinese amphibious forces early and striking them fast. Without overhead visibility, Taipei cannot match Beijing’s tempo. In such a conflict, the US and its allies would lean on commercial radar satellites—able to see through clouds and darkness—and on commercial communications constellations to sustain dispersed forces across the Pacific. Beijing understands this. It is building jammers, lasers, and cyber tools aimed not only at US military satellites but also at the commercial networks Washington depends on. By targeting or intimidating these providers, China could fracture US power projection without firing a shot.
The trend stretches beyond Europe and Asia. In the Persian Gulf, shipping firms now buy satellite imagery to monitor Iranian naval movements. Non-state actors purchase the same data. Strategic awareness—once reserved for nation-states—is now for sale. This democratization of transparency reshapes deterrence and complicates escalation control.
Commercial space is also a legal challenge. Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, states remain responsible for the companies they license. But what happens if a Chinese laser blinds a US-licensed satellite over Taiwan? Or if US commercial imagery directly enables a Ukrainian strike? These gaps create uncertainty adversaries can exploit.
Equally critical is corporate power itself. In Ukraine, Maxar and Starlink shaped battlefield outcomes through boardroom decisions as much as battlefield actions. When corporations hold veto authority over wartime support, national security collides with private incentives.
Other disruptive technologies—artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, electronic warfare—matter deeply, but none matches the immediacy of commercial space. AI requires integration into command systems. Hypersonic missiles are costly and scarce. Electronic warfare is powerful but geographically bound. By contrast, commercial constellations already span the globe, already outpace state systems in transparency, and are already accessible to allies, adversaries, and civilians alike.
This is why commercial space is the defining national security trend of 2025—and why it will remain decisive in 2026. It democratizes awareness, accelerates targeting, and gives corporations unprecedented influence over the tempo of war. No other domain hands so much power simultaneously to militaries and markets.
The path forward is clear. The Pentagon must lock in commercial partnerships with wartime guarantees, secure data pipelines against disruption, and build surge-launch capacity now. Failure would mean ceding the high ground—not through lack of weapons, but through lack of vision. In the contests ahead, the victor will not be the side with the most satellites, but the side that best controls the shared, conditional, and contested sky of the commercial high ground.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force, the US Space Force, the Department of War, or the US government.