Force Design for Contested Multi-Domain Operations

A Crucible Insight White Paper | May 2026

Abstract

This white paper examines Mosaic Warfare, the force design concept developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Strategic Technology Office and articulated publicly in August 2017, as it applies across the warfighting domains of air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace, together with the electromagnetic spectrum and the information environment. The concept proposes that the United States military gain asymmetric advantage by disaggregating capabilities from a small number of exquisite, multi-mission platforms onto a larger number of low-cost, mission-specialized, composable systems. Manned and unmanned elements link through resilient networks into kill webs that present adversaries with too many parallel sensing and engagement pathways to defeat at acceptable cost.

Drawing on primary doctrinal and policy sources, including the 2022 Joint All-Domain Command and Control Strategy, Field Manual 3-0, the 2022 National Defense Strategy, DoD Directive 3000.09, four Government Accountability Office reports, three RAND Corporation modeling studies, the Mitchell Institute’s 2019 analysis, CSBA and Hudson Institute decision-centric warfare studies, Congressional Research Service reports, and the July 2025 Department of Defense Inspector General evaluation, the paper traces the concept’s origins, doctrinal alignment, domain-specific applications, and current implementation status.

The analysis addresses eleven dimensions: origin and definitions; strategic context, including People’s Liberation Army system destruction warfare and Russian electronic warfare doctrine; operational logic, including the transition from kill chains to kill webs and the principle of human command paired with machine control; application across the five warfighting domains; the enabling technology portfolio (CASCADE, SoSITE, STITCHES, ACK, the CJADC2 Minimum Viable Capability declared in February 2024, the Replicator Initiative, and the Space Development Agency Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture); the empirical evidence base, including observations from Ukraine and the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War; oversight findings, particularly the April 2025 GAO conclusion that the Department of Defense lacks a comprehensive framework for CJADC2 investments; eight friction points including spectrum dependency, coordination overhead, decision authorities, AI test and evaluation, and industrial base capacity; and implications for the defense industrial base and federal contracting community.

The paper concludes that Mosaic Warfare provides a coherent answer to a clearly defined operational problem, that its technical foundations have advanced materially since 2017, and that the institutional and acquisition foundations on which fielded capability depends remain underdeveloped. Three conditions are identified as decisive for the next decade: the establishment of the unifying framework GAO has repeatedly called for, acquisition system operation at iteration speeds appropriate to mosaic capability, and industrial base delivery of modular, software-defined, open-interface capability at production scales appropriate to attritable mass.

Keywords

Mosaic Warfare; Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2); Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2); Multi-Domain Operations; decision-centric warfare; kill web; DARPA Strategic Technology Office; Replicator Initiative; Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture; Modular Open Systems Approach; force design; Indo-Pacific deterrence; defense industrial base.

Citation

Crucible Insight. 2026. Mosaic Warfare and the Modern Battle Domains: Force Design for Contested Multi-Domain Operations. White Paper. May.