Popular culture often distorts autonomy into science fiction caricatures. This framing obscures the real challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. military: autonomy as a layered, incremental capability, always shaped by mission context.Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” in which over a hundred drones conducted a coordinated, semi-autonomous attack, illustrates this reality. Operators tasked and launched the systems, but autonomy enabled distributed navigation, deconfliction, and timing. It wasn’t a leap to science fiction. It was a practical demonstration of how autonomy can multiply effects and impose asymmetric costs.For the Pentagon to realize a commercial-first and more autonomous force, it must overcome a lack ofThe post Without a Standard for Autonomy, the U.S. Military Will Get Lost in the Fog of War appeared first on War on the Rocks.