The Illusion of Transparency

By LTC Scott Dawe and LTC Alan Hastings

August 13, 2026 | Armor, Summer 2026 Edition

Read Time: < 9 mins

As the U.S. Army orients on large-scale combat operations (LSCO), the imperative to win the first fight of the next war has become the driving focus of not only doctrine and training, but of the way we conceive of ourselves. As MG Curtis Taylor argued in a recent Modern Warfare Institute (MWI) article, our units must be prepared for a violent, high-stakes initial contact that could determine the trajectory of the entire conflict.1 This preparation, however, is threatened by a seductive, yet dangerous, illusion: the concept of a “transparent battlefield,” where commanders can see all and know all in real-time. While higher command posts may enjoy a clearer view, for armored formations at the tactical edge, this transparency is a mirage. We argue that preparing to win the first fight requires us to first shed this illusion and embrace the murky, opaque reality of combat at the tactical level.

This does not mean we ignore the underlying technological shift. Again, as noted by MG Taylor, the proliferation of cheap sensors is creating a state of pervasive surveillance that will “render it impossible to hide the presence of any significant military capability.”2 Therefore, the winner will not be the side that achieves perfect, persistent transparency, but the one that most effectively masters the fight for temporary windows of opacity through superior counter-reconnaissance and masking.

Operational approaches on the modern battlefield remain in flux as lessons from the multitude of ongoing conflicts are learned, implemented, and assessed. As such, the Army can be credited with a great degree of successful introspection which has been operationalized through the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI), Transformation in Contact (TiC), as well through professional dialogue. There is a risk, though, of learning some materiel lessons too well at the cost of certain intangibles that will be hard to reproduce once lost. We see cavalry operations as one of those intangible risks. What follows is a breakdown of the problem of turning bulk sensing into actionable knowledge, and then an appeal to the often intangible and unquantifiable abilities afforded by the cavalry scout in the supporting mission sets of reconnaissance and security.

The Limits of Sensing: From Data Glut to Understanding

The sheer number of sensors available to formations today is staggering. Un-manned aerial and ground vehicles provide an unprecedented ability to collect vast amounts of information. However, this torrent of data does not automatically equate to perfect knowledge. Individually, these sensors provide localized, episodic awareness. Their effectiveness is consistently frustrated by enemy counter-unmanned aerial systems (CUAS), air defense, and electronic warfare (EW), not to mention the simple, timeless limitations of battery life, dense terrain, and foul weather. As a result, perfect situational awareness is fleeting. What we have is truly a snapshot of a specific place at a specific time.

Even more profoundly, we must confront the gap between sensing and sense-making. The proliferation of sensors creates new mountains of information that must be processed, analyzed, and synthesized by already over-burdened analysts. This gap is amplified because technology is “too easily fooled by countermeasures and decoys.”3 As observed from experience at the National Training Center (NTC), even sophisticated robotic systems lack the human intuition to develop a situation, quoting one young operator who noted, “Robots don’t have hair on the back of their neck.”4 This under-scores the irreplaceable role of the human in the loop to translate data into understanding.

Knowing the enemy’s composition and disposition on a map is one thing; knowing their intent to seize or defend a piece of terrain is another. That certainty can only be gained by forcing their hand and actively trying to wrest that terrain from them. At the tactical level, the battlefield is rarely transparent. It is a shifting landscape of translucent zones, where we have a general idea of the enemy, and opaque zones, where our assessments have yet to be validated. The primary tool to penetrate this opacity remains cavalry formations.

The Scout as the All-Weather Sensor

In this complex sensory environment, one platform remains the commander’s most reliable tool for turning uncertainty into opportunity: the cavalry scout. Scouts are the only truly all-weather, all-terrain, 24/7 sensor available. They are the essential human element that bridges the gap between data and understanding. While technology provides the dots on the map, scouts connect them. They provide sustained context, confirming or denying assessments, and ultimately turning a translucent picture into a transparent, targetable reality. They remain the instruments that answer the commander’s critical information requirements (CCIR) in a contested environment where our technological overmatch can no longer be guaranteed. Though reconnaissance and security are but mission sets, at the end of the day, it is also a mindset. “If you are firing your own weapon, you are wrong” is a hard concept for the unindoctrinated to internalize.

The Enemy Gets a Vote: Counter-Reconnaissance and Masking

We are not the only ones striving for a transparent battlefield. A peer enemy’s own sophisticated sensing and sense-making capabilities profoundly challenge our ability to achieve surprise. Coupled with their own long-range precision fires, this allows them to effectively punish our attempts to concentrate combat power. If we are to successfully penetrate and exploit an enemy’s defense, we must not only seek to see but also actively work to become unseen. We must, as John Antal has argued, pay greater attention to the concept of “masking.”5

The central challenge for armored formations is no longer just finding the enemy, but actively denying the enemy the ability to sense, make sense of, and target our own forces. In an era of pervasive surveillance, formations must “survive by looking unimportant.”6 This means becoming experts at masking not just physical signatures, but also thermal and electronic signals to blend in with the clutter of the modern world. The critical question becomes: how do we strip the enemy of their sensors and create pockets of opacity on the battlefield at the time and place of our choosing, allowing us to concentrate combat power without telegraphing our intent? Again, the counter-reconnaissance fight with an economy of force organization is well suited for the cavalry formation.

Preparing to Win the First Fight

The challenge, then, is not merely theoretical; it is a practical problem of readiness. If we are to take seriously the task of preparing our units to win the first fight, we must translate these concepts into tangible actions at the unit level. This means moving beyond a reliance on technological overmatch and building resilience for a contested environment.

First, we must train for opacity. Our home-station training and combat training center rotations must relentlessly challenge our units in environments where sensors are jammed, drones are shot down, and communications are denied. This training must incorporate the specific adaptations required for modern armored warfare. Following the model proposed by MG Taylor, this includes developing and drilling: (1) robust, layered counter-drone systems; (2) embedded EW to jam enemy systems and protect our own; and (3) the use of our own swarms of simple, attritable robotic systems for breaching and strike missions.7 But this is only the initial stage of meeting enemy UAS systems like for like. There must be steps between the UAS fight and the infantry or armored company attack. At least one of those steps remains the human scout.

Second, as you have already noted, winning the first fight is about seizing the initiative. In the context of a near-transparent operational battlefield, the initiative will belong to the side that best masters the counter-reconnaissance fight. Our scouts must not only be experts at finding the enemy but also at destroying and deceiving the enemy’s reconnaissance capabilities. Winning the human counter-recon fight creates the temporary windows of opacity needed to mass combat power at the decisive point, achieving the surprise necessary to win that critical first engagement.

Finally, preparing for the first fight means empowering tactical leaders. The speed and lethality of the future battlefield will not allow for centralized, top-down decision-making. Commanders must underwrite the risk inherent in empowering platoon and company-level leaders to develop the situation and act on their own initiative, guided by intent. This is the essence of turning the scout’s situational awareness into immediate, violent action that unbalances the enemy from the start.

Winning in a Murky Reality

Armored formations exist to penetrate the enemy’s defense and exploit the breach, but this can only happen if we survive and win the initial contact. As has been stated, the outcome of the next war may well hinge on the first fight. To win it, we must shed the comforting illusion of the transparent battlefield and embrace the murky reality of a contested environment where information is incomplete and fleeting. This requires a renewed investment in our human scouts as the primary tool for forging understanding from chaos. More importantly, it means shifting our focus from simply seeing the enemy to actively preventing the enemy from seeing us. By mastering the art of masking and winning the counter-reconnaissance fight—itself a synthesis of human skill and technological superiority in counter-drone and electronic warfare—we create the temporary, localized windows of opportunity needed to concentrate combat power, achieve surprise, and seize the initiative. Preparing our units to do this is not just an exercise in improving the use of cavalry; it is the fundamental requirement for winning the first, and decisive, fight of the next war.

Notes