Alternate analysis has a long history. From the ancient Persian practice of deliberating an issue both while drunk and, again, while sober, to the 1970s’ techniques for alternative analysis in intelligence work, techniques for overcoming group bias that result from fixed individual and group worldviews have proven useful. In a more recent incarnation, the red team was defined in the cybersecurity world as ‘a group … authorized and organized to emulate a potential adversary’s attack … against an enterprise’s security posture’. A formalised practice of alternate analysis made a brief foray into the American military consciousness during post-9/11 counter-terrorism efforts. As American military units were tasked with missions outside their kinetic comfort zone, a premium was put on deep learning, challenging groupthink, and alternate analysis (a graphic I created as a summary of the US Army’s efforts), in part to overcome a relative ignorance of cultural matters, in part to get ahead of new threats and emerging enemy techniques.
For a time, the US Army championed this effort. But as the American army’s focus inevitably shifted from counterinsurgency to the kind and type of operations it preferred (can you say ‘large-scale combat operations’?), institutional support for this latest iteration—which I’ll call US Army red teaming—fell away. Why? Expending time and effort thinking through the enemy’s mindset is hard; growing the force is intellectually easier, and is a popular pastime in the fight to preserve force structure, billets, and budgets (again, a summary of my own) in the halls of the American Congress. In September 2025, designated US Army red team slots were formally removed from the army’s highest-level tactical unit: the division.
US Army red teaming may still live on in some tactical US Army units, albeit informally, where there is a spirit of disruptive thinking and an appreciation for alternate analysis (units known as incubators of tactical boldness, US Army cavalry squadrons, are also under threat, but perhaps this is a discussion for another day). US Army red teaming was, like all alternate analysis, about attacking assumptions. In this case, to help frustrate the enemy’s expectations and, as such, is just the latest iteration of Sun Tzu’s wisdom. There was not a lot of call for it in peacetime: in any combat unit whose primary job in garrison is to prepare for operations by recruiting, training, and validating its ability to deploy, there was not a lot of call for alternate analysis as part of day-to-day operations. Training tasks have an extraordinarily well-defined end state and are more or less the opposite of the complex problems with which US Army red teaming was meant to address. These garrison problems are not the so-called ‘wicked problems’ that the US Army developed advanced thinking paradigms (again, my summary) to solve.
Given all this and how long the writing has been on the wall (also by me) regarding US Army red teaming’s fate at the tactical level, it is a pleasant surprise to discover another small nucleus of alternate analysis: the US Army’s innovation ecosphere. If you haven’t been following the explosion of ‘innovation’ in the American military, this is a thing now. The Department of Defense’s push towards ‘innovation’ has largely been led by the American Air Force and has primarily centred on the development of new technical and materiel solutions in a manner that short-circuits the American military’s cumbersome and lengthy procurement process (‘modernization takes too long, so what can we do on a shorter timeline?’). The US Army is now operating in this space with enthusiasm. Think of generals sitting around in a room and yelling about how they want drones and AI right now and they don’t care if they have to 3D print everything in order to get it. Although it always behooves military members to display a healthy scepticism for the latest MBA fad, our greatest scepticsim should be reserved for anyone who says that the latest new thing fundamentally changes warfare (anyone remember ‘effects-based operations’?). That said, after watching real-time innovations on the battlefields of the world, it is hard to blame the generals for asking.
The innovation space has also been characterised by a dose of Silicon Valley culture: lots of networking, searching for funding sources, and disrupting paradigms in order to get the thing the generals want for the force designed, built, and in the force in a quick hurry. We have designed a new app and are rolling it out in a month. It sounds a bit weird when an American general says it, but that is where we are. The new app is, of course, unlikely to change the nature of warfare, but at least the generals are trying. And at least they are willing to underwrite the types and patterns of thought that allow us all to try to innovate and disrupt. The underlying premise behind innovation—that the idea for the ‘magic bullet’ that will win America’s next war is likely lurking within the heart of the third man in the third squad at the heart of our formation—is a bit iffy. It is probably no substitute for thoughtful, disciplined study of ourselves, our enemy, and the terrain upon which we fight which was at the heart of US Army red teaming. Still, it’s something.
As mentioned, above, there is—or at least should be—a healthy scepticism in military circles of anything taught in an MBA program because of the fundamentally different parameters of the two endeavours (‘iteratively failing forward’ does not really work in a national defence environment). Even so, tactically minded war fighters have found things to admire in the innovation space. Moreover, innovation and US Army red teaming share a useful affinity for disruption of the status quo in service of the mission. Although innovation efforts to date have mostly focused on materiel solutions, they are not inherently limited to the creation of new things and there have been examples of innovations in the processes and programmatic spheres as well.
Indeed, in some units there can be an appreciation that, ultimately, the journey may be more important than the destination. Developing a culture of innovation may, in the long run, outstrip any benefits provided by any single new widget or procedure. So, while we have said goodbye to the designated US Army red teams designed to propagate an ‘intellectual insurgency’ within the force, perhaps in innovation we have a new mechanism to expose the formation to a disruptive and creative way of evaluating and attacking problem sets. In an environment where thinking outside of a shrinking box is not wholly encouraged (my commentary), innovation may be a way to preserve this essential combat multiplier. The US Army Red Team is dead. Long live Red Teaming!
Defence Mastery
Technical Mastery
Social Mastery
Lieutenant Colonel Garri Benjamin Hendell is a cavalryman and a drilling reservist in the U.S. Army’s Army National Guard. He has served in leadership and staff positions at the platoon, company, battalion, brigade, and division levels, as well as having been assigned to a regional joint force headquarters and to the National Guard Bureau (a federal entity which manages the Army National Guard formations within each U.S. State). He has deployed overseas three times to the Middle East, served on the U.S.'s southern border, as well as participated in training events in Europe.
Farewell to the US Army’s Red Team (Long Live Red Teaming!) © 2026 by . This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
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