UK Digital Targeting Web Misunderstands Safeguards, Warns RUSI Report
A new report from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) asserts that a foundational principle guiding the development of Britain’s Digital Targeting Web fundamentally misunderstands the role of safeguards. The report warns that legal and ethical checks, by their very nature, cannot accelerate a targeting cycle, likening them to friction which cannot speed up a moving object.
Titled “Modern Targeting in European Militaries,” the paper is authored by Robert Tollast, Noah Sylvia, and Matthew Savill. It is the initial installment in a series dedicated to examining the Digital Targeting Web (DTW) and incorporates insights from interviews with British policymakers, practitioners, and industry experts.
The Digital Targeting Web, announced in May 2025 and further detailed in the Strategic Defence Review, represents a consolidated effort to integrate various British digital initiatives. Its objective is to seamlessly connect sensors, decision-makers, and both lethal and non-lethal effectors across the joint force. The stated battlefield ambition of the DTW is to enable military forces to “sense, understand, decide, act and assess faster than they can.”
Critique of ‘Accelerate Tempo’ Principle
The RUSI report specifically critiques one of the DTW project’s strategic principles, which the core team outlines as: “assurance, legalities, ethics and security must accelerate tempo, not constrain it.”
According to the authors, this statement “fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of safeguards, which by their nature slow down processes.” They elaborate, stating that “Technical assurance processes, legal reviews and security protocols are extra steps added into targeting procedures, thereby increasing the steps and time needed for a cycle to complete. Even if partially or wholly automated, safeguards cannot be expected to increase the speed of a targeting cycle any more than friction can be expected to increase the speed of a moving object.”
The report notes that this perspective is not isolated to the DTW project team. Several practitioners interviewed reportedly expressed skepticism regarding the necessity of stringent legal and ethical safeguards. Their reasoning, as presented in the report, is that “since the UK’s/NATO’s enemies do not feel bound by such rules, the slowing of one’s own operations by these safeguards presents an unacceptable risk on the battlefield.”
Delegation of Authority in Large-Scale Conflicts
A significant implication for the UK government, particularly the Ministry of Defence (MoD), concerns the authorization of military strikes. The report argues that the operational habits established during the counter-terrorism era – characterized by close involvement of commanders, civil servants, and ministers in individual operations planned over weeks – are unsustainable in a large-scale conflict involving hundreds of strikes daily.
The authors contend that in such extensive operations, decision-making authority for most strikes, especially those involving targets of opportunity, will inevitably need to be devolved to mid-level or even junior commanders in the field. This delegation, they suggest, will lead to situations where commanders take actions that, intentionally or unintentionally, result in significant civilian harm or escalation of enemy response. The report advises that MoD officials and ministers “must grow accustomed to these realities of modern operations, where they will bear the political consequences for actions outside their control.”
The report concludes that this issue is “less about process and more about habit and culture,” emphasizing that senior officials and ministers will need to become more comfortable with delegation and risk, or at least establish more precise parameters for targeting. This cultural shift, however, faces a challenge from public scrutiny. An MoD official is quoted highlighting that “BDA [Battle Damage Assessment] is instantaneous on social media, leading to demands of accountability from ministers.” The report suggests this public pressure is likely to reduce the risk ministers find tolerable, precisely when the battlefield demands greater delegation.
Illustrative Scenario: Scale and Speed of Modern Warfare
To illustrate the potential scale and speed of future conflicts, the report opens by presenting a hypothetical future scenario: an American and Israeli strike campaign against Iran, commencing on 28 February 2026. This fictional Operation Epic Fury is described as operating at a tempo unprecedented since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with some accounts claiming nearly 900 strikes in the initial twelve hours, followed by hundreds of daily strikes for five weeks.
The authors suggest that such a scale would only be achievable through the collation of decades of data points from a myriad of sources. They note that various nations, including the UK, have made targeting a central component of force modernization efforts, with one European general reportedly expressing a desire to identify 3,000 targets per day.
Regarding civilian consequences within this hypothetical scenario, the report states that strikes on Iran affected thousands of sites and resulted in over 2,000 civilian fatalities. While some damage was intentional, other incidents, such as strikes on a fictional Minab school reportedly killing over 150 people, primarily children, were attributed to human error. The report adds that “Advanced digitalised systems appear to enable the speed and scale of such actions, both intentional and accidental.” It also highlights the difficulty of separating the civilian toll from a public decision by the US Department of War to cut civilian protection offices in the Pentagon in favor of prioritizing “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” within the hypothetical context.
These findings, the authors suggest, should be a concern for the Ministry of Defence, which has recently identified vulnerabilities in its own civilian harm mitigation policies.
Challenges in Allied Operations
The report also raises concerns about coalition operations, warning that gaps in interoperability among allies could lead to different categorizations of the same targets or even redundant strikes on them with limited, expensive weaponry. Specifically, it notes that “Targets which one force may identify as posing a collateral damage risk may be erroneously identified by an unconnected Allied targeting system as legitimate sites to strike.” Both British and French military doctrines are increasingly focused on striking enemy forces at depth, which inherently involves targeting infrastructure that may serve both military and civilian purposes.
The report concludes that aligning targeting policy and procedure between allies is imperative “now rather than later,” emphasizing that the training and doctrinal implications “must be addressed before the onset of conflict.”
Impact of the Digital Targeting Web
The report finds no clear consensus within British defence circles regarding the extent to which the Digital Targeting Web fundamentally alters existing practices. Many policymakers and some practitioners view it as primarily an implementation of existing Network Enabled Capability concepts. One senior policymaker is quoted as saying modern targeting policy is “nothing fundamentally different” from that of recent decades, with policies remaining grounded in traditional documents.
The authors conclude by emphasizing the limitations of technology rather than its promise. They argue that prioritizing quantifiable metrics, such as a set number of targets within a specific timeframe, “can enable greater lethality, but risks excising the human perceptions, judgements, reactions and ingenuity without which a war cannot be won.” They note that while hypothetical strike campaigns against Iran and actual conflicts such as in Gaza demonstrated historic speed and scale, neither resulted in a clear strategic victory. The project received support from Fujitsu, Leonardo, Systematic, and Thales, though RUSI maintains its independence in research outputs, stating the views are solely those of the authors.
Why This Matters
This report from the Royal United Services Institute carries significant implications for the future of warfare, defence policy, and international security. At its core, it highlights a tension between the pursuit of speed and efficiency in military operations through advanced digital technologies and the enduring necessity of ethical and legal safeguards. Misunderstanding the role of these safeguards could lead to policies that inadvertently increase the risk of civilian harm, erode international humanitarian law, and undermine public trust.
For the UK, the critique of the Digital Targeting Web’s principle directly challenges the foundational thinking behind a major defence modernization effort. If safeguards are viewed as accelerators rather than essential checks, it could lead to the automation of decisions without adequate human oversight, raising profound ethical questions about accountability and responsibility in kinetic operations. The report’s call for ministerial delegation in large-scale conflicts also signals a fundamental shift in political and military culture, demanding leaders become comfortable with actions taken outside their direct control, with potentially severe political consequences amplified by immediate social media scrutiny. This creates a difficult dilemma: the operational imperative for speed versus the political need for control and accountability.
Furthermore, the hypothetical scenario of a large-scale conflict, with its devastating civilian toll, serves as a stark warning about the potential human cost of highly digitized, accelerated warfare. It underscores the critical importance of robust civilian harm mitigation policies, which the report suggests are currently vulnerable. The issue of allied interoperability is equally crucial, as misaligned targeting policies could lead to operational inefficiencies, friendly fire incidents, or increased collateral damage in coalition efforts, jeopardizing the cohesion and effectiveness of international military alliances like NATO. Ultimately, the report is a timely reminder that while technology can enhance lethality and speed, strategic victory in complex conflicts still hinges on human judgment, ethical considerations, and robust international cooperation, rather than just quantifiable metrics.