Rebuilding the Kill Chain: NATO’s Doctrinal Pivot from COIN to Corps

NATO’s kill chains were built for manhunts, not mass. But Ukraine’s drone-fed tablet strikes and China’s AI-enhanced kill webs have rewritten the playbook. This white paper shows how doctrine is catching up—and what happens when it doesn’t.

Photo by U.S. Marines with 1st Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company

“We weren’t outgunned—we were out-looped. Time to fix the chain.”
-NATO Targeting Officer Valex AAR, 2024

For twenty years, NATO doctrine—particularly U.S. Army and joint frameworks—was wired for COIN: counterinsurgency, stability ops, and JSOC-led manhunts. But then came Crimea. Then came Donbas. And in 2022, Russia went all-in with massed formations and long-range fires in Ukraine. The LSCO playbook was back. NATO got the wake-up call.

This paper explores how NATO—led by doctrinal shifts in FMs 2-0, 3-0, 3-09, 3-60, and JP series—is rebuilding its kill chain. Not just to drop bombs faster, but to close sensor-to-shooter loops in contested, jammed, and target-saturated environments. This is the shift from raids to rolling fronts, from village shuras to corps-on-corps slugfests. This is doctrine catching up to reality.

From COIN to Corps: The Why Behind the Pivot

COIN Legacy and Its Limitations

For two decades, NATO forces ran on a COIN operating system. In Iraq and Afghanistan, kill chains were bureaucratic and vertical—more about deconfliction and collateral mitigation than speed. Intelligence ran through Joint Operations Centers (JOCs) and multiple echelons of approval. Fires were under theater control. Even ISR was scoped for personalities, not formations—optimized for HVT tracking, not artillery cueing or counterbattery fight.

Units operated in self-contained bubbles. Rifle companies got drone overwatch or CAS only when brigades pushed it down. Everything was too slow, too rigid for LSCO.

That worked in Kandahar. It breaks down in Kharkiv.

How LSCO Changed the Game in Ukraine

When Russia crossed the border in February 2022 with combined arms armies, BTGs, and strategic rocket forces, NATO doctrine got a reality check.

Ukraine didn’t have doctrinal perfection—but it had improvisation, guts, and speed.

  • Counterbattery battles became the daily grind. Russian artillery tried to mass fires, but Ukrainian forces turned to drone-adjusted fire missions, linking tablet-based apps like GIS Arta with commercial drones to rapidly cue HIMARS or tube artillery. No waiting for brigade-level targeting boards—just “see it, range it, kill it.”
  • Electronic warfare jammed GPS and communications across the front. Ukraine adapted with mesh networks, Starlink, and decentralized kill chains that allowed platoon leaders to push targeting info straight to FDCs.
  • Russian formations relied on rigid top-down orders. When BTGs got cut off or the commander was killed, the unit froze. Ukraine, on the other hand, pushed mission command and ISR-fed autonomy down to squad level. Dismounted infantry teams with DJI drones often had better real-time battlefield awareness than the Russian battalion HQs they were up against.
  • The battlefield was saturated with fires, armor, ISR, and EW—all domains were contested. This wasn’t about clearing compounds. This was about surviving a 24/7 sensor-shooter cycle.

Ukraine’s key lesson: if you can’t move fast, fuse ISR, and strike deep with organic means—you die.

What China’s Building for LSCO

Beijing is watching. Closely. And planning accordingly.

ATP 7-100.3 lays out Chinese LSCO doctrine in detail. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is prepping for multi-domain, high-intensity war across terrain like Taiwan and the South China Sea. Their pivot away from “people’s war” is complete—they’re now building a fast, lethal, AI-enabled joint force.

Key Chinese LSCO traits:

  • Layered and redundant fires networks, from long-range rockets (like the PHL-191) to precision-guided artillery to unmanned loitering systems like CH-901.
  • AI-assisted sensor fusion via integrated command posts that mimic U.S. MDO concepts but blend them with domestic networks like BeiDou, 5G, and EW-enabled denial bubbles.
  • Formations designed for rapid re-tasking: Battalion-level fire coordination centers linked directly to ISR and EW units. They’re collapsing decision time and building what they call intelligentized warfare—AI-enhanced decision-making embedded in the OODA loop.

And unlike Russia, which stumbled under its Soviet legacy, China is modernizing with intent, not inertia.

Bottom Line:
NATO’s doctrinal pivot isn’t theoretical anymore. Peer war is here. Ukraine showed what happens when doctrine lags behind reality. China’s building doctrine that tries to skip that mistake entirely. Rebuilding the kill chain—from brigade-down, across domains, with speed and autonomy—isn’t just a doctrinal correction.

It’s survival math.

The Doctrinal Rebuild: FM 3-09, 2-0, 3-60

A. FM 3-09: Fire Support Comes Home to the Fight

FM 3-09 (2024) doesn’t just tweak fire support—it rebuilds it for a world where artillery duels, GPS jamming, and drone swarm ISR are the new normal. It’s doctrine forged by war, especially the Ukrainian experience.

Key updates:

  • Corps-Centric Fires Planning, Reaffirmed
    Corps is back in the driver’s seat—not to centralize control, but to synchronize effects across depth and time. FM 3-09 now formalizes the fires warfighting function as a multi-echelon enabler, coordinating not just deep strikes, but also counterfire, interdiction, and shaping fires across corps and divisions. This change reflects the reality in Ukraine where HIMARS strikes against Russian ammo dumps far behind the front line tipped entire axes of advance.
  • Kill Webs > Kill Chains – and That’s Now Doctrine
    The manual explicitly pushes beyond linear kill chains, embracing a kill web model: layered, redundant, and multi-domain. Fires planners are now expected to integrate electronic warfare, deception ops, cyber fires, and air-ground coordination to achieve synchronized effects. HIMARS, 155mm Excalibur, FPV drones, and spoofing payloads? All part of the same web.

    This mirrors Ukrainian practice, where drone footage, cyber disruption, and indirect fires hit Russian positions simultaneously and from multiple angles.
  • Decentralized Fires with Resilient C2
    Battalion and company-level fire support teams (FISTs) are no longer just observers—they’re active targeting nodes inside brigade and division-level sensor grids. FM 3-09 emphasizes that fires must be planned and executed at the lowest echelon capable, especially when communications are degraded or higher echelons are jammed.

    This decentralization—along with tools like AFATDS, tactical chat, and PACE planning—is what allowed Ukrainian frontline units to generate strike requests in minutes, while Russian units stalled waiting for permission from paralyzed brigade HQs.
  • Example from the Field – Ukraine’s Tactical Fires Edge
    Consider the 2023 counteroffensive near Robotyne. Ukrainian infantry used commercial drones for target acquisition, pushed coordinates via mobile apps, and got responsive artillery fires without ever having to go through brigade. Meanwhile, Russian BTGs—structured to receive fires from higher—were often unable to respond before their positions were saturated.

FM 3-09 now builds that flexibility into doctrine: fire support that’s rapid, networked, and survivable under pressure—exactly what LSCO demands.

B. JP 3-0: The Joint Fight Is Now Local

JP 3-0 (2022) brings joint integration down to the tactical edge:

  • Establishes Joint Fires Cells (JFCs) at corps and division to synchronize fires, ISR, and cyber.
  • Codifies multi-domain ops (MDO) as a joint imperative, not just Army fluff.
  • Reinforces mission command, pushing authorities to the lowest capable echelon.

This is how NATO trains now: air-ground teams executing compressed kill chains with local ISR, joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs), and AI-aided targeting feeds.

C. FM 3-60’s Fires and Friction: Intelligence Gets Dirty Again

FM 3-60 (2023) is the Army’s doctrinal hammer for syncing intelligence, fires, and maneuver under contested LSCO conditions. If FM 3-09 is about pulling triggers, FM 3-60 is about knowing where and when to aim—before you ever get to the trigger.

Key enhancements and relevance to kill chain rebuilding:

  • D3A is No Longer a Buzzword—It’s the Spine
    FM 3-60 hardwires the Decide, Detect, Deliver, Assess (D3A) methodology into the military decision-making process (MDMP), explicitly linking it to the commander’s objectives at every echelon—from brigade to theater.

    Ukraine’s rapid HIMARS target cycles and loitering munition use mirror this: sensor, shooter, and decision-maker are flattened into the same time block.
  • Bottom-Up Refinement in a Top-Down System
    The manual acknowledges the tension: targeting is inherently top-down—but real-time fires demand bottom-up refinement. That’s a nod to Ukraine’s battlefield reality, where Territorial Defense Forces are sending drone-captured GPS coordinates straight to arty crews within minutes.
  • Targeting as a Warfighting Integrator
    FM 3-60 reframes targeting as a true operational integrating process, not just a fires enabler. It mandates close synchronization between fires, intelligence, EW, information advantage, and even logistics—something we’re watching unfold with China’s AI-assisted kill loops and Russia’s evolving strike coordination networks.
  • Appendix B: Intelligence Support to Targeting
    The revised FM includes a full appendix outlining how to integrate IPB, collection, and analysis directly into targeting—not just in theory, but as daily battle rhythm practice. This reflects battlefield success in places like Kupiansk, where layered ISR (from commercial drones to satellite feeds) drove precise shaping fires.
  • Joint and Multidomain Kill Webs Are Now the Expectation
    FM 3-60 aligns fully with JP 3-60 and emphasizes the joint targeting cycle as a complementary overlay. It mandates that Army targeting personnel understand and integrate both Army and joint targeting constructs for flexibility across domains—from cyber to CAS to deception fires.
  • Brigade-Level Targeting Gets Teeth
    Chapter 3 of FM 3-60 puts real weight behind brigade-level targeting, even under constrained time and personnel. It reinforces that brigades must own targeting cycles, not wait for higher—to set tempo, manage the deep fight, and nominate targets when organic assets can’t get it done.

FM 3-60 puts steel behind D3A—making kill chain compression not just a battlefield adaptation, but an institutional requirement for LSCO success.

Real-World Application: Lessons from Ukraine and Beyond

Ukraine’s Kill Chain Revolution

Ukraine didn’t just survive the first waves of Russia’s LSCO assault—it adapted, iterated, and innovated. Their kill chain wasn’t doctrinally perfect, but it was fast, flexible, and fused across all levels of war. Here’s how they did it:

  • Kill Chain Compression:
    In traditional Western targeting doctrine, the sensor-to-shooter cycle often takes hours—sometimes days—due to layers of deconfliction, legal vetting, and command authority. Ukraine flipped that script.

    Using off-the-shelf drones (like DJI Mavics), operators visually acquired enemy armor or artillery, relayed coordinates through targeting apps like GIS Arta or Kropyva, and enabled responsive artillery or HIMARS strikes in as little as 3–5 minutes. This meant Russian positions rarely survived after first contact—especially when coupled with loitering munitions that could follow-up or finish the job. This speed turned the tactical edge into operational leverage.
  • Loitering Munitions as ISR-Fires Bridge:
    Ukraine effectively blurred the lines between reconnaissance and strike platforms. First-person-view (FPV) drones, some homebuilt with commercial parts and explosive payloads, were used not only to locate targets but to prosecute them immediately—no handoff required.

    Think of them as poor-man’s Switchblades, but with higher agility in urban or trench-dense terrain. These drones filled critical gaps between ISR and artillery by acting as the direct-action bridge in the kill chain.
  • Decentralized ISR Fusion:
    This wasn’t a top-down, joint sensor grid. It was an ad-hoc but deadly network. Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces (TDF)—often made up of civilian volunteers with tech backgrounds—used smartphones, drones, and commercial satellite imagery to cue strikes.

    These weren’t just local recon assets—they were kill chain accelerators, plugged into national-level C2 structures via Starlink-powered cloud apps. Ukrainian artillery units could receive verified targets directly from a guy with a drone and a phone on the front line. And the enemy felt it.

China’s LSCO Firepower Model

While Ukraine improvised out of necessity, China is engineering LSCO kill chains by design. The PLA is learning from Ukraine—and planning to do it cleaner, faster, and with way more money.

Per ATP 7-100.3 (Chinese Tactics), China’s LSCO doctrine isn’t just focused on big numbers or steel. It’s about precision lethality, digital integration, and kill web redundancy:

  • Layered Fires Networks – Rockets, Missiles, and Denial Effects:
    The PLA builds overlapping firepower systems that stretch from long-range artillery (like the PHL-191 MLRS) to mid-range missile systems and close-range support from UAVs and indirect fire.
    These are backed by robust anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubbles—designed to degrade or deny NATO ISR and strike assets from entering contested zones. The goal is persistent fires pressure from multiple domains and axes.
    If one sensor or shooter is knocked out, another is already locked and loaded.
  • Networked Battalion-Level Kill Chains – AI in the Loop:
    PLA battalion command posts are increasingly equipped to task fires directly, without waiting for corps-level approval. Sensors, EW platforms, and UAVs are tied into tactical cloud systems like the PLA Integrated Command Platform (ICP).
    With AI-assisted targeting and decision support tools, the PLA aims to reduce human delay while still maintaining command oversight. The AI isn’t pulling the trigger, but it’s recommending targets, fusing data, and even simulating outcomes—all to compress the kill chain like Ukraine did, but with more automation.
  • Informationized Warfare – SIGINT, Cyber, and Deception as Fires Enablers:
    The PLA doesn’t see fires and cyber as separate. They’re part of a unified kill chain ecosystem.
    • SIGINT: Target enemy C2 nodes, relay sites, or emitters.
    • Cyber: Inject malware or spoof systems mid-fight.
    • Deception: Use decoys, deepfakes, and false signals to lure fires or confuse ISR.
      This is what they call informationized warfare—where targeting doesn’t start with a drone flyover, but with jamming your comms or feeding you a fake location via hacked Blue Force Tracking.

They’re not just building missiles—they’re building kill webs that are multi-domain, fast, redundant, and survivable. The entire system is structured to out-loop, outlast, and overwhelm the enemy before the first shot is fired.

Doctrinal Implementation: From Binder to Battlefield

NTC / JRTC Implications

  • Kill chain stress tests: OPFOR uses EW, deception, and target saturation to overload blue force targeting cycles.
  • Decentralized targeting exercises: BN-level target working groups (TWGs) practice independently tasking fires with minimal external C2.
  • AI-enabled fire planning: Integration of auto-nominated targets via sensor fusion tech (think: NATO’s ARTEMIS or US Army TITAN).

OPFOR Gets Smarter

  • Cyber injections disrupt kill chain nodes (e.g., spoofing JTAC locations).
  • Displacement drills pressure fires units to move every 3–5 minutes.
  • UAVs used to bait blue force ISR into decoy kill zones.

The future fight is one where if your kill chain isn’t redundant, fast, and adaptable—you’re dead in five minutes.

Recommendations: What Needs to Happen Now

  1. Push fire planning below brigade: Train and resource company and battalion targeting cells.
  2. Scale commercial ISR integration: Ukraine showed it works—time to standardize it in NATO SOPs.
  3. Invest in kill chain resilience: Redundancy, spoof-resistance, and autonomy must be built in.
  4. Adapt doctrine faster: Align future updates of FM 3-09 and ATP 2-33.4 with battlefield innovation cycles, not committee reviews.

Final Shot

The kill chain isn’t just a sequence—it’s a contest. Whoever loops faster, kills first. NATO’s pivot from COIN to corps is the start, but doctrine has to stay in motion. Ukraine’s teaching us. China’s watching. Russia’s learning the hard way.

This isn’t just about better doctrine. It’s about staying alive.