The Sixth Field - Dispatch #002

In April 2024, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s research arm responsible for pioneering technologies like stealth aircraft, GPS, and the internet, advanced its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program to live testing. Using the X-62A VISTA, a specially modified F-16 with autonomous flight controls, DARPA conducted within-visual-range dogfights against a human-piloted F-16 at Edwards Air Force Base. These engagements built on 21 sorties flown between December 2022 and September 2023, totalling more than 17 hours of live testing.

The AI’s performance was shaped by reinforcement-learning cycles, underpinned by over 100,000 lines of combat-relevant code. In May 2024, U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall flew aboard the AI-piloted aircraft, endorsing the program and confirming that the Air Force plans to introduce more than 1,000 autonomous aircraft in the late 2020s.

Autonomy in air combat has now moved beyond theory or simulation. Future air superiority will depend not only on projection of force, but on systems able to decide and act under degraded conditions, free from signal delays or operator fatigue.

For democracies, the question is not whether machines can react faster than humans, but how to ensure accountability at machine speed. Autonomy without safeguards risks centralising power in opaque systems; autonomy designed with oversight strengthens allied airpower without eroding freedom of action.

Investor Implications

Watchpoints

Tactical Lexicon: Machine-Speed Accountability
Frameworks that ensure autonomous military systems remain auditable, transparent, and under democratic oversight even when operating faster than human decision cycles.

By late 2023, autonomous sensor units were being deployed onto decentralised physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), monitoring conditions such as temperature, vibration, and movement, and distributing this data directly across resilient mesh environments. By mid-2025, voice-enabled agents were conducting identification, check-ins, and structured reporting seamlessly across logistics platforms, coordinating without dependence on a central authority.

Autonomous agents in operational mesh networks are no longer hypothetical. For logistics, ISR, or mobility support, the new model is sovereign, decentralised data flows combined with intelligent mesh-native agents.

For open societies, these networks carry both opportunity and risk. Decentralisation without open governance invites exploitation by hostile actors; decentralisation aligned with allied values strengthens resilience and civic trust. Mesh-native autonomy must be designed for transparency, interoperability, and accountability if it is to reinforce, rather than fragment, democratic systems.

Investor Implications

Watchpoints

Tactical Lexicon: Machine Trustline
An autonomous protocol that verifies and coordinates actions across mesh networks without central control, ensuring resilience and interoperability under contested conditions.

Since 2022, Nordic nations have scaled investments in underground data centers to safeguard infrastructure resilience and digital sovereignty. Norway’s Green Mountain DC1-Stavanger, situated within a former NATO ammunition depot, serves as a model of physically fortified infrastructure, powered entirely by hydroelectric energy and cooled naturally by adjacent fjords.

In Sweden, the Pionen White Mountain Data Center, buried 30 meters under granite in Stockholm, continues to expand its secure colocation offerings through 2024 and 2025. Once a Cold War civil defence bunker, Pionen delivers shielded compute environments for critical enterprise and government needs.

These facilities stand as more than just protected data centers. Hardened against electromagnetic threats, sabotage, and even kinetic strikes, they ensure sustained operational control even under surface-level disruptions or jurisdictional challenges. For democracies, subterranean compute is not simply a defensive move; it is a statement of continuity. Physical resilience ensures that free societies retain command even under attack, an expression of sovereignty rooted in geography, not just code.

Investor Implications

Watchpoints

Tactical Lexicon: Subterranean Sovereignty
The doctrine of anchoring digital command in hardened, physically protected infrastructure that ensures continuity even under attack or disruption.

Autonomous combat aircraft and mesh-native logistics reshape timelines and control structures. But endurance for democracies is measured not only in tactical performance but in how these systems preserve legitimacy through oversight at machine speed, open governance in mesh networks, and continuity that reassures citizens as well as commanders.

AI-piloted combat aircraft mark not just a leap in platform effectiveness, but a complete reshaping of the engagement timeline. Human perception and signal-delayed commands are no longer the limiting factor; autonomous systems can process, react, and execute even under communications denial or electronic warfare.

The rapid maturing of DePIN and decentralized logistics agents mirrors this shift on the ground. Traditional command centers and field operators are giving way to intelligent, incentive-aligned agents distributed across mesh networks. Command and Control (C2), once built on hierarchical trust, will increasingly be defined by seamless integration with both sovereign and open autonomous systems.

Meanwhile, subterranean compute infrastructure provides resilient answers for the continuity of control when surface visibility, access, or sovereignty is compromised. Below ground, digital command shifts from the realm of software and cloud to that of geography and physical security.

Together, these signals tell us that resilience in the Sixth Field is defined by how systems endure when cut off, contested, or attacked. For democracies, endurance cannot mean retreat into secrecy or authoritarian mimicry. It must mean embedding allied values like openness, accountability, freedom of speech, and civic trust into the very architecture of autonomous systems.

The frontier is shifting, machines now shape timelines, agents decide and act without waiting for distant orders, and sovereign control is dug deep beneath the surface. The next frontier of resilience is not just about resisting disruption, but about systems and agents that can adapt, self-coordinate, and persist when cut off from central guidance. In air, on the ground, and beneath it: the principle is the same. The architectures that endure will be those able to switch from orchestrated to autonomous action without losing trust or control.

This means investing not only in defensive walls, but in intelligent nodes that can hold ground, negotiate value, and preserve mission integrity even when isolated. The question for commanders, builders, and policymakers is clear: can your system stand alone while still standing for freedom? True endurance comes when autonomy and decentralisation preserve democratic control, not replace it.

In the Sixth Field, where cognition evolves through AI, decentralised networks, and embedded infrastructure, power without democratic safeguards fractures. Free societies preserve sovereignty by protecting democracy, freedom of speech, and the rule of law through ethical AI, open standards, and human oversight. These are not mere technical features but pillars of allied strength, anchoring resilience and ensuring that democracies, not authoritarian systems, hold the right to lead in a contested world.

Till next time,

The Sixth Field

The signal is the high ground. Hold it.
Subscribe for monthly tactical briefings on AI, defence, DePIN, and geostrategy.
thesixthfield.com

Section 1 – AI / Robotics

Section 2 – Blockchain / DePIN

Section 3 – Strategic Terrain