A reading list for non-technical founders

You do not need to write code to build a company in multi-domain autonomy. You do need to understand how modern forces think, what customers actually ask for, and the rules autonomous systems operate under.

This is the short list we would hand any founder, investor or officer entering the field.

Start with the big picture

• +Army of None, Paul Scharre. The best single introduction to autonomy in warfare: what machines can do, and where humans have to stay in control.
• +The Kill Chain, Christian Brose. Why legacy systems are struggling, and why networked autonomous systems matter.
• +Wired for War, P.W. Singer, and I, Warbot, Kenneth Payne. How robotics and AI are changing the character of conflict.

Learn the doctrine your customers follow

• +The Indian Armed Forces' joint doctrine and multi-domain operations thinking. This is what shapes what the services will ask for.
• +The US Army's Multi-Domain Operations concept and the DoD's JADC2 strategy, which describe connecting sensors to decision-makers across land, sea, air, space and cyber.
• +John Boyd on the OODA loop, the foundation of all decision-speed thinking.

Know the rules of the road

• +DoD Directive 3000.09 on autonomy in weapon systems, alongside NATO's and the ICRC's positions on responsible military AI.

Human-in-the-loop design is not only the ethical choice. It is the commercially smart one, because it is what a buyer can actually get approved.

Watch real conflicts

• +RUSI's analysis of Ukraine and of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Both show how cheap drones, counter-drone systems and electronic warfare behave in practice, and more usefully, what fails.

Understand the business of defence

• +India's Defence Acquisition Procedure, iDEX, and the Technology Perspective and Capability Roadmap, which together explain how a product actually reaches the field.
• +How firms like Anduril, Shield AI and Helsing sell and scale, and Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm on getting from prototype to contract.

Keep current

• +War on the Rocks, Breaking Defense and Defense One.
• +Indian sources: IDSA, CLAWS, USI and Indian Defence Review.

Read in that order and the state of the field stops looking like a list of acronyms and starts looking like a market.