Modern armies are designed to scale from a simple base pattern. From small units to the highest levels of command, the same organizational logic is repeated, replicated from one echelon to the next, with the size changing but structure remaining largely the same.
In his 2021 War on the Rocks article, Michael Shurkin gave this model a name: the “homothetic army”. The term may sound academic, but it captures a fundamental flaw in traditional military structures: forces built as scaled-up replicas of a rigid template, with fixed hierarchies, predictable roles, and unchanging relationships between unit size and function.
While this structure has shaped how traditional military organizations have been organized over the past centuries, its limits are now increasingly evident. As Shurkin notes, “Homothety denotes fixity or rigidity of shape”, a liability in the age of ever-present drones and a transparent battlefield.
We were joined by Guillaume Lerouge for this guest article, a Paris-based defense-tech investor and partner at Hexa, and one of the earliest backers of Harmattan AI, France’s first defense-tech unicorn, as well as Alta Ares. You can read more about Guillaume in our recent interview with him.
Command by Intent
In his article, Michael Shurkin explores French Gen. Guy Hubin’s prescient ideas that advances in precision sensors, real-time data, distributed lethality, and networked operations will render this model obsolete. Instead, future wars would demand fluid formations, dynamic authority, and task-oriented organizations over static, scaled units.
In Shurkin’s words:
“Hubin, consistent with French doctrine, is pushing the mandate for initiative down to junior officers and noncommissioned officers in a context in which he does not expect unit structures to be relevant.”
The ultimate goal of Gen. Hubin is to fully realize the concept of “command by intent” or subsidiarité, defined by Shurkin as follows in another great paper he wrote for RAND in 2022:
“This is the idea of commanding by communicating to subordinate commanders a general intent, but otherwise entrusting them with the responsibility to realize that intent. Implicit in the idea of subsidiarité is faith in the critical importance of the commander’s judgment in combat.”
Ukraine is not implementing “command by intent” as an abstract doctrine. It is embedding it directly into how combat effects are measured, rewarded, and resourced, most visibly through the Points system.
ePoints: Turning Battlefield Impact Into Procurement Power
In 2025, Ukraine introduced the ePoints (or “Bonus”) system: a points-based incentive for soldiers and units that links verified combat achievements to direct access to advanced gear.
How it works: Troops submit video evidence of confirmed effects, such as enemy kills, equipment destruction, or (as expanded in late 2025) evacuations using robots. Points are awarded through the DELTA battle command system and redeemed at the Brave1 Market, an “Amazon-style” online storefront for drones, electronic warfare kits, and other tools.
The system rests on two core principles: performance over bureaucracy & tailored enhancements. Capability is earned through impact, not rank or red tape, and the selected gear directly matches unit needs. This system ensures a rapid strategic adaptation, where outcomes drive resource allocation, allowing priorities to shift dynamically.
Far from “simple” gamification, ePoints quantify contributions, reward real results, and funnel high-value tools to top performers. In doing so, they replace standardized hierarchies with a system in which effectiveness, rather than position, determines access to capability.
Ukraine’s ePoints model, and by extension the Brave1 marketplace, succeed where traditional militaries struggle by fundamentally reconfiguring how feedback, authority, and capability flow through the force. Units can pull equipment based on verified performance metrics rather than waiting on slow approval chains, ensuring that effective tactics are rapidly resourced. At the same time, this approach grants real agency at the unit level, allowing forces to tailor their loadouts to operational context instead of relying on standardized, one-size-fits-all packages.
This approach signals a doctrinal pivot:
- From top-down force packages to bottom-up effect generation, with capabilities adapting in response
- From inflexible hierarchies to empowered units with incentives for ingenuity
- From homothety to a networked, performance-driven model that evolves on the fly
Hubin called for this rethink decades ago; Ukraine is implementing it at scale, under fire, thus proving its viability in the process. By late 2025, the system will have enabled units to order millions worth of gear based on verified strikes, generating real-time data on what works and fueling iterative tech upgrades.
If Ukraine’s model endures (and 2025 data on expanding programs and international partnerships suggest it does), the homothetic era may end not through policy papers but through actual implementation on Eastern Europe’s battlefields.
What It Means for Defense Tech Startups
For defense tech startups, the shift from homothetic rigidity to command by intent isn’t just an interesting doctrinal debate — it’s a market opportunity worth billions.
Western armies are watching Ukraine closely. They see the results. They understand that their own procurement pipelines, force structures, and command systems are ill-suited for the transparent, drone-saturated battlefields of tomorrow.
The problem is that legacy defense contractors aren’t built to deliver the solutions that command-by-intent requires. Their business models depend on long development cycles, large contracts, and standardized systems: the very hallmarks of homothetic thinking.
This is where startups come in.
Startups Are Already Seizing This Opportunity
Unbound Autonomy: Empowerment at the Edge
Take Unbound Autonomy, a Lithuanian startup founded in 2024. They’re building AI-powered wearables that automatically capture and transmit battlefield information to command systems – no manual radio reports required.
Their approach is instructive. Rather than trying to replace existing command-and-control infrastructure, they plug into it. Their device processes audio and visual data on-device (no cloud dependency, preserving operational security), converts it into structured status updates, and pushes it to commanders through whatever network is available.
This is exactly the kind of solution that command by intent requires: it reduces the cognitive load on soldiers, gives commanders real-time visibility they’ve never had before, and works in degraded communications environments. It’s also the kind of solution that a traditional defense contractor would struggle to build: too small, too fast-moving, too dependent on cutting-edge AI.
LE_VECTOR: The New Kid on the Block
Another startup worth watching is LE_VECTOR, a French company building what they call “cognitive infrastructure for the physical world.” In practice, they are pursuing the core command-by-intent challenge: enabling a single operator to effectively control and coordinate thousands of systems across a battlefield.
As drones and autonomous assets proliferate faster than militaries can train operators, the real bottleneck is no longer hardware but human bandwidth. LE_VECTOR’s bet is that the key is an abstraction layer that captures human intent (“screen this corridor,” “protect this convoy,” “saturate this area”) and translates it into coordinated actions for heterogeneous systems, without forcing the operator to micromanage every asset.
To get there, they work directly with frontline users to iterate on real workflows, interfaces, and alerting logic. The focus is not on adding more people to the chain of command, but on increasing the impact one operator can have: reducing cognitive load, simplifying decision-making, and turning large swarms of autonomous systems into something a small team can actually use in combat.
How to Position Your Startup
Ukraine’s Brave1 ecosystem proves that startups can deliver these capabilities faster and cheaper than traditional primes. The question for Western defense tech founders is: how do you position yourself to do the same for NATO armies?
If you’re building in this space, here’s what the Ukraine experience, and the Brave1 model, suggest:
1. Solve for decentralization, not centralization. The homothetic model assumes information flows up and orders flow down. Command-by-intent flips this: information needs to flow everywhere, and authority needs to push down. ⇒ Build tools that empower small units to operate independently, not tools that require connectivity to a central brain
2. Design for degraded environments. Peer adversaries will jam communications, spoof GPS, and disrupt networks. If your solution requires constant connectivity to function, it’s not suited for the fights that matter. ⇒ On-device processing, mesh networking, and graceful degradation aren’t nice-to-haves—they’re table stakes
3. Integrate, don’t replace. Militaries move slowly. You’re not going to rip out their existing C2 systems. Build solutions that plug into what they already have—DELTA, NATO systems, whatever your customer uses. ⇒ Make adoption easy
4. Get battlefield validation. Ukraine offers something unprecedented: a live laboratory where you can test and iterate on defense technology under real combat conditions. Programs like Brave1’s “Test in Ukraine” initiative and EU-backed grants (such as the €3.3 million EU4UA Defence Tech program) provide pathways to get your technology into the hands of soldiers who will use it in real combat. ⇒ Go to the field as soon as possible
5. Think about the feedback loop. The ePoints system works because it closes the loop between capability and outcome. If you can show that your technology directly contributes to measurable results, you’re not just selling a product—you’re selling proof. That’s a powerful position in a market where buyers are increasingly skeptical of promises without evidence. ⇒ Close the loop to prove the value of your system
The Opportunity Window Is Open — For Now
The defense establishments of Western nations are, for now, genuinely open to working with startups. The war in Ukraine has shattered complacency. The success of Brave1 and the ePoints marketplace has provided a template. NATO initiatives like UNITE – Brave NATO are explicitly designed to connect Ukrainian innovation with allied procurement.
For startups like Unbound Autonomy & LE_VECTOR, and for the many others building at the intersection of AI, autonomy, and defense: this is a rare moment. The doctrine is shifting. The buyers are motivated. The legacy contractors are slow to adapt.
The homothetic era is ending. The question is whether Western armies will build the post-homothetic force they need, and whether startups will be the ones to help them do it.
