The Lethality Metric: Aligning Commercial Technology with the Kill Chain Architecture

A predictable scene unfolds daily within the conference rooms of the Pentagon. A commercial founder, armed with a world-class artificial intelligence platform, secures a briefing with a Program Executive Officer (PEO). They open the presentation with a technical deep-dive, utilizing the lexicon of Silicon Valley: "We leverage generative models and federated learning to optimize complex, heterogeneous datasets in a cloud-native environment."

The meeting is effectively over before the second slide.

The government customer - a Program Manager evaluated on mission outcomes and a General Officer confronting a pacing threat - is not in the market for a "platform." They are drowning in platforms. They are inundated with "dashboards" that increase cognitive load without increasing combat effectiveness. They speak a different language entirely: the language of lethality, speed, and decision advantage.

The translator for these two languages - the "Rosetta Stone" connecting commercial technology to mission requirements - is the Kill Chain.

Founders who ignore this framework are pitching "features," creating a solution in search of a problem. Founders who master the Kill Chain build a product roadmap and a capture strategy perfectly aligned with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) core operating system. Understanding this framework is not merely "insider knowledge"; it is the structural difference between a cool demo and a funded Program of Record.

The DoD’s Operating System: Deconstructing F2T2EA

The Kill Chain is not a piece of hardware or a software application; it is a process model describing the structure of every military engagement. While versions vary across the services, the classic U.S. Air Force model, F2T2EA, forms the grammatical basis of joint doctrine.

The Pentagon does not "buy AI" or "buy Cloud." They buy solutions that solve a specific friction point at one of these six steps.

1. Find (Detection)

• The Mission: Detect a potential target within a vast area of interest.

• The Tech: Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) sensors, or social media scraping tools that identify anomalies.

• The Founder’s Pitch: You are not selling a "data lake"; you are selling the ability to see the adversary before they see you.

2. Fix (Identification)

• The Mission: Identify the detected object with high confidence. The operator asks: "Is that a T-72 tank or a farm tractor?" This step fuses data from multiple sensors to establish "Positive ID."

• The Tech: Computer Vision, Multi-Int Fusion algorithms, and AI classifiers.

• The Founder’s Pitch: You are not selling "generative AI"; you are selling the elimination of ambiguity in the fog of war.

3. Track (Monitoring)

• The Mission: Monitor the target’s location and movement to build a persistent "track file." If the target moves, can you hold custody?

• The Tech: Edge computing, cross-cueing automation, and resilient networking.

• The Founder’s Pitch: You are ensuring that the target never escapes the operator’s sight picture.

4. Target (Solution)

• The Mission: Select the appropriate weapon and develop a fire-control solution. This is Command and Control (C2). It answers: "Which asset is best positioned to strike, and what are the collateral damage risks?"

• The Tech: Battle Management aids, algorithmic wargaming, and automated weapon-target pairing.

• The Founder’s Pitch: You are optimizing the allocation of scarce kinetic resources.

5. Engage (Effect)

• The Mission: Apply the kinetic or non-kinetic effect. Fire the missile, jam the radar, or launch the cyber-attack.

• The Tech: Precision guidance systems, electronic warfare payloads, and autonomous loitering munitions.

• The Founder’s Pitch: You are the tip of the spear.

6. Assess (Evaluation)

• The Mission: Determine if the desired effect was achieved (Battle Damage Assessment). "Did we destroy the target, or do we need to re-strike?"

• The Tech: Automated change detection, satellite imagery analysis, and post-strike forensics.

• The Founder’s Pitch: You are closing the loop to enable the next decision.

The Strategic Crisis: From Chain to Web

The most critical strategic insight for a founder is that the classic F2T2EA model is broken.

This linear sequence was perfected during the Global War on Terror (GWOT), an era where the United States enjoyed uncontested air supremacy and permissive electromagnetic environments. In that context, the military could afford a "Kill Chain" that took minutes or even hours. The data moved linearly from a drone to a ground station, to an analyst, to a commander, and finally to a shooter.

In a peer conflict against a pacing threat like the People's Republic of China, that timeline shrinks from hours to seconds.

The adversary operates an "Anti-Access/Area Denial" (A2/AD) bubble designed to sever the links of the linear chain. If the "Fix" link is broken by jamming, the "Engage" link is useless.

The DoD's modernization effort, Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), aims to solve this single problem: compressing the linear "Kill Chain" into a redundant, AI-driven "Kill Web." In a web, any sensor can connect to any shooter. If one node is destroyed, the data reroutes instantly.

The Founder's Playbook: Aligning Strategy with Lethality

Your company's strategy must be the solution to this compression problem. You must pivot your narrative from "Capability" to "Consequence."

1. Identify Your Link (Product-Market Fit) Stop trying to be an "End-to-End Platform." The DoD rarely buys a single platform to manage the entire nuclear triad and the infantry squad simultaneously.

• The Pivot: Audit your technology against the F2T2EA model. Where do you live?

• The Example: If you build an AI that cleans messy data, you are likely in the "Fix" or "Track" phase. Stop pitching it as a generic enterprise tool. Pitch it as a "Sensor Fusion Engine" that accelerates Positive ID.

2. Sell "Speed," Not "Features" (The Value Proposition) The DoD’s new currency is time. In a hypersonic environment, accuracy without speed is irrelevant.

• Old Pitch: "We use a 5th-generation neural network on a low-SWaP chip to analyze imagery with 99% precision."

• New Pitch: "We compress the 'Fix-to-Target' loop from 15 minutes to 15 seconds. Our edge-native solution processes data on the sensor, giving the commander 'Decision Advantage' before the adversary can maneuver."

• The Insight: You are selling the recovery of lost time.

3. Build for the "Web," Not the "Chain" (Integration) Your technology is one node in a vast, resilient web. Integration capability is more important than standalone features.

• The Requirement: Your "Mission Module" must be built on open standards (MOSA) with clean, fast APIs.

• The Test: Can your software ingest data from a legacy radar (Find) and output a targeting solution to a different vendor’s fire-control system (Target)? If your "black box" cannot talk to the rest of the web, it is an obstacle, not an asset.

Operational Relevance as a Differentiator

The defense market is flooded with "Science Projects"—technologies that are theoretically impressive but operationally useless. These projects die in the Valley of Death because they never answered the PEO's fundamental question: "How does this help me kill the target faster?"

Founders who master the F2T2EA framework distinguish themselves as operational partners. They demonstrate that they understand the mission profile. They move the conversation from "Tech Specs" to "Mission Outcomes."

This alignment does more than win meetings; it shapes requirements. When a Program Manager writes the objective for a new program, they frame it in terms of the Kill Chain. If your narrative mirrors their doctrine, you are ghostwriting the requirement.

The Kill Chain is not just military doctrine; it is your strategic compass. It provides the language, the problem set, and the integration map required to win. At DualSight, we provide the Strategic Advisory to translate your technology into the language of the Kill Chain and the Capture Strategy to align you with the exact link and customer who needs it. We help you find your place in the web.

SCHEDULE A CALL