In modern doctrine, a kill chain is the full end-to-end process required to create a meaningful effect on a target. One widely used model is F2T2EA:

Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess 

• Find – detect and identify a target of interest.

• Fix – determine its location with enough fidelity to act.

• Track – maintain custody as it moves or changes.

• Target – choose the right weapon and plan the engagement.

• Engage – employ fires or other effects.

• Assess – determine whether the desired effect was actually achieved.

It’s called a chain for a reason: if you break any link—deny sensing, cut comms, disrupt targeting, neutralize the shooter—you break the whole thing.

That’s not a theoretical problem. Peer adversaries are investing heavily in jamming, deception, cyber, long-range fires, and counter-air precisely to snap our kill chains before weapons ever get to the target.

A kill web is what happens when you stop treating kill chains as a single, linear path and instead design a network of overlapping kill chains. Resiliency, assurance, and quite frankly we need to start thinking of every player (sensor, shooter, communication node) on the field as an agnostic contributor to the primary athlete running the ball.

Senior Navy leaders have described the shift this way: kill chains are linear “sensor-to-shooter” paths; kill webs are distributed, cross-domain architectures that connect many sensors, C2 nodes, and weapons so that any platform can leverage any relevant information and contribution to multiple engagements.

In practice, a kill web:

• Links multiple, diverse sensors (air, surface, subsurface, space, cyber) feeding a common picture.

• Uses redundant comm paths and data links so information can flow around damage or jamming.

• Connects a variety of shooters and effectors—fighters, ships, ground fires, EW, cyber—so multiple assets can close the F2T2EA loop.

• Ties it all together with C2 and decision logic that can operate centrally and at the edge, enabling both top-down and delegated execution.

Think of it this way:

A kill chain is one way to execute F2T2EA.

A kill web is many ways to execute F2T2EA, across domains, at once.

So when your primary source for Find or Track is jammed, when your preferred shooter is denied access, or when a C2 node goes dark, the web still has enough sensing, comms, maneuver, and fires available for another chain to spin up and finish the job. 

That resilience—under deliberate attack—is the point.

Long before anyone called them kill webs, I was working inside them.

I grew up in the joint fight as a special tactics operator, jumping out of aircraft and working alongside special operations teams. Missions were rarely clean or linear. We were constantly stitching together:

• Air and space sensing,

• Ground maneuver,

• Joint and coalition fires,

• Fragile comm paths that never behaved the way the slides said they would.

If a primary ISR platform dropped, if a radio relay died, if an air asset was pushed somewhere else, we didn’t get to stop and redesign the war plan. We improvised new chains on the fly:

• Different sensor.

• Different path for the message.

• Different shooter.

• Same F2T2EA outcome.

We didn’t call that “operating inside a kill web.” We just called it doing the job with what we had.

That lived experience—of carrying the risk at the edge when links break—is the lens I now bring into rooms where people talk about kill webs, JADC2, and the “future fight.”

When you strip away the buzzwords, building real kill webs comes down to a handful of hard problems:

• Sensing: Do we have enough diverse, overlapping sensors to maintain F2T2EA custody when the obvious ones are denied?

• Connectivity: Can information move along multiple routes with acceptable latency and quality when primary data links are jammed or cut?

• Shooter and effects flexibility: Can we reassign targets across platforms and domains quickly, without human bottlenecks that assume everything is going according to plan?

• C2 and decision design: Have we deliberately designed who decides what, where, and with what authorities when the plan breaks—and do the tools support that?

A kill web is only as good as its worst-designed link. If the sensing, comms, C2, and shooter options look world-class in the CONOPS but brittle at the edge, the web will fail the people who have to live inside it.

Unordinary Group doesn’t sell a single box or platform. Our value is in helping leaders design, stress-test, and sequence kill-web concepts so they work for real warfighters, not just for slides.

That often looks like:

• Translating between operators and technologists

Making sure architectures and concepts map to the realities of contested F2T2EA, not just lab conditions or unconstrained assumptions.

• Stress-testing sensor-to-shooter constructs

Walking through specific scenarios: What happens when this sensor dies? When that link is jammed? When this C2 node is cut off? Where does the web bend, and where does it break?

• Designing many-to-many options, not single “golden paths”

Helping teams move from “one ideal chain” thinking to networks of options that preserve tempo when key pieces are attacked.

• Helping leaders sequence change

Turning the vision—JADC2, “any sensor to any shooter,” networked lethality—into practical, phased steps that fit within existing programs, authorities, and budgets.

Unordinary Group brings together joint special tactics experience with enterprise-level future force work, which means we’re comfortable in the weeds of a mission and in the strategy conversations about where the force needs to go.

If you and your team are wrestling with questions like:

• How do we evolve from linear kill chains to true kill webs without breaking today’s fights?

• Where are the weak links in our current sensor-to-shooter constructs, and how do we make them more resilient?

• How do we design kill webs that operators will trust and use under real pressure?

…Unordinary Group can help.

We specialize in connecting operator reality with future-force design, and in asking the uncomfortable questions early—before they get answered for you in combat.

To explore how this expertise might support your effort, contact Unordinary Group and let’s talk about the specific problems you’re trying to solve.