Mick Ryan
Throughout the brutal war spawned by Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, adaptation has been one of the critical national and battlefield functions of both the Ukrainians and the Russians. This is a process that has pulses and pauses, and which can be distributed unevenly throughout combat units and the bureaucratic institutions of state.
Nonetheless, the capacity to learn and adapt is crucial to generating advantage in wartime. Given the pace of contemporary military operations, when advantage is generated, it can be quite transitory or rapidly overtaken by enemy counter adaption. Therefore, learning and adaptation must be an ongoing endeavour at multiple levels, from squads on the frontline to civilian and military national security planners working for national leaders. One of the most important levels of learning in war is that which takes place at the strategic level.
Strategic adaptation is the process of learning and adaptation that takes place at the strategic or nation level. It occurs in both peace and war, although war does tend to provide better incentives for thinking about better ways of applying all national means to achieve wartime objectives. At heart, strategic adaptation is about engaging in a battle of learning and adaptation with an adversary, applying lessons better or more quickly than they do, and ensuring this knowledge is used to shape the trajectory of war, and ultimately, winning it.
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