The military must learn how to institutionalize adaptability. Only then will we be ready for any contingency.
More than 99 percent of all the species of animals that have ever existed are now extinct. The remaining animal and plant life currently occupying the planet (including those reading this article) are survivors of a brutal struggle in which it is not the strongest who survive, but the most adaptable. After 160 million years of dominance, the massive and powerful dinosaurs were beaten into the evolutionary dust by mere rodents. If there is one universal constant, it is that change is inevitable, and that those who can't adapt will follow the dinosaur into oblivion.
What is true in the biological sciences holds in many other fields as well, from business to war. For example, if one peruses a listing of the firms in the original Dow Jones Industrial Average (which comprised the largest American corporations in existence), one discovers that all but General Electric have ceased to exist. Except for GE, none was able to adjust to changing business conditions. And although GE has continued into the present, a constant process of modification has created a corporation that is virtually unrecognizable when compared with its turn-of-the century incarnation.
We might assume that military organizations would be particularly attuned to the importance and process of adaptation, since failure to adapt to battlefield realities leads to almost certain defeat and often extermination. However, nothing could be further from the truth. While military thinkers often talk about the need to adapt, the implementation is often carried out with one single set of circumstances in mind. Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl has recently written several pieces calling for the military to develop a "culture of adaptability."1 However, he is not talking about institutionalizing adaptability as much as he is trying to convince the military to adapt to current conditions of insurgency warfare.
In fact, this is how the concept is approached nearly every time it is broached in military journals. The notion of institutionalizing adaptability or even studying the process is advocated in theory—not in practice. Rather, most advocates press for a pet project or advocate a new doctrine by arguing that these changes will make us more adaptable in our current situation. AirLand Battle Doctrine will make us more adaptable, transformation will make us more adaptable, counterinsurgency doctrine will make us more adaptable.
In truth, none of these makes us more adaptable. Each is merely an accommodation to the current military situation, or to a perceived near-term threat.
Institutionalized adaptability is completely different. It consists of the processes required for implementation in training, education, organization, planning and, possibly, even force structure(s), that allow for rapid adjustment when faced with a unique and unforeseen challenge or environment. In their study of military effectiveness, Allen Millet and Williamson Murray describe the challenge: "Given the difficulty in estimating enemy capabilities as well as the doctrinal adaptation that enemy forces go through, the real problem in this area may not emerge in the initial battles of a campaign. Rather the problem may lie in how well a military organization recognizes the obstacles placed in the way of reaching its strategic goal by the enemy, its own technological capabilities, and its operational weaknesses in combat."2
If history has taught us anything, it is that military institutions are incredibly slow to adapt to radical transformations in how wars are fought.
Static Behavior Loses
A superb example of the failure to adapt was demonstrated in France in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1346, the flower of French chivalry rode in mass formation directly into an unbroken line of English archers armed with deadly longbows—and was slaughtered. Ten years later, they rode into the same slaughter grounds at the Battle of Poitiers. Ever slow to change, more than half a century later they were butchered in the same way at Agincourt, on an even grander scale.
History is replete with tales of armies wrecked and empires brought low because they could not adjust to new environments. The French proved no better at modifying their behavior 600 years later when, despite having seen German panzers refine a new doctrine of blitzkrieg against Poland, they did very little to prepare in the six-month respite before it was their turn. So, despite having the better materiel, prepared defensive positions, and more troops, the French were defeated in a mere six weeks.
Since the fall of France in 1940, there has been a sizable cottage industry among military historians trying to explain why the country failed to adapt, despite the obvious pressing need. The short answer is that adaptation is very hard, whether in biology or in war. If it were easy the dinosaurs would still be here, along with a trillion or so other extinct species.
The U.S. military prides itself on speed of tactical adaptation, and, in historical terms, this might be a justifiable pride. Our so-called Yankee ingenuity and very deep pockets have made up for many institutional failures. However, the pace of change is accelerating, and even our adjustment process is now too slow to meet unforeseen conditions.
Slow Changes Are Costly
Despite having had three years to prepare for World War I, we still entered that conflict with a doctrine totally unsuited to the environment. Many historians argue that in World War II we did not get our act together until 1944, and some hold out for 1945. In Korea we cracked the code in 1953, after almost three years of fighting. Likewise, we went into Vietnam in strength in 1965, but did not get our situational doctrine and capabilities right until 1968.
Now, once again we appear to have come up with a potentially successful doctrine and capabilities in Iraq—after going down multiple wrong paths for three years. At the risk of oversimplifying, several points ring clear:
- The United States has almost always entered conflicts with an inappropriate force structure and doctrine for the situation.
- In recent decades, it has taken an average of three years to adapt U.S. military doctrine and force structure to meet unexpected challenges.
- Except for cases in which national survival is at stake, it appears that the American people give their government and military approximately three years to win or show tangible results. After that, public support for further military effort flags to the point where withdrawal is inevitable.
There is no reason to believe that the future will be different. No matter how the U.S. military transforms, or what force structure it adopts for 2020 and beyond, the odds are we will get it wrong. While counterinsurgency (COIN) is all the rage today, and most current apostles of adaptability are sounding the clarion call to restructure the entire military for COIN, there is virtually no chance that COIN 2007 will be appropriate for the challenges of 2020.
In fact, if so much were not at stake, it would be amusing to watch many of today's most zealous champions of adaptability and COIN try to beat the square peg of Iraq into the round hole of COIN doctrine—as Robert Thompson and David Galula annunciated it for an entirely different situation four decades ago.3
The real challenge is how to move beyond Michael Howard's admonition to doctrine developers that their job is not to get doctrine correct but to get it "least wrong."4 Fifty years from now, the world may be worrying about massive tank battles on the plains of central Europe again, or maybe some maniacal, nihilistic genius will have mastered the techniques of seventh- or eighth-generation warfare.
Even on the outside chance the United States gets it mostly right, we will still need to adapt to an interconnected set of global conditions and concerns that may make military challenges trivial by comparison. Besides, what if we get it right (as, arguably, when the 3rd Infantry Division pounded its way from Kuwait to Bagdad in 21 days, March–April 2003) only to find that our adversary has taken advantage of our moment of backslapping complacency for some self-adaptation? In this case, he switched to insurgency-based operations and once again made our doctrine and force structure obsolete.
Rapid Adaptation Wins
It is past time for the military's deep thinkers to ponder how to make the U.S. military a true rapidly adaptable force. As they do this, it will be helpful to keep two key points in mind. First, institutionalized adaptability is not a free ride. It does not mean we can defer purchases of new technologies or just go down any force structure path on the assumption we can adapt and fix when the crunch comes. Adaptation is easier the closer your capabilities are to what you find you actually need.
It is much easier to modify an aircraft carrier to support tsunami relief operations if you already have the aircraft carrier. This is where the new emphasis on capabilities-based planning fits nicely with a culture of adaptability. The more capabilities we have on hand, the easier it will be to adjust to unforeseen situations by mixing and matching.
In fact, ensuring that we have as many capabilities as possible on hand could be costlier than building a force to confront a fixed number of predicted situations—but not as costly as not having the required capability when it is required.
Second, the military will not find itself alone in any future conflict or contingency. Any study on improving institutional adaptability must also undertake the job of bringing all the agencies that support military operations along for the ride. This has clearly not been done in the present conflict where, even as the military belatedly adapted to the situation in Iraq, the rest of our national security apparatus continued to meander down the business-as-usual path. A process of institutionalizing adaptability that excludes the Interagency will accomplish only half the job.
Make Distinctions to Avoid Extinction
Before we further analyze the concept of enhanced institutional adaptability, it is necessary to clear up some definitional confusion. First, adaptation is not innovation (even though adaptation can be innovative). Adaptation is what you do with all your innovations after they have worked their way into your doctrine and force structure, so that they can best be employed in the environment that you face. Tanks were an innovation, and the M-1 Abrams is a product of continuous tank innovation over 90 years. Changing armored doctrine from slow-moving infantry support to blitzkrieg doctrine was an innovation. Figuring out on a day-to-day basis how to use an M-1 Abrams in Iraq's COIN environment is adaptation.
Adaptation is also not transformation. It is how to make the best use of whatever processes, systems, and structures continuous transformation produces. Undoubtedly, the pace of technological change will ensure that military transformation continues apace or even increases speed. However, the faster change takes place, the greater the possibility that we will make wrong choices.
Adaptation is the process by which we take ongoing transformation initiatives and put them to good practical use in a real situation. Adaptation is like potential energy. Its advantage derives from the fact that it has the potential to change the state of other objects when released. Learning how to create, store, and measure adaptability is an imperative in the emerging 21st century security environment.
Adjustment Means Movement
As we have seen, it takes the U.S. military, on average, three years to adjust. That is also the amount of time the American public gives the military to win. Therefore, the way forward is clear. The Department of Defense needs to institutionalize processes that will reduce the cycle from three years to one.
Some may claim that this concept is just the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop. That is not accurate. Rather, institutionalized adaptability includes the process and systems that should be emplaced now, so that our operational and strategic-level commanders are better prepared to apply OODA concepts to broad military situations.
At present we are on a strategic and operational OODA loop of three years. If the U.S. military is going to be successful in any future conflict, it is essential that strategic OODA be reduced to a single year. This way we will have two years to implement and win before dwindling public support calls for a halt.
It is not yet possible to specify exactly what will be involved in institutionalizing rapid adaptability. The military has not studied this concept widely. Considering the immense cost of failing to adapt in a timely fashion, this must be rated as one of the great oversights in strategic thought. Many volumes have been written on military transformation and the effects of innovation, but not a single study exists on how to build a system and culture in which rapid adaptability is feasible.
Everyone talks about the need for change agents and protecting the mavericks, but no thought has been given to rebuilding the entire Department of Defense edifice to make it more accepting of the messages that change agents and mavericks deliver.
Movement May Need Correction
The process must include the ability to rapidly adjust when the maverick leads everyone down the wrong path. After all, just because something is innovative does not make it good. There are many examples of doctrinal and force structure innovations that have led to military disaster. A culture of rapid adaptability does not assume every adaptation is correct. It is not about guessing what will be. Rather, it about recognizing what is. Therefore, it ensures that if a wrong choice is made, adjustments are possible before disaster ensues.
The entire concept is based on the historically proven assumption that whatever we do to transform the force, no matter how innovative, we will get it wrong. Only by institutionalizing adaptability in the professional military education system, training base, organizations, and leadership will we be sure that whatever the military looks like in future decades, it will be able to react and win in any contingency—before the three-year clock runs out.
Mr. Lacey is a retired U.S. Army infantry officer who works as a Washington D.C.–based defense analyst and writer.
Lieutenant Colonel Woods is a Washington D.C.–based defense analyst who specializes in adversarial research and concept development.
1. See LTCOL John Nagl, "New Rules for New Enemies," Armed Forces Journal, October 2006. back to article
2. Allen Millet and Williamson Murray, "The Effectiveness of Military Organizations," International Security 11, no. 1 (summer 1986), http://www.jstor.org/view/00028762/di981886/98p00236/, which summarizes their three- volume book. back to article
3. David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1964); Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1966). back to article
4. Michael Howard, "Military Science in an Age of Peace," Chesney Memorial Gold Medal Lecture, 3 October 1973, reprinted in Journal of the Royal United Services Institute 119 (March 1974): 3–11. back to article