Key Findings
- Ukraine and Russia have accelerated tactical, organizational, doctrinal, and industrial learning since 2022, making adaptation culture a central factor in their military effectiveness.
- The report argues that learning from Ukraine and the Middle East has expanded into an international adaptation competition involving Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
- Western powers are described as slower to recognize the adaptation war, leaving a gap between identifying problems, finding solutions, and implementing technological, conceptual, and organizational change.
- The report finds that new tools for collecting and prioritizing information from commercial and military sources could improve understanding of adversary adaptation and strengthen U.S. learning.
- Peacetime adaptation, transition-to-war adaptation, and wartime adaptation require different leadership mindsets, readiness conditions, force posture settings, and institutional approaches to lessons learned.
Overview
This report examines what it calls an emerging global “Adaptation War” rooted in the Russia-Ukraine war and informed by conflicts in the Middle East. It frames adaptation as a military requirement before war, during the transition from peace to war, and in wartime, then assesses tactical, strategic, and international forms of learning and adaptation. Drawing on examples from Ukraine and Russia, the report discusses uncrewed systems, digital command and control, changing battlefield tactics, long-range strike, air and missile defense, and industrial mobilization. It argues that Ukraine and Russia have both accelerated their ability to learn and insert lessons into military and industrial systems, while authoritarian cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea has produced an adversary learning and adaptation bloc. The report also reviews limits on military learning, including organizational culture, dissemination problems, leadership, and the challenge of translating lessons across contexts. Its policy relevance centers on recommendations for the Department of War and U.S. allies to make adaptation an institutional priority, study adversary learning networks, improve lessons translation for the Indo-Pacific and other theaters, apply tailored analytical AI, and close the gap between technological emergence and battlefield use.
Generating America’s competitive advantage in the 21st century will hinge on how well it can compete, and lead, in the new adaptation war.
Mick Ryan
Recommendations
- Embrace adaptation as an integral aspect of the Department of War's institutional culture. Senior leaders should nurture people and teams incentivised and resourced to continuously learn and that are capable of adapting quickly.
- Increase investment in learning how Ukrainian, Russian and other military organisations learn. This extends into learnings of the defense industries and how these lessons intersect with military affairs.
- Target vulnerable elements of the adversary learning and adaptation bloc. The approach must balance learning from a military institution’s own activities with those from foreign wars and exercises.
- Form an Indo-Pacific version of the NATO Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre. Link it to the Commander of Indo-Pacific Command and the Department of War for rapid dissemination of lessons.
From the report
Documents
Publication
Published by the Special Competitive Studies Project. Co-publishers and external authors, where they exist, are credited in the byline above.