Mick Ryan, AM Profile picture
Mar 11, 2022 24 tweets 8 min read Read on X
It is 16 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. Today I will examine the the importance of the adaptation battle in war, and how it is playing out in Ukraine. (Image - BBC) Image
2/24 As always, a shout out to those reporting on the Russian invasion. This includes @KofmanMichael @maxseddon @IAPonomarenko @RALee85 @shashj @DanLamothe @ikhurshudyan @IanPannell @DefenceHQ @TheStudyofWar @siobhan_ogrady
among others. Please follow them.
3/24 It is impossible for the military to anticipate every eventuality in war. There are too many scenarios to accurately predict wartime events. As such, a key virtue for military organizations in war must be adaptability to unexpected events.
4/24 In his famous essay, The Use and Abuse of Military History, Sir Michael Howard described the problem thus: “It is not surprising that there has often been a high proportion of failures among senior commanders at the beginning of any war.”
5/24 “These unfortunate men may either take too long to adjust themselves to reality…of they may have had their minds so far shaped by a lifetime of pure administration that they have ceased…to be soldiers.” Read it all here: press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewconten…
6/24 As Williamson Murray writes, because war “is interactive, both sides have the potential to adapt to the conflict at every level…thus the problems posed by the battlespace do not remain constant. More often than not they change with startling rapidity.” Image
7/24 The exploration of adaptation has resulted in the development of a range of concepts on how adaptation occurs & how it can be applied. In military literature, the best-known adaptive cycle is Boyd’s OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) loop. Image
8/24 Frank Hoffman has also proposed a model for military adaptation which he calls Organisational Learning Capacity. It has four parts: leadership; organisational culture; learning mechanisms; and, dissemination mechanisms.
9/24 So, effective military institutions need to adapt in war, at every level, and share lessons broadly to ensure an entire force can learn from both success and failure. Military institutions must win the adaptation battle at the strategic, operational & tactical levels.
10/24 What kind of adaptations have we witnessed in this war so far?
11/24 From the Russians, they had to adapt their campaign within the first 48 hours because their attempt at a lightening conquest of Ukraine failed. This was most obvious in the north and the attempts to capture Kyiv. They had to adapt their campaign to what we are now seeing.
12/24 Further, they have experienced major challenges in the ability to coordinate combined arms warfare on the ground - it has seen them advance much slower, and sustain more casualties, than anticipated. They have therefore adapted to rely more on firepower than maneuver.
13/24 For the Ukrainians, they have clearly recognised that the Russians have poor rear area security. They have adapted their operations to fight the Russians in the rear areas. It is hard for the Russians to advance when they have to constantly look over their shoulders.
14/24 The Ukrainians also appear to have adapted based on the big inflow of western crew served anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. This isn’t to say they did not have them previously. But it appears these now have greater emphasis in Ukrainian operations.
15/24 Finally, the Ukrainians have adapted in the info environment. Not only did they seize the initiative at the start of the war, they have learned and evolved in a tactical, operational and strategic influence fight against Russian misinformation. (Image - @IAPonomarenko) Image
16/24 There will be many other adaptations on the ground we are not seeing. In due course, we will need to study other military adaptations – from both sides – that will emerge.
17/24 Finally, what military adaptations might we see in the near future in Ukraine?
18/24 The Russians are clearly still attempting to improve their ability to plan and coordinate large scale ground maneuver. We may see them adapt their communications to be more secure, improve logistics, and replace incompetent commanders to improve tactical performance.
19/24 We may see increased Russian operations in the west as they adapt their overall campaign. They will need to halt, or severely restrict the flow of western arms and other aid, into Ukraine. This will force Ukraine to adapt is defensive campaign.
20/24 From the Ukrainians, we may see an #adaptation to their overall scheme of defence where they start focussing more on support to insurgent forces in areas already captured by the Russians. At the same time they will need to sustain conventional operations.
21/24 The Ukrainians are also adapting their tactical force structure to absorb foreign combatants and support personnel. Given training, language and cultural differences, this will be a significant adaptation for them to manage.
22/24 As I note in #WarTransformed, military organizations are never at a steady state. The rapid pace of change means that they will be adapting at each level concurrently and doing so constantly. This adaptation battle is what we are seeing play out now in Ukraine.
23/24 There are other good references on this topic. Here are just three of my favourites – among many – on the topic of military adaptation. Image
24/24 Adaptation is a central component of war, and a 'learning culture' is key to institutional adaptation. There will be more adaptations to observe in Ukraine in the days & weeks ahead. I will take a break tomorrow, and return with my daily thread on Monday. End.

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More from @WarintheFuture

Sep 11
In the past 24 hours, it has been reported that the Biden administration has finally submitted a strategy for supporting #Ukraine to the U.S. Congress. What is the current U.S. strategy for Ukraine, what might the new strategy look like and will it influence on the trajectory of the war? 1/19 🧵Image
2/ Currently, there is no published U.S. strategy specifically for the war in #Ukraine. After 31 months, the Biden administration is still using crisis management, speeches and slogans such as ‘for as long as it takes’ rather than developing and executed a clear, well resourced strategy for Ukraine.
3/ The key elements of the U.S. approach since the beginning of the war have been: 1. Providing military assistance to Ukraine; 2. Rallying international support to provide economic, humanitarian & military aid; 3. Leading development & implementation of economic sanctions; & 4. Avoiding a war between the U.S. & Russia.
Read 19 tweets
Aug 31
I have posted my weekly update with events in #Ukraine, Russia, and the Pacific theatre, as well as my recommended readings. Some key points in the thread below. (Image: @DefenceU) 1/11 🧵 Image
2/ In Russia, Ukraine’s Kursk campaign continues although advances in the past week have been fewer than in the initial part of their post-break through exploitation operations. Russia’s response has gathered momentum.
3/ While there have been some advances, the Ukrainian incursion appears to have reached - or is close to reaching - the ‘limit of exploitation’ that I discussed in this articleback on 12 August. In that piece, I examined what Ukraine’s options were once that occured. These include defending all terrain seized in Kursk, selecting defendable terrain and withdrawing into that, and withdrawing back into Ukraine altogether. It appears that the second option is most likely at this point. Image
Read 11 tweets
Aug 27
The Ukrainian attack into #Kursk, now into its 3rd week, was a tactical & operational surprise for the Russians. But the Ukrainians also surprised their supporters in the West. And part of the reason is that many Western nations can’t conceive of such audacity in the modern world. 1/14 🧵engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ukrai…
2/ Ukraine also surprised their supporters in the West in large part because #Ukraine deliberately withheld details of the #Kursk attack to preserve operational security, avoid second guessing by talkative bureaucrats in the West, and avoid the inflated expectations of the build up to their failed 2023 counteroffensive.
3/ The operation is not without risks. The Russian advances in the Donbas, particularly on their Pokrovsky axis of advance, are taking ground and threatening a key line of defended cities in eastern Ukraine. Losing these would cause significant challenges for the Ukrainian defensive campaign in the Donbas and political challenges for the Ukrainian president.
Read 14 tweets
Aug 25
Throughout the #Ukraine war, adaptation has been a critical national & battlefield function for #Ukraine, and for the Russians. This is a process that pulses & pauses, and is distributed unevenly throughout combat units & the bureaucratic institutions of state. What observations about strategic adaptation might be made of the #Kursk offensive? 1/16 🧵🇺🇦Image
2/ 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. One of the most important levels of learning in war is that which takes place at the strategic level.
3/ Strategic adaptation occurs in both peace and war, although war provides 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 & adaptation with an adversary, applying lessons better or more quickly than they do, & ensuring this knowledge is used to shape the trajectory of war, and ultimately, winning it.Image
Read 16 tweets
Aug 22
This provides further disturbing evidence (on top of the tens of thousands of Russian war crimes) that unnecessary cruelty is a systemic part of Russia’s invasion of #Ukraine and not isolated, individual acts. There are institutional incentives for the Russians to behave this way (medals, etc). Putin and Gerasimov are ultimately culpable. 1/6 🧵🇺🇦
2/ This is vastly different from the conduct of the Ukrainian military through the war. As I examine in my new book, The War for Ukraine, fighting a ‘just war’ is a key element of Ukraine’s war #strategy. As Zelenskyy noted last week, in #Kursk “we must fight by the rules.”
3/ This “fighting by the rules” plays a big role in projecting legitimacy for the Ukrainian state and helps in gaining military, diplomatic, financial and moral support from other nations.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 19
Ukrainian objectives for the #Kursk operation have gained some recent clarity with statements by the Ukrainian President, as well as other Ukrainian officials. What are these objectives, and what are the Russian options to respond to the Ukrainian Kursk campaign? 1/24 🧵🇺🇦 Image
2/ The first Ukrainian objective is political. Zelenskyy has described how "we’ve already expanded and will continue to expand the circle of those who support a just end to this war. It's essential that Ukraine enters this fall even stronger than before." Ukraine must be stronger as the year tapers off into Winter & it must also be seen as such by its supporters and those who support Russia.
3/ Another element of this political objective is to pierce the Russian bluffing about escalation. #Ukraine has demonstrated, again, that the various red lines projected by the Russian president are nothing but a chimera designed to reinforce Western political timidity about decision-making on the war, and shape Western decisions about provision of weapons.Image
Read 24 tweets

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