Understanding Adaptation

Abstract

This chapter examines why military adaptation is so difficult. All organizations resist change, but militaries resist change even more because of the inherent uncertainty of the battlefield, strategic interaction with the adversary, the radical difference between peacetime and wartime, and the existential costs of failure. The authors argue that existing explanations of military adaptation do not provide a sufficient understanding of how adaptation occurs after a war or conflict begins. They then identify the three key elements of their analytic framework—doctrine, technology, and leadership—and explain how they use that framework throughout the rest of the book.