The agility imperative - a revelation in military affairs.indd

The agility imperative: a revelation in military affairs
War fi ghting in the 21 st century and the information age is more about the speed of learning than it is about the
speed of reloading. Granted, this simplistic understanding of modern warfare is enticingly suggestive in that
it appears to focus on something more than just destruction. The notion that the number of tanks or warships
you have matters less than your ability to think network rather than linearly is comforting. But gone is also
the physical certainty of winning or losing decisive battles and formal surrenders of state actors. The security
environment is driven by an unparalleled explosion in information transfer that has affected how humans fundamentally
organise and develop ideas. The military cannot avoid the impact of these developments and the
challenges they present. By the end of 2013 the agility imperative will likely stand out as one of the defi ning
characteristics necessary for military organisations to fi ght wars in the 21 st century.
By Dr William Mitchell
The military legacy of learning – or not
Military history is full of moments where military organisations learned the hard way that maintaining organisations,
technologies and doctrine for war fighting based on tradition and routine rather than environment can
have terrible consequences. Few to none of these have been celebrated as victors or heroes, most pitied as the
unfortunate victims of modernisation. And like other significant times in military history driven by technological
breakthroughs, there is a period of transition within both the physical and cognitive dimensions of the
war fighting environment. From the spear to the armed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), from the romantic
idealism of chivalry to the legal rationality of the Law of Armed Conflicts, the environment in which we fight
is constantly evolving and always has. However, the information age is more than a physical attribute of the
modern war fighting environment; its impact is on the dynamic of change itself. There is no doubt that the
onset of the information age has affected every aspect of human life: how we think, how we manage information,
how we use the information, how we communicate with each other. It has also set in motion a pace
of learning, development and change that is perpetually accelerating. The faster we learn from each other, the
faster we adapt, innovate, develop and respond. We are exploiting knowledge faster and over greater distances
than at any other point in history.
The context of military operations is not a separate universe from the one all humans are expected to operate
in. It is this environment of information hyper drive that the 20 th -century military has found itself struggling to
adapt to. Struggling with retaining, discovering and recreating its own identity and history. Struggling to fit a
fast changing world that only a short 30 years ago was still slow enough to provide a rock solid raison d’étre
for continuing the way the military has generally organised itself since the time of Napoleon.
Military history is full of significant leaps forward in military organisation, doctrine and technology. Examples
are many: the invention and employment of chariots, flex bows, longbows, gunpowder, cannons and, more
recently, machine guns, aircraft, the tank by the British, its effective use by the Germans. There are many.
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