Amongst those countries that have engaged energetically with the concept of human security (HS), the UK has arguably led the way on integrating it into defence. Beyond smatterings of HS-related ideas across various UK defence doctrine publications and concept notes, the UK was the first country to formalise HS within military policy in 2019 (through JSP 1325, which was replaced by JSP 985 in 2021). There are HS-focused groups within various parts of the MoD; HS often features as part of pre-deployment training; the UK Defence Academy runs a Defence Human Security Advisory (DHSA) course, catering to both UK and foreign students; and the UK government announced plans back in 2019 to establish a Centre of Excellence for Human Security (although this has yet to see the light of day).

The real-world effectiveness of HS integration and operationalisation is difficult to assess, let alone measure. Nevertheless, it seems that much of the effort around operationalising HS within defence seems to omit an appreciation that the underlying logic of human security appears more inherently relevant to defence — and indeed more operationalisable in principle — than might otherwise be thought. Perhaps much of this is because a robust logic of human security is rarely, if ever, articulated.

That is what this article seeks to do. It puts forward a claim about the underlying logic of HS, by reasoning through what the concept is about, why it emerged, and how it proposes to solve the problem(s) it responds to. With its logic unpacked and articulated in this manner, the military salience of HS should be all the more apparent.

The What

As a security studies concept, HS focuses on the security of individuals and their communities. It is founded on the twin pillars of 'freedom from fear' and 'freedom from want' (a third pillar is often cited as 'freedom from indignity'). Given that the unit of analysis for HS is individual people, in analytical terms it can be contrasted with national security whose unit of analysis is the (nation-)state, and with international security whose unit of analysis is the international system of states. From this, we can write out the first part of the logic of human security — the what — as follows:

The HS concept:

(a) identifies people as the unit of security analysis.

So far, this is mostly common knowledge to those with a basic awareness of HS. But why is it necessary to focus on the security of the individual?

The Why

All concepts serve a purpose: they help us understand and navigate the world. So when new concepts arise, it is typically in response to the perceived inadequacies of pre-existing ones. This is no less true when it comes to security studies concepts. To shed light on the why of the HS concept we need to understand the driving force(s) behind its emergence. Much has been written about the confluence of factors that eventually formalised the concept in the UN's 1994 Human Development Report, and fully conveying that story is beyond the scope of this piece. However, there are a few points to highlight.

The concept of HS was conceived in the late 20th century in response to the perceived inadequacies of the traditional security studies concepts — primarily that of national security. National security had its foundations in realist theories of international politics, which positioned states as the primary unit of analysis (i.e., the thing to be secured) and emphasised hard military power (i.e., bullets and bombs) as the means for each state to achieve security against the others.

The challenge was that in the second half of the 20th century, an increasing number of violent conflicts appeared to be happening within states rather than between them. The traditional lens of national security didn't have much to say about civil wars, ethnic violence, and genocides. What's more, the national security lens appeared to gloss over the reality that in much of the world, issues like economic deprivation, disease, malnu...

WHY BRITAIN SHOULD RESURRECT 'LETTERS OF MARQUE' FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

In 1708, a Bristol trading captain named Woodes Rogers departed England in command of the 'Duke' and 'Duchess', two heavily armed merchantmen, with a commission from Queen Anne authorising him to wage war against French and Spanish shipping. The letter of marque had transformed him from a private citizen into a state sanctioned privateer. Over three years, Rogers circumnavigated the globe and captured – amongst many – a prize Spanish treasure galleon worth approximately £800,000. Rogers returned home having demonstrated the value of private enterprise under sovereign aegis: strategic power could be projected with minimal Crown expense.

Three centuries later, on 18 December 2025, Senator M. Lee (R-UT) introduced S.3567 to the 1st Session of the 119th Congress. Named the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025, it proposes to give the US President authorities "to issue letters of marque and reprisal with respect to acts of aggression against the United States by a member of a cartel". The US Government is also reportedly considering "enlisting private companies to assist with offensive cyberattacks". The historical inspirations are clear and the modern utility of private enterprise for British national purposes is worth considering.

What are Privateers?

Letters of marque were state-issued licences authorising private individuals to wage war on designated state enemies. Britain once dominated privateering. Elizabeth I's sanctioning of Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh transformed merchant adventurers into instruments of grand strategy against Spanish hegemony. The British Monarchy issued as many as 4,000 letters of marque during the Napoleonic Wars. In the war of 1812 alone, American privateers captured 1,300 British vessels. Privateering allowed governments to project power to complement or negate sovereign economic or military resource. The system worked because frameworks were clear, courts enforced rules and strategic objectives aligned with commercial incentives.

The 1856 Declaration of Paris formally abolished British naval privateering, yet in the United States the Constitution still empowers Congress to grant letters of marque under Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution. As the national defence conversation in Britain develops, with many difficult fiscal choices that lie ahead of the Government and all departments. Meanwhile, Private offensive cyber operations are reportedly occurring daily around the world and the consequences of unregulated private cyber capabilities are already visible. The Israeli firm NSO Group was ordered to pay damages by a US federal court for using intrusion cyber capabilities in June 2025. Whilst Ukraine's IT Army operates today as a volunteer cyber militia with tacit government blessing but minimal legal framework. The choice is not whether private actors will conduct cyber operations – they already do – but whether democracies should harness them through regulation.

Not doing so may cede advantage to adversaries exploiting unaccountable proxies.

Why could it be important?

The world of Great Power Competition and the looming threat of war crystallises the defence imperative and security challenge facing Britain today. The Strategic Defence Review 2025 said "innovation and industrial power are central to deterrence and decisive factors in war", going beyond pure military force to a 'whole of society' approach. The British Army stands at approximately 73,000 personnel – its smallest since the Napoleonic era and much reduced from 102,000 in 2006 – and the broader Armed Forces and security services will inevitably concentrate on protecting critical government and military networks, rather than the national infrastructure that underpins economic activity. More capacity is needed as capacity shrinks and threats expand.

Private companies and enterprise could fill this gap. British Private Military Companies (PMCs) alre...

THE BRITISH ARMY'S 20:40:40 SOLUTION TO THE 'SURVIVABILITY PARADOX'

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brutally validated an old truth about modern war: it requires not just military forces in the field but the societal ability to regenerate, outproduce and outlast. As the British Army's Chief of the General Staff observed in January 2026, "Russia is not looking at your front lines, they've priced that in. They will only take you seriously when it comes to deterrence, and strength, when they see your factories producing at wartime production rates."

This article outlines the British Army's emerging '20:40:40' concept that offers a solution to what Phillips-Levine et al recently identify as the "survivability paradox" – the vicious "self-reinforcing cycle" where "scarcity drives concentration, concentration incentivizes survivability, survivability increases costs, and rising costs further constrain force size.".

Operational imperative

Consensus academic and military analysis of the Russo-Ukrainian War has concluded that modern wars between near-peers will almost certainly remain as attritional as those of the past, which means, "as [a] conflict drags on, the war is won by economies, not armies". Today, the industrial scale of Russia's war effort is immense and continues growing. In 2024 it produced approximately 1,500 tanks and 3,000 other Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFV) whilst achieving 85% of their recruitment targets despite the pressures of economic sanctions and mounting casualties. The reality is that Britain cannot match such a defence industrial output, but nor should it seek to. Instead, it should pursue an asymmetric advantage "by making the component more survivable to protect the investment [force]."

The 20:40:40 concept is the logical corollary and draws on lessons from Ukraine that show the battlefield application of drones and combines them with extant British Army doctrine to achieve distributed lethality. The British Army will not simply incorporate emerging technology into an old-style fighting system but will instead rewire the system.

Defining the Layers of Distributed Lethality

The concept of 20:40:40 describes broad proportions of the force – people, platforms, software and sustainment – that are designed to 'endure, be risked or be expended' to keep the combat network functioning. The British Army does not seek for every formation or unit to become '20:40:40' but rather that the whole force will apply the concept differently by role and echelon. It is the Land component within the broader Integrated Force that harnesses and integrates together cross-domain capabilities alongside the other single services.

20:40:40 was announced in June 2025 (image above) and is to be the British Army's most significant conceptual evolution in generations. It is a deliberate move away from platform-centric to a network-centric approach warfare and seeks to maximise lethality by layering 'Reconnaissance Strike' (or 'Recce-Strike) combat systems of crewed / uncrewed sensors and effectors. It is designed to dismantle a peer adversary's fighting systems whilst protecting and preserving friendly combat power, an approach many will recognise from 'systems warfare'.

At the centre is a relatively small numbers of crewed 'Survivable' platforms (20%) that are the backbone of the tactical force. These are expensive capabilities such as armoured vehicles, helicopters or dismounted infantry that take longer to produce and thus replace which is why survivability is key. They are fundamental to achieving land manoeuvre and critical to missions such as seizing and holding terrain by maintaining Command and Control (C2) as well as Communication Information Systems (CIS) coherence.

Surrounding them will be a distributed layer of reusable uncrewed 'Attritable' (40%) platforms. They will cost less than those in the Survivable layer and are designed to operate at extended reach whilst still having significant technologically lethality. Thei...

The following work is an eye-opening insight into some peak Cold War contingency planning: how to defend Gibraltar – gateway to the Mediterranean and critical British military hub since 1713. Whilst (like all such plans) it may seem utterly far-fetched, the threat – however small – was real.

The latest in an increasingly hefty and impressive portfolio of work focusing on declassified archive material, veteran Wavell Room author and Thin Pinstriped Line blog titan "Sir Humphrey" sets out the very real measures taken to defend 'The Rock'. Regular readers will enjoy the delightful (and oftentimes farcical) similarities with UK defence matters across the decades… Editor.

Simmering Tensions

In the early hours of May 1982, following indications that a Spanish amphibious force, ostensibly on exercise, had begun sailing closer to Gibraltar, the Governor exercised powers to sortie armed Royal Navy warships, and deploy the Army onto the streets of the rock, to defend it from potential Spanish invasion. This sounds like the plot of a poor Cold War thriller but nearly happened for real. This article is about how in the 1980s the UK actively planned to defend Gibraltar from both Soviet and Spanish aggression in the most unlikely of circumstances.

In 1982 the UK and Spain had strained relations over the issue of Gibraltar since the Spanish closed the land border in 1969. Throughout the 1970s there was genuine concern that Spain could attempt some kind of military operation, leading to elaborate plans being developed to defend 'the Rock' against attack for long enough for cooler heads to prevail. The invasion of the Falklands by Argentina was a particular concern, given the vital military role played by UK military facilities in Gibraltar supporting the Task Force.

In April 1982 the Service Chiefs urgently reviewed plans and capabilities were needed to keep Gibraltar safe, both from Argentine attack and to deter the Spanish from taking advantage of a distracted UK both in the short and medium term. The plans to reinforce the Rock were known as Joint Tactical Plan (JTP) 52 existed to reinforce against the risk of Spanish aggression, but as the Chiefs noted "the plans concerns reinforcement of Gibraltar to meet a direct threat to the Rock, not a contingency plan for a war with Spain. Naturally should events escalate to such an unfortunate level, appropriate forces would be assigned as the situation dictated"!

There was an immediate concern about the presence of a Spanish amphibious force, with 4000 marines embarked operating barely 35 miles from the colony from 26 April to 4 May. While the threat was seen as extremely unlikely, it could not be ruled out. To reduce this risk two RAF Jaguar ground attack jets and an RN Lynx helicopter were dispatched to provide a level of anti-ship capability against Spanish vessels that posed a risk to the Rock.

The CINC in Gibraltar was sufficiently concerned about the risk from this exercise, however unlikely it may have been, to formally put in place "covert preparations to deal with any attempt, admittedly extremely unlikely, at an amphibious assault on Gibraltar".

These measures included covertly preparing and arming Royal Navy warships to be ready to sail at short notice to monitor the force if it moved eastwards out of the exercise area towards Gibraltar. If it continued, then the Army units would be brought to very high readiness, and aircrew in their cockpits. The proposed ROE stated that the Royal Navy would not engage until "enemy opens fire or have landed in Gibraltar and opened fire".

Spain did not, of course, invade, but it led to an urgent MOD reappraisal of the defences needed for Gibraltar to defend against "the situation in which a local Spanish commander might decide to attempt an unsupported and unauthorised adventure against the Rock". The conclusions were that there was insufficient anti-aircraft artillery, relying on WW2 40mm bofors guns to defend the airfield, insufficient counter bat...

Today, the British Army trains against a potential Russian enemy. Throughout the Cold War it trained against a possible confrontation with the Soviet Army and Warsaw Pact. In this respect nothing has changed. What has changed – self-evidently – is the Russian Army after three-and-a-half years of war in Ukraine. This article is about how the Russian Army fights in the war in Ukraine. It is not possible to say how it may fight in ten or twenty years. That caveat stated, insights can still be offered from what we observe today.

No tactical radio network

A first and fundamental point to understand about the Russian Army is that it lacks a functioning tactical radio network. Pre-war, the procurement of a modern, digital radio network was one of the biggest corruption scandals in the Russian MOD. Following the invasion, commentators quickly noticed the ubiquity of (insecure) walkie-talkies, as well as the general chaos of the invasion force. The reality is that just over 100 battalion tactical groups were sent over the border fielding three generations of radio systems connected in disparate, ad hoc nets (a British equivalent would be a force fielding Larkspur, Clansman and Bowman radios; most readers will not remember the first two). The loss of the entire pre-war vehicle fleets has exacerbated the problem; with the vehicles went the radios. Russian defence electronics industry does not have the capacity to replace this disastrous loss. It seems not to have tried.

So how does the Russian Army communicate? At tactical level it communicates with walkie-talkies (Kirisun, TYT, AnyTone, and others) and smartphones (on the civilian Telegram channel, although the MOD is about to roll out a new messenger system termed 'Max'). Starlink is widely used. As expected, Ukrainian EW daily harvests intercepts. Away from the mostly static frontlines, line, fibre-optic cable and HF radios are used.

The ability to communicate across voice and data nets, securely, is fundamental to an army. It is the lack of a functioning tactical radio network that has driven the Russian Army's tactics – you can only do what your communication system allows you to do.

No combined arms capability

The principal consequence of a lack of a functioning tactical radio network is that the Russian Army is incapable of combined arms warfare. The only observed cooperation between different arms is the now rare assaults involving perhaps one 'turtle tank' (essentially a tank resembling a Leonardo da Vinci drawing, covered in layers of steel plates and logs), and two or three similarly festooned vintage BMPs). They don't survive although one 'turtle tank' recently required over 60 FPV drone hits before it was definitively destroyed (the crew long abandoned their dangerous box and fled).

Following on, the Russian Army is incapable of coordinating an action above company level. The last period when true battalion-level operations were attempted was in Avdiivka in the winter of 2023-2024. However, these involved vehicles simply lining up in single file on a track and playing 'follow the leader'. Similar tactics were seen in the re-taking of the Kurshchyna salient in Kursk this spring, which was also the last period that witnessed sustained attempts at mounting company-level armoured attacks (there was an odd exception to this rule at the end of July on the Siversk front; all the vehicles were destroyed).

The level of operations of the Russian Army is company and below.

No joint capability

From the start of the invasion it was evident the Russian Air Force was incapable of co-ordinating a dynamic air campaign, air-versus-air, or in support of ground forces. By the autumn of 2022 Russian strike aircraft stopped crossing the international border altogether due to losses. The first glide bombs were recorded in the spring of 2023 (these are launched from Russian air space). Today, a daily average of 80 strike sorties and 130 glide bombs are recorded. These mainly target frontline pos...

Introduction

The Red Sea crisis has settled into an uncomfortable new normal. While the initial shock caused by the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) has faded, the strategic implications of the Houthi campaign remain dangerously under-analysed in the context of future British Naval Doctrine. For the Royal Navy, the conflict would appear to cast a shadow over amphibious operations in littoral waters, where both the Carrier Strike Group (CSG) and the Littoral Response Groups (LRGs) are expected to conduct their operations. The Houthi campaign has inadvertently provided an example of a scalable, repeatable model of sea denial that fundamentally challenges the operating and financial rationale of Western naval power projection.

The Houthi Model involves the integration of sensors and shooters at the state level with the expendability and mass of non-state actor operations. This model poses a significant challenge for the Royal Navy, which relies on low-density, high-value assets.

The Tyranny of the Cost-Exchange Ratio

The frightening mathematics of modern air defence are grounded in the lessons learned from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. In the first few months of the Red Sea conflict, British destroyers, notably HMS Diamond, excelled at shooting down wave after wave of hostile tracks. However, there was an unsustainable price to pay.

The Houthis' Shahed-136 derivative costs approximately $20,000. The missile required to intercept it, an Aster-15 or Sea Viper, costs at least £1 million. While individual engagements can be justified by the value of a destroyed merchant vessel or a destroyer providing escort, the economics of sustained engagement are financially disastrous.

This creates a magazine depth problem that the CSG must confront. A Type 45 Destroyer has 48 vertical launch (VL) silos. In a saturation attack scenario, precisely the type the Houthi Model promotes, a destroyer may expend its entire primary magazine in minutes, shooting down targets costing its adversary less than a basic rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB). It should be noted that at present, the Royal Navy can not replenish a surface vessel's VL silos whilst at sea.

Should the UK CSG deploy to the Indo-Pacific, it would face the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). However, the Houthi Model demonstrates that the PLAN need not risk its own high-value hulls to mission-kill a Queen Elizabeth-class carrier. It only needs to provide a proxy or 'maritime militia' swarm with sufficient cheap, attritable effectors to force the CSG to exhaust its magazines. Once the escorts are out of ammunition, the carrier becomes operationally irrelevant, forced to withdraw without a single capital ship being sunk.

The Littoral Response Group in Crisis: The Decommissioning Dilemma

The consequences for the Littoral Response Group could be the most profound. The current construct envisions the use of Bay-class and Albion-class vessels in the littoral zone to conduct 'raids' and achieve 'strategic effects' via the force insertion of Commandos. However, the basis for such an operational construct has now fundamentally changed.

In March 2025, the Ministry of Defence undertook the decommissioning of HMS Albion and Bulwark, the Royal Navy's two Albion-class landing platform docks. This was an exercise in cost-cutting that has resulted in a major capability gap. This capability gap now exists at a time when there is a considerable change in the doctrine surrounding amphibious operations. Albion-class vessels were designed to deliver amphibious landing forces at the brigade level. Their absence means that the Royal Navy has to rely on three Bay-class Landing Ship Docks, vessels that are already under considerable pressure due to crewing deficits within the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

The capability gap is significant, as there are now no Bay-class vessels available to conduct sustained operations. With the Albion-class now retired, the capability deficit is pronounced. The lightweight, a...

The Houthis

Necessity is a dark cloud that often gives birth to innovation in the turbulent arenas of contemporary conflicts. That 'dark cloud' – the existential threat – can act as a powerful catalyst for ingenuity, particularly in 21st-century conflicts. A very low-profile, yet dramatic form of this change is underway as terrorist and insurgent groups use commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – not just to conduct occasional attacks, but to provide a system of permanent, industrial-level resupply operations. This development makes fortified borders and patrolled roadways even more obsolete across the Sahel, to Yemen, and in South Asia.

This is not a tactical gimmick. It is a strategic development. What started as experimental applications of shelf-storey drones has evolved into a stable aerial logistics chain that can transport 300-800 kilograms of explosives, electronic parts, munitions and vital materiel each week over hundreds of kilometres of enemy-controlled land.

Terrorist groups establish their continuous logistical 'airborne' pipelines using fixed-wing UAVs, each carrying payloads of 5-20kg over distances of 100-400km per flight. These drones are now built using parts that cost less than 2500 US dollars each, with jam-resistant navigation, including SpaceX Starlink ROAM terminals, that can provide satellite-based freedom even in electronically hostile environments. These operations create long-range air bridges that evade ground interdiction and exploit vast uncontrolled airspace, unlike headline-grabbing isolated attacks.

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara

For instance, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) has wreaked havoc across the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso tri-border region in the Sahel. ISGS uses nocturnal relay chains of short-hop drone hops to ferry ammunition and IED precursors through deserts, where the use of ground troops becomes risky due to the ambushes of French-supported forces or local militias. A 2025 report by the Institute of Security Studies states that Sahelian terrorist cells, armed with Chinese-sourced commercial quadcopters as well as fixed-wing drones, acquired via Algeria and Libya, have adapted drones with longer battery life and thermal imaging. This has maintained offensive operations in remote outposts, regardless of Wagner Group patrols. This phenomenon has contributed to the UN estimate that terrorism based in Sahel contributed to more than 40 per cent of global terrorism fatalities in the first half of 2025.

The Houthis in Yemen

The Houthis have also developed the infrastructure of drone logistics, turning it into a geopolitical asset in Yemen. They launch payloads more than 300 km from mountain strongholds to reach the adjacent territory, bypassing both heavily monitored land and sea borders. In October 2025, the Pentagon evaluations and U.S. naval intercepts in the Red Sea verified the shipments of dismantled drone engines and guidance kits that were delivered in parts by UAVs. Every sortie is less than a thousand dollars, and interceptor assets are over a hundred thousand dollars, continuing the Houthi campaign against Bab-el-Mandeb shipping and disabling multibillion-dollar border walls.

Tehrik-i-Taliban in South Asia

This trend extends to South Asia, where Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) confronts Islamabad on the Durand line. Although Pakistan has maintained fencing and towers since 2017, TTP forces in Afghanistan's Kunar and Nangarhar provinces carry out nocturnal sustainment flights of small arms, batteries and IED components directly into Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province. A recent analysis by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies recorded a 30% surge in TTP attacks this year. This escalation has forced the military to divert resources to counter-drone efforts, exposing the futility of physical border barriers against overhead supply.

Why conventional methods do not work

These instances demonstrate that the traditional method of counter-ter...

'Power, violence and legitimacy are fragmenting, and modern conflict is starting to behave accordingly'1

Introduction

It's hard to shake the feeling that conflict no longer behaves the way we expect it to. Wars don't end cleanly, responsibility is always blurred, and decisions with real consequences seem to be made everywhere and nowhere at once. We sense that something has changed, but rarely have the space to stop and ask why. This isn't an attempt to predict the next war or sound the alarm. It's an effort to make sense of why power, violence and accountability no longer behave the way we assume they do, and what that could mean for states and societies that still expect to manage them.

Modern conflict is no longer defined by the Western conception of war as a discrete event led by states, fought by armies, and concluded by treaties. It has become a fluid spectrum shaped by states, private actors, technologies, algorithms, and societies that no longer share a common centre of gravity. The result is a geopolitical environment where the means of violence are distributed, authority is conditional, and conflict increasingly persists rather than resolves. That shift is hard to miss for anyone paying even casual attention to current events.

Conflict Without Resolution

In Ukraine, the fallout from Andriy Yermak's resignation in November 2025 was not just another political headline. It exposed a quieter competition over who shapes the end of the war, who decides the terms of security, and which interests gain access and influence when the war eventually winds down. It is a reminder that power has never been centralised in one place, and that competing interests are now shaping outcomes more openly than before. States still matter, but they no longer control the direction of conflict or the timing of peace alone. It shows how even in a major interstate war, control over outcomes is dispersed across political factions, private funders, foreign backers and societal forces.

Power Beyond the State

In Venezuela, tensions following the American strike has little to do with drugs, rhetoric or posturing alone. Politics matters, but so do the stakes beneath it: the largest proven oil reserves on earth, critical minerals and control of commercial advantage in a region where global competitors are increasingly active. This is the type of dispute where state power, private interests and informal networks blend into one another, and where none of these actors operate in isolation or according to national logic. It is a textbook case of a conflict shaped more by markets, resources and informal networks than by state intention.

In the Middle East, Israel's simultaneous operations across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank show how modern warfare behaves when too many actors hold the capacity to escalate. Fronts no longer open and close; they bleed into one another, influenced not only by governments but by proxies, foreign backers and interests that do not wear national uniforms. The result is not confusion, it is complexity. Together, these overlapping fronts reinforce a world in which the power to escalate is no longer held by states alone.

The Fracturing of Monopoly, Not the State

These conflicts should not be lumped together, but they reveal a structural reality that they now share: the state is still powerful, but it is no longer the only force that matters. Too many actors now possess the means to shape violence, stall peace or influence outcomes from outside the traditional architecture of a government. The modern battlefield has matured into something closer to a marketplace of capabilities, incentives and interests than a domain controlled solely by states.

Western strategic thinking has long struggled with this shift because its definitions of war remain narrow. Other traditions have always recognised a wider spectrum: the Russian military and strategic literature use the words borba ('struggle') to capture political, informational ...

The Russo-Ukrainian War is a crucible of modern military innovation and has seen adaptation at

every echelon, which the British Army is seeking to learn lessons from. In particular, the

emergence of brigade-level commercial contracting within the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has

captured the imagination of its commanders. However, such an approach has inherent

opportunities, risks and consequences. Ultimately, a Ukrainian brigade is not analogous to a British

one and the Army has higher echelons of capable Division and Corps headquarters. Through a

blended approach, these can serve to manage a system of 'decentralised' commerical contracting

whilst mitigating the risks of tactical and institutional fragmentation. The British Army has to be

discerning in which lessons it chooses to learn and adapt from.

Over the course of Russo-Ukrainian War, beginning with the seizure of Crimea in 2014 and

through the full-scale invasion in 2022, the AFU has "radically pivoted its approach to military

innovation" and evolved a dual-track scheme to develop and procure military technologies. On the

one hand, it operates a 'centralised' system orchestrated by the Ukrainian government and AFU

command headquarters. This principally coordinates the flow of western-supplied equipment and

seeks to manage sovereign industrial output. On the other, a 'decentralised' system has evolved

with individual AFU brigades working directly with the commercial sector. By this latter approach,

technology and equipment moves from factory to frontline at ever increasing speeds but this

comes at the detriment of force standardisation and integration.

This decentralised model of brigade-level procurement is attractive for those seeking to address

criticisms of the MOD's "sluggish procurement processes". But the question is not whether to

replicate the entire approach, which emerged from existential necessity to meet specific

operational conditions, but rather to discern which elements might be adopted. The goal being to

enhance MOD procurement without undermining the coherence that British industry and military

requires. To do so it must understand the genesis of the AFU's brigade-level procurement model,

consider the relative weight of opportunities vs risks and adapt them to Britain's own unique

context.

Origin Story

The Ukrainian state in 2014 lacked sufficient funds to address its force's equipment deficits and

regenerate units, which saw private citizens from across civil society fill the gap. This social

phenomenon accelerated in February 2022 as numbers joining the AFU increased, with many of

the new soldiers bringing significant personal wealth and business resource with them into service.

Commerical enterprise and industrial companies became intertwined at the lowest tactical levels

with frontline units. These in turn – which until recently were the largest AFU tactical formations –

developed an entrepreneurial attitude to procurement.

Thus emerged the 'decentralised' approach evident today. It grew organically to bypass traditional

bureaucratic channels to enable speed of delivery and embed battlefield feedback into industrial

procurement cycles. Critically, it also emerged in the absence of functional headquarters (for

example Division and Corps) between the brigades and the AFU central command. The system

was neither designed nor deliberate and as a result capacity varies across brigades. This is

because of three fundamental tensions: tactical agility vs force standardisation; operational

responsiveness vs industrial sustainability; and strategic mobilisation vs coherent force design.

Tactical Agility vs Force Standardisation

Brigade contracting has delivered a procurement cycle measured in days rather than months and

years. Ukrainian forces can get drones, communications equipment and logistics enablement with

unprecedented speed, allowing them to respond to Russian Forces in near-real time. CEPA noted

the AFU's "response to the logistical challenges o...

Incremental adaptation in modern warfare has astonished military observers globally. Ukraine's meticulously planned Operation Spider Web stands as a stark reminder of how bottom-up innovation combined with hi-tech solutions can prove their mettle on the battlefield. It has also exposed the recurring flaw in the strategic mindsets of the great powers: undermining small powers, their propensity for defence, and their will to resist. Having large-scale conventional militaries and legacy battle systems, great powers are generally guided by a hubris of technological preeminence and expectations of fighting large-scale industrial wars. In contrast, small powers don't fight in the same paradigm; they innovate from the bottom up, leveraging terrain advantage by repurposing dual-use tech, turning the asymmetries to their favour.

History offers notable instances of great power failures in asymmetric conflicts. From the French Peninsular War to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, these conflicts demonstrate the great powers' failure to adapt to the opponent's asymmetric strategies. This is partly due to their infatuation with the homogeneity of military thought, overwhelming firepower and opponents' strategic circumspection to avoid symmetric confrontation with the great powers.

On the contrary, small powers possess limited means and objectives when confronting a great power. They simply avoid fighting in the opponent's favoured paradigm. Instead, they employ an indirect strategy of attrition, foster bottom-up high-tech innovation and leverage terrain knowledge to increase attritional cost and exhaust opponents' political will to fight. Similarly, small powers are often more resilient, which is manifested by their higher threshold of pain to incur losses, an aspect notably absent in great powers' war calculus.

Operation Spider Web

In the Operation Spider Web, Ukraine employed a fusion of drone technology with human intelligence (HUMINT) to attack Russia's strategic aviation mainstays. Eighteen months before the attack, Ukraine's Security Services (SBU) covertly smuggled small drones and modular launch systems compartmentalised inside cargo trucks. These drones were later transported close to Russian airbases. Utilising an open-source software called ArduPilot, these drones struck a handful of Russia's rear defences, including Olenya, Ivanovo, Dyagilevo and Belaya airbases. Among these bases, Olenya is home to the 40th Composite Aviation Regiment-a guardian of Russia's strategic bomber fleet capable of conducting long-range strikes.

The operation not only damaged Russia's second-strike capability but also caught the Russian military off guard in anticipating such a coordinated strike in its strategic depth. Russia's rugged terrain, vast geography and harsh climate realities shielded its rear defences from foreign incursions. Nonetheless, Ukraine's bottom-up innovation in hi-tech solutions, coupled with a robust HUMINT network, enabled it to hit the strategic nerve centres, which remained geographically insulated for centuries.

Since the offset of hostilities, Ukraine has adopted a whole-of-society approach to enhance its defence and technological ecosystem. By leveraging creativity, Ukraine meticulously developed, tested and repurposed the dual-use technologies to maximise its warfighting potential. From sinking Russia's flagship Moskva to hitting its aviation backbones, Ukraine abridged the loop between prototyping, testing, and fielding drones in its force structures.

Underrated aspects?

Another underrated aspect of Ukraine's success is the innovate or perish mindset. Russia's preponderant technology and overwhelming firepower prompted Ukrainians to find a rapid solution to defence production. Most of Ukraine's defence industrial base is located in Eastern Ukraine, which sustained millions of dollars' worth of damage from Russia's relentless assaults. Therefore, the Ukrainian government made incremental changes in Military Equipment ...