Ukraine and Lessons for Future Military Leaders

Learning from Ukraine to Lead and Win

Leaders: Chief Master Sergeant of 47th Mechanised Brigade Valery Markus and President Zelensky. (Image: @MilitaryLandnet)

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, there have been a multitude of documents that provide initial observations about the war.  While these reports are too numerous to list here, some of the best compilation of lessons include the reports from the Royal United Services Institution, a recent report from T.X. Hammes, and this week, an excellent series of articles in The Economist by defence correspondent, Shashank Joshi.

Mostly, the observations produced so far have fallen into one (or more) of three categories.

First, there are the observations about equipment. This includes the multitude of different combat and support equipment, as well as munitions and other materiel used to underpin combat operations and the defence of military forces and civilian infrastructure.

Second, there are observations about ideas – the tactics and strategies used by either side. This has included observations about poor integration of combat arms, particularly by the Russians, as well as Ukrainian tactics to defeat the Russians north of Kyiv. More recently, observations have been made about Russian Z Storm Units and evolved tactics for the use of drones, Wagner human wave tactics, the employment of artillery and drones to close the detection to destruction gap and the evolving integration of the Ukrainian air defence network.

Third, there are observations about organisations. Early in the war, many observations were made about the utility of the Russian battalion tactical groups. Since then, other observations have been made about Ukrainian drone attack companies and Russian private military companies. Michael Kofman and Rob Lee have also written about the larger force design of the Russian military.

All three of these topics provide useful insights. But in many cases, these observations are too early to describe as lessons. This is because many institutions are still assessing which observations from Ukraine are relevant to only this war, and which ones might have much broader utility. The United States Army has good definitions for what a lesson is. A lesson is “knowledge or understanding gained by experience. Successes and failures are both considered sources of lessons.” Further, a lesson learned is “when you can measure a change in behavior.”

Despite this, it is incumbent on professional military institutions to sort through the vast array of observations made about the war and assess which ones might be acted on rapidly. And while there are, arguably, many lessons about equipment, ideas and organisations that might be exploited in the short and medium term, there is also one other area we must pay attention to. It is central to the human dimension of war: leadership.

Leadership

Leadership is an essential human skill with many definitions. Field Marshal Montgomery in his 1961 book, The Path to Leadership, called it a “battle for the hearts and minds of men.” There have been many other definitions offered by individuals from government, commerce, the arts and the military.

No human undertaking possesses such high stakes leadership as that of a nation in wartime. People who are elected or appointed to lead and command must have the presence to inspire or convince others to do most complex and difficult things in terrible and demanding circumstances.

Good leadership is developed through experience, study, reflection, mentoring and the mental capacity to embrace variety of ideas.

Providing the "why", or purpose, is also a central responsibility for leaders. Purpose is more vital than the tasks to be undertaken. Leaders inspire through giving their people meaning.

But the authority granted to leaders has many limitations. Consequently, leading through influence is a critical skill. Clear purpose helps, but leaders must invest in developing the logical and emotional appeal of tasks and missions, collaborate with others and then communicate using various mediums. This has been proven again during the war in Ukraine.

Military Trends and Military Leadership

Military institutions must use observations from the current war in Ukraine to evolve how they develop their leaders at many different levels. But, in evaluating how we might evolve the development of military leaders, it is important that we also understand how war itself is changing.

Those who study war and the military profession differentiate between wars’ changing character and enduring nature. This notion of how war both changes and stays the same originated, at least in written form, with Carl von Clausewitz’s On War. It is still a key framework for the contemporary study of war.

War’s Enduring Nature. The enduring nature of war refers to those aspects of human conflict that are consistent themes throughout the ages.  This nature of war is defined by the interaction between opposing wills, violence, and its being driven by politics. In describing this theory of the nature of war, Clausewitz sought to depict what he believed were the universal – or enduring elements – that every theorist above all should be concerned about.

War’s Changing Character. When exploring the changing character of war, we are accepting that political, technological, societal developments drive the evolution in how war is waged. Humans have moved from swords and shields to tanks and planes, and now into an era of autonomous machines and algorithms used in all domains of human competition and conflict. The ideas applied to war, blending new technologies and new organisations, have also continued to develop throughout the ages. This process has continued during the war in Ukraine.

In my 2022 book, War Transformed, I identified seven trends in contemporary war that are representative of war’s changing character.  The trends, all of which have impacted on the war in Ukraine, are as follows:

1.      A New Appreciation of Time. The speed of planning, decision making, action is increasing due to hypersonic weapons, faster media cycles, and AI support at many levels.  Military organisations is to ensure that their people and institutions at every level are able to intellectually and physically deal with the environment through better use of time for improved decision-making. Further, military personnel must be able to exploit this use of time to improve their capacity to adapt through re-organization, re-equipping, re-thinking and re-skilling.

2.      The battle of signatures, where military organisations must minimize their tactical to strategic signatures, use recorded signatures to deceive, and be able to detect and exploit adversary signatures—across all the domains in which humans compete and fight.

3.      New forms of mass, where military organizations must build forces with the right balance of expensive platforms and cheaper, smaller autonomous systems that will be more adaptable to different missions and be more widely available.

4.      More integrated thinking and action, where unlike the counterinsurgencies of the past two decades, future military institutions must be able to operate in all domains concurrently and integrate into broader national strategies.

5.      Human-machine integration, where robotic systems, big data, high-performance computing, and algorithms will be absorbed into military organizations in larger numbers to augment human physical and cognitive capabilities, to generate greater mass, more lethal deterrent capabilities, more rapid decision-making, and more effective integration.

6.      The evolving fight for influence, where disruptive twenty-first-century technologies have not only enhanced the lethality of military forces at greater distances, but they also now provide the technological means to target and influence various populations in a way that has not been possible before.

7.      Greater sovereign resilience, where nations must mobilize people for large military and national challenges, while also developing secure sources of supply within national and alliance frameworks to ensure that supply chains cannot be a source of coercion by strategic competitors or potential adversaries.

These trends influence all aspects of military affairs, from training to strategy to organization to budgetary issues. How might these trends, and their manifestations in Ukraine, drive evolution in how military institutions should train, educate, mentor and develop their leaders at the many levels of military organisations?

Future Military Leaders

The complexities of military operations mean that military leadership must be taught, practiced and continually honed by institutions. Neglecting the development of military leaders has proven, throughout time, to have profoundly bad outcomes for military organisations, and sometimes, for their countries. 

Based on war’s enduring nature, and the evolutions in the character of war, I propose the following ten focal areas that will require evolution as Western institutions learn from Ukraine and develop the coming generation of military leaders.

Build a Professional Foundation. From initial training, future military leaders must establish a foundation for leadership in military institutions. This is a critical phase for inculcating the values, attitudes and behaviours demanded by military organisations. As we have seen in Ukraine, those institutions that pay attention to the basics of the profession – including ethical behaviour, military effectiveness and good leadership – are more likely to be successful.

Communication and Influence Skills. The ability to communicate, is one of the most basic, yet crucial functions of leadership. The development of communication skills must be continuous throughout the career of a military leader. The ability to speak, write and influence must be honed through many different experiences. Military institutions play a large part in this process by incentivising the types of behaviours that develop good communication skills. The capacity to provide purpose, work with peers, generate influence and conduct information warfare, has come to the fore in the Ukraine War. Military institutions must trust their people to communicate outside their organisation, and ensure their future leaders are masters at employing these arts.

Tactical Mastery.  A key element of a future military leaders’ professional growth is building tactical acumen within their own service and specialisation. However, they must also begin to understand the purpose, procedures and protocols in the conduct of joint integrated operations. Tactics is cool, but many military institutions do not act like this. Senior service leaders must incentivise good tactical proficiency, for existing as well as new technologies and organisations.

Mission Command. Military leaders need a good knowledge, and the experience, to exercise mission command. Mission command, drawn from the German concept of auftragstaktik, is where subordinate leaders at various levels execute decentralised operations based on mission-type orders. They also provide feedback up the chain of command to inform subsequent mission orders. These mission orders provide subordinate leaders with missions but allow for flexibility in execution. While not universal, there appears to be a greater degree of this approach in the Ukrainian military compared to the Russians. The mission command approach to leadership will continue to be effective into the 21^st century where distributed operations are likely to be the norm to preserve deployed combat power.

Human-Robot-Algorithmic-Swarm Teaming. Future military leader must appreciate the interaction of humans, ideas and technology. Their professional development must be underpinned by working within human-machine teams and applying artificial intelligence in decision support.  As seen in Ukraine, there has been an explosion in numbers of robotic systems used on the battlefield. Digitised command and control, with embedded AI, is an essential part of operations. Future leaders must be proficient in applying autonomous systems in combat, logistics, reconnaissance, as well as disaster relief missions.

Broad Technological Literacy. The Human-Robot-Algorithmic-Swarm Teaming described above is a specific outcome of the broader need to maintain a knowledge existing, evolving and new technologies that are either used by the military or have an impact on the military. In Ukraine, we have seen soldiers and officers bring their technological literacy to battlefield adaptation; this is essential at all levels of military endeavour. Military leaders must appreciate the challenges and opportunities of employing these technologies, and must pay constant attention to technological education, literacy and ethics. 

Creativity and Curiosity. Future military leaders must develop the capacity to employ creative thinking to produce novel ideas and apply critical thinking techniques. Despite the rapidly evolving capacity of computing power and artificial intelligence, creativity and ingenuity will be critical skills for future military leaders.  The Ukrainians have demonstrated creativity in many endeavours during this war, including the marriage of drones and artillery, new digital command and control systems and the conduct of influence activities. Creativity is a foundation for new tactics and strategic approaches, and it should also influence leaders’ self-learning activities to build and sustain excellence in their profession. And creativity stems from curiosity. Military institutions must have the right incentives to nurture curiosity in their leaders. This has not always been the case in many Western institutions.

Adaptive Capacity. Future military leaders must possess a working understanding of organisational theory, institutional cultures, and adaptation theory. They will require the cognitive capacity and mental agility to appreciate when the external environmental demands are changing, to know and understand the capacity for the military to adapt, and moreover, encapsulate the ability to lead that change at the decisive point. These are important battlefield, as well as senior leader, skills. As we have seen in Ukraine, the battlefield and the strategic context can change rapidly. Understanding the concepts of institutional culture and adaptation is a vital knowledge set for future military leaders.

Strategic Foundations. While battlefield performance matters, institutions must also identify, develop and promote those with good strategic thinking, planning and leadership potential. This is a systemic responsibility for military organisations, but it is also profound responsibility for the most senior political and military leaders. Talent spotting and nurturing is crucial in this regard. General Zaluzhny, the finest military leader of the 21^stcentury so far, is a product of institutional professional development, command experience and talent spotting by President Zelensky. How do we find and nurture our own Zaluzhnys?

They Must Know How to Win. War is a competition, and we have again witnessed just how brutal this competitive environment is in Ukraine. As Clausewitz reminds us “to overcome the enemy or disarm him – call it what you will – must always be the aim of warfare.”  Military institutions need to develop leaders who know how to win, but also how to do so within the values and ethical frameworks of their institution and the nation they serve. There are no silver medals in the military profession.

Learning from Ukraine to Lead and Win

The most vital human skill in any military organization is leadership. Those who are appointed to command service personnel – at whatever level of military activity - must be able to lead and to influence.  To be an effective military leader, they must develop the command presence to convince others to do very difficult things in trying circumstances.

This is not an art, or a skill, which arises spontaneously in any individual. Leaders must be developed, and incentivised within a transparent and relevant promotion pathway. It is a process that requires deep institutional investment over time, as well as a personal commitment to professional learning by leaders at all levels.

But, as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, good leadership matters. Whether it is the President or a squad leader in charge of combined arms assault, the skill of leaders provides an excellent foundation for success. And while the qualities of good leaders may have evolved over the centuries, they remain the core of successful military organisations.