Relearning the 3 Rs: Risk, Resilience and Reconstitution
Learning and transferring the lessons of the battlespace in Ukraine
Much has been made of Euro-Atlantic countries’ need to learn from Ukraine’s experience in large-scale state-on-state warfare, with a shift in military culture, investment in socio-industrial infrastructure and appreciation of the need to prepare for the day after the ‘fight tonight’.
In the wake of three decades of low-intensity conflicts, how does a country prepare for peer warfare? The default is to reach for people, technology and equipment – the most tangible elements of physical power. Growing mass – that is, numbers or the effect which they have – provides performance measures which help justify expenditure and create dynamic soundbites. Such ambitions, however, are largely meaningless without concomitant improvements in both the moral and conceptual components of fighting power.
Ukraine’s impressive reform of its armed forces and exploitation of both state and society-led mobilisation prove that the will to fight across society is just as, if not more, vital than having the correct equipment. All the Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapons (NLAWs) and Javelin missile systems flown into Ukraine in the days prior to and immediately after the Russian full-scale invasion in February 2022 would have been immaterial had the Ukrainian military and populace not chosen to stand and fight.
For the Royal Navy today, there are clear lessons which should be identified, learned and transferred from the battlespaces of Ukraine. The obvious lessons are often quoted: attritable uncrewed systems, emissions control and counter-targeting, organic Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and so on. Important as they are, technology-centric lessons need to be considered alongside deeper questions about the will to fight or ways of fighting. Three of those vital lessons across the moral and conceptual components span the three Rs: Risk, Resilience and Reconstitution.
Risk
Preparing the Royal Navy for peer conflict means a change in how it conceptualises and manages risk. Ukraine has shown how individuals have accepted risk at all levels – from tactical to strategic – in ways which redefine the philosophy of mission command. Ukrainian units are innovating in disaggregated combat, in integrating new technology and in turning local initiatives into strategic advantages, all devolved from central command and control. Decision making and responsibility has been delegated to the lowest possible echelons, which has posed challenges for the coherence and coordination of operations.
The result, however, is dynamic adaptation and Ukraine’s ability to at least hold Russian forces in what is potentially a long-term untenable strategic dilemma. In tactical terms, the integration of sensor-decider-effector kill chains at the lowest, sub-unit level possible – rather than grand designs of dispersed network warfare across multiple platforms – is an exemplar of the type of tactical transformation envisaged by the Commando Force, and one which the Royal Navy could inculcate within its revamped Coastal Forces Squadron as a tactical incubator.
It would, however, require providing the legal frameworks and delegations for junior personnel to operate independently, and accepting that some of their decisions will result in adverse consequences and potential failure. One of the key drivers away from low-level individual decision making is the bizarre expectation that all actions will be successful. These expectations have become the norm because of resource scarcity and public backlash, despite naval operations being, by their very nature, hazardous and subject to friction. We cannot accept risk without also accepting that failure might be the result.
Resilience
Mental health awareness has championed the concept of resilience among service personnel, yet it is often confused with stoicism. Stoicism is often viewed as a leadership virtue – think of Nelson’s ‘duty-first’ approach – and it does help to build resilience, but cannot replace it. Being stoical means enduring challenges – accepting adverse experiences – without necessarily recuperating: the ability to ‘bounce back’. The assumption underpinning stoicism and resilience is that ‘this too shall pass.’ The lived reality, however, is that the pressures facing individuals and the Royal Navy are only increasing without respite.
Organisational resilience implies a degree of elasticity, of ‘building progressively greater levels of foresight, preparedness, continuity, response, recovery and improvement capabilities’. In contrast, British defence has continually shrunk year-on-year for at least the past five decades, while at least maintaining the same level of output; an argument made as early as 2007. What this means practically is the prolonged overstretch of people and equipment; the constant ‘generate-operate’ cycle common to so much of the Royal Navy and wider defence leaves no time for ‘recuperate’. Arguably, the Royal Navy is in a period of inelastic deformation; even if outputs were scaled back, the organisation has become so transformed by continuous efficiency measures – delivering more with less – that it no longer resembles the force of the early 2010s, let alone the 1990s.
Understanding the requirement for recuperation within the operational cycle is fundamental to resilience. It is something which Ukrainian forces know all too well, and which they have tried to maintain even in the face of ever-increasing pressures across their front lines. However, it is not just a question for front line forces, but the whole of society. One of the reasons why Ukraine has been able to sustain itself is the resilience and redundancy built into its infrastructure networks and social fabric. The Royal Navy’s ability to function despite the reduction in available resources is an exercise in collective stoicism – one which has arguably undermined the organisation’s ability to absorb strategic shock.
Reconstitution
Accepting risk implies an acceptance of loss; loss implies the need for resilience; and resilience implies the ability to reconstitute. In military terms, this means accepting that casualties will be taken, both in terms of human and platform costs, and the assumption that those losses will be made good. The danger is that today, focus on preparing for the ‘fight tonight’ – the dream of landing a single, decisive blow – obscures the reality of losses and the requirement to undertake battle casualty replacements.
Naval reconstitution typically occurs on a different timescale: the Type 26 frigate will achieve initial operating capability in 2028, 30 years after the Future Surface Combatant programme began. In wartime, that is simply not practicable. Ukraine has been able to reconstitute by leveraging asymmetric capabilities – its active naval forces are a case in point – repurposing civilian technology and industrial capabilities, and acquiring both materiel supplied by NATO countries and captured Russian equipment. More importantly, they have conducted mass battle-casualty replacements, something which the Royal Navy should be paying close attention to. For example, while the Commando Force has been very successful in training Ukrainian Marines in the basics, one wonders how much thought has gone into their own reconstitution challenge.
In comparison, during the Second World War, commando training – the equivalent of the 21st century’s All Arms Commando Course (AACC) – was compressed to just five weeks. Today’s AACC is 13 weeks, after single-service Phase 1 and 2 training. The same metrics could be applied across the fleet as a whole: the average for Royal Navy Phase 1 and 2 training is 24 weeks, with additional workplace learning required upon completion. Where Ukraine has been able to incorporate civilian expertise into its armed forces at short notice – taking civilian mechanics into equivalent roles, for example – it has not just been able to reconstitute, but to expand rapidly. It is a lesson which the organisational ‘purists’ should have at the forefront of their minds, especially as British history evidences the efficacy of ‘citizen’ forces.
So what?
The Royal Navy and its sister services naturally focus on the tangible items which make up fighting power at its most brutal and kinetic. However, this focus is neophiliac in nature; it views technology as the answer without appreciating the genesis of the question in the first place. That genesis is found instead in the human dimensions of fighting power – in the moral and conceptual components. Focusing on reinforcing and developing those elements through a new appreciation of risk, building recuperation time and redundancy into the operating cycle, and preparing for the requirement to reconstitute rapidly in the face of loss will create a navy which is resistant to strategic shock through strength in depth.
Andrew Young is Fellowships Officer at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre.
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