Redefining Military Readiness in an Age of Perpetual Competition

The concept of the “fight tonight force” has undergone a fundamental transformation that extends far beyond traditional measures of military readiness.

While conventional thinking has long focused on the trinity of force readiness, sustainability, and logistics support, contemporary military challenges demand an expanded understanding that incorporates rapid learning, continuous adaptation, and the ability to leverage uncertainty as a strategic advantage.

This evolution reflects more than tactical modernization or technological advancement. It represents a paradigm shift from static preparedness to dynamic adaptability, from crisis management to what might be termed “chaos management” or the deliberate cultivation of capabilities that can thrive within complex, unpredictable operational environments.

The traditional fight tonight force model emerged from Cold War assumptions about discrete military crises that could be resolved through the rapid application of superior force. Today’s security environment, characterized by persistent strategic competition with peer adversaries, technological acceleration, and ambiguous operational spaces, renders this model insufficient.

Modern military forces must maintain immediate combat effectiveness while simultaneously evolving their capabilities faster than adversaries can develop countermeasures.

The Obsolescence of Traditional Readiness Models

The classical approach to military readiness presumed that effectiveness could be achieved through predetermined planning, standardized procedures, and centralized command structures. This model worked adequately in an international system characterized by relatively stable major power relationships, clear geographical boundaries, and conventional military threats. Forces could deploy with detailed operational plans, execute established procedures, and achieve decisive results through superior training and equipment.

However, this approach contained implicit assumptions that have become increasingly problematic. It assumed military problems had clear solutions achievable through superior force application. It presumed successful intervention would create stable post-conflict conditions requiring minimal ongoing presence. Most fundamentally, it treated chaos as a temporary condition that could be eliminated through effective military action.

Contemporary security challenges expose the limitations of these assumptions. Modern conflicts are not discrete events with clear resolutions but ongoing competitions operating across multiple domains simultaneously. Adversaries do not present conventional targets but operate through networks blending state and non-state actors, conventional and unconventional methods, military and civilian infrastructure. The pace of technological change has accelerated beyond traditional planning cycles, requiring continuous capability adaptation rather than fixed solutions to predicted problems.

China’s approach to strategic competition exemplifies these challenges. By deliberately operating within ambiguous zones below traditional military response thresholds while gradually changing strategic conditions, Beijing creates persistent uncertainty that conventional crisis management cannot address effectively. This creates “persistent competition” environments where the distinction between peace and conflict becomes meaningless.

The Learning Imperative: From Procedural Compliance to Adaptive Capacity

The most significant transformation in the fight tonight force concept involves shifting from procedural proficiency to learning agility. Traditional military training emphasized developing competence in specific procedures through repetitive practice under controlled conditions. This approach built confidence in known situations but provided limited preparation for novel challenges characterizing chaotic environments.

Modern military effectiveness requires what organizational theorists call “negative capability” or the ability to remain effective in uncertainty without rushing toward premature clarity. Forces must develop comfort with ambiguity while maintaining operational coherence and continuing to execute effective responses to whatever situations emerge.

This learning imperative extends beyond individual competencies to organizational architectures. Military forces must become “learning organizations” capable of rapidly identifying effective practices, sharing knowledge across boundaries, and implementing improvements faster than adversaries can develop countermeasures. The traditional model of lengthy development cycles through analysis, experimentation, and institutionalization becomes obsolete when operational environments evolve on software timescales rather than hardware timelines.

The Ukrainian conflict provides compelling evidence for this transformation. Ukraine’s success against a numerically superior adversary stems from combining Western conventional weapons with indigenous technological innovation that rapidly adapts to battlefield realities. Ukrainian forces have demonstrated the ability to integrate unmanned systems, modify operational procedures, and develop new capabilities through real-time battlefield feedback loops that operate much faster than traditional military development cycles.

Distributed Operations: Architecture for Uncertainty

The development of distributed operational concepts represents the military’s architectural response to persistent complexity. Rather than concentrating force for decisive application against discrete targets, distributed operations create resilient networks of capabilities that adapt their configuration based on changing conditions and emerging opportunities.

Distributed operations reject centralized command and control in favor of mission command approaches that delegate significant decision-making authority to lower organizational levels. This delegation acknowledges that centralized decision-making cannot respond rapidly enough to modern operational environments’ pace of change. It also recognizes that local commanders often have better situational awareness and can make more effective tactical decisions than distant headquarters attempting to coordinate through traditional hierarchical structures.

The architectural principles underlying distributed operations mirror those found in resilient technological systems. Rather than creating single points of failure, distributed approaches build redundancy and adaptive capacity throughout the system. When individual platforms, units, or communication nodes are disrupted, the overall system maintains capabilities by reconfiguring around remaining assets.

This approach is particularly evident in the Marine Corps’ development of Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), which creates distributed networks of small, highly mobile units capable of independent operations while maintaining connectivity with larger force structures. EABO units can establish temporary bases, conduct reconnaissance and targeting, and coordinate fires without requiring large, fixed installations that characterized traditional expeditionary operations.

The distributed approach also enables “operational plasticity” or the ability to rapidly reconfigure force structures and tactical approaches based on emerging conditions. Rather than deploying with predetermined operational plans, distributed forces assess local conditions and develop appropriate responses using available capabilities.

The Technology Integration Revolution

One of distributed operations’ most significant advantages is its ability to integrate new technologies without requiring fundamental organizational restructuring. Traditional military organizations often struggle with technology integration because new capabilities must be retrofitted into existing structures and procedures designed for different technological environments.

The Ukrainian experience demonstrates how this integration can occur. Ukrainian forces have rapidly incorporated commercial drones, modified existing platforms, and developed new operational procedures through iterative experimentation rather than formal doctrine development. This approach leverages the accelerating pace of commercial technological development, particularly in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.

The concept of the “payload revolution” illustrates this integration potential. Rather than developing entirely new platforms for new capabilities, military forces can rapidly upgrade existing systems through modular payload modifications. This approach recognizes that modern military effectiveness increasingly depends on software and sensors rather than traditional kinetic capabilities.

The Navy’s Maritime Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (MISR) program exemplifies this transformation. Unlike traditional weapons training tied to specific platforms, MISR deliberately maintains platform agnosticism, focusing on what program leaders call “the shift in warfighting associated with the digital domain.” The program’s Resolute Hunter exercise has evolved from better ISR platform utilization to comprehensive payload innovation and rapid capability development.

Mesh Networks and Emergent Capabilities

The integration of unmanned systems with mesh networking technologies which I have written about extensively creates possibilities for entirely new operational concepts that exemplify chaos management principles. Mesh networks eliminate single points of failure characterizing traditional communication systems by automatically reconfiguring to maintain connectivity through alternative pathways when individual nodes are disrupted.

These networks provide more than communication resilience. They create persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance coverage that adapts to changing tactical situations. Rather than fixed sensor coverage patterns, mesh networks can dynamically reposition assets to focus on emerging areas of interest or compensate for platform losses.

The development of “loyal wingman” concepts illustrates how manned and unmanned systems can create emergent capabilities through dynamic interaction. Rather than programming unmanned systems for predetermined tasks, these concepts enable real-time collaboration between human operators and autonomous systems that adapt their roles based on changing tactical conditions.

UAS mesh networks developed by companies like MARTAC demonstrate how distributed technologies enhance adaptive capabilities. These systems create redundant, self-healing communication and sensor architectures that maintain operational coherence even as individual platforms are lost, repositioned, or reconfigured. The combination creates operational architectures that are both capable and resilient.

Cultural and Organizational Transformation

The transition from crisis management to chaos management requires fundamental shifts in military culture that challenge deeply embedded assumptions about effectiveness and success. Traditional military culture emphasizes planning, predictability, and control. Officers develop detailed operational plans that anticipate problems and prescribe solutions for expected scenarios.

Chaos management requires developing comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty. Rather than seeking to eliminate unknown variables, forces must learn to operate effectively when key information is unavailable or unreliable. This requires new approaches to training, education, and professional development that emphasize adaptive thinking over procedural knowledge.

The Marine Corps has certain cultural advantages in making this transition. The service has historically prided itself on adaptability and resourcefulness or the ability to “improvise, adapt, and overcome” challenging situations with available resources. This cultural foundation provides a basis for developing sophisticated chaos management capabilities.

However, institutionalizing chaos management requires new approaches to performance measurement, knowledge management, and organizational development. Rather than measuring success through compliance with established procedures, learning organizations must develop metrics that capture adaptive capacity and innovation effectiveness.

The Industrial Base Transformation

The evolution toward adaptive military capabilities requires corresponding changes in defense industrial base relationships. Traditional procurement models emphasizing lengthy development cycles and predetermined specifications become inadequate when operational requirements evolve continuously. The defense industrial base must become as agile and adaptive as the forces it supports.

The Ukraine conflict demonstrates how rapid industrial innovation can occur when operational users directly interface with developers. Ukrainian forces have created feedback loops with commercial technology companies that enable continuous improvement and modification of unmanned systems based on battlefield experience. This represents a fundamental departure from traditional military-industrial relationships characterized by formal requirements processes and extended development timelines.

The concept of “embedded logistics” offers another transformation pathway. Rather than manufacturing weapons in continental facilities and shipping them across vast distances, forward-deployed production capabilities can provide both strategic resilience and tactical responsiveness. Building weapons and components in Australia for American, Japanese, and South Korean forces while supporting Australian defense requirements represents this kind of paradigm shift.

This approach addresses the Pacific theater’s unique logistical challenges while creating industrial redundancy that complicates adversary targeting. It also enables more responsive support for distributed forces operating across vast geographical areas where traditional logistics chains become vulnerable.

Network Warfare and Speed Advantages

The integration of distributed operations with mesh networking creates what might be called “network warfare” capabilities that provide decisive speed advantages. As one MISR officer observed, “a local reconnaissance strike network now can operate much more rapidly in terms of decision cycle than a single national reconnaissance strike complex.”

This speed advantage becomes particularly important when facing sophisticated adversaries who have studied traditional operational patterns and developed countermeasures accordingly. Forces that can rapidly evolve their operational approaches present much more difficult targeting and planning challenges for opponents while maintaining their own effectiveness.

The shift from linear “kill chain” thinking to dynamic “kill web” approaches reflects this transformation. In distributed force structures, combat clusters operate with Local Area Networks, reducing dependence on centrally delivered intelligence. Autonomous and remotely piloted systems become decision-making aids rather than simple platforms, enabling faster responses at tactical levels.

This distributed approach creates what might be called “cognitive burden” for adversaries. While friendly forces operate within frameworks designed to handle complexity and uncertainty, opponents must attempt to predict and prepare for much wider ranges of possible operational patterns. This asymmetry provides significant strategic advantages in persistent competition environments.

Training for Adaptive Warfare

Developing effective chaos management capabilities requires fundamental changes in military training and education approaches. Traditional training emphasizes proficiency in specific procedures and technologies through repetitive practice under controlled conditions. While this builds competence in known situations, it provides inadequate preparation for novel challenges characterizing chaotic environments.

Chaos management training must focus on developing adaptive capacity and learning agility. Personnel need practice operating in situations where standard procedures are inadequate, available information is incomplete or unreliable, and success requires creative problem-solving rather than procedural compliance.

The MISR program’s approach to developing “warrior solution architects” illustrates this transformation. Rather than training personnel to operate specific systems, the program develops capabilities to understand payload capabilities and connect them with other systems to create effective constellations for desired effects. As one program leader explained, this enables “kill web design, execution, and management” rather than traditional platform-centric operations.

This training approach suggests greater emphasis on scenario-based exercises that deliberately introduce novel challenges requiring adaptive responses. Rather than perfecting responses to predicted situations, forces should practice developing effective responses to unexpected problems using available resources and capabilities.

Strategic Competition and Chaos Leverage

The chaos management approach provides particular advantages in strategic competition environments where adversaries are themselves adaptive and learning. Traditional crisis management assumes superior force can overcome opposition and create stable post-conflict conditions. In strategic competition, however, adversaries continuously adapt their approaches based on friendly force actions, creating dynamic, co-evolutionary conflicts that never reach stable resolutions.

China’s strategic competition approach deliberately operates within ambiguous zones that make traditional military responses inappropriate. By conducting activities below conventional military response thresholds while gradually changing strategic conditions, China creates persistent uncertainty that traditional crisis management cannot address effectively.

Chaos management capabilities enable responses to these ambiguous threats through persistent adaptation rather than discrete intervention. Rather than waiting for adversary actions to cross clear thresholds justifying conventional military responses, chaos management approaches enable continuous adaptation to changing strategic conditions.

This capability to operate effectively within strategic ambiguity may become the most important military competency for great power competition. Forces that can maintain effectiveness while adversaries struggle with uncertainty and complexity gain strategic advantages that transcend traditional military capability measures.

The Payload Revolution and Platform Agnosticism

The emergence of the “payload revolution” which my colleague Ed Timperlake has highlighted through the years represents a fundamental shift from platform-centric to capability-centric thinking. Rather than developing new platforms for new missions, military forces can rapidly upgrade existing systems through modular payload modifications that provide enhanced or entirely new capabilities.

This approach recognizes that modern military effectiveness increasingly depends on software, sensors, and artificial intelligence rather than traditional kinetic capabilities. Platforms become carriers for rapidly evolving technological capabilities rather than fixed systems optimized for specific missions.

The platform-agnostic approach enables much faster technology integration cycles. As one industry leader noted regarding rapid prototyping efforts, “Go from concept to a prototype in a box within 15 to 18 months. At the nine-month mark, if it’s not working out, we can scrap it, and nobody’s worse for the effort.”

This flexibility becomes particularly valuable when considering platforms like helicopters, which one engineer characterized as essentially “trucks” that are “easy to test things on.” The inherent modularity of such platforms enables rapid experimentation and capability integration without requiring wholesale system redesign.

Real-Time Learning and Operational Evolution

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the modern fight tonight force is its emphasis on real-time learning and continuous evolution. Rather than developing fixed operational procedures through lengthy training and doctrine development, adaptive forces develop capabilities to modify operations based on immediate feedback from operational environments.

This learning capability is enabled by distributed architectures themselves. Because individual platforms and units maintain significant autonomy while remaining connected through mesh networks, they can experiment with different approaches and rapidly share successful innovations across entire forces. This creates learning systems that evolve much more rapidly than traditional military organizations.

Ukrainian forces demonstrate this capability through their integration of unmanned systems. These are not traditional platforms with software additions but AI and software systems embodied in physical platforms. The innovation process is driven by operational users, with developers responding to real-world battlefield feedback to drive continuous improvement. This represents a fundamental shift from industrial-age lengthy development cycles to software-age rapid iteration.

The ability to evolve operations in real-time provides significant advantages against adaptive adversaries. While opponents attempt to develop countermeasures against specific operational patterns, forces capable of rapid evolution can change approaches faster than countermeasures can be developed and implemented.

Implications for Force Structure and Development

The chaos management approach has profound implications for force structure, capability development, and strategic planning. Traditional approaches attempt to predict future requirements and develop capabilities to meet specific needs. Chaos management suggests focusing instead on developing adaptive capacity that can respond to whatever requirements actually emerge.

This shift suggests prioritizing capabilities that enhance flexibility and learning rather than optimizing for specific predicted scenarios. Rather than developing perfect solutions for expected problems, military forces should invest in technologies and organizational capabilities enabling rapid adaptation to novel challenges.

Force structure decisions should emphasize modularity and reconfigurability rather than specialized optimization. Units should be organized around adaptive principles enabling rapid task organization and capability integration rather than fixed organizational structures designed for specific missions.

The acquisition process should reflect chaos management principles by prioritizing technologies that enhance adaptive capacity over those providing superior performance in predetermined roles. This might mean accepting lower peak performance in exchange for greater flexibility and faster adaptation to changing requirements.

The Industrial Base as Strategic Partner

The transformation of the fight tonight force requires corresponding evolution in defense industrial relationships. Traditional procurement models emphasizing lengthy development cycles, formal requirements processes, and predetermined specifications become inadequate when operational requirements evolve continuously and technological opportunities emerge rapidly.

The Ukrainian model demonstrates how effective military-industrial partnerships can operate. Direct interfaces between operational users and developers enable continuous improvement cycles that would be impossible under traditional acquisition frameworks. This requires defense companies to become more agile and responsive while military organizations become more experimental and iterative in their approach to capability development.

The concept of embedded logistics offers another transformation pathway particularly relevant for Pacific operations. Rather than manufacturing capabilities in continental facilities and transporting them across vulnerable supply chains, forward-deployed production facilities provide both strategic resilience and tactical responsiveness. Joint investments in Australian production capabilities supporting American, Japanese, and South Korean forces while enhancing Australian defense capabilities represent exactly this kind of paradigm shift.

Network-Enabled Decision Superiority

The integration of distributed operations with advanced networking creates decision-making advantages that may prove decisive in high-intensity conflicts. Local Area Networks enable combat clusters to operate with reduced dependence on centrally delivered intelligence, while autonomous and remotely piloted systems provide decision-making aids that accelerate tactical responses.

This transformation reflects a broader strategic shift from linear “kill chain” thinking to dynamic “kill web” approaches. Traditional kill chains assume sequential processes from detection through engagement that depend on centralized coordination. Kill webs create distributed networks where multiple sensors, platforms, and weapons can interact directly to engage targets without requiring centralized coordination.

The speed advantages this provides are substantial. As one program officer noted, “a local reconnaissance strike network now can operate much more rapidly in terms of decision cycle than a single national reconnaissance strike complex.” In high-intensity conflicts against peer adversaries, this speed-of-light decision-making capability could prove decisive.

The development of “warrior solution architects” who understand payload capabilities and can connect them with other systems to create effective constellations represents the human dimension of this transformation. These personnel enable what one military leader called “kill web design, execution, and management” or the ability to rapidly configure and reconfigure distributed capabilities for maximum effectiveness.

Chaos as Strategic Advantage

The concept of chaos management represents perhaps the most fundamental departure from traditional military thinking. Rather than attempting to impose order on chaotic situations, chaos management seeks to develop capabilities to operate effectively within complex, unpredictable environments while potentially leveraging uncertainty as a strategic advantage.

This approach recognizes that modern battlespaces are inherently chaotic systems characterized by nonlinear dynamics, emergent behaviors, and unpredictable interactions between multiple variables. Attempting to control these systems through traditional command and control methods often proves counterproductive because it creates rigidity preventing adaptation to changing conditions.

Chaos management focuses instead on building adaptive capacity that can respond to whatever conditions actually emerge. This requires organizational cultures and operational procedures that embrace uncertainty rather than trying to eliminate it. It means creating systems that can learn and evolve in real-time rather than following predetermined scripts.

The key insight is that chaos can become a strategic advantage for forces better adapted to operate within it. While adversaries struggle to maintain coordination and effectiveness in complex, rapidly changing situations, forces trained in chaos management can maintain operational coherence and continue executing effective responses.

Technological Integration Without Dependency

The modern fight tonight force must integrate cutting-edge technologies while avoiding technological dependency that could become a strategic vulnerability. The distributed operational approach solves this challenge by creating technology-agnostic frameworks that can incorporate whatever capabilities become available without being constrained by legacy systems or outdated organizational structures.

This flexibility becomes particularly important considering accelerating technological change in areas like autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and advanced communications. Military forces that can rapidly integrate emerging capabilities will have significant advantages over those locked into older technological paradigms.

The approach also provides resilience against technological obsolescence. Rather than being locked into specific technological solutions, forces with rapid integration capabilities can continuously adopt new technologies and operational concepts as they become available. This creates competitive advantages that persist even as specific technologies become outdated.

Strategic Implications for Major Power Competition

The evolution toward distributed, adaptive operations provides particular advantages for great power competition, especially in contested theaters like the Indo-Pacific. Traditional crisis management approaches assume military forces can achieve decisive results through concentrated application of superior capabilities. However, peer adversaries like China have developed strategies specifically designed to avoid such decisive confrontations.

Strategic competition operates through continuous, low-level actions that gradually change strategic conditions without crossing clear thresholds that would justify major military responses. Success in this environment requires persistent adaptation rather than decisive intervention.

Distributed operations concepts create capabilities for persistent presence and continuous adaptation well-suited for strategic competition environments. Rather than deploying large, fixed installations that present attractive targets, distributed operations enable persistent engagement through networks of small, mobile capabilities that can adapt their configuration based on changing strategic conditions.

This approach also provides resilience against anti-access/area denial strategies that peer adversaries have developed to counter traditional American military approaches. Distributed operations present much more difficult targeting challenges while maintaining the ability to project power and influence across strategic distances.

Implementation Challenges and Risk Mitigation

The transition to chaos management presents significant implementation challenges that must be acknowledged and addressed. Military organizations exist within political systems that often demand predictable, controllable responses to security challenges. Political leaders may be uncomfortable with military approaches emphasizing adaptation over predetermined planning, particularly when those approaches cannot guarantee specific outcomes.

The distributed approach creates coordination challenges that traditional centralized command structures were designed to address. While distributed operations provide flexibility and resilience, they also create possibilities for confusion, conflicting actions, and reduced overall coherence if not properly managed.

There are risks associated with delegating increased decision-making authority to lower organizational levels. While this delegation enables faster adaptation to local conditions, it creates possibilities for actions that may be locally appropriate but strategically counterproductive.

The technological requirements for effective chaos management present additional implementation challenges. Mesh networks, real-time data sharing, and adaptive communication systems require substantial investment and ongoing maintenance. Military organizations must balance desires for cutting-edge capabilities with practical constraints around cost, reliability, and security.

The Human Dimension: Meta-Skills for Uncertain Futures

Successfully implementing the transformed fight tonight force requires developing new categories of human capabilities. Traditional military training focused on building proficiency in specific systems and procedures. The adaptive approach requires developing “meta-skills” or the ability to rapidly learn new capabilities and adapt to novel situations rather than deep specialization in current technologies or procedures.

This suggests that military education should emphasize critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and collaborative learning rather than memorizing specific procedures or mastering particular technological systems. Personnel need capabilities to rapidly assess unfamiliar situations, identify available resources, and develop effective responses using whatever tools and capabilities are accessible.

The concept of “warrior solution architects” represents one approach to developing these capabilities. These personnel understand how different systems and capabilities can be combined and recombined to achieve desired effects. They serve as human bridges between technological possibilities and operational requirements, enabling rapid capability integration and innovative employment.

Conclusion: The Future of Military Adaptation

The evolution of the fight tonight force from static readiness to dynamic adaptation represents more than organizational adjustment to changing security conditions. It reflects a fundamental shift in thinking about military effectiveness in an era characterized by persistent complexity, strategic competition, and technological acceleration.

Rather than seeking to eliminate uncertainty and impose order on chaotic situations, the modern approach recognizes that the ability to thrive within complex, unpredictable environments may be the most important military capability for future conflicts. This approach acknowledges that modern warfare is characterized by complexity and uncertainty that cannot be eliminated through superior planning or technology.

The success of this transformation depends on military organizations’ ability to develop new cultures, training methods, and operational concepts that embrace rather than resist operational uncertainty. For forces willing to make this transition, the distributed approach offers possibilities for maintaining effectiveness and strategic advantage even in rapidly evolving threat environments.

The traditional fight tonight force emphasized being ready to fight. The modern fight tonight force must be ready to learn, adapt, and evolve while fighting. This requires building adaptive capacity into the fundamental architecture of military operations, creating forces that can maintain strategic value even when they cannot predict specific challenges they will face.

The future belongs to military organizations that can learn faster than their adversaries can adapt. The transformation toward chaos management and distributed operations provides frameworks for achieving this organizational and operational agility. Whether democratic military forces can successfully make this transition may determine their effectiveness in an era of great power competition and persistent strategic uncertainty.

This transformation represents both tremendous opportunity and significant risk. Successfully executed, it could provide capabilities uniquely suited for strategic competition in complex, dynamic environments. However, the transition requires fundamental changes in military culture, training, and organizational thinking that go far beyond technological modernization. The stakes could not be higher, and the outcome will significantly influence military effectiveness in what some strategists call the “new world disorder.”

The question is not whether military forces will need to adapt to increasing complexity and uncertainty, but whether they will develop the capabilities needed to thrive within it. The fight tonight force being reshaped now must be prepared not just for immediate combat, but for continuous learning and adaptation in an environment where the only constant is change itself.

A Paradigm Shift in Maritime Operations: Autonomous Systems and Their Impact

I am working on a book for publication next year entitled:

“Enhancing the “Fight Tonight Force”: An Inquiry into Shaping Ways Ahead.”