Fight Now Readiness: Rethinking Military Preparedness for Modern Warfare

Recently, I published an article arguing that military readiness must fundamentally shift from the traditional “fight tonight force” model which emphasized static preparedness, predetermined planning, and crisis management to a new paradigm of “chaos management” that thrives on uncertainty and continuous adaptation.

In modern strategic competition, particularly with peer adversaries like China who operate in ambiguous zones below conventional military thresholds, requires forces capable of real-time learning, distributed operations, and rapid technology integration rather than centralized command structures and fixed procedures.

The transformation involves developing “adaptive capacity” through mesh networks, autonomous systems, platform-agnostic payloads, and organizational cultures that embrace uncertainty as a strategic advantage, enabling military forces to evolve faster than adversaries can develop countermeasures.

This represents a paradigm shift from seeking to impose order on chaotic situations to building resilient, learning organizations that can maintain effectiveness while operating within persistent complexity and unpredictability.

I was thus interested to read a recent article by Gidget Fuentes published by USNI News on September 8, 2025 which focused on the perspective of the recent head of IMEF, LtGen Cederholm who discussed this subject in similar terms. I have interviewed in the past when he was the CG of 2nd MAW and discuss those interviews along with many years of visiting 2nd MAW in my forthcoming book entitled, 2nd MAW: Transitioning the Fight Tonight Force. I last met with him last year during a visit to Australia.

Based on that article, Cederholm believes that the traditional military readiness model of cyclical training followed by deployment is increasingly obsolete in an era where conflicts can escalate within hours and technological advantages erode daily.

The U.S. Marine Corps’ I Marine Expeditionary Force has pioneered a “Fight Now” readiness approach that fundamentally reimagines how forces prepare for and maintain combat capability.

This strategy offers both transformative potential and significant challenges for military organizations worldwide.

Conventional military readiness operates on predictable cycles: training phases, certification periods, deployment windows, and recovery time. This model assumes conflicts will develop with sufficient warning to complete preparation phases. The “Fight Now” approach abandons this assumption entirely, requiring forces to maintain peak operational capability continuously.

This shift reflects three critical changes in modern warfare. Technology now advances faster than traditional acquisition and training cycles can accommodate. Peer adversaries like China no longer telegraph their intentions through lengthy military buildups. Geographic realities, particularly in the Pacific theater, compress decision-making timelines while expanding operational distances.

The Pillars of Continuous Readiness

Immediate Operational Capability: Fight Now readiness demands that every unit, at any moment, can execute its primary mission without additional preparation. This requires maintaining equipment at the highest operational standards, keeping personnel current on evolving tactics, and ensuring logistics systems can support immediate deployment. Unlike surge readiness, which mobilizes forces in response to threats, continuous readiness treats every day as potentially the first day of conflict.
Dynamic Technology Integration: Traditional forces receive new equipment through formal programs that can take years to implement. Fight Now forces must integrate emerging technologies immediately as they become available. This requires adaptive training programs, flexible doctrine development, and personnel capable of mastering new systems rapidly. The pace of change becomes “hour to hour” in critical areas like electronic warfare and unmanned systems.
Distributed Experimentation: Rather than conducting experiments in controlled training environments, Fight Now forces use operational deployments as continuous laboratories. Rotational forces test new concepts while simultaneously maintaining regional presence and partnerships. This approach accelerates capability development while providing real-world validation of emerging tactics and technologies.

Operational Implementation Challenges

Personnel Sustainability: Maintaining peak readiness indefinitely places extraordinary demands on military personnel. Traditional deployment cycles provide recovery periods that prevent burnout and allow for professional development. Continuous high readiness risks personnel exhaustion, increased accident rates, and accelerated turnover. Military organizations must develop new approaches to personnel management that sustain performance without destroying the force.
Resource Allocation: Fight Now readiness is expensive. Equipment must be maintained at wartime standards continuously. Training ammunition expenditure increases dramatically. Logistical systems require redundancy and pre-positioning that traditional forces might consider excessive. Budget planners accustomed to cyclical spending patterns must adapt to sustained high expenditure rates.
Institutional Adaptation: Military institutions built around predictable training cycles struggle to support continuous readiness. Professional military education, career progression patterns, and family stability all depend on some degree of operational predictability. Fight Now forces must redesign these systems without losing the institutional knowledge and stability they provide.
Strategic Implications: The Fight Now approach represents more than tactical readiness. It signals strategic intent. Forces maintaining this posture communicate to adversaries that aggression will meet immediate, full-capability response. This may enhance deterrence but also risks escalating tensions and creating pressure for preemptive action during crises.

Alliance relationships face particular strain under continuous readiness models. Partner nations operating on traditional cycles may struggle to integrate with Fight Now forces. Conversely, the approach may provide opportunities for enhanced interoperability as forces train together more frequently and realistically.

Advanced simulation, artificial intelligence, and distributed training systems make Fight Now readiness more feasible than in previous eras. Virtual reality allows continuous tactical training without the resource expenditure of live exercises. AI-powered maintenance systems can predict equipment failures before they impact readiness. Distributed command systems enable coordination across vast distances without centralized infrastructure.

However, technology dependence creates new vulnerabilities. Cyber attacks, electronic warfare, and supply chain disruptions can degrade Fight Now forces more rapidly than traditional units with greater operational flexibility. The pace of technological change that drives the need for continuous readiness also creates the means for adversaries to disrupt it.

Traditional readiness metrics, certification scores, training completion rates, equipment availability, inadequately capture Fight Now capability. New assessment methods must evaluate adaptability, integration speed, and sustained performance under uncertainty. This requires developing metrics for institutional learning rates, cross-domain coordination, and personnel resilience.

Military effectiveness ultimately depends on people, not systems. Fight Now readiness succeeds only when personnel embrace continuous adaptation as professional identity rather than additional burden. This cultural transformation may prove more challenging than the technical aspects of maintaining peak readiness.

Leaders must balance immediate operational demands with long-term force development. Short-term readiness cannot come at the expense of the institutional depth and experience that enable sustained military effectiveness.

The Fight Now model may become inevitable as conflict timelines compress and technological change accelerates. However, its implementation must account for human and institutional limitations that pure readiness metrics cannot capture. Military organizations adopting this approach must solve sustainability challenges while maintaining the adaptability that makes continuous readiness necessary.

Success will require not just maintaining peak capability, but developing forces capable of sustained high performance under conditions of constant change.

This represents a fundamental shift from preparing for war to perpetually operating at wartime readiness levels, a transformation with profound implications for military culture, resources, and effectiveness.