Wavell Room Audio Reads

'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 ...

As Russia launches the next phase of its Campaign, Great Powers are Competing.

So why is the UK on the Bench?

With overt and covert probing across Europe, a newly undeterred Russia has entered the next phase in its War with the fracturing West. Rapidly developed on Ukraine's battlefields, Russia is deploying its newfound technological advantage over the West to penetrate the breadth and depth of our continent.

The UK needs to make a huge strategic choice today – do we want to put our Great Power pants on, match our ambitious words with the necessary resource, and compete – or do we let others write our destiny?

To be a great power is to choose.

Introduction

The liberal world order is gone; we are living in an era of great power competition. The rest of the world knows this, but despite our collective nuclear powers, huge GDP, world leading universities, manufacturing base and tech sectors, the UK and key European nations are sat on the bench. Our ambitious Ends in Ukraine unmatched by the necessary Ways and Means. As Russia probes beyond Ukraine, our words – unmatched by deeds – draw obvious parallels with 1914 where miscalculation, uncontrolled escalation and the absence of a mechanism to manage great powers resulted in world war.

Strategic Dissonance

Nowhere is this clearer than with the UK's recent alphabet soup of grand strategy documents. The SDR, the NSS, the NIS all explicitly accept the arrival of Great Power Competition, and all fail to connect the Ways and Means necessary to compete in it or propose a mechanism for managing it.

These national 'strategies' are risky. Firstly, they avoid the profound changes to our state machinery necessary for the management of Great Power Competition. Secondly, they allow political leaders to fudge, pretending they can both defend our nation and maintain unprecedented welfare spend. They can't. Thirdly, it is simultaneously bellicose whilst spiking our generals' guns. The limited increase in UK defence spend to ~3% arrives after the most likely window for great power conflict (2026-2029).

Great Powers must be both able and willing

To be a Great Power you must choose to be one. Russia, by force of will, is punching well above its weight, yet commentators overly focus on its relative GDP and Defence spend, somewhat missing the point. Russia is a Great Power precisely because it combines considerable mass and capability with the choice to deploy it – whether we like it or not. It has chosen to mobilise its populous and its industry, it has chosen to integrate rapid technological advances into its arsenal at the speed of relevance. The UK and other European nations manifestly have not.

We chose not to match our Means to our Ends. When Ukraine was invaded, Boris Johnson set the ambitious (and noble) End State: 'Russia must fail in Ukraine and be seen to fail'. However, our atrophied state machinery failed to allocate the commensurate Ways and Means to achieve this goal. Critically, the safety mechanism failed to highlight the mismatch and force our leaders to choose: Either upgrade our ways and means or downgrade our Ends. This dynamic was replicated across Western capitals, compounding this strategic failure. The US distancing itself and turning off critical capabilities at no notice saw the entire game change – ruining the West's strategic planning assumptions.

Consequently, Russia is attriting its way toward victory. With Western support fracturing and the frontline moving forward, Russia is winning, and Ukraine is losing. But this direction of travel affects far more than just Ukraine.

Whilst Russia has historically always held the advantage of mass against European armies. The grand strategy changing moment is seeing Russia develop Technological Advantage over the West in Ukraine. Simultaneously exposed daily to Western technology and trialling Chinese and Iranian prototypes on Ukraine's battlefields, Russia is learning fast and increasingly able to integrate emerging, decisive t...

"The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards."

~ Lt Gen Sir William F. Butler (1838-1910)

In the British Army we pride ourselves on our readiness. Prowess in physical fitness, tactical decision-making and speed of action lie at the forefront of our profession. But there's one form of readiness that's often overlooked. It doesn't come from kit, drills or doctrine - it comes from the mind.

Intellectual curiosity is the drive to ask questions. To explore ideas and seek deeper understanding that isn't just academic. It's a vital trait of the modern professional soldier and, if you're wearing the uniform, it belongs in your belt kit.

Whether commanding or following, whether in a platoon or a brigade HQ, curiosity sharpens your edge. It helps you adapt faster, lead better and think deeper. It's not about having all the answers - it's about having the habit of asking better questions.

Curiosity makes you Operationally Agile

Today we are constantly reminded that the modern battlefield is ever changing and unpredictable. Hybrid threats, cyber warfare, AI, drones and information operations demand more than muscle memory. They demand mental agility. Soldiers who read widely, study adversary doctrine and reflect on historical campaigns build the cognitive flexibility to pivot under pressure. You don't need a PhD to be curious and it isn't just an officer sport. All ranks need the discipline to keep learning, even when the tempo is high: the tactical battle moves faster than the operational one.

So what? Practical actions:

1. Read one article by Friday each week from a defence journal, historical case study or foreign doctrine summary. Start with RUSI, Wavell Room, CHACR or the British Army Review. Share an insight on Monday.

2. Join / start a Unit PME group - keep it informal, short, and relevant. One case, one question, 30 minutes, weekly or fortnightly, open discussion.

3. Find time in your schedule to scan open-source on military and defence topics. Ask: "What would I do if I were them?" The Institute for the Study of War is excellent for both the Russo-Ukrainian War and the Gaza conflict.

Curiosity isn't a distraction from the day job - it's preparation for operations. It's what lets you spot patterns others miss, challenge assumptions, and make decisions that stand up under scrutiny. In short, it's tactical advantage in mental form.

Curiosity strengthens Ethical Command

Contrary to popular belief (mostly how it's portrayed in films!), military leadership isn't simply about issuing orders. It's about making decisions that hold moral weight. Whether you're dealing with civilians in a conflict zone, navigating the grey areas of rules of engagement or fighting high intensity peer-on-peer war, ethical clarity matters. Soldiers who engage with philosophy, law and cultural studies are training their intellectual and moral reasoning like they train their marksmanship.

So what? Practical actions:

1. Investigate one case study per month from recent operations or historical dilemmas. Ask: "What would I do?" and consider the moral, ethical and tactical challenges.

2. Discuss moral challenges with your team - use real-world examples, not hypotheticals. Keep it grounded.

3. Explore cultural terrain before deployment - language basics, local customs, and historical context build empathy and reduce friction.

Curiosity helps you see the human terrain more clearly. It gives you the language to explain your decisions, the empathy to lead with integrity and the confidence to act when the right choice isn't the easy one. In a profession built on trust, that matters.

Curiosity builds a Better Army

The British Army isn't just a fighting force - it's a living and learning organisation. Doctrine evolves, technology changes and the enemy adapts. If we want to stay ahead we need soldiers who think critically, challeng...