|
Trending Topics
|
Learning to Learn: Lessons for the U.S. Army from the Israel Defense Forces' Wartime Adaptation
(Modern War Institute at West Point) Maj. (ret.) John Spencer - In war, survival often depends not just on strength or firepower, but on how fast an army can adapt - in time to save lives. While navigating the complex urban terrain in a column, Israeli infantry soldiers had been staying inside their armored personnel carriers too long as they waited for the lead vehicle - typically a bulldozer or tank - to clear the path forward. Hamas attacked with rocket-propelled grenades from a close and elevated position, killing eleven soldiers in one attack. In response, the IDF paused combat operations for 24 hours across multiple brigades to ensure that all personnel immediately adjusted their tactics. Soldiers would no longer sit in idling armored personnel carriers. One moment of battlefield horror became a lifesaving protocol - disseminated in a day. Out of necessity, the IDF resurrected the Learning Officer - a lesson from the Second Lebanon War: a dedicated officer whose sole mission was to observe, collect, and disseminate lessons in real time. This was viewed as a core battlefield function. The IDF ground forces surged their learning officer cadre from just ten reserve officers to 150, embedding designated learning officers down to the battalion level. These officers did not simply take notes; they engaged directly with frontline commanders, observed patterns, and helped rewire unit behavior in hours, not days - making learning a continuous, embedded function of combat operations at every echelon. Learning officers actively sought out lessons learned from the battlefield and passed them to their fellow learning officers, often in real time. The result was a synchronized, self-updating network of tactical adaptation that moved at the speed of battle. The U.S. Army does not currently have anything equivalent to the IDF's learning officer system. The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute.