And You Are? How to Recognize and Remedy Unrecognized Frictions
British military exercise, Salisbury Plain Training Area, England, 2016: Our convoy set off from its departure point in the dead of night. The six vehicles, carrying soldiers and air defense missile launchers, made their way slowly through wooded areas, across fields, and down rural tracks, looking to avoid detection by the enemy. Progress was slow. Vehicles got bogged down on more than one occasion, and we struggled to navigate using night vision equipment whilst trying to relate paper maps to the silhouettes of hills and trees. After several hours, we arrived at the battlegroup headquarters to which we were assigned. I headed into the building that had been requisitioned as the operations room. I approached the battle captain and introduced myself, but it quickly became apparent that we were not expected nor were we particularly welcome. There ensued an uphill battle for our capability to be understood, protected, and deployed appropriately in order to prevent the position being destroyed by enemy aircraft. Relationships had to be built, favors pulled, and compromises reached to make any progress.
Armed forces are divided entities by design. They are first split by domain — land, air, sea. The army, navy, and air force are then divided again by function. The enterprise is built on having separate capabilities such as armor, infantry, artillery, signallers, logisticians, and engineers all come together in times of conflict. Units are further dislocated by space, spread around a country and overseas. As a result, forces often do not “know themselves” as well as they should. Moreover, human frailties such as accidents and losses exacerbate the problem.
As our exercise showed, internal organizational friction reduces operational effectiveness and is often invisible in measures of force readiness. The British Army provides a particularly stark example where these functional divisions are exacerbated by historical norms and fissures. Other forces can learn from our experience, using rigorous and regular collective training to reduce the impact of friction.
Finding Friction
Analysis of military capability often focuses on headline metrics: numbers of tanks, howitzers, and soldiers. The strength of armies is often portrayed as a function of their size, with some minor modifications for the modernity of the systems at play. Forces the world over hold parades, flyovers, and demonstrations to show off this metric to allies and adversaries alike. This was certainly the case regarding Russia prior to February 2022. But the war in Ukraine demonstrated the importance of other considerations, such as the will to fight and the ability of commanders to combine capabilities and sequence them appropriately in time and space. However, there are also more ambiguous frictions that can prevent forces from reaching their potential. As shown in the anecdote above, which took place in a real training exercise, organizational realities must be considered when attempting to analyze the true abilities of a fighting force.
Many commentators were surprised by the Russian armed forces’ apparent inability to seize key objectives in Ukraine after the invasion in 2022. Subsequent examination has revealed that a layer of friction existed below the normal threshold of analysis — Russian soldiers had been using out-of-date maps as well as inadequate food and antiquated rifles. Moreover, command and control was confused, information was kept from soldiers, and orders failed to account for developments on the ground. Such revelations were seized upon by Western analysts and practitioners as evidence that the Russian war machine was a laughing stock. However, such hubris is unwise, and forces should take time to inflect to ensure they do not suffer from a similar sort of rot.
Do I Know You?
The British Army, like most military forces, moves its personnel around the country regularly. Each force does this differently, but it is common for soldiers and officers to change positions every two to three years. This may be upon promotion, or on a more general rotation. As a result, there is a constant churn of personnel through units and formation headquarters. Some people will have been there for two years, others two months, and some two days. Sometimes it is unavoidable for whole command teams to depart at once, although this is avoided where possible. Consequently, expertise in planning and executing missions waxes and wanes.
Indeed, while armies will have centralized, accepted planning processes, individual formations often put their own spin on things, producing their own templates and products. As a result, on arrival in a formation, new personnel will have to learn how to slot in. It is not uncommon for formations to hold an annual series of “crawl, walk, run” planning exercises to bring new staff up to speed with its processes. Ideally, these align with readiness timelines, but conflict may well fail to respect neat operational readiness mechanisms, especially when resources are scarce as they are in many NATO militaries.
In the United Kingdom, related units are often not located together. It may surprise nonpractitioners to learn that in many cases, units that are expected to deploy together, often at very short notice, are not based together and indeed are sometimes separated by hundreds of miles. As a result, there is an immediate barrier to building relationships and working together. Time spent together builds familiarity. It should not be underestimated how much easier it is to work with people you have a rapport with. This becomes even more critical in times of high pressure and fatigue.
When commanders may not know some of the people in their staff, this immediately leads to a reduction in performance. Moreover, familiarity with capabilities may be lacking. Battlegroup commanders may be given a fire group of air defense missile launchers having never laid eyes on them before and may not know the first thing about their use. It is then up to a young troop commander to bridge the gap in understanding. In some cases, this is easy. In others, the battalion commander may be reluctant to take advice from an unknown junior officer, or even fail to realize they are in the headquarters at all.
Military tribalism may also be deleterious to performance. Military forces are broken down into units with different capabilities that are often defined by their historic and lived experience. Different parts of the force often have their own colloquialisms. Some soldiers look down on those who do not have a particular qualification badge or who have not served with a particular unit and even have specific deprecatory terms for outsiders. In operational theaters, these problems become more acute as formations change shape as time moves on. Operational realities such as casualties or demands for capabilities with higher priority elsewhere will keep formations in flux, further exacerbating the issue.
Accidents Happen
Other frictions exist as well. Whilst some might seem minor, they form part of the complex picture that affects how forces perform on the battlefield. For example, despite lots of training and attempts at mitigation, soldiers crash their vehicles an awful lot, both in exercises and on operations. This, in fact, is one of the highest causes of casualties in military forces worldwide. Operating heavy machinery in convoys in the dark or conducting complex maneuvers in urban and wooded areas is hard — really hard. Vehicles get stuck, make a wrong turn, and in the worst cases overturn or collide with a friendly vehicle.
Soldiers also lose things as well as themselves. Weapons, night vision equipment, and even vehicles go missing. Operational imperatives will determine how much time is spent trying to recover them. These sorts of frictions are not accounted for in most planning cycles. This friction also captures last-minute demands on soldiers, including the simple act of battling the military bureaucracy to reach an outcome. Military forces are a mix of analogue and digital processes, in which archaic structures are wrestling with modernity. Obtaining a vehicle, rations, or place to train can be so complex and protracted as to be impracticable among a host of competing priorities.
When added together, the totality of these seemingly minor frictions means that the capability of a military to defeat an enemy is much more nuanced than might be reflected by numbers or the latest technology. A complex cocktail of personal relationships, ability, and willingness contributes to the effectiveness of a force in the field.
What to Do About It?
The solution? Train. Train lots, and train well. Aside from delivering on operations, the second most important task for armies and the other services is to prepare and train for those operations. British military training takes place at a number of levels. First, soldiers must be able to administer themselves in the field and be able to fire their personal weapon accurately and use basic communications equipment. Second, they must be able to operate their core equipment, which might be a vehicle, heavy weapon, missile system, or radar. Third, they need to operate that equipment in concert with other capabilities in pursuit of an aim or objective. This collective training is difficult and expensive to execute effectively, but is absolutely critical to achieving commonality. Units may also be stuck performing other duties such as vehicle maintenance and distracted by an assortment of other demands, from online training to hosting visitors to filling out paperwork.
William F. Owen, editor of Military Strategy magazine, argues that formations should train in the field for 90 days a year. Currently, however formations might be lucky to get 30 days of combined training in a year. And often, that combined training is also an assessment of some sort, which can detract from being able to take time to fully integrate and assimilate the various personnel and capabilities involved.
There are, as ever, frictions associated with such an aim. Some specialist units are passed between larger formations as there are not enough to go around. This means they could potentially end up spending a much longer time in the field, which would have ramifications on morale and retention. Prioritizing their time between supporting formations, their own force development, and time to recuperate requires a pragmatic approach by commanders. Inverting the normal practice of specialists travelling to the associated formation and instead being visited by them to share knowledge would reduce the burden on the minority. This also substantiates the point made previously about being unable to forge strong relationships. However, the intent is a good one. Time spent together builds familiarity with capabilities, which in turn means more favorability — those capabilities will be employed effectively and in concert with the rest of the formation offering competitive advantage.
Issues surrounding the locations of units, and how far they are from the formations they work with, are more difficult. Bases have finite capacities and may simply be unable to house the totality of those who would deploy with them. Sometimes there are infrastructure limitations as to what can be stored where — for example, not every base has the requisite facilities to store sensitive items like missiles. What’s more, armies often try to balance their presence around the country to help with recruitment and enable people to stay where their families are based. Likewise, the problem of career movement is difficult to solve. British career structures are built upon movement and promotion, moving from jobs requiring different skill sets with different profiles. Staying in one place can count against people when trying to achieve the next rank if a high-profile job exists elsewhere.
Remaining Challenges
Dealing with the subject of internal organizational friction is problematic on two fronts. First, it is difficult to quantify. It is nuanced and uneven across forces. There is no firm methodology by which to analyze a commander’s grasp on all the capabilities under their command, nor how good the relationships are between the battalion’s core and its attachments. Commanders do get put through their paces on validation exercises, but the marking criteria concern objectives like bridge crossings and assaults. Moreover, many exercises today are simulated, which further dilutes interactions between individuals.
Second, the topic does not make for good reading. Forces like to assume that soldiers are professional enough to put aside any personal or professional differences in order to complete an objective. This is often true, but not always. It is hard for a commander to admit that some of their soldiers are rude to other troops because they wear a different badge or have not completed a certain qualification. However ridiculous it seems, some readers will find this awfully familiar, and some will be guilty of it themselves.
This makes it all the more important to remember that, when assessing the readiness of a military, what you cannot see is of great importance. While some of this invisible friction is baked into military culture, time spent physically training together can dramatically reduce it. Combined arms training, which builds relationships, trust, and skills, will transfer directly into operational advantage.
Patrick Hinton was until recently the British Army’s visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank based in London. He is a serving artillery officer with a background in ground-based air defense systems and uncrewed aerial vehicles. He has an MA in international relations and an MBA. He has published widely on personnel matters, defense technology, and training.
Image: U.K. Ministry of Defence
