People, ideas, hardware – in that order.

“People, ideas, hardware – in that order. That was John Boyd’s direction on how militaries should transform to stay competitive.”  ⬇️

Chief of Army Symposium 2024 – The Human Face of Battle | The Cove

The Chief of Army Symposium 2024 is now available to watch!

“And yet, the way that we approach the future of war within militaries (bureaucratically) usually follows the opposite course.”

Royal United Services Institute‘s Jack Watling gave a key note speech at the recent Chief of Army’s Symposium at Land Forces 2024. For those of you who weren’t able to get to Melbourne The Cove has now posted videos of the full proceedings.

Jack raised the example of the longbow – a more effective weapon than the early musket but the time to train a longbowman to be proficient took years, whereas a rifleman could be up to speed in weeks. Even though the longbow was still more accurate, it wasn’t able to match the scaling factor of the musket. It is worth considering what ‘longbows’ the Western militaries have in the order of battle today?

Jack drove home the need to simplify training and equipment by using the Ukraine war as an example. In Ukraine they don’t have enough time to fully train recruits to the pre-war standard. There is a qualitative decline in capacity of the fighting force over time. With less time to train you need to focus on the key things that are most relevant to staying alive and completing the mission.

With less time to train, the tools of warfare that are most useful are those that are easiest to use – user experience cannot be ignored. Time to start simplifying your products and processes and using civilians for your user acceptance testing!