Military Agility: Ensuring Rapid and Effective Transition from Peace to War

The need to quickly enter into conflict and succeed in the initial engagements is an enduring demand on militaries around the world. Given today's dynamic geopolitical environment, the concept of successful, rapid transition or organizational and mental readiness is more relevant than ever.

Using the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a case study , Meir Finkel explores four important but generally neglected challenges of a swift transition from peace to wartime operations. He investigates the challenging mental transition from peace or routine security employment to a higher-intensity mode of action in combat. Then, Finkel explains that militaries must be capable of rapidly resolving debated prewar concepts and doctrine even as war breaks out. He also discusses how to integrate and employ new weapons systems delivered at the last minute or during a conflict. Lastly, he delves into methods for managing the tension between the need to win every tactical engagement in low-intensity conflict and the preparation of forces for a high-intensity conflict.

With clear applications for the IDF and US armed services, Finkel's study offers specific examples of hard-to-accomplish rapid transitions as well as broad suggestions for how to improve readiness. Military Agility will appeal to military personnel and leadership, strategists, historians with an interest in comparative analysis, and policymakers.

Meir Finkel, IDF (Ret.), is the current head of research and former director of the Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies/IDF-J3, as well as former director of the IDF Ground Forces Command's Concept Development and Doctrine Department. As a colonel in the IDF, he commanded an armored brigade during the Second Lebanon War. He is the author of On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield.He lives in Abirim, Israel.