The Agility Imperative: Emerging Knowledge Management Requirements for Stability Operations in the U.S. Army

David Kilcullen said it well in The Accidental Guerilla, when he argued that we have entered a new era of warfare in which the “enemy” is often not nation-states but non-state actors who are far more agile and adaptive than large nation-states.¹ As a result, succeeding in this era of warfare will require us to become more agile as well so that we can adapt quickly to changing environments.

U.S. soldiers and their commanders are aware of this need to be flexible. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, they have witnessed firsthand the enemy’s ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances in order to overcome efforts to defeat them. Insurgent groups have shown themselves to be mobile, capable of using simple technology to thwart sophisticated Western technology, and adept at quickly using what information they gather to guide their actions. Unburdened by any rule-bound system of how they must acquire and use resources, insurgent groups are often one step ahead of coalition forces.

As in any conflict, one of the most valuable assets is information. Military forces of most nations, including the U.S., are well aware of this, and the collection and management of information has long been considered critical for the successful planning and execution of missions. Advances in technology have made it possible for modern militaries to collect a mass of data, but process has not kept pace with technological advancement.

Despite the sophisticated new technology available to coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgents still often seem to know things sooner and to act on that information faster than the coalition forces fighting them. Collecting information has become much easier, but the “actionable” use of that information remains a challenge. Soldiers and commanders are now overloaded with data, and sifting through it to find what is and is not of value at any given moment is difficult. Moreover, sharing information remains a challenge, partly because of technological barriers between systems and partly because of barriers created by information-sharing policies.

Civilian and military researchers are aware of these challenges and of the urgent need to overcome them. Millions of dollars are poured into efforts to find technical solutions to information overload and to overcome roadblocks to information-sharing. The development process of new technology for the battlefield is too often cumbersome and not related to the needs on the ground. This is particularly true for military units deployed on nontraditional missions. Because these units are still such a small part of the military, there has been little support for creating software programs that improve the process of collecting and sharing data that are useful for economic development and nation-building efforts. However, the need for this sort of information is growing and becoming increasingly important in warfare and economic development.

The U.S. military is quite skilled in traditional warfare, also called kinetic or regular warfare. But, as we have seen in Afghanistan, these traditional approaches to warfare are far less effective when U.S. forces find themselves in the midst of an insurgency where the enemy consists of small, decentralized, mobile groups of insurgents. Counterinsurgency operations have become the norm in Afghanistan, and a large part of this counterinsurgency involves U.S. troops carrying out economic development and nation-building projects. Young soldiers trained for combat have found themselves assigned to such duties as rebuilding economic infrastructure and serving as liaisons to local government councils. These are tasks for which they have little training and for which it is difficult to find information on how to do them most effectively.

Because agriculture is the dominant industry in Afghanistan, the U.S. military sent special National Guard units called Agribusiness Development Teams (ADTs) into Afghanistan with the specific mission of rebuilding that nation’s agriculture industry. ADTs are company-size units that include both soldiers who are experts in agriculture and soldiers who are able to provide security for the team. The ADTs are modeled...