Army Innovation: Lessons from 250 Years of Army Innovation
by MAJ Robert Rose, USA
Land Warfare Paper 169, June 2025
In Brief
The Army has often struggled to innovate in peacetime, which has regularly resulted in defeat in the first battles of America’s wars.
We need to learn from the Army’s history of innovation to ensure we are ready to win from the start of our next war.
Innovation needs a clear problem to innovate against. It requires time to study the problem and iterate solutions.
To enable innovation, the Army should: provide a clear concept for how we fight; flatten bureaucracy; reform the personnel system; conduct realistic, large-scale exercises; and avoid the temptation to pursue offset technologies.
Introduction
In 2023, XVIII Airborne Corps hosted an iteration of Dragon’s Lair, replicating the television show Shark Tank. In the end, the winning innovation was not a weapon to help the Army prevail in battle, but a sensor to increase lethality against mold in the barracks.[1]
This invention highlights that defining a clear problem is essential to innovation. The Soldiers had a specific enemy, in a particular situation, that they could repeatedly test their device against. These are the elements necessary for innovation. You cannot just implore people to innovate. You must provide them with a problem to solve. Then, you have to grant them time to iteratively solve that problem.
During times of war, problems are apparent, which yields a fast pace of innovation. War provides a specific enemy, employing particular formations, in a unique context. During the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Ukrainian Defense Forces have been incredibly entrepreneurial because they have clear problems to solve. Ukrainian brigades are connected to start-ups to share challenges and produce solutions.[2] They have proven that necessity is the mother of invention.
When at war, the U.S. Army has generally been adept at innovating new technologies, organizations and techniques.[3] But in peacetime, it has been less effective.[4] Consequently, the Army has often lost the first battle of its wars. Now, we are at peace. So how can we improve how we innovate to ensure the Army wins the first battle of its next war?
Often, commentators make empty recommendations on how to improve innovation. They discuss building cultures of creativity or adaptive mindsets. Considering our Soldiers come from a society that leads developed economies in productivity growth and creative destruction,[5] the Army should have Soldiers with the necessary entrepreneurial spirits. Providing them with Post-its and bean bag chairs for ideation sessions is not going to magically manifest innovation.
Instead, we should learn from 250 years of Army innovation, which succeeds when the Army: (1) develops a clear concept for how it will fight; (2) establishes a bureaucratic structure that ensures that concept is tied to war plans, doctrinal and equipment development; (3) maintains a personnel system that provides Soldiers with time to develop techniques to solve a problem; (4) conducts realistic, large-scale exercises to test and iterate innovation; and (5) avoids pursuing “offset” technologies and instead prioritizes feasible solutions to employ in the context of near-term strategic problems.
As the Army celebrates its 250th birthday, we have a duty to learn from those who preceded us.
https://www.ausa.org/publications/land-warfare-paper/army-innovation
