Abstract: Modern armed forces face a paradox: the longer peace endures, the less prepared they become for war. This essay develops the concept of military entropy to explain the institutional decay that afflicts militaries during prolonged, unchallenged stability. Using the German Bundeswehr as a contemporary case study and the Prussian defeat of 1806 as a historical parallel, it traces how bureaucratic rigidity, political complacency, and loss of “war habit” erode combat effectiveness despite ample resources. Drawing from military thinkers, organisational theory, and recent policy debates, the analysis warns that incremental reform may no longer suffice. Instead, it explores the radical alternative of building a parallel force, a lean, adaptive structure capable of eventually replacing the old one. The essay concludes that only a mindset of constructive pessimism, which anticipates failure before it occurs, can prevent future catastrophes and restore credible deterrence in democratic societies.
Problem statement: How can a democratic military address institutional inertia and rebuild effective warfighting ability before a crisis or defeat compels reform?
So what?: If the lessons Jena and Auerstedt taught the Prussians in the 19th century still apply, reform must precede disaster. If defeat has historically been the precursor for renewal, then the strategic responsibility of the present lies not in hoping for success but in anticipating defeat before it occurs and resetting military entropy by, in extremis, new force design. Political leaders, defence planners, and military professionals should explore unconventional paths to renewal, including the deliberate creation of a lean, adaptive parallel force to augment or, if deemed beyond the point of reform, replace the existing structures. This requires intellectual courage, honest self-assessment, and the moral clarity to prioritise effectiveness over tradition.
The Corridor that Would not Open
A recently publicised wargame conducted by the German news outlet “WELT” in cooperation with the German Wargaming Centre (GWC) of the Bundeswehr provides the empirical baseline for the pre-mortem scenario developed in this essay.[1] The one-day exercise, named “Ernstfall” (Case of Emergency), brought together senior subject-matter experts to explore how Germany and its central partners might respond to a calibrated Russian escalation in the Baltic region, revisiting the uncomfortable results of similar wargames conducted by RAND nearly ten years earlier.[2] Its stated purpose was twofold: to contribute to Germany’s national security debate and to examine Russian escalation logic under conditions of legal ambiguity, political friction, and time pressure, according to Carolina Drüten, one of the lead initiators.[3]
The wargame focuses on the Suwałki Gap, the crucial logistics crossroads connecting Belarus and Kaliningrad, as well as Poland and Lithuania. The Baltics’ transition to the Western Hemisphere has created an extensive literature on the matter. Dictated by geography, bloody history and decades of ambiguous policy, the Suwałki Gap emerges today not only as one of NATO’s conventional military choke points, but as a political and structural vulnerability in Article V-deterrence itself.[4] Its unique constellation offers adversaries direct access to NATO’s Centre of Gravity (CoG), i.e., political cohesion and unified decision-making.[5]
In more familiar science fiction shorthand, the Suwałki Gap resembles the exposed access port leading to the core of the Empire’s Death Star.[6] A structurally decisive weakness whose control enables significant strategic leverage over either Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad or NATO’s Baltic regions. It embodies both deterrent weight and coercive potential.[7] An escalation of existing tensions along the corridor will therefore likely either unlock latent European military potential or deny meaningful action from the top down by strategically disrupting the crucial echelons of decision-making.[8] If decision-makers fail to respond swiftly and coherently to ambiguous, covert, and decisive action, the corridor can become a point of systemic paralysis, as a precisely timed strike may generate political effects disproportionate to its geographic scale. This is the logic ultimately exploited by the Red Team during the wargame, representing the Russian leadership.[9]
Set in late October 2026, the wargame’s scenario assumed a recent ceasefire in Ukraine with Russia maintaining control of the occupied territory. Following the conclusion of its annual Zapad exercises, approximately one Russian division remains deployed near the Lithuanian border. After a series of security incidents, Lithuania closed the Suwałki corridor, effectively blocking off the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad from most forms of transport.[10] Against this backdrop, Moscow increases pressure in the Baltic region, skilfully exercising its well-established portfolio of hybrid means.[11] Breaking and bending international law by combining escalatory force with de-escalatory narratives, Moscow subsequently declares a humanitarian crisis in Kaliningrad and secures a land corridor across the Suwałki Gap by effectively combining hybrid and military means.[12]
Germany’s response in the wargame follows an equally familiar pattern: Sanctions are imposed, maritime measures in the Baltic Sea are discussed, internal crisis preparations accelerate while direct military counteraction is deferred in favour of signalling and alliance consultation.[13] The United States, prioritising avoidance of European escalation in conjunction with its contemporary national security and defence strategies, declines to support the invocation of Article 5 under such hybrid threat levels, thereby effectively shutting down the cohesive core of NATO.[14] What remains are procedural substitutes for action: proposals to activate regional defence plans without formal collective defence and exploratory discussions, essentially denying the facts rather than denying the enemy.
Crucially, assembling an abstract collection of national forces within the Baltic region as disconnected tripwires rather than decisive actors reinforces the state of political arrest, demonstrated by the Blue Team during the wargame. Joseph Verbovszky, one of the co-directors of the GWC, has identified this systemic paralysis as a symptom of a deep-rooted “German Structural Pacifism,” effectively self-denying Germany’s military options in the scenario.[15]
The WELT wargame demonstrates the cost of deterrent symbolism: once a stronger will can exploit ambiguity and tempo, the defender responds from a position already strategically degraded by the cascading loss of initiative. Any NATO presence deployed east of a consolidated Suwałki Corridor would risk isolation, exposed to Russian fire, electronic warfare, and political interdiction. In this sense, the exercise reveals less an operational dilemma than a political decision trap. Once the corridor is secured, the defender confronts only unfavourable options: a costly counteroffensive that risks creating an unambiguous kinetic casus bello, a protracted and escalatory denial campaign, or de facto acceptance of the altered status quo with corresponding geopolitical consequences.[16]
Where the scenario of Ernstfall ends, a real crisis would not. This essay envisions that Blue Team actors, mainly operating under European political and German military leadership, would eventually seek to restore deterrence and initiative when faced with the consequences of reputational damage and erosion of alliance credibility. These actions would be framed as stabilising and defensive, yet they would operate under the fundamentally altered conditions of a fight-tonight scenario, dynamically forcing offensive ends with displaced and disrupted tactical means. The operation is not primarily decided by German resolve or Western technological superiority, but by Russian combat capabilities built on post-Ukraine experience, Russian military resilience and the ability to capitalise on Western forces being exposed to conventional and digital friction.[17] As casualties mount, the Blue Team fails in securing its objectives, paying a high price that leaves its forces degraded. After openly accepting the undeniable military defeat by withdrawing the following week, the Blue Team would settle for a lengthy negotiating process to reopen the corridor under Russian terms.
Pre-Mortem Conclusion
NATO endures as an alliance, but it remains under sustained military pressure and is vitally reliant on its central European member with the largest financial resources, population, and industrial base, the Federal Republic of Germany.[18] Within this pre-mortem exercise, the hypothetical failure of the Bundeswehr is not attributed to insufficient resources or a lack of professional commitment. It is instead credited to the long-term effects of military entropy, as described in Part I of this essay, combined with political ambiguity. This state of functional inadequacy, when measured against political and military ambitions and future warfighting needs, stems from a force structure shaped by peacetime norms, creeping political decision paralysis, and managerial optimisation.[19] It is expressed by the frequent prioritisation of symbolism over organised violence, a common phenomenon in Western foreign policy that culminates in bluffing and escapism towards voter-friendly and technocratic surrogates and buzzwords, as Joshua Lehman describes in 2025.[20] Such a force becomes structurally unfit to serve its political purpose of power projection against an opposing will.
Tracing the Foundations of a New Force
The contemporary geopolitical environment is characterised by accelerating multipolar competition and the persistent logic of great-power rivalry in Europe. The 2026 Munich Security Report, alongside the current national security strategies of the United States, Russia, and Germany, reflects a structural departure from assumptions of a durable liberal order toward renewed power politics.[21] In his Munich address, German Chancellor Merz described the “destruction” of a rules-based order that “no longer exists” as a civilisational inflexion point. Democratic states, he argued, must restore credible military capabilities as instruments of combined deterrence, aligned with constitutional mandates and strategic responsibility.[22]
This message demands a corresponding sense of urgency, as time has become the decisive constraint in kick-starting plausible and deterrent levels of military readiness. Political systems capable of rapid executive action increasingly determine the tempo of international politics through centralised decision-making, social media signalling, and decree-driven policy shifts, frequently operating at the fringes of legal and normative frameworks. They adapt and shape an age of continuous conflicts in “hybrid times,” as Berthelsen points out.[23]
Half a year earlier, Merz distilled the strategic equation into a single sentence: “The protection of Vilnius is the protection of Berlin.”[24] The remark contained beyond rhetorical solidarity a structural logic frequently inverted in European debates. Collective defence is a political commitment expressing intent, while national defence is a material capability that generates hard power. However, military alliances are contingent political arrangements, shaped by shifting interests and sustained only by the concrete military substance their members provide. As witnessed during the Ernstfall wargame, declaratory signalling does not defend the Suwałki Gap against a Russian armoured division.
According to Sean Monaghan, much of the contemporary discourse frames Europe’s defensive predicament as a classic collective action dilemma: states underinvest because they rely on NATO, and particularly the United States, as ultimate guarantor.[25] However, this diagnosis obscures a more fundamental reality: The coordination problem does not begin with reliance on alliances but with the erosion of national defensive capacity. Collective defence cannot compensate for hollow national forces disabled by decades of entropy. A treaty can only aggregate what already exists, but it cannot multiply zero. The credibility of Article 5 rests not on political declarations, but on divisions, logistics, reserves, infrastructure, and the political and societal will to generate, maintain and employ them. Although various graphs show theoretical European military, industrial, and demographic potentials that clearly exceed those of Russia, their inclusion in a spreadsheet does not necessarily translate into credible warfighting capacity.[26] This insight cuts to the core of the Military Entropy thesis. Alliances can mask decay for a time because shared commitments create the appearance of strength, but the military entropy described in this essay operates at the level of national institutions. When those foundations erode, the alliance framework may remain intact in language while hollowing out in substance. That truism leaves neither margin for complacency nor for the pre-mortem scenario outlined in this essay to become reality.
Avoiding Fatalism
“Adapt or perish has been the inexorable law of life [..], and it becomes more and more derisive as the divergence widens between what our fathers were wont to call the Order of Nature and this new harsh implacable hostility to our universe, our all,” author H.G. Wells wrote in 1945, as his life was coming to an end.[28] The dystopian theme of his final manuscript reflected a lifetime of technological upheaval, forged by world wars and culminating in the atomic bomb, marking the technological zenith of human destructiveness at the eve of Wells’ death. His message could not have been more transparent when applied to a future near-peer Large Scale Combat Operation (LSCO) involving the Russian Armed Forces: a military that does not adapt, decays.
The war in Ukraine since 2014, and in an intensified form since 2022, demonstrates that contemporary hybrid and kinetic conflicts between near-peer adversaries resist rapid compression and reliable control of escalation. Russian strategic discourse continues to reference an “escalate-to-deescalate theory,” extending in seventeen rungs to “war with the massive use of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction, including against large urban centres.”[29] In accordance with current Russian nuclear doctrine, a defeat of existential magnitude at the conventional level may cause premature nuclear escalation rather than decisive resolution.[30] Facing an opponent endowed with scalable nuclear capabilities and strategic patience, classic escalation dominance theory imposes structural limits on what conventional force can plausibly achieve, reinforcing Brodie’s warning that escalation is neither linear nor reliably controllable, but contingent on perception, restraint, and miscalculation.[31]
This dynamic was underscored by Russian deliberations on nuclear options during the battle for Kherson in the autumn of 2022 and frequently shaped Russian strategic communications.[32] Under such conditions, the applied Centre of Gravity theory, as deliberated by Echavarria II, neither assesses realistic chances of rapid decision-making nor of a drawn-out war-by-proxy as viable for breaking Russian will.[33] A recent Western study reflecting five strategic avenues for possible limited Russian attacks on NATO’s sovereignty comes to similar conclusions, estimating Russian resolve, political and societal stability in 2026 to produce a “formidable military backed by a resilient war economy.”[34]
This reality frames the divergence in political interpretation across Europe. In November 2025, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned that the Alliance “must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured,” portraying a “conflict reaching every home, every workplace, destruction, mass mobilisation, millions displaced, widespread suffering and extreme losses.”[35] Such language should be read not as alarmism, but as a realism not uniformly embraced across Europe.
At the Munich Security Conference in 2026, several prominent European leaders projected a far more optimistic outlook. Finnish President Stubb stated, “I actually think that Russia is losing this war,” while High Representative Kallas argued that “Russia is broken, its economy in shreds”.[36] French President Macron similarly characterised the continuation of the war as “a strategic, an economic and even a military failure [for Russia]”.[37] The Ukrainian President Zelenskyy cautioned against such optimism, describing the severe toll the war was taking on all sides and that his Russian counterpart could not “let go of the very idea of war,” essentially being its “slave.”[38]
The Battlefield as Structural Evidence
While strategic interpretations of ends and means may diverge within political discourse, structural constraints inevitably shape the battlefield, and however the war in Ukraine concludes, a future NATO–Russia LSCO in Eastern Europe would not replicate it mechanically. The baseline assumption is that NATO would enter with a doctrine, technological integration, and logistical depth that would seriously challenge any contemporary Russian approach to warfare. Still, the Swedish Defence University observed in early 2026 that “Russian military thinkers and practitioners currently do not carry out any discussion regarding the future of warfare isolated from the ongoing war in Ukraine.”[39] Russia’s next adversary should therefore anticipate repetition of acquired patterns before meaningful stylistic transformation occurs. RAND’s assessment of Russian military reconstitution reinforces this caution, concluding that success beyond grinding attrition can no longer be assumed and identifies “major challenges to NATO’s emphasis on high-quality yet quantitatively limited inventories and force structures.”[40] Therefore, the opening phases of a future conflict would, with high probability, reflect the Russian way of warfare currently evolving in Ukraine, before Clausewitz’s “chameleon” once again shifts its colours under the pressure of adaptive reciprocity and creative improvisation.[41]
Empirical observation supports this assessment. The Ukrainian battlefield has effectively dissolved the traditional linear front into a 20–30 kilometre drone-dominated “grey zone,” as described in contemporary Ukrainian analysis.[42] This insight alone destabilises the traditional NATO concept of the Forward Line of Own Troops (FLOT), as it undermines the geometric assumptions about front lines and spatial separation that have long structured Western operational thought.[43]
Further, along this FLOT, continuous aerial reconnaissance and precision strikes have erased coherent trench geometry, while the space between forces is composed of fragmented strongpoints, concealed burrows, and lethal kill strips, where daylight movement by formed units is frequently prohibitive.[44] Resupply, rotation, and casualty evacuation often entail greater risk than static defence. Drone-based sustainment and minimal-signature movement increasingly replace conventional logistics chains. Operational C2 is persistently degraded by electronic warfare, compressing decision cycles and eroding coherence.[45] As depth, dispersion, camouflage, and survivability increasingly outweigh the logic of positional advance, modern high-intensity warfare is defined less by decisive manoeuvre breakthroughs and more by sustained attrition conducted under conditions of persistent transparency and electronic denial, thereby challenging long-held assumptions embedded in offensive doctrine.[46]
Exercise “Hedgehog-2025” in Estonia offered a limited but revealing illustration of these dynamics.[47] The NATO drill simulated limited land-warfare scenarios between NATO forces and Ukrainian drone-warfare veterans acting as the opposing force. It exposed tangible weaknesses in Western force employment, including insufficient concealment, vulnerable command posts, incomplete integration of ISR and fires, and delayed kill-chain adaptation. Yet the open-source reports must be interpreted with caution, suggesting a diagnostic stress test rather than a predictive model of future defeat. The specific arrangements did not replicate the full capacity of NATO’s Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) concept, as strategic airpower, deep logistics, or escalation dynamics seemed limited. However, its significance lies in identifying adaptation gaps rather than forecasting inevitabilities, thus adding to the pre-mortem logic of this essay.
Western adaptations to the contemporary Russian way of warfare are no longer abstract theoretical constructs but are already being implemented by NATO members situated along a potential battlefield with Russia or Belarus. Multiple reports from the Baltic states and Poland indicate a gradual yet unmistakable doctrinal shift away from the paradigm of post-invasion punishment, where limited territorial depth would be temporarily conceded before a flexible, NATO-supported counteroffensive, toward a forward-anchored logic of denial.[48] Revitalised concepts of national and total defence increasingly revolve around the political promise to defend “every square inch” of allied territory, a commitment shaped not only by alliance rhetoric but also by historical memory, geographic exposure, and the limited strategic depth available to these frontline states.[49]
This doctrinal reorientation carries significant implications. The emerging model envisions drone-saturated kill zones layered with prepared positions and pre-configured supply hubs designed to delay, fragment, and attrit an invading force from the outset of hostilities.[50] Promising a “stronger and smarter alliance,” and in step with current calls for a drone wall, NATO ACT has presented to the public a series of robots and drones to bolster “Eastern Flank Deterrence,” envisioning an automated line of sentries instead of conventional armed units along threatened borderlines.[51]
Further, several countries have exited treaties banning specific categories of weapons, including anti-personnel mines, in order to reconstitute dense obstacle systems and fortified defensive belts.[53] Recent reporting describes German soldiers assisting Polish forces in constructing the “Ostschild” (Eastern Shield).[54] In parallel, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are implementing a coordinated “Baltic Defence Line” (BDL) intended to “significantly boost” the “capability to protect [..] at the national level.”[55] The strategic objective underpinning these initiatives is to reduce NATO reaction time while simultaneously increasing the friction, cost, and operational uncertainty of any Russian incursion.
The Imperative of Transformation
This evolving and deterrent logic of territorial denial does not sit comfortably alongside established NATO doctrine for the defence of the Alliance’s Eastern flank, which traditionally emphasises freedom of movement, manoeuvre, and the capacity for rapid offensive counteraction. Static defensive belts, minefields, and prepared fortifications may enhance national resilience and deterrent credibility, yet they also risk constraining operational mobility and complicating alliance-level manoeuvre concepts built upon rapid reinforcement and counteroffensive flexibility. The resulting doctrinal tension is therefore not merely technical but structural, reflecting a deeper strategic dilemma: whether a future war in Eastern Europe will reward manoeuvre dominance as previously assumed, or instead punish it under conditions defined by transparency, attrition, and constrained escalation. This imperative is underscored by former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi’s 2023 assessment that the battlefield had hardened into a positional, sensor-saturated struggle from which escape has “always been difficult for both the Armed Forces and the state as a whole.”[56]
Taken together, the evolving conditions on both sides of NATO’s eastern flank form a coherent baseline: the battlefield has changed structurally, and all potential belligerents must adjust accordingly. The war in Ukraine represents the largest and most consequential near-peer LSCO that directly involves Russia versus Western-supported forces since 1945. The question is no longer whether transformation is necessary, but how deeply and how rapidly it must proceed to either deter or, in the worst case, prevail in a direct confrontation.
No Silver Bullet, No Golden Gun
Persistent observation, degraded communications, electronic warfare saturation, protracted attritional timelines, scalable escalation under a nuclear shadow, and the steady erosion of operational freedom within a transparent yet fortified battlespace can no longer be treated as contingencies; they must become the baseline assumptions of planning and employment.[58] This status quo changes how force employment must be conceived. The image of the peace-time-adapted “Bonsai Army,” a phrase attributed to European militaries that are neither capable of successful national defence nor adapted to future collective defence, needs to be replaced by the vision of a less decorative Bramble Bush Army, specifically bred for the grim needs of future LSCO.[59]
This demands foremost a cultural inoculation against the enduring allure of decisive advance and inherent initiative. For much of the twentieth century, manoeuvre functioned as the silver bullet for the gold-plated systems of Western force design. Under contemporary battlefield conditions, however, the manoeuvrist approach can no longer serve as an unquestioned doctrinal foundation.[60] The Western military affinity for offensive action, a tendency widely examined in the academic literature and often traced back to the intellectual pathologies preceding the First World War, must be reassessed in light of its contemporary risks.[61]
Western military planners and analysts argue, not without reason, that MDO-adapted NATO airpower and deep-strike capabilities would provide a significant combat advantage, drawing on the Ukrainian experience in fighting Russian forces.[62] Therefore, ideally, it should not reach the levels of protraction and friction observed in Ukraine. Yet these highly ambitious concepts have so far been validated primarily through exercises and wargames, often drawing on ageing, only partially comparable historical precedents from Iraq or the former Yugoslavia to substantiate their promise. As Amos Fox and Franz-Stefan Gady contend, MDO as currently framed is in danger of presenting “a solution looking for a problem,“ generically expanding offensive doctrine instead of strategically accounting for the latest battlefield evidence.[63]
Dynamic Warfighting must be understood as a conditional act of “tactical opportunism,” as Russian analyst Sergey Poletaev suggests.[64] Like slow-growing roots that cannot be eradicated outright, tactical opportunities on the future battlefield will likely emerge gradually, exploiting fractures within the kill zone and widening them over time until movement becomes possible through the remaining rubble. After penetration, the attack can “blossom” behind enemy lines, as Markus Reisner quotes Russian sources, highlighting Russian adaptations in warfare.[65] Manoeuvre becomes viable only after opposing will, cohesion, combat power, and surveillance capabilities have been sufficiently degraded through sustained attrition. However, given the circumstances, culmination will follow with high probability, thereby narrowing the chances of operational or even strategic breakthroughs.[66]
Western forces should be prepared to conduct campaigns measured in years rather than months, while political and military leadership must resist the temptation to micro-manage the battlefield and instead place trust in professional judgment oriented toward sustained defence rather than ”ideologically” driven offence, as David Johnson has already argued in 2022.[67] Frontline pushes for push messages, maybe a legitimate part of MDO regarding the information domain, but risks additional exhaustion and contradicting narrative results.
Until conditions genuinely favourable to manoeuvrist doctrine can be re-established, force employment should be anchored in defence, fortification, dispersion, and indirect firepower. In this respect, Clausewitz’s reflections on attack and defence in Book VI of On War regain immediate relevance: defence remains the stronger form of war when the environment rewards endurance over velocity.[68]
In practical terms, this Bramble Bush Army converges with the form of warfare that has emerged from the interaction between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, not because the war in Ukraine offers an ideal or directly transferable model, but because this style of fighting most closely reflects the empirical realities of high-intensity conflict against a peer adversary under current conditions. To assume otherwise may seem comforting to the military optimist, but it is strategically dangerous, given that Russia is considered the most likely military aggressor against NATO forces. Its methods and adaptations must therefore be studied continuously and without politicised or media-driven distortion, requiring analytical humility rather than moralization or reflexive rejection. This has direct implications for force design and operational employment.[69]
Based on the research presented, this author cautions against premature overconfidence based on assumptions of doctrinal and joint superiority. A posture of constructive pessimism requires scepticism toward the assumption that technological asymmetry alone will restore manoeuvre as the dominant logic of future LSCO. The interaction between a post-Ukraine Russian force and NATO formations may well compress or even focus on MDO, leading to a series of deterministic procurement choices.
On Recycling the Bright and Shiny
As Frank G. Hoffmann describes, what ultimately distinguishes effective warfighting capability is not the absence of miscalculation, but the pragmatic capacity to alter trajectories of force design and force generation once assumptions prove false. However, procurement cycles routinely outlast innovation cycles, producing structural mismatches between emerging modes of warfare and the capabilities entering service. These disparities are further reinforced by political, bureaucratic, and industrial interests that often diverge from the actual requirements of combat, constraining adaptation precisely when it becomes most necessary.[70]
The list of procurement programs the German parliament has approved to reconstitute the Bundeswehr since 2022 is extensive.[71] Ranging from new service rifles to satellite systems, long-term contracts often commit the Bundeswehr for decades in advance.[72] These incoming capabilities, insofar as they remain within the Bundeswehr rather than being reallocated to support Ukraine, will inevitably shape not only the available means but also the strategic ends toward which the existing force is oriented.[73]
In a reform-oriented speech in November 2025, Chief of the Army Christian Freuding, called for profound structural, materiel, and doctrinal transformation of the German land forces, emphasising data-centric warfare, expanded long-range precision fires, and the establishment of ground-based deep-strike capabilities within a future Multi Domain framework, summarised in his dictum that “manoeuvre follows fires.”[74] Yet, in the same speech, he listed at least ten major tracked and wheeled combat systems, some of which were designed decades ago, resulting in highly digitised and maintenance-intensive systems optimised for peacetime availability, alliance interoperability, and managerial control rather than for sustained combat stress, as Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick critically point out.[75] Some have already been ordered in substantial numbers before the reform Freuding mentioned will take place, thereby illustrating the structural tension between long-term force generation and short-term adaptation discussed in this essay. The challenge, therefore, lies in finding the high road between dynamic and static forms of warfare with the existing means while also aligning procurement tempo and doctrinal acceleration.
Further, Germany’s delayed and uneven approach to force digitisation exemplifies this predicament. Repeated postponement in the broad introduction of digitised and cryptographically secured communications (Projectname: D-LBO) not only risks a measurable degradation of the land forces’ warfighting ability by 2026, as recently publicly acknowledged by Freuding, but also exacerbates interoperability gaps with more advanced NATO allies.[76]
Adding anecdotal scepticism, former Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov publicly challenged Defence Minister Pistorius at the Munich Security Conference in 2026 by asking whether Germany was preparing “for the old war or for the new one.”[77] His provocation implied that Berlin risked investing in legacy capabilities unsuited to the character of contemporary Russian warfare, suggesting that procurement decisions might be oriented toward past conflicts rather than the evolving realities of a sensor-saturated, drone-dominated battlefield. Pistorius calmly pointed to combined German-Ukrainian projects for drone development and fielding against Russia, and to the benefits the German armed forces were already reaping from training and third-party experience.[78]
In the frequently invoked “fight-tonight” scenario, emphasised by the German Army in late 2025 and echoing Donald Rumsfeld’s 2004 dictum that “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have a later time,” the characteristics of the existing Bundeswehr do not align with the probable nature of future warfare as presented in this essay.[79]
Splitting the Force
If peace-time entropy (described in part I) and pre-war ambition (as described so far in part II) cannot convert into warfighting readiness, then in-time adaptation through institutional reform is structurally impossible. What is required is a redesign, explicitly separating incompatible optimisation logics that otherwise metastasise into bureaucratic overload, simulated readiness, and brittle, MDO-centric force design.
If the envisioned fight tonight scenario were to become reality, one integrated Bundeswehr would be tasked with conducting two different efforts at once: One is at home, mainly consisting of supportive and state-stabilising functions, the other war is fought as an ally abroad on NATO’s eastern perimeter, requiring rapid deployment, coalition integration, and MDO-aligned orchestration across domains.[81]
A single organisation might oscillate between these imperatives, but it cannot optimise for both without internal contradiction. Structural separation is therefore not cosmetic, but an anti-entropy mechanism focused on military efficacy.
The proposed thought experiment advances a radically different dual-force architecture:
- First, a Territorial Defence Force (TDF), conceptually framed as the Bramble Bush Army, was built for national resilience, denial, dispersion, and regeneration under conditions of persistent ISR, degraded communications, and infrastructural stress. Its core doctrine is not winning a war of choice, but not losing a war of existence.
- Second, as the TDF’s complement, a structurally separate Expeditionary Deterrence Force (EDF), optimised for alliance utility, would be founded. This force is integrated firmly within the framework of close European neighbours, serving mutual interests within national constitutional limits. NATO’s current understanding of MDO provides the coalition logic that the EDF must currently serve.
Because redesign inside a democratic system must remain legitimate, the model is anchored in constitutional constraints, just as it has been for the Bundeswehr since its conception. Therefore, the remains of the existing Bundeswehr would either be transferred to one of the two forces on the basis of military judgment and necessity, or disbanded, setting free all administration, personnel and materiel found unfit to serve the new structures sufficiently. Further, two quantitative conditions are treated as non-negotiable design principles: a reduction of rank and grade complexity by approximately 50 per cent, and a corresponding reduction in bureaucratic personnel overhead, in accordance with counteracting “Parkinson’s law.”[82] Given the well-documented tendency of large bureaucracies to regenerate complexity over time, a reduction of approximately 75% should not be understood as an optimal steady-state, but as a corrective shock designed to re-establish operational primacy over administrative accumulation.
These figures should act as structural guardrails when paired with legal and budgetary “anti-bloat” mechanisms adapted from research on tackling civilian bureaucracies and designed to prevent the gradual re-expansion of administrative layers and peacetime inflation dynamics that have historically marked the entropic expansion of military institutions. The claim that radical redesign is impossible without external shock under catastrophic conditions is historically sound, yet exceptions exist: In October 1950, a small expert group convened at Himmerod Abbey from 05 to 09 October 1950 to develop principles for a new West German military contribution to the developing NATO defence framework.[83] The resulting “Himmeroder Denkschrift” (Himmerod memorandum) is treated in German military history as a foundational document. It also demonstrates what concentrated conceptual work can achieve within political constraints.
On 52 short pages written on a typewriter, the document outlined the foundations of the new armed forces, the Bundeswehr, which, roughly a decade later, had grown in size to all but exceed today’s.[84] The Bundeswehr later reached a Cold War peacetime strength of 495,000 military personnel, with wartime access to 1.3 million through reservists, demonstrating that rapid conceptual foundations can, under sustained political commitment, mature into mass and credibility.[85] This precedent does not sanctify the political context but validates the method of rethinking entire militaries through conceptual rigour and focused design, if the system permits clarity, and the sense of urgency supersedes any sense of comfort or complacency.
Conclusion
By the end of 2025, the chameleon of war between Russia and Ukraine will no longer be subdued by peacetime entropy. It is wide awake and hungry, draped in drones caught in nets, welded scrap-metal plating, entangled fibre-optic cables, stripped-out vehicles, and dragged forward by eternally exhausted soldiers, like millions before them. Hypersonic glide vehicles challenge both missile defence systems and assumptions of technological superiority, while arms control regimes erode faster than the political commitments meant to sustain them.
Adaptation is imperative, but for inert militaries, the call to “adapt or die” rings hollow once the capacity to adapt has been forfeited. They resemble a rabbit in the headlights, recognising the threat but failing to react decisively, mistaking awareness for adaptation until the window for change has closed. Where military institutions equate activity with action and confuse self-preservation with reform, innovation is theatrical and further promotes military entropy.[86]
In such conditions, leaders must begin by deconstructing the existing system: the deliberate dismantling of assumptions, structures, and incentives that no longer align with the evolving character of organised violence. Although any war between Russia and the combined power of NATO would likely manifest differently, the starting point for any meaningful adaptation to future LSCO in Eastern Europe must entail the humble study of the Russian way of warfighting and a willingness to move beyond the comfort of PowerPoint-enforced success narratives. More of the same will lead to more of the same.
Otto von Bismarck’s call for accepting the harsh realities of European power architecture in 1862 remains instructive: “it is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided [..] but by iron and blood.”[87] In a multipolar world order, shaped by the ruthless realpolitik of great-power competition, reconstructing and doctrinally dividing future military assets to ensure national sovereignty and alliance obligations may be the only path to preserving peace on terms compatible with freedom. Rebooting an army that appears structurally intact may seem like heresy, yet it may ultimately save countless lives. Waiting for defeat to trigger an epiphany remains the worst of all possible options.
[1] German Wargaming Center (GWC), “Publikationen,” accessed April 6, 2026, https://www.germanwargamingcenter.eu/#publikationen; see also Carolina Drüten, “Wargame Exposes Gaps in Germany’s Response to a Hypothetical Russian Attack on Lithuania,” Welt, February 5, 2026, https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article6984a7189d88d6e920be111f/ernstfall-podcast-wargame-exposes-gaps-in-germanys-response-to-a-hypothetical-russian-attack-on-lithuania.html.
[2] Carolina Drüten, “Wargame Exposes Gaps in Germany’s Response to a Hypothetical Russian Attack on Lithuania,” Welt, February 5, 2026, https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article6984a7189d88d6e920be111f/ernstfall-podcast-wargame-exposes-gaps-in-germanys-response-to-a-hypothetical-russian-attack-on-lithuania.html; see also David A. Shlapak and Michael W. Johnson, Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics, Research Report RR-1253 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1200/RR1253/RAND_RR1253.pdf.
[3] Carolina Drüten, “Wargame Exposes Gaps in Germany’s Response to a Hypothetical Russian Attack on Lithuania,” Welt, February 5, 2026, https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article6984a7189d88d6e920be111f/ernstfall-podcast-wargame-exposes-gaps-in-germanys-response-to-a-hypothetical-russian-attack-on-lithuania.html.
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[5] Antulio J. Echevarria II, Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: Changing Our Warfighting Doctrine—Again! (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, September 1, 2002), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1814&context=monographs; see also Daniel J. Sloan and Andrew W. Hatzfeld, Minding the Gap: Assessing the Challenges Between Policy and Execution in the U.S. Interagency Process, JILC Joint Staff College Paper no. 481 (October 2024), https://jilc.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/481-Minding-the-Gap.pdf.
[6] A metaphor drawn from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), in which the Death Star’s thermal exhaust port represents a limited but decisive structural vulnerability whose exploitation bypasses overall strength and renders the entire system strategically untenable. Following academic definitions of the centre of gravity as a focal point upon which all power depends, the Death Star can be interpreted as a strategic centre of gravity: a concentration of coercive force whose destruction precipitates systemic collapse.
[7] Antulio J. Echevarria II, Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: Changing Our Warfighting Doctrine—Again! (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, September 1, 2002), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1814&context=monographs.
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