Welcome to the Autumn 2026 issue of Parameters, which includes an In Focus special commentary, three forums (Artificial Intelligence, Russia-Ukraine War, and Defense Management), and the Strategic Competition Corner.
My In Focus special commentary, “From Reliability to Fit: Trust, Adaptation, and Distributed Cognition in AI-Enabled Mission Command,” argues that military artificial intelligence (AI) integration must pivot from model reliability to a “cognitive fit” within human-machine teams to ensure decision advantage under uncertainty. The analysis offers policy and military practitioners a crucial blueprint for designing command structures that preserve human judgment and mitigate risk.
The first forum, Artificial Intelligence, features two articles. In the first, “Can AI Pass the US Army War College?,” Kevin M. Boyce, John A. Nagl, and Kristan J. Wheaton analyze a 2026 project where three faculty panels tested four leading commercial AI systems (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok) to see whether they could pass the institution’s capstone, which measures senior officers’ strategic thinking abilities. The findings challenge how the Department of War assesses commercial AI for strategic applications and point toward domain-specific, dialogue-based benchmarking as a more rigorous standard. The second article, “Constraint Breeds Lethality: Three Models of Military AI Adoption,” by Branko Ruzic, argues that the United States faces an institutional, not technological, adaptation gap in military AI. Using Russian ZALA Lancet loitering munition strike data, Chinese-language doctrine on dissipative warfare, and US and NATO acquisition documentation, Ruzic’s analysis offers acquisition executives and combatant commanders five reforms achievable within existing authorities.
The second forum, Russia-Ukraine War, contains two articles. In the first, “Russia’s Attritional Theory of Victory in Ukraine,” Tewfik Hamel argues that the Russia-Ukraine War has evolved from a failed decapitation attempt into a coercive strategy of attrition designed to exhaust Ukraine, fracture Western cohesion, and force political recognition of Russia’s claims to status and strategic depth. Drawing on Russian strategic documents, official statements, elite Russian commentary, and Western military assessments, Hamel offers practitioners a framework for denying Russia the political fruits of endurance. The second article, “Innovation and Adaptation: Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War, 2024,” by Stephan Bolton and John A. Nagl, contends that the most important lessons for US forces from this year of the war are the impact and promise of emerging, multiuse technology on war-fighting functions and domains, noting that each year of the war has further reinforced principles of mission command, either by their observance or omission.
The third forum, Defense Management, includes three articles. In “Maximize Your Returns: The Critical Need for Red-Team Capabilities at All Echelons of Command,” Lex Oren Jr. argues that the US Army’s underuse of red teaming at echelons below flag-officer levels hinders effective decision making and operational adaptability. His findings suggest that embedding professionally trained red-team members at lower echelons enhances critical thinking, identifies potential vulnerabilities, and improves overall mission success. The second article, “Transforming the US Army Reserve for Protracted War,” by Joshua Yarbrough, posits that the US Army Reserve must transition from an operational to an adaptive reserve to meet the demands of protracted, high-intensity warfare. Blending strategic analysis with policy recommendations, Yarbrough offers practitioners actionable reforms relevant to the Army Transformation Initiative and future Joint Force readiness in large-scale combat operations. In the forum’s final article, “Intellectual Interoperability: Lessons from Afghanistan for Security Cooperation,” Sae Schatz and Scott C. Buchanan argue that intellectual interoperability—the cognitive and conceptual alignment necessary for multinational partners to coordinate decision making effectively—is a critical, yet undervalued, dimension of security cooperation. While considerable scholarship explores technical and procedural interoperability, this article examines its human dimensions through an evidence-based analysis of gaps observed in Afghanistan (2001–21).
The Strategic Competition Corner by Antulio J. Echevarria II closes out the issue. In “Getting There First: Strategic Competition Requires a Proactive Mindset,” Echevarria analyzes a recent war game that focused on Africa and the strategic competition over critical minerals. He argues that US military and policy practitioners need to learn to leverage crises—not just manage them—to gain the advantage over America’s competitors and strategic rivals. ~CAP