NATO Training in Ukraine Is Failing Modern War

As a longtime advocate for adaptive, human-centered military reform, I watched a recent frontline video about NATO training in Ukraine with a mix of validation and concern. When Ukrainian soldiers describe NATO courses as “useless and outdated,” they are not just critiquing a syllabus; they are signalling a deeper problem in how the alliance prepares forces for drone-saturated, data-driven, high-intensity war.

These are not armchair commentators. They are men and women who have faced Russian drones, dense artillery fires, electronic warfare, and hybrid threats along a 21st-century frontline. What they see, and say bluntly, is that too much NATO training in Ukraine still feels like a scripted exercise for a sanitized version of the last war, not a living laboratory for the one they are actually fighting.

Key Facts

Focus: Why frontline Ukrainians view NATO training as outdated, and how mission command and outcomes-based learning can close the gap.

Core argument: NATO doctrine talks about mission command, but training delivery often remains second-generation and checklist-driven.

Case study: A 2023–2024 initiative with a Ukrainian leadership center to embed Outcomes-Based Learning (OBL) and genuine mission command.

Strategic risk: If training culture does not evolve, NATO may continue exporting processes instead of combat-effective adaptability.

Frontline feedback: when training feels like the wrong war

In the video that sparked this reflection, Ukrainian soldiers describe training cycles dominated by classroom briefs, rigid checklists, and micromanaged drills. They describe scripted scenarios in which planners predetermine the outcomes, and instructors focus on whether trainees follow a sequence rather than whether they solve a problem.

One soldier quips that he feels as if he is “training for World War I in 2024.” The line sounds theatrical, but it captures a real sentiment: the gap between the lived chaos of the battlefield and the highly controlled world of NATO-approved courses. Under constant surveillance from uncrewed systems, fighting against an enemy that iterates tactics week by week, these troops need training that rewards improvisation, initiative, and critical thinking. Instead, too many of them experience courses as a compliance exercise.

The problem is not that all NATO training in Ukraine is useless. The alliance has provided essential skills and capabilities across logistics, combined arms maneuver, artillery, and air defence. The issue is that the underlying training culture often remains linear and attrition-based – better suited to tidy manoeuvre corridors than to the fragmented, sensor-heavy battlefields now stretching from the Black Sea to the Donbas.

Second-generation culture vs. mission command reality

On paper, NATO doctrine is clear. The alliance enshrines mission command – decentralized execution based on a clear commander’s intent – as its preferred command philosophy. Allied Joint Doctrine for Land Operations (AJP-3.2) and related publications emphasise agility, initiative and the manoeuvrist approach to operations.

In practice, however, many exercises and courses still default to second-generation habits: process over outcomes, control over trust, and detailed scripting over the deliberate use of uncertainty. Training events are designed to be “manageable” from higher headquarters. Orders become increasingly prescriptive as they move down the chain. Evaluation focuses on adherence to the plan rather than on how well leaders adapt when the plan breaks.

Recent academic work on mission command in NATO has highlighted the same tension: doctrine promotes initiative, but organisational culture frequently rewards risk-aversion and compliance instead. That contradiction is felt more sharply than anywhere in live war. When Ukrainian units that must improvise to survive encounter a training system that penalises deviation from the script, frustration is inevitable.

Ukraine’s adaptive innovation on a live battlefield

Ukraine’s armed forces have been forced into radical adaptation. Under intense pressure, they have integrated commercial drones at scale, built improvised sensor and strike networks, and experimented with new small-unit tactics tailored to pervasive surveillance and long-range fires.

Many of these innovations have emerged from the bottom up. Young officers and NCOs test new configurations of teams, platforms and software. Units share lessons laterally, often faster than any formal system can capture them. The battlefield itself has become a harsh but effective teacher in what real mission command looks like when communications are fragile and time is scarce.

The best training for this environment does not tell people exactly what to do. It creates conditions where leaders can try, fail, reflect and adapt – all while anchored in a clear understanding of intent and priorities. That is the opposite of a rigid, checklist-driven approach. Yet much NATO training in Ukraine still gravitates toward highly controlled validation events that leave little room for experimentation.

Outcomes-Based Learning: training for judgment, not checklists

My own work on Outcomes-Based Learning (OBL) grew out of similar tensions in previous wars, including more than five years in Afghanistan. The core idea behind OBL is straightforward: define the outcomes you actually need in the real world – such as sound tactical judgment under pressure – and design learning around those outcomes rather than around the comfort of instructors or the elegance of a schedule.

In 2023, a leading Ukrainian leadership-development institution reached out after studying OBL and my writing on mission command. Their question was simple: how do we retool our training so that officers and NCOs are evaluated on the quality of their decisions, not the perfection of their paperwork?

We moved quickly. I shared a full library of mission command material, OBL curricula tailored for high-intensity conflict, and authorised Ukrainian translations of books such as Adapting Mission Command and Raising the Bar. Their staff responded with detailed questions about designing exercises where the “right answer” is not scripted – where leaders must reason through incomplete information and make trade-offs in time, risk and resources.

From concept to implementation – and institutional friction

Because my family understandably opposed another trip into an active war zone after Afghanistan, we explored hosting intensive workshops in a NATO country. Ukrainian trainers could travel there, work through hands-on scenarios and then take OBL and mission command methodologies back home.

That is where institutional friction set in. No one issued an explicit veto. Instead, the project ran into a familiar pattern of delayed approvals, uncertain funding streams and quiet scepticism from some advisers who saw the approach as too unconventional. The implicit message was that a fundamentally different way of designing training – one that would expose gaps in existing courses – was more threat than opportunity.

This is not unique to NATO training in Ukraine. It is a recurring dynamic in large organisations: doctrine supports innovation, but bureaucratic incentives favour the status quo. Leaders are praised for managing risk downward and keeping programmes predictable, even when the battlefield punishes predictability.

What must change in NATO training culture?

If NATO takes Ukraine’s experience seriously, several shifts in training philosophy are non-negotiable.

First, we must redesign training around outcomes rather than scripts. Evaluation should focus on how well leaders frame problems, make decisions under uncertainty and learn from failure. The role of instructors is to create demanding scenarios and provide honest feedback, not to guide participants to a predetermined solution.

Second, mission command must move from doctrine to daily practice. That means deliberately empowering junior leaders, accepting that mistakes will occur and treating those mistakes as fuel for learning rather than as grounds for punishment. Exercises should reward initiative that serves intent, even when it deviates from the original plan.

Third, advisers and trainers need to see themselves as facilitators of local adaptation, not just as exporters of standardised packages. The most effective contribution NATO can make is not a perfect template, but an environment in which Ukrainian forces can continue to out-learn their adversary.

Finally, institutional incentives inside the alliance must change. We should recognise leaders who surface uncomfortable frontline feedback – like the Ukrainian soldiers who dismissed parts of their training as obsolete – and reward them for improving the system instead of sidelining them for rocking the boat.

Modern war will not wait for every committee and working group to be comfortable. As long as there is a gap between what mission command promises and what NATO training in Ukraine actually delivers, the alliance will fall short of its own stated ambitions. Ukraine has paid dearly to expose that gap. The burden now sits with NATO to close it.

For a related discussion on how institutional habits shape combat effectiveness and procurement decisions, see our earlier analysis of the “85 percent solution” debate in U.S. defence acquisition [1].