Many positive emotions have been stirred in the media space by reports about revising personnel approaches in the General Staff. Let’s try to figure out if there is reason for joy.
The Commander-in-Chief is responsible not just for ensuring that the right people work in the headquarters or that the organizational structure fits a certain model. His task is to ensure that this system yields results on the battlefield.
I believe the approach that makes combat experience virtually a universal criterion for an officer’s professional suitability in the General Staff is mistaken. Combat experience is undeniably an advantage for many positions, allowing better understanding of front-line realities, unit limitations, personnel psychology, and the consequences of staff decisions. However, combat experience alone does not make a person a competent strategist, planner, analyst, or resource supply specialist.
The General Staff performs a wide range of functions. This includes strategic planning for the use of the Armed Forces, state defense planning, mobilization work, organizing troop training, capacity development, coordination, standardization, analysis, and forecasting the nature of future military actions.
For some of these tasks, direct combat experience is not a mandatory condition for professional suitability. Instead, specialized education, experience in operational planning, knowledge of military logistics, analytical skills, understanding of defense planning, or experience managing complex systems might be critically important. Mastery of several foreign languages, in the end.
For example, a specialist who has worked for many years on planning mobilization deployment, organizing logistics, developing management systems, or ensuring cybersecurity, might be much more useful in a respective staff position than an officer with extensive combat experience but lacking necessary specialization.
There is also another problem – institutional memory.
The General Staff should not start from scratch every time leadership changes. Its effectiveness depends on preserving professional knowledge, previous operations experience, understanding procedures, continuity of planning, and the ability to learn from mistakes, identifying and avoiding predecessors’ errors.
If a personnel review in the GS turns into a mass removal of officers lacking direct combat experience but possessing necessary competencies, it could lead to the destruction of institutional memory. Along with people, the system risks losing established planning mechanisms, professional expertise, and decision-making continuity. This is particularly dangerous during a major war, when there is practically no time to restore such competencies.
Therefore, I would separate two issues: whether the General Staff needs to be updated and whether combat experience should be the universal criterion for personnel selection. The answer to the first is yes. To the second, no.
Personnel decisions should be made based on professional competence, suitability for a specific position, effectiveness, the ability to work in a team, and understanding modern warfare.
The General Staff should not be a club for combat veterans, but a professional military management body, where combat experience is combined with strategic thinking, specialized knowledge, and institutional memory.
If the main argument for personnel review becomes only the slogan about the necessity of combat experience, it creates the risk of a populist approach to a complex management problem.
Regarding the restoration of clear responsibility distribution between the General Staff and the Joint Forces Command, it fully aligns with the logic of professional military management and approaches applied in NATO.
The fundamental issue is not that the General Staff is involved in war management. By definition, it must ensure the strategic planning of the Armed Forces’ use.
The problem arises when a strategic management body excessively concentrates operational functions, effectively taking over the management of combat operations on different front lines.
With this model, the General Staff risks simultaneously being responsible for strategic planning, army development, reserve formation, mobilization, interaction with other components of the defense forces, and current management of combat operations. As a result, strategic tasks compete for the leadership’s attention with current operational issues.
Meanwhile, the Joint Forces Command should focus on the operational management of troop groups, coordinating actions at the front, and accomplishing assigned tasks. This distribution clarifies responsibility: who plans, who organizes the use of the troops, who manages operations, who provides resources, and who evaluates results.
However, it’s important not to oversimplify the concept of NATO standards. In different Alliance countries, command structures differ, and the specific distribution of powers depends on national legislation and operational tasks. It is not about mechanically copying someone else’s organizational scheme, but applying the basic principle – unity of command, clear separation of responsibilities, and matching authority to assigned tasks.
If General Drapatyy is indeed restoring such a model, it’s the right direction. But its effectiveness will depend on whether JFC has sufficient authority, a well-trained staff, necessary management tools, and clearly regulated relations with the General Staff.
System management transformations and redistribution of functions alone are not enough.
Victor Kevlyuk, expert at the Center for Defense Strategies. Reserve colonel with 35 years of military service, head of the civil-military cooperation center of the JFO AFU (2018-2020), head of organizational and mobilization management of the Western Command staff (2014-2018).
Pictured: Minister of Defense of Ukraine Yevheniy Khmara (center) and Commander-in-Chief of the AFU Mykhailo Drapaty (left). Photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
