Military evolution: broadening the discussion beyond innovation and adaptation: an example based on the IDF development

Military force design is a dynamic process that includes complex relations among innovation, adaptation, conservatism, enlargement, and shrinkage, and other forms of change or stability arising from the ongoing interaction among the military, its environment, and, primarily, its enemies. Changes in the development of the IDF between 1948 and 2026 are illustrated for the first time through an evolutionary phylogenetic tree and analysed using nine evolutionary theory themes, including changes in the rates of speciation and extinction over time, pre-adaptation, over-speciation, co-evolution, and evolutionary/adaptive lag. The IDF case study demonstrates how adopting evolutionary thinking could improve force-planning processes and military organisations' ability to adapt to changing realities when their adversaries try to enforce “selection processes,” new military “ecological niches” emerge, new technologies create new evolutionary branches, and so forth.