Coping with knowledge : organizational learning in the British Army? / Segio Catignani.

Study based on interviews with serving British Army personnel including infantry as well as representatives from Army lessons learned and training organizations. Found that experiences in Afghanistan were quickly shared on ad hoc informal basis but that this was inevitably piecemeal and had numerous limitations, whereas at the organizational level the process was very slow - doctrine is "almost out of date before it is published" and far too little time is devoted for example to counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine during any of the staff courses run at the JSCS. There was no shortage of information but it was often given too high clearance levels or rewritten for higher command rather than soldiers on the ground at company level down. The high tempo of operations and six-month deployments are further complicating factors. As a result a great deal of knowledge is lost or forgotten and the Army continues to repeat mistakes. Furthermore there is a risk that the Army system will revert to planning and educating for conventional manoeuvre warfare rather than COIN.