The Defense Intelligence Agency has revealed an analytical framework for assessing a foreign military’s “will to fight,” an intangible factor that figured in major forecasting errors before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The framework is intended to help intelligence analysts evaluate how political leaders, institutions and troops may respond when conflict begins, rather than relying only on visible measures such as weapons inventories or force readiness. Breaking Defense reported that the document was last updated in September 2024 and is designed to support intelligence community analysis.
The DIA describes will to fight as one of the most difficult parts of military capability analysis because it is “fundamentally intangible.” Most relevant factors are neither quantitative nor easily observed, according to the framework. That creates a different analytical problem from counting tanks, examining aircraft condition or measuring defense spending. The framework instead directs analysts to judge political, institutional and human factors across multiple levels of a military and the state supporting it.
Its categories extend from the authority and integrity of national leadership to the esprit de corps of individual soldiers. Analysts are also instructed to examine the stakes of a conflict, including whether victory or defeat represents an existential condition for a state, regime or organization. Perceived support from allies is another factor. The framework treats these elements as changeable rather than fixed characteristics of a country or armed force.
The agency’s release comes against the backdrop of two sharply different wartime outcomes. Afghan forces collapsed rapidly as the Taliban advanced in 2021, surrendering strategic areas without a fight. Then-President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan as the Taliban approached Kabul on Aug. 15, and the U.S. withdrawal was completed on Aug. 30, 2021. A DIA spokesperson said the agency was releasing the framework in the context of the fifth anniversary of that withdrawal.
The opposite error occurred after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Kyiv was expected to fall within days, but Ukrainian forces pushed back the larger Russian army and continued fighting in the country’s east. In November 2024, then-DIA Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse said the agency had miscalculated several factors, highlighting the extent to which Ukrainians would fight to defend their land. He said Ukrainian forces demonstrated a will to fight “far beyond anything any of us had estimated,” according to Breaking Defense.
The framework’s approach is broader than a single measure of battlefield morale. It asks analysts to consider leadership, institutions, individual soldiers, the perceived support of allies and the stakes attached to the conflict. Those factors may reinforce one another, or change as the conflict develops. A government’s authority may weaken, outside support may shift, or the perceived consequences of defeat may become more severe or less immediate.
The document warns that will to fight can change quickly and repeatedly during a conflict. A change in an assessment does not necessarily mean that an earlier baseline judgment was wrong, it says. Analysts should instead seek to establish a connection between events or criteria and the changes they produce in a combatant’s will to fight.
Kruse said in 2024 that the DIA had used the then-new methodology to assess China, which the agency identifies as the United States’ top strategic priority. The DIA declined to identify other militaries it had assessed or disclose the conclusions. The framework is not intended to replace conventional military analysis. It places will to fight among several intangible factors within a broader assessment that includes training, active- and reserve-force demographics, defense budgets and military doctrine.
The agency says the method can improve intelligence collection by identifying which factors matter most at particular organizational levels and points in a conflict. That gives analysts a way to focus collection on conditions that may affect military behavior over time. The public release offers an unclassified account of how the DIA is trying to make a difficult judgment more systematic, while keeping it as one element of a wider assessment of military capability.