A Fox News opinion column argues Ukraine’s recent battlefield successes illustrate the strategic advantage of rapid decision-making and decentralized innovation and calls on the United States to bolster those qualities to meet future threats.
In the column, Chuck DeVore, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and vice president at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, contends that Ukrainian forces have outpaced Russian counterparts by shortening the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act cycle — known as the OODA Loop — and by adopting flexible command arrangements that pull resources and authority outside rigid, Soviet-style chains of command.
DeVore cites an English translation of posts by a Russian war blogger known as “Atomic Cherry,” which an open-source intelligence analyst circulated and that, according to the columnist, illustrates Moscow’s problems. The blogger, DeVore wrote, laments that Russia’s air and naval forces have struggled with unmanned aerial and maritime technologies, hampered by centralized, slow-moving decision structures. By contrast, DeVore said, Ukrainian commanders have established alternative arrangements — including civilian-military hybrids and special operations-like units — that allow faster innovation and fielding of systems.
The column points to a series of drone operations as evidence. Ukrainian unmanned maritime craft have struck at elements of the Black Sea Fleet, while long-range drones have been used in strikes on facilities in Russia including fuel depots and warehouses, DeVore wrote. Those operations, he argues, demonstrate that speed of adaptation and decentralized initiative can offset numerical or material advantages.
DeVore frames the phenomenon through the OODA Loop, a decision-cycle theory developed by U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd that emphasizes getting inside an adversary’s decision cycle to create advantage. DeVore wrote that he received briefings on Boyd’s work in 1987 while working in the Pentagon and that the theory reshaped U.S. military doctrine in subsequent conflicts. He suggested the compression of sensor-to-shooter timelines by drones and artificial intelligence makes the OODA Loop more central to future combat.
The columnist also invoked cultural explanations for differing approaches to command. Drawing on arguments popularized by Malcolm Gladwell about how cultural legacies shape behavior, DeVore suggested that high-power-distance societies such as Russia and China prioritize hierarchy and central control, which can discourage junior officers from improvising. He contrasted that with Western military norms, including the U.S. all-volunteer force, which he said emphasize initiative at lower echelons.
DeVore warned, however, that Western forces can erode that agility through political micromanagement and legal constraints. He pointed to what he described as a communications revolution that enables political leaders to intervene in battlefield decisions, and called out lawyers — both military and civilian — as an impediment to fast action. The column credited former President Donald Trump’s move to reduce the size of the White House National Security Council staff as one step toward restoring decentralized authority, a claim DeVore presented as part of his prescription for restoring decision-speed advantages.
Turning to China, DeVore said the People’s Liberation Army retains centralized political oversight similar to Russia’s, but warned that Beijing has already invested heavily in drone swarms, artificial intelligence and hypersonics and could field capabilities that present unique challenges in a Taiwan scenario or against U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific. He argued that speed of decisioning and adaptation — not just platforms or munitions — will be decisive in those contests.
To preserve and strengthen what he described as an American edge, DeVore called for investment in artificial intelligence that augments human decision-making rather than replaces it, expanded exercises that emphasize rapid adaptation, and institutional changes to reduce bureaucratic and legal friction. He also urged cultural reinforcement of independent judgment among noncommissioned officers and junior officers.
Observers and analysts caution that assessments drawn from opinion columns and selective open-source translations reflect the author’s interpretation of events and that battlefield dynamics are complex. Analysts outside the column have documented instances of both Ukrainian innovation and persistent Russian adaptation efforts. Military scholars note that decentralization can bring advantages in some contexts and risks in others, and that the integration of autonomy and artificial intelligence raises legal, ethical and command-and-control questions.
Still, the debate highlighted in the column captures a broader discussion among defense planners and strategists about how to organize, train and equip forces for a future in which unmanned systems and rapid information flows compress decision cycles. As governments weigh procurement and doctrine choices, proponents of decentralization argue that cultural and institutional reforms are as important as new platforms to maintain a competitive edge.
DeVore wrote that Ukraine’s example is a proof of concept for the value of cycling faster than an adversary and urged policymakers to “double down” on policies that enable that approach to ensure the United States and its allies can remain inside an opponent’s decision loop in future conflicts.