전투의지 분석틀을 공개한 DIA

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When Computers Went To Sea | 우-러 전쟁의 교훈으로 '전투 의지'(will to fight) 분석을 개발해 중국에 적용중인 DIA - Daum 카페

우-러 전쟁의 교훈으로 '전투 의지'(will to fight) 분석을 개발해 중국에 적용중인 DIA

When Computers Went To Sea | 전투 의지를 예측하는 소프트웨어 - Daum 카페

전투 의지를 예측하는 소프트웨어

DIA가 개발한, 추상적이고, 측정하기 어려운 전투의지를 분석하는 분석틀을 공개했다고 하네요. 2024년 9월에 이미 개발이 완료돼 있었나 봅니다. 링크한 기사가 2024년 11월 기사네요. 

Will-to-fight.pdf

단독: DIA는 군대의 ‘전투 의지’를 어떻게 측정하는가

우크라이나군의 역량을 과소평가한 뒤 미 국방정보국은 정량화하기 어려운 요소를 수치화하려는 새로운 분석틀을 채택했다.

리 페란
2026년 9월 30일 오후 2시 8분

2026년 5월 24일 우크라이나 드니프로페트로우스크주 포크로우스케 정착지 인근 사격진지에서 제23기계화여단 로켓포대 소속 우크라이나 장병들이 BM-21 그라드 다연장로켓체계를 발사하고 있다. 사진: Oxana Chorna/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

워싱턴 — 미 국방정보국(DIA)은 오늘, 핵심적이지만 답하기 어려운 질문에 접근하기 위해 사용하고 있는 분석틀을 공개했다. 분쟁이 발생했을 때 외국 군대의 “전투 의지”는 어느 정도인가?

“전투 의지는 본질적으로 비가시적인 성격 때문에 군사능력 분석에서 가장 까다로운 요소 가운데 하나다.” 공개 전 Breaking Defense에 독점 제공된 이 분석틀은 이렇게 밝힌다. 군사 준비태세 분석의 많은 부분을 이루는 전차 대수나 전투기 상태와 달리, 이 분석틀은 “전투 의지와 관련된 대부분의 요소는 정량적이지 않으며, 쉽게 관찰할 수도 없다”고 설명한다.

DIA는 보도자료에서 2024년 9월에 마지막으로 갱신된 이 문서가 “정보공동체의 분석을 지원하도록 설계됐다”고 밝혔다. 동시에 이 문서는 “미국 국가안보에 대한 핵심 도전과 기능적 위협을 대중이 더 깊이 이해하도록 돕기 위해 DIA가 계속 발간하고 있는 비기밀 기초 개요 자료 시리즈의 일부”이기도 하다고 설명했다.

DIA 대변인은 이번 공개가 2021년 8월 30일 완료된 미국의 아프가니스탄 철수 5주년과 관련해 이뤄졌다고 말했다.

당시 미국 정보공동체(IC)와 백악관은 탈레반이 국가를 장악하는 과정에서 아프가니스탄군이 예상보다 훨씬 빠르게 붕괴하고, 여러 전략지역을 싸움 없이 포기하는 모습을 보며 다소 허를 찔렸다. 당시 아슈라프 가니 대통령은 8월 15일 탈레반이 카불로 진격하자 국외로 탈출했다.

2024년 11월 당시 DIA 국장이던 제프리 크루스 중장은 아프가니스탄의 경험을 2022년 2월 러시아의 침공 직후 우크라이나의 경험과 대비했다. 이 경우 정보공동체는 반대 방향으로 오류를 범했다. 키이우는 며칠 안에 함락될 것으로 예상됐지만, 실제로는 우크라이나군이 훨씬 더 큰 러시아군을 밀어냈고 양측은 이후 동부지역에서 오늘날까지 이어지는 유혈 교착상태에 들어갔다.

크루스는 DIA가 예측분석에서 몇 가지 요인을 잘못 계산했다고 말했지만, 특히 한 가지를 강조했다. 우크라이나인들이 자신들의 땅을 지키기 위해 얼마나 치열하게 싸울 것인가 하는 문제였다.

“우크라이나인들은… 우리 모두가 추정했던 수준을 훨씬 넘어서는 전투 의지를 보여줬습니다.” 크루스는 정보·국가안보연합(INSA)이 주최한 행사에서 말했다.

외국 군대의 상대적 역량을 평가하는 것이 임무인 DIA에게 이는 크루스가 반드시 바로잡고 싶어 했던 오류로 보인다. 그는 DIA가 새로운 “‘전투 의지’ 전 출처 분석기법을 도입해 ‘그것은 어떤 모습인가? 우리는 그것을 어떻게 평가할 것인가?’라는 질문을 던지고 있다”고 말했다.

그 결과가 오늘 공개된 분석틀이다. 이 체계는 DIA 분석가들에게 국가 지도부의 “권위”와 “청렴성”에서 개별 병사들 사이의 “부대정신”에 이르기까지 모든 권력 수준의 역학을 신중하게 판단하도록 권고함으로써, 정량화하기 어려운 것을 정량화하려 한다.

이 분석틀이 2022년에 이미 존재했다면, 우크라이나 대통령 볼로디미르 젤렌스키는 높은 평가를 받았을 가능성이 크다. 당시 그는 가니와 달리 크렘린군이 수도로 접근하는 상황에서도 키이우에 남기로 결정해 서방에서 찬사를 받았으며, 당시 조 바이든 미국 대통령에게 “나는 탈것이 아니라 탄약이 필요하다”고 유명하게 말하기도 했다. 동맹국의 지원에 대한 인식 역시 전투 의지 분석의 핵심 요소 가운데 하나다.

분석틀은 “분쟁의 이해관계”도 다룬다. 분석가들에게 승리나 패배가 “전투당사자에게 실존적 조건인지, 예를 들어 국가·조직·정권에 대한 실존적 위협인지” 평가하도록 요구한다.

미 국방정보국의 ‘전투 의지 분석’ 분석틀 샘플 페이지. DIA

그러나 이 문서는 어떤 질문에 대한 답이든 시간이 지나면서 달라질 수 있다고 경고한다.

“전투 의지는 각 분쟁당사자에게 있어 분쟁의 진행 과정에서 빠르게, 극적으로, 그리고 여러 차례 변할 수 있다.” 분석틀은 이렇게 설명한다. “전투당사자의 전투 의지 상태가 변했다고 해서 이전의 기준 평가가 본질적으로 잘못됐다는 뜻은 아니다. 분석가들은 전투 의지에 영향을 줄 수 있는 사건이나 기준과 상태 변화 사이의 인과관계를 규명하려 노력해야 한다.”

크루스는 2024년 DIA가 당시 새로 도입한 이 분석틀을 미국의 최우선 전략과제인 중국 평가에 사용했다고 말했다. DIA 대변인은 다른 어떤 군대가 평가 대상이었는지, 또는 어떤 결론이 도출됐는지는 밝히기를 거부했다.

문서에서 DIA는 전투 의지가 훨씬 더 복잡한 “군사능력” 분석 그림에 포함되는 여러 “비가시적 요소” 가운데 하나일 뿐이라고 지적한다. 여기에는 훈련, 현역 및 예비역 병력의 인구학적 구성, 국방예산, 군사교리 같은 요소들도 함께 고려된다.

그러나 문서는 전투 의지를 전문적으로 분석하면 “전투 스펙트럼과 시간대 전반의 어떤 하위요소에서 어떤 요인이 가장 중요한지에 대한 이해를 높이는 과정의 일부로, 정보수집을 의미 있게 이끌 수 있다”고 설명한다.

그리고 아마도 이는 DIA가 2021년 8월이나 2022년 2월처럼 다시 크게 놀라는 일을 줄이는 데 도움이 될 것이다.

EXCLUSIVE: How the DIA measures a military's 'Will to Fight' - Breaking Defense

EXCLUSIVE: How the DIA measures a military's 'Will to Fight' - Breaking Defense

EXCLUSIVE: How the DIA measures a military’s ‘Will to Fight’

After underestimating Ukraine's forces, the Defense Intelligence Agency adopted a new analytical framework to try and quantify the unquantifiable.

By Lee Ferran on September 30, 2026 2:08 pm

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Ukrainian servicemen of the rocket artillery battery of the 23rd Mechanized Brigade fire a BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket system at firing positions near the settlement of Pokrovske on May 24, 2026 in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine. (Photo by Oxana Chorna/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Defense Intelligence Agency revealed today the analytical framework it’s using to try to answer a key but difficult question: When conflict arises, what is a foreign military’s “will to fight”?

“Will to Fight is one of the most challenging elements of military capability analysis because of its fundamentally intangible nature,” states the framework, shared exclusively with Breaking Defense ahead of its publication. Unlike the specific number of tanks or the condition of fighter jets that form the basis for so much analysis of military readiness, the framework says “most elements relative to will to fight are not quantitative; nor are they easily observed.”

The DIA said in a press release that the document, last updated in September 2024, is “designed to support intelligence community analysis,” but is also “part of DIA’s ongoing series of unclassified, foundational overviews designed to help the public achieve a deeper understanding of key challenges and functional threats to U.S. national security.”

A spokesperson for the agency said DIA was releasing it now in the context of the fifth anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed on Aug. 30, 2021.

It was then that the US Intelligence Community (IC) and White House were caught somewhat flatfooted by the speed at which Afghan forces collapsed in the face of the Taliban’s takeover of the country, giving up several strategic areas without a fight. Then-President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the Taliban bore down on Kabul on Aug. 15.

In November 2024, then-head of the DIA Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse contrasted the experience of Afghanistan with that of Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s February 2022 invasion. In that case, the IC erred in the opposite direction: Kyiv had been expected to fall in days, but instead Ukrainian forces pushed the much larger Russian army back and fought them into the eastern part of the country where the two have settled into a bloody stalemate to this day.

Kruse said DIA miscalculated a few factors in their predictive analysis, but highlighted one especially: how hard Ukrainians would fight to defend their land.

“The Ukrainians … exhibited a will to fight that was far beyond anything any of us had estimated,” Kruse said at an event put on by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA).

For the DIA, whose job it is to estimate the relative might of foreign militaries, it was an error that Kruse appeared eager to correct. He said the agency was implementing the new “‘will to fight’ all-source tradecraft methodology [to ask], ‘What does that look like? How do we assess what that looks like?'”

The result is the framework released today. It attempts to quantify the unquantifiable by advising DIA analysts to carefully judge dynamics at all levels of power — from the “authority” and “integrity” of national leadership down to the “Esprit de corps” among individual soldiers.

Had it been in place in 2022, the framework likely would’ve looked kindly on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. At the time he drew praise in the West for his decision, unlike Ghani, to stay in Kyiv as the Kremlin’s forces approached the capital, including famously remarking to then-US President Joe Biden, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” (Perceived support from allies is another key factor in the Will to Fight analysis.)

The framework also deals with the “Stakes of the Conflict,” asking analysts to assess whether victory or defeat is “an existential condition for combatant[s] e.g. an existential threat to the state, organization, or regime[.]”

A sample page from the Defense Intelligence Agency’s “Analyzing Will To Fight” framework. (DIA)

But it warns the answers to any and all of the questions can change over time.

“[The] will to fight can change quickly, dramatically, and many times over the course of a conflict for each party to the conflict,” the framework says. “A change in a combatant’s will to fight status does not inherently mean that a previous baseline assessment is wrong. Analysts should seek to establish causality between events or criteria that have the ability to affect will to fight.”

Kruse said in 2024 that the DIA had used the then-new framework to assess the US’s top strategic priority, China. The DIA spokesperson declined to say what other militaries had been eval‎uated or to describe any conclusions that had been drawn.

In the document, the DIA notes that the will to fight is just one of multiple “intangibles” to be factored into a much more complicated “military capabilities” analytic picture that also takes into account factors like training, the demographics of both active and reserve duty troops, defense budgets and military doctrine.

But, it says, professional analysis of the will to fight can “enable us to meaningfully drive collection as part of enhancing our understanding of what factors matter most, at what subsets, across the combat spectrum and timeline.”

And, presumably, it’ll help keep the agency from being as surprised as it was in August 2021 or February 2022.

Topics:

• Air Force
• Army
• Defense Intelligence 

[백선호]

우리나라는 과연 얼마가 나올지...

[위종민]

내용을 보니 전투의지를 다양한 층위에서 바라보고 평가하는 방법론인 것 같긴 한데, National, Combat Will to Fight는 높지 않을 것 같은데, Adversary Military Will to Fight 때문에 전투 의지가 높아지지 않을까 싶습니다.

[김유철]

잘못되면 완전히 정책판단을 그르치게 할 방법인데....

그나저나 미국인들은.. 아니면 높으신 분들은 보고서같은 것 보다가 뭔가 수치화되지 않은 항목을 발견하면 견디지 못하는 것 아닌가하는 짓굿은 생각이 드네요. ^^

[백선호]

맥나마라가 아마 원조죠? ㅎㅎ

[ssn688]

<첩보전쟁Intelligence war>에서, 팔레비왕정을 지원한 미국이 스스로 팔레비의 프레임 속에 갇혀서 상황파악을 못했다고 비판했던 대목이 떠오르네요: 왕정이 무너진다는 건은 신문만 잘 읽어봐도 알 수 있었다!!!

[위종민]

아무리 징후가 뚜렷해도 보는 사람이 장님이면 소용이 없긴 하니 ㅋㅋㅋ

[백선호]

1978년 르몽드 기사만 읽어봐도 누구나 알 수 있었는데... ㅠ.ㅠ