Faster than the Adversary: Building a Racing Mindset in Defence
A guest post by Piers Flay of Kraken Technology Group, where they are applying racing engineering principles to defence with Uncrewed Surface Vehicles
Victory belongs to those who adapt the fastest. This article explores what militaries can learn from the mindset of elite racing teams. That mindset is already visible in the rapid and improvised innovation on Ukraine’s battlefield and is increasingly taking root in parts of the defence industry, where racing-born approaches to engineering and iteration are shaping a new generation of adaptable defence systems.
There is no true substitute for war. That does not mean we wish for it, but no simulator, exercise, or carefully managed trial captures the relentless pressure to adapt, improvise and survive. In Ukraine, innovation is happening in hours, days and weeks rather than months or years, and much has been made of this change driven by necessity. It is a constant reminder that real conflict drives adaptation in a way no training environment ever can. However, there is an adjacent field where rapid innovation cycles are the norm, and where adapting equipment until the last moment is measured by the rewards it can bring while dynamically balancing the risks. That field is elite racing engineering.
The parallels are striking. In Formula One, America’s Cup sailing and endurance racing like the Dakar Rally, technology is not simply tested. It is broken, rebuilt and reimagined under constant pressure. Teams succeed or fail based on the speed at which they adapt. No design is ever perfect. No plan survives the race weekend intact. Victory belongs to those who adapt the fastest, not those who start with the best idea. Lean Startup, the commercial sector’s variant of this philosophy, formalises rapid iteration, constant feedback and learning from failure as the drivers of success. This same approach is now playing out daily on the front line.
Ukraine’s battlefield follows the same pattern. Units are constantly fielding new technologies: drones modified with 3D printed parts, electronic warfare systems built from commercial components, vehicles adapted overnight. Each week, new ideas are tested under fire. If they work, they spread. If they fail, they are abandoned without ceremony. Good enough today beats perfect tomorrow.
In motorsport, the garage never rests. Between qualifying and race day, teams reconfigure suspension settings, modify aerodynamics and tune engines. Some upgrades are ready overnight. Others evolve over successive events. The cycle of experimentation, feedback and adjustment is brutally honest. The stopwatch never lies.
On the Ukrainian battlefield, the incentive structure is even harsher. Innovation cycles are not measured in seconds, but in lives. Failure is not disappointing. It is lethal. Success depends less on hierarchical control and more on empowering frontline units to trial new ideas and adapt in real time. The procurement model that has developed allows unit level changes to equipment to meet specific challenges rather than relying on large scale procurement frameworks that many Western militaries still practise.
This cycle of innovation is extremely difficult to simulate. In military training environments, even the most advanced ones, the goal is validation. That means confirming tactics, procedures and system performance. Experimentation, when it happens, is bounded and risk managed. Feedback loops are slower. Mistakes are treated as learning points, not existential threats. Even then, training often relies on benign opposing forces that do not simulate the full range of threats faced on today’s battlefield, from counter uncrewed aerial systems to realistic electromagnetic concealment measures.
To their credit, the British Army is trying to build greater realism into the training pathway. Through relationships developed during Operation Interflex, this may continue to improve. However, will simulated opposing forces have the freedom to fight realistically within technical limits? Or will exercise restrictions return once the urgency inspired by the war in Ukraine fades?
Synthetic environments offer valuable repetition, testing and stress inoculation, but they cannot replicate the chaotic pressure of real war. Repairs are instantaneous. Costs are theoretical. The gritty and uncomfortable materiality of war, the overheating engine, the jammed weapon, the battery that fails in freezing temperatures, is extremely difficult to model. The relentless exhaustion of operating under constant threat, day after day, cannot be programmed in.
The danger is mistaking simulation for preparation. Just because we can model a scenario does not mean we can master it. Real war punishes rigidity and rewards adaptive resilience. As Ukraine demonstrates, battlefield advantage is transient, and success belongs to those who adapt faster than the adversary.
Here are some clear lessons
Attitude towards failure
In competitive engineering sports, failure is expected and rapid recovery is planned. In many military organisations, by contrast, failure in training is treated as a crisis. The lesson to learn from engineering sports is that cultivating an experimental mindset, expecting plans to break and rebuilding quickly, is more valuable than polishing perfect doctrine.
Approach to organisation
Another lesson is about organisation. Motorsport teams empower engineers at the tactical edge. Frontline feedback is prized, not suppressed. In Ukraine, we see the same ground level energy: soldiers modifying drones, coders building targeting applications, non-commissioned officers and junior officers driving tactical innovation. Militaries that centralise control or over-bureaucratise field adaptation will fall behind.
Having visited McLaren headquarters, I was struck by how their race operations centre resembles an operations centre many militaries could only dream of. Data from the vehicles reaches engineers in Woking before the pit wall in Melbourne. This level of low latency connectivity and distributed command and control is a microcosm of what is achievable.
There is another lesson here. McLaren deliberately over-sensors and over-collects data during testing and warmups, so they understand the platform in detail. But before race day, they remove many sensors to reduce weight and simplify data flows, keeping only what is essential for decision making. Once, they even ran a race keeping all sensors live, but found the extra information slowed them down. The insight: data should enable faster decisions, not overwhelm them. Militaries face the same challenge in balancing collection and action.
Constant pressure and rapid iteration
Increasingly, the sharpest innovation in defence is being driven by individuals and teams with backgrounds in extreme engineering environments. These are people accustomed to constant pressure, rapid iteration and unforgiving constraints.
General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former Commander-in-Chief and now Ambassador to the United Kingdom, captured this shift succinctly in April 2025, speaking at the UK Ukraine Defence Tech Forum:
"It is obvious that victory on the battlefield now depends entirely on the ability to outpace the enemy in technological development. It is very important that changes occur in the chain 'science (development) production application'. Innovative development will depend on the effective interconnection between them. Manufacturers must be flexible and adaptable, ready to make changes to their hardware solutions at any time."
His words reinforce the same reality observed on the battlefield and in elite competitive engineering: that speed of adaptation across every link in the chain now determines success.
What Needs to Change
These lessons are aimed at military leaders, procurement officials and industry partners responsible for ensuring their forces can outpace adversaries in the next conflict.
If speed of adaptation is now decisive, then military structures, incentives and procurement systems must reflect that reality.
First, we must treat training as the place to embed adaptive feedback loops, not just rehearse fixed doctrine. The goal is not experimentation for its own sake, but to normalise the process of frontline modification, testing and feedback. These loops must be working before war begins, not built reactively in the middle of it. This requires cultural permission, technical flexibility and operational relevance in training environments.
Second, procurement must move from centralised perfection-focused models to modular, spiral approaches. Platforms must be built for continuous evolution, not locked specifications. Interfaces that connect frontline users directly with developers, such as Ukraine’s Brave1 technology marketplace, demonstrate how faster commercial engagement can tighten the development loop without losing oversight.
Third, we should create hybrid spaces where engineers, coders, operators and commanders work together on live problems. Just as motorsport teams collaborate between races to refine performance, defence ecosystems must empower tactical units to co-develop solutions, not just escalate issues. These collaborative teams must be trusted to adapt equipment, not simply request permission to do so.
Fourth, we must raise the baseline technical fluency across the force. The proliferation of electronic warfare systems, digital interfaces and uncrewed platforms means that the average soldier’s technical skillset must expand significantly. It is not just about specialist operators. The mean level of digital competence across frontline units will need to rise. This represents a fundamental upskilling challenge across the military career pipeline, one that current training models are not yet prepared to deliver.
Fifth, we must reward adaptation as a leadership trait, not just compliance. Initiative, modification and lateral problem solving must be recognised, not penalised. Too often, innovation at the edge is praised informally but blocked formally. Commanders and instructors should be incentivised to surface novel solutions, share failures and build adaptive cultures, not just enforce process discipline. If speed of adaptation wins wars, it must also win promotions.
Finally, it is about recognising limits. Simulation has real value for repetition, testing and stress inoculation. It cannot replace the chaotic pressure of real war. It cannot replicate innovation driven by existential threat. As one Ukrainian NCO reportedly told a visiting delegation: "You learn fast here. Or you do not."
The hard truth is that war remains the ultimate disruptive environment. No synthetic exercise, no matter how advanced, can fully replicate the speed, fear, exhaustion and ingenuity that real combat demands. We should train ruthlessly, simulate realistically and innovate aggressively. However, we must also maintain humility about the gap between preparation and reality. Elite sports integrate rapid innovation cycles into their teams’ DNA. It is not a novelty. It is a necessity.
As in elite sport, the winners are not those who plan best in theory, but those who adapt fastest in practice.
It is what drew me to Kraken Technology Group, a team with racing pedigree in offshore powerboats that brings deep engineering experience honed under pressure through thousands of race-tested hours to defence challenges. Their approach applies fast iteration, proven engineering and continuous refinement to defence systems, with a focus on Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USV). It is not simply about building platforms faster: it is about creating organisations and systems that can adapt at racing speed when it matters most.
For this approach to have real effect, the wider system must evolve to accommodate teams and systems that can move fast. That is not only the responsibility of innovators at the edge. It demands leadership from senior commanders, policymakers and commercial officers who design the structures and contracts that govern adaptability. If adaptation is decisive in conflict, it must be embedded by design, not left to chance. That must change if we are to fight and win.
Piers Flay is Commercial Director at Kraken Technology Group. Prior to this, he spent ten years in military service and was a driving force in technology scouting and programme delivery UK Strategic Command’s jHub, helping bring novel technologies to frontline users and bridging operational challenges with industry solutions.
