From Battlespace Insight to Adaptation: NLLC26 Day One
If one message emerged clearly from the first day of the NATO Lessons Learned Conference 2026, it was this: Learning only creates advantage when it leads to action.
Day One of NLLC26 brought together military leaders, practitioners, analysts, innovators and Lessons Learned specialists to examine how NATO can turn battlespace experience, emerging technologies and Allied knowledge into faster and more effective adaptation.
The opening remarks from the Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS) for Capability Development (CAPDEV) at HQ Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT, LGEN Marcus Annibale, speaking on behalf of SACT, Admiral Pierre Vandier, and, Commander JALLC, BGEN Cristinel Colibaba, set the scene. LGEN Annibale delivered several key messages. The first looked at our ability to learn and adapt at pace as a warfighting advantage. He also spoke about the fact that, in our race for adaptation, we must accelerate adoption and that we must act quickly to turn lessons into a warfighting advantage. COM JALLC echoed the “need for speed" in terms of, not only identifying what needs to be learned, but also of taking the right action to ensure the right change is made.
The keynote address, delivered by Deputy Director Operations & Planning from the International Military Staff (IMS), BGEN Torbjorn Sahlen, who is also the IMS' Lessons Learned Champion gave the audience three focus areas. We need to widen the lens and capture lessons from a much broader range of activities; we need to implement and learn lessons in all relevant areas; and we must accelerate our learning as we no longer have the luxury of time.
The conference then kicked off in earnest with the first panel examining how battlespace experience can inform Next Generation Targeting in Multi-Domain Operations, focusing on multi-domain fires and effects, precision, integration and decision advantage. The discussion reinforced one of the central themes running through NLLC26: experience has value only if organizations can capture it, understand it and make it available quickly enough to influence the next decision. That challenge becomes even more important as the speed and complexity of military decision-making increase. Exercises are therefore becoming increasingly important as safe spaces for force to fail, because, as it was noted during the panel: failing in an exercise is cheap, and “… if we are not failing, then we are failing."
The conference then turned to one of the most significant factors shaping modern military activity: artificial intelligence. Under the heading “The AI Advantage in Military Decision Making," speakers explored how new technologies can enable NATO to decide faster, act first and generate operational advantage. But the conversation went beyond technology itself. AI does not remove the need to learn. It increases the need to understand how knowledge is generated, assessed, shared and used. For the Lessons Learned community, the opportunity is considerable: technology can help identify patterns across vast quantities of information, connect experiences that might otherwise remain isolated and bring relevant knowledge closer to the people who need it. But as the ACT AI Champion, MGEN Olivier Pernaudet, explained during his briefing, AI is just the top layer of the cake; it must be supported by the cloud, and data. Without these two foundational layers, AI cannot work. Creating the environment for AI to function is there for critical to its integration in NATO.
The afternoon brought the discussion back to one of NATO's enduring strengths — and challenges — as an Alliance: interoperability. The panel on “Interoperability and Lessons 'Under Fire'" examined how Allied capabilities move from national offers to integrated combat power, and what battlefield experience tells NATO about making interoperability work when speed and pressure are greatest. For an Alliance of 32 Nations, differences in equipment, doctrine, procedures and structures can create friction. But the Alliance also possesses something no single Nation can replicate: the collective knowledge and experience of all of its members. The challenge is ensuring that knowledge moves.
DCOM MARCOM, Vice Admiral Ludovic Poitou, representing an Allied Command Operations command, presented some of the ways MARCOM is working towards ensuring stronger interoperability across NATO, but also with Nations.
The final panel of the day brought the conference theme directly into focus covering the topic: Audacious Training and Learning as the Cohesive Learning Accelerator.
Speakers explored how experience can move from insight to adaptation, including the emerging SABRE and RIVAL concepts and lessons drawn from Ukrainian and Russian learning systems. This is where the idea of Audacious Learning becomes particularly important. The objective is not simply to make the existing Lessons Learned process faster. It is to challenge assumptions about where learning happens, who is empowered to act on it, how knowledge is shared and how quickly useful insights can be exploited.
It means recognizing that sometimes the right lesson does not need another database entry. It needs to reach the right person now.
Today proved that the NATO LL Community can be Audacious. We can challenge our assumptions, our processes, ourselves even as we face the current fast-paced global security threat environment. One thing is clear, COM JALLC noted: “victory will no longer belong to those who fight hardest, but to those who learn and adapt fastest."
Tomorrow, Nations have the opportunity to bring their unique perspectives to the discussion— looking at the practical use of AI in national Lessons Learned systems and how armed forces can build the structures, culture and processes required for learning and adaptation at scale.
