Ken,


I'm unsure of the comment that innovation fosters the climate that produces adaption and agility. What I do know is that innovation can encompass or lead to both abilities and can also stand on its own.
I have to agree with this. What I was trying to say is that in the case of innovating CIW, an element of it is to foster agility and adaptation. Innovation in and of itself does not foster agility and adaptation. As an example, as past of the adoption of maneuver warfare as a warfighting concept, the military should have fostered mental agility and adaptiveness, but I am not aware that it did this, or at least that it did this very well (or withthe persistence throughout a persons professional career that they need to in order to sustain agility in the face of bureaucratic friction and inertia).

Do not trust Coffee...

So you are right - coffee did let me down. I will try wine next....

The desirability of adaption and agility in IW or CIW are mentioned. They are desirable traits -- I'd say necessary -- in all levels of warfare and while we may well have to soon engage in another IW effort; we may just as well not need to do so. We should be careful not to plan for the next war based on the last (we have evidence that this is not wise), we must be full spectrum.
I agree that agility and adaption are always valuable at all levels of warfare. My reading of 'Complex Irregular Warfare' - as opposed to 'irregular warfare' - is that you need to be able to do conventional and unconventional (your 'full spectrum', I suspect) pretty much simulataneously as well as sequentially (and I have to cringe using the term 'sequentially', as war and warfare is non-linear). As I am not (yet) into the wine, I expect I have not explained this well.....