Afghanistan and Russia Predictions: Overestimation of Will to Fight

In a recent Senate hearing, it was highlighted that the intelligence community made grossly wrong predictions about the Afghan government's ability to hold out against the Taliban and the Russian army's invasion of Ukraine. The overestimation of the Afghan army's will to fight contributed to the flawed assessment. Intelligence assessments focused more on the capacity to fight rather than the will to fight, leading to faulty predictions. The assumption that civilians would surrender in large numbers if significant casualties occurred further skewed the analysis in both cases.