Scope
The Building Resilience in a New Age of War (NAW) Programme is a three-year, multidisciplinary initiative supporting democracies amid escalating drone-enabled warfare and hybrid conflict. Ukraine is both a core partner and a hub for operational learning and knowledge exchange. Leveraging LSE’s global expertise, direct Ukrainian partnerships, and practitioner engagement, the programme delivers real-world solutions for democratic resilience against accelerating authoritarian threats and technological disruption.
Rationale
Despite rapid changes on battlefields, research and policy formulation have struggled to keep pace with the underlying economic and governance systems that sustain them. Policy solutions reappraising security requirements are urgently needed. This is necessary not only for frontline democracies like Ukraine, but also to prevent similar threats from overwhelming other states.
The NAW Programme addresses this by examining how democracies translate battlefield innovations into lasting structural preparedness, a capability that has become critical alongside the need for strengthening defences against new threats. By analysing and sharing Ukraine’s experiences, the programme works both to bolster Ukraine's own efforts and to inform policy solutions on drone-enabled warfare and hybrid threats elsewhere.
Approach & Delivery
Actively demand-driven and applied, the NAW Programme strengthens collective and national resilience by directly informing active policy debates and critical decisions. The programme prioritizes direct policy support – facilitating policy discussions through expert briefings, roundtables, and executive trainings, all underpinned by an applied research agenda and commissioned policy analyses by sectoral experts
The NAW Programme is delivered through a multidisciplinary team structured between London and Kyiv to bridge innovative research with real-world policy solutions. Its core strength is articulating Ukraine’s wartime experiences and policy models. Towards supporting multisectoral policy design, the programmatic focus, both in terms of policy support activities and related research, emphasizes the wider governance and economic systems needed for building resilience in a new age of war.
Policy Tracks
Two interlinked Policy Tracks are utilized. The first focuses on Frontline Learningby understanding and articulating the experiences of Ukraine and particularly its networked drone ecosystem. The second concentrates on Defending Against Hybrid Threats byusing illustrative case studies from frontline democracies in Europe and Asia to synthesize global developments essential to policy discourses on national resilience, including the international political economy of new ways of war.
Together, these Policy Tracks address critical policy considerations for helping countries continuously prepare, respond, and adapt. Programming focuses on multi-sectoral organization, technological innovation, societal engagement, wartime resourcing, adaptive governance, and decentralized industrial development.
Impact
The NAW Programme accelerates the real-time transfer of frontline Ukrainian insights to NATO and partner states, providing actionable policy support for institutions and decision-makers facing new threats. Sustained engagement with senior practitioners and field experts ensures recommendations are strategic, grounded, and directly relevant. Every activity promotes adaptive, scalable resilience – converting field learning into tangible benefits for democratic institutions, policymakers, defence planners, civil society, and industry.