Kapanadze graduated from the Faculty of Geography and Geology, Tbilisi State University, in 1983. He then studied at Georgia's Academy of Interior and has also been trained at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, National Academy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and U.S. Army War College. A veteran of the civil wars of the early 1990s, Kapanadze commanded a Georgian peacekeeping battalion in South Ossetia in 2004 and served as the Chief of the General Staff from August 2004 to February 2005. In 2005, he briefly served as a military aide to the President of Georgia, and was then employed as a special envoy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia in Poland from 2007 to 2008. He was deputy head of the foreign intelligence service of Georgia from 2008 until October 2012, when Brigadier General Kapanadze was appointed Deputy Chief of Joint Staff of the Georgian Armed Forces. He again became Chief of General Staff, succeeding Colonel Irakli Dzneladze, on November 22, 2013. On this occasion, he was promoted to major general. His term expired on November 22, 2016, and was succeeded by Brigadier General Vladimer Chachibaia. He was appointed as Georgia's top military representative to NATO. Kapanadze is the recipient of the orders of Honor and Vakhtang Gorgasali, 3rd Rank.