Government Industry

Thinking About Innovation

Naval War College Review, Spring, 2001 by Williamson Murray

Briefings by service representatives at recent conferences on military innovation suggest a great deal about what is wrong with the current efforts in the U.S. Department of Defense to foster innovation. One clearly evoked a mass Stakhanovite-like [*] operation at that service's doctrine center, a program in which the entire staff, from the commander to the lowliest enlisted person, are working twelve hours a day, six days a week, to realize the service chief's vision of innovation. [1] That is unfortunate; it is inconceivable that any valuable thinking, much less progress toward substantial innovation, could be taking place under such conditions.

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It is all too easy, in fact, to form the impression that none of the services are deeply serious about transformation, that little real thinking is occurring within the labyrinthine corridors of the Pentagon or the various agencies that make up the Defense Department's nervous system. [2] There is a great deal of talk in the Washington, D.C., area about transformation, innovation, and "revolutions in military affairs," but there is unfortunately little focus on the attributes of military (and other) organizations that have actually fostered significant, successful innovation over the past century.

Instead, even the most sympathetic onlooker is likely to sense that the Pentagon lives in a sea of slogans, briefings using elaborate electronic graphics, and a self-satisfied belief that new platforms will solve the tactical and operational problems of the future. Unfortunately, slick presentations do not equate to serious military thought. Nor does the procurement of sophisticated--and therefore exceedingly expensive--weapons systems necessarily lead to a "revolution in military affairs." In fact, technology has rarely been more than an enabler of revolutions in military affairs in the past, and there is no reason to believe that things will be different in the future. [3]

From the perspective of a military historian, there is no particular cause for surprise in that state of affairs--or, at least for the coming decade, for worry. What is troubling is the set of attitudes and cultures that characterizes U.S. military services at the beginning of what appears to be an extended period of peace. These are attitudes and cultures of a sort that may make real innovation, when it counts, impossible.

Ironically, the United States has been all too successful in its efforts to eliminate the threats that arose in the twentieth century to its national security interests. Entering World War I near the end of the conflict, it helped to bring victory on the Western Front in 1918 and thereby to prevent Kaiser Wilhelm's Reich from establishing a general hegemony over Europe. Two decades later America's military and industrial might wrecked both Nazi Germany (with the help of the Soviet Union) and imperial Japan in a successful two-front war. [4] Then, over the course of a cold war of nearly sixty years (for the Cold War really began in the late 1930s), the United States outlasted its ideologically motivated communist opponents; their economic systems finally collapsed. The difficulty is that the current framework of international politics is unlikely to last until the end of the twenty-first century, and the threats to American interests are likely to grow rather than diminish. [5]

THE HISTORICAL PARAMETERS OF REVOLUTIONS IN MILITARY AFFAIRS

One of the factors that emerged in the last interwar period as a significant enabler of revolutions in military affairs was the fact that military organizations--which then had real, discernible threats against which to develop new capabilities and doctrine--invariably innovated more coherently and effectively than other entities. A case in point is the development of combined-arms tactics by the Germans. The German army spent much of the interwar period confronting threats in both the east and west represented by Polish, Czech, and French military forces. [6] Mobility and a careful refinement of the lessons of the last war eventually allowed the Germans to handle the immediate threats on their frontiers. However, the development of combined-arms warfare in a Central European setting was not sufficient for the worldwide war that was unleashed; the Germans possessed neither the logistical or intelligence resources nor the strategic grasp necessary to wage war from the North Gape to the Mediterranean and from S talingrad to the Caribbean.

Similarly, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps confronted in the 1920s and 1930s formidable problems in developing capabilities to fight a war over the distances involved in the Pacific Ocean. [7] For the Navy, the eventual result was the development of carrier aviation in a way that would significantly extend the reach of the fleet. [8] In the case of the Marines, the need to capture logistical bases to support the projection of naval and air power across the ocean led to the development of amphibious tactics and capabilities. The Navy, which required island bases to support its own advance across the Pacific, recognized the need to assist the Marines.

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Government Industry

Thinking About Innovation

Naval War College Review, Spring, 2001 by Williamson Murray

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