I'm not sure the military bureaucracy will solve the old Peter principle problem. It's not so easy to detect duds without giving them a chance to fail.


How about instead taking competitive sports as an example?

The German football league system has multiple leagues. Every year the best clubs get promoted to the next leagues and the worst ones get demoted to the lesser league. Football is also the only representative of hire & fire in Germany, at least in regard to trainers. A football team plays more than 30 compulsive matches a year, often much more because of additional tournaments, friendly matches etc.

Now imagine our armies would turn into free play exercise societies in which units and formations get pitched against each other all the time. 1on1, 2on1, 2on2, 3on2, similar/dissimilar, varied terrain.

Soldiers would be away from home almost half the time, so armies would need to look at another sector on how to compensate; oil rigs or the navy, where men are away for a long time and then back home for a long time, rinse and repeat. Add in some distance learning for the free time when soldiers are with their family.

The leaders who were promoted beyond the limit of their capabilities would be identified within months, and their superiors - intent on proving themselves in the same competitive environment - would replace them with more promising alternatives (our football leagues have two transfer periods per year for players, but trainers can be replaced any time).



Then again we all know an army is a bureaucracy, and army sport #1 is everywhere to game the system, whatever system that is. I know some hilarious stories from first-hand experience...