I've read plenty such monographs and they all appear to be less about the content than about the grey matter exercise for the author.
It's striking how rarely such papers include any gems, any fascinating original thought. They do contain lengthy military history chapters describing not so much the particularly interesting events and ideas, but rather a chronological development. This is about the least original you can do in regard to independent writing on such subjects.
The few original monographs are regularly outlandish, such as some air mechanization paper years ago, for example.
The most embarrassing monograph I've ever seen in such archives was about the German army's operational fashion of '96: It was an English summary of a German conference document made by a German visiting officer. I possess the German original, and can attest he did not add the slightest bit of original thought or critical thought to his paper.
Compare for example the 2013 SAMS paper on cavalry 'Mechanized cavalry groups: lessons for the future of reconnaissance and surveillance':http://www.ausa.org/SiteCollectionDo...ers/LWP_53.pdf with the excellent 'Trading the Saber for Stealth:Can Surveillance Technology Replace Traditional Aggressive Reconnaissance?':http://www.ausa.org/SiteCollectionDo...ers/LWP_53.pdf
Most papers which were written because officers were required to write them (instead of intrinsically driven to it) are useless to other people than the authors.
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