Design for military operations

[Stevely]

This is human nature:This, OTOH, is history:and should allow us to over come the natural inclination...

Intuitive leaders and commanders versus metrication...

Unfortunately Ken I believe that of all societies in human history, we are the most obsessed with quantification (metrication - great word). Every last redoubt of the intuitive in the end gets overwhelmed by the statisticians, the analysts, and the systematizers. Experience rarely ever triumphs over the numbers, unfortunately.

[Ken White]

mine even more gray by wanting things I cannot have...

Still, I have faith -- some day, some way, we'll figure out how to measure talent and competence, fine tune ego and ambition and achieve military perfection.

Briefly. Then Congress will change the rules.

[William F. Owen]

CT Lab has Antoine Bousquet's comments on his book The Scientific Way of Warfare:

Quote:
Finally, I would like to briefly comment on what progressively emerged from my study as a central dynamic at the heart of both military practice and scientific theory and did eventually structure much of my thinking: the relationship between order and chaos. The human psyche, the organisation of human society, and the production of knowledge all strive for order and regularity and to keep at bay what threatens to bring disruption and meaninglessness into them. However, not only does chaos inevitably resurface with the capacity to upset the most stable and established of arrangements but it seems to be in fact a necessary condition of creativity and even order itself. Science has recurrently needed to concede to chaos and indeterminacy to permit the development of its understanding of the natural world, notably through the introduction of probabilities or non-linear dynamics. Throughout the development of the sciences I have charted, this tension between their drive for predictability and the limits they consistently encounter has been a perennial constant, even if the ways in which these tensions are navigated are never quite the same. What one might characterise as an on-going dialectic between chaos and order (I tend to privilege Edgar Morin’s notion of dialogic understood as the simultaneous competition, antagonism and complementarity of distinct logics and for which there exists no possible higher synthesis that might resolve this tension) is echoed in the forms taken by the organisation of military force. Indeed, all attempts to bring complete control and predictability prove to be inherently self-defeating while a tolerance for (and capacity to profit from) chaos and contingency seems an enduring necessity.

It is worth pointing out, that the meaning and essence of nearly every sentence above was originally said by Clausewitz in some shape or form - back when warfare was "simple" and before it become "complex."

[Ron Humphrey]

It is worth pointing out, that the meaning and essence of nearly every sentence above was originally said by Clausewitz in some shape or form - back when warfare was "simple" and before it become "complex."

One has to heavily complexify things in order to learn how to simplificate them -

Thereby being able to refer back to the greats for verification and /or validation of the aforementioned processes

[Surferbeetle]

It is worth pointing out, that the meaning and essence of nearly every sentence above was originally said by Clausewitz in some shape or form - back when warfare was "simple" and before it become "complex."

Wilf,

Clausewitz certainly has something to say, for me however his is not the only business model when it comes to warfare.

I am interested in chasing down a copy of his work to reread but this time I want to try it in German. Any suggestions?

Best,

Steve

[Old Eagle]

Don't screw w/the German. The language used is almost impossible to put in context due to evolution of the German language.

Get the Paret/Howard annotated translation, even if just from the library. It is the touchstone of Clausewitz translations. It also has great interpretive notes by two of the world's great military historians.

[Hacksaw]

Old Eagle, as usual, is correct... Paret/Howard...

In this case so is Wilf

[William F. Owen]

Old Eagle, as usual, is correct... Paret/Howard...

I'd also recommend H.R. Smiths work on Clausewitz. It is excellent.

[Stevely]

Don't screw w/the German. The language used is almost impossible to put in context due to evolution of the German language.

Bonus points if you read an old German copy printed in Fraktur.

[William F. Owen]

Don't screw w/the German. The language used is almost impossible to put in context due to evolution of the German language.

Verily, I say that these words, speak the most solemn and considered truth, though they be little known and thus most surprising.