Flawed Doctrine or Flawed Strategy?

[slapout9]

This is my big beef with the Intel community from top to bottom. Gross negligent failure to evolve from a complete and total focus in identifying and learning as much as possible about who the "enemy" is; and a equally complete refusal to put their tremendous energy, skill and talent to creating a similar understanding of the environment in which these groups operate, and the causations that give rise to them in the first place and sustain them in their efforts. They are all about the symptom, and neither know, understand, nor care about the causes. It’s a disgrace, and it is putting out nation at risk.

So they drone on about who changed their name to AQ last, Who the top senior leadership is, endless drivel about ideology and radicalism; but I have yet to see them lay out the failures of governance around the world that are the causation of such groups. Or a linkage chart of 'legitimacy' laying out where activities by the U.S. have created dangerous perceptions of legitimacy over other populaces governances, and thereby placed us in the crosshairs of those same populaces as they seek change.

So, no, I don't try to predict the future, but I do try to understand more fully the here and now. That means a deep study and understanding of the past, without also adopting a blind adherence to the same.

Very profound.

[William F. Owen]

So much of what you see out there in terms of current understanding of what needs to be done is based upon what needed to be done for the last war. Almost a definition of doctrine, which is a codification of what needed to be done for the last war, applied to the next. Thus the "fighting the last war" syndrome.

With respect Bob, that's not what history shows us. History and the operational record show us that screw ups in one war mostly come from not understanding the observations from the last. The list of examples is literally endless. Things known in WW1 were not applied in WW2. WW2 knowledge was not applied in Korea, and the Falklands etc etc etc. We hardly ever "fight the last war". if we did we might get somewhere. IIRC That line comes from Liddell-Hart, so needs to be taken with a huge pinch of salt.

I, for one, believe that the principles of both state-based and populace-based conflicts, while very different, are also very enduring in nature. But the environment in which they occur, made up of the history and culture of the affected populace/state; the terrain, veg, weather; the available technologies; etc, etc shape each in a unique way.

Concur

Who will use them? Don't know. Where? Don't know. But there are trends and indicators of change.

That are consistently ignored. All the "NEW WAR" crowd constantly ignore the evidence that Warfare is not changing in the ways they say it is.

This is my big beef with the Intel community from top to bottom. Gross negligent failure to evolve from a complete and total focus in identifying and learning as much as possible about who the "enemy" is;

I concur. If you can find him, you can fix him and strike him. Works on criminals, works on irregulars, works on Tank Divisions.

So, no, I don't try to predict the future, but I do try to understand more fully the here and now. That means a deep study and understanding of the past, without also adopting a blind adherence to the same.

I don't see how you could "adhere to the past," but yes, you have to understand what is relevant an why that is. Some day, someone might want to look at all the smart folks that came up with FCS, and ask what about history did they not understand.

[Surferbeetle]

This month's Technology Review has a Cloud Computing briefing and one of the associated articles Conjuring Clouds may be of interest:

Much of the popularity of cloud computing is owed to a technology known as virtualization. A host computer runs an application known as a hypervisor; this creates one or more virtual machines, which simulate real computers so faithfully that the simulations can run any software, from operating systems to end-user applications. The software "thinks" it has access to a processor, network, and disk drive, just as if it had a real computer all to itself. The hypervisor retains ultimate control, however, and can pause, erase, or create new virtual machines at any time. Virtualization means that e-mail, Web, or file servers (or anything else) can be conjured up as soon as they're needed; when the need is gone, they can be wiped from existence, freeing the host computer to run a different virtual machine for another user. Coupled with management software and vast data centers, this technology allows cloud providers to reap massive economies of scale. And it gives cloud users access to as much computing power as they want, whenever they want it.

The dream of on-demand computing--a "utility" that can bring processing power into homes as readily as electricity or water--arose as soon as computers became capable of multitasking between different users

MBA school introduced me to some interesting textbooks and provided some valuable insights into why the Army has been so slow in upgrading our knowledge management tools in this war. As a result of these insights into the costs and associated timelines for cultural changes I try and temper my impatience with the understanding that many of the resource allocators have not been on the front line and are not of the 'internet generation' (skills based definition).

It has been a while since the festivities kicked off in 2001 however.

And so I ask myself how many municipalities, cities, US States, and nations are using standardized COTS Geographic Information Systems? For the frontline troop is it helpful to have inaccessible classified info buried somewhere on some arcane software program when the villagers he or she are working with already know where the weir dam is, where the irrigation ditches are, where the mill is, and who the ag folks are? Perhaps this knowledge could be used in having more villagers spend time on agricultural pursuits then on kinetic pursuits?

Standard Disclaimers (and more) apply but I found this to be a very interesting post nonetheless on the blog Free Range International: A Trip to Gardez and a Visit with the Marines

Wiki sites for TTP's, BCKS, and AKO are huge strides forward but we need more: wiki-style mapping (GIS/Google Earth) and information sharing break information stovepipes and get folks out gathering, sharing, discussing, and vetting knowledge among the participants. We do it in science and engineering and we gain valuable insights from the multidisciplinary interactions...we can do the same in the military.