The Opportunity of Failure

[Rob Thornton]

I think the last QDR holds the key to both what our military organizational structure should be, and how our acquisition strategy should be driven. I love good tech, but if you don't have good people and enough of them, you will come up short. Since we know good people cost money (recruiting, training, retention, sustaining, education, etc.), it means we will not be able to buy all the tech, in all of the quantities on an existing budget that relies on additional appropriations to get us over bumps in the road.

As such, we'd probably better be realistic and decide to either adjust our appetite, our strategy or our budget. In my opinion that either means holding industry to some tighter standards about fiscal responsibility with some stiff penalties and the occasional disappointment; increasing taxes to pay for it; adjusting our strategy in terms of application of military force with a greater reliance on "soft power"; or some combination of all of the above, plus some others I know I missed. Each have their problems and concerns, each are affected by politics.

While the public is familiar with Transformation as synonymous with doing more with less, there are some very bright folks in the military, or recently retired who understand that Transformation was really about people. Hardware was really limited to Evolution. The potential for "Revolution" could only occur in a military culture entrenched in the conventional application of kinetic lethals. Our over-reliance on technology as a solution led to us always framing the problem in the context of attrition. Words worth retaining from the Transformation wave include: Agility, Adaptive, Innovative, and a few others that describe traits in people which will enhance mission accomplishment.

If you take our recent lessons on the friction of COIN, and apply it to the projections of the QDR you might come to the conclusion that in order to successfully meet this strategy you will need a large pool of talented people with good equipment that allows them to overcome diversity and odds that are generally not in their favor.

Regards, Rob