Mass Insanity: Latest Trend in Army Doctrine

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Surferbettle,

Heh...the military is all about controlling and minimizing variables in the pursuit of defined objectives while the World has always and ever been about 'complexity'.

Read something recently in an unclassified SOCOM publication related to your comment that prompted an aha momement, since it brought a lot of thoughts together coherently (something I can rarely do without help).

Apparently it was extracted from Francois Jullien's book A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking:http://www.amazon.com/Treatise-Effic...9687314&sr=1-4 . He writes a truly skilled strategist makes a careful study of a complex situation to ascertain the natural inclination of the system (that will make slapout happy), then uses this knowledge to put himself in a position of strength. They use a river analogy to describe: Identify how the river naturally surges and moves and then use these powerful forces. Once others seek to act further downstream, the flow of the situation and power of the river becomes irresistible.

The Chinese supposedly seek to transform the situation and not act to reach goals, as western thinking does. We definitely try to achieve goals/effects, and spend a lot time trying to measure if we're succeeding, when in reality the trend is the trend (or the river is the river) and we're only fooling ourselves with our efforts to "force" change. Chinese logic states to continue any effect DO NOT link it to force, force is temporary in nature, as compared to the natural tendency of the situation. The more one merges with the natural proclivity of the situation, the more effective one is.

No truer words were ever written, and we have demonstrated that our attempts to force change have almost always failed. There are limits to military power (as most of us know, unfortunately our politicians don't get it). We can and should use force to kill terrorists that threaten the homeland, if removing Saddam was really in our interest, then using force to do so was appropriate; however, using force to transform the Iraqi, Afghan, and Vietnamese societies was and is a futile effort, we were rowing against the tide.

This gets to Bob's point about not using control as a strategy (I think); however, population control for temporary periods of time can be an effective tactical tool to achieve limited objectives. The key to clear, hold, build being successful is enabling the trend, if we're pushing against the trend we'll only clear and hold as long as we apply force, as soon as we stop, the trend will assume its course.

Funny how people with Phds, Graduate degrees, etc. can't grasp this. Higher education is effective for those that can liberate their thinking from the assumptions others have proposed and can think independently, for others it is a piece of paper that checks the block.

[Surferbeetle]

He writes a truly skilled strategist makes a careful study of a complex situation to ascertain the natural inclination of the system (that will make slapout happy), then uses this knowledge to put himself in a position of strength. They use a river analogy to describe: Identify how the river naturally surges and moves and then use these powerful forces. Once others seek to act further downstream, the flow of the situation and power of the river becomes irresistible.

Bill,

Appreciate your well thought out comment, and the river analogy.

So if we were to accept that the Army is a channelized river, and that much time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears were spent to make it so...what can we do to help our beloved river as we watch it silt up, become increasingly saline, experience decreased dissolved oxygen content, and experience volume reductions?

How to get it back to running wild and true?

Dismantling the myriad intellectual dams which choke it, might be a place to start. A damning/hoarding of ideas has obvious security benefits however it obviously leads to a intellectual stagnation cost. So far we have been able to a maintain a balance that allows for a hegemony that's in our nation's favor, but it's a common theme among many in the field - dissatisfaction with the status quo.

How about an American solution? IMHO Harvard Business Review is worth regular review. Business Model Innovation was addressed in the January - February 2011 edition and along the lines of dismantling intellectual dams the following articles were quite interesting:

• When your Business Model is in Trouble, by Rita Gunther McGrath

• Reinvent Your Business Before It's Too Late by Paul Nunes and Tim Breene

• How to Design a Winning Business Model by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan E. Ricart

• New Business Models in Emerging Markets by Matthew J. Eyring, Mark W. Johnson, and Hari Nair

• The CEO's Role in Business Model Reinvention by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble

These particular articles are built upon the article, in the same issue, How to Fix Capitalism (Creating Shared Value) by Michael Porter & Mark Kramer. It's my sense that Davos, Washington DC and other concentrations of power are still discussing it....but that one has to go elsewhere to find people who are strong enough/concerned enough to try and implement the concept

If this looks like too much reading, underlining, highlighting, note taking, reflecting, and discussing with friends and peers how about a concept we learned all about way back in high school...one that the whole world uses to advance knowledge?

Peer Review by wikipedia

Professional peer review focuses on the performance of professionals, with a view to improving quality, upholding standards, or providing certification. Professional peer review activity is widespread in the field of health care, where it is best termed Clinical peer review.[6] Further, since peer review activity is commonly segmented by clinical discipline, there is also physician peer review, nursing peer review, dentistry peer review,[7] etc. Many other professional fields have some level of peer review process: accounting,[8] law,[9][10] engineering (e.g., software peer review, technical peer review), aviation, and even forest fire management.[11] In academia, peer review is common in decisions related to faculty advancement and tenure. Peer review is used in education to achieve certain learning objectives, particularly as a tool to reach higher order processes in the affective and cognitive domains as defined by Bloom’s Taxonomy. This may take a variety of forms, including closely mimicking the scholarly peer review processes used in science and medicine.[12]

It has been suggested that traditional anonymous peer review lacks accountability, can lead to abuse by reviewers, and may be biased and inconsistent,[39] alongside other flaws.[40][41] In response to these criticisms, other systems of peer review with various degrees of "openness" have been suggested.

Starting in the 1990s, several scientific journals (including the high impact journal Nature in 2006) started experiments with hybrid peer review processes, often allowing open peer reviews in parallel to the traditional model. The initial evidence of the effect of open peer review upon the quality of reviews, the tone and the time spent on reviewing was mixed, although it does seem that under open peer review, more of those who are invited to review decline to do so.[42][43]

Throughout the 2000s first academic journals based solely on the concept of open peer review were launched (see e.g. Philica). An extension of peer review beyond the date of publication is Open Peer Commentary, whereby expert commentaries are solicited on published articles, and the authors are encouraged to respond.

[slapout9]

(that will make slapout happy)

Systems rule .....BUT Systems Engineering can get you into a lot of trouble when you try to apply Engineering against Biology.

[Surferbeetle]

Slap,

On the lighter side of the fusion of biology and engineering...Cyborgs If they actually pull that one off there will be trouble:

Pentagon’s Project ‘Avatar’: Same as the Movie, but With Robots Instead of Aliens, By Katie Drummond Email Author February 16, 2012 | 4:51 pm, Danger Room

In the agency’s $2.8 billion budget for 2013, unveiled on Monday, they’ve allotted $7 million for a project titled “Avatar.” The project’s ultimate goal, not surprisingly, sounds a lot like the plot of the same-named (but much more expensive) flick.

According the agency, “the Avatar program will develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate.”

Apollo 11 Tech - Kalman Filtering, systems control via prediction, observation, and correction. Still high tech for '80's era hedge funds, now run on home computers.

[Bill Moore]

Systems rule .....BUT Systems Engineering can get you into a lot of trouble when you try to apply Engineering against Biology.

Mankind has always done that, remember the 6 Million Dollar Man

That is closer to reality everyday, and now we're able to map genes and even execute genetic engineering. Nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will take into a brave new world that could in fact dominate biological systems. We missed it, but our grand kids may be turn out to be super warriors (cyborg types), or they may all get killed do to the development a superinfection that is created in a lab in someone' garage.

Tying it back to the thread, there is a serious danger of missing the boat when you tie your future doctrine and force structure based on the last 10 years of warfare.

[Bob's World]

In the SecDef's most recent strategic guidance there is a section on large scale coin operations that directs us to capture the lessons learned from the past 10 years from these operations (as in, don't just flush the experience, write it down so we don't do this process again); but then in italics makes it very clear that we will not resource the force for these types of operations as we move forward.

I think the Army is working hard to leverage that statement on lessons learned to validate force structure into the coming cuts. I also think they are reading the strategy in a light most favorable to them (as are SOCOM and all the Services), but are picking the wrong missions and the wrong "lessons" to hang their hopes upon. God knows there are few men who have spent more time dedicated to waging the current fight than the current Army Chief. He's earned his bias. But we still need to get to the force we need with the focus we need; and in most cases that is not the force we want with the focus we want.

[Fuchs]

But we still need to get to the force we need (...)

"Foreign policy" recently had an article about the perceived #1 threat to the United States; Iran with 32% in the poll.
That basically means there's no real-world threat at all.

Wrong continent, small 1970's coastal navy, worn-out 1970's air force, an army that's technologically largely stuck in the 1960's, much smaller economy and population, little technology base, no nuclear weapons and no nuclear weapons program (according to Mr. Panetta!), no missiles that reach even halfway tot eh United States, no history of attacking other countries for centuries, no history of attacking other countries for even more histories if you discard a case where a foreign ruler did it.

The force you need is the National Guard...you'll get way more than you need, no matter how the doctrine and budget discussions in Washington end.