U.s. Military Transformation and Experimentation Historical Perspectives, Prospects, and Prescription

Despite the mandates of a rapidly changing world, the U.S. military today is still dominated by Cold-war era weaponry, organizational hierarchies, doctrine, and planning based on the expectation of massive Soviet-style land warfare. Nevertheless, one thing is absolutely certain: a U.S. military transformation will occur. The real issues are when, how, and with what consequences. Two historical cases most dramatically represent successful responses to the WWI-WWII interwar challenge: German combined arms armored maneuver warfare (colloquially known as “Blitzkrieg”) and American aircraft carrier battle group operations. Despite their differing strategic perspectives, these two cases (widely studied—but not exclusively and directly compared) share a striking number of significant common characteristics—many of which were lacking in other militaries that failed. The critical common elements of these two institutions (the German Army and the U.S. Navy) form a blueprint or framework from which to evaluate current U.S. institutions, and ultimately a historic basis for recommendations for change. These common characteristics are: Visions/Visionary leaders (persistent tenure) Pressing national security concern Detailed, systematic study and analysis of others’ military experiments and ideas Decades to develop (recognition that it will take time) At least a modicum of outside (civilian) influence and assistance An environment or culture genuinely open to new operational concepts Extensive experimentation and wargaming without a single major system prototype Extremely realistic experimentation grounded in detailed analysis and focused on solving