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I promise you, there is very little improvisation or "jazz" in the U.S. Army and a lot of micromangement and bureaucracy. The experience is more akin to being

I promise you, there is very little improvisation or "jazz" in the U.S. Army and a lot of micromangement and bureaucracy. The experience is more akin to being in a massive company with tons of middle managers who are always looking to self-promote and cover their a. The army has many great men and women in it, despite the bs, but let's not pretend it's some "dynamic" entity. Don't believe me? Read Bob Gates' memoir, where he recounts how as SecDef he had to fight the Pentagon brass just to get MRAPs that would save lives. And he was in charge of the department!

nexuist 7y ago
Isn't this exactly the point of OP? >In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. If we had a Static Army, the Pentagon brass would have immediately yielded to SecDef and executed his orders. The fact that there had to be immense debate around the issue means that everyone is granted the right to do their thing and improvise in the meantime. You can bet troops were trying all sorts of wacky things to IED-proof their Humvees.
- burneraccount12 7y ago
  This presumes the underlings were busy doing important things, aka "improvising" solutions that benefited the whole. Wrong. Most of the time they were slow-rolling initiatives or not getting things done because they want to promote initiatives that get them promoted. For example, take the Air Force. Every year it tries to sunset more and more Warthogs, a heavy plane that supports actual troops fighting actual battles. Why? Because it's old and no one gets promoted championing Warthogs. Instead they lean into the F-35, the most expensive weapons system ever built by mankind, and a system that appears to do everything worse than its predecessors. So no, Pentagon brass dragging their feet or refusing to execute is not some amazing example of them thinking on their feet, it shows how rotten the bureaucracy has become and how static and non-agile the military can be.
darkerside 7y ago
I think the point is that, there is a bureaucracy to fight. Sometimes units can simply do what needs done, other times they'll need resources and get them, and other times then need resources and not get them. But you can bet no high ranking officer in Saddam Hussein's army was successfully "fighting the bureaucracy" to get things through.
- Balgair 7y ago
  acoup's post goes into much better detail and I'll point any readers to it. One tid-bit I did find interesting was : "Likewise, armies with weak organization, training and discipline will find chemical preparedness – which involves a lot of training on how to get those gas masks and NBC suits on fast – very difficult; actually getting all of the fidgety equipment to the right spots will also prove hard (but is second-nature to a modern system military which has nothing but fidgety equipment)." I think that acoup's point extends to most aspects of the military and to parts of civilian life as well. The complex, murky, and seemingly insane rulesets of command systems in Modern militaries is a feature, not a bug, though most people in it understandably disagree and are screaming at their screens right now. There's that old apocryphal quote that goes something like: war is chaos, which is why the Americans do so well in it, as they practice it on a daily basis. Econtalk had a great bit on chaos in potato chip sales. Brendan O'Donohoe of Frito-Lay mentions that he randomly makes people take vacations, pulls them on to other projects, jazzes things up, so that his team can better sell potato chips. I've no idea of their internal numbers back in 2011, but based on his current LI, he's done alright enough since then (maybe, I really can't judge here) https://www.econtalk.org/odonohoe-on-potato-chips-and-salty-snacks/ https://www.econtalk.org/odonohoe-on-potato-chips-and-salty-...
- burneraccount12 7y ago
  > But you can bet no high ranking officer in Saddam Hussein's army was successfully "fighting the bureaucracy" to get things through. Why do you assume that? The Baath party was quite a complex organization that had all kinds of hierarchies and subgroups. Iraq was one of the most educated societies in the Middle East before we started fighting several wars with them. Even Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, founder of ISIS, had a PhD. So there was bureaucracy and hierarchy in Saddam Hussein's army, so odd to assume there wasn't. Their biggest weakness was 1970s era tank technology but within a few years were able to morph into a guerilla force with a networked command and control structure that almost sent the US home in shame.

nexuist 7y ago

Isn't this exactly the point of OP? >In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. If we had a Static Army, the Pentagon brass would have immediately yielded to SecDef and executed his orders. The fact that there had to be immense debate around the issue means that everyone is granted the right to do their thing and improvise in the meantime. You can bet troops were trying all sorts of wacky things to IED-proof their Humvees.

burneraccount12 7y ago
This presumes the underlings were busy doing important things, aka "improvising" solutions that benefited the whole. Wrong. Most of the time they were slow-rolling initiatives or not getting things done because they want to promote initiatives that get them promoted. For example, take the Air Force. Every year it tries to sunset more and more Warthogs, a heavy plane that supports actual troops fighting actual battles. Why? Because it's old and no one gets promoted championing Warthogs. Instead they lean into the F-35, the most expensive weapons system ever built by mankind, and a system that appears to do everything worse than its predecessors. So no, Pentagon brass dragging their feet or refusing to execute is not some amazing example of them thinking on their feet, it shows how rotten the bureaucracy has become and how static and non-agile the military can be.

darkerside 7y ago

I think the point is that, there is a bureaucracy to fight. Sometimes units can simply do what needs done, other times they'll need resources and get them, and other times then need resources and not get them. But you can bet no high ranking officer in Saddam Hussein's army was successfully "fighting the bureaucracy" to get things through.

Balgair 7y ago
acoup's post goes into much better detail and I'll point any readers to it. One tid-bit I did find interesting was : "Likewise, armies with weak organization, training and discipline will find chemical preparedness – which involves a lot of training on how to get those gas masks and NBC suits on fast – very difficult; actually getting all of the fidgety equipment to the right spots will also prove hard (but is second-nature to a modern system military which has nothing but fidgety equipment)." I think that acoup's point extends to most aspects of the military and to parts of civilian life as well. The complex, murky, and seemingly insane rulesets of command systems in Modern militaries is a feature, not a bug, though most people in it understandably disagree and are screaming at their screens right now. There's that old apocryphal quote that goes something like: war is chaos, which is why the Americans do so well in it, as they practice it on a daily basis. Econtalk had a great bit on chaos in potato chip sales. Brendan O'Donohoe of Frito-Lay mentions that he randomly makes people take vacations, pulls them on to other projects, jazzes things up, so that his team can better sell potato chips. I've no idea of their internal numbers back in 2011, but based on his current LI, he's done alright enough since then (maybe, I really can't judge here) https://www.econtalk.org/odonohoe-on-potato-chips-and-salty-snacks/ https://www.econtalk.org/odonohoe-on-potato-chips-and-salty-...
burneraccount12 7y ago
> But you can bet no high ranking officer in Saddam Hussein's army was successfully "fighting the bureaucracy" to get things through. Why do you assume that? The Baath party was quite a complex organization that had all kinds of hierarchies and subgroups. Iraq was one of the most educated societies in the Middle East before we started fighting several wars with them. Even Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, founder of ISIS, had a PhD. So there was bureaucracy and hierarchy in Saddam Hussein's army, so odd to assume there wasn't. Their biggest weakness was 1970s era tank technology but within a few years were able to morph into a guerilla force with a networked command and control structure that almost sent the US home in shame.