military’s means of imposing generalization via new doctrine, organizations, training, and technologies. Senior leaders often say they want to learn, but their enthusiasm sometimes dampens when reports call into question current efforts to develop the U.S. military leaders are ready to hear what they have to convey in terms of both interpretation and data. It only makes sense to send battlefield observers to Ukraine if U.S. Defense Attaché Office in Kyiv is currently resourced and authorized to do. It would be worth sending them with civilian military analysts, such as the various teams that have already organized their own battlefield research. ![]() Defense Department has not launched a formal battlefield observer program that would send military personnel from all the services and a variety of occupational specialties to learn as much as they can through direct observation and communication with Ukrainian forces where the war is happening. (In fact, some of these newer communications technologies distort rather than clarify what is actually happening on a given battlefield, as Michael Kofman and I have discussed on the War on the Rocks podcast.) I have understood this viscerally since my time as a civil servant in Afghanistan and this lesson was only reinforced during a visit to southern Ukraine in late October of last year. There is only so much human beings can learn from afar, even in the age of satellites, instantaneous communication, and video streaming. defense leaders ought to feel obligated to not fall behind on the learning curve. One thing is certain: America’s rivals are surely using the war to learn lessons of their own. It could be the successful navigation of a crisis or confrontation with the aid of deterrence, for example. A future scenario need not involve a war proper. Finally, generalizability happens if the observation can be transferred from its context to projected future scenarios. It also requires an understanding of how and whether events and developments are significant. Interpretation requires the organization to understand what is happening and why. Objectivity is exactly what it sounds like and this is often where attempts to learn stumble. In short, access means being there and having good data. To successfully learn, a military organization requires access, objectivity, interpretation, and generalizability. ![]() Occasionally there is a break in the clouds: a small-scale conflict occurs somewhere and gives you a “fix” by showing whether certain weapons and techniques are effective or not but it is always a doubtful fix. The greater the distance from the last war, the greater become the chances of error in this extrapolation. You have left the terra firma of the last war and are extrapolating from the experiences of that war. The best militaries and analysts can usually hope for is what the late Michael Howard called a “ doubtful fix.” The passage is worth quoting:Ī soldier … in peacetime is like a sailor navigating by dead reckoning. The picture is noisy and the process of turning data into analysis into lessons is fraught with pitfalls, diversions, and biases. While data is often readily accessible, the lessons are not. However, the reality is far more complicated. In the classic 1990 text Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War, Eliot Cohen and John Gooch intone, “The failure to absorb readily accessible lessons from recent history is in many ways the most puzzling of all military misfortunes.” As someone who has long bemoaned the yawning chasm between “lessons identified” and “lessons learned,” I am sympathetic with this claim. ![]() Readers may not agree with all of my suggestions - and that’s fine - but I hope to at least impress upon leaders the value of having a set of policies and programs that are more serious and deliberate about learning from what is happening in Ukraine. There are many ways in which the Biden administration could be more forward-learning in this regard, including experimenting with uncrewed systems, exploring new ways to produce munitions, and using battlefield observers. While American support for Ukraine is admirable and worthwhile, Washington ought to be bolder in using the ongoing war as a testbed for emerging technologies and operational concepts that could be of use to deter or, if necessary, defeat its adversaries on the battlefield. Is the United States doing everything it can for itself in Ukraine? Unfortunately not.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |