managing defense transformation

MANAGING DEFENSE TRANSFORMATION

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Managing Defense TransformationAgency, Culture and Service Change

ADAM N. STULBERG and MICHAEL D. SALOMONE

with AUSTIN G. LONG

© Adam N. Stulberg and Michael D. Salomone 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

The authors have asserted their moral rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,

1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.

Published by

Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company

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Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Stulberg, Adam N., 1963–

Managing defense transformation : agency, culture and service change

1. Armed Forces – History – 20th century 2. Military art and science – History – 20th

century 3. Military history, Modern – 20th century 4. United States – Armed Forces – Re-

organization – History – 20th century

I/ Title II. Salomone, Michael D.

355.3

ISBN-13: 9780754648567

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stulberg, Adam N., 1963–

Managing defense transformation : agency, culture, and service change / by Adam N.

Stulberg and Michael D. Salomone.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7546-4856-7

1. United States--Armed Forces--Reorganization--History--20th century--Case studies. 2.

Strategy--History--20th century--Case studies. I. Salomone, Michael D. II. Title

UA10.S735 2007

355.30973--dc22

20066100349

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

http://www.ashgate.com

Contents

List of Figures vii

About the Authors ix

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction 1

PART I: UNDERSTANDING MILITARY TRANSFORMATION 11

Chapter 1 Explaining Military Transformation 13

Chapter 2 Principals, Agents and Service Transformation 35

PART II: CASE STUDIES 63

Chapter 3 The German Blitzkrieg Transformation: Rebuilding

Preeminence from Catastrophe 65

Chapter 4 The U.S. Navy Transformed: Managing Change from

Sea to Air 101

Chapter 5 The British and Armored Forces: Squandering Early Innovation 129

Chapter 6 U.S. Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Shirking Transformation 153

Chapter 7 Conclusion 181

Bibliography 197

Index 209

List of Figures

Figure 2.1 Agent Choices 42

Figure 2.2 Managerial Strategies and Compliance 58

Figure 3.1 Reichwehr Command Structure 1919-1934 71

Figure 3.2 Tank Forces Command 77

About the Authors

Dr. Adam N. Stulberg is Associate Professor at the Sam Nunn School of International

Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Stulberg earned his Ph.D. in Political

Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as holds a Masters

of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and

Public Affairs, and a B.A. in history from the University of Michigan. His research

and publications focus on military innovation, Russian foreign and security

policies, energy security in Eurasia, and WMD proliferation. Dr. Stulberg is the

author of Well-Oiled Diplomacy: Strategic Manipulation and Russia’s Energy

Statecraft in Eurasia (SUNY Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of Preventing

Nuclear Meltdown: Managing Decentralization of Russia’s Nuclear Complex

(Ashgate 2004). He also has published articles in Security Studies, Geopolitics,

Contemporary Security Policy, Orbis, and Foreign Affairs. Dr. Stulberg previously

worked at RAND and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Dr. Michael D. Salomone is Professor of International Affairs in the Sam Nunn

School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology. He was educated

at Lehigh University and earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University

of Pittsburgh. For the past 30 years, Dr. Salomone has studied the capabilities and

vulnerabilities of military organizations, and he has conducted numerous assessments

in this area for Office of the Secretary of Defense and other Department of Defense

organizations. Most recently, he has been studying information flows, intelligence

analysis, battlefield decision-making, command and control assessment, network-

centric operations, and military transformation. He is presently constructing an

interactive computer simulation of the World War I German Schlieffen Plan and

writing on the reasons for its failure. Dr. Salomone has written articles for Defense

Acquisition Review and Defense Analysis on these subjects, and is the co-author

of The Reluctant Supplier: U.S. Decision Making for Arms Sales (1983) and of

Technology Transfer and US Security Assistance (1987), and the co-editor of

Marketing Security Assistance: New Perspectives on Arms Sales (1987).

Austin G. Long is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology and a member of its Security Studies Program. His research

includes work on military innovation, counterinsurgency, and intelligence. He is

also an adjunct researcher at RAND.

Acknowledgements

Although this book began when the meaning of the current revolution in military

affairs was contested, it addresses issues that will continue to challenge future

scholars and defense planners. The authors wish to express their enduring gratitude

to Andrew W. Marshall for his sustained encouragement of the study of military

transformation. They also owe special thanks to Walker McKnight for his diligent

and professional research assistance. In addition, Adam N. Stulberg wants to

acknowledge that parts of Chapter 4 appeared in an article published in Security

Studies (2005). All shortcomings, of course, are attributed to the authors.

Introduction

This book analyzes the challenges of managing major military transformation. It asks

why and how some military organizations are more adept than others at reinventing

themselves, not just introducing but sustaining and honing revolutionary changes

in technologies, systems, doctrines, operations, and training. Why, for example,

did the British Army have difficulty marshalling early enthusiasm and advancing

initial innovations in tank warfare, while the German military leaped ahead with the

truly revolutionary Blitzkrieg strategy that pushed the technological and operational

frontiers for integrating tactical air power and mechanized warfare with devastating

effectiveness on the battlefield? How did the U.S. Navy excel at sustaining the

revolution at sea, steadily supplanting the “big gun” club that dominated the

service and transforming the aircraft carrier from an auxiliary spotter to the capital

ship by the end of World War II? By contrast, why did the U.S. Army resist new

demands for counterinsurgency, and how did it actively sabotage efforts to alter

the post-World War II bias towards a large-scale conventional warfare? This book

seeks to explain the variable patterns to which military services succeed and fail at

institutionalizing radically new approaches to warfare to inform efforts at managing

military transformation today.

Understanding why and how military organizations sustain revolutionary

change is especially important for both practical and theoretical reasons. Strangely,

statesman at the dawning of the 21st Century have been thrust “back to the future” in

grappling with international security. On the one hand, the hangover of the nuclear

revolution and mounting globalization— encompassing the rapid movement of ideas,

people, resources, services, and technologies across national borders— diminish

the utility of capturing territory and significantly raise the costs of using force

across the international system. The intertwining of national economies, societies,

and security elevate, in particular, the salience of non-military and “soft” power

dimensions to statecraft. As underscored by Joseph Nye, complex interdependence

of the security, political, and economic realms opens unprecedented opportunities

for states to wield power indirectly by enticing and attracting; getting what they

want by setting political agendas and leading by example, rather than by relying on

traditional means of intimidation and force.1 Yet the broadening and deepening of

interdependence simultaneously expose new vulnerabilities that while complicating

the use of force underscore “hard power” as the currency for international security.

Amid the proliferation of international institutions, growing reach of non-state

1 Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2002), pp. 4-12; and Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and

Power in the Coming Century (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

Managing Defense Transformation2

actors, and rampant compromises to national sovereignty and domestic governance

that profoundly affect international relations, states nonetheless continue to hew to

military force as the ultimate instrument for arresting new threats. As demonstrated

vividly by American military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, the asymmetrical

impact of globalization bears ominous tidings that continue to compel states to

redress international grievances by exercising force, albeit with radically new forms

and purpose.

Yet without displacing hard power, the end of the Cold War and gathering

momentum of globalization generate profound pressures for military change.2

The newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, for example, face the

monumental tasks of professionalizing and modernizing national armies amid

protracted domestic political transition and fiscal austerity. Their former Eastern

bloc allies confront challenges of qualitatively upgrading and reorienting national

armies to meet the standards of new Western military partners. At the same time,

superior Western militaries are pushed and pulled in different directions, saddled

with new requirements for conducting high-intensity combat and asymmetrical

warfare, as well as with an ever-expanding scope of operations “other than war.” No

longer consumed with containing a predictable peer competitor, the U.S. military

confronts the formidable challenge of maintaining global preeminence along multiple

fronts, assuming a panoply of new responsibilities that include peacekeeping,

peace enforcement, humanitarian intervention, counter-terrorist operations, drug

interdiction, coercive diplomacy, post-conflict policing, and nation-building. As

many of these constitute “high frequency-low stakes” missions, in contrast to the

“low frequency-high stakes” scenarios that were the preoccupation throughout the

Cold War, defense planners are now called upon to manage multiple operations

amid tight budgetary and personnel constraints, more restricted foreign access, and

mounting political pressure to minimize casualties with each success. If not handled

deftly, this confluence of pressures risks not only retarding military change but

inflaming civil-military tensions over basic questions concerning the use of force.3

The maturation of the information age accentuates the strategic impetus for

radical military change. Ongoing advances in computer processing, microelectronics,

surveillance, and precision guided weapons technologies seemingly offer qualitatively

new opportunities for robust communications links among sensors, command nodes,

and “strikers” that necessitate a fundamental restructuring of U.S. military strategy,

operations, tactics, logistics, and organization. New information technologies appear

to augur well for a network-centric approach to warfare premised on the acquisition

and exploitation of more and better information with revolutionary implications

for synergies among platforms and for re-structuring U.S. command and control

(ultimately to include command, control, communication, computer, intelligence,

surveillance, and reconnaissance tasks- C4ISR). The digitization of information

2 Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, “The Sources of Military Change,” in, Ibid., eds.,

The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, and Technology (Boulder: Lynne Reinner

Publishers, 2002), pp. 3-17.

3 Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-

Military Relations and the Use of Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Introduction 3

gathering, processing, and dissemination not only presents significant technological

challenges but portends radical changes to the architecture for managing real-time

translation of “dominant battle-space knowledge” into superior performance on the

battlefield. These potentially unprecedented advances stand to render traditional

qualitative-quantitative trade-offs obsolete, widening the gap between those militaries

that effectively integrate new technologies and methods of warfare and those that

do not.4 Consequently, there is burgeoning consensus among contemporary defense

intellectuals that the key to maintaining strategic preeminence and bolstering future

combat effectiveness will be the ability of military organizations to keep pace with

revolutionary changes in technology and strategic environments that make fielding

“systems of systems” and network-centric warfare both increasingly feasible and

necessary. Success will be contingent on organizational structures and processes

that integrate non-linear interactions “created by the personalities, strivings, values,

past experiences, history, visions, and cultures of the individuals and institutions

involved.”5

Are military organizations up to the challenge? A growing chorus of

contemporary American and European military experts seems determined to answer

in the affirmative. Enamored by the prospects for radical synergies between novel

technologies, doctrine, and organization fostered by the RMA and emboldened by

the preliminary “lessons learned” from wars fought since the 1991 Persian Gulf

war, defense planners now challenge each military service to jettison decades old

practices, technologies, planning assumptions, and bureaucratic parochialism that

governed the linear, incremental approach to military change during the Cold War.

Sweeping changes are demanded in the ways that each service envisions, procures,

trains, plans, cooperates, and conducts warfare.6 The staunchest proponents hold up

4 Advocates of the contemporary RMA thesis include: Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War

and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993);

James R. Blaker, Understanding the Revolution in Military Affairs: A Guide to America’s

21st Century (Washington, DC: Progressive Policy Institute, 1997); Andrew F. Krepinevich,

“Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions,” The National Interest 37 (Fall

1994); Eliot A. Cohen, “A Revolution in Warfare?” Foreign Affairs 75 (March/April 1996),

pp. 34-54; Joseph S. Nye Jr., and William A. Owens, “America’s Information Edge,” Foreign

Affairs 75:2 (March/April 1996); John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., In Athena’s Camp

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1997), and Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond

(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000). For dissenting views see especially Stephen Biddle,

Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 2004).

5 Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, “Military Innovation in Peacetime,” in

Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar Period

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 375. For a seminal discussion of the critical

importance of organizational innovation to the success of embracing the RMA, see especially

Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Military Technical Revolution: A Preliminary Assessment

(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 1999).

6 Immediately following the 2003 war in Iraq, for example, the Pentagon launched an

initiative to centralize procurement, dramatically stripping each military service of the power

to establish their technical needs, as well as submitted a revised procurement plan that placed

a premium on the acquisition of next generation systems.


the vision of a quickly fought, technologically-driven, jointly-performed, low-risk

military operation (beyond what was achieved by Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003)

as the model for re-shaping the future of the American military. Service leaders also

are expected to take full advantage of new information technologies by developing

administrative structures to mesh centralized control with adaptive, joint, and

flexible planning “down echelon.” Convinced of the necessity to advance military

transformation, defense planners now take aim at reconfiguring service cultures and

organizational practices that are regarded as the greatest obstruction to the diffusion

and assimilation of these fundamentally new ways of war.7

Notwithstanding new strategic, technological, and political impulses for change

that grip the defense planning community, scholars of military organizations are more

circumspect about the prospects for transformation. Mainstream theories invoked to

explain military innovation do not provide a clear-cut answer. On the one hand, it

is difficult not to be pessimistic, as the imperative to harmonize decisionmaking

mechanisms with advances in digital information processing presents military

planners with the problem of reconciling the dynamism of technological change with

the stasis that besets organizations. Traditional studies of organizational behavior

warn us that military institutions are designed explicitly to maximize consistency

and to regularize coordination among functionally specialized sub-units in order

to reduce the high uncertainty of task environments and to preserve the service’s

autonomy and health.8 Internal relations are hierarchical, redundant, rigid, and

routinized; narrowly attuned to achieving specific and predictable organizational

outputs. Because peacetime and wartime conditions buffer military organizations from

common threats of bureaucratic extinction and political accountability experienced

by other government agencies, these attributes impose especially binding constraints

on information flows within services that render decisionmaking highly resistant

to change absent external shocks, such as defeat in war or forceful intervention by

political “outsiders.” At best, military change is expected to be ad hoc, informal, and

ephemeral, marred by tradeoffs between efforts to improve managerial efficiency

at performing traditional missions and adapting to new task environments. The

old efficiency-versus-flexible formula for incremental change, however, no longer

suffices because the latest RMA places a premium on military organizations doing

both simultaneously. Thus, organizational inertia is assumed to be the “Achilles

7 For a succinct discussion of the organizational change that is warranted for reaping

the full benefits of the RMA, see especially discussion in Admiral William A. Owens (U.S.

Navy, ret.), “Creating a U.S. Military Revolution,” in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, The

Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, and Technology (Boulder: Lynne Reinner

Publishers, 2002), pp. 205-219; Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr, The Military-Technical Revolution:

A Preliminary Assessment (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,

1993), available at www.csba.org; and Christopher J. Bowie, Robert Haffa, and Robert E.

Mullins, Future War: What Trends in America’s Post-Cold War Military Conflicts Tell Us

About Early 21st Century Warfare (Washington, DC: Northrup Grumman Analytical Center

Paper, 2003).

8 Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC:

Brooking Institution, 1974); and Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France,

Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).

www.csba.org

Introduction 5

heel” of transitioning from traditional “sunset” systems and platforms, to flexible,

complex, network-centric command and control architectures made possible by

dramatic advances in communications and information technologies.

On the other hand, recent empirical and analytical research challenges this

prognosis to warrant cautious optimism. The 1920s and 1930s, in particular, were

replete with examples of internally driven military change that current planners

strive to emulate.9 The inter-war period demonstrated that military organizations

do not behave uniformly, as some undergo major innovations in the manners that

they exploit technological possibilities and carry out new combat missions with

different degrees of success. Notwithstanding the functional predisposition towards

inertia, some military organizations and services are more effective than others

at internally initiating and then institutionalizing radical changes to warfighting

or command and control even in the absence of catastrophic failures, outside

intervention, or maverick leaders. Some attribute success at diffusing new forms

of warfare to shifts among intra-agency coalitions and the creation of new career

pathways.10 Alternatively, “new wave” organizational learning and culture theories

posit that many of the material, structural and political incentives presumed to bias

military services against flexibility and improvisation and that make them prone to

solving the wrong problems, can be overcome by fundamental changes to how they

think about and prepare for war. Causal weight here is assigned to mental frames

and norms within service communities that shape collective understandings of

the legitimacy of new ways of war.11 Yet for all of the attention to the salience of

changing material incentives and culture within a military organization, we still lack

systematic understanding of how the process unfolds or can be managed. Although

sophisticated interest-based and ideational approaches identify necessary conditions

for the introduction, direction, and appeal of change for a military service, each

by itself is not sufficient for explaining the timing and range of organizational

responses to nebulous and unproven forms of warfare, nor offers a sound predictor

of subsequent success at nurturing and honing change.

In the spirit of cautious optimism, this book offers an alternative perspective

on intra-organizational politics that identifies conditions conducive for managing

revolutionary military change. We argue that a full accounting of the “missing link”

between the initial impetus for military change and sustained organizational responses

requires systematic understanding of the synergies among functional and normative

factors and their impact on the management strategies within organizations that

are the prime developers, consumers, and practioners of military innovation. The

central analytical concern here is not what precipitates the introduction of military

9 See especially collection of case studies on military innovation in Murray and Millett

(1996).

10 Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1991).

11 Jeffrey Legro, Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-American Restraint During World

War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); Craig M. Cameron, American Samurai: Myth,

Imagination, and the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations,

Knowledge, and Nuclear Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).


technologies, doctrines, and procedures between states or organizations, but what

enhances or impedes their diffusion and institutionalization as a radically new way

of war within a service. Therefore, we take up the managerial dilemmas confronting

defense planners as the primary point of departure from the extant literature. Focus is

placed squarely on exploring how authority is delegated within an organization, how

different responsibilities foster rival incentives for change within an organization,

and how these differences can be managed via alternative procedural and normative

solutions with different consequences for nurturing military change. Drawing on

insights from a modified principal-agent framework, we argue that the ability to

manage military transformation is critically determined by the intra-organizational

mechanisms that service entrepreneurs put in place to delegate, monitor, and enforce

new responsibilities, as well as to tap into core service competencies and administrative

norms to communicate and guide subordinates along a consistent path. The beauty

of a properly aligned managerial strategy is that it promotes interests, responsibility,

and common knowledge needed to unite commanders and sub-units for contending

with the nebulous and unproven dynamics of sustaining transformation.

By examining the intra-organizational dynamics of managing change, this

study addresses a conspicuous void in the extant literature on military innovation.

In the name of parsimony, theories of military change tend to privilege alternative

structural variables situated at the international, state, organizational, and individual

levels, respectively. The direction that military organizations or entrepreneurs

receive often is prescribed by external or internal conditions and/or mental templates

that either constrain or hardwire the proclivity for change. New interests or ideas

emerge and presumably translate smoothly into organizational change. Yet, there

is little attention to the conditions that affect how new technologies and ideas take

hold within a service beyond their introduction or imposition. Why, for example, are

some military organizations more adroit than others at sustaining a change of course,

institutionalizing new ways of war under otherwise static material and normative

conditions? Why do some efforts at managing change during peacetime succeed

rapidly, while others only gather momentum over time, and still others become either

sidetracked or even subverted? How in the process of nurturing change are defense

planners able to coordinate different interests and preferences that cut across divisions

within a service? This book seeks to redress these oversights by illuminating the

microfoundational sources of organizational change. This entails specifying relevant

actors within a military organization that both promote and impede change, their

immediate institutional environment, and the causal chain linking these actors and

their environment to success and failure at sustaining and honing military change.

This focus complements recent studies on the microfoundations of national

security and defense policymaking. Though the principal-agent framework has been

applied to understanding military change, it has been used primarily to generate

a theory of civilian control over the U.S. military that feature the idiosyncrasies

of the hierarchical relationship between the political drivers of innovation and the

propensity of respective services to accommodate pressures for change.12 Others

12 Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from

Peripheral Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). For an agency theory of general U.S.

Introduction 7

have used it to explain how design features and the constellation of political interests

rendered the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff system especially resistant to change.13 We

build on these developments by applying the principal-agent framework to strategic

interaction among different levels of hierarchy within a military organization.

From this we explain how internal supervisory mechanisms affect incentives

and inclinations for change within a service that can account for variations in

transformational performance beyond the stale success/failure dichotomy, and that

cut across strategic, technological, national, and service environments.

In addition, our modified framework for intra-organizational behavior is

intended as an analytical bridge between contending schools of thought on military

change. As discussed in the next chapter, theorists have been preoccupied mostly

with developing and testing rival explanations for organizational innovation that

give priority either to material-functional interests or to cognitive-cultural biases

as the main source of change. Yet, this has come at the expense of both fleshing

out increasingly common findings that interests and norms matter for spurring or

obstructing military change, and for exploring how the two types of variables interact

to shape the course of transformation.14 Conversely, military historians and policy

practitioners have grown frustrated with arcane debates that compartmentalize the

role of interests and ideas, and that seem out of touch with mounting evidence that

attitudes for change vary among core elements within military organizations.15 This

approach, however, has circumscribed systematic understanding of the general

conditions ripe for prodding change from within different military organizations.

As a result, defense planners tend to focus on idiosyncratic factors that correlate

with historical innovation at risk of inflating their causal significance in crafting

action plans for administering organizational change. The net effect of these trends

has been to widen the gulf between policy and theoretical approaches to grappling

with similar issues of military change. Part of our ambition with specifying the

microfoundations of strategic interaction between different levels of hierarchy within

civil-military relations, see especially Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight,

and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

13 Amy B. Zegart, Flawed By Design (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). For

a related application of the principal-agent framework to explain the success of the Goldwater-

Nichols reforms, see especially Sharon Weiner, “Resource Allocation in the Post-Cold War

Pentagon,” Security Studies 5:4 (1996), pp. 125-142.

14 Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, “Military Innovation in Peacetime,” in Murray

and Millett (1996), pp. 369-417; and Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox, “The Future

Behind Us,” in MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, eds., The Dynamics of Military

Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 175-194; and Terry Terriff

and Theo Farrell, “Military Change in the New Millenium,” in Farrell and Terriff (2002), pp.

271-276.

15 For a discussion of the different attitudes towards military innovation and new

missions among the cohort of middle level officers in the contemporary U.S. military, see

especially Deborah D. Avant and James H. Lebovic, “U.S. Military Responses to Post-Cold

War Missions,” in Farrell and Terriff (2002), pp. 139-160. On the complaints about the policy

relevance of the theoretical literature on military innovation, see especially Watts and Murray

(1996), p. 381.


military organizations and discerning fungible dimensions to administrative culture,

therefore, is to provide an analytical framework for integrating material and non-

material sources of change, while simultaneously generating logically consistent

implications upon which to base practical planning assumptions.

Part I of the book identifies the paradoxes of military transformation, and develops

a theory to explain why some efforts at managing change might be expected to succeed.

Chapter 1 specifies the problem and reviews the extant literature on organizational

change that relates directly to our investigation of military transformation. The focus

is on illuminating systematic pitfalls at explaining synergies between new ideas and

material incentives that we intend to redress in this book. In addition, we define

more precisely how our research contributes to understanding the importance of the

managerial dimension to service change.

Chapter 2 presents our alternative argument. It begins by specifying our

assumptions and the limitations to applying traditional principal-agent models to

issues of military change. Attention then turns to identifying the central causal

logic linking specific incentive schemes and managerial norms associated with

reducing agency costs of supervising change, and then to the propensity for service

organizations to nurture and sustain transformation in methods and forms of warfare.

We address the following questions: What are the different incentives for exploring

and exploiting new forms of warfare within a service? Why do they differ among

various levels of hierarchy? How and under which conditions can service champions

of change supervise successfully without knowing exactly where they are headed?

Under which conditions do sub-units readily comply to sustain or advance change,

as opposed to resist or even sabotage transformational directives? The chapter

concludes by presenting a method for “process-tracing” the argument in comparative

case studies that vary across strategic, technological, historical, national, and service

settings.16

The hypotheses generated in chapter 2 are put to empirical test in classic cross-

national, cross-service cases of successful and unsuccessful military transformation

in Part 2. The emphasis of each chapter is primarily on illustrating the strengths

and weaknesses of contending arguments, as opposed to providing rich historical

description. Chapters 3 and 4 explicate two alternative patterns of transformational

success. Chapter 3 addresses the question of how interwar German defense planners

managed to capitalize readily on revolutionary innovations in combined armored

warfare. It begins by recounting the ironies of the German Army’s success, given the

internationally imposed restrictions on rearmament, comparative technological and

industrial advantages of its future adversaries, initial dominance of “traditionalists”

within the High Command, and formation of a separate air force. This is followed

by a critical review of the administrative consequences of the complementary

material incentives and managerial norms. We examine how the proponents of

armored warfare adroitly forged an administrative strategy that aligned promotional

incentives, information flows, and the service’s technical evidentiary standards that

16 Alexander L. George and Timothy J. McKeown, “Case Studies and Theories of

Organizational Decision Making,” in Robert Coulam and Richard Smith, eds., Advances in

Information Processing in Organizations (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1985), pp. 43-68.

Introduction 9

were derived from a collectively accepted scientific approach to problem-solving.

Chapter 4 explores the distinct form of protracted transformation to offensive carrier

warfare spearheaded by the U.S. Navy during the interwar period. The chapter

begins by assessing prominent strategic, functional, and ideational explanations for

the American navy’s carrier revolution. We then apply the modified principal-agent

framework to illustrate how service entrepreneurs gradually introduced low cost

mechanisms of delegation and oversight, as well as tapped into prevailing managerial

norms to steadily increase incentives for and confidence in carrier-based operations

up and down the naval hierarchy, notwithstanding the prevailing balance of power

and orthodoxy that favored the traditional Battle Fleet throughout the period.

The ensuing two chapters examine opposing patterns of aborted or failed military

transformation. Chapter 5 analyzes the factors that led the British Army to abandon

success at introducing massed armored warfare (reverting to traditional infantry

support and cavalry-oriented missions), notwithstanding the global lead in tank

technology and doctrine coming out of World War I. We begin by demonstrating

how the Royal Army’s recalcitrance challenges dominant theories of international

relations and organizational behavior. The chapter then turns to exploring the

transformation-stifling consequences of successive reorganizations of mobile and

armor divisions. We find that even when entrepreneurial commanders were ceded

command authority over armored formations, divergent promotional pathways,

divided responsibilities and reporting requirements, coupled with the lack of staff

support, diminished their ability to supervise well-integrated combined arms doctrine

and operations. Furthermore, within the British Army, there were long-standing

traditions of top-down command, low error tolerance, and regimental specialization

and fragmentation that militated against common knowledge and operational/tactical

flexibility, ultimately suppressing the diffusion of innovation across the service.

Together these elements significantly exacerbated the agency costs of managing

change that derailed the British Army’s effective exploitation of mechanized warfare,

notwithstanding the strategic imperatives and burgeoning enthusiasm and advances

in operational and tactical doctrine. Chapter 6 identifies the sources of the U.S.

Army’s doctrinal rigidity and protracted resistance to embracing counterinsurgency

as a core mission. The chapter opens by distinguishing the Army’s behavior at not

only shirking new forms of warfare, but actively sabotaging the policy goals imposed

by different political administrations and strategic and technological contexts. It then

turns to explicating the perverse incentives and inclinations for innovation generated

by successive intra-service administrative reforms. This includes a review of how

assigned supervisory directors lacked discrete authority, were ill served by the

division of command authority, and were orphaned institutionally both within the

Vietnam theater command and the Special Forces Offices at the Pentagon. There

also is discussion of how the managerial challenges were compounded by ad hoc

executive and legislative oversight, and the failure to frame counterinsurgency

operations in terms that made sense to the Army. The latter, in particular, contributed

directly to the absence of a service-wide affinity for “pacification” or collectively

accepted quantitative standards for assessing the performance of counterinsurgency

operations. Unlike the case for air mobility, the low-intensity character of counter-


insurgency was not presented either as an adjunct to the Army’s traditional mid-to-

high intensity operations or with potential application to the European theater.

The Conclusion recaps the main empirical and analytical findings from the case

studies. It teases out implications for theories of organizational change, international

relations, and security studies, as well as for policy debates over the meaning and

prospects for realizing the fruits of the contemporary RMA. In doing so, we distill

practical lessons from our analytical and historical case studies, offering a set of

contemporary guidelines for managing transformation into the future.

PART I

Understanding Miltary Transformation

Chapter 1

Explaining Military Transformation

What is military transformation? Why and how are military services able to convert

the initial impetus for radical change into sustained adjustment in the ways that they

outfit, plan, train, and organize to wage war? This chapter addresses these questions.

The first section notes the dilemmas of military change that necessitate conceiving

of military transformation as an ongoing process of organizational change. The

second part assesses the traditional debate between “outside-in” and “inside-out”

explanations for military innovation. This features a critical review of “new wave”

material-functional and cognitive-cultural theories of military organizational change.

The third section highlights generic problems with recent efforts to push the frontiers

of the incentive-ideas divide, and specifies directions for recasting the debate. We

then briefly outline the general claims of an alternative microfoundational approach,

with specific reference to its value as an analytical bridge between material and

ideational explanations for military service change.

The Paradox of Transformation

Military transformation on its face is paradoxical. In practice, it entails reconciling

motivations for dynamic shifts towards new ways of war within organizations

designed to foster continuity. Given the intrinsic complexity and unknowns of

warfare, militaries to a greater extent than other government organizations are

structured to promote standardization and predictability in order to hedge against

uncertainty and the deleterious consequences of uncharted and uncoordinated action.

Accordingly, military services are cautious about change, especially if it involves

introducing new means towards new ends. This poses a dilemma for defense

planners, as progress towards transformation entails the disruption of old practices

that triggers disincentives for change among the very organizational elements that

are the prime producers, supervisors, and consumers of change.1

A second dilemma derives directly from the practical meaning of military

change. New ideas about military objectives and organizations are defined in

1 James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do

it (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1989), pp. 221-223. For a similar observation in

the military context, see especially Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation

and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 2; Theo Farrell and Terry

Terriff, “The Sources of Military Change,” in Theo Farrell and Terry Tarriff, eds., The Sources

of Military Change: Culture, Politics, and Technology (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2002), p. 4.;

and Captain Terry C. Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation

(London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 19-20.


relation to existing ways of war; they do not arise in a vacuum. For novel ideas

to have meaning and to evoke new interpretations within a military organization,

they must resonate with preexisting understandings and experiences of the service.

To paraphrase another author, there is no such thing as an immaculate military

innovation; transformational ways of war cannot register in the absence of an

established logic to describe them and to stand in contrast to them.2 The concept of

carrier battle groups, for example, was meaningless without preconceived notions

of naval warfare or comparative referents provided by the capital ships of the day.

This presents an additional dilemma for defense planners; they must frame new

conceptions of warfare in the context of old ideas. Innovative contributions will

likely go unnoticed and undervalued if they do not invoke familiar understandings

and methods. The rub, however, is that by clutching too closely to existing concepts,

the promoters of new ideas risk obfuscating the essential conceptual and institutional

features of transformation.3

By the same token, military transformation constitutes a dynamic process of

translating vague visions of war into mature, innovative outcomes. According to

one recent study, major military transformation involves “changes in the goals,

actual strategies, and/or structure of a military organization.” The barometers of

success include the adoption of a new primary mission, novel technologies, and

new operational methods that together warrant a major restructuring of the existing

organizational landscape. The synergy between novel concepts, operations, strategies,

and technologies carries implications for organizational strategy and structure that

exceed the sum of discrete technological, strategic, and force structure modifications.4

Yet this poses a challenge for defense planners, as they must decide ex ante to

create new organizational processes and forms that only can be fully appreciated as

innovative ex post. Because new ideas and technologies are intrinsically nebulous,

evolving, and unproven (as well as unleash unforeseen consequences), they require

buy in from an organization before full innovative forms take shape, not to mention

before success or failure can be unambiguously demonstrated in training exercises

or on the battlefield. In short, new ideas meet stable institutions before they are well

defined, requiring an organization to undertake change without the leadership first

understanding where it is headed. This element of flying blind necessitates an open-

ended organizational process of exploring new ideas while continuing to exploit

proven methods. Accordingly, at the crux of military transformation are administrative

processes and practices that foster and nurture new ideas and organizational forms in

a manner that allows them to be fully envisioned and institutionalized. The process

of radical change begins prior to the maturation of new forms and technologies.

Success or failure, therefore, is defined in organizational terms and does not turn on

the performance of new systems in battle, which can be unpredictable and affected

by factors beyond the control of a single organization.

2 Andrew B. Hargadon and Yellowlees Douglas, “When Innovations Meet Institutions:

Edison and the Design of the Electric Light,” Administrative Science Quarterly 46 (2001), p.

478.

3 Ibid.

4 Farrell and Terriff (2002), p. 5.

Explaining Military Transformation 15

In light of the above issues, major military transformation, as defined here, is

at core an organizational issue. It pertains to changes in both the efficiency and

flexibility of organizations to acclimate to new task environments. As Stephen

Rosen points out, such innovation consists of a “new way of war, with new ideas of

how the components of the organization relate to each other and to the enemy, and

new operational procedures conform to those ideas.” Unlike military adaptation,

which conveys the refinement of traditional routines or the grafting of new missions,

technologies, or tactics onto the old, transformation represents major changes in

“what military organizations do, how they do it, and who does it.”5 Transformation

does not merely encompass the development and use of new technologies, but

constitutes qualitative changes in organizational strategies, procedures, and measures

of effectiveness for performing critical tasks. This means that the issue at hand

is not limited to the technical mechanics of developing and fielding a new armor

asset. What was transformational about the German blitzkrieg strategy, for instance,

was the novel method of integrating the tank into a fundamentally new approach

to mechanized warfare. Similarly, with respect to future network centric warfare,

major change entails not only the absorption of information technologies but the

development and integration of new approaches to close the decisionmaking loop

between sensors, command nodes, and strikers, while disrupting the respective loop

for a potential adversary.6

Transformation also imposes a dynamic tension on an organization to embrace

the complexity of the external environment while mitigating uncertainty in internal

relations. Because of the numerous and ever-changing interactions among mutually

adaptable actors that define the complex domestic and international settings within

which military organizations are situated, change cannot be measured in terms of

control over the external environment. At best, organizations can strive to undertake

change that effectively “harnesses complexity,” adjusting in ways that embrace and

even exploit it, rather than eliminate it.7 At the same time, organizations must maintain

internal coordination among functionally differentiated constituent elements that are

affected in different ways by the fluidity of the external setting. To do both, as noted by

James March, necessitates that an organization is structured simultaneously to exploit

opportunities for improving internal efficiency according to established standards,

and to explore altogether untested knowledge and organizational forms that take

advantage of the opportunities provided by the complexity of the external landscape.

Therefore, successful transformation is tantamount to organizing fundamentally new

tradeoffs between exploitation and exploration that provide leverage for a military

system in responding appropriately to new technologies and task environments.8

5 Rosen (1991), p. 134.

6 Edward A. Smith, “Network Centric Warfare: What’s the Point?” Naval War College

Review (2001), pp. 59-75.

7 Robert M. Axelrod and Michael D. Cohen, Harnessing Complexity: Organizational

Implications of a Scientific Frontier (New York: Free Press, 1999), p. 9.

8 Ibid., pp. 43-44. This draws on the seminal discussion in James G. March,

“Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning,” Organization Science 2 (1991),

pp. 71-87.


Military transformation also involves sustaining innovations, as opposed to

achieving an ad hoc, ephemeral policy outcome.9 Transformation does not stop

with a single modification to rectify a specific performance shortfall or to exploit a

tactical opportunity during wartime or peacetime. It is not embodied, for example,

by the many situational and informal communications links and administrative

stopgaps that emerged to provide effective “short-term error correcting feedbacks”

in planning the 1991 Gulf War air campaign.10 Nor is transformation reflected

solely by the development and deployment of new military technologies. Rather,

transformation is manifest in the diffusion and institutionalization of lessons,

beliefs and practices for organizing the fulfillment of new tasks. This subsumes the

capacity of a military organization to nurture and hone change, integrating lessons

and informal practices established during periods of war and training exercises

into lasting structures and operations appropriate to the prevailing technology and

task environment. In short, transformation is tantamount to a sustained process of

innovation; the product of a series of choices made over time and at different levels

within a military organization.

In light of these parameters, there are certain organizational features that military

historians and defense analyst typically associate with armed services that are

primed to gather internal momentum for transformation. For example, scholars point

to the importance of structures that balance centralized command with decentralized

implementation. “Junior commanders need to know how their operations support

the senior commander’s overall plan, how to integrate their operations within

various elements of a full-dimensional concept of operations, and how to react

quickly, and often independently, to a rapidly changing conflict environment.”11

As exemplified by the German Army during World War II, these requirements

are best served by streamlined but loosely structured organizational forms that

simultaneously convey a strong vision of warfare held by senior commanders

while ceding discretion for independent action at lower levels. Others highlight the

significance of elastic decisionmaking mechanisms that facilitate adaptive learning

and flexible force development and employment while avoiding premature lock-in

on unproven systems, concepts, and organizational arrangements. American military

experience since the end of the Cold War, for example, reveals the importance of

maintaining fluid organizational processes that allow for continued adjustments in

targeting and operational maneuver while maintaining overall coordination among

sub-units.12 A third classic organizational attribute of transformation is the regular

9 Pierce (2004), pp. 18-19.

10 Mark D. Mandeles, Thomas C. Hone, and Stanford S. Terry, Managing ‘Command

and Control’ in the Persian Gulf War (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1996); and Richard G. Davis,

On Target: Organizing and Executing the Strategic Air Campaign Against Iraq (Washington,

DC: Air Force History and Museum Program, 2002), pp. Pp. 57-110.

11 Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Military-Technical Revolution: A Preliminary

Assessment (Washington D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 1991), p.

37.

12 Christopher J. Bowie, Robert Haffa, and Robert E. Mullins, Future War: What Trends

in America’s Post-Cold War Military Conflicts Tell Us About Early 21st Century Warfare,

(Washington D.C.: Northrup Grumman Analytical Center Paper, 2003), pp. 36-38.


and rigorous testing of new visions and practices of war. Comparative episodes of

radical transformation during the inter-war period, for example, demonstrated that

“institutional processes for exploring, testing, and refining conceptions of future

war—in the specific sense of linking those inherently imprecise and ever evolving

visions to concrete concepts, doctrines, and organizational arrangements—are literally

a sine a qua non of successful innovation in peacetime.”13 Finally, comparative

studies of military transformation suggest that organizations with mechanisms

in place to spend scarce resources wisely, as opposed to those that simply enjoy

budgetary slack, are systematically poised for innovation. The success of the inter-

war U.S. Navy, Japanese Navy, and German Army at maximizing transformational

possibilities under strict budgetary constraints, for example, provided clear-cut

evidence that what matters more than the size of service budgets are the procedures

put in place to balance expenditures for current programs with stable investments in

calculated risk-taking.14

The problem is that some services are more adept than others at institutionalizing

novel features for meeting the demand and opportunity for transformation. This

then raises the questions: Why do some services get it right? Which conditions are

propitious for managing large-scale military change? Which factors facilitate or

impede the process of translating new ideas, technologies, and operations into new

forms and methods of preparing for and waging war? Why is it that some new ideas

stick while others fail to be institutionalized in new organizational forms or are used

to sustain old ways of fighting? The first step towards answering these questions is

to consider general ways of explaining military change.

Contending Approaches to Military and Organizational Change

A survey of the recent literature on military transformation reveals a highly evolved

discourse on the sources of organizational change. The uniformly pessimistic

prognosis of routinization and incrementalism posited by traditional organizational

theory no longer dominates. The contemporary focus in security studies has shifted

instead to addressing “why, when and how” radical military transformation is

possible, offering alternative “outside-in” and “inside-out” explanations for shifting

incentives, norms and processes of organizational change. At the crux are debates

among rival theories that ascribe the propensity for military change either to

structural/material stimuli or to cognitively/socially constructed patterned ways that

organizations approach their central missions and tasks.

13 Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, “Military Innovation in Peacetime,” in

Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar Period

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 410.

14 Andrew J. Krepinevich, Transformation Strategy (Washington, DC: center for

Budgetary Analyses), www.csbaonline.org/2Strategic_Studies/3Transformation_Strategy/

www.csbaonline.org/2Strategic_Studies/3Transformation_Strategy/


External Sources of Change

The dominant “outside-in” approach, structural realism, locates the impetus for

military transformation in the anarchic and competitive international security setting.

Military organizations are expected to respond automatically and successfully to

changes in prevailing strategic and technological environments out of basic concerns

for state survival in the anarchic international system. Because failure to acclimate

appropriately to immediate and potential threats is expected ultimately to lead

to defeat, states that are dissatisfied, insecure, and/or ambitious confront strong

incentives to maximize military efficiency by operating at technological frontiers.

This approach, which subsumes a healthy dose of technological determinism,

expects that the competition intrinsic to the international system leads states to

emulate the military capabilities and innovations of each other subject to prevailing

resource constraints. Shifting technological and security imperatives act as invisible

selection mechanisms that discipline national militaries to seize upon opportunities

to transform themselves or risk eventual defeat.15 It is during those occasional

periods when the pace and direction of technological change do not comport with

the prevailing security conditions that military organizations are most susceptible to

problems. In his account of the failure of the British Army to embrace new ways of

mechanized warfare during the inter-war period, for example, John Stone shows that

the disconnect between what is technologically possible and strategically imperative

at any given point in time can wreak havoc on determined efforts at managing

transformation.16

Another mainstream “outside-in” approach suggests that the propensity for

military innovation is determined by the national social structure.17 Because

contemporary militaries are open organizations embedded within larger societal

structures, the ability to innovate depends on a seamless relationship between the

service and its host society. The most effective and innovative military organizations

are predicted to arise out of the most cohesive societies. By contrast, divided societies

are expected to produce alternate sources of identity and loyalty for individual

soldiers and to create coordination problems within the armed forces that restrict

combat effectiveness and limit transformation. Although military leaders may be able

to reduce the negative effects of a divisive society by isolating soldiers via selective

conscription and training practices, such efforts are only stopgaps and ultimately

limit the resources available to innovate. “An innovative military that extracts

resources but is isolated from society may not be able to sustain that innovation in

periods of prolonged conflict.”18 Thus, military organizations are doomed to reflect

15 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,

1979).

16 John Stone, “The British Army and the Tank,” in Farrell and Terriff (2002), pp. 187-

204.

17 Stephen Peter Rosen, Societies and Military Power (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 1996).

18 Ibid.


the troubles of their divided host societies at great peril to the capacity to manage

transformation.

A third exogenous approach suggests that civilian intervention is decisive

for inducing military change. The traditionalism and hierarchical character of

professional military organizations provides little relief from the institutional bias

towards stasis in coping with the uncertainty of war. While there are strong strategic

and technological impulses for change, they are mediated by the political institutions

that oversee national defense establishments. Accordingly, some suggest that the

impetus for major change is most likely to come directly from the intervention

by civilian authorities that are presumed to be both more attuned to international

threats and technological opportunities and less vulnerable to the parochialism

that besets large military organizations. This can be accomplished by either direct

civilian oversight of specific military operations, or the promotion of internal allies

and mavericks within a military organization.19 Conversely, the isolation of military

organizations and barriers to civilian intervention foster stagnation.20

Other conceptual approaches share a common emphasis on the central importance

of civilian leadership for making the link between strategic imperatives and doctrinal

change, but attribute different propensities for military transformation to specific

institutional features that regulate civil-military relations. Neoclassical realists, for

example, locate the source of successful transformation in the political alliances that

emerge between statesmen sensitive to international balance of power incentives

for change and key military officers with expertise to devise and champion new

ways of war.21 Alternatively, principal-agent models for civil-military relations

assign explanatory power to the manner in which civilian leaders monitor and

delegate responsibility to the military. What matter most for generating incentives

for military transformation are the institutionally conditioned choices that civilians

make to oversee the military, and how they affect military preferences and costs for

responding to new demands for change.22

These three exogenous approaches, however, hold only limited explanatory

power. While each illuminates different stimuli and incentives that take us to the

precipice of military transformation, they do not follow through with systematic

accounts for how external imperatives are translated into specific outcomes among a

range of available responses. For example, why during the highly competitive inter-

war period did Germany innovate with an offensive military strategy, while France

19 Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1984); and Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decisionmaking and the

Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).

20 Daniel W. Drezner, “Ideas, Brueacratic Politics, and the Crafting of Foreign Policy,”

American Journal of Political Science 44:4 (October 2000), pp. 733-749.

21 Sten Rynning, “Shaping Military Doctrine in France: Decisionmakers Between

International Power and Domestic Interests,” Security Studies 11:2 (Winter 2001/2), pp. 89-

92.

22 Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons From

Peripheral Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). See also the related agency theory

of civil-military relations in Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-

Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).


clutched to a defensive mode of warfare to its own peril? Given parallel strategic

and technological developments in Germany, Britain, and the U.S., why and how

were the Royal Air Force and Navy able to leapfrog the others, both operationally

and technically in the use of radio technology, despite their relative backwardness

before World War II?23 Though societal structures may account for cross-national

variation, they have trouble accounting for change within a specific organization

over time (i.e., France’s shift from an offensive to defensive doctrine during the inter-

war period), as well as for significant behavioral differences among military units

with similar ethnic and class profiles (i.e. variation among Indian battalions). Those

arguments that regard military change as a response to the institutional structures

of civilian oversight fail to account for cases where the same service experienced

different rates of transformation, despite operating under static institutional

constraints. The U.S. Navy’s successive embrace of battleships and carriers as

transformational capital ships, for example, stood in stark contrast to the service’s

long-standing reluctance to downgrade the coastal defense mission that preceded

the battlefleet, as well as to the Navy’s resistance to assimilating anti-submarine

warfare that followed exploration with naval aviation. While it is has been argued

that legislators relied on mechanisms of Congressional control over the military to

promote the interests of local constituencies in American naval expansionism, the

deciding factors in each case seemed to turn more on respective regional interests in

foreign trade and the convictions of “navalists” than on the independent impact of

inter-branch oversight mechanisms. Rooting the causal chain in civilian intervention

is especially problematic, as military organizations are typically buffered more than

other bureaucracies from threats of extinction or intrusive supervision, especially

during peacetime.24

In addition, all three schools treat military institutions as static and monolithic

organizations. Yet there is no uniform professional military “self interest” or creed

to use as a benchmark. We know from history that different national militaries and

services retain unique identities and missions, with different sub-unit “communities”

operating in accordance with their own priorities. To the extent that variation among

sub-units is acknowledged by exogenous theories of change, they are assumed

either to be pursuing universal bureaucratic interests, i.e., budget maximization,

23 For an empirical critique of the technological determinism that undergirds structural

realism, see especially George Raudzens, “War-Winning Weapons: The Measurement of

Technological Determinism in Military History,” Journal of Military History 54:4 (October

1990), pp. 403-433. For detailed accounts of the historical variation in military change

across national systems and services, see especially Murray and Millett (1996); and Emily

O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason, eds., The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

24 Peter Turbowitz, “Geography and Strategy: The Politics of Naval Expansionism,”

in Peter Turbowitz, Emily O. Goldman, and Edward Rhodes, eds., The Politics of Strategic

Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999),

pp. 105-138; and Mark Shulman, “Institutionalizing a Political Idea: Navalism and the

Emergence of American Sea Power,” in Turbowitz, Goldman, and Rhodes (1999), pp. 79-101;

and Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Devastation

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 57-58.


or to constitute mavericks ripe for civilian exploitation. In short, “outside-in”

arguments posit incentives for and constraints on organizational behavior, but by

themselves do not explain the process of sustaining organizational change. There is

no causal connection established between internal organizational preferences, sub-

unit interaction and bargaining, and the behavioral responses to external pressures

or the introduction of new military technologies and forms. Even principal-agent

models that focus on civilian oversight of the military ultimately rest their case

on how different preferences are institutionalized and used within the military

organization to either promote or obstruct change. What at first looks as an inter-

organizational issue of control—civilian supervision of the military—is in essence

an intra-organizational issue.25 To move beyond the limits of these perspectives on

change necessitates peering into the “blackbox” of organizational decisionmaking

and identities.

Internal Sources of Change

“Inside-out” approaches highlight specific organizational characteristics that nurture

intellectual innovations and translate them into new, tangible tasks. Collectively,

these new wave theories of intra-organizational sources of change no longer assume

that the intrinsic complexity of peacetime-task environments uniformly restrict

organizational concerns to protecting institutional resources, autonomy, and health.

Rather, they take up the variation among services responses under similar external

conditions as the point of departure. Accordingly, the revival of intra-organizational

analysis in security studies has shifted to addressing not only why and when, but

how military services succeed at reinventing themselves.

One school of thought attributes major military change to shifts in intra-

organizational power and material incentives. A dominant strain in this literature

heralds the decisive roles played by sub-groups with power to reward change and

that are integrally tied to the organization’s mainstream. Military innovation thrives

due to the elevation of new political communities and successful bargaining by

embedded agents within the service.26 Stephen Rosen, for example, argues that radical

military change follows from the determination and success of senior commanders

at creating “promotional pathways” for junior officers that encourage the latter to

spearhead new ways of war and provide avenues for them to eventually dominate

the service. The success of the U.S. carrier revolution, for example, is attributed to

the initial cooptation of senior surface ship officers into aviation commands, and the

25 This is adapted from the general critique of Congressional control over U.S.

executive branch agencies, in John Brehm and Scott Gates, Working, Shirking, and Sabotage:

Bureaucratic Response to a Democratic Public (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

1997), p. 19.

26 Drezner (2000); and Kimberly Marten Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organizational

Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955-1991 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1993).


cultivation of new aviator cohorts who were poised to “become admirals in charge

of fleets incorporating aircraft carriers.”27

A rival set of new wave arguments assign causal weight for the impetus, appeal,

and directions for profound change to learning or cultural biases within states and

military organizations. These cognitive-cultural theories echo the claim that “outside-

in” explanations are indeterminate, and do not sufficiently account for how military

organizations promote innovation internally without being forced to do so by threats

of defeat or civilian intervention. At the same time, they part ways with incentive-

based explanations for internal organizational change. The proponents argue that

there is no systematic explanation for the material interests that drive actors with

power in an organization to undertake change that effectively risks reducing their

clout relative to rising entrepreneurs. Instead, the prospects for service reorganization

hinge on the experience and knowledge base of military professionals, or on the

specific normative templates that each service has been socialized into accepting as

its main mission.28

The organizational learning model posits that under favorable conditions,

services are capable of reevaluating and redefining objectives and procedures.29

Contrary to the maxim that organizations seek to reduce uncertainty, learning models

start from the assumption that organizations strive to optimize behavior in their

complex task environments. An organization will respond in ways that contradict

the expectation of classic organizational theory by updating internal beliefs about

core missions consistent with its knowledge base; redefining tasks, skills, training

and procedures accordingly. At the crux of military transformation, therefore, is the

acquisition of new ideas based on observations and (re)interpretations of historical

experience. Learning takes place by encoding inferences from standardized sources

of information, feedback mechanisms and experimentation into new routines for

guiding behavior. This is most likely to occur at the conjunction of a clear impetus

27 Rosen (1991), 20-21, and 78.

28 This literature suggests numerous mechanisms for the influence of norms on

preferences and outcomes operating at both the state and organizational levels of analysis. In

this study, we focus specifically on those cognitive-cultural theories that feature norms and

ideas operating inside a state—such as strategic or organizational culture, or organizational

learning—that are expressly applied to explain differences in military forms and behavior.

This is distinguished from broader constructivist theories that locate ideas and norms at the

international level to explain the similarity in state action and “institutional isomorphism”

within the military profession, independent of the material circumstances of world politics.

Although the distinction is somewhat artificial—as some constructivists seek explanation

for how international norms link up with domestic agents, while some cognitive-cultural

work explores how specific organizational norms derive from historical and professional

developments outside of the state in question—it is relevant, as respective traditions,

explanatory focus, and practical applications have remained quite different. On the distinction

among different levels of cognitive-cultural theories, see especially Theo Farrell, “Culture and

Military Power,” Review of International Studies, 24 (1998): 412-414.

29 Michael D. Cohen and Lee S. Sproull, eds., Organizational Learning (London: Sage

Publications, 1996); and Barbara Levitt and James G. March, “Organizational Learning,”

Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988): 319-340.


or opportunity for reevaluation, a credible internal knowledge base to draw on for

undertaking and managing the appropriate form of innovation, and a prevailing sense

of urgency that provides a focal point around which learning can take place.30 In

practice, service learning is incremental, and manifested by the correlation between

experimentation and the updating of ideas on the one hand; and changes in core

tasks, training and education procedures, and mission requirements, on the other.

Alternatively, the organizational culture approach assigns causal weight to

distinct patterns of assumptions, frames, beliefs, values, norms, and identities shared

by service membership.31 As is the case with the learning thesis, this perspective

rejects the assumption that organizations are fundamentally constrained by formal

or informal rules for accomplishing specific goals under uncertainty. Instead,

it assumes that core organizational preferences, decisionmaking processes, and

perceptions derive from shared ideas of group priorities and missions. In this regard,

culture constitutes the socially constructed ethos and mental “tool kits” among

members or sub-groups within an organization that constrain the way they define

objectives, perceive opportunities and threats in the external environment, and order

options and collective strategies among different policy alternatives. Where service

decisionmakers stand on a specific issue is expected to depend not so much as on

where they sit or how they are constrained by standard operating procedures, as

on the specific normative templates for action that they have been socialized into

accepting.32 In general, an organization’s effectiveness at resisting or standardizing

dramatic adjustments to new strategic or technological settings is expected to vary

consistently with the presence or absence of shared dogmas that favor flexibility or

complement the specific task environment. What is “appropriate” for one service,

does not readily apply to another confronting similar international and domestic

settings.

30 Emily O. Goldman, “Mission Impossible: Organizational Learning in Perspective,”

in Turbowitz, Goldman and Rhodes (1999). This draws directly from the concept of learning

proposed by James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Uncertainty of the Past: Organizational

Learning Under Ambiguity,” in Decisions and Organizations, ed. James G. March (New York:

Basil Blackwell, 1988), 335-358.

31 For an overview of organizational culture, see Edgar H. Schein, Organizational

Culture and Leadership, 2nd Edition (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992);

Harrison M. Trice and Janice M. Beyer, “Studying Organizational Cultures through Rites and

Ceremonials,” Academy of Management Review 9:4 (1984); Andrew Pettigrew, “On Studying

Organizational Cultures,” Administrative Science Quarterly 24: 4 (December 1979), pp.

570-581; Peter J. Frost, Larry F. Moore, Meryl Reis Louis, Craig C. Lundberg, and Joanne

Martin, eds., Reframing Organizational Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1991); Allen M.

Imershein, “Organizational Change as a Paradigm Shift,” Sociological Quarterly 18 (Winter

1977); Peter Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1996); Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1992); J. Steven Ott, The Organizational Culture Perspective (Pacific

Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1989); and Sonya A. Sackman, “Culture

and Subcultures: An Analysis of Organizational Knowledge,” Administrative Quarterly 37

(1992).

32 Edward Rhodes, “Do Bureaucratic Politics Matter?: Some Disconfirming Findings

from the Case of the U.S. Navy,” World Politics 47 (October 1994), p. 32.


The organizational culture perspective provides important insights for

understanding different aspects of military innovation. Military organizations

are especially useful subjects for this approach due to their size and turnover in

membership, as well as the emphasis placed on distinct training, indoctrination and

assimilation of membership within each service. Analysts have demonstrated the

potential value of this approach by drawing attention to how organizational “bias” or

“creed” shapes perceptions of threats and preferences for specific weapons systems,

doctrinal development, offensive versus defensive strategies, and the level of civil-

military integration. One study employs the organizational culture perspective to

explain how preferences for different types of warfare were stigmatized by the fit

between a specific weapon system and the collective beliefs concerning mission

responsibilities of the military services that deployed the weapon in question.33 Another

attributes radical differences between French, German, and British military strategies

on the eve of World War II to the unique cultural frameworks embedded within

each national military service that shaped respective understandings about domestic

politics, the nature of warfare, the utility of conscription, and the “appropriateness”

of offensive and defensive doctrines.34 Still others explain the relative success

(failure) of different military organizations at translating technological inventions

(e.g. battleship and radar) into operational innovations by exploring the capacities of

respective commands to envision the potential for change.35 Most recently, an ardent

proponent of the RMA referred to the U.S. military culture of “service unilateralism

and competition” as the bane of transitioning to a “system of systems” architecture

that lies at the crux of network-centric warfare.36 The common thread to these studies

is that military culture represents the intellectual and inter-subjective capacity of the

different armed services to come to grips with the tasks of preparing for and waging

war in different strategic, political, and technological settings. Such organizational

culture is described independently of specific behavior, and is measured in terms

of the beliefs and ideas that are reflected in doctrines, pedagogy, service training

manuals and exercises, personal histories of officers, and internal communication in

the armed services (especially as they pertain to systematic discussions and studies

of lessons from previous organizational experiences with change).37

33 Jeffrey Legro, Cooperation Under Fire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).

34 Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Doctrine Between the Wars

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

35 Alan Beyerchen, “From Radio to Radar: Interwar Military Adaptation to

Technological Change in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States,” in Murray

and Millett (1996), pp. 265-299; and Edward Rhodes, “Sea Change: Interest-Based vs.

Cultural-Cognitive Accounts of Strategic Choice in the 1890s,” Security Studies 5:4 (Summer

1996), pp. 73-124.

36 William Owens (Adm.), Lifting the Fog of War (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,

2000).

37 See also Williamson Murray, “Does Military Culture Matter,” Orbis (Winter 1999);

Edward Rhodes, “Constructing Power: Cultural Transformation and Strategic Adjustment in

the 1980s,” in Turbowitz, Goldman, and Rhodes (1999); and Colin S. Gray, Modern Military

Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Zisk (1993). Zisk offers a blending of

organizational culture and civilian intervention, suggesting that military innovation is most


The “stickiness” of established norms and ideas notwithstanding, there are

several causal pathways to explain how the interaction between collectively held

expectations, actual events, and socially desirable outcomes can determine an

organization’s propensity for innovation. First, radical transformation can occur

when the membership collectively adheres to ideational expectations that contradict

actual outcomes with starkly negative consequences for the organization. Exogenous

shocks can give credence to oppositional ideas, strengthening the legitimacy and

persuasive power of advocates of change that, in turn, improves the prospects for

consolidating a new dominant idea. Conversely, continuity derives from when the

extant orthodoxy is either confirmed or challenged by events to the advantage of the

organization. Absent unanticipated disaster, even invalidated ideas tend to stick.38

A second set of cultural explanations attribute the diffusion of new ways of war to

the compatibility of novel technologies and doctrines with prevailing organizational

norms, and the legitimacy that these new developments confer upon certain coalitions

within the service. Some services possess cultural mores and doctrinal norms that are

more compatible with certain methods of war than others, irrespective of the nature

of the prevailing threat environment or the performance by foreign militaries.39

Without changes to deep-seated “organizational frames”—including professional

standards for defining and evaluating new information—novel ways of war that are

incompatible with extant knowledge-laden routines are doomed to fall on deaf ears

within a service.40

The potential payoffs for explaining major military change notwithstanding,

each new wave approach is problematic. Rosen’s material-functional argument,

for example, is challenged by the logic of contending procedural relationships.

Newcomers, mavericks, or “missionary” sub-groups unburdened by core

organizational interests, in some instances can become the main drivers of service

change. Insulated from the inertia of routine operations and shielded from interaction

with established institutions, these agents enjoy autonomy and resources to secure a

locus for new ideas within a service.41

likely when civilian leaders are able to widen the defense “policy community” with new ideas

that can change the minds of military leaders, who are otherwise prone to upholding the status

quo.

38 Jeffrey W. Legro, “The Transformation of Ideas,” American Journal of Political

Science 44:3 (July 2000), pp. 419-432; Imershein (1977), pp. 33-43; Thomas U. Berger,

“Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan,” in Katzenstein (1996), pp.

317-356; and Scott D. N. Cook and Dvora Yanow, “Culture and Organizational Learning,”

Journal of Management Inquiry 2:4 (December 1993), pp. 373-390.

39 See especially John A. Lynn, “Heart of the Sepoy: The Adoption and Adaptation of

European Military Practice in South Asia, 1740-1805;” and Michael J. Eisenstadt and Kenneth

M. Pollack, “Armies of Snow and Armies of Sand: The Impact of Soviet Military Doctrine on

Arab Militaries,” in Goldman and Eliason (2003), pp. 33-62; and 63-92.

40 Eden (2004); and Kier (1997). See Rhodes (1996); and Farrell and Terriff (2002).

41 On the benefits of intra-organizational insulation, see especially Drezner (200), pp.

737-738; and Juliet Karbo, “Power Politics in Foreign Policy: The Influence of Bureaucratic

Minorities,” European Journal of International Relations 4 (1998): 67-98. This also is

consistent with arguments for “institutional protection” in Rynning (2001/2), pp. 85-116; and


Similarly, the cognitive-cultural arguments are marred by definitional problems.

It is difficult to pin down the exact meanings of organizational learning and culture,

and how they differ as explanations for change. Recent studies that attribute military

adaptation to organizational learning, for example, refer loosely to concepts of “unit

cohesion,” “accepted standards of behavior” and “organizational creed.” Similarly,

proponents of organizational culture ascribe preferences for change to a malleable

predisposition or “learning” in the ways that a service collectively visualizes the fit

between the particular means of warfare and its mission.42 Yet, because cultures are

resistant to taking on new tasks that seem incompatible with core missions, an inherent

openness to learning is not self-evident, especially in the absence of military defeat

or unambiguous failure.43 There also is no uniform domain for analyzing culture, as it

is used interchangeably to describe mind-sets shared by individuals, units, services,

bureaucracies, and society with conflicting implications for promoting organizational

change. In addition, there are various sub-cultures within an organization, as well as

distinctions between strategic beliefs and managerial style, that are not addressed

by mainstream organizational culture explanations. Which norms matter most for

change? Do shifts in one set of norms about operational goals—such as those that

converge on central missions and tasks—require attendant shifts in managerial

cultures dealing with the means to achieve goals—such as shared cognitive frames,

core competencies for addressing problems, and normative benchmarks—to sustain

successful military change? Under which conditions are organizational norms related

to the means of performing specific tasks, as opposed to corporate objectives, more

decisive as causal agents of change?44

A related problem is that ideas and culture are treated typically as idiosyncratic

attributes of an organization. This severely circumscribes the generalizeability and

predictive value of these concepts across different societies, services, and units. In

particular, the behavioral manifestations of subjective beliefs and mind-sets that

permeate an organization are extremely difficult to observe or measure. Recent efforts

to operationalize generic definitions of ideational and cultural factors are potentially

tautological, as factors associated with training, experimentation, consensus,

hierarchy, and military strategy are treated as attributes of both the cause and effect

of organizational change.45 There also is a problem with separating the independent

effects of new ideas from the influence of material-based interest groups that stand

“creative enclaves” in Pierce (2004), pp. 30-31. For a discussion of the role of mid-level

military iconoclasts, see especially Vincent Davis, The Politics of Innovation: Patterns in

Navy Cases (Monograph Series in World Affairs, no.3, University of Denver, 1967).

42 See especially Michael Brown, Andrew May, and Matthew Slater, “Defeat

Mechanisms: Military Organizations as Complex, Adaptive, Nonlinear Systems,” SAIC

Document No. 00-6960+SAC (10 March 2000).

43 Wilson (1989), pp. 101-109.

44 On the different categories of organizational sub-cultures, see especially Schein,

(1992), pp. 51-143; Sackman (1992), pp. 140-161; and Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action:

Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51 (April 1986).

45 Kier (1997); Legro (1995); Owens (2000); Goldman (1999); Rhodes (1999); Brown,

May, and Slater (2000).


to benefit from the consolidation of those ideas.46 These problems are compounded

by claims that neither is distinct from interests and that both ultimately condition

rational decisionmaking.47 In order for ideas or culture to be useful explanatory

variables, they must be defined in a manner that renders them identifiable, discrete,

independent, stable, and predictable across different cases.

In sum, contemporary debates over external versus internal, and material versus

ideational explanations of military change have reached an impasse. Proponents

of exogenous models of military innovation are too wedded to naïve assumptions

about the preferences and processes of military organizations, and fail to explore

how internal managerial structures and subjective, ideational factors can play

important roles that bias responses to “outside” pressures for change. Because few

argue that shifts in material incentives or external shocks can explain all aspects of

military innovation, there is little dispute that factors internal to specific societies

and military organizations are critical for determining “when and why” different

armed services respond the way they do to prevailing strategic and technological

opportunities. At the same time, while “new wave” endogenous explanations for

organizational change have made important headway towards redressing these issues,

more thinking is clearly needed to pinpoint causal mechanisms in the managerial

processes for institutionalizing new tasks that translate new visions of warfare into

sustained processes of organizational change. This suggests that the search for

explanations for military transformation needs to be redirected from the traditional

“zero-sum” approach to theory building, and infused with a dynamic understanding

of the systematic links between material, ideational, and institutional factors.

Bridging The Gap

Contemporary material-functional and cognitive-cultural theories each offer necessary

but insufficient explanations for military change. In the respective and novel efforts

to push the frontiers of organizational theory, treating military services as dynamic

and evolving entities, each general approach privileges changing interests or ideas as

the main driver for the introduction of a new way of war. Although each perspective

acknowledges an interaction—with material-functional arguments recognizing

the supplementary role played by ideas for shaping proximate identities and

constraining the struggle over contending options, and cognitive-cultural arguments

drawing attention to permissive material power conditions that create openings for

the elevation of new ideas— neither alone specifies how interests and ideas can be

systematically integrated into an explanation for sustaining organizational change.

There are four generic problems with the extant debate that have complicated

analysis of the interplay of functional and normative factors and its effect on

46 John Kurt Jacobsen, “Much Ado About Ideas: The Cognitive Factor in Economic

Policy,” World Politics 47 (1995), pp. 283-310; and Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane,

eds., Ideas, Interests, and Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993)

47 For a contrasting view that stresses the causal autonomy of organizational culture

“because” it is intimately bound up with defining the interests of actors, see especially Kier

(1997), pp. 37-38.


rooting change within a service. The first derives from static treatment of the

dimensions and patterns of military change. Scholars often confine the inquiry to

a single dimension of policy (i.e. technology, strategy, doctrine, tactics). Major

change is captured by the resource and organizational implications of shifts along

one of these elements of military policy.48 Similarly, adjustment and innovation are

treated as mutually exclusive patterns of change. This is manifest by the imposition

of a stylized dichotomy between military adaptation (typically defined in terms

of incrementalism and the grafting of novel tactics or minor modifications onto

prevailing goals, strategies or missions); and innovation (the adoption of radically

new technologies, goals/strategies, and organizations).49 Yet, exclusive focus on a

single policy dimension fails to capture the interplay with other dimensions that can

significantly broaden the character of service change. While adaptation traditionally

depicts the political process of introducing and promoting new ideas within an

organization, innovation reflects the final outcome of such a process. Accordingly,

the accumulation of successive rounds of adaptation across different policy

dimensions can bring to fruition innovative practices. Therefore, it is useful to think

of change in terms of a continuum of adaptation and innovation. Progress along this

continuum reflects transformation, which when successful in the military context

consists of fully institutionalizing a synthesis of successive technological, doctrinal,

and organizational adjustments that together crystallize a fundamentally new way of

war. This focus on transformation also closely reflects the practical pursuit of change

embraced by contemporary defense planners.50

Second, the current debate circumscribes consideration of the intrinsic uncertainty

with introducing and consolidating innovation within an organization. The story is

presumed to be over once new incentives or ideas are introduced.51 For material-

functional explanations, the inherent uncertainty of technological breakthroughs

is mitigated by “low cost” hedging strategies for developing numerous prototypes

and allowing competition among respective sponsors to determine the real value of

innovations. According to Rosen, once an innovative goal is conceived, success turns

on creating new promotional pathways to bring these novel technologies and concepts

to fruition.52 Yet, the vast literature on the diffusion of innovation demonstrates

that the very unpredictability of possible outcomes associated with an invention

belies clear understanding of common objectives needed to tailor material rewards

ex ante. How contending product champions can generate common knowledge

through competition without falling prey to established bureaucratic interests, or

how they can then seek to optimize via respective promotional strategies without

48 For a similar critique, see especially Farrell and Terriff (2002), p. 8.

49 On alternative patterns of military change, see especially Emily O. Goldman, “The

U.S. Military in Uncertain Times,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 20:2 (June 1997), p. 43.

50 See especially the early conceptualization of the practical administrative challenges

posed by military transformation in the Office of Net Assessment’s influential study on the

RMA in Krepinevich (1991).

51 Drezner (2000), p. 733.

52 Rosen (1991), pp. 243-250.


clear visions of victory cannot be explained by instrumental rationality alone.53 Why,

for instance, were early innovations related to helicopter aviation and air mobile

warfare transformed into novel operational practices via the creation of new career

tracks within the U.S. Army, while potential revolutionary changes associated with

tank and air warfare, counterinsurgency, and “pentomic” divisions were initially

orphaned? Why did senior U.S. Navy officials display far less enthusiasm for

establishing new promotional opportunities for junior officers experimenting with

continuous aim gunfire than for those exploring carrier aviation?54 Rewarding initial

expectations can preempt exploration of new and uncertain technical, operational

or strategic possibilities.55 What are the incentives for senior officers to persist with

championing a novel way of war once they are promoted, if as was the case during

the interwar Japanese Navy, continued pursuit can come at great professional and

personal risk?56 How can service entrepreneurs avoid premature lock-in on modest

or sub-optimal technological and doctrinal innovation, as well as create promotional

opportunities that not only lead to top echelons but eclipse established avenues for

advancement?

By contrast, shielding product champions can explain the introduction of

innovative ideas but cannot account for their subsequent ascendance within an

organization. This omission is potentially significant, as suggested by the contrasting

experiences of the British and German Armies at exploring and implementing

revolutionary changes to mobile armored warfare during the interwar period.

Whereas both protected “creative enclaves” to develop technological and conceptual

breakthroughs, the former was partially blinded by previous doctrine and largely

ignored within the broader service community, while the latter proved adept at

incubating and consolidating a new and “disruptive” way of war.57 Under certain

conditions, insulation can be analogous to quarantine, impeding the spread of the

new ideas from a missionary enclave to the broader service community.58

By the same token, cognitive-cultural arguments cannot account for how military

services make intelligible otherwise inchoate developments needed to internalize

53 Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation, 5th Edition (New York: Free Press,

2003). For a summary of the problems of rational choice and materialist arguments for

explaining the formation of “common knowledge,” see especially Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert

O. Keohane, and Stephen D. Krasner, “International Organization and the Study of World

Politics,” International Organization 52:4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 645-685; and James Fearon and

Alexander Wendt, “Rationalism vs. Constructivism: A Skeptical View,” in Walter Carlsnaes,

Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, eds. Handbook of International Relations (London:

SAGE Publications, 2002), p. 60; and James March and Johan Olsen, “The Institutional

Dynamics of International Political Order’,” International Organization 52, no.4 (1998): 943-

969.

54 David Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1998); and Pierce (2004).

55 Rogers (2003), p. 6. On the implications for “sustaining” versus “disruptive”

innovation, see especially Pierce (2004).

56 Pierce (2004), pp. 140-142.

57 Ibid., pp. 34-35.

58 Drezner (2000), p. 737.


common knowledge about a new way of war, and then institutionalize this vision

within the organization.59 It is expected that either incremental or precipitous

transformation will follow from changes in substantive beliefs. Yet, how can the very

actors socialized in the past initially appreciate the unexpected value and application

of new technologies either in the absence of an unambiguous disconfirming event or

amid contending interpretations? How are such differences adjudicated and a new

common knowledge about warfare validated? Recent efforts to disentangle evaluative

(procedural) norms and “organizational frames” from constitutive identities and

substantive beliefs about organizational missions suggest that the gap is narrowing;

but it nonetheless persists, as the consolidation of new mental “tool-kits” is often

treated as historically contingent upon ad hoc shifts in threats, funding priorities,

and entrepreneurial skill.60

In addition, much of the cognitive–cultural literature short-shrifts analysis of the

strategies for incorporating and honing changes to organizational procedures and

goals. This is especially important in the military context, as those responsible for

engineering change must navigate hierarchical structures, nurturing transformation

amid competing interests and power, as well as ideas. As suggested by the

underwhelming display of tank innovation by the British Army, even relaxation

of institutional conservatism could not surmount obstacles imposed by modest

operational capabilities and bureaucratic resistance.61 Thus, an understanding of

the practical significance of new paradigms of warfare necessitates identifying

the conditions and mechanisms that systematically augur well for managing their

institutionalization within military hierarchies.

A third limitation of the debate over the organizational effects of ideas and

interests is confounded by a tendency to conflate normative and functional features

of institutions.62 This obfuscates both the independent impact of different types of

shared norms and evaluative standards, as well as the distinct effects of alternative

distributions of power and authority embodied by different procedural configurations.

The confusion is compounded by the tendency among authors to implicate

institutions that operate at different levels—transnational, inter-governmental, inter-

organizational, and intra-organizational. In addition, predominant organizational

cultural accounts of military change tend to focus on the constitutive and regulatory

dimensions of norms at the expense of neglecting or conflating the impact of distinct

59 This critique draws on insights by Emanuel Adler, “Constructivism and International

Relations,” in Carlsnaes, Risse, and Simmons (2002), p. 106; and Thomas Risse, “Let’s

Argue!: Communicative Action in World Politics,” International Organization 54:1 (Winter

2000), p. 6.

60 See especially Kier (1997), pp. 253-282; and Eden (2004), pp. 253-282.

61 Stone (2002), pp. 187-203.

62 This is especially problematic for ideational arguments that attribute causal

significance for policy to the “power of ideas” and that subsume the material factors driving

the success of an idea within the “institutionalization” of that idea. See critique in John Kurt

Jacobsen, “Much Ado About Ideas: The Cognitive Factor in Economic Policy,” World Politics,

47 (January 1995), pp. 283-310; and Christopher Gelpi, The Power of Legitimacy: Assessing

the Role of Legitimacy in Crisis Bargaining (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp.

16-25.


evaluative (procedural) norms or organizational frames.63 The latter, for example,

speak to the appropriateness of specific problem-solving approaches and the means

of action, rather than to accepted standards of political interaction, permissible

conduct, or substantive organizational goals. Because organizational frames and

evaluative norms constitute distinct institutions and can affect how members of

an organization construct identities, knowledge, strategies, and missions, they

warrant separate examination.64 Disentangling these specific normative and material

institutional elements is significant because each can generate both complementary

and conflicting impulses for change that in different combinations can hold distinct

policy implications for managing transformation. Therefore, a critical step to

understanding the interaction between interests and ideas entails focusing on the

impact of evaluative and problem-solving norms on the institutionalization of

organizational behavior, while simultaneously distinguishing the material incentives

associated with various institutional features that shape intra-organizational power

and responsibility.

Finally, extant conceptions of the interests-ideas interface are overwhelmingly

linear. The relationship between the two is treated as sequential, with either a

new idea initially formulated and then politically brokered; or the empowerment

of a new coalition or political interests that subsequently creates opportunities for

new ideas to flourish.65 Although scholars working within the cognitive-cultural

tradition acknowledge the interplay between ideas and interests, taking feedback (or

blowback) and issues of legitimacy into account for the mobilization of resources

to effect change, the process nonetheless is depicted as sequential. This, however,

misses the simultaneous and synergistic effects that certain combinations of ideas

and interests have on both the success and failure at formulating and implementing

a new way of war. In the interest of discerning independent but reciprocal effects,

therefore, it is important to highlight combinations of intra-organizational ideas and

interests and their implications for sustaining change.

Agency, Culture, and Military Transformation

The old saw that organizations are functionally doomed to stasis no longer carries

the day in theoretical debates over military change. Organizations do undergo

transformation, and the sources of change are both externally and internally

generated. Yet in leading us down this path, the extant debate between the

proponents of ideational versus material-based motivations for organizational change

speaks surprisingly little to the strategies for translating what are initially vague

understandings into sustained revolutions in military affairs. Typically overlooked

is how qualitatively new concepts and methods of warfare that are either imposed,

socially constructed, or instrumentally embraced by members of an organization

transcend early resistance, prevail over alternative courses, and become embedded

63 This is acknowledged in Katzenstein (1996), p. 5.

64 Notable exceptions that distinguish the causal features of organizational frames and

“mental tool kits” include Eden (2004); and Kier (1997).

65 See for example Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare; and Goldman (1997).


within a military service. Consequently, we are left with many unanswered

questions pertaining to the process of administering organizational change: How

does the structure of a military organization affect the prospects for transformation?

How much centralization and decentralization is enough? How do entrepreneurial

commanders bring their organization along to cement a new way of war in light

of asymmetries of information and expertise that favor sub-units? Do they bridge

these gaps by coercing or inducing compliance from below? How do senior officers

manage tradeoffs between exploration and exploitation in a manner that nurtures and

sustains transformation without knowing exactly where they are headed? Should the

agents of change be insulated from or integrated into core service competencies and

forms?

Merging incentive-based and specific ideational factors into the study of intra-

organizational politics offers a first step towards addressing these issues. We

attempt here to unite neo-institutional arguments regarding the management of

hierarchical relations and intra-organizational preferences with specific features

of organizational culture that are related to shared assumptions about creative

problem-solving. Synthesizing these insights in a manner that specifies the costs

and benefits of overseeing change and compares them to the respective costs and

benefits of shirking among different elements within an organizational hierarchy

can go a long way towards understanding the success or failure at institutionalizing

transformation.

Drawing on insights from the “principal-agent” framework, we argue

that nurturing fundamental military change is primarily an issue of managing

strategic interaction within a hierarchical organizational structure. Because policy

entrepreneurs empowered to introduce new forms of warfare are separated from

but are dependent upon the prime developers and consumers tasked with refining

and implementing them, success depends on the administrative strategies pursued

to coordinate asymmetrical interests and curb opportunism within the service.

Accordingly, internal mechanisms of delegation and oversight that are put in place

to manage these discrepancies, or agency costs, determine the effectiveness of

consolidating adjustments along a path towards military transformation.

Three institutional conditions are key to reducing the agency costs of managing

transformation: clear task delineation, integration of material incentives for innovation

with core service promotional tracks, and regularized access to “affected” third

parties. Managerial strategies that specify complementary (as opposed to redundant)

tasks vest sub-units with discrete responsibility, making them readily accountable

for the performance of assigned mandates. Similarly, administrative forms that open

opportunities to mainstream advancement for service innovators can increase the

desirability of embracing new tasks without orphaning new billets. Finally, reliance

on indirect measures—including informal back channels between entrepreneurial

commanders and sub-units that reinforce their formal relationships, competition

between rivals within or outside the service, and established lines of communication

to extra-organizational actors with independent incentives to observe and influence

the performance of sub-units—create opportunities for oversight that are potentially

less costly and more reliable than intrusive mechanisms of institutional control.


Formal checks and material incentives alone, however, are not sufficient to

consolidate military organizational change. Shared understandings and ideas too

play a pivotal role bridging administrative gaps, especially when the meaning and

direction of change are vague and unproven, as is the case with the introduction

of radically new forms of warfare. Specifically, managerial norms, which consist

of collectively accepted assumptions about appropriate representations of problems

and criteria for problem-solving, constrain how actors within an organization make

sense of new and uncertain adjustments. If accessed, they can offer “common

knowledge” for closing the residual monitoring gap in performing non-routine tasks.

By invoking these common analytical referents for assessing new information, policy

entrepreneurs can make more transparent to actors across an organizational hierarchy

the legitimacy of new directions, as well as the inappropriateness of shirking. It also

instills trust that can reinforce functional mechanisms of oversight by making it easier

for agents to “visceralize” new directions for policy and what is being asked of them,

even when transformational technologies and policy objectives are neither shared

nor obvious. The key to nurturing successful military change, therefore, rests with

the intra-institutional alignment of authority, material inducements, and managerial

norms that enable entrepreneurial commanders to devote more resources exploring

new ways of war, and that provide sub-units with little incentive and inclination to

devote residual autonomy shirking the performance of new tasks.

Conclusion

The central concept at the crux of this study is the idea that military transformation

constitutes a process of initiating and sustaining organizational change. This is not

to suggest that major military change cannot be precipitated by events and pressures

external to military organizations, but accepts that for such change to last it must be

embedded in the very services that are the targets of transformation. Returning to the

organizational level of military change does not ignore the important role of strategic

and ideational factors; rather it focuses analytical attention on the institutional and

political features that provide the grist for systematically integrating material and

normative strands in the extant literature on military innovation. Viewing military

transformation as the outgrowth of the interaction between organizational and

normative mechanisms of oversight results in a better understanding of the conditions

under which managerial efforts are likely to have a decisive effect on the course of

military transformation. Because policy entrepreneurs empowered to introduce new

ways of war are at once separated from but dependent upon subordinates tasked

with examining and implementing such change, success depends on coordinating

asymmetrical interests and curbing opportunistic behavior within a service.

Accordingly, variation in the internal mechanisms of delegation and administrative

control, and in the extent to which collective assumptions about problem-solving and

evidentiary standards are accessed determines the agency costs and effectiveness of

military transformation. The next chapter develops this argument.

Chapter 2

Principals, Agents, and Service

Transformation

Chapter 1 critiqued the extant literature on major military change, suggesting that

the intra-organizational diffusion of innovation is an important but much overlooked

issue. In this chapter, we present a theoretical framework to fill this void. We argue

that material and normative factors related to intra-organizational control can be

complementary, and that examining synergies via a modified principal-agent

framework augurs well for a systematic explanation of military transformation. The

core claim here is that the capacity of service entrepreneurs to hone and sustain

transformation is largely a function of the internal structure of delegation and

oversight. These factors specify the division of authority and range of preferences

for exploration versus exploitation in task environments, the costs of monitoring

and enforcing new tradeoffs between these preferences, and the incentives for

opportunism within the organization. If properly aligned, they can profoundly

narrow the gap between what military commanders ask for in terms of change and

how subordinates choose to respond. Given the intrinsic uncertainty, however, we

add that principals must rely on elements of common knowledge to legitimate new

directions and boost the credibility of commitments to transformation. Specifically,

shared assumptions about professionalism and appropriate methods for problem-

solving, as opposed to common understandings of service mission, provide points of

leverage for organizational entrepreneurs to reduce the transaction costs of overseeing

change. Thus, while the scope of success at institutionalizing military transformation

depends critically on getting the incentive structure “right”—aligning choices and

behavior across different levels of hierarchy—the efficiency of doing so turns on the

instrumental use of managerial norms.

This chapter develops this modified theory of agency to specify conditions

conducive for managing military transformation. We trace the influence of incentive-

schemes and managerial norms on the propensity of organizations to institutionalize

new methods and forms of warfare. We present our basic assumptions about military

organizations and the challenges of managing transformation within a generic

principal-agent framework, and then posit a theory for answering the following

questions: What are the different incentives for exploration and exploitation in a

military organization? Why do they differ among various levels of hierarchy? How

and under which conditions can the champions of change supervise successfully

without knowing exactly where they are headed? Under which conditions do sub-

units precipitously versus gradually comply with change, as opposed to resist or even

sabotage development and implementation of new directives? Finally, we present a


method to test our answers to these questions in historical, cross-national, cross-

service case studies of successful and unsuccessful military transformation.

Assumptions

The microfoundational approach advanced here—that focuses on the causal

connection between intra-organizational incentives, inclinations, and choices

for transformation—is premised on several core assumptions about military

organizations. First, we assume that intra-organizational components are the basic

units of analysis for studying military change. This stands in contrast to the more

traditional approach that treats organizations as monolithic entities. As noted

in chapter 1, this classic assumption fails to take into account the variation in

dispositions or behavior within a single organization.1 That said, we also take issue

with rival approaches that focus exclusively on individual officers. Not only does

the individual level of analysis introduce idiosyncrasies that defy even the tightest

psychological explanations, but individuals within an organization are constrained by

the mandates of their offices that specify basic elements of power, preferences, and

modalities of interaction. Accordingly, interaction among sub-groupings and internal

agencies vested with different mandates and across different levels of hierarchy lies

at the nub of understanding the sources of change within a military organization.

In this stylized discussion of principal-agent relations within a service, we refer to

“commander” as the office empowered with authority to oversee the implementation

of new forms, and to “sub-unit” as the agency delegated some kind of authority to

implement functional tasks under the supervision of the commander.2

Second, we relax traditional assumptions that military services are closed and

static, and that a corporate preference can be deduced from a single functional

objective, such as reducing uncertainty or maximizing budgets. Instead, we assume

that military organizations are complex entities, comprised of a collection of sub-

components, each engaged in rational, goal-seeking activities.3 Each sub-group

is delegated responsibility for carrying out specific tasks that produce outcomes

in terms of technologies, doctrine, strategy, tactics, and procedures. The assigned

1 John Brehm and Scott Gates, Working, Shirking, and Sabotage: Bureaucratic

Response to a Democratic Public (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), p.

19.

2 There can be multiple principals and agents within a hierarchical relationship (both

outside and inside of a specific organization). Because this study examines specifically the

managerial challenges to consolidating change within an organization, I confine the analysis

to the strategic interaction between those parties that are explicitly delegated authority to

supervise transformation and those that are assigned authority to implement these new

directives. Accordingly, the most relevant principals are those organizational sub-groups

that possess de jure authority to make key policy decisions related to assimilating and

institutionalizing a new way of war. What is important here is not whether these sub-groups

dominate a service, but the authority assigned to them to monitor and oversee the nurturing of

change within the organization.

3 James D. Thompson, Organizations in Action (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967).

Principals, Agents, and Service Transformation 37

authority defines each sub-unit’s preference, entitling each to reap certain benefits

(and costs) associated with fulfilling (or not) specific mandates. To the extent that

each sub-unit bears the full benefits and costs of carrying out its assigned authority

there is a strong incentive for due diligence, assuring that the collective output will

exceed that which can be produced by each sub-unit absent coordination. Within

hierarchical military organizations, for example, senior command levels possess

inclusive rights to monitor the behavior of subordinate units and enforce directives.

However, because sub-units are not directly responsible for the organization’s

aggregate performance—they are rewarded and punished for fulfilling specific

mandates—they do not shoulder encompassing organizational preferences.4

Similarly, military organizations are presumed to consist of multiple hierarchical

relationships that interact in unplanned and unintended ways. Organizational leaders

craft strategies to navigate simultaneously dynamic external environments, where

they must embrace ongoing interactions among various political and societal actors

that produce unforeseen consequences, and complex intra-organizational hierarchies,

where they must strive to control the behavior of multiple sub-units. Situated in this

Janus-faced relationship, service entrepreneurs have incentive to respond to new

opportunities by overseeing the formulation and implementation of a strategy for

organizational change.5

Fourth, we assume that military organizations are open, subject to societal,

political, and technological pressures that surround them. Commanding offices seek

to encourage sub-units not only to maximize the efficiency of tried and true methods,

but to explore new and untested approaches for fulfilling delegated responsibilities

amid shifting technology and task environments. Because optimal behavior is

measured in terms of a balance between alternative functional objectives that must

be pursued in fluid external settings, we do not assume that there is a single “correct”

response.6

Finally, we assume that military organizations are loosely coupled, with slack

between the authority of commanders to set broad directives for policy and the

responsibilities of subordinates to implement them.7 Slack fosters opportunism,

as it is grounded in information asymmetries and conflicts of interest between

commanders that have a mandate to pay heed to pressures for exploration and

lower-level units that are primarily concerned with the exploitation of stable tasks.

Thus, military transformation can be understood as growing out of a set of choices

4 Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz, “Production, Information Costs, and Economic

Organization,” American Economic Review 62 (December 1972), pp. 777-795; and Gareth

R. Jones, “Transaction Costs, Property Rights, and Organizational Culture: An Exchange

Perspective,” Administrative Science Quarterly 28 (1983), pp. 454-467.

5 Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991;

Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 1994).

6 Robert Axelrod and Michael D. Cohen, Harnessing Complexity: Organizational

Implications of a Scientific Frontier (New York: Free Press, 1999), pp. 43-45.

7 For distinctions between complex versus linear, and tightly versus loosely coupled

organizational structures, see especially Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1999).


among a diversity of possible responses to a shifting task environment presented by

continuous interaction between and among commanders (principals) and sub-units

(agents).8

Broadening the Frontiers of Agency Theory

The assumptions above provide a foundation for deducing an explanation for

organizational change. Because the power to oversee and reward transformation is

separate from functional expertise and responsibility for implementing change, there

are conflicts of interest between different levels of organization. Gaps in interests

and expertise give rise to principal-agent relationships that are ubiquitous within

hierarchical decisionmaking structures.9 Principals—those empowered to introduce

fundamental change and to set overall performance targets within an organization—

depend on agents—those subordinate units with greater technical expertise and

that are more proximate to the practical effects of change—to refine, assess, and

implement new visions and forms of behavior. Acting as distant supervisors, principals

establish general parameters for change but are both unwilling—because of the risks

of failure—and unable—because of information asymmetries, technical unknowns,

and constraints on time and resources—to explain or dictate how new tasks should

be defined and achieved. Accordingly, principals seek to structure a relationship with

sub-units so that the latter act effectively on their behalf by critically exploring and

executing new ways of war. The cumulative result of this iterative process, if all

operates smoothly, is radical change in the methods and forms of an organization’s

approach to warfare.10

The rub lies with the costs of securing compliance. Agents are interested in

introducing change to the extent that doing so benefits them directly and that they

possess the resources needed to discharge new duties effectively. This presents

potential problems of “adverse selection” and “moral hazard.”11 With the former,

agents have an incentive to exploit advantages of information and expertise to portray

themselves as more committed to implementing new directives than they really are in

an effort to gain promotion. This can potentially confound the efforts of principals to

appoint true champions of organizational change, and if not redressed properly, can

8 Ibid.

9 For a non-technical review, see especially Brehm and Gates (1997); Matthew D.

McCubbins, Roger G. Noll, and Barry R. Weingast, “Structure and Process, Politics, and

Policy: Administrative Arrangements and the Political Control of Agencies,” Virginia Law

Review 75:2 (March 1989), pp. 431-507; John W. Pratt and Richard J. Zeckhauser, “Principals

and Agents: An Overview,” in John W. Pratt and Richard J. Zeckhauser Principals and Agents:

The Structure of Business (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1985), pp. 1-35; and

Barry Mitnick, “The Theory of Agency: The Policy ‘Paradox’ and Regulatory Behavior,”

Public Choice 24 (1975), pp. 27-47.

10 McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast (1989).

11 Ibid. See also D. Roderick Kiewiet and Mathew D. McCubbins, The Logic of

Delegation: Congressional Parties and the Appropriations Process (Chicago: The University

of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 22-27.


generate incentives for agents to systematically “oversell” themselves. The problem

of moral hazard pertains to the inherent difficulties of monitoring the performance

of agents that are more expert on the practical aspects of new tasks. Possessing

limited responsibilities and discretion over their own actions, agents have incentives

to act opportunistically in fulfilling assigned duties, withholding information from

principals that might lead to more onerous demands or adversely affect their standing

within the organization, subject to the principal’s oversight. They have incentives to

optimize on conspicuous performance indicators at the expense of either proactively

trouble-shooting unexpected problems or pursuing nebulous elements of change

difficult for principals to observe. The incentives to shirk new tasks are especially

pronounced where a specific agent’s actions only partially determine organizational

change.12 The resources lost to shirking new directives or to containing opportunism

constitute the agency costs of sustaining change. As agency costs mount, principals

must devote greater portions of their resources, time, and effort to supervision that

come at a cost to exploration. If left unabated, such shirking can mar the prospects

for radical change. For a novel method to thrive within an organization, therefore,

the champions of change must possess either effective administrative control

mechanisms or procedures to formalize learning and encourage responsiveness to

transformational objectives.13

Within this framework, military officers charged with undertaking and sustaining

novel methods of war must depend on subordinates and internal groupings to

dutifully carry out new tasks. As is the case with other principal-agent scenarios, this

relationship involves elements of hierarchy and strategic interaction.14 Commanders

possess formal authority to give orders to subordinates and to delegate responsibilities

for the implementation of specific tasks. Notwithstanding differences in official rank

and authority, commanders depend on sub-units for information and expertise to

carry out assigned tasks. Although generally obedient, sub-units do not possess the

same responsibilities as their commanders, nor do they have a strong incentive to

make changes that risk provoking professional uncertainty and intrusive intervention

from above. Because they are interested in fulfilling duties with the least amount of

disruption, sub-units may strive to manipulate the relationship with superiors on the

margins and, subject to their expectations of being detected and disciplined, that can

effectively mitigate both the scope and efficiency of transformation. This suggests

12 Kiewart and McCubbins (1991), pp. 24-27.

13 The literature on containing agency costs focuses on either different types of

monitoring and administrative control, or methods for encouraging horizontal learning among

agents. For a discussion of the former, see especially Ibid., pp. 31-33; Mathew D. McCubbins

and Thomas Schwartz, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire

Alarms,” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984), pp. 165-179. For an alternative

view of supervision that focuses on the preferences and learning capacity of agents, see

especially Brehm and Gates (1997), pp. 46-74.

14 Peter Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 54. Feaver applies this framework to

relations between civilians and the military in the American national security system. As

discussed below, the same elements of hierarchy and strategic interaction form the crux of

intra-organizational management issues with the military services.


that within an otherwise unambiguous hierarchical organizational structure, strategic

interaction between the supervisors of change and respective sub-units has a direct

effect on organizational behavior. This occurs as the choices by commanders to

delegate and orchestrate change and the choices that sub-units make in how they

comply with such directives are contingent. Thus, it is by creating efficient monitoring

and enforcement schemes, and by establishing procedures to bring sub-unit choices

into line, that the promoters of change can effectively instill an organization-wide

incentive for institutionalizing transformation.

Although the traditional principal-agent framework fits nicely with conventional

understandings of professional relations in the military, it does not capture the full

range of intra-organizational dynamics related to defense transformation. First,

classic formulations focus almost exclusively on the internal traction of clearly

formulated directives with explicitly targeted rewards and punishments. As summed

up by John Brehm and Scott Gates, the basic assumption in this framework is that

“the principal knows what she wants; the problem is getting it.”15 The primary

challenge is to lower the agency costs and secure compliance with specific, top-

down generated directives within an organization. Yet because military entrepreneurs

operate in complex external and internal settings, as well as lack clear conceptions

of transformational outcomes, the agency costs of managing change are especially

acute. Incentive schemes and performance-based monitoring that otherwise work

well when principals know exactly what they want are less effective when the ends

are nebulous at the outset. The agency costs attendant to open-ended exploration

present special challenges, as there are potentially multiple applications for new

technologies and different paths for addressing new tasks, but only limited time

and resources available for principals to devote to oversight.16 Given the range of

“feasible” choices, the challenge of managing transformation is not simply a formal

control issue, but involves shared understanding of appropriate behavior up and

down the organizational hierarchy.17

Second, the principal-agent framework fixates on issues of compliance. Payoffs

to both principals and agents are calculated in terms of the performance of top-down

tasks, regardless of the substance of the action performed.18 Success is a function

not only of getting sub-units to comply but making sure that the substance of

compliance is conducive to advancing transformation. However, the potential range

of compliance at performing otherwise vague directives, and the trade-offs between

time and effort spent on monitoring versus exploration by principals, necessitate

moving beyond strict incentive-based schemes to understand the propensity of sub-

units to line up behind transformation. The issue of how an agent chooses to tow

15 Brehm and Gates (1997), p. 25.

16 Deborah Dougherty, “Organizing for Innovation,” in Stewart Clegg, Cynthia Hardy,

and Walter R. Nord, eds., Handbook of Organizational Studies (London: SAGE Publications,

1996), pp. 424-439.

17 David M. Kreps, “Corporate Culture and Economic Theory,” in James E. Alt and

Kenneth A. Shepsle, eds., Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1990), pp. 90-143.



the line is almost as important to managerial success as whether it decides to do so,

especially when it comes to taking action in uncharted waters. By acknowledging that

sub-units can be predisposed to embrace change if it is presented “appropriately,” we

can begin to appreciate how less formal and non-material factors can either expedite

or complicate the effective administration of transformation.

On the surface, classic characterizations of “shirking” also seem overstated when

applied to highly disciplined military organizations. In the literature on bureaucratic

politics and firm behavior, the term refers to slothful functionaries and employees

primarily interested in maximizing wages while minimizing effort; elements that

are less appropriate to military servicepersons. There also is a tendency to equate

“shirking” with the most extreme forms of insubordination. Yet, as Peter Feaver

demonstrates, the term can be constructively applied to military organizations in terms

of professional autonomy rather than material profits. In the civil-military context,

for example, “regardless of what the military agent is asked to do, he would like to do

it with the minimum amount of civilian interference and oversight.”19 This includes

the presentation of different policy mixes that do not comport with a commanding

officer’s prescriptions for meeting assigned tasks, the inflation or skewing of threat

assessments and task requirements, appeals to alternative constituencies and higher

ups both within and outside the service, and reticence towards taking the initiative to

illuminate potential pitfalls and opportunities with the performance of new tasks.20

Shirking represents less an issue of disobedience (unless taken to the extreme with

the overt defiance of orders) than the deliberate failure by an agent to complement

or satisfy the spirit of a principal’s commitment to exploring the unknown. In short,

shirking can be measured as much as by what sub-unit military agents do not do

in meeting the spirit of what is asked from them by commanding units, as by how

strictly they conform to the letter of a new policy directive.

Furthermore, the classic problem assumes that agents confront a dichotomous

choice in responding to central directives; they can either comply or shirk. But as

discussed by Brehm and Gates, agents within an organization have a wider range

of responses at their discretion.21 As depicted in Figure 2.1, subordinates can

respond by meeting minimum requirements for change, narrowly addressing formal

directives. This can include satisfying crude performance indicators and gradually

integrating successive changes to complementary policy fields. This is tantamount to

a hedging strategy of protracted transformation. Alternatively, sub-units can comply

with vigilance, exceeding the expectations and policy goals prescribed by respective

principals. Enthusiastic agency support for change can help to push transformation

beyond what principals can initially envision. With such compliance, sub-units not

only embrace the call for change, but proactively pursue uncharted paths to advance

the spirit of transformation.

Agents also can chose among very different forms of shirking. On the one hand,

they can be strictly opportunistic by avoiding new tasks to seize upon openings to

skirt detection from above. Agents can passively resist by foot-dragging. This can

19 Feaver (2003), p. 64.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., pp. 22, 26.


include ad hoc adjustments to a single policy field—i.e technological, strategic, or

procedural—that are grafted onto old practices and not integrated with other policy

dimensions. Military sub-units can fail to put forth a “good faith effort” in support of

a principal’s interests, even colluding with other agencies to retard transformation.

Although a principal ultimately may be able to reel in such recalcitrant agents,

the form of compliance may be less progressive than expected and the principal

may have to overpay for it in terms of time and resources devoted to oversight.

Alternatively, agents can choose a more egregious form of shirking by actively

sabotaging new directives. Because commanders do not know exactly where they

are headed by introducing change, sub-units can exploit favorable asymmetries by

intentionally withholding information, offering “negative advice,” and skewing

the analysis and presentation of technical data used to make or defend a policy

decision.22 Agents can solicit allies among other sympathetic sub-units upon which

the principal also depends for expertise, as well as among rival principals within

the service that can challenge their immediate commander. They also can collude

with “outside” allies from other services, civilian authorities, political sympathizers,

and the corporate sector to generate alternative information and pressure on their

immediate commanders either to uphold the status quo or to alter significantly the

course they are heading. In the U.S. military, for example, sub-units can conduct

end runs around civilian supervisors by exploiting legitimate authority to appeal

to sympathetic legislators via public hearings and testimony.23 Thus, there are clear

distinctions between active and passive forms of compliance/non-compliance along

the “working-shirking” continuum that can carry very different implications for

policy behavior.

In light of these caveats, we develop in the next section a modified theory of

agency to explain the variable propensity of military organizations to institutionalize

transformation. We broaden traditional principal-agent models by integrating issues

of hierarchical supervision with normative elements of common knowledge and

22 This element of shirking is often neglected in traditional principal-agent models.

However, as argued by Brehm and Gates, this form of intentional subversion is qualitatively

different than opportunistic resistance and requires a fundamentally different approach to

supervision. Brehm and Gates (1997), p. 31.

23 Feaver (2003), pp. 58-68.

Agent

Shirk Comply

Sabotage Foot dragging Hedge Vigilance

Agent

Shirk Comply

Sabotage Foot dragging Hedge Vigilance

Figure 2.1 Agent Choices


trust among the promoters and implementers of organizational change. From this we

establish a causal link between management strategies and military transformation,

deducing an explanation for the variety of forms that success and failure can take.

A Modified Agency Theory of Military Transformation

The first step towards amending the traditional principal-agent framework is to

disaggregate the managerial problem into a stylized four-step process of strategic

interaction among commanding units with authority to promote new directions, and

the respective sub-units tasked with implementing them. This process unfolds as

follows: a) service commanders first settle on the general contours of new ways of

war; b) they then decide on how to oversee the implementation of new directives;

c) sub-units choose between strictly adhering to upper-level directives for change or

not; and d) commanders, in turn, choose to reward vigilant compliance or to punish

opportunism. Within this scheme, each choice is contingent upon the others.24

Given asymmetries of authority, interests, and information the intensity of agency

problems and the attendant implications for military transformation vary according

to how commanders and sub-units adapt to the other’s decisions. In theory, the

probability of “successful” transformation is greatest when military commanders

have strong incentives to monitor exploration indirectly and cheaply, and when sub-

units have weak incentives to shirk. This is most likely to obtain under conditions

where: the pay-offs to sub-units for embracing exploration are significant; control

mechanisms can reliably and efficiently detect shirking; the probabilities that senior

military officers will punish sub-units caught shirking are high; and there is a shared

sense that the methods for orchestrating change are appropriate. Conversely, the

prospects for managing “successful” transformation are least likely when military

commanders have strong incentives to monitor intrusively, and sub-units retain

strong incentives to act opportunistically. This condition is most likely to obtain

when the advantages of exploitation outweigh those of exploration for sub-units,

and the probabilities are low that foot-dragging or sabotage will be detected and

punished. By combining insights from the literature on delegation, oversight, and

managerial norms, we deduce that the likelihood that service entrepreneurs will

succeed at sustaining transformation depends on the specific combination of intra-

organizational procedures for administrative control and for accessing shared norms

of problem-solving.

Strategic Interaction Between Champions and Agents of Change

The process of institutionalizing a fundamentally new way of war begins with

the assignment of specific units (commanders) to supervise transformation. These

24 This argument draws on the insights from the literature on the new economics of

organization, and is adapted to explain the management of military innovation from Peter D.

Feaver, “Crisis as Shirking: An Agency Theory Explanation of the Souring of American Civil-

Military Relations,” Armed Forces & Society, 24:3 (Spring 1998), pp. 407-434; and Avant

(1994).


champions of change are formally charged with deciding on a new mix of exploration

and exploitation appropriate for the prevailing technology and task environments.

Professionally accountable to the High Command (and in many cases to respective

civilian authorities) for the “success” or “failure” of their units—both in terms of

the rationalization of defense expenditures and performance on the battlefield—they

have strong incentives to advance the service’s innovative capacity as well as its

efficiency at performing specified tasks. Accordingly, the commanders of change are

very sensitive to opportunities for sustaining new means and methods of war that will

allow them to achieve both goals simultaneously. Yet, entrepreneurial commanders

are neither omniscient, naïve, nor instrumentally myopic; their offices are limited in

the information and expertise regarding the final outputs of transformation, as well

as in the computational skills needed to make effective choices. As a consequence,

commanders are critically dependent on the input and performance provided by

subordinates that are closer to developments on the ground and control crucial

knowledge about the possibilities and limitations of new approaches for carrying out

specific organizational missions. Before embarking on the process of administering

reform, newly assigned supervisors must decide on the general scope and direction

of organizational change, even without knowing exactly where they are headed.

Thus, an important challenge before them is to devise effective administrative

control mechanisms that motivate subordinate offices to progressively define, refine,

and flesh out the practical implications of new directives that are otherwise general

and inchoate.25

In addition, the purveyors of change within a service look to external actors

to bolster their understanding of the likely fruits of transformation. They can be

swayed by new knowledge generated by civilian “experts;” pressures generated

by the overarching political, commercial, and social milieu; and by information

produced by competition among other commanders and services that also seek

to strike out new balances between exploration and exploitation in managing

respective units. These actors generate new ideas and understandings about future

technologies and possibilities of warfighting that principals can use to chart an initial

course for organizational change. The upshot is that commanders have an incentive

to innovate in dynamic technology and task environments, but only to the extent

that the possibilities and effectiveness of doing so are brought to their attention by

subordinates and/or outside pressures.

Upon striking a new balance between exploration and exploitation, commanders

must select a mechanism to monitor sub-unit compliance. One option is to monitor

intrusively. In practice, this requires that commanders micro-manage sub-unit

activities by identifying technologies relevant to performing discrete tasks, scripting

new procedures for wartime and peacetime exercises, supervising directly the

integration of new approaches into all phases of decisionmaking, and retaining large

staffs to police the behavior of sub-units down to the lowest level. This is a hands-

on, labor-intensive approach to oversight that is very reliable for communicating

25 Rosen (1991), pp. 19-20; and Mathew D. McCubbins, Roger D. Noll, and Barry R.

Weingast, “Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control,” Journal of Law,

Economics, and Organization 3:2 (Fall 1987), pp. 246-250.


and observing agency behavior. However, “police patrolling” imposes significant

direct and opportunity costs in terms of the allocation of scare time and resources.

Intrusive oversight compels commanders to sacrifice energy that could be used for

exploring technologies and approaches in order to devote more attention to the

details of effectively performing specific missions. It also risks increasing mistakes

caused by the meddling of commanders in areas outside of their expertise.26 These

problems are compounded when it comes to managing radical change where the

ends are intrinsically nebulous.

Alternatively, commanders can choose to monitor sub-unit performance

indirectly, relying on either outside input provided by civilian experts, the private

sector, and watchdog agencies, or information generated by competition among

rival sub-units. This is a less costly approach to oversight, as commanders can take

advantage of affected third parties (or “fire alarms”) with complementary interests

in detecting and reporting on the opportunism or insolence of agents. It also allows

for more energy to be devoted to exploring novel approaches to war. The drawback,

however, is that commanders become increasingly removed from the activity of sub-

units and potentially hostage to divergent interests of “third parties.”27 Monitoring

indirectly also comes at the expense of overseeing the full range of agent activities.

This renders superiors increasingly dependent upon crude performance indicators,

such as the procurement and acquisition of new technologies, and the creation of new

job titles. As discussed below, this hands-off approach to managing change affects

sub-unit calculations about the costs and benefits of giving priority to exploration

versus exploitation in responding to new directives. Thus, commanders strive to put

in place an optimal mix of the two forms of oversight that allows them to secure

proper control over subordinates while maximizing residual discretion devoted to

exploring new ways of war.

The third step in this process involves choices made at lower levels of the chain

of command. Once the supervisor settles on an appropriate mode of monitoring,

sub-units must decide how to react. They face a choice between strictly following

directives or undertaking different forms of shirking. The former entails doing exactly

what commanders ask for, how they ask for it, as well as performing new tasks with

due diligence and skill, and in a manner that reinforces the new balance between

exploration and exploitation struck by commanding offices. Vigilant compliance

also can be manifest in proactive measures to advance the cause of transformation.28

Conversely, sub-units can choose to shirk, either acting opportunistically to re-

interpret directives consistent with their own self-interests, or to sabotage new

directives, taking action to intentionally undermine transformational initiatives

from above. Unlike commanders, agents are concerned primarily with improving

the exploitation of established operations rather than with the exploration of new

technology and task environments. This conflict of interest is endemic to military

hierarchies, as sub-units stand to reap direct rewards for effectively performing

established tasks, on the one hand; while they bear the full costs but receive only

26 McCubbins and Schwartz (1984). See also discussion in Feaver (1998).

27 McCubbins and Schwartz (1984)

28 This is adapted directly from Feaver (1998).


partial benefits of implementing novel procedures, on the other hand. Moreover, when

an agent shirks by clutching to the exploitation of traditional operations and reducing

efforts towards the completion of novel tasks, the savings in effort accrue only to the

agent; the resulting losses of foregone innovation are borne collectively by the other

members of the organization. This fundamental asymmetry of incentives induces

agents to engage in some degree of shirking, irrespective of personal competence

or intentions.29

Three factors ultimately affect an agent’s decision to shirk. The first is related

to the asymmetry of information within service hierarchies. The more commanders

are dependent on agents for interpreting the significance of new technology and task

environments, the more vulnerable they are to the choices made by subordinates.

The second condition has to do with the extent of the conflict of interest between

upper- and lower-levels of decisionmaking, or the difference between what

commanders want agents to do and what sub-units would likely do anyway. The

smaller the difference between a commander’s call for exploration and an agent’s

understanding of the potential benefits of such action, the smaller the incentive to

shirk. Unconvinced of the appropriateness of the direction that they are headed,

the more recalcitrant the agency response. The third factor is related to how agents

expect commanders to respond to shirking. The more likely a principal is to follow

through on threats of punishment for shirking, the greater the incentives agents have

to comply with directives for change.

The final choice in this simple model of managing transformation involves the

reaction by commanders to agency compliance, shirking, or sabotage. This entails

an acknowledgement of vigilant compliance or the detection of opportunistic or

subversive behavior, as well as a subsequent decision by a commander to follow

through with respective rewards or punishment. Given the asymmetry of information

between principals and agents and the high costs of intrusive oversight, commanders

must contend with problems of adverse selection, as they risk promoting sub-units

with limited convictions for change, thus generating incentives for sub-optimal

compliance. Similarly, limits to observing sub-units raise problems of moral

hazard, as commanders must rely on proxy measures of performance that can be

manipulated to redirect sub-unit behavior towards specific indicators other than the

desired transformational behavior.

Furthermore, the decision to reward compliance or punish shirking/sabotage is

not self-evident, as there are direct and indirect costs involved. The promotion of

vigilant agents can potentially create a void that may be difficult to fill. During the

time it will take to retrain and coordinate successor agents, a principal risks losing

momentum for change. Although there are tangible benefits in terms of “correcting”

the implementation of directives and deterring future shirking or dissention by

other agents, a commander must divert time and resources to intervening at lower

decisionmaking levels to reverse opportunism. The incentive to punish varies with

the salience of the issue (and degree of infraction) to the changes desired by senior

officers. Commanders also must take care to issue credible threats of punishment,

and to avoid overreacting in a manner that may discourage desirable and proactive

29 Alchian and Demsetz (1972).


forms of creativity and flexibility that are necessary for coping with dynamic

technology and task environments. In addition, while commanders retain authority

to set boundaries for acceptable behavior and to interpret the implementation of

policy guidelines, their responses ultimately are constrained by what actors inside

the organization tell them and deem appropriate. Thus, the probability of effectively

rewarding or punishing agents is a function of the costs of: detecting compliance,

opportunism or defiance; mobilizing sufficient resources to reward compliance or

reverse “independent” behavior; and diverting energy from alternative priorities.

The result is a dynamic process in which imperfectly informed principals and

agents interact to determine a military organization’s response to new technologies

and tasks. It is the potential for opportunism, fostered by information asymmetries

and conflicts of interest between commanders and sub-units, that makes it difficult

to sustain new means and methods of war. Although responsible for striking a new

balance between exploration and exploitation, commanders confront high costs

of directly observing and controlling the implementation of new directives. If not

careful, they risk paying the price of adverse selection, taking cues for innovation

from risk-averse sub-units in order to compensate for information deficiencies.

On the other hand, agents have a structural incentive to shirk, as they are directly

affected by the challenges of implementing new directives and stand to benefit more

from successful exploitation than from exploration. If left unabated, this generates

problems of moral hazard, with agents retaining incentives to redirect behavior from

acting creatively to meeting the crude performance targets specified by commanders

who are otherwise limited in their capacities to observe directly their actual behavior.30

Consequently, the prospects for honing and sustaining true military transformation

are fundamentally linked to the internal mechanisms put in place to manage the

choices involved in formulating and implementing new directives.

In light of asymmetries in authority, interests, and expertise between principals and

agents, as well as the objective uncertainty of pursuing unproven means and methods

of war, how can service supervisors contain the agency costs of transformation? How

can they mitigate the adverse selection and moral hazard problems that confound

hierarchical decisionmaking, and increase the likelihood that sub-units will comply

by using their residual autonomy to sustain exploration? To answer these questions

we need to understand the procedural and normative conditions that affect the

alignment of incentives and inclinations for sustaining transformation up and down

a service hierarchy.

Procedural Remedies

The principal-agent literature suggests that there are both direct and indirect

procedures that can mitigate monitoring and enforcement problems of managing

organizational change. Given gaps in hierarchical control, one obvious solution is

to “dangle the residual,” offering material and professional rewards that encourage

30 Oliver E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies (New York: Free Press, 1975); and

Terry M. Moe, “The New Economics of Organization,” American Journal of Political Science

28:4 (November 1984), pp. 739-777.


transformation. As argued by Stephen Rosen, a highly effective manner to ingrain the

intellectual and organizational dimensions of change is to create new promotional

pathways that advance the careers of those who accomplish new tasks. 31 Yet new

promotional pathways, though necessary, are not sufficient to transcend the agency

costs of managing change. In particular, information asymmetries encourage

agents to embrace reform initiatives only up to the point that the material reward is

extended. This tends to produce “short-term winners” of reform with vested interests

in withholding efforts at transformation beyond that which is formally required. This

can lead to premature “lock in” on new tasks, as agents rewarded early for carrying

out limited change subsequently acquire a veto over future decisions to perpetuate

organizational change. Accordingly, the primary managerial challenge does not

turn on outflanking the intra-organizational opponents of change, as much as on

sustaining the impetus for transformation in the face of efforts by early winners to

preserve the partial reforms that elevated their status in the first place.32

A second problem with focusing exclusively on material incentives and the

formation of new promotional pathways is that there are traditionally multiple

avenues for agents to rise up through the ranks within an organization to become an

admiral or general. In practice, the creation of billets associated with the performance

of new tasks may simply compete at a disadvantage with more established pathways.

This is especially problematic when new assignments are merely grafted onto

traditional billets and duties with more established constituencies and powerful

patrons within the service. Ultimately, material motivations for agency compliance

with new directives are affected by where professional pathways are situated within

the broader institutional incentive structure of the service.33

Given these caveats, there are three supplementary procedural features

that condition the potency of material inducements for advancing the cause of

organizational change. The first parameter pertains to the interface between

the service’s traditional and new career pathways that shape the desirability of

promoting change. It is not sufficient simply to reward agents for undertaking new

tasks or to grant access to new autonomous billets. Insulating new billets from core

organizational promotional pathways makes it more difficult for the officeholders

to coordinate and gain recognition within the broader organization.34 What matters

31 Rosen (1991), pp. 20-21.

32 This is derived from an analysis of the institutional constraints on the political

decisions to embark on market transition in Joel S. Hellman, “Winners Take All: The Politics

of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,” World Politics 50:2 (1998), pp. 203-234.

The authors extend special thanks to Alexei Shevchenko for drawing attention to the relevance

of this discussion.

33 Avant makes a similar observation that promotional policies cannot be interpreted

in an institutional vacuum. She, however, focuses on the broader institutional context that

regulates civil-military relations, as opposed to our focus on the intra-service institutional

context. Avant (1994), p. 17.

34 On the problems of insulation versus integration of new offices within the broader

organizational structure, see especially Daniel Drezner, “Ideas, Bureaucratic Politics, and the

Crafting of Foreign Policy,” American Journal of Political Science, 44:4 (October 2000), pp.

736-737.


is that new promotional tracks open opportunities for rising to the top of a service.

The benefits of pursuing transformation do not come from the mere creation of new

service hierarchies or alternative postings, but derive from how well these new

offices complement core lines of promotion and serve as instruments for moving new

cadres up through traditional ranks. The trick, however, is to open new pathways to

established senior ranks without facilitating premature defection from new posts.35

From this we can deduce that the closer that incentives for performing new tasks are

tied to an organization’s core chain of promotion—as indicated by the integration

of formal rewards and promotional pathways within a service—the stronger the

incentive to innovate. Conversely, where such rewards are distinct or preclude

mainstream advancement within the organization, sub-units will be discouraged

from fully embracing new ways of war.

A second procedural parameter relates to the clarity of formal responsibility

among the agents of change. The costs of direct monitoring (police patrols) are

lower when there are clear lines of authority and a clear set of relationships between

different sub-units throughout a military hierarchy. The delineation of discrete

mandates among sub-units makes it easier for both principals and agents to calculate

probabilities and to understand the results of different decisions. It also gives agents

a partial stake in modifying behavior in response to changing external and technical

requirements.36 This improves the transparency of organizational operations both

across different levels of hierarchy and among specific-sub groupings. Conversely,

the proliferation of redundant or ambiguous responsibilities creates opportunities

to hide information and encourage behavior at lower levels of decisionmaking that

together raise the cost of uncovering shirking within an organization. Ill-defined

and ambiguously delegated authority at best muddles an agent’s commitment to

upholding the interests of a principal.37

Similarly, the coherence of informal structures and mandates bears directly on

the efficacy of promoting and sustaining specific military innovations. Typically,

ad hoc groups have leeway to address specific problems by operating outside of

formal structures. According to several scholars, it is precisely the flexibility to

mitigate performance shortfalls that renders “ad hocism” crucial to the absorption

of new technologies and methods of warfare.38 The problem, however, is that ad

hoc structures tend to be marred by ambiguous and fluid reporting relationships, as

well as by poorly defined job responsibilities. As a result, they are prone to foster

problems of moral hazard due to the unobservability of actual behavior and the

necessary reliance on crude measures of oversight. Members of an ad hoc group have

an incentive to restrict compliance with directives for innovation to the fulfillment of

35 The authors thank Colonel Thomas Ehrhard for this point.

36 On the importance of the clarity of institutional decision rules and the choice of

actors, see especially the general discussion in Ronald Rogowski, “Institutions as Constraints

on Strategic Choice,” in David A. Lake and Robert Powell, eds., Strategic Choice and

International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 127.

37 Alchian and Demsetz (1972); and Jones (1983), p. 460.

38 Mark D. Mandeles, Organizational Structures to Exploit the Revolution in Military

Affairs (Fairfax, VA: The J. de Bloch Group, January 2000).


specific proxy measures, and stand to benefit little from institutionalizing changes that

require sustained actions that are not directly apparent to commanders. In contrast,

those informal or quasi-formal structures that are sanctioned by the organization and

that complement formal reporting arrangements and career paths tend to reduce the

costs of shirking.39 Informal groupings that combine the clarity of formal structures

with the direct engagement of commanders and the flexibility to address specific

problems that cut across internal boundaries are more transparent to the upper-

levels of management of an organization. Consequently, there is less need for senior

military officials to rely on crude proxy performance measures, and more incentive

for sub-units to follow through by fleshing out new operational procedures.40

A third, complementary set of parameters that eases fire alarm oversight is related

to procedural mechanisms governing access to external information and competition

within an organization. In general, indirect monitoring is less costly and more reliable

when principals can create multiple avenues of access for competing sub-units. By

fostering competition among rival services and sub-units, and by opening the lines of

communication, senior military officers can establish incentives and venues for agents

to distinguish themselves and to report on the performance of rivals at lower-levels.

This becomes more efficient when directives for incorporating new technologies

and tasks apply to multiple sub-units and external actors, and the absorption of new

functions carries spillover-effects for these different actors.41 Conversely, the absence

of competition from below or alternative outlets for reporting, in effect, deprive

principals of surrogate forms of low cost oversight. Thus, the wider the potential

diffusion of new technologies and tasks within and across military hierarchies, the

more cost-effective it is for principals to rely on sub-unit or inter-service competition

as an indirect mechanism for managing innovation.

Under certain circumstances, shielding or insulating organizational sub-units

that carry out change can attenuate agency costs. The more specific the requirements

for innovation and the more specialized the skills and knowledge needed for

implementing change (i.e. the more idiosyncratic the process of innovation), the more

important it is for sub-units to be insulated from competition with rival groupings

and to possess clear mandates for carrying out new tasks.42 Insulated agents of change

typically enjoy relatively more autonomy and stable resource allocation than do rival

offices within the broader organizational structure.43 These advantages are especially

39 Rosen (1991).

40 Claudia Bird Schoonhoven and Mariann Jelinek, “Dynamic Tension in Innovative,

High Technology Firms: Managing Rapid Technological Change Through Organizational

Structure,” in M. Von Glinow and S. Mohram, eds., Managing Complexity in High Technology

Organizations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 90-118.

41 Williamson (1975).

42 This is adapted from the logic of “asset specificity” provided by Williamson (1975).

See also Benjamin Klein, Robert G. Crawford, and Armen Alchian, “Vertical Integration,

Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process,” Journal of Law and Economics

21:2 (October 1978), pp. 297-326; and Oliver E. Williamson, “Transaction-Cost Economics:

The Governance of Contractual Relations,” in Steven G. Medema, ed., Journal of Law and

Economics 22:1 (1979), pp. 233-261.

43 Drezner (2000), p. 736.


important in transaction-specific technology and task domains, as sub-units require

assurances that the fulfillment of unique and complex contingencies associated with

a specific innovation will be rewarded by commanders in order to be encouraged to

invest in and sustain long-term efforts at undertaking organizational change. In this

context, the incentives for agents to act opportunistically are diminished, since an

agent might not have another consumer of its innovations besides its own principal.

Moreover, to elicit appropriate change requires that principals continue to reward

sub-unit compliance even after agents have incurred initial failure or sunk costs of

undertaking reform. Competition with other sub-units here can undermine confidence

that the interactions and rewards needed to meet idiosyncratic tasks will be secured,

thus reducing the stakes of individual sub-units in the outcome of organizational

change and raising the incentives for shirking.

Managerial Norms

Even under ideal conditions, incentive-schemes alone cannot root out non-compliance.

It simply costs too much in time, effort, and resources for principals to ride herd over

agents to ensure that they diligently apply residual discretion towards transformation.44

In stable environments, where there are few externally- or internally-generated

pressures to perform non-routine tasks, lingering gaps in oversight are not necessarily

devastating. Organizations with well-defined divisions of authority and standardized

practices generate stable expectations that over time increase the value of continuity

among interacting sub-units that can smooth over marginal goal incongruity among

principals and agents.45 These omissions are very problematic, however, when it

comes to managing transformation where both the external and internal demands

on principals and agents are in flux. Faced with dramatic changes in technology

and task environments, principals must cope with even greater uncertainty about

the meaning and direction of organizational change. Although policy entrepreneurs

may settle on the importance of change, shifting strategic opportunities, technical

possibilities, and conceptual understandings associated with new ways of warfare

make it difficult to stipulate coherent directives for implementation beyond either a

perfunctory or generic call for change. The incentives and opportunities for shirking

grow as agents confront demands for performing novel, vague and highly variable

non-routine tasks. In this situation, limitations on institutional oversight compound

what are already very high transaction costs of managing change.46

Recognizing that formal institutional mechanisms of oversight alone do not

suffice, scholars increasingly look to organizational culture to fill the gap. William

Ouchi and Gareth Jones, for example, argue that shared norms and beliefs play

especially important roles in reducing the costs of supervising the performance of

new tasks. Out of a clearly defined set of property rights among principals and agents


45 Charles Perrow, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View (Belmont, CA:

Wadsworth Press, 1970); and William Ouchi, “Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans,”

Administrative Science Quarterly, 25 (1980), pp. 129-141.

46 Jones (1983), pp. 458-461; and Dougherty (1996), p. 426.


can emerge a professional culture in which organizational actors share ideas and

beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behavior. This professionalism facilitates

reciprocal monitoring to augment hierarchical supervision, as well as the emergence

of shared norms and values to reinforce formal procedures. “The use of sophisticated

socialization programs in the training of professional employees may also be seen

as a way of economizing on transaction costs, since the internalization of norms and

values provides employees with a common language with which to enact events

and regulate the exchange relationship.”47 Others point to the pivotal role of shared

norms and ideas for overcoming agency problems when there are multiple equilibria

to the strategic interaction between principals and agents. Shared attitudes and ideas

can serve as “focal points” around which the perceptions of organizational actors

converge that pave the way for internal coordination and common approaches to

new circumstances.48 In keeping with the main focus on principal-agent structures

and transaction costs, these insights offer a conceptual bridge between the material

and non-material features of organizational oversight and compliance.49

Which normative attributes are decisive for minimizing the agency costs of

military transformation? The extant literature, for example, draws special attention

to the consequences of “strong” organizational culture—defined as “those norms

and values that are widely shared and intensely held throughout the organization”—

for the effectiveness of organizations at performing tasks in stable environments.50

Many argue that there is a positive link between strong culture and effectiveness,

as the former can facilitate goal convergence, define the appropriateness of certain

behavioral norms, and unify motives across all levels of hierarchy.51 Others discern

that strong cultures predispose organizations towards greater reliability in the face of

environmental change. The homogeneity of beliefs within the organization offers a

common template that makes performance more consistent. This improves collective

resilience towards a mission amid changing external circumstances. In short,

strong cultures reduce differences in values and clarify goals that, in turn, render

performance more reliable. Conversely, still other scholars note that internal strength

becomes a liability for meeting the challenges of performing radically new tasks.

Strong cultures are just as likely to narrow perceptions and displace incongruous

data. Organizations that embody strong cultures are less prone to acclimating to

fundamentally new requirements for change, as they are ill-suited to foster learning

47 Jones (1993), p. 464; Ouchi (1980); and Alan L. Wilkins and William G. Ouchi,

“Efficient Cultures: Exploring the Relationship Between Culture and Organizational

Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 28 (1983), p. 471.

48 Kreps (1990); Gary J. Miller, Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of

Hierarchy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Geoffrey Garrett and Barry R.

Weingast, “Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Constructing the European Community’s Internal

Market,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Ideas & Foreign Policy: Beliefs,

Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 173-206.

49 Brehm and Gates (1997), pp. 18-22.

50 Jesper B. Sorensen, “The Strength of Corporate Culture and the Reliability of Firm

Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 47 (2002), p. 72.

51 J. P. Kotter an J.L. Heskett, Corporate Culture and Performance (New York: Free

Press, 1992); and Kreps (1991). See also review in Sorensen (2002), pp. 72-73.


and strong “counter-cultures” needed to embed novel ideas and methods within the

unit.52 For organizational transformation to occur, members must first reinterpret

the organization’s mission in light of new opportunities or fears for survival, thus

experiencing a cultural change.

As evidenced in the military context, some organizations with strong cultures

and clearly defined missions handle environmental flux better than others. In the

cases of the U.S. Navy and Air Force, the dominant service cultures that privileged

big gun ships and manned aircraft, respectively, did not prevent the radical

transformation to carrier and missile warfare.53 However, in the case of the U.S.

Army, the strong cultural affinity to maximizing firepower and the deployment of

large-scale mechanized units stymied efforts to adapt to the demands for counter-

insurgency warfare in fighting unconventional enemies in the Third World.54 These

contrasting examples suggest that the strength of an organization’s culture might

mean less than its content for mediating gaps between internal incentive structures

and transformational behavior.

Added to the confusion is that there are different dimensions to organizational

culture, aside from perceptions about missions and goals, that generate different

types of shared values and understandings of appropriate behavior. Edward Schein,

for example, draws distinctions between artifacts (visible organizational processes

and behavioral regularities), espoused values (goals), and the basic underlying

assumptions that “actually guide behavior and tell members how to perceive, think

about, and feel about things.”55 As reviewed in chapter 1, other scholars breakdown

the cultural core to its constitutive and regulative dimensions that ascribe related

functional attributes to shared identities, ideologies, core values, rules of the game,

standards of behavior, habits of thinking, and axiomatic knowledge. Although there

is a general consensus that organizational culture is defined by elements of stability

and integration, a culture’s essence is multidimensional and can affect the variety of

ways members collectively think about themselves and their environment, as well as

pattern different aspects of their behavior.56 Thus, while culture has been implicated

52 Sorensen (2002), pp. 75-87; and Barry A. Turner, “The Organizational and Inter-

Organizational Development of Disasters,” Administrative Science Quarterly 21:3 (1976), pp.

378-397.

53 See especially Robert L. O’Connell, Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship and

the Rise of the U.S. Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Edward Rhodes, “Sea

Change: Interest-Based vs. Cognitive-Cultural Accounts of Strategic Choice in the 1880s,”

Security Studies 5:4 (Summer 1996), pp. 73-124; and Edmund Beard, Developing the ICBM

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).

54 Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army in Viet Nam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1986).

55 Edward Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-

Bass Publishers, 1992), p. 22

56 See especially discussion in Sonja A. Sackmann, “Culture and Subcultures: An

Analysis of Organizational Knowledge,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 37 (1992), pp.

140-161; Stanley Davis, Managing Corporate Cultures (Cambridge: Ballinger Press, 1984);

and Mariann Jelinek, Linda Smircich, and Paul Hirsch, “Introduction: Code of Many Colors,”

Administrative Science Quarterly, 28 (1983), pp. 331-338; and Linda Smircich, “Concepts of


as a potential explanation for redressing lingering agency costs, which aspects of an

organization’s normative template or which sub-cultures matter most to complement

procedural mechanisms of oversight remain largely unexplained.

Just as there is no such thing as an “immaculate innovation,” as purely novel

ideas cannot register without institutional preconditions, new administrative

forms cannot root out old practices without an element of “common knowledge”

within an organization. For innovations to diffuse effectively, their content must

be communicated in a manner that forges understanding among organizational

actors with different responsibilities. Otherwise, innovations can go undetected,

as well as unrewarded.57 This presents a dilemma for managing major change.

Without invoking a collective understanding of transformation, entrepreneurial

principals risk devoting scarce resources to micromanaging sub-units or succumbing

to information asymmetries at the expense of exploring change. By clutching to

a strong sense of organizational mission or well-defined goals, they may never

appreciate the opportunity for novel change, nor have the capacity to implement

an innovation if realized.58 One way out of this paradox is to appeal directly to

shared professional norms about framing and solving problems.59 Enlisting common

procedural understandings can facilitate acceptance among agents to perform ill

defined and incompletely rewarded new tasks without prematurely bumping up

against the organization’s substantive identity and goals.60

One dimension of organizational culture that pertains to agency costs relates

to shared understandings about appropriate methods for creative problem-solving.

Among the many different elements to culture are shared mental maps that determine

how members of a group relate to each other, interpret the prevailing physical and

social realms, acquire new knowledge, define and assess problems, take pragmatic

action, and pursue truth. Some refer to this set of beliefs as comprised of shared

Culture and Organizational Analysis,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 28 (1983), pp. 339-

358.

57 Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations 5th Edition (New York: Free Press,

2003), pp. 18-19.

58 This corresponds to the problem of managing “sustainable” versus “disruptive”

military innovations described in Captain Terry C. Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive

Technologies: Disguising Innovation (London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 20-28.

59 Here, the force of shared beliefs derives from their administrative utility, as

opposed to their intrinsic compatibility with a novel way of war. Kreps (1990); and Garrett

and Weingast (1993), pp. 181-185. Whereas these authors treat ideas as “focal points” for

coordinating expectations among multiple solutions for cooperation, our formulation treats

them as salient for reducing agency costs in hierarchical administrative relations. Unlike these

authors, we emphasize the special importance of ideas for managing disparities in power

among organizational actors.

60 This draws on Jones (1983), pp. 454-467; Andrew B. Hargadon and Yellowlees

Douglas, “When Innovations Meet Institutions: Edison and the Design of the Electric Light,”

Administrative Science Quarterly 46 (2001), pp. 476-501; and Wilkens and Ouchi (1983),

pp. 468-481. This is distinguished from accounts that treat culture as a decisive independent

variable that automatically specifies means for carrying out tasks within an organization

without the instrumental action by entrepreneurs.


assumptions of reality and human nature; others define it as “directory knowledge”

that “delineates the ‘how’ of things and events, and their processes, such as how a

specific problem is solved in a given organization or what people actually do to be

promoted.”61 Still others refer to these beliefs as organizational frames that structure

how members collectively identify, represent, and solve problems that, in turn, form

the basis for how the organization acquires knowledge about its environment and

establishes routines to contain such knowledge.62 We refer to these traits collectively

as comprising an organization’s managerial norms, defined as understandings of

appropriate means and methods for internal interaction and clarifying and solving

problems shared throughout an organization. These concepts are distinguished

from constitutive or regulative norms, as they pertain specifically to the means by

which issues are defined and evaluated. A particular managerial norm is manifest in

accepted standards of evidence, criteria, and metrics (qualitative or quantitative) that

members use to present arguments and assess performance; special competencies

that members display to approach and fulfill tasks; mental templates or rules of

thumb that guide members in interpreting, analyzing, and acting on new information;

and collective affinities for centralization and flexibility of command structures.

These elements provide common analytical referents that members are socialized

into accepting for guiding the everyday business of communicating, interacting, and

problem-solving that are distinct from assumptions and knowledge about specific

identities and strategic missions.63

Managerial norms are especially important for closing the monitoring gap in the

performance of non-routine tasks. First, they provide a common analytical prism for

measuring, assessing, and legitimating new ideas and behavior across different levels

within an organization. Managerial norms can provide the basis for a “reasoned

consensus” about the meaning of innovative ideas and technologies.64 Clarity

61 Sackmann (1992), p. 142; Schein (1992), pp. 94-143. See also Ann Swidler, “Culture

in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51 (April 1986).

62 Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons

Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 49-57; and Edwin Hutchins, “How

a Cockpit Remembers its Speed,” Cognitive Science 19 (1995), pp. 265-288.

63 Eden (2004), pp. 37-60; and Kier (1997), pp. 31-32; and Wilkins and Ouchi (1983),

p. 471. The emphasis on procedural norms and shared beliefs on the means of action draws

on insights from Swidler (1986). Whereas Eden links “organizational frames” to the social

construction of organizational knowledge and constitutive norms, I draw attention to the

implications that such professional norms hold for generating intra-organizational trust and

inclinations to comply or shirk responsibilities for performing non-routine tasks. Therefore in

my account, such norms do not have to change to cause shifts in the organization’s strategic

behavior or substantive identity or culture. and

64 Thomas Risse, “Let’s Argue: Communicative Action in World Politics,” International

Organization 54:1 (Winter 2000), pp. 11-14. The main purpose of enlisting managerial

norms is to communicate and validate claims needed to generate common knowledge about

an innovation. This contrasts with other arguments that feature adjacent norms for either

deceiving or shaming other members to acquiesce to organizational change. See especially

Pierce (2004); and Frank Schmimelfennig, “The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical

Action, and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union,” International Organization 55

(Winter 2001), pp. 47-80.


about where and how to begin assessing novel action allows for the convergence

of judgments not only about which type of behavior is proper, but which analytical

arguments and conclusions are justified to support those conclusions. In this respect,

managerial norms assist with validating claims by offering common evidentiary

standards for measuring performance and assessing the appropriateness of new

technologies and operations. They serve as common referents for processing and

evaluating new data that can be used to legitimate new ideas and align preferences

up and down a military service. Invoking managerial norms constitutes an accepted

“ritual” within an organization that signal to others the potential fruitfulness of

otherwise unknown or unobservable behavior.65 This significantly eases the burden

of defending new positions to superiors, as well as provides a sound basis for

competing against rival policy positions.

Second, an instrumental sensitivity to common professional norms of intra-

organizational communication and accepted analytical referents can build trust.

Tapping into managerial norms provides an important normative crutch for bolstering

the credibility and commitment to sustaining transformational steps when objective

realities are ambiguous and evidence of the success or failure of initial reform is

unclear. By framing adjustments consistent with existing professional judgments of

appropriate problem-solving, principals can make it easier for agents to “visceralize”

new directions for policy, even when transformational objectives are neither shared

nor obvious.66

Finally, common professional norms increase the consistency among approaches

for navigating uncertain paths. Where there is broad agreement on acceptable norms

of communication and interaction, violations of behavioral norms are more easily

detected. Shared professional norms and expectations reduce transaction costs of

oversight by generating an impulse for self-monitoring. Not only does this ease

hierarchical supervision and reciprocal monitoring among rival sub-groups, but

common notions of appropriateness provide agents with benchmarks for judging their

own actions and the legitimacy of shirking.67 Thus, by invoking shared managerial

norms, policy entrepreneurs can make new directives seem more familiar at all

levels of the organization, and manipulate how agents understand change and use

their residual autonomy.68

The ability of military entrepreneurs to tap into the core managerial norms of

the service can pay significant dividends for mitigating the residual agency costs of

supervising transformation. Enlisting managerial norms matters for inclining both

commanders and agents to share in their approaches to making sense out of new

possibilities for change, notwithstanding the uncertainty of technology and task

environments and different distributions of intra-organizational power, incentives,

65 Michael Suk-Young Chwe, Rational Ritual (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

2001), pp. 3-19.

66 On the motivational attributes of organizational culture, see especially C. A. O’Reilly,

“Corporations, Culture, and Commitment: Motivation and Social Control in Organizations,”

California Management Review, 31:4 (1989), pp. 9-25; and Dougherty (1996), pp. 434-435.

67 Jones (1983), p. 464; and Wilkens and Ouchi, (1983), p. 471.

68 Dougherty (1996), p. 434.


and even strategic visions. Shared professional norms provide common knowledge

that galvanize principals and agents to reach similar conclusions for striking out a

new balance between exploration and exploitation. As Elizabeth Kier demonstrates

in her study of the inter-war French and British armies, intra-service dogmatism

about the appropriateness of certain methods of organization, such as centralized

command structures, conscription, and relations between ranks, played crucial roles

in shaping choices between offensive and defensive doctrines.69 General acceptance

of managerial methods and evidentiary standards allows commander and sub-units

to speak the same language in assessing new information and events. Attuned to

the same method for solving problems and realizing opportunities, sub-units are

predisposed to disclose and gather information useful for developing a credible

knowledge base for commanders to draw on in support of a proposed innovation.

Conversely, the more that inter-subjective understandings of how best to interpret

new technological and task environments diverge among principals and agents, the

wider the gap in preferences for change, and the stronger incentives there are for

sub-units to remain wedded to traditional tasks and shirking new responsibilities.

Because those directives for innovation that do not speak to core managerial norms

of the organization generally encounter more resistance from below, successful

implementation requires more intrusive intervention from above. Yet, the greater

the need to micromanage change, the greater the opportunity cost of exploring new

ways of war. From this perspective, managerial norms do not dictate the course of

change; rather, if accessed, they can serve as an important adjunct to institutional

control mechanisms, facilitating or impeding effective management of military

transformation by altering inclinations to shirk and the legitimacy of compliance.

Hypotheses

The discussion above suggests that a successful transformational strategy turns on

the interaction between the material incentives that it embodies and the extent to

which it embraces prevailing managerial norms. Certain combinations of material

incentives and norms are likely to encourage continued exploration across a service

hierarchy. Others are likely to increase agency costs, retarding or even subverting the

introduction of a new way of war.

Figure 2.2 summarizes the core hypotheses for management strategies that

synthesize material control mechanisms with norms of professionalism within a

military service. Neither factor is sufficient by itself to explain the variation in the

internal traction of new ways of war. All else equal, military transformation will be

successfully institutionalized when entrepreneurial commanders employ strategies

that allow them to devote more resources to discovering and defining new ways

of war than to directly supervising sub-units, and that leave sub-units with little

69 Kier (1997). While both our argument and Kier’s emphasize the importance of

organizational culture for explaining change, we stress how shared managerial beliefs affect

agency costs within mechanisms of intra-organizational oversight, while Kier focuses on

how shared beliefs condition how military organizations react to changes in the external

environment.


incentive to resist carrying out new directives and inclined to devote their residual

autonomy to advancing interests in exploration. As depicted in the upper-left cell,

transformation is most likely to be vigilantly sustained when clearly delineated

institutional mechanisms of oversight are reinforced by concerted efforts to lodge

exploration within the service’s traditional understandings of creative problem-

solving. In this situation, both the savings on supervision and residual autonomy

can be readily channeled towards exploration across different levels of hierarchy.

Conversely, the lower-right cell captures administrative conditions conducive for

sabotage and active resistance to transformation. In this context, an entrepreneurial

commanding staff must devote a disproportionate amount of resources not only to

monitor opportunistic implementation of new directives, but to hold in check sub-

unit initiatives to circumvent what are otherwise regarded as inappropriate methods

and means of warfare.

In between the polar cases are conditions ripe for promoting either the status

quo or incremental adjustments to changing technology and task environments.

In these scenarios, sub-units lack either incentives or inclinations to embrace new

directions. Given the room for opportunism intrinsic to both managerial strategies,

the respective services can be expected to act more as followers than leaders in

coping with technology and task environments. The upper-right cell reflects those

intra-organizational situations where the institutional mechanisms of oversight are

muddled, effectively reducing the incentives for compliance with new directives, but

where agents share a common vision about the appropriate means for defining and

pursuing transformation. The result is hedging and drawn out agency responses to

new directives. Though it may be possible to broker radical change, the process will

be protracted, marked by gradual shifts along different dimensions of behavior. By

contrast, the lower-left cell depicts those scenarios where the main impediment to

transformation is related to the accessibility and content of the service’s traditional

Sabotage / StasisFoot-dragging /

Resistance to radical

change

Hedging / Deliberate

Change

Vigilant

Transformation

Sabotage / StasisFoot-dragging /

Resistance to radical

change

Hedging / Deliberate

Change

Vigilant

TransformationAccessed

Managerial Norms

Neglected

Clear Unclear

Procedural Oversight

Accessed

Managerial Norms

Neglected

Accessed

Managerial Norms

Neglected

Clear Unclear


Clear Unclear


Figure 2.2 Managerial Strategies and Compliance


managerial norms. While clearly delineated institutional mechanisms sufficiently

reduce the agency costs to sustaining adaptation, gaps in common knowledge of

the appropriateness of change discourage sub-units from applying their residual

autonomy to advance the cause of transformation beyond what they are directly

rewarded for undertaking. Given the limits to supervision, marginal improvements in

tightening oversight and increasing material incentives will not encourage sub-units

to fully embrace transformation, and may even lead them to derail initial advances.

The likely result is foot-dragging and resistance towards blazing innovative trails.

Testing the Argument

Testing the modified agency framework of military transformation first requires

identifying operational measures for the respective variables that are independent

of each other. The extent to which new technologies and new primary missions

accumulate and are integrated into new training procedures and organizational

structures is used as the indicator of transformation. Successful transformation

results when advances along all these parameters are synthesized into a new way

of war. This is an internal organizational matter that involves coordination of

multiple activities; success is not a reflection of performance on the battlefield or a

function solely of the introduction of a new idea, technology, or tactic of warfighting.

Alternatively, incremental shifts along different policy dimensions (i.e. technology,

strategy, tactics, etc.) are regarded as part of a hedging strategy. The failure to absorb

new technologies and to codify doctrinal revisions in established procedures for

training and wartime deployments represents foot-dragging. Finally, sabotage is

indicated by active measures undertaken by military sub-units to lobby against or to

embrace alternatives to change along any one parameter.

To operationalize the agency costs of managing transformation, we start by

examining the formal institutional distribution of authority and oversight. First, we

measure policy incentives by the character of formal mandates. The extent to which

entrepreneurial offices are charged with implementing change is a function of their

formal responsibilities and scope of authority over sub-units. Similarly, we examine

the specificity of tasks that are delegated to sub-units to comprehend respective

interests in exploitation versus exploration. Second we assess the efficacy of direct

oversight mechanisms by examining a combination of formal reporting requirements,

the clarity by which new task directives are specified, and the material incentives

tied to the performance of new tasks. With respect to the latter, we turn to the formal

organizational structure to discern official pathways of promotion and the institutional

link between the core chain of promotion and performance success registered in new

organizational offices. This is augmented by a review of the personal histories of

the champions of change to gain an understanding of the practical value of different

avenues for promotion. In addition, we explore the efficacy of indirect institutional

checks (fire alarms) on sub-units by analyzing the extent to which sub-units or inter-

service rivals are formally positioned against each other with competitive mandates

and have access to independent channels for reporting to immediate supervisors.

This includes mechanisms put in place to regularize exchanges of information


between sub-units across services, and between outside political actors (via official

testimony) and private actors (via formal contracting and oversight stipulations).

Finally, we measure the effectiveness of informal and ad hoc control mechanism

by analyzing the personal exchanges between and among rival commanders and

sub-units.

Managerial norms are uncovered by analyzing respective attitudes, beliefs, and

norms pertaining to problem-solving held by officers across intra-service divisions.

We measure professional attitudes by examining the assumptions and metrics used to

structure and evaluate experimentation, training exercises, interpretation of historical

lessons, and presentation and rationalization of policy initiatives. We also draw on

both the memorial and secondary literature to gain insights into how officers assessed

the appropriateness of specific issues related to basic organizational structure. This

specifically includes attitudes towards centralization/decentralization of command,

flexibility and initiative at lower echelons, and qualitative versus quantitative

indicators of training and battlefield performance. The focus on managerial norms,

as opposed to strategic beliefs, eases the problem of separating the defining traits

of organizational culture from the substantive outcomes of transformation. Given

that the relevant normative features reflect attitudes towards the means not ends

of reform, this also reduces the chance of conflating the impact of cultural with

institutional mechanisms of oversight.

The comparative case method structures our preliminary test of the propositions

advanced in this study. First, we selected four “strong” cases to probe the plausibility

of the modified principal agent framework.70 Each case—the British armor, U.S.

carrier, U.S. counterinsurgency, and German armor—is distinguished in the

historical literature as an episode of either unequivocal success or failure at military

transformation. In none of the cases were these outcomes either preordained or

fully predicted by rival explanations. At the same time, the variety of cases controls

for national, technological, service, and strategic conditions. Moreover, the cases

offer extreme but alternative values on the proposed independent variables. They

all stood out for either the conspicuous presence or absence of procedural oversight

mechanisms and managerial norms. Although the cases alone cannot validate the

superiority of this new framework, they offer a first cut at systematically illustrating

the combined effects of managerial incentives and norms to advance research on

institutionalizing defense transformation.

Second, we employ “process-tracing” to structure the inquiry and investigate

prospective casual links between managerial oversight and transformation.71

For each case we ask the following questions: Was the initial impetus for change

institutionalized? Who were the relevant principals and agents assigned responsibilities

70 This provides a “doubly decisive” case for testing the certainty and uniqueness of

the predictions generated by a principal-agent framework. On “strong cases,” see especially

Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1997): 30-34.

71 Alexander L. George and Timothy J. McKeown, “Case Studies and Theories of

Organizational Decision Making,” in Robert Coulam and Richard Smith, eds. Advances in

Information Processing in Organizations (Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, 1985), pp. 43-68.


to formulate and implement change? What were the respective interests in sustaining

change? What were the formal and informal procedures and material incentives for

change that were embodied by the managerial strategy for transformation? How

attuned was this strategy to the prevailing managerial norms of the service’s? How

were the choices and pace of the service’s response to honing an sustaining change

linked to the incentives and inclinations embodied by the managerial strategy?

Finally, we selected the cases for their policy relevance. Each serves as an historic

benchmark for contemporary military transformation. Scholars and policymakers

alike typically hold up the interwar German armor and U.S. carrier cases as models

to emulate for successful military transformation. Some have gone so far as to

single out in each case the strong sense of mission and progressive attitude towards

experimentation as bellwethers for inculcating revolutionary sensibilities to contend

with today’s diverse, asymmetrical and unforeseen security threats.72 Others lament

the absence of entrepreneurial leaders, and champion either civilian directed, top-

down assaults on the services to bludgeon transformation or the creation of new

promotional tracks within each service. By the same token, the absence of these

conditions in the British armor and U.S. counterinsurgency cases are typically used to

underscore the potential costs of neglecting these factors. Yet if resting on misguided

understandings of even exceptional cases, these strategies could unnecessarily

inflame civilian-military tensions, squander scarce resources, orphan new ranks,

and/or discredit viable opportunities for transformation.

Conclusion

This chapter addressed gaps in the extant literature on military transformation by

positing an argument that attributes success to the managerial strategies of delegation

and oversight within a service. Change is a function of the internal structures put

in place to cope with asymmetries of information and conflicts of interests that

exist between different levels of hierarchy within an organization. In this regard,

“successful” military transformation is more likely when commanders do not have

incentives to monitor intrusively and sub-units do not have incentives to shirk

directives for change. The focus on agency costs and the specific parameters that

shape them offers a prism for linking “outside” and “inside” pressures for change—

stemming from shifts in the technology and task environment and distinctive

normative templates—to distinct patterns of military innovation. This approach

stands to illuminate just what is different about managerial variables, and how they

72 See especially Krepinevich, Transforming to Victory: The U.S. Navy Carrier Aviation

and Preparation for War in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: The Olin Institute, 2000), available

at www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Publications.htm; and Barry Watts and Williamson

Murray, “Military Innovation in Peacetime,” in Military Innovation in the Interwar Period,

eds., Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1996), pp. 369-415; Williamson Murray, “Does Military Culture Matter,” Orbis 43:1 (Winter

1999), pp. 27-57; and Hunter Keeter, “Transformation Office Calls for Cultural Change,

Possible Shift in Acquisition Priorities,” Defense Daily, 28 November 2001, p. 1.

www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Publications.htm


can supplement analysis of strategic factors in a systematic framework for basing

predictions about the capacity of armed services to reinvent themselves.

Ultimately, the validity of these deductions depends on how well they hold

up against the historical record of military transformation. Because the argument

identifies factors attendant to general problems of hierarchy associated with military

organizations, its relevance and potential implications are neither country nor service

specific. Therefore, the challenge taken up by the chapters in Part 2 is to test the

strength and limits to these theoretical propositions in a set of comparative case

studies of “successful” and “unsuccessful” military transformation.

PART II

Case Studies

Chapter 3

The German Blitzkrieg Transformation:

Rebuilding Preeminence From

Catastrophe

At the conclusion of The Great War, the German Army was in disarray and reduced

to a fraction of its former strength through the Versailles treaty restrictions imposed

by the victorious allies in 1919. Germany was permitted only a 100,000 man army

and only a 4,000 man officer corps, greatly reducing manpower and eliminating

its ability to defend the country’s borders. The restrictions also forbade possession

of heavy artillery, poison gas, any form of air power, and heavy armor, as well as

the industries to make them. The General Staff system was abolished, although

it was deftly reconstituted in a reorganized entity named the Truppenamt which

retained the same spirit, status, and many of the functions as the old General Staff,

as which it was often referred during the Versailles period. Furthermore, the German

economy was in ruins, insuring that besides the treaty restrictions the Army would

have minimal funding. To insure that the Allies’ goal of handicapping Germany’s

military potential succeeded, the Inter-Allied Control Commission was established

to monitor the German military’s compliance with the treaty restrictions.

Ironically, the catalyst for reconstruction of the Army into a more effective

organization came with the imposition of the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Treaty served only to strip the German military of technological and organizational

dead wood. Its restrictions had the internal effect of providing opportunities for

reconstruction of a small, simple command structure that could more easily manage

innovation. The restrictions also forced the German Army to seek ways around

some of those restrictions externally, by monitoring foreign military developments

closely and exporting military industry, training, and experimentation that created

new opportunities for innovation. This combination of internal reform and external

monitoring helped to mitigate principal-agent problems in the management of

innovation during the interwar period.

Paradoxically, when the Second World War began the German Army had

successfully adopted new technologies and doctrine, especially that of armor, to a

far greater degree than the victorious allies. The most striking and comprehensive

aspect of this tactical and technological development was blitzkrieg, the use of

massed tank formations with combined arms support to make rapid and decisive

penetrations into enemy forces. Motorization of the Army had produced extremely

rapid mobility for which the Allies were completely unprepared. Thus in May and

June of 1940 the German Army defeated the combined forces of Britain, France,

Belgium, and Holland in a mere six weeks. The tactical superiority of the German


Army was demonstrated fully in this victory considering the aggregate numerical

and material superiority of their opponents.

Given the enormous disadvantages that characterized the German military at the

end of The Great War compared to the Allied situation, how did Germany enjoy

such complete initial success in the Second World War? There have been several

explanations for the German Army’s renewal. Some, like J.F.C. Fuller, believe that

the rebirth of spirit, ingenuity, and capability occurred under the National Socialist

regime and was attributable to Hitler himself. When he felt confident enough to

throw off the shackles of Versailles and begin rearmament in earnest, he forged

advancements in capabilities to support a clairvoyant and aggressive foreign policy

through dominating leadership, and he either convinced or coerced the military

professionals to accede to his organizational, operational, and technological visions,

and to give him the capabilities he demanded.1 Others, like Matthew Cooper, who

explicitly refute Fuller, believe that the blitzkrieg was neither new nor revolutionary

but was simply the logical extension of German operational thinking from Clauswitz,

Moltke, and Schlieffen that emphasized technological adaptation, mobility over

mass, speed of execution, envelopment, and force concentration against enemy

weak points. Historically, all of this was driven by the dictates of German political

geography that made Germany vulnerable to a two front war.2 Thus, to Fuller the

transformational technology, organization, force posture, doctrine, and operational

art developed during the interwar period was the province of one man’s mind

and to Cooper it was evolution, not military revolution, and besides, others were

simultaneously working on similar developments.

Our approach is different and adopts an organizational perspective. Despite the

losses in manpower, weapons potential, and funding, the remaining officer corps and

troop structure maintained the basic efficiency and professionalism that historically

had characterized the German military. The unwavering commitment of this German

Army leadership to the reconstruction of a modern, effective military, to the utmost

extent possible under the treaty restrictions, ensured that the Army would utilize every

opportunity to progress. The Army itself was stripped of useless stockpiles of outdated

weapons and reduced to a size that permitted reorganization and simplification in

management and maximization of efficiency in learning and training.3 Strict attention

to foreign military developments both formally and informally ensured that the Army

remained at the forefront of tactical and technological development even though it

did not possess the actual weapons of the Allies. These initial characteristics and

necessities helped pave the way for more radical and progressive developments in

technology and tactics which were to come later.

One of the primary factors contributing to this success was German military

culture. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Prussian and later German

1 J.F.C. Fuller, The Conduct of War: 1789-1961, (New York: Da Capo Press: 1992

edition), p. 244.

2 Matthew Cooper, The German Army: 1933-1945, (Lantham: Scarborough House;

Latham, 1978), pp. 126-129.

3 Bart Whaley, Covert German Re-Armament, 1919-1939 (Frederick: University

Publications of America, 1984), p. 31.

The German Blitzkrieg Transformation 67

Army had focused on maneuver as the decisive element of battle, and continued

that focus in studying The Great War and trying to understand how to circumvent

trench warfare and restore mobility to military operations. The introduction of new

technologies that enhanced mobility was a perfect complement to this organizational

belief in maneuver. Experience in The Great War, particularly with the successful

combined arms efforts of the storm troops, further strengthened German belief in

combined arms maneuver. Emphasis on higher education of the officer corps also

increased after The Great War, creating a small but well educated officer corps. An

organizational history of reassessment after defeat that traced back to the Battle of

Jena during the Napoleonic Wars was another valuable asset in the management

of innovation. Finally, the norm of decentralized decision-making, that gave junior

officers discretion in carrying out orders, increased the confidence of principals, and

reduced the need to monitor intrusively.

The German high command also was unique in its training methods by developing

technical proficiency in all of its officers and men, and encouraging independent

initiative and enterprise.4 A U.S. Army representative stated in 1927 after witnessing

the maneuvers of that year that the German Army “seemed to be training an army

of technicians.”5 This increased technical knowledge and training created an officer

corps that would not only be able to envision the same set of possibilities for

exploration and exploitation but would be quicker to accept technological innovations

into common use. One particular method of entering the highly competitive General

Staff also introduced incentives for technological innovation; officers with high

Military District Examination scores could obtain a technical degree at a university

and then enter the General Staff, usually in the Weapons Office.6

The German Army during the interwar period benefited from the interactions

between a hands-on leadership and junior officers that both had incentives to see the

rapid development and incorporation of innovation. High-level commanders like

Hans Von Seekt and other chiefs of Army command took a personal interest in the

daily operations of almost every aspect of the Army’s development. Supervising

appointments and training methods, and even writing training and doctrinal manuals

were regular exercises by Army leaders that desired a return to prominence for

the military.7 High-level leaders regularly attended exercises and maneuvers,

thus personally witnessing the innovations that were developed by subordinates,

but without micro-managing their actions.8 Leaders in the armor development

field experienced accelerated career paths through successful participation in tank

development, which was a branch clearly expanding in importance. Subordinates

found many opportunities, often encouraged by the high command, to convey novel

ideas and advance themselves through successful innovation and incorporation of

4 Robert Citino, The Path to Blitzkrieg (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), p.

100.

5 Quoted in ibid., (1999), pp. 100, 181.

6 James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,

1992), p. 93.

7 Ibid., pp 52-55.

8 Citino (1999), pp. 105-106.


new technologies. The high command placed high value on armor development, and

those officers developing it could expect to play prominent roles in the new branch

of the Army.

Success of tank and heavy armor development resulted from freedom through

a form of “shielding” by being placed in its own organizational structure where

experimentation by armor enthusiasts could proceed unhindered. This shielding

did not constitute disinterest; the high command intended the unit to be important

and monitored its development enthusiastically but not intrusively. The latter

characteristic was demonstrated early on during the formation of the early command

structure, when Army leaders transferred all of those officers with experience and

learning in armor to the Inspectorate of Motor Troops (IN-6). The concentration

of armor knowledge in its own branch, in conjunction with an Inspector or

“branch leader” who was a proven armor or tank enthusiast and expert, such as

Oswald Lutz of the Weapons Office, ensured decentralized, innovative testing and

successful technical/doctrinal development of armor. IN-6 control over exercises

and experimentation with tanks only increased during the existence of this branch,

culminating after much success with the establishment of a Tank Forces Command

that shielded and concentrated tank development even further.9 Separated into a

main sub-branch of the Army, yet linked directly to the Weapons Office and the

highest levels of command, the organizational unit for armor achieved maximum

shielding for unhindered development with maximum chances for incorporation into

the operating core.

The comprehensive post-war studies initiated by Von Seekt and simultaneously

pursued by the Air Staff were naturally important for beginning the process of

internal change with regards to air power tactics and technology. The sheer number

of officers involved inculcated a norm of learning through saturation, and also

insured that some of those officers actively engaged in this innovative process

would eventually be placed in positions of command. The Air Staff, being the most

technically concentrated section of the Army, executed the post-war studies with a

heightened technical focus. Thirty-one officers, most with technical or engineering

background, were initially selected to begin the study, but by 1920 there were 130

working on the technical and industrial concerns of air war. (Then) captains Hugo

Sperrle and Kurt Student were two of the participants that later became innovators

in higher command positions; and both went on to work toward innovative concepts:

Sperrle for close air support (CAS) and Student for paratroops.10

The role of German industry also was critical to the development of blitzkrieg

during the interwar period. Industry’s connections overseas allowed for the

circumvention of the treaty restrictions on armor and aircraft. Thus the German

military was able to design and test equipment it could not possess. For example,

armor pioneer Heinz Guderian first operated a tank in Sweden at a subsidiary of a

German company. The initial necessity of relying on civil aviation in war simulations

9 Samuel Mitcham, The Panzer Legion (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 10-

14.

10 James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), p. 60.


and for planning air power made industry critical to the development of air assault

and air power, which became an integral part of blitzkrieg. Industry was a key source

of alternative information for principals, which reduced monitoring costs.

The location of German specialized warfare schools in Russia constituted a hybrid

formal/informal mechanism that advanced military doctrinal and technological

development. Although the schools themselves were formally constructed, joint

operations with the Soviet Army provided opportunities for testing and practice

that would not have been available to Germany. Tank doctrine and technology

was developed jointly, with engineers and representatives from German industry

working at these schools to develop tanks and airplane designs.11 The Germans had

their first opportunity to participate in large-scale maneuvers with tanks as active

parts of the Soviet Army’s maneuvers. Another similar informal experience was the

German participation in the Spanish Civil War; German forces operated in the same

command structure with the Spanish Nationalist forces. The experience provided

opportunities to directly test and perfect close air support and blitzkrieg operations,

under the direct supervision and direction of important German commanders like

von Sperrle.

It is maintained here that the development of blitzkrieg and its adoption into the

operating core of the German Army was advanced by the Versailles treaty restrictions.

These restrictions helped forge the principal-agent relationships that encouraged

experimentation, tolerated experimental failure, identified core competencies,

institutionalized successes, and minimized incentives for shirking and stove-

piping. In the end, this system of human organization and interaction facilitated the

development of new and transformational military doctrine and operational art, new

technologies, weapons and military systems applications, and new organizational

structures through which to implement them. In short, the Germans developed a new

way of war. External sources of information provided initial guidelines for testing

and experiments that would later incorporate the actual weaponry they simulated.

Highly vested commanders implemented an organizational structure that facilitated

development of truly innovative weaponry and doctrine. All of these efforts at

various levels of German society and within German institutions were driven by

the unified national purpose to again “make Germany strong” and return her to the

status of a great power. This unity of purpose was framed before the ink was dry on

the Versailles Treaty and was pursued with equal vigor by the democratic Weimar

Republic and the totalitarian Third Reich. The collective desire for renewal within

the armed forces as well as within society as a whole facilitated inter-institutional

pathways for cooperation and collaboration within and among the various branches

of the armed forces and provided a common goal for the armed forces leadership, the

political leadership, and the industrial elites.

11 Corum (1992), pp. 194-195.


Formal Control Mechanisms

Formal Structure

Despite the Versailles restriction that prohibited the military from having a General

Staff, the officers were reconstituted in a body that was effectively the same thing.

The core of the old General Staff was preserved in the Truppenamt, but consisted of

only about sixty officers. It contained four sections—Army, Organization, Statistical,

and Training. The new Army headquarters would consist of two other significant

bodies on the same level as the Truppenamt—the Weapons Office, in charge of

weapons and technological development, and the Branch Inspectorates, in charge of

directing training and doctrine in the different sections of the Army. The Weapons

office consisted of slightly over sixty officers (about the same as the Truppenamt)

and each branch had four to six officers (with one “Inspector”—the commander of

that branch inspectorate). The small number of officers in total that constituted the

high command ensured transparency and reduction of agency costs, and ensured

rapid and easy cooperation among the diverse branches of the Army. The impressive

linkage between all three bodies helped ensure consistent coordination between

leadership, doctrine, and technology.12

Clear and direct links existed between sections of the Weapons Office and the

appropriate branch inspectorates—each branch inspectorate had a corresponding

section in the Weapons Office (IN-6 to WA-6, for example). Representatives of

each unit were housed in the other to further ensure that doctrinal, tactical, and

technical innovation would always be linked for mutual application of independent

developments.13 Von Seekt personally monitored the links between the Weapons

Office, the Inspectorates, and the Truppenamt to make sure there was a smooth flow

of information. For example, Corum reports that in 1924 he once sent a memo to all

the leaders of the Inspectorates and the Weapons Office demanding greater mutual

education of technical and tactical developments. Department and section chiefs had

to attend bi-monthly seminars on weapons technology, and Weapons Office reports

on specific projects went not only to the corresponding branch inspectorate but also

to the T-1 and T-2 sections of the Truppenamt.14

The resources and personnel involvement of the Weapons Office in R&D is

impressive; a “significant percentage of [the] four thousand man officer corps [was]

engaged directly in weapons research and development.”15 These groups included

Weapons Office officers stationed with each branch inspectorate, and officers within

each branch inspectorate school conducting experiments and equipment tests.

The high number of officers directly involved in weapons R&D and their wide

12 Ibid., pp. 34-37.

13 James S. Corum, A Clash of Military Cultures: German & French Approaches to

Technology Between the World Wars (Defenselink Joint Doctrine Electronic Library Online,

1994).

14 Corum (1992), pp. 101-102.

15 Ibid., p. 102.


organizational placement ensured that every section of the Army would be exposed

to the constant innovation.16

A brief description of the development of radio communications and the

important decision to place a radio into every tank demonstrates the impressive

coordination between experimentation, weapons development, and implementation

that the Weapons Office-Inspectorate relationship made possible. During the 1920s

extensive radio research and experimentation was conducted by the Inspectorate of

Communications Troops (IN-7) and its corresponding section in the Weapons Office.

This included sponsoring projects with German civilian firms, where the extremely

valuable development of the ultra-short wave frequency radio occurred.17 Ernst

Volckheim in 1924 had determined that a radio in every tank was a necessity; he was

part of the Inspectorate of Motor Troops—which also had a corresponding section

in the Weapons Office.18 The Weapons Office matched that operational guideline

developed in that inspectorate (IN-6) with the radio development underway in IN-

16 Ibid., pp. 101-102.

17 Ibid., pp. 108-109.

18 Ibid., p. 129.

Truppenamt

T1: Army Section

(Operations & Planning)

T2: Organization

T3: Statistical

(Intelligence)

T4: Training

Weapons OfficeInspectorates

IN1:Weapons

Schools

IN2: Infantry

IN3: Cavalry

IN4: Artillery

IN5: Pioneers

& Fortresses

IN6: Motor Troops

(Lutz became

Inspector, then

Guderian)

IN7: Signal

Troops

WA1

WA2

WA3

WA4

WA5

WA6

(Oswald Lutz

served as a

section leader)

WA7

Army High Command (Heeresleitung)

Field Commands

Group 1

(East

Germany)

Group 2

(West

Germany)

Truppenamt

T1: Army Section

(Operations & Planning)

T2: Organization

T3: Statistical

(Intelligence)

T4: Training

Weapons OfficeInspectorates

IN1:Weapons

Schools

IN2: Infantry

IN3: Cavalry

IN4: Artillery

IN5: Pioneers

& Fortresses

IN6: Motor Troops

(Lutz became

Inspector, then

Guderian)

IN7: Signal

Troops

WA1

WA2

WA3

WA4

WA5

WA6

(Oswald Lutz

served as a

section leader)

WA7


Field Commands

Group 1

(East

Germany)

Group 2

(West

Germany)

Figure 3.1 Reichwehr Command Structure, 1919-1934


7 (Communications) and its linked Weapons Office section and mandated that a

radio be included in every prototype tank developed in the 1920s. Innovations like

these were quickly incorporated because of the coordination between the Weapons

Office branch in charge of its technical development and the Inspectorate, which

was responsible for its operational, tactical, and doctrinal incorporation and use.19

The linkage between these branches reduced information asymmetries and agency

costs by making it easier for managers to unobtrusively monitor both technical and

doctrinal developments simultaneously.

The quick reinforcement of innovation into military training also was an important

aspect of blitzkrieg developmental success. Much of this occurred because of direct

participation of high-level commanders in the mechanisms—like the maneuver—that

produced innovation. Equally important was the linking of commanders in charge

of innovative units to the writing of military training literature. An example of this

was the work carried on at Lipetsk, the secret, Russian-located German air training/

development base. Officers there, for example, wrote the most current manuals on air

power based on their direct findings, and important IN-6 figures like Tschischwitz,

Lutz, and Volckheim contributed substantially to the doctrinal literature.20 The

Army’s Tank School at Wunsdorf used personnel practices to incorporate recent

lessons learned—all of its instructors in late 1940 were officers who had just fought

in the French campaign, where blitzkrieg enjoyed its most impressive success.21

There were important promotion and prestige incentives for officers that pursued

technical knowledge and innovation. Successful positions in the Weapons Office,

the center for R&D in all technical matters, often led to important positions as

commanders in corresponding branches. Oswald Lutz’s impressive achievements in

the Weapons Office led to a promotion to the Inspectorate of Motor Troops.22 Captains

Kurt Student and Wilhelm Wimmer were important officers in the Weapons Office

and later achieved senior ranks, with Wimmer becoming chief of development and

testing for the aviation section of the WO.23 The air staff of both the Truppenamt and

Waffenampt had a high concentration of talent and expertise, much as IN-6 did, and

a high percentage of those officers went on to high-level promotion. Hugo Sperrle

was chief of Air Staff in the Truppenamt during 1927-29, and possessed an unusual

technical competence. He went on to command the Condor Legion in Spain and later

became a fleet commander.24 A number of the civil service members of the Weapons

Office became generals of the Luftwaffe. Rudolf Spies, who earned an aeronautical

engineering degree, achieved the rank of general as a senior Luftwaffe engineer.25

19 Ibid., p. 108.

20 Ibid., p. 195.

21 R. L. DiNardo, Germany’s Panzer Arm (Westport: Greeenwood Press, 1997), p. 61.

22 Corum (1992), p. 119.

23 Ibid., (1992), p. 148, and (1997), pp. 173-174.

24 Ibid., (1997), pp. 86-87.

25 Ibid., pp. 85-86.


Shielding and Formal Links—The Inspectorate of Motor Troops

The greatest advances in tank doctrine during the interwar period occurred within a

subunit of the German Army, the Inspectorate of Motor Transport Troops.26 It was

the sixth inspectorate, referred to in organizational abbreviation as IN-6. A detailed

examination of the evolution of this branch is necessary considering that it housed

virtually all the most important German armor doctrine developments during the

interwar period. As this unit proved more and more successful in producing real

innovation, it was changed and refined to both shield it and increase its ability to

concentrate on its most important achievement—tank doctrine. Both its principals

and agents were given greater incentives to innovate by granting them extra powers

and exemption from normal duties. From this formal branch of the Army came the

formation of massed tank doctrine, tank tactics, and eventually the organizational

core of the blitzkrieg—the panzer division. The extra authority of its commander

and ample attention by high command ensured that the lessons learned there made

quick transition into general training.

The Inspectorate of Motor Transport Troops (IN-6) was number six of the branch

inspectorates in the Army high command headquarters, each of which contained

several General Staff officers and operated on par with Truppenamt and the

Weapons Office.27 The authority of the Inspectorate of Motor Transport Troops over

tank training and development is due largely to the forward thinking of Hans Von

Seekt, whose interest in and planning for the mechanization of the Army gave the

advancement of tank doctrine its necessary roots. Von Seekt planted an important

organizational seed with IN-6, which he desired to become a separate main branch of

the Army like the infantry. Instead of managing its efforts directly, he left its course

largely up to the inspector commanding it.28

As time passed IN-6 would gain greater autonomy and continuously produce

important innovations in armor doctrine. As described in the section on formal

links, IN-6 was directly linked to its corresponding section in the Weapons Office,

WA-6. IN-6 would determine what new weaponry/motorization was required and

its specifications, and WA-6 would determine the exact technical specifications

and begin to draw up development contracts for contractors.29 The initial task of

distinguishing this new unit, IN-6, fell to Erich von Tschischwitz, its first commander

(or “Inspector”), and one of his staff officers, Heinz Guderian. Both were strongly in

favor of motorized and armored combat formations and turned IN-6 toward tactical

experimentation instead of normal service tasks.30 In 1921 Tschischwitz conducted

motorized exercises in the Harz Mountains, and decided, based on the success of

26 Different authors translate the name of this inspectorate, Kraftfahrtruppen, several

different ways—Transport Troops, Motor Transport Troops, and Motor Troops. IN-6 will

most often be used in this study.

27 Corum (1992), p. 36.

28 Ibid., p. 137.

29 Ibid., pp. 100-101.

30 Albert Seaton, The German Army 1933-1945 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982),

pp. 61-62.


these maneuvers, that motorized infantry were viable in combat. Demonstrating the

strong relationships that existed between principals in the German High Command

and the agents developing doctrine, Von Seekt issued copies of Tschischwitz’s report

directly throughout the Army.31

The importance of placing a progressive commander in the position of Inspectorate

of Motor Troops was demonstrated by the lack of progress under its next commander,

Von Natzmer. Natzmer, a virtual reactionary, succeeded Tschischwitz in 1924 and

interpreted the IN-6 mission as nothing more than a transport support organization

for the other branches. Guderian left in 1924 to become a military history instructor

at Stettin; convinced that his efforts would fall on deaf ears, this strong innovator

ceased to try. The fact that Guderian was chief of staff under Tschischwitz but

voluntarily left the branch of the Army he was most interested in during the tenure

of Natzmer highlights the importance of reciprocity in principal-agent relationships.

Guderian in 1924 was suddenly bereft of organizational outlets and channels for

conveying novel ideas, reducing his incentive to try. Natzmer was succeeded in 1927

by Vollard-Bockelburg, re-introducing into the branch a commander interested in the

potential of armor doctrine.32

Vollard-Bockelburg used his authority to bring IN-6 back on track toward

mechanized warfare. He directed the Inspectorate of Motor Troops’ Berlin-Moabit

school to change a small technical course for motor officers to include amour and

motorized warfare tactics. Under his direction the school began to evolve in general

toward a more tactical orientation, finally becoming the Panzer Troops School in

1935 when rearmament began. Vollard-Bockelburg was also the first to change the

name of the Inspectorate to reflect its more militarily offensive instead of support

focus—to Inspectorate of Motorized Fighting Troops.33 The name could not be

reported officially because of Versailles restrictions, but even this internal designation

would help spur further innovation toward combined arms tank doctrine. Vollard-

Bockelburg actually began the first regular instruction of IN-6 officers in theory of

armored warfare by translating a 1927 British manual on the subject and using it for

a teaching tool.34

The evolution of mechanized and tank doctrine took a huge leap forward with

the appointment of Major General Oswald Lutz to the position of Inspector of Motor

Transport Troops in 1931.35 He was the perfect man for the job. Lutz was a technically

minded commander who would not only make experimentation with armor his top

priority but also give his subordinates, especially Guderian, clear opportunities to

implement their ideas. Lutz had spent almost his entire career in Army transport,

including service in The Great War as director of motor transport for the Sixth Army.

He was promoted to a higher technical command in 1924 as a lieutenant colonel,

transferring to become the Weapons Office section leader in charge of vehicle

development. Already he was displaying much zeal for technological innovation

31 S. J. Lewis, Forgotten Legions (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985), p. 18.

32 Seaton (1982), pp. 62-63.

33 Corum (1992), p. 136.

34 Seaton (1982), p. 62.

35 Mitcham (2001), p. 7.


and consequent impatience with lack of progress during this posting in the Weapons

Office.36 Upon arrival, he discovered the failure of the Weapons Office to undertake

advanced armored car development since 1921, which annoyed him particularly.

Lutz changed a technical course for his staff on the purely technical aspects of motor

vehicles to include tactical uses, as well as generally training his staff in armor

tactics. He conducted numerous studies that among other things led him as early as

1925-26 to recommend differentiation in both a medium and light tank for different

types of tactical missions.37

Lutz’s energetic efforts in the Weapons Office got him onto the staff of IN-6 in

1928, and when Lutz finally succeeded Vollard-Bockelberg in 1931 as Inspector

of Motor Transport Troops,38 Guderian transferred back to become his Chief of

Staff. During 1931-1932, Lutz conducted exercises that yielded lessons essential

to the future development of the panzer division. Using dummy tank battalions, he

experimented and used the results to draft a report to Von Brauchitsch, who was in

charge of revising Leadership and Battle, the primary training text for the Army.

One of his more important discoveries in the report was that tanks should be used in

nothing less than battalion strength, although on special occasions a few might be

used for support in other missions. Equally as important was the need to give a tank

battalion its own offensive mission; the experiments had demonstrated to him the

speed and range capability of tanks when freed from the slow-moving, unmotorized

infantry. These two discoveries alone demonstrate how capable an IN-6 manager

could be given ample resources and authority to experiment; it has been argued that

the exercises of 1931-32 were the true birth of blitzkrieg.39

The incentive for promotion in IN-6 through successful doctrinal development

was reflected by the number of officers that used the inspectorate to achieve higher

rank in the all important tank divisions. Officers could be sure the high command

intended from its very inception that IN-6 would be the center of tank doctrine

and technology development because they transferred all of their experienced tank

officers there, including Volckheim and Thoferhn. IN-6 also served as an impressive

channel for promotion throughout the interwar period. Von Tschischwitz after his

impressive management of IN-6 went on by 1927 to command Group I, one of the

only two Riechswehr field commands equivalent to an army level command. A

number of other officers went on to higher positions in the Army generally.40 Oswald

Lutz and Heinz Guderian both exhibited very impressive career promotions through

IN-6.

An important example of IN-6 organizational linkage with the high command

occurred in 1933 when Guderian was able to lead an exercise for Hitler’s benefit.

It was really just a demonstration of new weaponry; Guderian led a tank formation

display for the new chancellor, which consisted of a combined arms motorized

formation involving the experimental light tanks that would soon become the Pzkw.

36 Corum, (1992), p. 119.

37 Ibid., pp. 134-136.

38 Ibid., p. 134.

39 Citino (1999), pp. 202-204.

40 Corum (1992), p. 137.


I. The demonstration resulted in Hitler’s often quoted comment: “That’s what I need!

That’s what I want to have.” Thereafter the panzer had direct support from the top

commanding officer in the government, ensuring that the overall organization of IN-

6 and armor organization would continue to receive high support.41

Due to the impressive results obtained in IN-6 under Lutz and Guderian, the

Kommando der Panzertruppen (Tank Forces Command) was created in 1934 as an

autonomous organization to deal specifically with tanks. Lutz and Guderian were

transferred to this new unit with their same command relationship (commander and

his chief of staff), and were ordered to continue with experimenting tactically and

organizationally with tanks.42 An important organizational addition to the authority

of the new unit greatly increased its potential for innovation.

Due to the fact that panzer units had yet to be created but were expected to

come into existence, both Lutz and Guderian were given field armored commands

with which they would control and organize panzer units as each was created.43

The panzer troops were now distinguished from other branches of the Army in that

their commander and chief of staff had a double authority—field commander and

a managing role as commander of the Tank Forces Command. The extra command

authority gave Lutz even more ability to directly instigate and implement a number

of highly important exercises during his tenure.44 It was also an incentive to innovate,

granting power that made it easier to produce results. This important command

structure demonstrates principal-agent model linkage between high command and

field command, and shielding from the bureaucratic difficulties that would have

resulted from Lutz’s attempts to secure field armies for his exercises.

The exercises that Lutz conducted in fall 1935 with his new authority yielded

results that he and Guderian used to recommend successfully the creation of the

first three panzer divisions.45 These exercises also produced a number of other key

changes, most importantly helping advance the concept of combined arms. Based

on his findings from the events, in which he personally commanded the first panzer

division to operate in a maneuver, Lutz recommended that motorized infantry and

tanks be used in conjunction with each other. This was a significant break with the

teachings of the British armor theorists Fuller and Liddell-Hart, and an important step

in combined arms armor doctrine. The 1935 exercises revealed the important role

of engineer units in the panzer division; their special talents could be immediately

employed for a host of problems like bridging rivers or removing obstacles to clear

the path for the panzers.46

Guderian succeeded Lutz as commander of Tank Forces Command in 1938,47

and enjoyed even greater authority to test and implement innovative ideas for tank

doctrine. Guderian’s primary incentives to innovate were his near religious belief in

41 Quoted in Citino (1999), p. 230.

42 Citino (1999), pp. 230-231.

43 Seaton (1982), pp. 62-64.

44 Ibid., p. 102.

45 Citino (1999), pp. 230-231.

46 DiNardo (1997), pp. 77-78.

47 Mitcham (2001), p. 12.


the utility of the massed offensive tank formation and his desire for personal prestige

through being its champion. This can be witnessed through his largely successful

attempt to paint himself as the father of blitzkrieg, a kind of armor messiah fighting

against an intractably conservative leadership. This view took hold initially because

it was based on Guderian’s self-serving autobiography, which was for some time after

the war one of the only major historical sources on the institutional development of

blitzkrieg. Although it is has become clear that he was neither the father of blitzkrieg

nor forced to fight against an impossibly conservative leadership, it cannot be doubted

that he was as influential on the development of tank doctrine as any other.48

Initially Guderian possessed the same impressive linkage authority by being

both the commander of the Tank Forces Command and having his own armor field

command to use for exercises and experimentation. In autumn of 1938 he was

granted additional powers when a new military organization was established, the

Mobile Troops with him as Chief. The new organization included all the elements of

a blitzkrieg operation minus air power: all tank, anti-tank, and motorized infantry,

rifles, etc (Tank Forces Command had only possessed tanks and tank troops). Now

Guderian was truly on a different authoritative level than the other arms inspectors,

having even greater authority than Lutz had to design and implement his own

experiments. He also was in charge of the mobile troops schools so that he had

their resources for experimentation and could immediately introduce lessons learned

through experimental exercises directly into training curriculums.49

48 Corum, (1992), p. 138.

49 Seaton (1982), pp. 102-103.


Inspectorates

IN 1,2,3,4,5,7

IN-6: Tank Forces

Command

(Commando der

Panzertruppen)

Formerly Inspectorate of

Motor Troops

Oswald Lutz Commanding

Field Commands

Panzer Divisions – Part of the

Field Armored Command under

Lutz – now both Inspector of Tank

Forces Command and a field

commander

Division 1

Div. 2-Guderian

Commander

Division 3,4,5, . . .

Figure 3.2 Tank Forces Command, 1934-35


The Role of Managerial Norms

The German Army’s managerial norms heavily influenced the management of the

innovations that would come to characterize blitzkrieg in several ways. First, the

strategic and operational conceptions of the Army determined how the innovations

would be received and incorporated. Second, the impact of World War I on German

organizational culture would shape the composition of the panzer division. Finally,

managerial norms affected the ways in which innovation would be monitored and

evaluated by principals in the German Army.

The defeat of Germany and imposition of the Versailles Treaty at the conclusion

of World War I, as catastrophic as many Germans considered them, were not

without precedent in German military culture. Little more than a century before,

the Prussian Army had suffered similar catastrophe at the hands of Napoleon.50 The

defeat at the Battle of Jena, and subsequent imposition of oppressive treaties by

the French created a situation for the Prussian Army similar to that experienced by

the German Army in the interwar period.51 The response of the Prussian Army was

led by Generals Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and involved review of the failures

of the Army and overhaul of the education system for officers. Eventually these

reforms strengthened the Prussian military to the point that it could cast off the

constraints of the hated treaties and join the new coalition against Napoleon.52 The

Army consciously promoted this model for reform in the interwar period. As James

Corum notes, “this period in German military history was a favorite theme of the

German military writers of the 1920s.”53

The educational reforms undertaken by the German Army in the aftermath of

both defeats focused on increasing the scientific and technical capabilities of the

officer corps. Prior to the reforms of Scharnhorst after the defeat at Jena, for example,

mathematics and even basic literacy were often neglected and even scorned by the

Prussian officer corps.54 In the 1920s, reform further increased the educational

requirements of the officer corps. University matriculation was made mandatory,

examinations were toughened, and a new officer-training program was introduced.

An emphasis on knowledge of technology and its relation to military affairs was

created, with sections of the Weapons Office, the service branch inspectorates,

and General Staff sections required to hold two or more seminars on technology

per month.55 The most radical change was the new possibility of substituting an

engineering or technical degree for the General Staff academy course as a means for

joining the General Staff.56

This focus on technology was in keeping with the German Army’s culture, dating

to the time of Helmut von Moltke, the elder. Moltke came to appreciate the impact

50 Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (London: Oxford University Press,

1955) pp. 33-36.

51 Ibid., pp. 35-38.

52 Ibid., pp. 38-53.

53 Corum (1997), p. 79.

54 Craig (1995), pp. 44-46.

55 Ibid, (1995), pp. 393-397, and Corum (1997), p. 68.

56 Corum (1997), pp. 66-68.


of new technologies on war after the 1864 war between Prussia and Denmark over

Schlieswig-Holstein. First among these was the increased capability of defensive

arms. Rifling, percussion caps, and eventually breech loading and repeating weapons

meant that defenders could dominate attackers with firepower. Moltke wrote in 1869

“it is fire effect, nowadays so powerful, which will determine the issue.”57 Second was

the ability of telegraph and railroad to increase mobility dramatically. Moltke was

thus forced to reconcile increased strategic tempo with decreased utility of frontal

assaults. His solution, which would dominate Prussian and then German military

culture for the next seventy-five years, was to move offensively yet fight defensively,

or put another way, to combine offensive strategy with defensive tactics.

This solution was focused on moving rapidly to envelop the enemy, and attack

his flanks and rear. If the enemy sought to break out of the encirclement, he would be

forced to launch a costly frontal attack on the prepared German defenders. Moltke’s

idea became came known as Kesselschlacht, or cauldron-battle.

Kesselschlacht was an unorthodox concept, which in many ways ran counter

to the lessons of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon fought offensively, concentrating

assaults on the weakest part of an enemy’s front. When Moltke sought to revise

Prussian tactics in the period prior to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, he was

resisted by the king and others who still believed in the utility of the massed frontal

assaults.58 When the war occurred, the Prussian infantry attacked en masse at the

battle of Konniggratz with little success. Victory came after a second Prussian Army

arrived and attacked the Austrian flank.

Moltke used the experience of the Austro-Prussian War to rewrite doctrine,

cautioning against the frontal assault and urging the flanking and enveloping

maneuver. He also sought to upgrade the technological capabilities of the Army to

enhance this new doctrine. He encouraged the development and adoption of the

Dreyse rifle, an early breech-loading rifle of considerable accuracy prior to the

Austro-Prussian war, and the adoption of breech-loading rifled artillery after the

war. Once encirclement was completed, the massed infantry and artillery fire would

render it inescapable.

Implicit in Moltke’s thinking was a realization of the possibility of a two front war.

This became particularly important in the period following German unification. As

early as 1871, Moltke began contemplating this eventuality.59 The solution to the two

front war was to rapidly concentrate and defeat one enemy while holding the other at

bay. Moltke and his successor Schlieffen would rely on rapid mobilization and defeat

of one enemy through decisive offensive maneuver to overcome the limitations of

German geography. Victory would be decisive and quick, or unattainable.60

57 Quoted in Cooper, (1978), p. 133

58 Larry H. Addington, The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff 1865-1945

(Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), p. 5.

59 Craig (1995), pp. 273-276.

60 Indeed, Moltke indicated that victory may have been altogether impossible. Moltke

had experienced “people’s war” after Sedan, and began to believe rapid victory was becoming

impossible. Schlieffen would not accept this, and sought to salvage war as a political

instrument. Nonetheless, the Prussian tradition remained focused on the decisive short war.

See Stig Forster, “Dreams and Nightmares: German Military Leadership and the Images of


The Napoleonic concept of war nonetheless proved difficult to remove from

Prussian military culture, particularly at the tactical level. When the Franco-Prussian

War erupted in 1870, some Prussian officers still attempted frontal assaults. It was

only after encountering the powerful defensive fire of the French at the battles of

Spicheren and Worth that the Prussian officer corps began to accept the utility of

Moltke’s doctrine. Relearning the lessons as the war moved into French territory,

sometimes with heavy losses, the Prussian officer corps finally accomplished a

successful encirclement at Metz, and then a greater one at Sedan. At Sedan, Moltke’s

new doctrine proved itself, as the French command lost 17,000 men trying to escape

before surrendering 104,000 troops.61

The Kesselschlacht doctrine would guide German strategic and tactical thinking

both prior to and during World War I. The Schleiffen Plan was Kesselschlacht on

a grand scale, which notably failed due to the limits of logistics, the limits of the

endurance of men and beasts of burden, and the limits of effective command and

control over such an extensive front.62 After the failure of the Schleiffen plan at the

First Battle of the Marne, attempts were made to outflank the Allies on their left

by moving towards the English Channel, attempts which by the close of the year

had ended in entrenchments from the Swiss border to the English Channel. In the

East, however, the victory over the Russians at Tannenberg in August 1914 was a

masterpiece of Kesselschlacht.63 This success would not be forgotten.

German military culture also was influenced at the tactical level by the

Kesselschlacht concept. Von Moltke saw the importance of cooperation between

infantry and artillery in maneuver and encirclement, and the experience of the First

World War reinforced it. The Germans reorganized the structure of the infantry

division during the war from four infantry regiments (the “square”) to three

infantry and one artillery regiment (the “triangle”), increasing both combined arms

effectiveness and tactical maneuverability.

Of even greater importance to combined arms concepts was the development

of the Storm Troops. The Storm Troops were detachments which sought to effect

penetration of enemy lines by combining light machineguns, flamethrowers, and

even man-portable light artillery with short yet intense concentrations of heavy

artillery fire.64 In the final Ludendorff offensives of 1918, the Storm Troops proved

successful in breaching enemy lines through combined arms operations.65 This initial

success, which ultimately failed for lack of resources, would be remembered by the

German Army during the interwar period.

Future Warfare 1871-1914” in Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Forster, eds,

Anticipating Total War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

61 Addington (1971), p.8.

62 It is worth noting that some argue that had the original plan been followed rather

than the variant imposed by Moltke, the younger, victory could have been achieved by the

Germans. The timetable for victory was less than six weeks, meaning that Germany could have

beaten France in approximately the same time it took to win in 1940. See Fuller, (1992).

63 Ibid., pp. 23-24.

64 Ibid., p. 24.

65 Corum (1992), p. 2-9.


This combination of education and experience produced a set of shared values for

evaluating developments in technology and doctrine that helped reduce monitoring

costs within the German Army. These managerial norms are summed up in the

introduction to the German manual “Command of Troops” (Truppen-fuhrung) from

1936:

The art of war is in a state of constant development. New weapons cause it to assume ever-

changing forms. The advent of these weapons must be foreseen in good time, and their

effect correctly assessed. Thereupon they must be quickly taken into service.66

The German officer corps, therefore, was oriented towards exploration of new

technology, and able to assess its value in terms of enhancing the Army’s ability

to perform its perceived mission of conducting rapid strategic offensives through

Kesselschlacht.67 This normative approach provided cohesion for the management of

innovation and reduced the costs of monitoring. Evidentiary rules became stronger as

technical education increased during the interwar period. Nonetheless, and perhaps

apocryphally, Hans von Seeckt, as commander of the Reichswehr, was thus able to

correctly assess the value of the innovations that would comprise blitzkrieg despite

maintaining belief that horse cavalry could still play an important role in modern

warfare.68

Armor theorist Heinz Guderian, in his manifesto Achtung-Panzer, makes

extensive reference to these shared evidentiary rules as a means of gaining support

for his vision. While Achtung-Panzer exaggerates in several places, it is nonetheless

relevant as a clear example of the type of arguments that would be acceptable to

members of the German military. As such it illustrates the value of shared concepts

of valid evidence for the management of innovation.

In the introduction, Guderian first notes the German need for short war: “Such

nations have been forced to consider what means may best conduce an armed conflict

to a rapid and tolerable end.”69 He further notes the importance of assessing new

technology which can further this goal:

When a nation has to reckon with a struggle against superior forces on several fronts, it

must neglect nothing that may conduce to the betterment of its situation… it is a question

66 Quoted in Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German Military Performance

1914-1945 (Report to Office of Net Assessment, December 1980), p. 30.

67 The German military’s perception of its mission and methodology was not monolithic

and was contradicted by various statements of senior German leaders. Nevertheless, the

overall culture was centered on maneuver and decisive battle, even if, for example, von Seeckt

criticized slavish obsession with envelopment.

68 The extent to which von Seeckt believed in cavalry is debatable, with some arguing

he was a reactionary who wanted to bring back the lance charge, and others arguing he merely

saw cavalry as part of an all-arms light division. See Cooper (1978) for the former view; and

Corum (1997) for the latter.

69 Heinz Guderian, Achtung-Panzer (London: Arms and Armor Press, 1992), p. 23.

The original German edition was published in 1937.


of making sure that military developments keep pace with the technical and economic

ones.70

Guderian later details a variety of technical developments obtained from foreign

sources and discussed in the German military journal Militar-Wochenblatt.71

Guderian also devotes time to discussing the need to adopt combined arms

doctrine for blitzkrieg: “Tanks are unable by themselves to meet all the combat

tasks which come their way; the other arms will be needed as well…Everyone is

agreed on this basic point.”72 He then discusses the appropriate relationship between

armor and the other arms from the perspective of “striving for decisive victory on the

grand scale.”73 The tank, he argues, must be the primary arm, supported by aircraft

and mechanized infantry and artillery.74 Finally, Guderian argues for a doctrine of

operations which combines the new technology with the overall German concept of

war by maneuver. He states the goal of armored warfare thusly: “We therefore aim

at achieving a sweeping victory by the means advocated by our third school, namely

a breakthrough which will lead to a pursuit, and the rolling up of the intact sectors

of the enemy front.”75 It is worth noting also that Guderian makes reference to the

concepts of Moltke the elder on firepower.76

The final normative element of the German Army’s managerial approach

was the decentralized conception of command. Rather than focusing on detailed

planning from above, the Germans sought to instill junior officers with initiative and

creativity. Principals thus had a high degree of confidence in agents, reducing the

need to monitor intrusively.

War is described in the 1936 manual “Command of Troops” as “an art, a free

creative activity resting on scientific foundations.” Regulations are described as

“guiding lines that must be applied in accordance with circumstances.”77 The manual

is replete with statements that reinforce this decentralized theory of command.

According to Martin van Creveld, these ideas trace back to the time of Moltke the

elder.78 The limitations of communications technology during the century prior to

World War II combined with a concept of warfare based on maneuver required that

subordinates have latitude to effect maneuver. In describing the essence of an order,

the 1936 manual states: “An order should contain everything a subordinate must

know to carry out his assignment and only that.” It also states that “a commander

must leave freedom of action to his subordinates.”79 This norm of decentralized

70 Ibid., pg 24.

71 Ibid., p. 156 provides a good example of his argument about technical details of

armor vs. artillery.

72 Ibid., p. 188.

73 Ibid., p. 188.

74 Ibid., pp. 193-198.

75 Ibid., p. 190.

76 Ibid., p. 203.

77 Quoted in Van Creveld (1980), p. 30.

78 Ibid., p. 40.

79 Quoted in Ibid., p. 41.


command hinges upon, as van Creveld notes, “complete confidence of superiors in

their subordinates, and vice versa…”80

Encouragement of technical writing and thinking by the high command and

informal outlets for novel ideas also created incentives for senior and junior officers

to offer innovative thinking. One of the best outlets for this type of thinking was

the Militarwochenblatt (MW), a semi-official weekly Army journal that provided

an informal outlet for the expression of innovative ideas—armor doctrine among

the most important. It was edited by a retired general who was a progressive

military theorist, leading him throughout the 1920s to include numerous works on

armor doctrine. Through 1924-1925 he even went so far as to produce a monthly

supplement called “The Tank”, to which Volckheim contributed to every issue.81

Overall, the MW demonstrated the technical orientation of the German Army; there

was an almost complete absence of political or economic articles in the publication.

This was a result partly of the fact that officers were not permitted to take part in

any kind of political activity; their intellectual energies were thus channeled toward

operational thinking.82

The High Command used this informal mechanism, the MW, as a teaching and

encouragement tool by attaching official importance to some of its products. In

addition to gaining prestige through publication in the MW, theoretical and analytical

contributors might find their works in a recommended reading list compiled and

promoted by the high command. Volckheim in particular benefited from this practice;

the only books that were part of the list were written by him. All the rest were MW

articles, of which he also wrote many.83 Thus with the formal and informal outlets

that had the high command’s attention, an author on armor might attract favorable

notice with innovative ideas on the new type of warfare.

Maneuvers, Exercises, & War Games

The German maneuver during the interwar period was by no means a new

mechanism for tactical learning; all of the major European militaries participated

in their own versions of military exercises and battle simulations in the interwar

period. The German military prior to 1914, however, had been the world expert

in staging full-army maneuvers as a teaching tool in which new tactics could be

tested and discovered. During the early interwar period the practice of war gaming

and maneuvers continued to receive intense attention. Various types of simulations

were practiced; the commander’s war game involved simulated battle on a sand

table using a map—this emphasized strategic and operational learning.84 Staff tours

were another learning tool in which the Chief of Army Command beginning with

Von Seekt would lead members of higher staff officers through geographical areas

to provide familiarity and tactical brainstorming for particular tracts of terrain.

80 Ibid., p. 46.

81 Corum (1992), p. 127.

82 Ibid., p. 86.

83 S. J. Lewis, Forgotten Legions (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985)

84 Citino (1999), p. 105.


Maneuvers and field exercises involved simulated battle with actual units of the

field; maneuvers often used division and even corps level armies for the simulations.

In the commander’s war game, field exercises and maneuvers, the simulated war was

usually set up with two opposing teams; Germany as the blue team and the enemy

(France or Poland for example) as the red.85 None of these mechanisms by their

simple existence were innovative—it was their application and realistic intensity,

coupled with principal-agent relationships that primed them for producing serious

innovation.

Field exercises and maneuvers provided the most concrete and productive

method for discovering and incorporating tactical innovation, and were thus the most

important peacetime tool for training and tactical innovation of the German Army.

Unlike the pre-war German military, leadership tried to avoid isolation of the main

arms in the exercises and instead perfected them through cooperation with others.

Initially the practice of the maneuver began small, at the company and battalion

level, but by 1926 the Army had advanced to the multi-divisional maneuver.86

Innovation was realized to a much greater scale through the German maneuver,

however, because its structure, comprehensive application, and attention to large-

scale exercises created a particularly conducive atmosphere for production and

incorporation of innovation. No other interwar power performed the maneuver on

even close to an equivalent scale, nor attached the importance to the results that the

Germans did.87 The innovations on the field were guaranteed to be examined because

of the unobtrusive but close participation of high command officers in observing the

maneuver and officiating the post-maneuver critique.

Creative solutions were given the highest priority in war gaming. Directors of

exercises were tasked with inventing new situations that would consistently require

non-schematic novel approaches. Von Seekt insisted on exploring a full spectrum

of possibilities, so the Army practiced combat situations that ran outside the actual

strategic requirements of Germany.88 So much emphasis was given to realism and

innovative structure that wooden dummy tanks were used to simulate tank action

in these maneuvers. This practice was another aspect of German war training that

received high marks from the American military attaché.89

The maneuver in the hands of the Germans was especially conducive to new

ideas, due to the traditional Prussian operational doctrine of decentralization of

command to the junior officer in the field. This devolution of tactical authority was

not a new aspect of the interwar period, but it allowed the Germans to produce

greater innovation through the maneuvers and exercises. Commanding generals

developed the mission and left it up to the field commander to implement it. This

practice extended to the maneuver as well, leaving freedom to innovate tactically

to junior officers that normally might not otherwise have the opportunity to convey

novel ideas. The role of the high command during battle was to exploit the local

85 Ibid., pp. 105-106.

86 Corum (1992), p. 183.

87 Citino (1999), pp. 105-106.

88 Ibid (1999), p. 18.

89 DiNardo (1997), p. 76.


successes of the junior commanders in the field.90 Attention to planning was another

impressive and important hallmark of the German maneuver. Army commanders

gained constant experience in planning and movement, operational size, and fighting

tactics of division-size units.91

Much of the success of the maneuver can be attributed to the realism produced

by the German umpire system, which surpassed by far anything other militaries had

developed. The basis for the operation of an umpire was the manual Regulations

for Umpire Service During Troop Maneuvers issued by Von Seekt in 1921 and

subsequently revised several times. The umpire’s job was to prevent anything

unrealistic, and to force situations in which both sides would use and realize the

necessity of individual action and combined arms. The umpire had to be a veritable

expert on all types of arms and tactics to be able to both guide and judge the

complicated maneuvers.

The umpires themselves operated in their own military organization, with a head

umpire receiving reports from an array of diverse umpire officers assigned to each

unit. All tactical and operation actions of the maneuver were reported on by umpires

from beginning to end, including judging the effectiveness of fire and tactics by

one side toward the other. The specificity of the umpires’ tasks and training are

astonishing, and led to maneuvers and exercises of the most realistic nature possible.

The umpire regulations also had an annex, the “Guiding Principals for Judging the

Effectiveness of Weapons” which provided guidelines for examining the tactical

utility of all combined arms. The 1924 revision of this annex already demonstrated

some very early blitzkrieg doctrine by suggesting that tanks should be used en masse

and never individually as mere infantry support weapons. Subsequent exercises and

maneuvers would prove these statements correct and greatly advance the doctrine.92

The U.S. military attaché during the period remarked very positively on the training

and use of umpires in the German Army, and noted that the U.S. military had no

literature on the use of umpires and no umpire training.93

The post-maneuver analysis was one of the key components insuring that

successful innovation would be recognized and receive attention by the highest

level of commanders. Each maneuver had its own commander, often an officer of

very high rank in the general staff. He would be in charge of assigning umpires and

ensuring their level of readiness, in addition to receiving the reports and presiding

over a post-maneuver critique that studied the lessons of the previous few days.

Winning or losing a war game or maneuver was inconsequential; what mattered

was the lengthy analysis of lessons learned and tactics discovered. Participation in

the full-scale maneuver critiques was always at the highest level; Von Seekt during

his tenure as commander of the German Army observed the maneuvers personally

and then presided over the critiques—later Army commanders did the same. The

critiques were not secretive affairs; they were often conducted almost like a press

90 Van Creveld (1980), pp. 40-46..

91 Corum (1992), pp. 187-188.

92 Citino (1999), pp. 105-116.

93 Corum (1992), p. 183.


conference—with all the maneuver’s participating officers and foreign attachés in

attendance.94

Brief descriptions of some specific actual maneuvers and exercises will illustrate

the practical application of principal-agent relationships. As early as 1922, exercises

began to yield substantive results in tactical innovation, providing in that year new

important knowledge in signal operations.95 A detailed description of the Group

Command Maneuvers of 1927-1928 provides an excellent example of the direct

link between the high-level principals observing the maneuvers and the field

commanders participating in them. It is valuable as an example of the extensive

nature of the post-maneuver critique that provided for direct information channels

between the actions of field commanders and the high command.96 There were post

exercise daily critiques, followed by a post-maneuver critique that summed up the

entire experience. General von Reinhardt conducted the first day critique. He was

also the commander of the 2nd Group Command that participated in the maneuver.

Among other things he was highly critical of the use of cavalry and stated that this

would be the last maneuver in which certain cavalry maneuvers would be used.

This critique was attended by numerous foreign military attaches in addition to the

German officers. The final post-maneuver critique was astonishing for its high-level

officer participation; besides involving all the officers of the red and blue teams,

it was presided over by Defense Minister Otto Gessler, Chief of Army Command

Heye and again General Reinhardt. The lessons learned during the exercise were

witnessed by the leaderships of the high command and the civilian government.97

The maneuver also was a mechanism through which commanders experienced

and learned the new motorized and armored innovations that later propelled them

to high and reputable positions, and often fame, in the German Army.98 During the

autumn 1932 maneuvers several new experimental formations and units were fielded

for the first time, chief of these being the motorized reconnaissance detachment

(MRD). The testing of that unit was a great success, personally witnessed and

favorably commented on by Chief of the Army Command Kurt von Hammerstein.

The red team demonstrated quick and deep penetrations that were clear early

precursors of blitzkrieg. Overall the maneuver was impressive for its level of

motorization; every unit participating was motorized at least in part. This maneuver

also demonstrated how future high-level commanders had an innovation incentive

by becoming familiar with motorization and armor. Future famous commanders

Gernd von Rundsted, Fedor von Bock, Werner von Fritsch, and Ewald von Kleist all

commanded maneuver forces in the field.99

The close participation of Chief of Army Command Hammerstein was especially

important because he personally planned, in consultation with Oswald Lutz, an

amazingly busy exercise schedule for 1933. Motorized armor played a large role

94 Citino (1999), pp. 106-109, 178-181.

95 Ibid., pp. 116-117.

96 Ibid., pp. 178-181.

97 Ibid., pp. 178-181.

98 Ibid., pp. 212-213.

99 Ibid., pp. 212-215.


because of Hammerstein’s strong agreement with Lutz in that area, building off of

what Lutz had already accomplished with his own exercises. The planned exercises

were extensive enough to involve every single unit in the Army, thus achieving

maximum exposure to lessons learned and new potential discoveries.100 Lutz and

Guderian later in 1935 used the results of large armored maneuvers to bring about

the creation of the first three panzer divisions. The new emphasis on combined arms

was the true German difference from the teachings of the British armor theorists in

the construction of the panzer division; the MRD had even made it into the structure

based on its proven success in prior maneuvers. Indeed the entire combined arms

additions to the tanks in the panzer division came from the steady experimentation

through exercises, war games, and maneuvers on the field. 101

The autumn 1937 maneuvers proved to be invaluable for the acceptance of

the panzer division into the operating core, and were arguably the most important

maneuvers of the interwar period. These maneuvers were by far the largest the

Germans had held during the interwar period, involving 160,000 men and 830 tanks.

The participants were as usual divided into blue and red teams, and the maneuver

was planned for seven days—longer than the normal two or three days. On the very

first day of the maneuver, before hostilities had even begun, the Red 30th division

commander decided that a sharp armored thrust at a particular point in the Blue

forces would be best and requested permission for the action. X corps commander

agreed (Red forces were divided into X and V corps) and amazingly an entire panzer

division was given to the Red 30th division commander to use at his disposal. This is

an amazingly clear example of giving a subordinate both the incentive to innovate

and the power to carry out his ideas, without sacrificing higher level authority or

damaging the chain of command.102

This also was the first opportunity that the panzer division had been given to

perform in front of the entire Army—and perform it did, surpassing the hopes of

even the most ardent of mobile armor advocates. In only four days, the red armor 3rd

panzer division thrust had captured a vital bridgehead, broken through the blue lines,

and destroyed the blue position in that entire area. The move was unprecedented

for the German maneuver; the planned seven-day maneuver had been effectively

decided in favor of the Red team on day four. Most importantly, the participation

of the high command ensured that the success of this junior field officer in proving

the innovative use of armor would be quickly accepted into the operating corps.

Chief of the General Staff Beck was there, as well as his 1938 successor Gen. Franz

Halder, who was astonished by the “fluid mobility”103 and effectiveness of the panzer

division.104 The spectacular success of the panzer division and the presence of a full

spectrum of witnesses, from the common soldier on the field to the high command,

resulted in the extremely rapid incorporation of panzer instruction into training

centers, most importantly the Kriegsakademie. By 1938 students there were already

100 Ibid., pp. 216-218.

101 Ibid., pp. 231.

102 Ibid., pp. 236-242.

103 Quoted in Citino (1999), p. 241.

104 Ibid., pp. 236-241.


studying general principals of panzer operation and deployment and participating in

simulations and tactical problem solving.105

During 1939 the maneuver, exercise, and staff tour continued to provide evidence

for successful innovation. One of the most successful staff tours occurred in 1939

and involved Guderian and large numbers of tanks, further demonstrating to the staff

their impressive mobility and effectiveness.106 The Battle of France, which remains

the most effective and memorable use of blitzkrieg, was supported and finally agreed

on because of high-level attention to war gaming simulations. Germans took the

results of war games more seriously than others. The consistency of war gaming

before the attack into France also helped solidify and improve the plan, as did the

lessons learned in the Polish campaign the previous year.107

External Influences and Methods of Oversight

Kazan and Lipetsk

Due to the extensive restrictions of the Versailles treaty the German Army in the

1920s had to seek both technical, weapons, and doctrinal and tactical development

outside of its borders. Some of this evasive export occurred through joint training

and development efforts with the Red Army in the Soviet Union; it was coordinated

secretly on the German side by the Truppenamt and the Defense Office of the

Reichswehr (German Army). Von Seekt founded the program, creating a special

staff within the Intelligence Section of the Truppenamt (T-3) tasked with negotiating

and coordinating the joint efforts with the Soviets.108

The two most important of these joint efforts in Russia were the clandestine tank

school at Kazan and the equally secret air school in Lipetsk. The direct management

(although geographically removed) by the highest military offices and the immense

effort they expended to maintain the secret collaboration clearly demonstrated the

importance they attached to the endeavor. Intense and expensive smuggling of men

and machine parts were necessary, and on one occasion three dead Germans from

airplane crashes were smuggled back as spare parts. There was a substantial flow

of German officers through Moscow going to tour the facilities, which ensured

ample attention from the high command; Colonels Keitel and von Brauchitsch of

the Truppenamt visited the installations. Contact and management was maintained

with Soviet representation at the German Embassy and with a Reichswehr office in

Moscow.109

The Air Training Center at Lipetsk was very important for the development of air

doctrine and the testing of new airplanes. It opened in 1924, and between then and

1930 it housed around 200 Germans, fifty of which ran training courses. After 1930

105 Ibid., pp. 242-243.

106 Walter Goerlitz, The German General Staff (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1995), p.

301.

107 Ernest May, Strange Victory (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), pp. 258, 261-263.

108 Corum (1992), p. 98.

109 Whaley (1984), p. 80-81.


that number rose to over 300 to facilitate an enlarged aircraft testing program. A

great many prototype aircraft were tested at Lipetsk, and pilots were trained in a one-

year course that covered all the aspects of flight. They also received some experience

in joint operations with the Soviet air force, like the joint operations at Kazan. By

the time the school closed in 1933, it had produced 120 fighter pilots, 300 air and

ground crew, and 450 administrative personnel—all highly qualified.110 Their chief

importance now came primarily from their capacity to be instructors in Germany,

perpetuating the innovation achieved at Lipetsk.111

The tank school at Kazan was established in 1927 and was a major success for

the armor program, just as Lipetsk was for air doctrine and development. Rigorous

testing took place at Kazan, and by 1927, tank prototypes were tested frequently at

the clandestine training grounds. German technicians were permanently stationed in

Kazan from 1926 on.112 Testing of several tank and vehicle models began in 1927,

and courses were taught on tank tactics and development. Because Kazan was the

only center in the German Army both for experimentation and training, discoveries

at Kazan made an instantaneous transition into the literature and learning.113

Kazan and Lipetsk were formal mechanisms with some informal aspects that

promoted innovation yet avoided an ad hoc nature through formal planning and

organization. The necessary limitations of concealment produced institutions of the

barest necessity and size, stripped of unnecessary bureaucratic layers. The small

number of officers (principals and agents) stationed there at any one time (200-300 for

Lipetsk, less for Kazan) ensured interaction among innovators and that all members

of the operation would be first-hand participants in innovation. Both the Kazan and

Lipetsk schools were also essentially “shielded” from the costs of innovation by their

geographic and secretive isolation from the main military establishment in Germany.

The foreign base meant that it was difficult for conservative elements at home to

block new ideas. Aside from Kazan’s isolation, it was under the jurisdiction of IN-

6, the Inspectorate of Motor Troops and thus shielded even within the main core of

the Army.114 The installations themselves were primed for innovation because of

their small and intimate nature and the variety of armor and technological experts

concentrated there. Innovations also had a clear channel for acceptance. Clear lines

of accountability and responsibility were preserved within the structure.115 The lack

of extensive bureaucracy strengthened efficacy and reduced the distance novel ideas

had to travel between subordinates and their commanding officers; indeed in many

cases the commanding officers were directly present for experimentation.

Innovation is most likely if it complements clearly delineated formal structures and

procedures for promotion, and both Kazan and Lipetsk were military units with strong

potential for promotion through successful innovation. Incentives for innovation

came from the opportunity to work on and develop two forms of warfare, either tank

110 Ibid., p. 81.

111 Corum (1997), pp. 115-117.

112 Whaley (1984), p. 32.

113 Corum (1992), pp. 190-195.

114 Ibid., p. 192.

115 Ibid., pp. 190-193.


or air, that were clearly recognized to be of the highest value to the military. Officers,

teachers and students—Kazan produced slightly more than 50 armor experts—were

now leaders in important technological and tactical developments which would

prime them for promotion. Other successful participants included the engineers from

Daimler, Rheinmetall, Bussing & Magirus that would now be experienced in the

doctrinal direction of the armed forces and could benefit from successful innovation

as well.116 Among the participants there could be no doubt that successful innovation

would bring about personal success; the importance that the high command attached

to the work in these centers was clear. It also ensured that innovation there would

find quick and easy incorporation into the Army. The Chief of Army Command von

Bloomberg was so worried about delay in the establishment of the tank school that

he personally discussed the matter with the Soviet Commissar for War. Extreme

effort was exerted to get it running; new types of bombs were smuggled across the

Baltic at night in foggy weather and fake identities were arranged for officers to

travel there. High ranking soldiers like Colonels Keitel and Von Brauchitch also

traveled under secret identities to tour the facilities. 117

The list of high-level officers and innovators that these clandestine training

camps produced is impressive, indicating that their participation in tank technical

and doctrinal development fulfilled promotion incentives. Kazan produced or trained

Volckheim, Nehring, Reinhardt—not only high level officers but also important

tactical thinkers. Many of the graduates of the school became the German Army’s

leading armored warfare instructors during the 1930s and 1940s—for example the

first three commanders of the Tank Gunnery School (established 1934). Radlemaier

and Harpe became commanders of the Panzer Troops School, and others became

important armor commanders (like Nehring and Rheinhardt). Friedrich Kuhn,

Kazan’ first course leader, became commandant of the Panzer Troops School.118

Lipetsk in the year 1928 alone contained four future generals der fleiger, nine

generals of the Luftwaffe, and ten future major generals. The Lipetsk facilities

produced Kurt Student, founder and commander of paratroops of the Luftwaffe,

and trained future field marshals Abert Kesselring, Hans Stumpff, and Hugo Von

Spurrle as pilots.119 Lipetsk was extremely important in the development of German

air doctrine; the importance of close air support and ground support missions was

reinforced. This organizational learning was facilitated, in part, through joint missions

with the Soviet military. The Lipetsk fighter school instructors were directed to write

the fighter operational doctrine for the Shadow Luftwaffe; this meant that written

standard doctrine was produced directly by a highly innovative mechanism.120 The

innovators themselves wrote what they learned directly into manuals requested

by the high command—there is no greater or more direct channel for conveying

novel ideas and incorporating them. Nehring in 1932-1934, who had just finished

the armor course at Kazan, was asked by the training section of the Truppenamt to

116 Ibid., p. 195.

117 Ibid., pp. 190-192.

118 Ibid., pp. 192-195.

119 Whaley (1984), p. 81.

120 Corum (1997), pp. 115-117.


write on the tactics of the Panzer brigade.121 Kurt Student visited every year and

had the opportunity to test around 800 aircraft parts. This impressive list of future

commanders demonstrates the importance of the center as a testing and training

ground.

Joint training with the Soviet army and air force was an informal aspect of the

two installations. At Kazan there was exchange of officers for duty, in 1926-1927

alone 39 German officers were assigned to duty with the Red Army. The Soviet tank

commanders and the German officers worked effectively together on technical and

training aspects of the program. Kazan’s capabilities were increased further by the

British decision to sell modern tanks to the Soviet army. By 1930 there were enough

tanks at Kazan for battalion and company maneuvers, and the Germans were able to

participate in truly large-scale Soviet maneuvers—observed by officers from Army

headquarters including General von Hammerstein-Equord. Joint exercises continued

through 1931 with the benefit of the most modern British tank technology. The

experiences increased opportunities for innovative thinking and produced a group

of German officers with direct experience in combat maneuvers involving tanks and

a sense of confidence in further writings on the subject.122 Experience at Lipetsk,

as with the Kazan school, was gained through joint operations with the Russian air

force.

External Sources of Information

The German Army managed the acquisition of external information through an

extensive structure for monitoring foreign military developments. The Intelligence

Section of the Truppenamt (T-3) was the primary organizational unit for this task.

T-3 made the surveillance of foreign military developments its top priority, and

concentrated on the most technically developed nations—the U.S., Britain, and

France. The office collected publications on foreign weaponry and vehicles, translated

and repackaged it in a series of Technical Bulletins. T-3 also intensely studied the

performance of new equipment employed in the French maneuvers of 1922-23 and

the British maneuvers of 1924, and then distributed reports of the results throughout

the Army.123 Von Seekt required all officers to speak a second language, and there

was a great deal of travel by officers, who then reported on foreign developments.124

The intelligence section also aided the development of radio use through closely

monitoring the effectiveness of radio use in the British maneuvers of 1924.125 The

civilian sector was monitored closely as well. IN-7 and the Weapons Office, for

example, were able to help advance their mobile army communications program by

keeping close tabs on civilian developments.126

121 Ibid., p. 197.

122 Corum (1992), pp. 194-196.

123 Ibid., pp. 102-103.

124 Corum (1997), pp. 100-101.

125 Corum (1992), p. 108.

126 Ibid., p. 108.


Many studies of foreign military developments and articles on foreign technology

breakthrough and use, including much armor development, appeared in the journal

Militarwochenblatt. Much of the British tactician and theorist Fuller’s work appeared

there.127 Study of foreign militaries was no intermittent practice by the MW; every

issue contained translations and critique of foreign military literature. The most

serious student of and writer on foreign tank development, an Austrian automotive

engineer, wrote numerous articles for the MW during the 1920s.128 The quick

evolution of German armor thought from re-statement of foreign developments to

expression of indigenous ones can be seen in the MW—in 1923 most of its articles

on armor are from foreign sources, while by 1926 they are primarily German.129

The Role of Industry

The German management and adoption of the blitzkrieg innovation would have been

impossible with out the aid of German industry. Cooperation with industry allowed

for the evasion of treaty restrictions, as well as provided a variety of alternative

information sources. In addition, German industry created and maintained ties to

foreign industry which provided additional sources of alternative information.

Development of armor by German industry during World War I was preserved

when Josef Vollmer, one of Germany’s principal armor designers, fled to Sweden

at the end of the war. Vollmer took several disassembled prototypes of a light tank

known as the LK II with him. In Sweden, Vollmer went to work for Landswerk,

which was purchased by Krupp, the German heavy equipment firm. The LK II

became the basis for the Swedish tank known as the Strv m/21.130 German Army

officers worked closely with Vollmer in the Strv m/21 development, though this

cooperation was highly clandestine. It would be here in Sweden that Heinz Guderian

would first drive a tank.

German industry produced a number of prototypes from 1926 to 1929 under

a variety of codenames such as Grosstraktor (field tractor). Competition between

firms such as Rheinmetall, Daimler-Benz and Krupp allowed for a number of

different approaches to tank design. In particular, suspension systems were advanced

by this competition.131 It is worth noting that firms such as Opel and Ford were

excluded because their foreign connections rendered them suspect. This would have

implications for later mass production of tanks. Opel and Ford were automobile

firms which had experience with mass production techniques, whereas Krupp and

Rheinmetall were heavy equipment firms with limited mass production experience.

The designs the heavy equipment firms produced were not as readily produced in

rapid assembly line fashion.

The first true panzer design was the result of design competition between

Daimler, Benz, Henschel, Krupp, MAN, and Rheinmetall in the early 1930s. The

127 Ibid., p. 142.

128 Corum (1997), p. 103.

129 Ibid., p. 130.

130 Christopher Chant, The Tank (London: Haynes Publishing, 1994), p. 106.

131 Whaley (1984)


Krupp design was chosen, though elements of the other designs were incorporated.

The Panzer Kampfwagen I (Pz I) was primarily an experiment, though it would

be used in combat. However, even as production began in 1934, it was declared

obsolete and a new design was commissioned known as the Pz II.

The Pz II was a result of a design competition between Henschel, Krupp, and

MAN. The MAN design was accepted, though Daimler-Benz apparently contributed

some elements to the superstructure.132 The Pz II was a stopgap until the Pz III and

Pz IV were available, but served as a design learning experience for industry and

army alike.

The Pz III would be the main battle tank of the Wehrmacht through the early

stages of the war. Both Pz III and Pz IV were a result of competition between the

same firms that had designed the Pz I and Pz II. The Pz III went through multiple

prototypes with numerous changes to the suspension and drive system. These

changes reflected the preferences of each firm. The heavy industry firms such as

Krupp preferred leaf springing each road wheel or longitudinal arrangements for

suspension, as would be expected from firms that built locomotives. Daimler-Benz,

with automobile experience, preferred latitudinal suspension. Eventually, a transverse

torsion bar arrangement was settled on for Pz III, after much experimentation. This

competition between firms allowed a number of alternate viewpoints and sources of

information to be presented to managers.133

German industry also contracted overseas for technology the German military

might not have otherwise had access to. German firms, for example, licensed the

highly efficient Pratt-Whitney air-cooled radial engine, which had been developed

in conjunction with the U.S. Navy.134 This licensing arrangement not only allowed

for immediate access to alternate information on technology, it also allowed for

“reverse-engineering” of the technology. German industry was thus able to acquire

advanced technology through commercial arrangements that enhanced both military

and industrial capabilities.

The Czech Takeover

The German takeover of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, though coming late in

the period, provided an excellent source of alternative information for German

principals. The Czech army had a number of modern tanks that the German army

annexed. Czechoslovakia also possessed an advanced armaments industry centering

on the Skoda arms works, the absorption of which provided valuable alternative

information for German principals. Skoda was one of the largest munitions plants in

the world and had large numbers of technicians and engineers. The German takeover

allowed for principals in both the German military and German industry to evaluate

the reports of subordinates more effectively by referencing what had been done at

Skoda.

132 Chant (1994), p. 48

133 Ibid., p. 50.

134 Corum (1997), p. 177.


It is worth noting that the Czech tanks which would be incorporated into the

Wehrmacht as Pz-35(t) and Pz-38(t) were designed with the aid of Josef Vollmer, who

had left Sweden for Czechoslovakia. The Czech tanks were effective and roughly

as capable as the German Pz III. Absorption of these new machines provided an

external validation of German design and practice.

Innovation in the Spanish Civil War

The German participation in the Spanish Civil War was an experience that

incorporated a number of principal-agent relationships conducive to innovation.

The Luftwaffe units in Spain were exposed to important external information, were

informal in much of their organizational structure, and necessitated a very close

yet unrestrictive relationship between agents experimenting in actual combat and

the high-level principals monitoring them. The German Army was able, from 1936-

1939, not only to test innovation already accomplished but also to further advance

existing doctrine through direct participation in the Spanish Civil War.135

At the start of the Spanish Civil War, commander Francisco Franco of the

Nationalist Forces passed to two German businessmen a message requesting

military aid from Germany. Hitler eagerly assented and commanded Goring to begin

using the Luftwaffe for aid, which began with airlifting Spanish military personnel

and equipment from northern Africa to Spain. In an impressive demonstration of

German military efficiency and readiness in 1936, a significant German presence

was on the ground in Africa assisting only four days after Hitler’s decision.136 The

full four years of participation with Franco’s forces, from 1936-1939, provided the

Luftwaffe with a wide range of experience in air and joint land-air operations, and

provided ideal testing of innovations in armor doctrine.137 The German participation

went further than simply practicing and testing their current doctrine; the campaign

was structurally unique in that the force was relatively small and tightly-knit, and

necessitated a simple, informal command structure that grouped both Army and

Luftwaffe units under a single Luftwaffe command, the Condor Legion.138

Commanders were of high quality, forward thinking, and tactically very hands-

on. Junior officers had many opportunities for expressing new ideas, that they were

able to directly test in actual combat. The poor quality of the opponent and near

absence of air opposition encouraged realistic experimentation without fear of heavy

losses, especially in the area of joint air-land operations.

By October 1936 the Spanish civil war had developed into a stalemate, prompting

the Wehrmacht high command to increase the small German force there into a larger

operation. The force was upgraded to over 5,000 Luftwaffe personnel using over 100

of their most advanced aircraft; the new force was named the Condor Legion—it

included a bomber group, fighter group, reconnaissance group, staff, flak battalion,

135 Ibid., pp. 219-223.

136 Ibid., pp. 182-183.

137 Herbert Mason, Jr. The Rise of the Luftwaffe (New York: Dial Press, 1973), pp. 288-

289.

138 Corum (1997), pp. 187-188.


logistics supply battalion, and medical group. New preproduction prototype German

aircraft models were included for combat testing. Army participation included a tank

battalion and around two hundred military advisors, supported by the Condor Legion

logistics group and all serving under Major General Hugo Sperrle and Chief of Staff

von Richthofen, both senior Luftwaffe officers.139 During the subsequent years of

combat the Germans would gain the opportunity to test a wide array of new aircraft

and to assess their military faults and benefits, making the needed changes. Equally

important was the constant testing of tactics and combat formations with the new

weaponry.140

This informal command structure, placing both the Luftwaffe and Army under

the same command, was important in helping produce the air-ground coordination

and blitzkrieg innovations soon to come.141 It was a simple structure; the commander

of the Condor Legion reported directly to the Special Staff W (the high command

structure in Germany coordinating the effort), which reported to the Army high

command.142 The Condor Legion had the benefit of an easy access to the highest

levels of leadership, yet enjoyed relative freedom from intrusive oversight. They

were separated geographically and possessed tactical authority to control the course

of the war. Hitler and the central government showed almost no interest in the day

to day management of the operation, leaving the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to direct

the effort. The lack of micro-management by central command allowed Condor

Legion commanders to operate as agents with more freedom to experiment and

incorporate. These commanders were also principals of the Condor Legion, and

the disentanglement from central command provided stronger principal-agent links

between these commanders and their agents in the field.143

Commanders Sperrle and Richthofen were very hands-on commanders,

overseeing attacks and constantly constructing forward bases so that they could

personally witness the actions. The difficulty of coordinating air-ground attacks,

especially with Spanish forces, necessitated this intense involvement, but it allowed

the highest command level—commander and chief of staff—to see innovative air-

ground tactics employed first-hand.144 Richthofen had come to Spain specifically

hoping to see the Luftwaffe and its equipment in action,145 and has been described

as the “spiritual mentor” of close air support development by Karl Ries and Hans

Ring in their book on the Condor Legion146. The highly vested commander is an

important commodity for innovation, and the command in Spain was both eager to

succeed and willing to remain ever-present during innovative tactical operations. As

with the German maneuver, it becomes obvious how important it can be for leaders

to personally witness innovation.

139 Ibid., pp. 187-188.

140 Mason (1973), pp. 236-237.

141 Ibid., pp. 187-188.

142 Ibid., pp. 190.

143 Corum (1997), p. 188.

144 Ibid., pp. 194-196.

145 Mason (1973), p. 219.

146 Karl Ries and Hans Ring. The Legion Condor (Westchester: Schiffer Pub. Ltd,

1992), p. 234.


Agents of course had incentives to successfully innovate because they were

involved in actual combat, and despite the obviously inferior nature of the enemy,

their lives were dependent on the success of the operation. Even the junior officers

not directly exposed to combat were responsible for the successful execution of a real

war effort. Another benefit of having a small and somewhat independent operating

force was demonstrated by the ability of junior officers to express novel ideas to

higher command. One young lieutenant, Werner Molders, developed ideas on

tactical fighter formations that were implemented during the course of the operation

in Spain. He changed the traditional three plane “V” formation into a pair formation,

a superior structure which the Condor Legion used to great effect.147 The combination

of the highly vested yet unrestricted leadership and small operating core of junior

officers with incentive to innovate is a perfect example of the proper principal-agent

relationship, neither excessively top-down nor bottom-up.

Another informal aspect of the German command in Spain was the necessity

of operating through the Nationalist Spanish command in order to coordinate with

ground units. At first this might seem like a detriment to the process of innovation,

given that Spanish military leadership was of such low quality compared to their

German collaborators. In the ground-support sphere, however, it led to improved

communications structures. In order to better coordinate attacks, Luftwaffe

personnel had to work tirelessly to find ways of jointly planning the air and ground

offensives. Besides having to work hard at the command level, the Luftwaffe placed

communications and liaison teams at the front lines for better information sharing.148

Herbert Mason describes these inter-service cooperation lessons as being very

beneficial for the later blitzkrieg operations during the Second World War.149

Air-ground coordination improved a great deal during the campaign based on the

increased effort for managerial efficiency. The informal command link reinforced

the obvious need for good air-ground coordination because the Spanish Army was

repeatedly unable to follow up after Luftwaffe forward attacks. It was a constant

irritation to the German commanders, who became aware of what a well-coordinated

attack could accomplish and what innovative information sharing would need to

take place to achieve it.150 Thus in only a year’s time of combat experience in Spain,

the Luftwaffe had truly mastered close air support. On the December 29, 1937, they

participated in a battle in Teruel, in which they executed excellent forward bombing

that allowed the Nationalist ground forces to follow up, then seamlessly switched

to bombing of the follow-up Republican reserve forces 151 This battlefield proof of

the effectiveness of ground attack led directly to technological innovation; Condor

Legion commanders requested the development of heavily armored aircraft made

147 Corum (1997), p. 207.

148 Ibid., p. 194.

149 Mason (1973), pp. 288-289.

150 Raymond Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War (Westport, CT:

Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 252-253.

151 Corum, (1997), p. 204.


specifically for ground attack. The Henschel and Focke Wulf companies produced

the Henschel 129 as a result.152

Incentives for the German commanders were naturally based in part on

the fact that they were participating in a real conflict, trying to secure a military

victory and protect the lives of their troops. Many German officers experiencing

the innovative work in Spain later gained valuable promotions, demonstrated by

Sperrle’s advancement in 1937 to field marshal of the Luftwaffe, and the promotion

of officers Drum, Plocher, Galland, and Seidemann to the rank of general. Von

Richthofen later served as a senior commander in most of the major theaters of the

war, including Britain and Russia.153 An example of direct processing of innovation

due to command promotion from the Spanish Civil War to the main Luftwaffe force

came after evidence of German deficiency in night and bad weather flying. The

German accidents resulting from poor visibility crashes had an immediate impact

on Condor Legion commanders, and new training practices were immediately

implemented. Sperrle in 1937 returned to Germany to become a commander of the

Luftwaffe Third Air Fleet, and immediately strengthened the deficient night and bad

weather training.154

The importance of Sperrle’s promotion should not be underestimated; he later

found himself in the position to directly implement exercises and experimentation

designed to strengthen CAS practices. Both Sperrle and von Richthofen were two of

the very few Luftwaffe officers to achieve the rank of field marshal.155 In Germany

Sperrle ordered Luftwaffe commanders to set up joint war games with Army units,

and used his influence to get Army commanders to allow the participation of the

Luftwaffe in their own war gaming and exercises. His Luftwaffe officers were not

allowed to merely attend these exercises, but had to participate as commanding air

officers.156

German air power innovation was aided, particularly in the north of Spain, by

their opponents’ lack of air power. German Luftwaffe operations in the Basque

region of northern Spain were carried out virtually unopposed by enemy aircraft,

giving Luftwaffe command the opportunity to execute ground support, bombing

and experimental operations at will. The experimental process benefited from

the environmentally-constructed high error tolerance.157 This historical anomaly

suggests opportunities for successful innovation can be abundant when competing

against a highly inferior enemy. Ineffective opposition led to high error tolerance

for experimentation because there was much less chance of penalty for unsuccessful

attempts at actions like close air support or use of massed armor. For example, the

near-perfect operating conditions for the Stuka dive-bombers, due largely to the

152 Ibid., p. 245.

153 Ibid., p. 220, pp. 199-200.

154 Ibid., pp. 222-223.

155 Proctor (1983), p. 260.

156 Corum (1997), pp. 245-247.

157 Ibid., pp. 193-196.


ineffectiveness of Spanish anti-aircraft guns against them, led to tactical perfection

and large-scale passing on of lessons learned to parent units in Germany.158

An alternate source of information was provided by the participation of the

Russian military, which committed forces on behalf of the Spanish Republic. The

military value of the fighter/bomber was further emphasized for the Germans in

March 1937 when Russian-piloted fighter aircraft nearly decimated a motorized

corps of Italian troops. The action demonstrated the devastating potential of tactical

ground bombardment. These results, in particular, were analyzed by the German

command and the international military press.159

A unifying military culture occurs when both commanders and sub-units

envision the same set of possibilities. This was facilitated by the comprehensive

exposure of large numbers of the Luftwaffe to the Condor Legion’s innovations. In

the interest of providing combat experience for its officers, over fourteen thousand

German personnel of all levels of rank were rotated in and out of Spain, seeing

and participating firsthand the new innovations. The rapid production of combat

veterans that returned to their units after a year of service in Spain ensured the rapid

integration of the new tactics throughout the operating core of the Luftwaffe.160 The

experience had an immense influence on Luftwaffe doctrine, tactics, and technology

through its involvement in every type of air campaign. Commanders and managers

involved with innovation also infused the Luftwaffe; in addition to Sperrle and

von Richthofen, future generals Drum, Plocher, and Seidemann all gained combat

experience in the Spanish Civil War. The Luftwaffe gained a command staff

experienced in planning and execution of joint land-air combat operations.161 This

heavy exposure to innovation worked the same way as the comprehensive post-War

studies of the German Army’s failures and the changes that needed to be made—by

saturation through involvement of a large number of officers.162

The commitment by the German Army of one armored battalion to the Spanish

campaign, under the leadership of the Luftwaffe, provided excellent opportunities

for testing blitzkrieg tactics. These opportunities began after the Fascist forces had

essentially broken the fixed Nationalist lines and initiated a war of maneuver. In what

was considered one of the first true blitzkrieg operations, in 1938 the armored force

was able to break through the front lines and make a thirty-six kilometer advance

in one day. The Luftwaffe had to make several forward deployments to continue

support to the quick-moving armor squadron, gaining valuable experience for future

blitzkrieg operations.163 Many attribute the German experience in the Spanish Civil

War as the final field test of the joint doctrinal and operational lessons that had been

first introduced at Kazan and Lipetsk.

158 Ries and Ring (1992), p. 235.

159 Corum (1997), p. 193.

160 Mason (1973), p. 236.

161 Corum (1997), p. 220.

162 Whaley (1984), pp. 61-62.

163 Corum (1997), pp. 205-206.


Conclusion

In 1937 when the German Army held the all-important autumn maneuvers in

which blitzkrieg proved itself beyond a doubt, the close air support employed was

a direct result of Sperrle’s participation in the Spanish Civil War and the Condor

Legion’s experience with blitzkrieg.164 As Herbert Mason confirms, Condor Legion

commander Richthofen—like Sperrle before him—became a passionate supporter

of the Luftwaffe’s close air support role in blitzkrieg operations. During the invasion

of Poland, Richthofen was so committed to securing the benefits of air and ground

cooperation he had learned in Spain that he shared command headquarters with

Tenth Army commander von Reichenau. This excellent inter-service cooperation,

also learned through dealings with the Spanish officers, facilitated Richthofen’s

close air support to Reichenau’s armor during that campaign and was a key element

in the next year’s success in France. 165 Indeed, Richthofen’s close air support against

the French at Sedan facilitated the crossing of the Meuse and the breakout from the

Meuse river bridgeheads on 15 May 1940 by Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps and the

XLI Panzer Corps, the seminal event in the Allied collapse in the West.

In another irony, this German advantage was fleeting. The blitzkrieg successes

against Poland and France, going down from the wide to the narrow openings of a

funnel, were inverted in the following campaign against the Soviet Union where

the German forces traversed the funnel from narrow aperture to wide, dissipating

their mass over the vast Russian land mass and stretching their air assets to beyond

the breaking point. Strategic mismanagement and over-extension will always trump

doctrinal innovation and tactical brilliance.

The history of successful military transformations also reveals that others always

will catch up. By 1944 the United States Army had almost double the armored

divisions as the Germans, beginning in 1940 with none. Indeed, the interwar

experiences of U.S. armor innovators, George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower, is one

of repudiation and official rebuke by higher authorities. Yet, the circumstances of the

onset of the war and the initial disaster at Kasserine Pass brought to the forefront

these experimenters whose views had been vindicated by the German successes. That

the Germans did all that they did without the pressures of an ongoing war or high

intensity threat environment stands as a truly remarkable achievement in the history

of military transformation. The combination of the highly vested yet unrestricted

leadership and small operating core of junior officers with incentive to innovate is a

perfect example of the proper principal-agent relationship, neither excessively top-

down nor bottom-up. As demonstrated by the following chapters, this achievement

was neither inevitable nor has it been easily replicated by other military services.

164 Ibid., p. 247.

165 Mason (1973), pp. 288-289.

Chapter 4

The U.S. Navy Transformed: Managing

Change From Sea To Air

By the onset of World War I, the prolonged transformation of naval warfare had

culminated with the ascendance of the Battle Fleet. From the mid-nineteenth century

onward, the mighty navies of the world gradually but deliberately harnessed the

technological fruits of the Industrial Revolution to produce a new class of battleship

and to re-organize naval command and control in service of a new mission of long-

range combat at sea. The protracted fusion of new types of big-gun cruisers with

evolving changes in strategy, tactics, education, and training brought about the first

true revolution in naval warfare since the arrival of the line-of-battle ship in the

seventeenth century.1 But by the end of the war, the seeds of another revolution at

sea began to germinate.

It was during the halcyon days of the Battle Fleet, in the immediate aftermath

of World War I, that the great navies of the world began in earnest to explore the

potential of the modern aircraft carrier. The Royal Navy, the purveyor of the seas for

the previous two centuries, exhibited early interest in testing and deploying a wide

variety of sea platforms for launching naval aircraft in support of the fleet. By 1918,

the British introduced the Argus, the precursor to the modern carrier. Imperial Japan

followed by pioneering carrier-centric attack formations and elevating the stature

of naval aviators.2 Yet it was the U.S. Navy that after initial foot-dragging surged

full speed ahead, honing and integrating innovative technologies, strategies, and

tactics that transformed carriers and naval aviation into an independent strike force.

This achievement was marked by sufficient funding for new technologies, extensive

experimentation, entrepreneurial leadership, a coherent service-wide vision of future

warfare, and doctrinal and organizational adjustment; all trademarks of effective

military change.3 Together these factors enabled the Navy to overcome bureaucratic

1 Holger H. Herwig, “The Battlefleet Revolution, 1885-1914,” in MacGregor Knox

and Williamson Murray, eds. The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 114-131.

2 For a discussion of the Royal Navy’s early (1914-1922) enthusiasm and open-

mindedness towards carriers, see especially Geoffrey Till, “Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The

British, American and Japanese Case Studies,” in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett,

eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1996), pp. 194-203.

3 Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, “The Sources of Military Change,” in Theo Farrell

and Terry Terriff, eds., The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, and Technology

(Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002): 5; Willliamson Murray and MacGregor Knox,

“The Future Behind Us,” in Knox and Murray (2001), pp. 179-181; and Andrew Krepinevich,

Managing Defense Transformations102

inertia, allowing carrier aircraft and task groups to step out of the shadow of the

battleship to assume core missions of projecting power and disabling enemy warships.

By the end of World War II, this new way of war was fully institutionalized by the

U.S. Navy, prefiguring naval combat into the twenty-first century.4

The U.S. Navy’s success at orchestrating the “revolution at sea” was as curious

as it was remarkable; neither preordained nor fully predicted by rival explanations.

While the U.S. military confronted powerful strategic pressures during the interwar

period, neither the high threat environment nor new technological possibilities

determined the variable rates and patterns of naval transformation, or that it would

be a traditional “follower,” such as U.S. Navy, that would eclipse Britain’s initial

advances and eventually surpass Japan at sharpening carrier-led power projection.5

The procurement of radically new naval aviation technologies, let alone profound

displacement of the reigning Battle Fleet and intra-service embrace of carrier-

based power projection, is particularly difficult to reconcile with the pessimistic

prognosis of internally driven change served up by traditional organizational theory.

Nor, for that matter, do the timing and pattern of transformation jibe with “new

wave” material-functional or cognitive-cultural explanations of organizational

change, as the operational and technological innovations to carrier warfare

dramatically outpaced the diverse and incremental adjustments that were initially

envisioned or rewarded. In short, why and how the U.S. Navy evolved from an

initial conservative approach to systematically transcending both political and

normative organizational barriers to nurture a fundamentally new and uncertain

way of war remains a puzzle.

This chapter explicates the managerial success of U.S. carrier transformation.

What made the U.S. Navy, an organization with an entrenched bureaucracy and

culture, receptive to exploring and sustaining a new way of war? How did carrier

advocates overcome internal political obstacles, including the ascendancy of the

“big gun” club, as well mitigate the inherent uncertainty associated with sustaining

and honing innovative and unproven technologies and practices? How did they

succeed at orchestrating a new synthesis of technological breakthroughs in naval

aviation with dramatic shifts in strategy, tactics, experimentation, training, and

education at an otherwise inauspicious moment for radical change within the

service?

The argument advanced here is that the U.S. Navy’s success at bringing about the

remarkable transformation to a carrier fleet rested with the convergence of incentives

“Military Experimentation: Time to Get Serious,” Backgrounder (March 31, 1999), available

at: www.csbaonline.org/Publica…/B.20000331.Military_Experimen.htm.

4 As summed up by one study, the U.S. Navy entered World War II as a battleship

navy and came out of it as the preeminent carrier fleet. “Less than four years later the U.S.

Navy ended the war with 28 large carriers and 71 smaller types. Naval aviation commanded

over 41,000 planes.” Andrew Krepinevich, Transforming to Victory: The U.S. Navy, Carrier

Aviation, and Preparing for War in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: The Olin Institute, 2000),

available at http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Publications.htm.

5 Emily O. Goldman, “Receptivity to Revolution,” in Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C.

Eliason, eds., The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 2003), pp. 267-303.

www.csbaonline.org/Publica%E2%80%A6/B.20000331.Military_Experimen.htm

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Publications.htm

The U.S. Navy Transformed 103

and inclinations for innovation that cut across different levels of hierarchy within

the naval establishment. The story is not one of new technologies and institutional

reform imposed on the U.S. Navy by the civilian leadership. Nor is it a clear-cut

episode of top-down or deceitful management of innovation within the Navy.

Rather, the shift from foot-dragging to steady progress depended on a changing

constellation of intra-organizational mechanisms that allowed a committed group of

pioneers to overcome information asymmetries and conflicting incentives within the

U.S. Navy, as well as to tap into managerial norms in their efforts to champion new

ways for naval aviation to solve practical problems at hand. The secret to success

lied with the gradual alignment of material oversight and incentives with established

problem-solving norms within the service that mitigated principal-agent problems

and facilitated the adroit management of the twin pressures of exploitation and

exploration of a new carrier way of war.

The chapter unfolds in two parts. The first section evaluates the consistency

of the scope, pace, and pattern of U.S. carrier transformation with expectations

generated by contemporary material-functional and cognitive-cultural explanations

of organizational change. Though elements of each resonate in the case, respective

causal mechanisms are incomplete. The second section applies insights from the

modified principal-agent framework. Here we analyze how shifting procedural

advances combined with shared understandings of professional standards and methods

of assessment to create common interests and knowledge about naval aviation up

and down the service hierarchy. We illustrate the specific procedural mechanisms

that complemented long-standing managerial norms by easing the task for service

entrepreneurs of fusing incentives for change within the U.S. Navy. This includes

a review of the formal and informal mechanisms of promotion and administrative

control that gradually facilitated coordination among agents of change and gave

traction to new visions for naval aviation. Taken together, these factors empowered

a cadre of senior commanders to manage the transformation to a carrier fleet, while

remaining true to the U.S. Navy’s traditional operating core.

Confounding Expectations

During the interwar years, the U.S. Navy transformed itself. Over roughly 25 years,

the service transitioned from an initial reliance on the striking power of the battleship,

to the incremental introduction of naval aviation as an auxiliary arm for scouting,

directing fire, and protecting the battleship, to the institutionalization of the carrier

task force as the backbone of the world’s premier sea power during World War II.

What began as an adjunct to the Battle Fleet in 1919, evolved steadily into a carrier

strike force by 1942 that “had a combined strength of many hundreds of aircraft,

surface ships in close support, and a revolutionary system of mobile supply bases

that overcame distance and logistical difficulties.”6

There are numerous contending explanations for the imperatives and feasibility

of this historical feat. For one, the U.S. Navy was both challenged and constrained by

6 Krepinevich (2000).


prevailing strategic conditions. The Navy faced a deteriorating position in the Pacific

that overtaxed its ability to defend national interests in the Philippines and China, at

the same time that it confronted pressure of keeping pace with friendly competition

in Britain and offensive developments in Japanese naval warfare. Compounding this

strategic necessity was the impetus provided by the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty

that at once denied the U.S. Navy bases to operate land-based aircraft in the Far

East and compelled the conversion of two battle cruisers into the aircraft carriers

Lexington and Saratoga. Ironically, the arms control commitments stripped the Navy

of its established power projection capabilities, while opening the door to exploring

alternative sea-based solutions to naval aviation to compensate for the adjustment.7

In addition, elements of the case are consistent with rival material-functional

explanations of intra-organizational change. On the one hand, there is evidence

that speaks to the pivotal importance of a “missionary” subgroup that was shielded

from the inertia and predatory effects of routine operations. In 1927, for example,

the service created the “Taylor Board” to test and reevaluate the technological

frontiers of large-deck carriers. This “small innovative group” that was comprised of

committed carrier enthusiasts, worked in relative isolation to hammer out decisive

findings concerning the significance of producing large numbers and variable

types of aircraft for large-deck carriers and of deploying carriers for a variety of

offensive missions beyond strictly supporting the Battle Fleet. As summed up by

Terry Pierce, the main value of this and other small groups was to concentrate

progressive intellectual capital and foster insular debate among specialists that

were protected from the “big gun” club that was poised otherwise to “exploit cracks

within the aviation union.”8 On the other hand, different scholars point to the critical

role played by the determination of senior officers, such as Rear Admiral William

Moffett, to create promotional pathways for young, innovative aviators. The most

forceful commentary comes from Stephen Rosen, who argues that full realization

of the carrier revolution followed from the initial cooptation of senior surface ship

officers into aviation commands, and the subsequent insertion of new aviator cohorts

into the service’s promotional system. The integration of naval aviators into the core

command structure and the push for them to obtain sailing skills ensured that they

would be eligible for promotion to senior ranks, thus becoming “admirals in charge

of fleets incorporating aircraft carriers.”9

The case also supports insights from different cognitive-cultural theories. The

learning thesis, in particular, has been applied to explain the incremental character

of U.S. carrier innovation. Success depended on first overcoming experiential

7 Emily O. Goldman, “The U.S. Military in Uncertain Times: Organizations,

Ambiguity, and Strategic Adjustment,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 20:2 (June 1997),

pp. 56-57; and Captain Terry C. Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising

Innovation (London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 121-122.

8 Pierce (2004), pp. 125-127. For detailed discussion of the composition, as well

as technical and doctrinal conclusions generated by these different groups, see especially

William F. Trimble, Admiral William A. Moffett: Architect of Naval Aviation (Washington,

DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1994), pp. 230-254.

9 Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 78.


and knowledge, not bureaucratic, barriers to change. As early as 1919, there was

growing appreciation among progressive officers in the Navy that carrier aviation

could perform duties beyond those of scouting for the Battle Fleet. “Air minded”

officers, in particular, began to value aircraft carriers as “spotters” that were critical

for enhancing the effectiveness of battleship gunfire and for shielding the fleet against

attacking bombers.10 Also during the early interwar period there was an overarching

strategic imperative to circumvent the constraints on forward basing of land-aircraft

imposed by the Washington Five-Power Treaty. The view of the flattop as a “vital

auxiliary” to the battleship was challenged in 1929 by new evidence provided by

Fleet Problem IX that large carriers could be used effectively as an independent strike

force.11 Yet the initial impulse for change was offset by evidence of the vulnerability

and limited effectiveness of carrier operations at night and in bad weather. There

also were expectations that carrier aircraft would suffer inordinately high attrition

rates during the early phases of surface warfare. The lack of conclusive evidence

“hindered the development of new consensual knowledge, raised ambiguity, and

limited prospects for learning.”12 It was only after continuous experimentation, war

gaming, simulation, and actual developments in the Pacific campaign that the U.S.

Navy acquired a sufficient experiential base to support the progressive shift to multi-

carrier task forces.13

Others credit the U.S. Navy’s organizational culture as especially attuned

to change. Several contemporary studies, for example, attribute the U.S.’ unique

success at institutionalizing carrier innovation to the visionary drive of key naval

officers and the evolutionary problem-solving orientation ingrained in the Navy. The

reformulation of naval warfare, from the traditional belief in the ascendance of the

battleship and battle line to acceptance of concentrated pulsating attacks by naval

aircraft, unleashed development of the multi-carrier task force as an independent

arm. By 1931, senior officers—most notably Admiral William S. Sims, Moffett, and

Captain (later Admiral) Joseph Reeves—forcefully championed the transformational

10 Thomas Wildenberg, “In Support of the Battle Line: Gunnery’s Influence on the

Development of Carrier Aviation in the U.S. Navy,” Journal of Military History 65 (July

2001), pp. 697-712.

11 Thomas C. Hone and Mark David Mandeles, “Managerial Style in the Interwar Navy:

A Reappraisal,” Naval War College Review 32 (September-October 1980), p. 95. By 1925,

one of the chief visionaries, then Captain Joseph Reeves, referred to the aircraft carrier as a

“vital auxiliary type” that reflected his appreciation of naval aviation as playing an important

independent but nonetheless subordinate role to the battleship in future naval warfare. See

discussion in Wildenberg (2001), p. 706.

12 Emily O. Goldman, “Mission Impossible: Organizational Learning in Perspective,”

in Peter Turbowitz, Emily O. Goldman, and Edward Rhodes, eds., The Politics of Strategic

Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999),

p. 8. See also Robert A. Winston, Dive Bomber (New York: Holiday House, 1939).

13 Hone and Mandeles (1980), pp. 95-98; and Michael Vlahos, The Blue Sword: The

Naval War College and the American Mission, 1919-1941 (Newport, RI: Naval War College

Press, 1980); and Goldman (1997), pp. 56-59.


view of the fast carrier as a “mobile airfield” and the capital ship of the future.14

This intellectual breakthrough was arguably fostered by the Navy’s custom of open-

ended experimentation via simulations and extensive fleet exercises that rendered

the service surprisingly open to exploring new ways of furthering carrier and aircraft

development with the accumulation of positive results. Accordingly, the U.S. Navy’s

success was distinguished by an organizational culture biased towards “systematic,

rigorous, evidentiary-based processes for testing visions and linking them to sound

technical decisions about carriers and aircraft.”15

In a slightly different twist, other organizational cultural accounts underscore

the significance of a unique external shock for removing the U.S. Navy’s embedded

blinders to the prospects of carrier warfare. Jeffrey Lego specifies that the causal

weight of the Pearl Harbor attack—particularly, the devastating blow to the U.S.

battleship force—rested with undermining the viability of the dominant “big gun”

culture within the service.16 Others go so far as to argue that had it not been for

the attack, the ambivalence of ranking admirals towards naval aviation would have

perpetuated the bias towards spending on additional battleships at the expense of

procurement and development of fast carrier task forces within the U.S. Navy.17

Although the U.S. Navy displayed elements of each of these factors, the case is far

from over-determined, as neither the scope nor pattern of carrier innovation jibes with

the extant causal claims noted above. Contrary to strategic predictions, the interwar

British, Japanese, and American Navies varied distinctly in their choices and success

with carrier innovation, despite gathering winds of war and technical breakthroughs in

the launch and recovery of aircraft at sea. Not only did all three navies systematically

under-estimate the technological potential and strategic significance of maritime air

power, they did so to different degrees.18 Ultimately, the Royal Navy—which at

the close of World War I laid keel to the prototype of future carriers, accumulated

the most extensive wartime operational experience, and deployed the only carrier

force—failed to develop carrier capabilities on par with those of the Japanese and

American navies by the onset of World War II.19 The variation is especially curious

in the cases of the U.S. and Imperial navies that confronted equally ominous threats

to national interests posed by each other. Both faced resource constraints that were

14 Rosen (1991), pp. 70-71; Charles M. Melhorn, Two-Block Fox (Annapolis, MD:

Naval Institute Press, 1974): pp. 88-89; Thomas Wildenberg, All the Factors of Victory:

Admiral Joseph Reeves and the Origins of Carrier Power (London: Brassey’s, 2003); and

Trimble (1994).

15 Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, “Military Innovation in Peacetime,” in Murray

and Millett (1996), pp. 405.

16 Jeffrey W. Legro, “Culture and Preferences in the International Cooperation Two-

Step,” The American Political Science Review, 90:1 (March 1996), p. 128.

17 This point is made by Thomas C. Hone, “Battleships vs. Aircraft Carriers: The

Pattern of U.S. Navy Operating Expeditures, 1932-1941,” Military Affairs, 41:3 (October

1977), pp. 139-140. For a slightly different interpretation, see Goldman (2003), p. 287.

18 Till (1996); and Thomas C. Hone and Mark D. Mandeles, “Interwar Innovation in

Three Navies: U.S. Navy, Royal Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy,” Naval War College Review

40 (Spring 1987), pp. 63-83.

19 Watts and Murray (1996), pp. 384-85.


similarly “neutral,” in that they aided with clarifying priorities while imposing the

same limiting effects on the numbers of aircraft and carriers that were available.20

Moreover, both navies reacted very differently to the strategic necessity imposed

by losses at Midway. As noted by Emily Goldman, the Imperial Navy responded to

the loss of four carriers by “making the intellectual leap to seeing the carriers as the

backbone of the fleet, with all available battleships, cruisers, and destroyers used to

protect the carrier.” By contrast, after losing the Yorktown, the U.S. Navy initially

disavowed the concentration of carriers and preferred to use them separately and

sparingly for defensive operations.21

Arguments that attribute organizational change to shifts in internal political and

functional configurations are similarly incomplete. Airmen were neither orphaned

nor deprived of key staff positions within the U.S. Navy’s influential Bureau and

Fleet structures. Unlike the British that buried naval aviators both within the Royal

Air Force and Royal Navy—to the detriment of infusing the Admiralty with high-

ranking carrier enthusiasts from 1918-1939—the U.S. Navy resisted pressure to create

an independent air force or to insulate aviators from the broader service community.

Rather, it was precisely the integration and competition with other mainstream naval

programs that allowed carrier innovators to shine within the service.22

The creation of new promotional pathways alone cannot account for the U.S.

Navy’s achievement. This shortcoming is especially conspicuous when juxtaposing

the U.S. case to both the organizational receptivity to “pushing the offensive envelop”

of carrier operations demonstrated by the Japanese Navy, and the bureaucratic

impediments to aviation within the Royal Navy during the same period. Within the

Imperial Navy, for example, aviators achieved representation at the highest operational

and political levels by 1936 (before the U.S.), were concentrated in a combined

maritime and shore-based air wing in 1938, and pioneered “the first permanent carrier

force whose pilots trained together”23—yet they registered these accomplishments

while remaining outside of the service’s formal chain of command.24 By contrast, the

Royal Navy’s deficiencies at exploiting early leadership in carrier innovation and the

persistent poor performance of the Fleet Air Arm were due in no small part to the

flyers being too embedded into naval life. The Admiralty’s unwavering commitment

to immersing aviators in the surface navy, for example, came at the expense of

20 Till (1996), pp. 203-204. In addition, during the 1920s the Japanese Navy was

handicapped by dependence on “obsolete aircraft licensed by European manufacturers” and

poorly trained pilots. Thomas G. Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and

Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 73.

21 Goldman (2003), pp. 283-284.

22 Till (1996), 209-211; Thomas C. Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark D. Mandeles,

American & British Aircraft Carrier Development (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,

1999); and Malcolm Cooper, “Blueprint for Confusion: The Administrative Background to

the Formation of the Royal Air Force, 1912-1919,” Journal of Contemporary History 22:3

(July 1987).

23 Goldman (2003), p. 285.

24 Till (1996), p. 212. Unlike the American and British navies, however, the Japanese

relied overwhelmingly on enlisted men for aviators up through the Pearl Harbor attack.

Mahnken (2002), p. 76.


retaining committed naval air officers that could act as a potent internal lobby both

before the service lost and after it regained exclusive administrative control over the

naval air arm.25 How then were U.S. carrier entrepreneurs able to stay the course

of transitioning to air-centric naval organizations, featuring independently operated

and offensively-oriented multi-carrier task forces, especially given the different rates

and directions of carrier development pursued by their Japanese and British peers?

By the same token, claims of the U.S. Navy’s learning and cultural affinity for

carrier-related technologies and operations offer only partial explanation for the

diffusion and consolidation of carrier innovations. First, the transformation to carrier

strike forces stood in stark contrast to the “reactionary impulse” pervasive within the

U.S. Navy both before and after the interwar period. For nearly a century earlier, the

Navy resisted abandoning a strategy based on coastal defense and commerce raiding

in favor of an offensive posture aimed at controlling distant waters with state-of-

the-art battleships and the massing of naval firepower.26 From the 1860s to the early

1900s, the Navy was similarly circumspect about synthesizing novel advances in

steam propulsion and radio technology with new forms of organization, training,

and communication. This ambivalence persisted for decades due to deep-seated

aversions to compromising on the efficiency of available naval fighting vessels,

the social status of line officers, and the traditional autonomy of commanders at

sea.27 Only gradually did senior officers relent, but they did so in ways that grafted

new systems onto traditional naval practices, thus limiting the operational benefits

offered by the technological breakthroughs. Furthermore, the same service that

ultimately embraced the full potential of carrier aviation failed subsequently to

assimilate new technologies with changes in doctrine, and to organize effectively

for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) at the onset of World War II. Despite resource

advantages, astutely anticipating full-scale ASW engagement, and digesting probing

“lessons” from the British experience with using ASW against Germany’s U-

boats, the U.S. Navy adapted only after suffering successive humiliating defeats.28

25 Ibid., 205-209.

26 Walter R. Herrick, The American Naval Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University, 1966). For a constructivist acknowledgement of the “stickiness” of the traditional

wartime strategy of coastal protection and commerce raiding, see especially Edward Rhodes,

“Sea Change: Interest-Based vs. Cultural-Cognitive Accounts of Strategic Choice in the

1890s,” Security Studies 5:4 (Summer 1996), pp. 73-124.

27 On the “reactionary impulse” of the U.S. Navy, see Michael Evans, “Fabrizio’s

Choice: Organizational Change and the Revolution in Military Affairs Debate,” National

Security Studies Quarterly VII:I (Winter 2001), pp. 8-10; and Vincent Davis, The Admiral’s

Lobby (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966). Only gradually did senior

officers relent, but they did so in ways that grafted new systems onto traditional naval

practices, thus limiting the operational benefits offered by technological breakthroughs. Susan

J. Douglas, “Technological Innovation and Organizational Change: The Navy’s Adoption of

Radio, 1899-1919,” in Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise and Technological Change:

Perspectives on the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1985), pp. 2-

3.

28 Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War

(New York: The Free Press, 1991), pp. 59-94.


Thus, part of the remarkable story of the carrier case is that the Navy succeeded at

institutionalizing a new way of war in spite of maintaining an otherwise cautious

organizational profile.

Consistent with this conservatism, the overwhelming majority of senior naval

commanders were not initially impressed with carrier aviation. Although curious

about the potential for naval aviation—as reflected by the creation of the first pilot

training school in 1914 and the significant growth of officers, enlisted men, and

aircraft during World War I—the leadership opted to reduce disproportionately

the size of the force as part of the initial postwar demobilization effort.29 Secretary

of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, regarded the carriers as at best support vessels for

the battle line, and objected to funding construction of aircraft carrier.30 Similarly,

the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in 1918 was highly skeptical of the aircraft

carrier immediately after the war, dismissing its potential as “just a lot of noise.”

The CNO refused initially to press the case with Congress for creating a separate

organizational structure to oversee carrier development within the Navy. After

losing this bureaucratic battle, he then tried to abolish the naval aviation office and

subordinate it to the Naval Operations’ Planning and Material Divisions.31 Even

staunch advocates of the carrier initially were circumspect about its revolutionary

potential. At the apogee of the internal debate over the battleship’s vulnerability to

aerial attack in 1925, Reeves remarked that “airplanes and other auxiliary weapons

might prepare the way for the big gun, but ship battles have always been, and under

conditions that will probably exist for the next ten years will continue to be, decided

by the primary weapon (the battleship).”32 Although the Navy was open to exploring

alternative uses for naval aviation, it was in no way predisposed towards making the

carrier the next capital ship coming out of World War I.

Second, there was no single vision of carrier aviation that prevailed within the

interwar U.S. Navy. Instead, there were contending schools of thought even among

carrier enthusiasts.

One concept was to use carrier-based aircraft to attack land targets. Under this concept, the

carrier was just a forward airfield. It did not work in concert with, or form an integral part

of, a whole fleet. Another concept was that the carrier, though part of the larger fleet, was

nonetheless an auxiliary to existing weapons such as the battleship. Under this concept,

29 In 1914, U.S. naval aviation consisted of 9 officers, 23 enlisted men, and 7 aircraft.

By the end of World War I, the numbers increased to roughly 7000 officers, 33,000 enlisted

personnel, and over 21,000 aircraft. By the end of 1919, however, the number of officers was

down to 580 (of which 370 were aviators), and the number of enlisted men plummeted to

4,879 (of which only 3,479 were aviation certified). It was not until 1923 that the numbers

began to pick up. Hone and Mandeles (1987), p. 71.

30 Watts and Murray (1996), p. 390. See also discussion in Melhorn (1974), pp. 30-

31.

31 Krepinevich (2001). It was only after successive hearings conducted by the

Navy’s General Board in 1919 that the recommendation for creating a well financed and

organizationally shielded naval air service, consisting of both sea planes and aircraft carriers,

gathered momentum. See Hone and Mandeles (1987), p. 72.

32 Quoted in Wildenberg (2001), pp. 706. Parenthesis added.


carrier aircraft scouted, drove off enemy scouts, and directed gunfire of heavy ships. Yet

another, different—and revolutionary—concept was that of the carrier and its aircraft as

the centerpiece of a long-range striking force—the new battle line, so to speak.33

It was not until midway through World War II that the dominant intellectual strain

favored multi-carrier task forces as independent strike weapons. Until that point, only

a small group of visionaries espoused radical transformation, but they had neither

the legitimacy nor political clout to impose their views on other sympathizers, let

alone skeptics within the “big gun” club that dominated the service until after the

war.34

Lacking a clear affinity for change, cognitive-cultural models predict that the

Navy would have embraced carrier aviation technologies and independent operations

only after undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift. Yet, throughout the interwar

period, the Navy’s strategic mission fixated on defeating potential enemies at sea

via long-range fire. Consistent with the strategic adjustment from commerce raiding

and coastal defense to a unified battle line that was implanted in the 1890s, the U.S.

Navy clutched to an imperial-style strategy that featured the battleship and large-

scale engagements (guerre d’escadre).35 As the Japanese threat mounted, the shared

vision of naval warfare settled on fighting across the Pacific. This was codified in

“War Plan Orange” that prescribed offensive operations for engaging and defeating

the Japanese fleet west of Hawaii and in its home waters. The plan anticipated that

control of the sea would go to the nation that maintained a superior battle line in

the area of operations; a conviction that constituted “a holy writ in the interwar

Navy.”36 Notwithstanding the rise of Germany and growing dangers in the Atlantic

and Caribbean—as well as unfavorable balances in fleet bases, personnel, and ships

to support the required naval offensive in the 1930s—the U.S. Navy was intransigent

in support of this Pacific strategy.37 Moreover, the plan did not elevate the carrier to

capital ship, as most strategists at the time “inaptly viewed carriers as auxiliaries

to the battle line, imagining them hovering near battleships for scouting, artillery

spotting, and sky brawls before the decisive gunnery exchange.”38 It was not until

publication of “Pac-10” in 1943 that the incantation of sailing the battle fleet across

33 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), p. 150.

34 Melhorn (1974), pp. 30-31.

35 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945

(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991); and Robert L. O’Connell, Sacred Vessels: The

Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the U.S. Navy (New York: Oxford University Press,

1991).

36 Michael K. Doyle, “The U.S. Navy and War Plan Orange, 1933-1940: Making

Necessity a Virtue,” Naval War College Review (May-June 1980), p. 54. The strategic planning

debate revolved around the desired pace of the naval offensive campaign, as both “thrusters”

and “cautionaries” agreed that a large-scale battle line engagement was critical for the success

of the second phase of the war plan. See Miller (1991), pp. 77-85.

37 The tenacious adherence to what naval strategists at the time acknowledged was an

obviously flawed and outmoded conception of the Pacific war was borne out of a combination

of self-serving interest, narrow mind-set, and diplomatic flexibility to ensure British naval

cooperation in the Far East. See especially Doyle (1980), p. 54.

38 Miller (1991), p. 348.


the Pacific ceded primacy to concentrated carrier operations in naval doctrine, and

that the multi-carrier task force became enshrined as the dominant feature of naval

warfare.39 However, this occurred after the sinking of the battleships at Pearl Harbor

in 1941, as well as after naval battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in May-June 1942

where mass aerial formations were exploited to deliver great pulses of firepower in

epic carrier engagements.

The pattern of naval appropriations also attests to the persistence of the strategic

commitment to the battle line and the absence of favoritism towards carrier aviation

during the interwar period. From 1932, the year that aircraft carriers were first

seriously discussed as an independent striking arm, to the Japanese attack on Pearl

Harbor in 1941, spending on battle line warships (battleships, destroyers, and land-

based air forces) as percentages of total ship and operational expenditures declined

steadily relative to the carriers. Allocations earmarked for second-generation

battleships dropped by over 50 percent, while those for carrier development increased

significantly.40 Yet these trends did not reflect conceptual transformation, as investment

in the battle line continued to figure prominently in naval procurement. Resources

once designated for the battleships were not reallocated solely to the carriers but

were spread among heavy cruisers and submarines as well, in order to prepare all

three types of vessels to escort and support the battleships. Annual modernization

expenditures on new battleships, as percentages of total ship and operating expenses,

significantly exceeded respective allocations for the carriers throughout the period.

According to one naval analyst, “any spending bias toward the surface fleet in the

1930s was a bias toward the cruisers, especially the 18 heavy cruisers permitted the

U.S. Navy by the London Naval Agreements of 1930.”41 To the extent that there

was any shift in mindset it was toward deploying a balanced fleet, with neither the

battleship nor aircraft carrier intrinsically favored as the capital ship of the future.

It was only between 1941 and the war’s end that transformation began to take full

effect, as reflected by decisions to terminate battleship construction and quadruple

the fleet carrier force.42

39 Rosen (1991), pp. 79-80.

40 Hone (1977), p. 135. The assumption here is that tradeoffs in operational spending

for the fleet, which were made by the Navy without special Congressional appropriations,

reflected the service leadership’s basic understandings of the types and mixes of vessels that

were most important for war.

41 Ibid., p. 139. The extent to which battleships continued to capture the attention of

the naval command was reflected by the facts that the plurality of naval officers served on

battleships, and that the number of battleships commissioned per year far exceeded respective

numbers for the carriers.

42 The argument here is not that the Navy leadership was resistant, in principle, to

investing in carrier development. As noted by the above trends, as well as by the fact that the

low proportion of the Navy’s property investment in the carriers (10 percent from 1919-1941)

was prescribed by the Washington Treaty limits, it is erroneous to claim that the Navy did not

value aircraft carrier development. Rather, naval budgetary patterns suggest that while the

aircraft carrier was valued, this conviction did not come at the expense of displacing the battle

line even as the war neared. Furthermore, “the balanced fleet stayed balanced. The ‘two-ocean

Navy’ authorized in 1940 was, like the ‘treaty Navy,’ centered on a battleship force augmented


Despite the contested appeal of a new way of war throughout the interwar period,

the aircraft carrier ultimately came into its own as the main strike force of the fleet

during World War II. Incremental learning accumulated to punctuate transformation

of naval doctrine that featured multi-carrier strike forces. This too, however, is

inconsistent with priority accorded to cognitive-cultural variables. Given the

traditional appeal and improvements in steam power plants, radar, mobility, armor, and

endurance of the battleship, as demonstrated both in simulations and initial wartime

engagements, naval commanders should have been resistant to basic learning at the

time. Such success augured well for the continued preeminence of the battleship,

notwithstanding the cumulative evidence that carriers could operate as an effective

independent force.43 Moreover, evidence marshaled in support of the ascendancy of

naval aviation was ambiguous at best. Fleet Problems IX-XIX, conducted from 1929

to 1939, featured both the advantages and lingering vulnerabilities of the carriers as

a potential capital ship. Critics as well as proponents of naval aviation seized on the

same set of fleet problems to make respective cases about the effectiveness of the

traditional battle line relative to the independent offensive and defensive roles of the

carriers.44

Third, there are serious grounds for questioning claims that the Pearl Harbor attack

dealt a decisive blow to a battleship-centric mindset or unambiguously strengthened

the appeal of offensive carrier warfare over the battle line. The affinity for maintaining

a “balanced fleet” persisted well after the devastating Pearl Harbor strike. The attack

also did not disproportionately discredit the battle line. It was widely acknowledged

that the aircraft carrier was no less vulnerable to a surprise attack than was the Battle

Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Without suffering a uniquely humiliating defeat and amid the

success of the Pacific naval campaign, the “big gun” club should not have been

primed to jettison the battle line or to internalize a potentially costly and uncertain

organizational myth that favored the aircraft carrier over the proven battleship.45 That

the Japanese had not given up on the battle line after 1942 suggests, according to

Thomas Hone, that “it cannot be assumed that any intelligent naval staff should have

by other warship types.” Alternatively, once the Navy bought into transformation during the

war, 16 fast carriers were commissioned together with 79 light and escort carriers. Thomas C.

Hone, “Spending Patterns of the United States Navy, 1921-1941,” Armed Forces and Society

8:3 (Spring 1982), p. 459.

43 At minimum, technical improvements in mobility and endurance of the battleship

augmented the battle line of the U.S. fleet, as well as “meant that carriers and battleships

would be able to steam together at high speeds.” Hone and Mandeles (1980), p. 91.

44 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), pp. 51-82. See also discussion in Krepinevich

(2000).

45 Clark Reynolds, The Fast Carriers: Forging an Air Navy (Huntington, NY: Robert

Krieger, 1978), pp. 18-19. The carrier fleet fortuitously avoided disaster, as three of the carriers

attached to the Pacific Fleet were not on station at Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese

attack. Moreover, the U.S. Navy was not shocked into endorsing carrier aviation by the attack

on Pearl Harbor, as evidenced by the fact that the Japanese carrier fleet was defeated by U.S.

carriers procured and developed during the preceding decade. See discussion in Rosen (1991),

p. 58.


recognized the passing of the preeminence of the battle line.”46 Furthermore, to the

extent that the battleship lost stature in the future navy, carrier warfare was not the

obvious replacement. The dislodging of the battleship mentality did not presuppose

the ascendance of the carrier task force, as the attack also elevated the normative

appeal of other naval arms, including unrestricted submarine warfare.47

In sum, prevailing material-functional and cognitive-cultural theories offer

necessary but insufficient explanations for the institutionalization of carrier

transformation within the U.S. Navy. In the effort to push the frontiers of

organizational theory, each general approach privileges changing interests or ideas

as the main driver of radical change. Although each acknowledges an interaction—

with material-functional arguments recognizing the supplementary role played by

ideas for shaping proximate identities and constraining the struggle over contending

options, and cognitive-cultural arguments drawing attention to permissive material

power conditions that create openings for new ideas to take hold—neither alone

presents a framework to understand systematically how the two sets of factors were

rationally employed to overcome initial resistance and then to realize the revolution

at sea.

Fluid Institutions, Stable Norms

Despite the limitations to the extant literature, it is certainly the case that there were

new ideas and interests that favored change within the U.S. Navy. Our modified

principal-agent framework suggests this discrepancy can be reconciled by focusing

on the administrative measures that integrated these disparate factors to encourage

the successful maturation of the carrier strike force. For the U.S. Navy, this was

manifest by the gradual jettisoning of old forms of oversight in favor of new ones

that ensured that the introduction of naval aviation technologies and practices

would not require intrusive and costly mechanisms for internal monitoring. This

was realized within the context of a specific set of formal and informal intra-

organizational mechanisms. Lacking a clear idea of where they were headed

or dominance over service decisionmaking, those charged with guiding and

implementing the development of new carrier technologies and practices gradually

acquired discrete and complementary mandates. Moreover, these actors carefully

embraced mechanisms to reward innovative practices via main avenues of service

promotion. At the same time, informal arrangements were heavily relied on to

oversee change and to supplement the flow of information along formal channels.

These mechanisms complemented the formal division of labor by filling gaps in

oversight and reinforcing formal inducements. Finally, managerial norms within the

naval establishment offered common standards to validate the potential significance

of new technologies and practices, as well as provided a base for building trust among

initial skeptics of change within the naval establishment. By purposefully aligning

service incentives and tapping into these norms, carrier entrepreneurs gradually but

46 Hone (1977), p. 139.

47 Legro (1996), p. 128.


surely succeeded at putting in place low cost mechanisms to constrain opportunism

and promote common knowledge that augured well for a deliberate but progressive

course of transformation.

Procedural Changes

Though American interest in sea-based aviation predated World War I, early

proponents lacked a strong institutional base to give traction to new ideas about

carrier innovation. As discussed above, the service was dominated by “big gun”

enthusiasts who were predisposed to relegate the carrier to subordinate status. As

recounted by Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, coming out of The Great War,

“conservatives, including the chief of naval operations, saw the capital ship as

the decisive element of naval warfare; aviation could provide reconnaissance and

over-the-horizon spotting, but was only a support element for the battle line- a not

unreasonable view at the time.”48 Because naval aircraft at the time “were small,

fragile, capable of short-range flight, and unable to communicate effectively with

ships at extended distances,” there was a strong sense among senior civilian and

military leaders that the technology was not sufficiently advanced to warrant a rush

to constructing or elevating the status of the carriers.49 In the face of threats posed

by mavericks, such as Army Air Corps General William “Billy” Mitchell—who

aggressively seized on accomplishments during secret bombing exercises to make

the case for hiving off aviation from the Navy—reigning service “traditionalists”

were prepared at most only to hedge against bureaucratic defeat by lobbying to retain

control over the carriers. The shift from resistance to ambivalence among senior

service officers was further stoked by conclusions reached in 1919 by the General

Board, the standing committee of senior officers that advised the Secretary of the

Navy, that the carriers had become “an essential element of the fleet” and should

be pursued to the effect of “accompanying and operating with the fleet across the

globe.”50 Yet even with this high level endorsement, sea-based aviation was confined

to supporting the battle fleet, and fell under the supervision of skeptics within the

secretary’s office.

The administrative situation began to change, however, by the early 1920s

with assignment of a clear principal to oversee carrier development. In effect, the

organizational arrival of carrier aviation came with Congress’ mandated creation of

the Bureau of Aeronautics (BurAer) in July 1921; the first new bureau established

in the Navy over 60 years. Endorsed by the General Board, this organ was officially

authorized to supervise “all that related to designing, building, fitting out, and

repairing Navy and Maine Corps aircraft.” In addition, Congress confirmed the chief

of BurAer as a flag-rank billet and special advisor to the CNO, sending a clear signal

48 Watts and Murray (1996), p. 390.


50 Ibid., See also discussion in Hone and Mandeles (1980), pp. 97-98.


that leadership of naval aviation should appeal to ambitious senior naval officers and

would not impede promotion to the highest levels of the service.51

Complementing the formation of BurAer was a set of administrative reforms

that attracted the service’s “best and brightest” to naval aviation. Because flying

was considered hazardous duty, the Navy agreed to pay 50 percent above base

salaries for aviators who logged at least ten flights or four hours in the air per

month. According to BurAer chief, Admiral William Moffett, “flight pay was one

of the most important incentives the Navy had in attracting and retaining aviators

and reducing or eliminating it would exacerbate the already serious shortage of

flyers.”52 BurAer also steadily garnered authority to claim the top graduates of the

Naval Academy, and in 1930 established the position of aeronautical engineering

duty officer that opened professional career paths for technical specialists in naval

aviation. Furthermore, Congressional legislation stipulated operational command

of all flying activities (carriers, seaplanes, and naval air stations) as the exclusive

preserve of qualified pilots that, in practice, created a pool of guaranteed command

billets for naval aviation. Pilots serving on-board the carriers were naval officers

first and foremost; however, they were rotated back into the service reserve during

peacetime and incorporated into the mainstream promotional track. As proposed

by the President’s “blue-ribbon” Morrow Board in 1925, junior aviators were

guaranteed the opportunity to compensate for any missed sea-duty requirement

before being examined for promotion. Together, these measures effectively fused

individual incentives for advancement with growth in the status of the naval air arm

within the service.53

The guaranteed command billets for naval aviators also proved an effective lure

for senior surface-ship officers. In an effort to jump-start formation of an initial

senior cadre of naval aviators and to vest the flying units with early stature within the

service, the law that created BurAer stipulated the offering of an “observer course.”

This constituted a twelve-week training course for a select group of senior, and in

some cases retired, officers that was aimed at providing them an opportunity to

“learn some of the fundamentals of flight, do some flying, associate with aviators,

and get a better understanding of the needs of naval aviation in general.54 Captain

Joseph Reeves, for example, who was originally a battleship officer, chose to pursue

a career in naval aviation in part due to the promotional opportunities. Reeves was

51 BurAer was authorized to recommend recruitment, training, and promotion

procedures for Naval and Marine aviators, and to supply the Chief of Naval Operations with

technical expertise regarding “all aeronautic planning, operations, and administration.” Hone

and Mandeles (1987), p. 73. See also Trimble (1994), pp. 64-86.

52 Trimble (1994), p. 239. See also Watts and Murray (1996), pp. 395-396; Krepinevich

(2000); and Paolo E. Coletta and Bernarr B. Coletta, Admiral William A. Moffett and U.S.

Naval Aviation (Lewiston, UK: the Edwin Meller Press, 1997), pp. 209-210.

53 In effect, these measures introduced a situation whereby success in developing

carrier aviation would lead to an increase in the number of carriers that, in turn, would increase

the pool of guaranteed naval aviation command billets. See discussion in Donald Chisholm,

Waiting for Dead Men’s Shoes: Origins and Development of the U.S. Navy’s Officer Personnel

System, 1793-1941 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 636-661.

54 Wildenberg (2003), p. 120.


appointed Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet in 1925, a position that

entitled him the rank of Commodore. Although not a pilot himself, Reeves completed

the special naval observer course that qualified him to pursue the aviation career path

without meeting the physical and flying standards demanded of pilots. Though often

derided as “Johnny-Come-lately,” these officers served as crucial administrative

“stopgaps,” occupying leadership positions until the first cohort of naval pilots

advanced in seniority and rank.55 This strategy paid special dividends when it came

to Reeves, who brought the same exacting standards used to create record-breaking

battleship gun crews to develop techniques for fast-launch and recovery and general

carrier tactics. His success contributed directly to the conversion of the position of

Commander, Aircraft Squadrons into a rear admiral’s billet in 1927.56 In general,

this administrative technique fostered early cross-fertilization of naval surface and

aviation communities, and ensured that the latter would not be ostracized or deprived

access to traditional pathways to senior ranks.57

In addition, formal authority to formulate and implement new concepts of

carrier aviation was clearly delineated within the Navy. As the primary principal,

BurAer retained exclusive mandates to promote and oversee the engineering

design, development, testing, and procurement of new aviation technologies. It also

controlled a separate budget for aircraft development, as well as shared responsibility

with the Bureau of Navigation for personnel issues related to the carriers. While the

latter introduced an element of bureaucratic tension over the relationships between

specialization and general duty and between duty and career paths for airmen—as

BurNav generally advocated that naval aviator ranks be restricted to enlisted pilots

whose proficiency was no more specialized than those serving on submarines or

destroyers—BurAer retained privileged authority to establish special boards to

frame the debate over personnel issues.58 In addition, BurAer reported directly to

the General Board, acting as the service’s link to the highest echelons of executive

and legislative leadership in the U.S. government and American industry on issues

pertaining to carrier aviation.59 This was facilitated by the appointment in 1926 of

an Assistant Secretary of Navy for Aeronautics that established a civilian ally within

55 Ibid., p. 121; and Thomas Wildenberg, Destined for Glory (Annapolis, MD: Naval

Institute Press, 1998), pp. 3-4.

56 Wildenberg (1998), pp. 48-49, and 87.

57 Rosen (1991), pp. 78-79.

58 According to a report issued by BurNav (which was dominated by members of the

“big gun” club) to the Johnson Board on aviation personnel issues: “The manipulative skill

required for flying is of no consequence in determining that the officer is fit to hold a higher

command in aviation or in general line duties, nor does the possession of the naval aviator

designation by a group of men carry the argument for its perpetuation by a medium of a corps.

If it did, similar groups should be formed for destroyers, submarines, or oother types…”

Chisholm (2001), p. 639.

59 While no bureau had absolute veto power over policy, each maintained a discrete

prerogative that was acknowledged and reinforced in decisions made by the General Board.

BurAer, in addition, had authority to recommend selection criteria for pilots to the Bureau of

Navigation. This gave BurAer a leg up in intra-bureau competition on issues related to the

carriers. Hone and Mandeles (1980), p. 95; and Hone and Mandeles (1987), p. 74.


the service that worked in concert with BurAer chief to promote naval aviation.60

Though fully integrated into the Navy’s bureau and promotional structures, BurAer

ultimately bore responsibility for balancing exploration of carrier aviation with the

service’s core competencies and fighting effectiveness. This generated a pragmatic

incentive for wedding guidelines for carrier development closely to what was both

technically feasible and operationally effective. Consequently, the leadership of

BurAer was preoccupied with setting realistic goals for systematically exploring new

technologies, personnel policies, and operations to better fulfill the Navy’s primary

mission of fighting across the Pacific Ocean.61

At the agency level, it was left to the fleet command and the Naval War College

to follow BurAer’s lead, fleshing out general directives for change with concrete

operational and intellectual meaning. Within the fleet in the 1920s, the Commander,

Aircraft Squadrons acquired the rank of Commodore, and supervised two naval

aviation units that reported to commanders in the Battle Fleet and Scouting Fleet,

respectively. One of these units, Commander, Aircraft Squadron, Battle Fleet (later

Force), was delegated operational command of naval aviation, including all of the

carriers. Responsible for the combat performance of the carriers, this commander

had a direct stake in “calling for” and then effectively “incorporating new, improved

technology.” In 1927, this portfolio was elevated to a rear admiral’s billet. These

reforms institutionalized a strong incentive at this level to make progress on issues that

mattered most for the operational effectiveness of the carriers—such as minimizing

hangar space, optimizing the flight deck, slashing landing and launching intervals,

delivering sufficient ordnance, improving carrier effectiveness at night strikes, and

reducing vulnerabilities to diver bomber attack.62

Similarly, at the tactical level administrative control of aircraft squadrons and

deck operations was clearly established. The Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle

Fleet wielded direct control over all independent aviation units. Although formal

lines of reporting were slightly blurred by the reorganization of July 1928 that called

for squadron commanders to report directly to the carrier’s commanding officer, an

amendment was issued that preserved the Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle

Fleet’s de facto supervisory role. Although required to inform the commanding

officer of the carrier of the instructions issued to aviation units aboard the ship, the

Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet maintained sole control over the tactical

60 This office existed until 1932 (when it was eliminated due to budget cuts), and was

reestablished in 1941. A. Turnbull and C. Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 312.

61 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), p. 184; and Watts and Murray (1996),

pp. 394-396. Even an enthusiast of carrier aviation, such Admiral Moffett, was compelled

to reconcile his personal visions with the organization’s mandate. Accordingly, his real

contribution was not a revolutionary vision of carrier development but his skill at exploiting

BurAer’s mandate to harmonize progressive exploration of naval aviation technologies with

the Navy’s immediate operational needs for first improving the spotting for battleship gunfire,

then shielding the battle fleet from attrition, and finally delivering independent pulsating

attacks on the enemy’s naval fleet. See Trimble (1994); and Coletta and Coletta (1997).

62 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), p. 158. The second fleet unit was Commander,

Aircraft Squadrons, Scouting Fleet.


employment of those units and over their daily training activities. The practical nature

of this control was demonstrated vividly in September 1928 when the Commander

of the Lexington, Frank Berrrien, attempted to re-direct training of the air squadron

from gunnery practice to a concentration on precision landings, rendezvousing, and

deck signals that would enhance the overall performance of air units aboard the ship.

Although this effort at usurping tactical authority was initially endorsed by the ship’s

air officer, who also wanted to enhance his role over running the units assigned to

the Lexington, the Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet (Admiral Reeves)

ultimately prevailed at preventing such intervention by rallying support from both

the CNO and the Lexington’s squadron commanders.63 Furthermore, on each carrier,

flight deck responsibilities were clearly delineated. Admiral Reeves, in particular,

devoted significant energy to delegating discrete responsibilities among small teams

of specialists. As recounted by Thomas Wildenberg:

Specific tasks, such as operating the arresting gear, releasing tail hooks, and fueling

aircraft, were allocated to each team, along with a set of colored shirts. The members of

each team wore the same color, which served to sort out who was doing what on the busy

flight deck: blue for airplane pushers, brown for crew chiefs, purple for fuelers, and so

on. Most important were the yellow-shirted directors, for they were responsible for seeing

that planes were safely moved about the dangerous deck.64

Similarly, the Naval War College was delegated exclusive and complementary

prerogatives to design war game procedures, generate scenarios for fleet exercises, and

conduct rigorous assessments of operational exercises. The faculty was authorized to

study the technical data provided by BurAer for the purposes of devising simulations

and structuring annual fleet problems, as well as to receive feedback from the fleet

to update and improve the parameters for war games.65 In practice, the clear division

of labor encouraged synergies between the innovative practices spearheaded by

leaders within respective bureau, fleet, and academic structures. As summed up by

one historical account:

Reeves’ (Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Force) success in increasing the numbers

of aircraft the Langley could launch at a time generated empirical data that fed back into

the rules governing subsequent war games at Newport. Moffett (head of BurAer) then

capitalized on Reeves’ early success to generate support for a five-year, 1,000-airplane

program that allowed BurAer to pursue specialized aircraft—fighters, spotters, dive

bombers, etc.—rather than multipurpose aircraft. Finally, by the time Lexington and

Saratoga went to sea for Fleet Problem IX (held off of Panama during 23-27 January

63 Wildenberg (2003), pp.180-185. This encroachment on the authority of Commander

Air Squadorns was taken seriously and remained an issue of contention between Admiral

Reeves and both officers aboard the Lexington. In fact, Reeves subsequently exacted

punishment on the Lexington’s air officer by filing an “unsatisfactory” fitness report for the

officer that effectively stunted his career within the service.

64 Ibid., p. 134.



1929), the fleet had extended the deck-park concept to include refueling and rearming on

the flight deck itself, and Saratoga boasted an air wing of 110 airplanes with 100 pilots.66

Yet it is too simplistic to assume that the carrier revolution followed directly

from the rationalization of these formal lines of authority. BurAer could have

either made the wrong choices or prematurely locked in new technical designs,

especially since it lacked in-house expertise to assess the operational effectiveness

of carrier developments.67 Although the fleet and Naval War College were formally

responsible for integrating new concepts with operational practice, none of the

specific innovations were prescribed or anticipated by BurAer.68 Moreover, there

were overlapping lines of authority for aircraft design within BurAer that generated a

spiraling demand for engineers and rampant opportunities for shirking. This created

an environment within BurAer that effectively “robbed (sub-units) of any incentive

to keep abreast of the newest and best in the (naval aviation) field.”69 Accordingly,

there were no formal guarantees that actors within BurAer, the fleet, or the Naval

War College would follow consistent developmental paths or sustain reciprocal

exchanges of data and analysis. How then was BurAer so successful at managing the

residual discretion to further deliberate but progressive development of the carrier

force?

Part of the answer rests with the complementary informal links established among

the three administrative structures. Some of these ties were partially mandated from

above, as evidenced by the CNO’s order that the Naval War College be kept abreast

of developments in fleet doctrine and the appointment of a respective liaison office.

For example, the CNO appointed Captain Harry Yarnell as liaison to the Naval

War College. Yarnell later served as captain of the aircraft carrier Saratoga and as

Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Force.70 Similarly, Captain Reeves served

as head of the Tactics Department at the Naval War College prior to his appointment

to the same post within the Fleet.71 Throughout the decade, the close relationship

between the fleet and the Naval War College was solidified by the reciprocal

exchange of war-gaming data. Information from fleet exercises, for example, was

used to update and improve the parameters for war games. At the same time, the

Naval War College submitted scenarios to structure fleet exercises.72

Intra-service ties were reinforced by complementary links forged between

BurAer and the Naval War College. Moffett, in particular, encouraged his staff at

BurAer to present lectures regularly at the Naval War College.73 This connection

was strengthened in 1922, when the head of the Tactics Department was summoned

before the General Board to evaluate naval aviation. This provided strong impetus

66 Watts and Murray (1996), p. 402. First two parentheses added.

67 Ibid., 394. Mistakes were indeed made along the way, as evidenced by Moffett’s

early support for airships.

68 Hone and Mandeles (1987), pp. 74-75.

69 Turnbull and Lord (1949), p. 191. Parentheses added.


71 Wildenberg (1998), p. 93.

72 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), pp. 36-37.

73 Ibid., p. 32.


for the aviators at BurAer to work closely with faculty members and to apply the

evidence gleaned from Naval War College gaming analyses in support of their

claims to the General Board and other offices across the service.74

At the same time, responsibilities assigned to BurAer and the Commander,

Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet were complementary, fostering close cooperation

between the individuals who held these positions. The chief of BurAer supervised

procurement and technical issues, while the Commander, Aircraft Squadrons

managed training and operations. On occasion, this created rivalry among offices with

different mandates. As head of BurAer, for example, Moffett occasionally clashed

with Admiral Reeves over the cost-effectiveness of risky training exercises or the

fiscal soundness of creating additional fighter squadrons or rushing the purchase and

introduction of a single-seat fighter.75 In general, however, the rivalry spawned by

this division of labor mitigated information asymmetries and eased oversight, as it

brought contending views to the fore, as well as limited the numbers of subordinates

and missions supervised by each organ. The administrative control also was abetted

by the informal working relationships forged between the heads of these organs.

Though Moffett and Reeves were never close friends and were equally ambitious,

they nonetheless communicated directly with each other to coordinate respective

political and operational concerns. Reeves, for example, personally invited Moffett

to observe fleet exercises first hand on numerous occasions to bolster his advocacy

and persuasion power on Capitol Hill. Similarly, Moffett’s respect for Reeves’s

capacity to shape naval aviation doctrine was reflected by his endorsement of the

latter’s petition to extend his tour of duty as Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle

Force in 1928. Acknowledging the significance of both placing the supervision of

two carriers under the Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Force, and Reeves’

stature as “the only one to carry out this important work,” Moffett upheld the

division of authority and sent his endorsement to the CNO.76 These informal gestures

facilitated cooperation that transcended occasional professional differences, as well

as promoted mutual political protection without blurring respective jurisdictions.77

At the administrative level, BurAer strengthened oversight via the informal

practice of circulating personnel. Specifically, BurAer encouraged the rotation of

retired and reserve officers with aviation experience across both the bureau-fleet and

conceptual-operational divides. Though this practice was criticized for distracting

skilled officers from their flying responsibilities, it introduced an element of de

facto monitoring in the process. In addition, critical leadership positions went to

individuals who had acquired experience working within the different carrier

aviation units. Reeves, for instance, was appointed Commander, Aircraft Squadrons,

Battle Fleet, only after he completed a senior officer’s course on naval simulations

and served as head of the Tactical Department at the Naval War College. “Having

learned from Newport simulations that the number of aircraft a carrier could get into

74 Ibid., p. 35.

75 Wildenberg (2003), pp. 140, 166-171; Trimble (1994), pp. 167-199.

76 Wildenberg (2003), p. 171.

77 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), pp. 184-185. See also Trimble (1994), pp.

190, 232-233; and Pierce (2004), p. 123.


the air was crucial, Reeves (in his capacity as fleet commander) worked tirelessly

to shorten aircraft launch and recovery times, and to increase the number of planes

operating off the Langley.”78

The link between personnel rotation and administrative control was manifest by

the career of Admiral John Towers, who served as an informal conduit between the

three organs en route to becoming head of BurAer in 1939. As one of the first naval

aviators, Towers rose up through fleet ranks to become commander of the Langley

where he worked closely with Reeves. From there he was transferred to BurAer’s

Plans Division and, in 1929 became assistant chief of BurAer, serving as Moffett’s

deputy. Two years later he returned to the fleet as chief of staff to the Commander,

Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Force, where he kept Moffett apprised of the fleet’s needs

and activities. Towers subsequently studied the future role of naval aviation at the

Naval War College, and became proficient at designing and evaluating war games.

He returned to the fleet in 1934 as chief of staff to the carrier commander, and from

there went on to assume command of the Saratoga. In 1938, Towers transferred back

to BurAer as assistant chief, and in 1939 was appointed head of the bureau where he

presided over the Navy’s shift to conducting carrier operations independent of the

battle line.79

A fourth feature that allowed BurAer to monitor indirectly the policy work of

sub-units derived from the bureaucratic competition that took place both inside and

outside of the Navy. For example, BurAer outfitted two naval air squadrons with

slightly different models of the Curtiss Hawk F6 dive-bomber, and encouraged

competition to assess the performance characteristics of the two planes against both

fixed and moving targets.80 Similarly, the fleet command exploited efforts by the

Marine Corps to evaluate dive-bombing techniques. During the interwar period,

the two services engaged in an iterative process of exploring and testing alternative

aircraft, bomb delivery equipment, and operational innovations that advanced

each service’s programmatic objectives. Competition at air shows and assessment

of Marine dive-bombing operations generated independent input that helped the

fleet command to settle on dive-bombing as an important mission, and to tailor

engineering specifications and techniques to naval operations. The Commander

of the U.S. Battle Fleet was so impressed with developments between the services

that during the first demonstration of dive-bombing by naval aviators in 1926 he

conceded that it would be virtually impossible to defend large surface ships against

such attacks. Furthermore, the stationing of Marine, Army, and Naval aviation units

at the same bases not only accentuated competition, but forged informal ties between

respective aviators that were conducive to sharing diverse combat experiences from

World War I and more limited Central American operations.81

Competition also extended to sub-units within the Fleet. Admiral Reeves, in

particular, was a big fan of instilling “the same intense spirit of competition among

78 Watts and Murray (1996), p. 401.

79 Clark Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,

1991), pp. 199-290.

80 Wildenberg (1998), pp. 10-47.

81 Ibid.


aircraft squadrons that he had found invaluable during his days as a gunnery

officer.”82 Accordingly, he would frequently pit squadrons against each other to

generate new practical lessons on the limits of new dive-bombing techniques and

launching operations. Reeves also wholeheartedly embraced competition with Army

units at air shows as an outlet not only for spurring Naval pilots to develop new aerial

acrobatics techniques but “to put on a show” that demonstrated the accomplishments

of the aircraft squadrons in front of the public and entire Fleet.83

Managerial Norms

How appropriate were these procedural changes? Although carrier enthusiasts in

the bureau, fleet, and NWC managed to align incentives, oversight and coordination

between the three structures was far from complete. The impact of new material

incentives was restricted by the absence of shared understandings of the value and

purpose of carrier aviation as either an adjunct or rival to the Battle Fleet. This

was compounded by differences over the risk-taking appropriate for pacing the

introduction of new systems and tactics to “convince” skeptics within the service,

as well as by differences over the long-term repercussions of absorbing unproven

technologies and practices. In addition, the premium placed on loyalty within

the service, even among ranking carrier proponents, severely circumscribed the

percolation of “unwanted” information and discouraged “whistle-blowing.” Admiral

Reeves, for example, was notorious for demanding unwavering compliance among

naval flyers. On several occasions he went to great lengths to punish squadron

commanders who breeched the chain of command either by reporting concerns

about the safety of novel carrier landing techniques to civilian authorities, or by

challenging the focus of tactical training exercises.84

Such obstacles to risk-taking were compounded by the very opacity of the

selection process to flag rank officer. Because even “a single negative vote by any

admiral sitting on the board” could be sufficient to scuttle promotion of an otherwise

well-deserving officer, there was little margin for error when exploring new directions

for the carrier aviation. “Any officer ambitious enough to strive for the two stars of a

rear admiral needed to avoid antagonizing a superior, for one never knew who might

be sitting in future judgment of his promotion to the senior ranks of the Navy.”85 In

this context, a crucial element of managerial success rested with the adroit efforts by

carrier enthusiasts at framing new initiatives in terms consistent with professional

norms so as to defuse potential opposition, win over the battleship command, and

generate “common knowledge” about the carriers throughout the service.

Within the U.S. Navy there was traditional respect for commander autonomy,

and an accepted norm of indirect monitoring. As reflected in the Navy’s longstanding

theory of command, the prevailing managerial creed was that “the top officers should

tell their subordinates ‘what, when and where,’ then hold the subordinates responsible

82 Wildenberg (2003), p. 138.

83 Ibid., pp. 158-159.

84 Ibid., p. 144.

85 Ibid., p. 150.


for the ‘how.’”86 This ethos was deeply ingrained as individual naval commanders,

prior to the development of radio, were left without specific instructions from shore-

based superiors for days, weeks, or even months. Accordingly, there was deep-seated

acceptance of decentralized authority and the presumption that officers at all ranks

would exercise discretion with due diligence.

At the Fleet level, this was manifest by carrier enthusiasts who exhibited a

strong disposition for taking the initiative to push the practical boundaries of

new technologies and operations. Reeves, for example, seized on this sentiment

repeatedly to bring others along at gaining appreciation for new possibilities for

carrier-based dive-bombing operations. The success of this administrative tactic was

borne out during Fleet Problem VII in 1927, when Reeves broke from the script

by re-deploying fighters from their long-range scouting and anti-submarine patrol

duties to conduct an aggressive bombing of the Black enemy fleet. As recounted by

Wildenberg:

Knowing that the problem was nearing an end, and unwilling to continue to take defensive

posture, Reeves requested and received permission to launch a strafing attack against the

enemy’s destroyers. This left the convoy without protection against air attack, which was

subsequently delivered by a large force of Black aircraft just after the exercise had been

called off.

Although opponents seized on the blunder to expose the limits of sea-based

aviation for protecting surface ships, ranking Fleet commanders on the scene

conspicuously refrained from criticizing the action. Instead, they were thoroughly

impressed by Reeves’ initiative at landing a powerful and unexpected first blow

from the air.87

In addition to repeatedly stealing the initiative to demonstrate the prowess of

naval aviation, there were concerted efforts made to speak to the Navy’s collectively

accepted managerial norms for coping with the uncertainty of novel technologies and

concepts. Naval officers shared from top to bottom respect for empirical evidence and

analysis acquired from experience, scientific testing, and war gaming.88 This dated

back to the late nineteenth century, when the shift from sail to steam power lead to the

merger of naval and engineering officers into a single line. “Amalgamation was tacit

recognition of the technological basis of contemporary naval power and the necessity

of engineering training for all naval officers,” thus cementing technical expertise as

a prerequisite for command appointments.89 This was reinforced by the creation of

the Naval Postgraduate School, and the service’s promotion of important exchanges

with engineering faculty at Columbia University, M.I.T., and other leading academic

institutions. As a result, much of the officer corps was trained in engineering and

86 Turner and Lord (1949), p. 191.

87 Wildenberg (2003), pp. 147-148.

88 On the U.S. Navy’s shared evidentiary standards and norms of experimentation, see

especially Murray and Watts (1996); William McBride, Technological Change and the United

States Navy 1865-1945 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Wildenberg

(1998); and Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999).

89 McBride (2000), p. 32.


oriented towards accepting evidence obtained through rigorous experimentation.90

This deep-seated appreciation for technical analysis was embodied in subsequent

shifts first to the big gun dreadnought in the early twentieth century and then to the

carriers, as both were justified on the basis of the so-called N-square law that was

applied to evaluate attrition rates of traditional battle line engagements.91 Sensitivity

to this long-standing technical orientation within the service, and recognition of

the importance of cross-fertilization for easing tension and cultivating common

understanding among the Navy’s sub-communities, in effect, framed the approach

by senior officers—including Admirals Sims, Moffett and Reeves—to presenting,

orchestrating, and winning acceptance of carrier aviation.92

This technical orientation imbued the interwar U.S. Navy with a general openness

to explore new methods and technologies for improving operational effectiveness, as

long as the case for change could be supported by “appropriate” evidence gleaned

from extensive testing and operational experience. At the crux was a service-wide

acceptance of reciprocal exchanges and feedback between the rules and effects of

experimentation. Naval War College training simulations and fleet exercises, for

example, stressed close attention to technical detail and real conditions in operating

the carriers for assessing and conveying the prospects for naval aviation. As implored

by Admiral Sims, “In operating aircraft in chart maneuvers and game board exercises,

various rules are applied which must of necessity be in close agreement with actual

conditions if the true value of aircraft to the Fleet is to be appreciated.”93 By the same

token, there was a shared belief that intellectual horizons for tactical simulations and

doctrine could be soundly expanded, as long as evidence was thoroughly grounded

in real data and operational conditions. For instance, Sims’ successor as President

of the Naval War College, Admiral William Pratt, used data generated by rigorous

adherence to traditional measures of effectiveness for naval aviation simulations to

refine war-game rules and the parameters for assessing the performance of carrier-

based aircraft.94 Accordingly, simulations based on the findings of the Fleet problems

and the latest data provided by BurAer were important for developing widely accepted

novel solutions to key tactical issues—such as the effectiveness of ordnance delivery,

pulsating aerial attacks, aircraft launch and recovery, and communications warfare—

especially under the constraints imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty.95 In short,

90 Joseph Reeves, for example, first came to prominence as an engineering officer on

the Oregon during the Spanish-American War. Wildenberg (1998), p. 3.

91 Wildenberg (1998), p. 6. This law, formulated by the English engineer Frederick

Lancaster, stated that the value of a fighting force can be measured by multiplying the square of

its numerical strength by the fighting power of the individual units. This was used to calculate

attrition rates of battle line engagements. As one author notes, theorists at the Naval War

College subsequently attempted to make the technical case for the carriers by demonstrating

that the N-square law did not apply to carrier air strikes delivered in a pulse of combat power.

See Krepinevich (2000).

92 Wildenberg (2003), p. 133.

93 Quoted in Pierce (2004), p. 123.

94 Ibid., 125.

95 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), p. 161. Treaty limits on numbers of ships

necessitated a reliance on simulations to assess future carrier designs. The result was that


the rule impressed on junior officers on up the naval hierarchy was to present valid

evidence in making the case for improvements.96 Failure to produce reliable results

via realistic war-gaming, tests and exercises was simply unacceptable and constituted

legitimate grounds for denying commands and stunting promotion.97

Reeves was especially attuned to the importance of tapping into the service-wide

norm of “practicality” to stave off criticism and make the case for new operational

and tactical techniques for naval aviation. Upon assuming duty as Commander,

Aircraft Squadons, Battle Fleet, he moved quickly to dispel the image of naval

aviation as a “flying and drinking club” by issuing a prepared list of questions for

each squadron to address in performing for the Fleet. Reeves’ “Thousand and One

Questions” were regarded as the “holy” scripture by naval aviators, as they not

only guided them to “perfect the techniques, maneuvers, and tactics that formed the

basis of carrier doctrine,” but were crucial to communicating to officers in the Fleet

the burgeoning relevance of sea-based airpower to the service. In a lecture to his

charges in 1925 on the importance of going beyond reveling in the mere dangers of

aviation to addressing probing operational questions, Reeves minced few words on

the imperative of pitching future exploits in practical terms easily digestible to the

broader service community.

I do not know the answers to these questions and dozens like them any more than you do,

but until we can answer them, we will be of very little use to the fleet. That means that we

must become a school before we can become an air force. I do not know how long this

training period will last….. In any case, always remember that every “answer” must meet

the test of practicality; there will be no room for abstract theorizing in my command.98

This was coupled with keen attention to demonstrating the practical application

of naval aviation during Fleet exercises. Consequently, Reeves’ tenure as a

Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet was marked by compulsive efforts to

display the resourcefulness and skill of naval aviators at improving launching and

dive-bombing techniques during naval exercises and public exhibitions. For Reeves,

an integral component to sustaining sea-based aviation within the service rested

with publicly, tangibly, and repeatedly demonstrating its potential decisiveness to

the Navy’s concept of achieving military success.99

simulations, while not given the same weight as direct evidence, carried validity throughout

the naval hierarchy. See Trimble (1994), pp. 32-33, and McBride (2000), p. 165.

96 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), p. 159. This stood in direct contrast to the

French Army immediately prior to the Second World War that placed more emphasis on the

received wisdom of World War I than available evidence from German operations in Spain,

Poland and Norway. See Cohen and Gooch (1991), chapter 8.

97 Unfortunately, this policy could have deleterious effects as well. Several junior

officers that were at the forefront of carrier innovation were passed over for promotion on

at least one occasion for focusing more on aviation than spending time at sea. Reynolds

(1991).

98 Wildenberg (2003), pp. 126-127.

99 Ibid., p. 209. See also Joseph M. Reeves, “Aviation in the Fleet,” U.S. Naval Institute

Proceedings 55:10 (October 1929), pp. 867-870.


The shared belief in the value of experimentation and simulation was critical for

wooing interest in carriers from the naval officers who engineered earlier dreadnought

innovations.100 The “big gun” club was especially biased towards evidence that

spoke to the mission of delivering long-range naval firepower against an opponent’s

battle line. This pro-battleship group was receptive to the findings produced by the

Fleet problems from 1925 onward that featured improvements to the bomb load

capacity of carrier-based aircraft, the accuracy of aerial bombing exercises, launch

and recovery of aircraft, and the effects of aerial ordnance.101 For example, by

initially couching the arming of reserve aerial spotters as augmentation of battleship

spotting doctrine, Reeves “effectively doubled the strike power available without

causing an intra-service squabble with the battleship officers.”102 Similarly, in the

1927 exercises, Reeves won over Fleet admirals by combining strong initiative with

careful attention to meeting the Fleet’s primary objective for offensive operations.

Though initially slated to patrol the fleet, Reeves made the case for reassigning air

squadrons to conduct bombing raids by demonstrating impressive launch and dive-

bombing techniques and pitching the initiative as consistent with the service’s search

for greater power projection capabilities. Notwithstanding operational delays and

difficulties with meeting the plan, Reeves’ success during the exercise effectively

“had given the admirals a weapon that enabled the fleet to project power far inland,

well beyond the limited range of its big guns.”103 For battle cruiser designers steeped

in the Navy’s scientific and technical culture, such as Hutch Cone, evidence marshaled

in this way made it easier to appreciate the value of exploring an independent role

for carrier aviation.104

Similarly, both Reeves and Moffett made conscious efforts to couch operational

and tactical modifications in terms of the Navy’s long-standing proclivity for searching

out “efficient” solutions to practical problems. For Reeves, this was manifest in his

staunch commitment to keeping air units together so that the service could maximize

the efficiency of training and use of whatever assets it was provided. For example,

in the face of mounting pressure to curb the financial and replacement costs of his

hard-driving training in 1926, Reeves solicited support from the CNO by defending

his actions as a quest to maximize the number of take-offs and landings from a single

carrier. This argument won over his superiors who were thoroughly impressed by

Reeves’ commitment to pushing the limits of training, testing, and developing naval

aviators and their material, and were loath to impose “unnecessary” restrictions on

such effective practices.105 The attention to couching aircraft operations as supporting

the service’s standard of efficiency also shaped Reeve’s approach to pressing the case

for extending the flight decks and increasing the complement of aircraft assigned to


101 Ibid., 159-161. Projections developed by BurAer in conjunction with the aircraft

industry supplemented this valuable data.

102 Pierce (2004), p. 129.

103 Wildenberg (2003), pp. 145-147.

104 Trimble (1994), pp. 69-70; and McBride (2000), p. 99. Once convinced of the

importance of naval aviation, Cone lobbied for the formation of BurAer in a statement issued

to the General Board in 1919.

105 Wildenberg (2003), p. 140.


the experimental Langley in 1927. For him, the only way for the Langley to “earn

her salt in the Navy” was to demonstrate that she could launch and recover more

than the 12-plane complement originally allocated. This idea met with significant

resistance from other carrier enthusiasts who firmly believed Reeves’ approach too

risky, fearing that it would take only one accident for the “carrier business to go out

the window.” Yet Reeves prevailed in doubling the size of armed aircraft attached to

the carrier largely by framing his proposal as an efficient response to recent changes

to battleship spotting doctrine that required the readiness of a second spotting aircraft

for each battleship. By convincing battleship commanders that the second armed

spotters could protect the spotting planes while flying in reserve, Reeves’ effectively

increased the striking power of the Langley and operational experience for carrier-

based aviators in a manner that neither posed a bureaucratic threat to the “big gun”

club nor required additional material outlays.106

Moffett too was deft at framing administrative initiatives aimed at integrating

naval aviators into the line consistent with the service’s long-standing commitment

to balancing equity of duty with broader naval efficiency. His argument in support

of creating BurAer as a separate entity, for example, was cast in terms of “popular

themes of economy and efficiency and the requirement to bring order out of present

‘chaotic conditions.’”107 Similarly, requests for extra-flight pay and for creating

temporary ranks for officers filling initial aviation billets drew on precedents of the

service’s solutions to personnel problems during and after the Civil War.108 This

skill was especially evident in Moffett’s presentation to the Morrow Board in 1925,

where he defended the need for new promotional opportunities, duty assignments,

and proficiency requirements against both Billy Mitchell’s proposal for creating an

independent air service and the campaign by BurNav to restrict the manning of flying

units to enlisted pilots and to favor general line duty over specialized aviation training

and knowledge. He worked closely with other carrier advocates to deliver a uniform

message about the inequalities confronting naval aviators—especially difficulties

at balancing sound technical proficiency with selections for general line duty and

serving under the direct command of non-flyers—in their efforts to integrate with the

line. By representing the problem as one of appreciating and rewarding specialized

service among airmen committed to improving the efficiency of naval operations,

Moffett and the other aviators channeled deliberations on the Morrow Board towards

favored solutions regarding representation within the service, command over flying

activities, and privileged access to general line duties for purposes of qualification

for commands.109

Common rules of evidence also were tremendously important for communicating

with and gaining acceptance from the Navy’s General Board. As the final arbiter

on how best to adapt aviation for naval purposes, General Board hearings offered

opportunities for entrepreneurs to persuade their seniors to undertake change. “They

gained that support by adhering to an important institutional and organizational rule-

106 Ibid., pp. 153-155.

107 Trimble (1994), p. 78.

108 Chisholm (2001), p. 646.

109 Ibid., pp. 641-646.


providing evidence. When admirals sitting as the General Board asked their aviator

colleagues for evidence of aviation’s performance and promise, the latter never

answered back that the demand for evidence was unfair.” Rather, it was accepted

by junior and senior officers alike that the shared evidentiary rule created a common

referent that made complex issues more accessible to senior officers, and strengthened

confidence in assessing otherwise novel concepts and practices that were beyond

the purview of the General Board’s expertise.110 In sum, successive achievements

demonstrated via traditional measures of effectiveness had the cumulative effect

of updating common knowledge and shoring up service-wide acceptance of the

carrier’s potential for evolving from a secondary spotting role to an independent

strike force.

Conclusion

Our analysis of U.S. carrier transformation supports the hypotheses presented in

chapter 2. We believe that this discussion should add confidence to claims about

the decisiveness of harmonizing procedural and normative elements of managerial

control to ensure successful transformation. Through successive administrative

reforms, those vested with authority to supervise development and exploration of

the carriers gradually but surely discouraged shirking and forged new common

understandings concerning the significance and prospective effectiveness of aircraft

carriers at all levels within the service. Their success proved decisive at not only

winning over traditionalists but inculcating trust and confidence in the exploration

of unproven technologies, strategies, operations, and forms. Far from being an

exception, the managerial strategy pursued within the U.S. Navy appears to be the rule

when military organizations opt for incremental, deliberate paths of transformation.

While other services may be more vigilant at aligning procedural with normative

dimensions of oversight, as demonstrated by the German Army in chapter 3, failure

to reduce agency costs by purposefully enlisting formal and/or normative measures

can significantly obstruct the course of military change. It is to these troubled and

failed trajectories of transformation that we turn our attention in chapters 5 and 6.

110 Hone, Friedman, and Mandeles (1999), p. 159; Hone and Mandeles (1980), pp. 97-

99; and Trimble (1994), pp. 38-39.

Chapter 5

The British and Armored Forces:

Squandering Early Innovation

The British Army during the closing years of World War I employed a new weapon,

the tank, to achieve dramatic breakthroughs across the barbed wire and trenches

that otherwise defined the attritional warfare. Though the British fielded their first

technologically-challenged tanks for infantry support, the Army’s pioneering use of

them en mass on the battlefields at Cambrai and Amiens illuminated the revolutionary

potential for large-scale, independent offensive armor operations. As described

by Harold Winton, the British Army’s innovative prowess was on full display by

war’s end with the new Tank Corps that “from a figment of the imagination, had

become a force of 20 battalions and 12 armored car companies,” and that due to its

dynamic performance at the tactical-level formed the crux of new visions for armor

operations.1 The enthusiasm spilled over into the initial interwar period, as the British

Army spearheaded significant technological, tactical, doctrinal, and organizational

advances. These early achievements were nourished by constructive debate over

mechanized versus armored warfare, and by decisions to create a permanent Tank

Brigade and expand the Royal Tank Corps. This was complemented by forward-

leaning experimentation in command, control, communications, and maneuverability

that by the early 1930s placed Britain at the vanguard of transformation to combined

arms warfare.

Yet by 1934, the British Army’s leadership of the armored revolution came to

an abrupt halt. Enthusiasm for the progressive use of the tank waned, with new

developments in doctrine featuring the mechanization of infantry and cavalry units

rather than independent armor operations. The transition from corps- and brigade-

level experimentation to division-level innovations at offensive tank warfare on the

Continent was outpaced by diffused approaches to fielding a new “Mobile Division”

for mechanizing the Army suited to policing the empire. Though the first to conduct

systematic experimentation of new tank designs and doctrine and the only army fully

outfitted with track and mechanized transport, the British Army virtually abandoned

hot pursuit of armored force, eventually taking a back-seat to German tactical and

operational exploration with combined arms during the latter half of the decade.

By the beginning of World War II, the British Army had undergone extensive

mechanization but effectively little transformation, with the deployment of a few

modern tanks grafted onto existing armored cavalry and infantry units that served

ad hoc and secondary roles. Even with superior numbers, as lamented by senior

1 Harold Winton, To Change an Army, (University Press of Kansas; Lawrence, KA;

1988), p. 15.


officers, the British armored formations were so tactically inferior that they could

not meet the German Panzer units on the battlefield prior to 1942.2

What went wrong with British armor transformation during the interwar period?

Why, after introducing promising new tank designs and visions, did the British Army

fail at institutionalizing armored warfare? Why did the British Army not only lose

its lead in exploring novel formations, but fall woefully behind peer competitors

in Germany, and to a lesser extent the Soviet Union, in exploiting them? Why,

in contrast to the experience of the U.S. Navy at the time, was the British Army

unable to sustain the momentum of early technological, doctrinal, and organizational

reforms to gradually but surely realize the potential for this new form of warfare?

Answers to these questions are not obvious. The British Army’s halting success

with transformation is especially problematic for mainstream explanations of

military change. Though technologically, fiscally, and politically constrained, the

British Army, like its foreign and inter-service rivals, confronted feasible options

that augured well for perpetuating, albeit evolutionary, progress towards armored

transformation. Furthermore, the British Army achieved both more and less than

predicted by extant organizational functional and normative arguments. On the one

hand, successive service reforms limited the influence of reactionary officers, as well

as enhanced the authority and career trajectories of tank enthusiasts who favored

modernization and exploration of novel armored formations. Similarly, prominent

outside advocates of offensive tank and mechanized warfare enjoyed constant contact

with the Army’s leading generals, as well as privileged access to senior politicians

and civilian officials in the War Office to exert important influence over internal

service matters. These developments notwithstanding, the British Army failed to

sustain dynamic armored innovations, leaving ardent proponents, such as J.F.C.

Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart, with only sporadic influence over armored innovation.

On the other hand, the British military’s early technological, organizational, and

doctrinal successes with expanding the frontiers of tank and mechanized warfare (as

well as poison gas and strategic bombing) belie claims of strategic or organizational

cultural aversions to innovation. Army generals had neither settled on a definitive

way of mobile tank warfare, nor resisted experimenting with novel independent or

offensive formations for a continental war. Uncertainty and ambivalence, rather than

dogmatic adherence to outdated infantry and cavalry tactics or steadfast resistance

to armored force reflected the prevailing disposition among Britain’s leading Army

officers during the interwar period.

Though hamstrung, the British Army nonetheless proved to be its own worst

enemy at managing armored transformation. Coming out of World War I, tank

enthusiasts enjoyed political support and clearly delineated command authority to

oversee the exploration of armored and mechanized warfare. Yet, as we argue here,

these organizational advantages were squandered by a series of transformation-

stifling procedural and normative factors. In particular, the Army lacked effective

mechanisms to coordinate action among otherwise shielded tank units within the

broader service structure, as well as to overcome traditional incentives for promotion

and regimental specialization. Most important, diehard tank enthusiasts both within

2 Ibid., p. 156.

The British and Armored Forces 131

and outside of the service had a penchant for chastising their rivals for subscribing

to traditional practices, promoting massed, autonomous tank operations without

offering empirical evidence to support their claims or refute counter-arguments.

Together these factors significantly intensified the agency costs of diffusing radical

change that derailed the British Army’s effective exploitation of mechanized warfare,

notwithstanding strategic imperatives, burgeoning enthusiasm among empowered

entrepreneurs, and initial advances in operational and tactical doctrine.

This chapter examines the administrative challenges to managing the

transformation of British armored formations. The first section elucidates problems

that the Royal Army’s initial accomplishments and subsequent abandonment of

armored warfare pose for extant “outside-in” and “inside-out” explanations of

military innovation. Specific attention is devoted to identifying the inconsistencies

of this pattern with independent material-functional and cognitive-cultural

explanations for organizational change. The second part traces insights from the

modified principal-agent framework. Here we demonstrate how the British Army

failed to take full advantage of the organizational division of authority to sustain

initial armored innovations. We highlight how the inability to restructure incentives

and tighten coordination up and down the service hierarchy, as well as failure to

promote common knowledge by tapping into accepted norms for decisionmaking

and experimentation, gradually but surely exacerbated the agency costs of managing

the armored revolution.

Constrained but Not Doomed to Failure

The British Army exited World War I embracing novel ways to employ the tank.

The tank corps received “Royal” status by 1923, and the Army supported the design

and development of three tank programs, and was at the forefront of executing

experimentation with armored and mechanized formations throughout the remainder

of the decade. Shortly thereafter, however, the Royal Army reversed course,

burying ambitious concepts for deep armored penetration within its massive, all-

Army program for the mechanization of infantry, artillery, and cavalry formations.

The senior leadership re-directed procurement, training, and experimentation, as

well as exhibited residual interest in offensive armored operations and doctrine.

Consequently, by the outset of World War II, the Army “had no tank in production,

its artillery was antiquated, its anti-tank gun obsolete, and its vehicular support

inadequate,” as well as was ill-prepared intellectually to cope with the changing face

of the battlefield.3

On the surface, the failure of the British Army to institutionalize novel ways of

armored warfare seems over-determined, the product of multiple impediments to

military change beyond the service’s control. The Army, for example, was under the

tight reins of the Treasury and was placed in a fiscal vice by the War Office’s 1919

commitment to the “ten-year rule.” The latter, reaffirmed in 1925, carried a severe

3 Williamson Murray, “Armored Warfare: The British, French, and German

Experience,” in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the

Interwar Period (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 11.


budgetary constraint, as it constituted a pledge to refrain from fielding a robust

expeditionary force throughout the period.4 Declining resource allocations limited

procurement orders and left dedicated experimental units shorthanded, as well as

compounded technological and industrial barriers to redressing reliability, mobility,

firepower, logistical, defense, and wireless communications problems beyond the

modest operational capabilities and training associated with the first generation

of tanks. The situation arguably worsened by the early 1930s, as the economic

depression in Britain retarded tank research and development (R&D), as well as

prompted a freeze on the acquisition of new equipment and reliance on obsolete and

mass produced hardware for the Army. Accordingly, by the outset of World War II,

the Royal Army was saddled with technically inferior tanks vis-à-vis the Germans

that required 6 to 9 months to produce in any significant numbers.5 The pressure was

exacerbated by the strategic necessity to protect simultaneously the home front (via

air defense), as well as Britain’s far-flung imperial and continental commitments.

Against the backdrop of these complementary fiscal-technological constraints, this

strategic “trilemma” militated against a decisive shift in doctrine, organization, and

procurement practices throughout the interwar period.6

Upon closer inspection, these exogenous factors constrained more than prevented

successful transformation. Though immature and lacking a demonstrative effect on

the offense-defense balance of wars fought between 1919 and 1939, tank technology

nonetheless was widely accepted as evolving and offering promising avenues for

exploitation during the interwar period.7 Indeed, early conceptions of armored

warfare—including Fuller’s “Plan 1919” that called for innovative combined arms

use of an all-tank army—were predicated on improvements in reliability, speed,

firepower, and protection from anti-tank guns that failed to materialize in newer

tank models, such as the “Medium-D.” Yet, the Army continued to introduce several

innovative tank designs, as well as coded transmissions, radios, and combustion

engines. As early as 1927, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Gen. Sir

George Milne, pronounced that new advances with the gasoline engine presaged

the eventual formation of armored warfare. Despite the technological challenges,

other senior British officers, such as Maj. Gen. John Burnett-Stuart—who was well-

known for his judicious and comprehensive analysis—boasted that the tank had been

developed sufficiently by the end of the 1920s that it could “cut itself adrift from the

4 Winton (1988), p. 78.

5 John Stone, “The British Army and the Tank,” in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff,

eds. The Sources of Military Change (Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., Boulder, CO; 2002),

p. 189; Robert Larson, The British Army and the Theory of Armored Warfare (Newark, DE:

University of Delaware Press, 1984), p. 124, 180; and Brian Bond, British Military Policy

Between the Two World Wars (New York, NY: Clarendon Press-Oxford, 1980), pp. 145-147.

6 Winton (1988), p. 203.

7 On the paucity and confounding battlefield evidence of the offensive versus defense

impact of tank designs during the interwar period, see discussion in Keir A. Lieber, War and

the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics over Technology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

2005), pp. 101-103.


infantry battle, and go into business on its own as a principal, not merely assistant.”8

Furthermore, British tank achievements not only stoked interest within the service

for greater tactical experimentation, but provided the basis for the technological,

logistical, and production advances with combined mass, mobility, and firepower

undertaken by the Germans and Soviets.

Tight budgets also did not preclude significant discretionary spending on new

tank designs or experimentation. From the end of The Great War to 1936, the British

spent heavily on the development of different medium and light tank designs. Yet the

Army opted to spread its limited R&D resources thinly on development of multiple

medium tank prototypes, including six versions of the “sixteen tonner.” It then decided

by the mid-1930s to alter course, placing production priority on lighter tanks and

armored vehicles.9 Fiscal stringency neither prevented successive reorganizations

that elevated the stature of the tank, including the formation of the Experimental

Armored Force (EAF) in 1928 and the Tank Brigade in 1934, nor prohibited annual

maneuvers, such as experiments in 1931 involving the watershed use of radios for

mobile tank operations that occurred at the most austere moment faced by the Army

during the interwar period.10 Furthermore, Army officers proved adroit on occasion

at averting painful spending tradeoffs at the expense of advancing armored warfare.

In recognition of both the promise of an armored brigade and the fiscal constraints

imposed on the Army, Milne simultaneously proposed to focus experimentation in

1929 on mechanized infantry units while securing from the Treasury the necessary

budgetary authority to place future orders for heavy and light tanks to outfit the

permanent armored brigade. Impressed by Milne’s entrepreneurship, Winston

Churchill, then Chancellor to the Exchequer, reassured the Army by promising “that

this part of your (Milne’s) program will be given absolute priority within whatever

total is fixed when Estimates come to be considered.”11

In addition, Britain’s strategic predicament did not prescribe a specific role for

the tank or armored formations. Critics of armored warfare pointed explicitly to

the inconsistencies of such developments with meeting the narrow requirements

for waging imperial and continental warfare, respectively. Yet, the proponents

based their case on alternative interpretations of Britain’s strategic priorities. For

some tank enthusiasts, such as Liddell Hart, the premium placed on Imperial

control necessitated expanding the armored component of the Army’s role on the

Continent to compensate for limitations to the traditional strict reliance on the Navy.

Alternatively, Fuller underscored the rising prominence of continental warfare, and

the attendant strategic demands on augmenting the mobility and firepower of the

8 Quoted in Harold R. Winton, “Tanks, Votes, and Budgets,” in Harold R. Winton and

David R. Mets, eds., The Challenge of Change (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000),

p. 84.

9 J.P. Harris, Men, Ideas, and Tanks (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995),

pp. 238-239, 278; and Larson (1984), pp. 190-192.

10 Bond (1980), p. 187; and John J. Mearshimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 76-78.

11 Winton (2000), p. 85. Parenthesis added.


tank to conduct highly advanced combined arms operations.12 In short, Britain’s

strategic priorities were perceived as both reinforcing and invalidating emphasis

on armored warfare, rendering the Army ill-prepared to wage either imperial or

continental warfare by the outset of World War II. As summed up by Winton, one of

the curious anomalies among strategic thinkers of the time was that “the desire of the

reformers for armored warfare was at loggerheads with their strategic preference for

limited liability, while the preference military conservatives had for mechanization

over armored warfare was directly at odds with their realization of the necessity for

a firm continental commitment.”13

By the same token, new wave intra-organizational explanations for military

change are deficient at capturing the halting pattern of British armored innovation.

On the one hand, there were clear obstructions to promotional pathways for tank

officers. Leadership of the Royal Tank Corps, for example, was initially denied to tank

enthusiasts. Because senior positions were typically renewed for three-year periods,

tank innovators were virtually frozen out of the top positions in the Corps during the

early years. Furthermore, junior officers that had been in the Corps from inception in

1923 were repeatedly displaced by the promotion of officers from other branches of

the service.14 On the other hand, by the 1930s, the RTC was composed of a diverse

group of officers—such as Col. Gen. George Lindsay, Lt. Col. Charles Broad, Maj.

Percy Hobart, and Maj. Frederick Pile—who not only distinguished themselves

as significant champions of technological, doctrinal and operational innovations

with tank and armored formations but went on to hold senior positions within the

service.15 Fuller too had an opportunity to rise up the ranks and to bring his concepts

for armored doctrine into force, as he was offered the position of commander of the

Experimental Mechanized Force (EMF) in 1926. That he did not hold the post was

due less to a formal promotional barrier than to his own volition, as he turned it down

largely out of concerns for autonomy and personal staff support.16

Similarly, cognitive-cultural arguments appear convincing on the surface. The

British Army, for example, has been traditionally depicted as a victim of its own

visceral conservative approach to colonial warfare and reactionary response military

change. As noted by Brian Bond, “The Army’s whole organization, recruiting system,

training, equipment, and—not the least—tradition were strongly oriented towards

imperial defense.”17 Moreover, Army officers appeared to be indoctrinated by the

Caldwell system that stipulated that soldiers had to be prepared to serve at home

and abroad, rotating freely between deployed units. The result was the matching on

a one-to-one basis of brigades and divisions designated for homeland and colonial

defense that was accepted virtually as a holy writ for experimentation, training, and

12 David French, The British Way in Warfare 1688-2000 (London: Unwin Hyman,

1990), pp. 175-201; and Winton (2000), p. 90.

13 Winton (2000), p. 100.

14 Bond (1980), pp. 51-52; and Patrick Wright, Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War

Machine, (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc.,2000), pp. 142-143.

15 Bond (1980), pp. 130-131.

16 Larson (1984), pp. 73-74; and Winton (2000), pp. 82-83.

17 Bond (1980), p. 188.


organization within the service throughout the interwar period.18 Together, these

factors inculcated a bias towards embracing a strategy of “limited liability” on the

continent and policing the empire via small mechanized units that blinded the service

both to exploiting the full promise of armored warfare—that appeared to offer

little value for defending India—and to appreciating the effectiveness of armored

formations in the German blitzkrieg strategy for defeating Poland in 1939.19

This prejudice was seemingly buttressed by a lingering disgust with The Great War

across British society, and a related proclivity within the Army to default to a prewar

tactical aversion to searching for technological panaceas. A common understanding

was that “the ultimate Allied victory, however costly, had vindicated completely the

strategy of attrition and that this doctrine should be strictly maintained in the army’s

postwar training and planning for future war.”20 As Bidwell and Graham assert, the

prospective emotional attachment within the Army to “celebrating the technical

knock-out” potential offered by new systems, including the tank and tactical airpower,

was drowned out by the groundswell of mourning over the immense losses of the

war.21 The anxiety and fear of reliving the war also contributed to a yearning for a

reversion to prewar service rituals and routines. According to Liddell-Hart, “‘Back

to 1914’ was a common military catchphrase of the post-war period, and came to be

applied unthinkingly even in the reconstruction of tactics and tactical organization.”22

At Camberly and the Staff College, for example, this translated into a bias towards

studying new methods for “winning the last war,” and downgrading emphasis on

mechanization and new tactics, much to the chagrin of many students.23 Though the

War Office occasionally formed ad hoc senior officer committees to study particular

prewar issues, these efforts generated few practical recommendations for armored or

mechanized warfare prior to 1930.24

Yet, traditional cognitive-cultural arguments too fall short as independent

explanations for the British abandonment of armored transformation. Assertions

of an ossified British strategic culture do not comport, for example, with the

determination of the Royal Air Force to “cook the books” and reject “lessons

learned” in its embrace of novel technologies and doctrines for strategic bombing.25

More specifically, the issue of radical change, and especially progressive concepts

of armored warfare, hardly fell on deaf ears within the Army. Rather than paralyzed

by an emotional attachment to defending the empire while adhering to “limited

liability” on the Continent, the Army was consumed by “keeping its options open,”

18 Murray (1996), p. 22; and Winton (1988), p. 229.

19 Bond (1980), p. 188. See discussion in Mearshimer (1988), pp. 21-22; and French,

(1990), p. 289.

20 Larson (1984), p. 63.

21 Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Firepower: British Army Weapons and

Theories of War, 1904-1945 (Boston, MA: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 132; 169.

22 Sir Basil Henry Liddell-Hart, The Tanks, Vol. 1 (New York, NY: Praeger Publishers,

1959), pp. 199-200.

23 Bond (1980), p. 37.

24 Larson (1984), pp. 26-27.

25 See especially discussion in Williamson Murray, “Strategic Bombing: The British,

American, and German Experiences,” in Murray and Millett (1996), pp. 116-122.


resisting preparation for a single strategic mission.26 The service also engaged in self-

reflection, as the General Staff commissioned several forward-leaning reports. The

Kirke Committee, for example, proved especially open to reexamining lessons from

The Great War, producing a report in 1932 that touted combined arms operations

and detailed the need for novel training and experimental methods for employing

tanks for offensive warfare.27 Similarly, both the first postwar tank manual published

in 1918 and the 1929 hallmark primer for armored warfare underscored the

progressive contributions of tanks and armored formations. That the practical effects

of these documents were marred by revisions and restricted circulation, speak less

to the dearth of novel ideas than to the political impediments to implementation.28

Also, as noted above, the absence of a cogent continental mission—that fostered

the residual primacy of an imperial focus and stunted the Army’s full embrace of

armored warfare—did not prevent the service from embarking on key innovations,

as evidenced by the sustained expenditure of scarce resources on anti-aircraft guns

for homeland defense or experimentation with armored warfare.29 The latter, in

particular, generated from 1925 new insights that lead directly to the formation of an

armored experimental force, as well as turned heads in demonstrating the potential

for small armored formations to incapacitate much larger infantry formations.30

Finally, the Army was far from monolithic in its orientation towards future

combat, with members of the senior officer corps holding diverse views on the utility

of tanks and armored formations. Though there were certainly senior officers who

resisted mechanization (let alone armored warfare) as substitutes for the cavalry,

they in no way monopolized the intellectual landscape. Winton and Bond note,

for example, that visions for armored warfare during the interwar period were far

from polarized, and fell into as many as six main groups—revolutionary, reforming,

progressive, conservative, reactionary, and indifferent. A small group, led by Fuller,

Hobart, Pike, and Broad, who by the 1930s exerted strong influence over doctrine,

envisioned the “overwhelming superiority of the tank over any other mechanical

invention or scientific discovery.” The others, except for those who were indifferent

or true reactionaries, held strong views on the prospects for reforming the Army’s

tactical doctrine, enhancing the role of combined arms and mechanizing infantry

units. Though these officers differed over the role of tanks versus mechanized infantry

in mobile force units, they were not biased against future pursuit of armored units.

Moreover, several prominent officers, such as Burnett-Stuart, changed their views

from lukewarm to ardent support for sweeping tactical revisions.31 Other officers,

such as Milne, who were initially skeptical of the primacy of armored formation,

26 Winton (1988), p. 203.

27 Bidwell and Graham (1982), pp. 139-145, 172; and David French, Raising Churchill’s

Army (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 31.

28 Larson (1984), pp. 151-152; Harris (1995), pp. 180-181, 223; and Bidwell and

Graham (1982), p. 174.

29 Winton (1988), p. 203.

30 Ibid., pp. 84-87.

31 Ibid., pp. 27-30. See also Bond (1980), pp. 130-132.


nonetheless championed successive innovations in experimentation, training,

procurement, and standing up new tank units.32

Institutionalized Separation Without Control

The British Army’s halting experience with armored transformation during the

interwar period makes sense when viewed through the prism of the modified

principal-agent framework. On the one hand, command authority was clearly

delineated throughout the period. This provided an institutional base for introducing

new tank technologies and conducting novel experimentation. On the other hand,

deficient formal and informal coordinating mechanisms and reporting requirements

diminished the capacity of newly empowered commanders to supervise combined

arms doctrine and operations. Rampant power-sharing and the diffused administrative

structure of the Army Council and General Staff blurred operational authority, and

institutionalized consensual and risk-averse decisionmaking among senior military

and civilian leaders within the War Office. The confusion was compounded by the

British Army’s regimental system of decentralized but isolated units, adherence to

the Cardwell system of creating parallel units at home and abroad, separating the

tank corps from the regular divisional structure (eliminating opportunities for joint

training and experimentation), absence of formal ties to mechanized infantry, and

fragmentation of design and development of armored technologies. Furthermore,

promotion within the service was determined largely by seniority, regimental

peculiarities, and versatility at serving at home and within colonial ranks rather than

by specialization. At the same time, the champions of armored warfare neglected

long-standing managerial norms of top-down command, low error tolerance, and

regimental specialization that complicated the task of building support for operational

and tactical flexibility needed from across the service. By failing to marshal

experimental evidence and lessons from history in a compelling manner, Royal armor

enthusiasts simply failed to establish analytical benchmarks or generate common

knowledge needed to build trust concerning the promise of armored warfare across

service ranks. Consequently, they were unable to overcome procedural inefficiencies

or to navigate the uncertainty associated with sustaining this new form of warfare

until confronted with new realities on World War II battlefields.

Confusion Amid Procedural Clarity

At the highest level, the British Army was governed by the Army Council (AC)

that was formed in 1904 to ensure civilian control via diffuse administration of the

military. The AC was formally charged with overseeing all aspects of the Army,

with specific authority delegated to the senior membership. For example, the

Secretary of State for War, who served as chairman, was generally responsible for

all military issues, while the Financial Secretary supervised Army contracting, the

32 Larson (1984), pp. 146-147.


Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State was responsible for Territorial Army issues

(other training), and the Permanent Undersecretary served as the bridge between the

civilian leadership and military branches of the service.33 Within the AC structure,

the latter were subordinated to the War Office that was composed of the CIGS and

the General Staff, the Quartermaster-general, the Master-general of ordnance, and

the Adjutant-general.34 The War Office, in turn, directly supervised Army forces,

doctrine, procurement, and training.35

The efficiency of these clear lines of authority, however, was obfuscated by

several countervailing factors within the AC. In practice, the AC convened only two

to six times a year, with the lion’s share of the administrative burden falling ad

hoc on each member. Because military and civilian members of the AC retained

autonomy over respective issue areas, decisions that transcended departments

required consensus-building among the AC leadership.36 This effectively empowered

civilian offices that were simultaneously subordinate to other government offices,

such as the Treasury Office, with veto authority within the AC over the minutiae

of military policy. As described by Sir Gifford Martel, the damage to coherent and

professional defense policymaking caused by such extensive civilian intrusion was

“beyond description.”37

Planning and organization also was hindered by the absence of institutional links

between offices. For example, strategic planning was conducted by the Directorate

of Military Operations of the General Staff that reported through the CIGS to the

Committee of Imperial Defense.38 Yet there was a separate office, the Deputy Director

of Staff Duties, within the General Staff that was charged with overseeing wartime

army organization. At the same time, there was a third office outside of the General

Staff, subordinated to the Adjutant-General’s office and appended to the AC that

supervised peacetime operations. Similarly, despite its formal stature as the highest

ranking military commander of the Army, the CIGS served “at best as only the first

among equals.”39 The highly autonomous role of AC members and the imperative

for decisionmaking consensus curtailed the operational authority of the CIGS so that

field commanders were expected to report directly to the Secretary of State for War

(the chairman of the Army Council).40

The diffusion and confusion at the highest levels of command authority directly

affected oversight of armor development. On the one hand, in the immediate postwar

33 Bond (1980), pp. 42-43.

34 Ibid., pp. 398-399.

35 Ibid., pp. 41-42.

36 Winton (1988), pp. 74-75, 227. Even a War Office member so removed from

doctrinal and tactical planning, such as the Quarter-master, was able to postpone the formation

of the first experimental tank unit simply because he deemed that billeting facilities were

insufficient.

37 Bond (1980), pp. 39-43.

38 John Gooch, The Prospect of War: Studies in British Defense Policy 1847-1942,

(London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1981), p. 146.

39 Bidwell, and Graham (1982), p. 167; and Winton (1988), p. 227.

40 Ibid., pg. 167-168. Army Council members were legally prevented from approaching

any member of the government other than the Secretary of State for War.


period, the General Staff began to integrate the tank closely into the mainstream

Army command structure. A new branch, SD7, was created as part of the General

Staff section of the War Office (Staff Duties branch) with responsibly for tank

development. On the other hand, the new Director General of the Tank Corps was

appointed strictly as an advisor to the General Staff, and not a full commander of

a separate Army branch. This effectively divorced responsibility for doctrinal and

procurement issues from the leadership of tank units.41 Moreover, the Tank Corps was

initially placed outside of the regular divisional structure that eliminated opportunities

for joint training and interaction with other branches.42 This configuration limited

contact between the Tank Corps and the AC that rendered the latter vulnerable to

significant manpower cuts and ultimately dispersal by the early 1920s.43 Similarly,

with the formation of the “Royal” Tank Corps in 1923, tank battalions were not

attached one-to-one to respective infantry divisions.44 The administrative separation

was revisited with formation of the EMF in 1927 as part of the 7th Infantry Garrison,

with the commander charged with overseeing the operation of groups other than

the EMF.45 Though the armor support units were attached to the EMF, they were

responsible for their own training and were subordinate to the overall commander

only in the final exercises. In addition, the EMF was subordinated to the 3rd Division

and Southern Command – with the latter under the command of Gen. Montgomery-

Massingberg, a conservative opponent of the tank.46

The formal separation of tank entrepreneurs reduced their influence at promoting

innovation within the larger operating core. Fuller, at the height of his influence (on

armor theory) was only a “military assistant” to CIGS Milne.47 Though his personal

association with Milne elevated a nominally secretarial position, he could not

monitor agents in tank development, directly assist their promotions, or personally

manage experimentation.48 Even when entrepreneurs secured commands, divided

responsibilities and insufficient staff support reduced the capacity to monitor their

own sections. The lack of staff support institutionalized strict top-down management,

forcing them to devote scarce resources to manage coordination between tank

units.49

41 Harris (1995), p. 180.

42 French (2000), p. 41.

43 Larson (1984), p. 120. The Tank Corps was reduced from 20 to 4 battalions.

44 Wright (2000), pp. 142-143.

45 Bond, (1980), pp. 140-143, and Larson (1984), p. 133.

46 Murray (1996), p.24; and Larson (1984), p. 133. In 1926, the EMF was renamed

“Experimental Armored Force.” It was disbanded in 1928.

47 Larson, (1984), p. 125.

48 Jay Luvaas, The Education of the British Army: British Military Thought, 1815-1940

(Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 361-362; and Bidwell and Graham (1982),

pp. 168-169. Fuller realized the weakness of British tactics and predicted that blitzkrieg

warfare would alter the outcome in France and North Africa in the early years of the war. His

recommendations for defense in depth and combining tank and anti-tank units in an armored

force were exhibited by France and Germany’s Afrika Korps.

49 French (2000), p. 164.


Ironically, the ad hoc division of labor both elevated and stymied armored

transformation. In 1932, Hobart was presented with command of the new Tank

Brigade, and doubled as the Inspector of the RTC. This empowered him to coordinate

experiments in his role as Inspector with his possession of a field command, similar

to the arrangement that Oswald Lutz and Heinz Guderian enjoyed in the German

Army. Hobart immediately tried to secure (unsuccessfully) a charter for the new

unit that specified an official operational doctrine that could not be amended by a

new CIGS.50 Adding to the potential of the force, the War Office issued a statement

that encouraged pursuit as an independent offensive, mobile force.51 Hobart used

his official position and relationship with Col. George Lindsay (commander of the

experimental 7th Infantry Brigade) for collaborating on designing an experiment to

combine their two units under Lindsay’s command.52 This was the only occasion for

significant informal contact between tank enthusiasts during the interwar period that

aided the experimentation and monitoring process, culminating in the merger of the

7th Infantry and Tank Brigades into the Mobile Force.53

On the other hand, the ensuing administrative arrangements were problematic.

Oversight was poorly integrated, as there were neither tight interfaces between the

Tank Brigade and 7th Infantry, nor joint training in advance of the 1934 exercises.54

Even when the force did come together, the two brigades maintained separate staffs

that significantly curbed the oversight and political clout of both commanders.

Accordingly, when the new CIGS, Montgomery-Massingberd, codified a general

mechanization plan that did not expand the Tank Brigade, commanders were poorly

positioned to secure backing from the AC that was otherwise predisposed to protect

the size and resources of traditional arms via mechanization of the infantry and

cavalry. Therefore, upon completion of the Mobile Force exercise, RTC experts were

dispersed and any tactics that had been “discovered” in the course of experimentation

were sacrificed in favor of cavalry-friendly missions outfitted by separate light tank

command.55 In 1935, former RTC officers requested that the director of military

training reinstate their oversight as real tank experts, but the appeal was rejected.56

The Army’s shift from armor innovation to general mechanization undermined

the effectiveness of the full integration of the Tank Brigade and mechanized cavalry

division into the Mobile Division in 1937. The reconnaissance-minded cavalry had

become almost completely mechanized, as the two mechanized cavalry brigades

contained six light tank regiments that diluted the two medium tank regiments of the

50 Bond (1980), pp. 163-164.

51 Larson (1984), p. 163.

52 Ibid., p. 166.

53 Harris (1995), pp. 248-249.

54 Bond (1980), p. 166; and Harris (1995), p. 250.

55 Wright (2000), p. 186. The cavalry, ironically, was the prime recipient of new tanks

as mechanization consisted mostly of conversion to light tanks. The new cavalry light tank

units maintained separate authority over officer lists that further inhibited integrated oversight

of tank operations. Larson (1984), pp. 173-175.

56 Winton (1988), p. 186.


Tank Brigade.57 In gradual pursuit of mechanization, Montgomery-Massingberd and

the General Staff ironically created a supporting unit for reconnaissance that was

“little more than a conglomeration of assorted units.”58 The lack of opportunity for

joint experimentation and training and the ill-defined continental mission effectively

atomized and disoriented the two mechanized infantry regiments, the cavalry units,

and the Tank Brigade.59

The period from 1934 to 1938 constituted “one long attempt to move from the

brigade level to the division level of armored formations.”60 It was a tortured journey

through bureaucratic indecision that resulted in the codification of supporting cavalry

operations and structure at the expense of the promise of fielding an offensive

armored force.61 On the eve of World War II, the British equivalent of the German

Panzer division had a 7:2 light-to-mixed tank battalion ratio that prevented sufficient

firepower, and a 9:2 tank-to-infantry battalion ratio that limited its ability to hold

territory.62 Similarly, the formation of the new Royal Armored Corps (out of the merger

of the RTC with mechanized cavalry) was marred by the administrative separation

of respective regiments, badges and identifications. Officers from the RTC and

mechanized cavalry regiments retained separate officer lists that further divided the

two units. While the new light tank cavalry units were formally subordinate to RTC,

training remained a separate affair that limited advancement of both sections.63

By the same token, institutional disorder in the design process, coupled with

the failure to enlarge industrial capacity, stymied tank developments.64 The British

weapons design and development process was divided between several offices,

making it very difficult for principals to monitor the process from start to finish.

Instead of empowering a single branch to oversee the tank development process, the

War Office maintained general control, while the Directors of Military Operations

and Intelligence were authorized to generate requirements for future warfare

and monitor procurement by foreign adversaries and the Director of Staff Duties

was delegated authority to specify weapons requirements. Management of the

procurement process was then parceled out to two different Army Council offices:

the Master General of Ordnance (MGO) and the Quarter-master General (QMG)

57 French (2000), pp. 41-42. There were only two infantry battalions compared with

nine tank battalions. See Bond (1980), p. 189.

58 Winton (1988), p. 204. See also Harris (1995), p. 257.

59 Winton (1988), p. 204.

60 Ibid., p. 234.

61 Larson (1984), p. 179.

62 Ibid., p. 213.

63 Ibid., pp. 175-176. The lack of armored divisions was not the sole result of the

government’s colonial emphasis or strategic views. The Army’s ratio of armored to infantry

divisions actually decreased as the government moved further towards a continental

commitment. By 1938, it was one-to-four and later became one-to-seven at the outset of the

war.

64 Lt. Gen. Sir Giffard Le Q. Martel, Our Armed Forces (London: Faber and Faber

Limited, 1945), pp. 49, 52, 55-56, and 98; and Harris (1995), p. 241.


that excluded the General Staff.65 There was almost no horizontal or vertical linkage

through which the weapons doctrine and specifications designers could supervise

production, rendering long-term oversight extremely difficult. This encouraged

shirking down the line, as the MGO offices in charge of tank R&D often refused to

provide prototypes that were otherwise required by the CIGS for the development

related doctrinal and policy changes.66 This negative feedback loop stifled new tank

designs at a moment when technologies related to firepower, mobility, engine design

for medium and heavy tanks experienced dynamic change. 67

The problem was compounded by the reliance on a single company—Vicker-

Armstrong—for British tank designs. This deprived the service of alternative

sources of information to compensate for the internal problems of oversight. The

damage took its toll early, as the company scrapped impressive R&D advances on

the Medium D tank in 1919 in favor of the production of a Medium tank that proved

to be too heavy.68 The Army simply lacked authority to guide development or the

benefit of choosing among competitive prototypes, thus rendering the Vickers-

Medium the service’s standard until 1937, despite obvious technical deficiencies

and growing demand for large numbers of diversified systems to fulfill different

missions. In light of the fiscal constraints, the Army could not afford to coax other

companies to enter into the design and development process without promises of

production before 1936.69 Even after that point the Army’s cadre of tank design and

production experts was too small and weak, and was bereft of engineers to monitor

systematically private competition.70

In addition to orphaned units, there were strong material disincentives to pursuing

a career with armored warfare within the British Army. Uncertainty about the status

of the tank discouraged many officers and led them to transfer back to their original

branches. One particularly strong formal disincentive for expanding armor doctrine

rested with the Cardwell system that was designed to facilitate the operation of the

colonial military mission, since officers and soldiers had to be able to serve both at

home and to rotate between the two. To ease such training, the home army was formally

structured and outfitted as a near mirror image of the abroad army. This effectively

doubled the burden for creating new armored units, as it necessitated matching

brigades or divisions abroad in theaters of war that would render them completely

useless.71 Furthermore, forward military commands did not always embrace the

structural changes favored by the home leadership. In this regard, the Indian Army

presented a key problem, as it was part of the Caldwell system but fell outside the

65 French (2000), p. 83. The QMG developed supply and transport vehicles, and the

MGO developed artillery and other weaponry.

66 Larson (1984), p. 192.

67 M. M. Postan, British War Production, (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1952),

pp. 185-189.

68 Bond (1980), pp. 132-133.

69 Harris (1995), p. 274; and Larson (1984), p. 121.

70 Bond (1980), pp. 177-178. It took a service maverick in the procurement department,

such as Lt. Gen. Sir Gifford Martel, to jumpstart exploration of foreign designs and procurement

of the U.S. Christie tank as a medium cruiser prototype.

71 Murray (1996), p. 22; and Winton (1988), pp. 229-230.


regular Army chain of command. Moreover, it was funded and administered by an

Indian government that was generally predisposed to interpret efforts to amend the

imperial force structure as signals of waning British commitment.72 The formation

of the Tank Brigade in 1932 (later part of the Mobile Division) was possible only

by matching and maintaining the tank companies at home with an equal number of

armored-car companies and mechanized cavalry units abroad.73 The Cardwell system

also disrupted the armor training system by regularly rotating officers out of units

to garrison imperial posts (and replacing them with the returning soldier/officer).74

Accordingly, differences between continental and colonial warfare rendered officers

trained in armored warfare less useful abroad, as well as rotated officers with little

training with mechanization and armor into home commands.75

Second, the British army placed a premium on seniority. It remained overstaffed

and constrained by the Cardwell system, unable to retire officers past their prime.76

Reductions in pay and rank were introduced after WWI, but did not encourage

widespread retirement.77 Rather, throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, senior

officers were allowed to move laterally, enabling them to hold onto their positions

for over 20 years.78 David French describes the senior ranks as a “self-perpetuating

gerontocracy,” detrimental to heightened attention to mobile warfare.79 With the

merger of the RTC and the mechanized cavalry into the Royal Armored Corps (RAC)

by the late 1930s, officers from each unit were placed in the unfavorable position of

competing directly for promotion against more senior cavalry officers.80

Favoritism too was inherent to the formal promotional process. Promotions

from lieutenant-colonel to lieutenant-general were decided by a Selection Board

composed of the CIGS and a select group of senior officers. Tank entrepreneurs had

to forge personal relationships with these men, many of whom were indifferent to

innovation. Adding to the confusion, a separate Staff Selection Board determined

staff appointments through the General Staff level that resulted in “the ludicrous

situation in which some officers had been promoted but immediately placed on half

72 Bond (1980), pp. 99; and 115; and Harris (1995), p. 258. Percy Hobart, Director of

Military Training, was consistently blocked by the Cardwell system and India’s insistence that

its force structure remain unchanged. Even CIGS Montgomery-Massingberd faced difficulties

with India in implementing his mechanization program.

73 Winton (1988), pp. 229-231.

74 French (2000), p. 171.

75 Winton (1988), p. 230; and Bond (1980), p, 114. As Secretary of State for War Hore-

Belisha tried to bring about major army reorganization in the latter 1930s, CIGS Deverell,

who had served in India and staunchly opposed any changes in the Indian force structure,

blocked him.

76 Bond (1980), pp. 45, and 134.

77 Luvaas (1964), pp. 383-384. The reduction in salary motivated Liddell-Hart to

pursue his career in journalism.

78 Bond (1980), pp. 49-50.

79 French (2000), p. 163. Military members of the AC and field commanders were on

average much older than their peers had been at the start of World War I.

80 Larson, (1984), p. 176.


pay until an appointment fell vacant for them.”81 Aside from a tendency to force

“square pegs into round holes,” the Army leadership had a general distaste for

practical experience or specialization when it came to promotion criteria.82

The disincentives were especially strong for the armor community, as the

regimental system combined with seniority to compound promotion problems.

Regimental officers controlled all promotions up to the rank of sergeant major

that militated against the formation of a single list of Army candidates for specific

branches.83 Traditional regimental commanders also discouraged the attempt to leave

the regiment for career advancement, deeming it an act of desertion.84 Furthermore,

J.F.C. Fuller repeatedly seemed to be in the wrong official position at the wrong time

to affect directly developments in armored warfare. In 1926 when the War Office

first began assembling elements of an armored unit at Camberly, Fuller had been

sent to India.85 He later commanded an infantry brigade and was promoted, based on

standard infantry management, to major general; a position he held until retirement

in 1933.86 When Fuller turned down command of the EMF, Brigadier R.J. Collins, an

infantryman with no experience or interests in tanks or armor, was appointed.87

The promotional ceiling was manifest in the professional experiences of

prominent tank entrepreneurs. Initially, few officers gained official positions that

seemed well suited to implement innovation. For example, Pile was assistant

director of mechanization in the War Office, Lindsay was Inspector of the RTC, and

Broad planned war-organization under the Director of Staff Duties.88 By the 1930s,

however, career opportunities dimmed, leading these officers to return to mainstream

units. In general, incentives for careers with armor continued to decline in the 1930s,

as personnel that served in the Tank Brigade experienced high turnover rates and

rotated disproportionately back to other branches.89 The “failure” of the Mobile

Force in the 1934 exercise (of which the TB was a part) accelerated the dispersal

of RTC experts from heavy armor units.90 Hobart, for example, informally replaced

Lindsey as the lead intellectual of the RTC but was subsequently passed over for

81 David French and Brian Holden Reid, The British General Staff, (London: Frank

Cass Publishers, 2002), pp. 159-163. Little reform occurred before Hore-Belisha became

SSW in the late 1930s.

82 Bond (1980), p. 55.

83 French (2000), p. 123; and Bond (1980), pp. 60-61. Only 10 percent of the candidates

could be promoted via the Staff Colleges, outside of the regimental system of command.

84 Murray (1996), p. 24.

85 Luvaas (1964), pp. 357-358.

86 Ibid., pp. 357-358.

87 Harris (1995), p. 217. Collins was overly cautious to the point of inhibiting the

mobile potential of the experimental unit. His comments on EMF experiments and exercises

revealed that he was completely unconcerned about the prospects for mechanization or mobile

armor warfare. Larson (1984), p. 141.

88 Bond (1980), p. 155; and Larson (1984), pp. 80-81.

89 Larson (1984), p, 189; and Bond (1984), pp. 48-49.

90 Wright (2000), p. 186. Lindsay, for example, was held in poor regard as a result of

his participation in the Mobile Force exercise, and was transferred to marginal assignments

before being assigned to Calcutta until his retirement. He fared the worst, experiencing


command of the Mobile Division at home.91 He was then transferred to command

the 2nd Mobile Division in Egypt, losing his position in the War Office as Director of

Military Training in what he perceived to be an effort to curb his influence.92

By contrast, ardent critics of armored force enjoyed steep promotional trajectories.

For example, successive cavalry officers with no experience with tank units were

appointed as Commander, Mobile Division in 1937.93 Similarly, Montgomery-

Massingberd rose up the ranks while actively supporting the continued strength of

the cavalry, and fought to place restrictions on armor units to protect traditional

arms. Even when the EMF/EAF experiments had demonstrated the inability of the

cavalry to work well with armored units, he used his authority as chairman of the

Cavalry Committee to block attempts by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the

Secretary of State for War at mandating a reduction in the size of cavalry.94 In 1928,

Montgomery Massingberd was appointed GOC-in-C, Southern Command (the top

commander of that field branch), where he set out to dismantle the EAF.95 Similarly,

upon succeeding Milne as CIGS in 1933, he made a concerted effort to promote

mechanization over armored warfare.96

Managerial Norms

The procedural and material disincentives for sustaining novel armored practices

were reinforced by the norms of operation within the British Army. Specifically, the

service’s tradition of imposing strict top-down command and control and preserving

cohesive regimental units, coupled with insistence on bludgeoning change by

tank entrepreneurs, militated against the establishment of common understanding

regarding prospects for armored warfare. Complacency with the administrative

status quo, as well as widespread neglect of rigorous empirical study of historical

events and experimentation worked against transformation by making it difficult for

the service leadership to reach consensus on the meaning or expected value of an

armored force or to accept more than incremental adjustment to mechanization.

At the heart of the problem was a normative attachment to top-down oversight.

British commanders valued above all the vigilance of subordinate units at implementing

administrative and operational plans. This command style was codified in the Field

Service Regulations, and though a few officers such Burnett-Stuart lamented the

embarrassment and a ruined Army reputation as a direct result of his participation with armor

innovation. Larson (1984), p. 80; and Harris (1995), p. 251.

91 Harris (1995), p. 304.

92 Larson (1984), p. 216. However, Hobart lost the 2nd MD command after running

into personal differences with his Egyptian principals. General Sir John Burnett-Stuart also

was a strong tank proponent that advanced as far as General Officer Commanding, Southern

Command; but his promotion had little to do with his influence on tank doctrine. Although he

was a prime candidate for CIGS toward the end of his career, he was passed over precisely

because of his association with reformist elements. Winton (1988), pp. 234-235.

93 Larson (1984), pp. 207-208; and Harris (1995), p. 288.

94 Bond (1980), p. 144.

95 Ibid., p. 147.

96 Ibid., pp. 162-163.


inflexibility, they were few and far between.97 The official position on the 1927 EMF

exercises reflected this control method and obfuscated alternative interpretations of

the experiment. The service leadership was so critical of the failure to adhere strictly

to the “rules” of combat and communication channels that it dismissed the practical

outcomes of the exercises.98

Similarly, the British Army neither embraced operational training nor ensured the

formulation of a coherent, well-defined tactical doctrine. On the one hand, British

field officers were required to communicate unexpected developments before taking

action.99 On the other hand, as late as 1937 there was no standardized training, and

individual commanders were encouraged to “flout War Office directives wholesale”

by clutching to independent interpretations of mass, offensive mobile warfare.100

This was reinforced by the regimental system that fragmented training, and relegated

autonomy to each regiment to advance its own approach to training.101 The General

Staff assumed that the freedom to improvise was one of the most important and unique

aspects of the British military that permitted commanders to explore with confidence

unique solutions to the practical challenges that they faced. Ironically, it was the

autocratic command and control system that did not afford individual “freedom,” as

the absence of sound training and coherent doctrinal base deprived commanders of

the competence to advance battlefield innovation.102 This contradiction placed tank

commanders in the difficult position of structuring highly personalized and ad hoc

experiments.103

The lack of standardized experimentation imbued Army commanders with low

error tolerance and a preoccupation with demonstrating positive results. It was

generally accepted that if an experiment proved extremely promising for armor,

then the realism of the experiment would likely be called into question.104 Prevailing

service assumptions concerning experimentation placed premiums on continuity and

strict adherence to guidelines that, in turn, put prospective innovators in the difficult

position of advocating uncertain and novel breaks with tradition in subjective,

qualitative terms.105

The failure to embrace this service milieu proved detrimental to the cause of

sustaining armored transformation. Rather than presenting measured arguments

that framed the tank as an innovative complement to mechanization, the proponents

often insisted on radical change. According to Bond, “operating as these men did

like yeast within a somewhat stodgy officer corps, it is hardly surprising if some of

them displayed a narrow and almost fanatical concern with professional matters.”106

97 French (2000), pp. 19-20.

98 Larson (1984), pp. 141-142.

99 French (2000), pp. 21-23.

100 Ibid., p. 21.

101 Bond (1980), pp. 58-60, 62.

102 French (2000), pp. 45-46.

103 Harris (1995), p. 245.

104 Bond (1980), pp. 157-158.

105 John Stone, The Tank Debate (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000),

pp. 29-30.

106 Bond (1980), p. 57.


They did not seek common cause with infantry or artillery units, and hyped almost

exclusively the benefits that innovative tank doctrine portended for other branches. At

the end of The Great War, for example, it was often recommended that the tank serve

as the primary weapon thereby relegating other arms as auxiliary units.107 Fuller,

too, fell into this trap. Although one of the first to elucidate major new concepts of

tank doctrine, his touting of the tank as a foolproof weapon did much to undermine

his credibility within the service.108 He had little patience for conflicting viewpoints

and openly criticized his superiors to the point of being perceived as insubordinate

by many of the senior leadership.109 Fuller also simply ignored details and empirical

evidence that challenged his claims. This style eventually tarnished the RTC as

emblematic of the dogma of tank radicals.110 In the same vein, Hobart’s disdain for

artillery and mechanization alienated much of the high command, including future

CIGS Alan Brooke.111

These problems were especially glaring, given the service-wide suspicion of

“outside” intervention. One of Liddell Hart’s greatest handicaps as a champion of

armored warfare was that he was widely regarded as a journalist who leveraged his

influence with senior officers to circumvent the chain of command. The creation of

the EMF, for example, was largely attributed to his ability to exploit his position to

shame publicly the military leadership for its foot-dragging.112 However, playing the

role of an antagonistic outsider cost him internal connections to the War Office and

the earlier sympathy of the senior command, including the chairman of the AC by

the late 1930s.113

Tank “innovators” also relied heavily on arguments marred by internal

contradictions. The proponents stridently touted the decisiveness of the tank on

the battlefield, even in the face of the unequivocal ease with which most forms of

artillery could destroy a tank. This disconnect undermined their credibility, and failed

to create incentives for operational testing to address the anti-tank problem.114 The

debate over the composition of the EMF also reflected the inability to sell innovation

to the service core. By advocating tank “purity” for this early experiment, Lindsay

107 Larson (1984), pp. 56-57.

108 Ibid., pp. 74-75.

109 Bond (1980), p. 138.

110 Harris (1995), pp. 202-203.

111 Bidwell and Graham (1982), pp. 179, 214-215; and Larson (1984), p. 17. Hobart

often argued about the role of the tank as if its mission were mutually exclusive, ignoring the

fact that different situations might require different roles.

112 Mearsheimer (1988), p. 73.

113 Larson (1984), p. 137; and Luvaas (1964), pp. 385-386. Liddell-Hart experienced

a brief resurgence of influence in the latter 1930s when the new Secretary of State for War,

Hore-Belisha, took him into his confidence as his chief military advisor for purging the Army

Council. Not only did Liddell-Hart earn the enmity of the senior Army leadership, but Hore-

Belisha received so much criticism as a mouthpiece for Liddell-Hart that he comically began

to deny that he had ever even met the tank enthusiast. Luuvas (1964), pp. 140-413; Bond

(1980), pp. 255-256; and Larson (1984), pp. 205-206.

114 Bidwell and Graham (1982), p. 177.


effectively reduced the participation of infantry and other arms in the EMF that, in

turn, politicized the debate among the other branches.115

Problems were compounded by a disdain for empirical analysis. The expositions

of tank entrepreneurs produced an interwar debate that was, as Bidwell and Graham

describe, “literary instead of empirical.”116 Though their ideas did not lack merit,

as a group the armor advocates did not actively search out empirical credibility.117

The otherwise constructive debates on armor covered in military journals during

the 1920s were conspicuously devoid of empirical evidence, with winners of essay

contests often holding completely contradictory opinions.118 Often debate raged

within the RTC over the proper organization and tactics for armor that inspired

dissent among entrepreneurs who otherwise shared similar objectives.119

Part of the problem stemmed from the limited number of experiments during the

interwar period that left entrepreneurs with only a few, unrealistic tactical exercises

upon which to muster evidentiary support to promote innovation. The first large-

scale maneuver held in 1925, for example, was marred by the decision of a field

commander to rely on an offensive tank force that outpaced its artillery and cavalry

support. The failure of the attack was officially attributed to technological deficiencies

that, in turn, were exploited to relegate the tank to a supporting role.120 Subsequent

exercises related to armor were small, ad hoc tests of specific issues. Three series

of test exercises on mechanization formed the mainstay of the 1929 training season;

but each exercises was isolated from the other, with the focus placed on streamlining

the use of light tank brigades to support infantry brigades and armored cars with

horses.121 Despite technological advances, the tank failed to realize its potential, as

official operational instructions for armored units limited their field of play, dictating

raids and cavalry support as their primary missions.122

The inconsistency of the experimentation scheme obfuscated lessons for

implementation. Although the RTC participated in the 1930 exercise, it was composed

of an ad hoc group of three battalions that were inserted into 1st and 2nd Division

exercises. Because the tanks were employed in unimaginative roles, few new ideas

could be discovered or validated.123 The problem was subsequently exacerbated

during the 1934 trials of the newly formed Mobile Force that was comprised of

the 7th Infantry Brigade and the Tank Brigade. In an effort to test the logistical

organization and temper overconfidence within the Tank Brigade and to bolster

the morale of infantry units, Burnett-Stuart intentionally structured the exercises to

limit the flexibility of tank columns at conducting offensive raids. Accordingly, the

armored units were overtaxed and easily defeated by the infantry forces. Although

this offered opportunity for in-depth examination of the tactical and logistical roles

115 Harris (1995), p. 213.


117 Ibid., pp. 177-178.

118 Larson (1984), p. 111.

119 Winton (1988), p. 177.

120 Larson (1984), p. 123.

121 Ibid., pp. 152-154.

122 Stone (2000), p. 193.

123 Larson (1984), pp. 152-154.


of the tank force, it was conducted with little regard for the prevailing analytical

assumptions held by the service leadership or media expectations of the exercise.

Accordingly, Burnett-Stuart “was unable to offset the notion that an experimental

formation consisting of two of the army’s most modern units had been bested by

a conventional infantry division with some attached motorized support.”124 In

conjunction with the pervasive low error tolerance, this effectively doomed the early

formation of the Mobile Force.125

Deficiencies in combined arms doctrine also stemmed from the simple failure

of the Army to conduct realistic experiments. Only twice between the wars did the

Army hold corps-level trials. By 1939-1940, the officers in charge of the major

formations had no experience commanding them in peacetime, nor had they played

a significant role in the preceding maneuvers. 126 The two large-scale maneuvers, in

1925 and 1935, were held so far apart that any lessons derived from the first were

obsolete by the time of the second due to technological changes in mechanization

and mobility.127

The strict adherence to top-down command and control also discouraged realistic

improvisation. Orders were extremely complicated and agents were overwhelmed

by attempts of principals to control every aspect of operations; thus providing

junior commanders with few opportunities to improvise with the tank.128 Umpires

also were expected to enforce detailed written orders that were aimed at facilitating

operational oversight of the commanders. This introduced an element of artificiality

that both prevented tactical innovation when appropriate, and discredited innovation

when it actually occurred. The lack of realism became so problematic during the

1934 Mobile Force exercise that Burnett-Stuart lamented that he could not expect

any of the units under his command to take the field in real combat.129

Finally, armor enthusiasts were confounded by the failure to generate systematic

lessons from previous campaigns. The British Army began the process of creating

new tactical manuals in the early 1920s before absorbing the tactical lessons of the

war or reviewing assumptions concerning the primacy of standard infantry tactics.130

The most important internal Army documents were the Field Service Regulations

(FSR) and the supporting arms manuals that were intended to guide the execution of

operations and unify assessments of tactical employment across the service. However,

because the regulations were very abstract and general, they provided little direction

for responding to specific scenarios and emerging technologies.131 In 1935, the

revised FSR authorized the Mobile Division to exploit breakthroughs in entrenched

positions and flank the rear to either side. Yet, this was not a fully offensive role,

124 Winton (1988), p. 182.

125 Ibid., p. 224.

126 French (2000), p. 169.

127 Larson (1984), p. 221.

128 French (2000), pp. 161-162.

129 Bond (1984), pp. 180-181.


131 Ibid., pp. 170-171; Winton (1988), p. 31. Until 1928, the FSR’s tactical doctrine

was premised on the final campaign of World War I, despite the technological developments

during that period.


as the FSR simultaneously designated the infantry as the only arm to achieve the

breakthrough, and was virtually silent on the role of ground-air cooperation.132

The five major journals that the British Army sponsored were a rich source of

ideas on pertinent mechanization and the role of the Army.133 The debates conducted

in these pages provided further evidence that conservative views were neither

paramount nor an unstoppable force that precluded armor innovation. Journals were

accessible for reading or submission, and often held essay contests won by armor

enthusiasts. Yet, the military leadership in the War Office neither encouraged nor

exploited the value of these ideas.134 By the 1930s, scholarly writing on armor theory

virtually disappeared, due largely to the lack of equipment and experimentation

available to generate opportunities for new insights.135

By the same token, stereotypes colored British officers’ thinking about the German

military, leading them to discredit relevant developments. Ironically, they believed

that the Germans were incapable of improvisation and innovation. In practice, the

British failed to imagine that foreign military doctrines might differ significantly from

their own, and thus discounted the utility of carefully monitoring German activities.

The Staff College discouraged study of foreign army tactics and development until

1936.136 Furthermore, Milne’s attempts to lend more weight to regular assessments

of German military strength were ultimately contradicted by the findings of reports

commissioned by the Foreign Office.137 There also is evidence that the General Staff

at times did not take German activities seriously enough to affect their own ideas.

In the stages leading up to the formation of the Mobile Division, for example, the

General Staff was alerted to German experiments with combined arms formations for

deep penetrations but dismissed their significance for developing appropriate counter

measures.138 Similarly, the British Army and Military Intelligence downgraded the

significance of Germany’s invasion of Poland, assuming that the former’s victory

was based on good fortune, surprise, and the latter’s mistakes.139 They effectively

likened German Panzer divisions to their own Mobile Division, and were content

to develop counter-measures premised on outdated assumptions gleaned from the

experimental Mobile Force’s defeat in 1934.140

Similar normative blinders impaired the constructive possibilities for inter-service

competition with the RAF. Although there was a flirtation with including RAF units

in the 1927 EMF exercises, neither service envisioned that much could be gleaned

from close ground-air cooperation. The opposition of the Navy and Army to the

independence of the RAF immediately following The Great War motivated the latter

to insist on the prominence of the strategic bombing mission.141 Any joint-service

132 French (2000), pp. 33-34.

133 Larson (1984), pp. 21-22.

134 Winton (1988), p. 227.

135 Larson (1984), p. 148.

136 Ibid., pp. 45-46.

137 Bond (1980), pp. 93-94.

138 Harris (1995), p. 262.

139 French (2000), pp. 159-160.

140 Larson (1984), p. 226.

141 Bond (1980), p. 22.


operation or combined arms formation that did not enhance its independent role was

strongly resisted. This view tainted RAF analysis of WWI operations, inculcating

a fixation on the number of aircraft lost in ground support operations, as opposed

to the amount of damage inflicted upon German troops, as the primary metric for

assessing prospects for close air support. The bias in favor of strategic bombing also

led the RAF to discount intelligence regarding German experimentation with close

air support.142 When the Spanish Civil War later began to provide clear evidence

of the role an air force might play in close air support of armored ground forces,

the RAF and new Chief of Air Staff Newall continued to deny that it made any

difference and maintained the primacy of strategic bombing.143 Accordingly, by the

outset of WWII there were neither planes adapted nor pilots trained for conducting

close ground support.144

Conclusion

This chapter highlights the transformation-stifling effects of poorly aligned

procedural and normative dimensions to service oversight. It supports the hypothesis

for foot-dragging in chapter 2, as the British Army failed to sustain innovative

armor initiatives coming out of The Great War. Though technologically, fiscally,

and strategically constrained, tank enthusiasts within the Army were critically

handicapped by the inability to capitalize on early organizational reforms to clarify

responsibility among new units and institutionalize material incentives for armored

force. At the same time, a combination of hubris and neglect of accepted service

evidentiary standards militated against building trust and common knowledge across

the service concerning the prospective value of armored warfare to compensate

for these procedural shortfalls. In short, they proved unsuccessful at securing the

necessary organizational traction for tank warfare by the outset of World War II. In

contrast to U.S. carrier entrepreneurs who succeeded by instrumentally accessing

managerial norms and gradually streamlining procedural oversight, the proponents

of the armored force within the British Army stumbled by not seizing upon latent

but available organizational opportunities to strengthen their case. Yet, as we discuss

in the next chapter, this failure to grasp the prospects for military change contrasts

starkly with other cases in which mutually reinforcing procedural and normative

constraints can provoke outright service resistance to transformation.

142 Bond (1980), p. 202.

143 Ibid., pg. 322-323.

144 French (2000), p. 35; and Harris (1995), p. 295. Despite CIGS Gort’s complaints, he

lacked authority to implement practice with the RAF on the eve of World War II.

Chapter 6

U.S. Counterinsurgency in Vietnam:

Shirking Transformation

The U.S. military experience in Vietnam remains a source of frustration and debate

among historians and military professionals. Despite the enormous expenditure of

resources in a relatively small geographical area, the U.S. could not establish a viable

non-Communist South Vietnam. The U.S. became deeply divided over the conduct

of the war, and eventually the war effort became politically unsustainable.

The proposed sources for this failure vary. They run the gamut from the

unwillingness of civilian leadership to give the military sufficient autonomy to wage

unconventional warfare, to the failure of military leaders to envision or implement a

new way of war to fight effectively against the Communist insurgents.1 This chapter

does not address the question of why the U.S. was unable to accomplish all of its

goals. Instead, it examines why the U.S. fought the war the way it did, and why this

represents a failure to manage transformation. Specifically, it addresses the resistance

of the U.S. Army to nurturing and sustaining counterinsurgency operations in the

Vietnam conflict. Counter-insurgency is defined here by an emphasis on bolstering

population security, and building a viable and credible government structure.

Operations aimed at strengthening population security require separating insurgents

from the general population, both to ensure the safety of the citizens and to deprive

the insurgents of resources. Without access to sophisticated logistics and secure

bases, in the conventional military sense, insurgents must rely primarily, though not

exclusively, on local sources of supply.2

The central puzzle of this chapter turns on the overt resistance of the U.S. Army

to reinvent its approach to fighting insurgents in Vietnam. How was the service,

1 See Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked

(Washington D.C.: Brooking Institution, 1979); Harry Summers, Jr., On Strategy: A Critical

Analysis of the Vietnam War (New York: Dell Books, 1982); Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command:

Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Free Press, 2002); Andrew F.

Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1986); and H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the

Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperCollins, 1997).

2 For discussion of counterinsurgency theory and its intellectual roots, see Austin

Long, On “Other War”: Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research,

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2006); Douglas Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era (New

York: The Free Press, 1977); D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S.

Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); and Jefferson

Marquis, “The Other Warriors: American Social Science and Nation Building in Vietnam,”

Diplomatic History, 24:1 (Winter 2000).


which was under intense political pressure from President John F. Kennedy to

institutionalize costly revisions to its core conventional approach to warfare, so

effective at staving off the transformation to counter-insurgency warfare in Vietnam?

The answer, we posit, rests with the severe agency costs confronted by entrepreneurs

within the service. In particular, prevailing material incentives and managerial norms

combined not only to discourage transformation but also to motivate subversion of

extra-service directives for counterinsurgency.

This chapter proceeds in three parts. The first part reviews some of the basic

shortcomings with the extant literature. The second part describes the formal structure

for managing U.S. military activity in Vietnam. This discussion highlights how the

procedural arrangements obscured the actions of agents throughout the Army, and

discouraged compliance with counter-insurgency directives and initiatives. The

third part reviews how prevailing managerial norms within the U.S. Army not only

reinforced material disincentives for unconventional warfare, but blinded service

proponents of counter-insurgency from forging “common knowledge” about the

opportunity for change. Together these material and normative factors intensified

intra-service agency problems of managing change that enabled Army officers not

only to shirk executive directives for counter-insurgency, but to actively sabotage

them.

Lingering Questions

The U.S. Army’s failure with counterinsurgency in Vietnam is particularly

problematic for traditional theories of military change. Those who suggest that

civilian intervention is crucial for promoting doctrinal change are confounded

by the strong initial advocacy of counterinsurgency by civilians in the United

States government, up to and including President Kennedy.3 Deborah Avant, for

example, seeks to explain the puzzle by applying a civilian-military principal-agent

framework that focuses on the role of political institutions. She argues that the

divided government system of the United States constrained the ability of civilian

principals to influence military agents, as the military could play-off the executive

and legislative branches against one another. By contrast, the British parliamentary

system prevents this “divide and rule” strategy by the military. These institutional

differences had long-run effects on both the U.S. and British armies’ organizational

culture, further amplifying principal-agent problems.4

Avant’s argument, however, is incomplete. Although acknowledging the

importance of civil-military relations, her argument focuses exclusively on civil-

military relations without exploring systematically principal-agent relations within

the U.S. Army. Second, she elevated the significance of formal institutional barriers

3 On the importance of civilian intervention for innovation, see Barry Posen, The

Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany Between the World Wars

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). For a summary of Kennedy’s advocacy of

counterinsurgency, see Deborah Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons

from Peripheral Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 55-60.

4 Avant (1994), pp. 6-18 summarizes this argument.

U.S. Counterinsurgency in Vietnam 155

between civilian and military organizations. Lost in this analysis, however, is how

service material incentives and norms within the formal service structure stifled the

flow of information and expertise across the service hierarchy. Accordingly, she

is unable to account for how Army principals delegated with authority to oversee

counterinsurgency innovations were denied access to multiple streams of information

from sources both within and outside of the service.5

Alternative explanations attribute the failure of U.S. Army transformation to a

combination of cognitive biases and bureaucratic inertia.6 While these explanations

seem to accord with much of the evidence, they tend to understate the contradictory

evidence. For example, many Army officers who fought in Vietnam claim they felt

that the resistance to population security was misguided, a sentiment that General

Creighton Abrams sought to remedy upon assuming command of U.S. forces in

Vietnam.7 However, if many in the Army, including the senior commander after 1969,

felt that there was a serious problem with the U.S. Army’s approach to Vietnam, then

something more than inertia and bias must have been at work. Moreover, in practice,

the U.S. Army proved adept at innovating before and during Vietnam. The most

notable innovation involved the introduction of air-mobility. As one of the fathers of

air-mobility, John Tolson, observed:

The air-mobility concept was not a product of Vietnam expediency. It would probably not

be practical to make a record of every decision that formed a part of the airmobile concept.

It certainly had its roots in both the airborne techniques of World War II and the early

doctrine for organic aviation for ground forces for that era. However, from a practical

viewpoint, the embryonic decision can be said to be the Army’s move to form twelve

helicopter battalions on 21 August 1952.8

Like many costly innovations, air-mobility was not warmly received by the Army,

which regarded it as a budgetary drain.9 Eventually, however, it was accepted as a

way to resolve disputes with the Air Force over the provision of close air support and

5 As one reviewer of Avant notes, she presents no evidence that executive-legislative

arrangements had any impact on the principals’ ability to affect agents in Vietnam. See

Barry Posen review in Political Science Quarterly, v.110, n.2 (Summer 1995). Avant herself

concedes that “…both Kennedy and Johnson enjoyed general support in Congress for their

activities on behalf of unconventional warfare. Congress seems to have had little active role in

the story.” Avant (1994), p. 73. She subsequently argues that Congress did in effect passively

constrain the range of actions the executive could take in regard to military agents.

6 See especially Robert Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints

on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1972) and Krepinevich

(1986),

7 See Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers (Hanover, NH: University of Vermont,

1977) and Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of

America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1999).

8 John J. Tolson, Airmobility in Vietnam 1961-1971 (Washington, D.C.: Army Center

for Military History, 1973), p. 5.

9 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 116-119.


to pacify counterinsurgency advocates as well as Secretary of Defense McNamara,

who had become a staunch proponent of air-mobility.10

It is worth emphasizing that air-mobility, though touted by the Army as a

technological panacea for counterinsurgency, was never originally intended for such

purposes. Tolson again notes:

A briefing of particular significance took place in the late afternoon of 12 December

1960... At that time the focus in the Army was on the nuclear battlefield. Organic aviation

was viewed by the Army as the best means of maintaining combat operations in an area

characterized by great depth and frontage with the dispersion of many small self-contained

units. The major threat was viewed as a sophisticated enemy attacking with masses of

armor on the plains of Europe. Counter-guerrilla warfare at that time was viewed as a

secondary mission. Nevertheless, the early planners in air-mobility perceived that one

of the automatic fallouts in organizing the Army for greater air-mobility would be much

greater capabilities in the lower spectrums of warfare.11

The Army merely assumed that anything that would help them fight in Europe

would help them elsewhere.

There also were additional material incentives associated with air-mobility that

were not in place for counter-insurgency. The formation of airmobile units ensured

that combat command billets would be available for servicemen interested in air-

mobility. By contrast, there were no equivalent combat command billets available for

counterinsurgency advocates. The only possible command billets for those advocates

were in the Special Forces, whose very name indicates that they were considered

different. Air-mobility, with its perceived utility in a major European war, was more

directly tied to mainstream service structures, as airmobile units could be formed

into divisions and managed similar to other Army units.12

The fact that air-mobility was a technological solution improved its stature

with the Army. Air-mobility required the purchase of new equipment that carried

a significant monetary value. Conversely, counterinsurgency involved mostly a

doctrinal innovation that offered few procurement benefits. Accordingly, some

innovations, such as air-mobility, appeared to be more promising and easier to

manage than others, such as counterinsurgency.

Many other innovations, both technical and doctrinal, took place in Vietnam as

well. The close integration of indirect fire with airpower to support ground forces was

advanced considerably in Vietnam. For example, B-52 bombers, originally intended

to deliver strategic nuclear weapons, were used in support of ground troops in South

Vietnam.13 Similarly, relations between Air Force, Marine, and Navy aviation,

10 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 115-125, and Tolson (1973), p. 11.

11 Tolson (1973), p. 12.

12 Tolson, for example, was a major general at the time he was commander of the

1st Cavalry Division. Special Forces large units, by contrast, are “groups,” which are the

equivalent of a brigade and generally led by a colonel. Tolson (1973).

13 See Robert Scales, Firepower in Limited War (Washington, DC: National Defense



though contentious, eventually improved and were institutionalized to better deliver

close air support for Army troops.14

Yet, even as the U.S. Army embraced air-mobility in Vietnam, it actively sabotaged

the plans of both civilian and some military principals to sustain counterinsurgency

operations via population security. Rather than merely shirking change, the Army

sought to mislead deliberately by creating the appearance of accepting the mission

of counterinsurgency. It created manuals and training courses for counterinsurgency,

and claimed to be highly interested. Thus, in practice, the Army’s commitment was

tantamount to a smokescreen.

One step the Army took to generate this smokescreen was to create staff positions

with little actual authority. Both the Army and JCS established staff sections for

counterinsurgency that were hollow. Under pressure from both high level principals

and from critical internal reports, the Army created a pamphlet and film to demonstrate

its commitment to counterinsurgency. The Army leadership then considered the

problem solved.15

The experience of Gen. William Rosson, one of the Army’s few experts in

counterinsurgency, is illustrative of this organizational feint. As head of the Special

Warfare Directorate, Rosson should have enjoyed significant influence over Army

doctrine and training for counterinsurgency. Instead, Army Chief of Staff Decker

instructed Rosson that he would not have his own staff, and that he should focus

on the Army’s special assets, such as the Special Forces. Furthermore, Lt. Gen.

Barksdale Hamlett and Decker himself would oversee special warfare requirements

for field units.16

The Army also allegedly altered its training and instruction curricula to reflect

the growing acceptance of counterinsurgency. In reality, much of the Army’s

“innovation” simply entailed re-designating routine service functions, such as

patrolling, as “counter-guerilla” training. This allowed the Army to generate statistics

and data to demonstrate an apparent commitment to counterinsurgency.17

Andrew Krepinevich notes several examples of this phenomenon. One key

example is the education at the Command and General Staff College (C&GSC) at

Fort Leavenworth. According to Dr. Ivan Birrer, a long-time official at C&GSC,

“All we had to do... was certify that each officer had X number of hours of

counterinsurgency... we were too far from Washington for anyone to really come

down and bother us...”18 Any mention of “irregular” or “guerilla” forces involved in

an exercise or training counted as counterinsurgency training.

14 Willard Webb, “The Single Manager for Air in Vietnam,” Joint Forces Quarterly

(Winter 1993-1994).

15 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 42-45.

16 Ibid., p. 43.

17 Ibid., pp. 46-55.

18 Ibid., p. 51.


Intra-Service Agency Costs to Transformation

The Procedural Dimension

The command structure of U.S. forces in Vietnam was especially problematic for

institutionalizing transformation. Initially the U.S. effort in Vietnam was restricted

to an advisory role, supervised by a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG).

In 1962, the commitment to Vietnam was increased with the formation of Military

Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). MACV supervised all U.S. military

activities in Vietnam, while the MAAG continued in its advisory role. This dual

structure was expected to be temporary and “adequate for handling operations until

the emergency passed and the Military Assistance Advisory Group could resume

its normal functioning.”19 The commander of MACV would wear two hats as both

senior advisor to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and commander of

all Army components of MACV

This command structure indeed proved to be temporary, but not in the manner

expected. The emergency did not pass but rather intensified. This led to the full

absorption of the MAAG by MACV in 1964.20 MACV was then the sole U.S.

military command in Vietnam, though a welter of civilian agencies continued to

operate, as well.

On 13 November 1961, Secretary of Defense McNamara requested a proposal

from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on the “command structure for South Vietnam

under which a senior U.S. military commander would assume responsibility for

all activities including intelligence operations, related to the counterinsurgency

effort.”21 McNamara stated: “It is understood that such a commander would report

directly to the JCS and thence to me for all operational purposes.”22 The response

of the JCS was to dictate how U.S. forces in Vietnam would be commanded for the

next decade.

In a memorandum dated 22 November 1961, the JCS described three possible

command structures for Vietnam. The first was a unified command under the JCS.

The second was a joint task force under the JCS. The final option involved creating a

subordinate unified command under the Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC).23

19 Lieutenant General Carroll H. Dunn, Base Development in South Vietnam 1965-

1970 (Washington, DC: Center for Military History, 1972), p. 13. Document available online

at www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/Vietnam/basedev/.

20 Ibid., p. 14.

21 Memorandum from SecDef McNamara to Chairman JCS Lemnitzer, November

13, 1961. Washington National Records Center, RG 330, McNamara Files: FRC 71 A 3470,

Southeast Asia 1961. Available at www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_i_1961/

x.html.

22 Ibid.

23 Memorandum from JCS to SecDef McNamara, November 22, 1961. National Defense

University, Taylor Papers, T-185-69. Top Secret. Attached to a brief covering memorandum

of November 28 from Lemnitzer’s staff assistant, Richard R. Day, to Taylor, indicating that

Lemnitzer had asked that the memorandum be sent to Taylor for his information. Available

online at www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_i_1961/z.html

www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/Vietnam/basedev/

www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_i_1961/x.html

www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_i_1961/x.html

www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_i_1961/z.html


The JCS recommended the third option, despite the fact that it contradicted

McNamara’s “understanding” that the commander would report directly to the JCS

and then to himself.

The JCS rationale for the decision was that:

Current guidance as to the nature of the mission and the magnitude of U.S. forces to be

assigned to the new command does not warrant the establishment of a theater of operations

type command directly under the JCS staff. South Vietnam cannot be isolated militarily

from the rest of Southeast Asia, which is in CINCPAC’s area of responsibility. All U.S.

and SEATO contingency plans for South Vietnam are inextricably tied, both operationally

and geographically, to CINCPAC strategic plans. All resources in the Pacific Area are

allocated to CINCPAC.24

Essentially the JCS advocated a “business as usual” arrangement, with CINCPAC

creating a command arrangement for South Vietnam similar to those established

in Japan, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan. This was supported by the CINC, Admiral

Harry D. Felt, who firmly believed that only Pacific Command (PACOM) could

deal with the broad picture of Asia, of which Vietnam was seen as only a part.25 This

would have consequences, as Felt sought to retain contingency planning at the level

of PACOM, limiting the staff and planning capability of MACV.26 MACV would

thus be merely an arrangement for a temporary and incremental increase in U.S.

activity in South Vietnam.

Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy’s military savant, wrote a letter to the President on

November 27 that critiqued the command arrangement in Vietnam. Specifically, he

stated that:

As long as that program is essentially an intensification of past actions, it would be at a

minimum inconsistent to set up a command structure such as the Berlin or Korean model

which suggests that we are clearing the boards for a show-down until that is indeed the

case...For the time being I would stay with the normal model until our program changes

or the model proves inadequate.27

Taylor’s observation proved strangely prophetic. The “normal model” remained

in place as U.S. commitment deepened, including the commitment of over half a

million combat troops, with each step viewed as a merely “an intensification of past

actions.”

It is worth noting, however, that the idea of using combat troops on any significant

scale was unthinkable in late 1961. In a letter to MAAG Chief Lionel McGarr, JCS

24 Ibid., SEATO was the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, which sought to be an

Asian NATO.

25 Dunn (1972), p. 13.

26 Ibid., p. 13.

27 Memorandum From the President’s Military Representative (Taylor) to the

President, November 27, 1961. National Defense University, Taylor Papers, T-185-69. Secret.

An attached note indicates that copies were sent to Rusk, McNamara, U. Alexis Johnson,

Lemnitzer, Bundy, and Rostow. Available online at www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/

vol_i_1961/z.html.




Chairman Lemnitzer indicated that without combat troops, significant changes were

undesirable. He stated that:

With the decision not to introduce combat troops into Vietnam we have had serious doubts

about the desirability of a fundamental change in the U.S. organization there. In view of

information we had regarding thinking at higher levels in U.S. govt., the JCS response to

a request for recommendations for a new U.S. command structure in Vietnam is qualified

by the words ‘if it is decided to change the command structure in Vietnam.’ Nevertheless

although final decision has not yet been made by the President it now appears that a

change in U.S. organization will be made. The primary object of the change is to impress

Diem that we are entering a new era in U.S.-Vietnamese relationships in which the U.S.

will be giving him increased support and be expecting him to pay increased heed to our

advice and suggestions. Generally speaking, the new terms of reference will provide for a

U.S. military assistance command, rather than an advisory group, and will insure that the

senior U.S. military representative in Vietnam has the controlling voice, both on the U.S.

side and with Vietnam officials, on military matters.28

The JCS did not advocate radical changes to the command structure in 1961.

Yet, it was not prepared to reassess subsequently the modest changes that were

proposed.

At the same time, the JCS and Secretary McNamara did not want their new

man in Saigon to be subordinate to an ambassador. The Ambassador would be the

nominal senior representative of the United States in Vietnam. Accordingly, the

Ambassador and the Commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam

(COMUSMACV) were delegated separate but coequal spheres of influence. This

was done despite the strenuous objections of then Ambassador Frank Nolting. Thus,

from the very beginning of MACV, the war would be directed by two different

groups, the military and the civilians.29

The basic command structure of MACV that was established in February

1962 was one in which COMUSMACV reported directly to CINCPAC. Below

COMUSMACV were the commanders of the 7th Air Force (7 AF), Naval Forces

Vietnam (NAVFORV), the III Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF), the Chief of

MAAG (until 1964, when the MAAG was merged with MACV), the United States

Army, Vietnam (USARV) and the U.S. Army field forces. The field forces were

subdivided into I Field Force, II Field force, and the 5th Special Forces Group.

The distinction between USARV and the field forces, however, violated existing

doctrine.30 Traditionally, the Army component of a unified command, like the Navy or

Air Force component, would control all Army operations in the command. However,

28 Telegram From the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Lemnitzer) to the Chief of

the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Vietnam (McGarr), December 21, 1963. National

Defense University, Lemnitzer Papers, L-21071. Top Secret; Priority. Available online at


29 For a full presentation of this debate on relations between COMUSMACV and

the ambassador, see Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1961-1963, Volume II, Vietnam 1962,

documents 1-53. Available online at www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_ii_1961-

63/index.html.

30 Dunn (1972), p. 16.


www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_ii_1961-63/index.html



COMUSMACV William Westmoreland did not want to add an additional bureaucratic

layer between himself and “his” troops. Therefore, USARV was only responsible for

logistics and administration, while Westmoreland retained direct control of combat

operations.31 This illustrates both that the military was willing to amend accepted

doctrine when it suited the purposes of commanders, and that Westmoreland did not

fully trust in his subordinates. As with air-mobility, this organizational “innovation”

reveals that the Army did not oppose all forms of change.

The formation of MACV introduced an important bureaucratic barrier between

the lowest level agents and the highest level principals. The agents in the field

in the years 1962-1965 were the advisers to the ARVN, and many of them were

critical of the progress of the war.32 Many of the senior advisers submitted critical

reports on the conduct of the war in 1962 that were ignored in COMUSMACV’s

report on the first year of MACV operations.33 MACV also tried to limit the ability

of advisers to provide alternative information to the press. Personnel headed to

Vietnam were instructed “to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.”34

Very little criticism reached the high level principals, including Secretary of Defense

McNamara.

The most egregious example of this suppression occurred after an operation by

the ARVN at the hamlet of Bac in January 1963. There, the Vietnamese communist

insurgents inflicted heavy losses on an ARVN force with vast materiel superiority.35

The adviser to the ARVN unit, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, wrote detailed after-action

reports that were highly critical of the ARVN performance. He was supported in this

assessment by his superior, Col. Dan Porter, as well as by Brig. Gen. Robert York.36

COMUSMACV Harkins ignored all of these conclusions, reporting the Battle of Ap

Bac, as it became known, as an unambiguous victory for the ARVN. His conclusions

were accepted by a high-level military mission sent the same month to evaluate the

conduct of the war.37 This suppression of dissent from below would continue during

the next phase of the war, when Americans began to directly engage in combat.

There were additional organizational weaknesses associated with MACV. The

Seventh Fleet’s operations and the bombing of the North fell under CINCPAC, while

bombing in the South was directed by COMUSMACV. COMUSMACV, however,

lacked operational control over carrier-based air support, and had to request support

31 Dunn (1972), p. 16.

32 See Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

(New York: Vintage Books, 1988) for the detailed story of one adviser. Krepinevich (1986),

pp. 80-84 provides an overview of the experience of advisers under MACV.

33 Krepinevich (1986), p. 81.

34 Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and Operations to U.S. Continental Army

Command, “Special Orientation of U.S. Army Personnel Being Assigned to Vietnam,” May

16, 1963, quoted in Krepinevich (1986), p. 81.

35 For a detailed summary, see Sheehan (1988), pg. 203-265. For a more official

version, see General Donn Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam (Washington, DC: Center for

Military History, 1978), pp. 25-28.

36 Sheehan (1988), pp. 280-283.

37 Ibid, pp. 298-304.


from CINCPAC.38 Similarly, B-52 strikes remained under the control of the Strategic

Air Command (SAC), though targeting was completed by COMUSMACV.39 Though

the division among tactical airpower substantially improved during the latter stages

of the war, for many of the critical years it remained seriously flawed.

Intelligence also remained divided. The CIA and MACV generated intelligence

reports that were often contradictory. During the Tet Offensive in 1968, for example,

the CIA, which gathered human intelligence and captured documents, produced

an analysis of events in 1967 that predicted a general offensive in January 1968.40

MACV, which focused on signals intelligence and the large units of the enemy,

seriously underestimated the strength of the Communist insurgents. MACV instead

focused on the Central Highlands and Khe Sanh, where the large units of the People’s

Army of Viet Nam (PAVN) were producing high volumes of signals intelligence.41

Similarly, reporting agencies to the President worked at cross-purposes. The Chairman of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, the Ambassador to Vietnam, and others all

reported to the executive at one time or another. One subordinate of particular importance was

the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA). This position

was created in direct response to pressure by the President on the Army. Initially, the JCS

designated Marine Major General Victor Krulak as SACSA, an able officer with a good

personal relationship with Kennedy. Krulak, however, was no expert on counterinsurgency,

and consequently unable to monitor effectively his subordinates.42

An expert in counterinsurgency could have filled the position of SACSA. One

possible candidate was the head of the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, Brig.

Gen. William Yarborough. Yarborough was a Special Forces officer with a strong

background in counterinsurgency. Furthermore, there were others, such as Brig.

Gen. William Rosson and Col. William Peers who possessed relevant training and

expertise.43 Yet none of these men was sufficiently mainstream to rate such a post.

Instead, the President, whose knowledge of counterinsurgency was rudimentary

at best, chose Krulak because he respected him personally, not for his counter-

insurgency qualifications.

38 See John B. Nichols and Barrett Tilman, On Yankee Station: The Naval Air War over

Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001). This would undergo some modification

after 1968, with the introduction of a single manager for air in I Corps. See Willard Webb,

“The Single Manager for Air in Vietnam,” Joint Forces Quarterly, 3 (Winter 1993-1994).

39 This pattern would have disastrous effects even late in the war, particularly during

the Linebacker II bombing of North Vietnam in 1972. See Marshall Michel, The Eleven Days

of Christmas: America’s Last Vietnam Battle (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2002).

40 James Wirtz, The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1991), pp. 171-173. See also Harold Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers:

Three Episodes 1962-1968 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998); and

George Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001).

41 See Wirtz (1991), pp. 196-198.

42 Sheehan (1988), pp. 293-298. Krulak had met Kennedy during combat in World War

II.

43 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 30-31, 36. Rosson was made head of Special Operations,

but never had the influence of Krulak.


Lacking the knowledge and experience with counter-insurgency, Krulak was

willing to listen uncritically to the reports produced by Harkins. Moreover, when

lower-level agents like John Paul Vann attempted to provide information critical of

Harkins’ strategy, Krulak went out of his way to quash them. In the case of Vann, it

appears that Krulak acted to prevent him from briefing the JCS after returning from

his tour as an adviser in Vietnam.44

In Krulak’s defense, he did eventually acknowledge that counterinsurgency

operations were poorly prosecuted in Vietnam.45 This change of heart, however,

came years after Kennedy and well after the Army had circumvented early attempts

to manage the innovation. In fact, Krulak’s reports on Vietnam essentially gave

the Army concept a seal of approval while Kennedy was alive. In these reports,

he uncritically accepted the data provided by MACV and endorsed the strategy

pursued.

Material (Dis)incentives

In addition to these structural impediments, there were virtually no material

incentives to encourage servicemen to invest their careers in counterinsurgency.

Examples abound of the ostracism of agents who explored counterinsurgency within

the broader Army community. No expert was selected to fill the command billet

responsible for overseeing a counterinsurgency operation. Harkins, Westmoreland,

and Abrams were all “generalists,” with backgrounds in conventional infantry and

armor operations. Counterinsurgency experts such as Yarborough, Rosson, and

others were considered too far removed from the mainstream to be assigned to a

four-star post.46

It was widely perceived that there was a bias against counterinsurgency for

promotion. As Peter Dawkins argues, even after the Army Chief of Staff, Gen.

Harold Johnson, realized the importance of counterinsurgency, he had a difficult

time convincing the officer corps of its viability for promotion. In a poll of over 500

former advisers, Dawkins found that about half believed advisory duty had damaged

their chance for promotion. This was in spite of the fact that Gen. Johnson ordered

promotion boards to consider advisory duty in Vietnam as equivalent to a combat

command, the gold standard for promotion in the U.S. Army. As a result of this bias,

Gen. Johnson could not convince many highly capable officers to take senior adviser

positions, despite repeated personal pleas and the offer of special benefits. That a

personal letter from the Army Chief of Staff could not convince capable personnel

to serve as advisers was indicative of the prevailing view of advising and related

counterinsurgency ideas held within the Army.47

44 Sheehan (1988), pp. 337-342. Vann’s personal problems may have contributed to

Krulak’s decision.

45 Sheehan (1988), pp. 629-630.

46 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 64-65.

47 Peter Dawkins, “The United States Army and the ‘Other War’ in Vietnam,” (Ph.

D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1979), cited in Stephen Rosen, Winning the Next War

(Cornell University Press; Ithaca, NY; 1991), pp. 103-105.


In addition, the rapid rotation of officers enhanced the desirability of shirking

innovation. If an officer would not have to deal with the consequences of his actions,

he had little incentive to refrain from the use of massive firepower indiscriminately,

for example. He could pass the results on to his successor. His successor could then

call for even more firepower, knowing that he would soon be rotated out of the

situation. An officer just had to get his “ticket punched” in a combat command billet

for promotion.48

Even those counterinsurgency experts who did reach general officer rank did so

more in spite of than because of their views. Generals Rosson and Yarborough, the

experts who did reach general rank, had promotion potential derived from combat

experience gained in World War II and Korea. Counterinsurgency advocates in the

future could not count on this advantage if they became specialists.

Experts often disagreed on methods of waging a counter-insurgency that diluted

their influence and ability to create broad constituencies. Rosson, for example, was

critical of Special Forces’ CIDG program, discussed below, despite its efficacy. He

also remained suspicious of the Special Forces.49 Yarborough, on the other hand,

was a Special Forces officer and head of the Special Warfare Center. Air-mobility

advocates, by contrast, were united in their search for an alternative force posture

and doctrine.

By the same token, there were strong incentives to ignore alternative information

generated outside of the service. The Army, though the largest element of U.S. ground

forces in Vietnam, was not the only field force. The Marines were the first combat

forces committed, and had the most experience with what were termed “small wars.”

Indeed, they had published a manual on the subject. Almost as soon as the Marines

landed, they began to implement their version of counterinsurgency innovations.

Transformation’s Orphans: CAPs, Army Special Forces and Others

After establishing base security at Da Nang, the Marines began attempts to provide

security to the remaining population of their area of responsibility, which was all

of I Corps (the five northern most provinces of South Vietnam). With over 100,000

civilians within mortar range of the Da Nang airfield, one Marine commander

observed that a friendly attitude from the population could only help the Marines’

mission.50

The command arrangement of MACV initially gave the Marines reasonable

latitude to fight the war as they saw fit. The Commander of III MAF was authorized to

explore novel fighting methods. This led to the creation of Combined Action Platoons

(CAPs) aimed at providing security and development assistance to the people of I

48 Jeffrey Record, The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Naval Institute Press;

Annapolis, MD; 1998) pp. 97-99.


50 Maj. Gen. J. M. Platt, “Military Civic Action,” Marine Corps Gazette, (September,

1970) p. 24, quoted in Peter Brush, “The War’s ‘Constructive Component,” available online

at www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pbvietnam0297.html.

www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pbvietnam0297.html


Corps.51 Each CAP consisted of a Marine rifle squad stationed in a village along

with the local self-defense militia, known as the Popular Forces or PFs. The Marines

conducted patrols from the village and protected the population from the insurgents.

They also provided medical and development assistance to the villagers.52

CAPs proved remarkably effective in light of the relatively small number of

Marines committed to the program. They suffered lower casualty rates than search

and destroy missions.53 Furthermore, they were able to eliminate VC infrastructure,

curtailing the ability to extract resources from villages. This was particularly

important in terms of rice, as CAP and regular Marine units made a strong effort

to protect the harvest, depriving the enemy of vital resources and earning the trust

of the people.54 Typically, CAP villages were rated as much more secure than

non-CAP villages.55 The main problem with CAPs, however, apart from the small

number of Marines committed, was the lack of coordination in the program. While

not completely ad hoc, the CAP villages were not integrated.56

Despite the accomplishments of CAPS, the Army ignored them as a source of

alternative information. COMUSMACV Westmoreland did not accept pacification

as a legitimate part of his mission, at least not in the manner the CAPs performed it.57

He continued to believe in the Army Concept of counterinsurgency.

Another Army argument was that there was not enough manpower to station a

cadre in every village.58 This is belied by the fact that at its maximum in January

1970, CAPs utilized less than 2,300 total personnel.59 With almost 475,000 personnel

in Vietnam on December 31, 1969, this was less than one half of one percent. A

report commissioned in 1967 by the DOD indicated that a CAPs approach to every

51 The best treatments of CAP by Marine officers who served with them in Vietnam

are F.J. West, The Village, 2nd edition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003); and William

Corson, The Betrayal (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968), pp. 174-198. See Brooks Brewington,

“Combined Action Platoons: A Strategy for Peace Enforcement,” (Marine Corps Command

and Staff College, 1996) for some additional history on the evolution of CAP from a single

village.

52 See Jack Shulimson and Charles M. Johnson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Landing

and Buildup 1965, (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, USMC,

1978), Chapter 9, “Pacification” for a good overview of the early years of CAPs and other

Marine civic action programs. A detailed treatment is Michael Peterson, The Combined Action

Platoons (New York: Praeger, 1989).

53 Krepinevich (1986), p. 174; Brush.

54 These harvest protection operations were known as GOLDEN FLEECE operations.

See Krepinevich (1986), p. 174, and Shulimson and Johnson, pp. 138-141.



57 Shulimson and Johnson (1978), pp. 599-603.

58 Krepinevich (1986), p. 175, and Shulimson and Johnson, pp. 618-621. The civilians

in CORDS such as Komer also felt that CAPs was too manpower intensive.

59 Graham A. Cosmas and Lt. Col. Terrence R Murray, U.S. Marines in Vietnam:

Vietnamization and Redeployment 1970-1971 (History and Museums Division, Headquarters,

USMC; Washington, D.C.; 1986), p. 139. These included 42 officers, 2050 enlisted, 2 naval

officers and 126 hospital corpsmen.


village could have been accomplished with about 167,000 troops.60 Moreover, each

Marine used for CAPs generated about 1.4 combat effective PF militiamen in 1968.

The CAP program actually generated manpower, which was always the most limited

resource for the U.S. 61

In addition, the Army ignored the fact that simultaneous stationing of a CAPs

unit in every village was not necessary. Indeed, security could be provided to one

area, and then spread outwards in keeping with the traditional “oil spot” principle

of counterinsurgency. But Westmoreland and his subordinates denigrated the CAP

program and, in some cases, the Marines in general. In an attempt to adapt the CAP

concept to the Army warfighting method, MACV created Mobile Training Teams

(MTTs). The MTTs consisted of four Army officers that provided village security

for one month and then moved on. Four men and one month was wholly insufficient

to achieve the goals the Marines sought in CAPs. Westmoreland’s influence ensured

that CAPs remained small.62 Moreover, as the war dragged on, more and more Army

units moved into I Corps, undermining Marine autonomy. Marine historian Jack

Shulimson summarized the Marines’ dilemma:

By the end of 1966, the two Marine divisions of III MAF were fighting two separate

wars. In the north, the 3d Marine Division fought a more or less conventional campaign

while the 1st Marine Division took over the counter-guerrilla operations in the populous

south. Although by December 1966, III MAF numbered nearly 70,000 troops, one Marine

general summed up the year’s frustrations, “ . . . too much real estate—do not have enough

troops.63

The Marines also sought to develop alternative measures of effectiveness for

counterinsurgency. These metrics took the form of a matrix look at various inputs such

as security in villages, provision of services, etc. The Central Intelligence Agency

subsequently used this matrix as the basis for the Hamlet Evaluation System (HES).

HES consisted of 18 indicators grouped into six major categories. Each indicator

was scored for each hamlet (a small subset of a village) on a scale of 1 to 5 (or A to

E), and each category was then given a “confidence rating” by the assessor based

on how accurate he believed the scores to be.64 Though imperfect, these metrics

were much more appropriate for measuring and evaluating counterinsurgency. The

Army was always suspicious of HES, and after “failing” to predict the Tet Offensive,

although beyond the scope of HES, the Army denigrated it further.


61 Shulimson andd Johnson (1978), pp. 628-629.

62 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 175-177.

63 Jack Shulimson, “The Marine War: III MAF in Vietnam 1965-1971,” paper presented

at Texas Tech Vietnam Center symposium, 1996, p. 3. The quote is from Brigadier General

Lowell E. English. English was the assistant division commander for the 3rd Marine Division,

and, as West notes in The Village, had rejected the option of removing one of the first CAP

units from its village following an attack by a main-force insurgent unit. See West, p. 131.

64 Robert Komer, Organization and Management of the” New Model” Pacification

Program—1966-1969 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1970), pp. 198-203. Corson found HES to

be misleading, primarily because its inputs were either poorly gathered or falsified. He did not

object to the system per se or its criteria. See Corson, pp. 231-242.


Army champions of counter-insurgency also failed to use competition among

sub-units to bolster oversight. In the case of counterinsurgency, the Army had a

subunit that was well prepared for exploration of fighting the new “wars of national

liberation” proclaimed by the Soviet premier Khrushchev. Unfortunately, this subunit

was orphaned within the Army structure.

The Army Special Forces were an outgrowth of elite units formed during

World War II. Deactivated at the end of the war, the Special Forces were reformed

at Fort Bragg in 1952. Special Forces began limited operations in Indochina in

1957, helping form the Vietnamese Special Forces.65 In 1961, President Kennedy

pledged additional support for the Republic of Vietnam in its war against communist

insurgents. As part of this effort, the 5th Special Forces Group was formed at Fort

Bragg in September 1961. This unit would eventually be responsible for all special

operations in Vietnam. Kennedy began to take a keen interest in the Special Forces

at this time.66

Kennedy was convinced that insurgency would be the threat of the future, and saw

Special Forces as a way to counter it. He authorized the distinctive green-beret for the

Special Forces, as well as an increase in the size of the force. Yet, Kennedy realized

that without Army support his efforts would founder. Despite intense pressure on

both the military and civilians in the Department of Defense, he could not convince

the Army of the importance of counterinsurgency or the Special Forces.67

The Army viewed Special Forces as an adjunct to big unit warfare, useful for

harassing the enemy, but nonetheless limited. Special Forces were to carry out

unconventional warfare, which was defined in the U.S. Army dictionary in 1964 as:

The three inter-related fields of guerrilla warfare, evasion and escape, and subversion

against hostile states. Unconventional warfare operations... are conducted within enemy

or enemy-controlled territory by predominantly indigenous personnel, usually supported

and directed in varying degrees by an external source.68

The Special Forces themselves were not so dogmatic in their beliefs about

their mission. Under CIA auspices, the Special Forces began a program to provide

population security to the tribes of the Central Highlands. Known as the Civilian

Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) program, it began with one village and quickly

expanded. At the heart of the CIDG program was a team of U.S. and Vietnamese

Special Forces who would arm and train villagers. They would then remain at a

camp along with a strike force of villagers. The other villagers would return home

and become defenders. The villages were lightly fortified and were supplied by the

CIA outside of normal channels.69

By July of 1962, the CIA requested additional Special Forces to expand the

program. Five U.S. Special Forces A teams (12 men each) were sent in, some without

65 Francis J. Kelly, U.S. Army Special Force in Vietnam 1961-1971, (Washington, DC:

Center for Military History, 1972), pp. 3-4.

66 Kelly (1972), p. 5.

67 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 27-33.

68 Quoted in Kelly (1972), p. 9.

69 Kelly (1972), pp. 25-27.


Vietnamese counterparts. By August 1962, 200 villages were in the program, which

was a major success. The entire province was considered secure by the end of 1962,

and efforts were being planned to expand the program to other minority groups.70

During this period, the Army began to reassert control over the Special Forces in

Vietnam. When MACV was formed in February 1962, a special warfare branch was

included in the staff section. An agreement between the CIA and MACV in May led

to joint coordination, but this lasted briefly as the Army sought to draw its personnel

fully under the control of MACV. The expansion in the number of Special Forces

in July was the last straw, and the Army claimed full jurisdiction over the Special

Force.71

This led to Operation SWITCHBACK, which called for the transfer of the

Special Forces to MACV. By July 1963, MACV wanted the Special Forces to

conduct unconventional warfare operations of an essentially offensive nature.72 This

led to a collapse of the CIDG program as a tool of pacification.73 In the words of

General Francis Kelly:

By the end of 1964 the Montagnard program was no longer an area development project

in the original sense of the term. There was a shift in emphasis from expanding village

defense systems to the primary use of area development camps or centers (CIDG camps)

as bases for offensive strike force operations. 74

Operation SWITCHBACK saw a rapid expansion of Special Forces activity but

a reduction in quality of product. According to Kelly:

The expansion of the CIDG program from 1 November 1962 to 1 July 1963, the end

of Operation SWITCHBACK, was fairly rapid. Approximately forty CIDG camps

were opened and eight closed. The rapidity of this expansion did not permit the kind

of development that took place at Buon Enao, where a great deal of time was taken to

prepare the area and the people for military activity in the CIDG program. This time the

emphasis was on speed. The usual approach was to establish security first, undertake civic

action later, and work through province and district chiefs instead of tribal leaders. In

general these projects were not as successful as the Buon Enao experiment... It was also

during this period that emphasis shifted from the establishment of mutually supporting

village defense systems to carrying out offensive strike force operations in order to open

up and then secure an area. 75

The CIDG program as a potential counterinsurgency innovation was essentially

eliminated following Operation SWITCHBACK. It continued to function until 1970,

but as a source of unconventional warfare troops, friendly guerillas who could harass

70 Ibid., p. 28.

71 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 70-71; and Kelly (1972), p. 27-29.

72 Kelly (1972), pp. 30-32.

73 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 71-74.

74 Kelly (1972), pp. 33-34. See also Krepinevich (1986), p. 219, 229-232 for more on

the deleterious effects of Operations SWITCHBACK.

75 Kelly (1972), p. 37.


the enemy as a supplement to the MACV war of attrition. Like CAPs, the CIDG

program had failed as a source of alternative information.

In addition to service and subunit competition, some high-level military principals

sought to use ad hoc organizations to promote counterinsurgency. Army Chief of

Staff Harold Johnson, as noted earlier, was a proponent of counterinsurgency who

sought to make advisory positions more attractive. He created an ad hoc group to

review the situation in Vietnam and U.S. approaches to it. This organization, known

as the Special Study Group, was commissioned in July 1965 under the Office of

the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations (ODCSOPS). It was made up of

well-regarded younger officers (lieutenant colonels and majors) who were generally

supporters of counterinsurgency. General Johnson charged the group with devising a

plan to pacify Vietnam for the long term even if it took 50 years.76 In less than a year,

this organization produced a 900 page study of the situation in Vietnam and a plan

for confronting it that centered on population security. This report, titled “A Program

for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam,” was known by

the acronym PROVN and was the best articulation of what Army transformation for

counterinsurgency should have looked like.

Yet these conclusions did not sit well within the Army, nor were they widely

circulated. The report was classified Top Secret with only a very limited “need to

know” distribution list. Westmoreland and others successfully argued it should be

considered a “concept piece” rather than a plan of action. CINCPAC Admiral Sharp

also opposed the PROVN study, as it recommended creating a unified joint command

which, as noted previously, was what many civilians had felt was appropriate for

Vietnam from the beginning. However, that would effectively remove him from

the Vietnam chain of command. Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations Lt.

Gen. Vernon Mock, refused to sign the study and downplayed its significance to his

superior, Vice Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams.77 Ultimately, PROVN would

have little impact on the conduct of the war. When Abrams replaced Westmoreland

in 1968, he sought to implement much of the PROVN study, but was as frustrated in

those efforts as Gen. Johnson was two years earlier.78

76 See William Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and

Legislative Roles and Relationships (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 4,

201-202.

77 The above account of PROVN is drawn from Gibbon (1995), pp. 201-212, and Lewis

Sorley, “To Change a War: General Harold K. Johnson and the PROVN Study,” Parameters,

28:1 (Spring 1998). The PROVN Study itself is available in two volumes from the Defense

Technical Information Center.

78 Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of

America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1999) argues that Abrams

succeeded in using PROVN to adjust U.S. conduct of the war. However, many sources

(including primary sources used by Sorley) contradict his upbeat assessment. See Lewis

Sorley, ed., Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes 1968-1972 (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech

University Press, 2004), pp. 116-117, 212-213, and 285-286; Cincinnatus [Cecil Currey], Self-

Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army During the Vietnam

Era, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), p. 125 and Brian M. Jenkins, The Unchangeable War

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1972).


The Lack of a Common Understanding of Counterinsurgency

The culture of the U.S. Army that operated in Vietnam was a reflection of its

foundational experience in the American Civil War and its subsequent professionalism.

This self-referential culture was reinforced by subsequent conflicts, particularly

World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War. Each of these conflicts molded the

Army’s perception of its strategic needs and goals as well as how it measured and

evaluated progress towards those goals. This combination of influences produced an

organizational culture focused on mass and quantification. In Vietnam this resulted

in the mismanagement of innovation advocated from the President down the chain

of command to combat troops in the field.

Following the Civil War, the U.S. Army began to develop a strong professional

identity and a professional education system. The core of Army professional education

was the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry at Fort Leavenworth,

founded by Gen. William T. Sherman in 1881. The School, which would eventually

become the Command and General Staff College (CGSC), was the center of Army

professional identity and education.79

The norms inculcated in the Army by CGSC elevated prominence of the “total

war” model of the American Civil War. Graduates were expected to be able to

rapidly take command of or work on the staffs of divisions that did not exist in

peacetime. War would involve absorbing large numbers of civilians and managing

the conversion of vast amounts of capital to military uses. In short, U.S. Army norms

became oriented towards total war between great power armies, at a time when it did

not face plausible great power rivals and the only military operations it conducted

were against the Plains Indians.80

The Army’s attendant managerial norms featured large units, particularly the

division. In the late 1890s, the Army, despite numbering far less than 100,000

men, adopted a permanent division structure as the basis for organization.81 Each

division consisted of a massive combined arms unit capable of effectively engaging

enemy conventional formations. Yet, this focus on the division left a normative

void regarding conflicts waged at much lower levels of violence, such as counter-

insurgency.

U.S. managerial norms were modified by several experiences following the Civil

War. The experience in World War II, in particular, imbued the service with an affinity

for mating technological innovation to a massive industrial base to produce an army

79 See Mark R. Grandstaff, “Preserving the ‘Habits and Usages of War’: William

Tecumseh Sherman, Professional Reform, and the U.S. Army Officer Corps, 1865-1881,

Revisited,” The Journal of Military History, 62:3 (July 1998), and Timothy K. Nenninger, The

Leavenworth Schools and the Old Army: Education, Professionalism, and the Officer Corps

of the United States Army 1881-1918 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978).

80 See Lance Janda, “Shutting the Gates of Mercy: The American Origin of Total War

1860-1880,” Journal of Military History, v.59, n.1 (January 1995). Yet even in the operations

against the Plains Indians, the Army exported the methods of total war, foreshadowing the

Vietnam experience nearly a century later.

81 John B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate

Brigades (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1998).


that fought successfully on two fronts. This had two effects on the U.S. Army. The

first was to inculcate a spirit of invincibility. That the victory had come against two

overextended empires, one a small island nation, the other already exhausted from

fighting the largest nation-state on earth, was ignored. The early failures in World

War II, such as the debacle at Kasserine Pass, were also conveniently forgotten. This

attitude also infected the civilian leadership that was charged with evaluating the

effectiveness of Army doctrine, strategy, and tactics.82 The staff officers of World

War II, such as the first COMUSMACV, had not learned the lessons of Patton and

Eisenhower from their experimentation with theories of armored warfare in the

interwar period, that operational innovation and organizational adaptation were

as at least as important as technological and materiel innovation. As Neil Sheehan

argues:

The junior officers of World War II, now the generals of the 1960s, had become so

accustomed to winning from the later years of that war that they could no longer imagine

they could lose...They assumed that they would prevail in Vietnam simply because of who

they were.83

This attitude was revealed time and again in statements by military and civilian

officials. The belief in inevitable American success is a constant theme in the ex post

facto statements and memoirs of the leaders of the time.84

This hubris also fostered a bias against negative assessments, as noted earlier in the

example from the Battle of Ap Bac. Even the terminology of reporting was oriented

toward positive results. Officers gave “progress reports,” and COMUSMACV

Harkins gave a weekly “Headway Report” to the JCS.85 This “can-do” mentality

prevented serious discussion of U.S. strategy, as well as reinforcing the bureaucratic

barrier between principals and agents.

Second, the U.S. Army’s World War II experience produced an unshakeable

confidence in technology and materiel that reinforced a faith in firepower that dated

back to the Civil War. Andrew Krepinevich refers to this as “The Army Concept” of

war-fighting that placed a premium on engaging the enemy’s order of battle with the

maximum possible firepower and a minimum of U.S. casualties.86 William DePuy,

COMUSMACV Westmoreland’s chief of operations, summed up U.S. methods:

“We are going to stomp them to death.” Tellingly, he added “I don’t know any

other way.”87 Following his promotion to commander of the 1st Infantry Division,

82 See James P. Harrison, The Endless War (New York: Columbia University Press,

1989), pp. 257-260.

83 Sheehan (1988), p. 287.

84 For example, Robert McNamara, In Retrospect (New York: Times Books, 1995), pp.

209-213. An excellent brief summary of American arrogance and statements of disbelief is

Jeffrey Record, The Wrong War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998) pp. 47-54.

85 Sheehan (1988), p. 287.

86 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 5-7.

87 Quoted in Sheehan (1988), pp. 501 and 568. DePuy would go on to become the first

head of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, which was created after Vietnam. His

views can thus be considered to be broadly representative of the Army as an institution.


Depuy elaborated on this strategy to Daniel Ellsberg: “The solution in Vietnam is

more bombs, more shells, more napalm... till the other side cracks and gives up.”88

Westmoreland himself stated: “We’ll just go on bleeding them to the point of national

disaster for generations.”89

This concept of fighting marked an explicit return to an affinity for attrition

warfare, like that waged by the German Army at Verdun in 1916, though without the

recognizable fronts. The German objective there, according to Chief of the General

Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, was “to keep open a bleeding wound in the side of

the French Army” to “bleed France white”. It was evidence of the bankruptcy of

operational thinking that characterized the Great War. So too, the attrition option

in Vietnam, made more attractive by U.S. technological and industrial resources,

revealed a bankruptcy in operational thinking that characterized U.S. Army leadership

at the time. The amount of ordnance expended was prodigious: 300,000 tons in 1965,

increasing thereafter to a peak of almost 3 million in 1968, not counting defoliants.90

In spite of this expenditure of firepower, the Vietnamese insurgents and their North

Vietnamese allies never wavered. The Army did not want to institutionalize counter-

insurgency strategies and innovations, as they ran counter to the Army’s preferred

method. As summed up by Army Chief of Staff General George Decker, the Army’s

attitude was “any good soldier can handle guerillas.”91

In addition, there was an ingrained fear and loathing of limited war. The Army

felt that if it had been given a free hand, it could have concluded the Korean War

with an outright victory rather than stalemate.92 This variant of the stab-in-the-back

theory used by Ludendorf and some others in the German Army to explain its failure

in World War I and thus escape culpability for that failure became ingrained in the

U.S. Army’s culture during the 1950s. “No more Koreas” was a rallying cry for the

disaffected officer corps.93

Following Eisenhower’s election and the adoption of the strategy of Massive

Retaliation, the Army was marginalized as a service.94 It was reduced to little more

than a police force for whatever would be left after a nuclear war. Its budget was

reduced as the new shield of the free world was created in the form of the Strategic

Air Command. In order to restore and maintain organizational prestige and budgets,

88 Quoted in Sheehan (1988), p. 619.

89 Quoted in Harrison (1989), p. 256.

90 Harrison (1989), p. 256.

91 Quoted in Krepinevich (1986), p. 37.


93 Regardless of the limited nature of the war, the Army suffered from weaknesses

inherent in its concept of war, though it did a better job of correcting these flaws in the

essentially mid-intensity conventional war in Korea than it would do in the true guerilla war

in Vietnam. See Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortune (New York: Free Press,

1990) pp. 192-195 and Eric Hammel, Chosin (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1990) for some

of the failures of the U.S. Army in Korea, particularly when contrasted with the Marines’

experience.

94 Andrew Bacevich, The Pentomic Era, (Washington, DC: National Defense

University Press, 1986) provides an excellent overview of this period.


the Army would have to discover ways to remain relevant in a nuclear-armed

international security environment.

The first potential method was to modernize and equip the Army to survive and

operate on a nuclear battlefield. Air-mobility was certainly part of this strategy.

The second was to denigrate the Eisenhower Administration’s strategy of Massive

Retaliation. Several prominent generals wrote books after leaving the service

castigating the administration for its adoption of Massive Retaliation.95 The most

important of these was Maxwell Taylor’s The Uncertain Trumpet.96 Taylor’s

alternative to Massive Retaliation called for the ability to make a “flexible response.”

John Kennedy, a great admirer of Taylor, seized upon “Flexible Response” as his

strategy. Yet Kennedy sought to extend Flexible Response down to low-intensity

operations, while the Army thought Flexible Response meant high to mid-intensity

conflict, centering on Europe.

This strategic focus on Europe also weakened the status of counter-insurgency

innovations in the U.S. Army. The Eurocentric strategic viewpoint amplified the

popularity of total war. The Army felt comfortable conducting large scale conventional

operations in Europe, having already defeated the Axis powers there. During Korea,

the Army’s focus remained on building up its capabilities for Europe.97 That the

likelihood of major war in Europe after 1962 was small was irrelevant to the Army.

Army planners focused on the contingency they felt was of greatest importance.

Robert Komer, who would later be responsible for civilian pacification as head of

the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) office,

offered a succinct assessment of Army strategic beliefs in 1963. In a memo entitled

“Critique of Army Force Posture,” he stated: “...the Army is still preparing more for

the worst case [war in Europe] than the most likely case [counterinsurgency].”98 This

focus would not change significantly for the remainder of the Cold War, despite the

commitment of hundreds of thousands of combat troops to Vietnam.

Other prevailing service norms reinforced the affinity for total war and

compounded the agency costs of introducing an effective counter-insurgency

strategy in Vietnam. One in particular was the service taboo against violating chain

of command. For example, members of the military mission to Vietnam following

95 See Bacevich for Army reactions to the “New Look.” For an overview of Massive

Retaliation and Eisenhower’s “New Look”, see John Lewis Gaddes, Strategies of Containment

(London: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 127-197.

96 Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper, 1960). Strategists at

the RAND Corporation and in academia had already begun to question Massive Retaliation

before Taylor’s book, as had some in the Eisenhower Administration. For an overview of

the evolution of thinking on nuclear strategy in this period, see David Alan Rosenberg, “The

Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy 1945-1960,” International

Security, 7:4 (Spring 1983); Marc Trachtenberg, “A ‘Wasting Asset’: American Strategy and

the Shifting Nuclear Balance, 1949-1954, International Security, 13:3 (Winter 1988); Gregg

Herken, Counsels of War, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Fred

Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983).

97 See David T. Fautua, “The ‘Long Pull’ Army: NSC 68, the Korean War and the

Creation of the Cold War U.S. Army,” Journal of Military History 61:1 (January 1997).

98 Quoted in Krepinevich (1986), p. 123.


the Battle of Ap Bac spoke to both Col. Dan Porter and Brig. Gen. Robert York. Yet

neither Porter nor York sought to proselytize to any of the mission members, which

included Krulak, the JCS special assistant for counter-insurgency and special affairs.

In the words of Neil Sheehan:

York had the strength and weakness of Porter. He was an individualist with an inquiring

mind, and his character was beyond reproach. He was also a man molded by his institution

who put faith in its mores. He was not the sort to violate the chain of command by starting

to preach out of turn to these senior officers. He had provided Harkins, who was responsible

as the commanding general, with his confidential analysis of the battle and his warning of

what it portended... For York to have made copies and distributed them on his own would

have been going behind Harkins’s back. York did not behave that way.99

This service bias against end-runs was not absolute. In practice, the advocates of

air-mobility violated the chain of command by taking their case directly to Secretary

of Defense McNamara.100 McNamara then created a board, primarily of those

receptive to and knowledgeable about airmobility, to study the issue.101 Though

this maneuvering irked the Army high command, they nonetheless complied. The

advocates of counter-insurgency, however, were unable to revisit this experience, as

they lacked a large constituency within the service.

The tale of the two Howze boards illustrates the important difference in support

for service end-runs for air-mobility and counter-insurgency within the service. Gen.

Hamilton Howze chaired two boards in 1961-1962, one on Special Warfare and one

on Army Air-mobility. The Special Warfare report was critical of Army practice and

called for “a very considerable reorientation of its outlook and effort...”102 The actual

impact of this board’s report was minimal. By contrast, the second board Howze

chaired led to the acquisition of helicopters and formation of airmobile units by the

Army. This support provided the necessary administrative cover for circumventing

the chain of command to advance air-mobility operations.

Managerial Norms and Measures of Validation

In addition, the U.S. Army’s managerial norms placed a high value on quantitative

evidentiary standards. In particular, there was a special bias in favor of operations

research, systems analysis, modeling, and simulation.103 During World War II,

systems analysis had proved its utility for the development of logistics, radar and

strategic bombing.104 With the onset of the Cold War, the massive size and expense

99 Sheehan (1988), p. 300.

100 Krepinevich (1986), pp. 119-121.

101 See Tolson (1973), pp. 19-25 for a detailed discussion of the board (the Howze

Board) and some of the machinations that led McNamara to create it.


103 For simplicity’s sake, all of these techniques, which involve reliance on mathematical

calculation, will be referred to as “systems analysis.”

104 E.S. Quade’s “Introduction”, pp. 2-3 in E.S. Quade and W.I. Boucher, eds., Systems

Analysis and Policy Planning (New York: American Elsevier, 1968).


of the peacetime defense burden required systems analysis to maximize cost/benefit

ratios, or, more crudely “bang for the buck.” The increased technological complexity

of war also augured for systems analysis.105 Secretary of Defense McNamara,

a former head of Ford Motor Company, reinforced this norm by introducing the

Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) that called for continuous review

and analysis of all defense expenditures.106 He also created an Office of Systems

Analysis in the Pentagon.107

Yet the penchant for systems analysis was intrinsically limited and flawed. The

U.S. Army fixated on quantifiable evidence at the expense of ignoring or downplaying

alternative information. Innovation was replaced by equation. As summed up by

E.S. Quade, then director of RAND’s Mathematics Department:

...many factors fundamental to national defense problems are not subject to rigorous,

quantitative analysis. They may, therefore, be neglected, deliberately set aside, or

improperly weighed in the analysis itself or in the decision based on such analysis. The

danger also exists that an analysis will appear so scientific and quantitative on the surface

that it may be assigned a validity not justified by the many subjective judgments it involves.

In other words, we may be so mesmerized by the beauty and precision of the numbers

that we overlook the simplifications made to achieve this precision, neglect analysis of

the qualitative factors, and overemphasize the importance of idealized calculations in the

decision process.108

Managing counterinsurgency innovations, which rely on such “unquantifiable”

measures as winning “hearts and minds”, was not in keeping with the Army’s

proclivity to be “mesmerized” by numbers. Nor was it easy for principals, including

McNamara, to manage counterinsurgency innovations when they were equally

“mesmerized.” This, for example, contrasted with air-mobility that could be readily

quantified. Each airmobile operation constituted a separate “search and destroy”

operation that generated easily measured results more conducive to systems analysis

to fit the overall Army concept of total war.

Even after the war was over, Lt. Gen. Julian Ewell produced a monograph

detailing many of the applications of systems analysis in Vietnam. Ewell’s comments

on search and destroy, written in 1974, are worth reproducing:

When one first observes the fighting in Vietnam, there is a tendency to assume that the

current tactics are about right and that previous tactics were rather uninspired if not wrong.

The first conclusion is probably correct, the second is probably wrong. For example, one

hears much criticism of the Search and Destroy Operations, which were extensively used

in 1967 and before. However, if one looks at the situation then existing and what was

actually done, the tactics were pretty well chosen and did the job. Any reasonably effective

105 Ibid., pp. 5-7.

106 Quade (1968), p. 7.

107 See Alain Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the

Defense Program 1961-1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). Enthoven was the first head

of the Office of Systems Analysis, which would evolve into the current Office of Program

Analysis and Evaluation.

108 E.S. Quade (1968), “By Way of Summary,” p. 427, in Quade and Boucher (1968).


commander, after observing the enemy operate a while, can cope with him reasonably

well.109

Elsewhere, Ewell comments:

More often than not, units in Vietnam emphasized pacification by stressing civic action

efforts. In our opinion, this was a mistake as long as the enemy retained even a modest

military capability. In the 9th Division, we always stressed the military effort.110

In Vietnam, this produced measures of evaluation that were inappropriate to

the management of counter-insurgency operations. One of the most famous —or

infamous —benchmarks of agent activity in Vietnam was the “body count.” This

measure focused on the number of fatalities resulting from U.S. military action. It

was the central measure of success for the strategy of attrition used by Harkins and

Westmoreland and was used to evaluate all agents. Body counts, however, were

inappropriate for measuring exploration of an innovation that relied on providing

security to the citizens of a country. The American adviser Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, for

example, considered the body counts counterproductive, as they generated incentives

to inflate numbers by including non-combatants and the civilian constituencies who

were the very targets of related security operations.111 As one soldier wrote:

our mission was not to win territory or seize positions, but simply to kill... Victory was a

high body count... This lead to such practices as counting civilians as Viet Cong. ‘If it’s

dead and Vietnamese, it’s VC’ was a rule of thumb in the bush.112

Given that the security and support of the civilians was crucial to a true

counterinsurgency strategy, it is readily apparent why this measure was

inappropriate.

Body counts also were subject to inflation that made them unreliable indicators.

Body counts became a quota to be fulfilled for promotion. As Andrew Krepinevich

commented, “If the commander before you had killed X number of VC, you had

best kill X+1.”113 This created intense pressures to inflate body counts. Krepinevich

concludes, “General Westmoreland’s efforts to ensure compliance with the ROE

[Rules of Engagement] proved unsatisfactory in the face of the strong incentives that

his strategy provided for commanders to generate a high body count.”114 Similarly,

Jeffrey Record contends that “amassing kills became the standard of career success

for U.S. commanders, and therefore an often irresistible temptation to abuse in both

the infliction and reporting of enemy casualties.”115

109 Julian Ewell and Ira Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use of Analysis to

Reinforce Military Judgment (Washington, DC: Center for Military History, 1974), p. 78.

110 Ewell and Hunt (1974), p. 160

111 Sheehan (1988), p. 287.

112 Phillip Caputo, A Rumor of War, (New York: Henry Holt, 1977), p. xv..

113 Krepinevich (1986), p. 202.

114 Ibid, p. 199.

115 Record (1998), p. 84.


Other measures of agent activity were equally inappropriate. Some these included

combat sorties flown, bomb tonnage dropped, ammunition expended, and ratio of

U.S. deaths to enemy deaths.116 Each of these measured effort expended, not the

efficacy of that effort. As noted earlier, an almost tenfold increase in the tonnage of

ordnance expended in three years did not result in victory.

“Battalion Days in the Field” also proved to be deleterious indicators for the

success of counter-insurgency operations. This focused on evaluating the effectiveness

of commanders based on the amount of time spent in combat operations. However,

the effort devoted to population security was not counted as time in the field.117

This would negatively impact agents who sought to implement counterinsurgency

innovations. One Marine brigadier general observed that Marine units had much

lower ratings in this category because “battalions engaged in pacification operations

were not counted as battalions in the field.”118 This limited Marine attempts to

implement and manage counterinsurgency innovations.

Similarly, Army Special Forces had trouble adapting to the Army’s managerial

norms. The basic unit of the Special Forces was the A-Team—or Operational

Detachment Alpha—which was a unit of about twelve men. The unit was generally

led by a captain, who in the regular Army would command a company ten times that

size. The regular Army, accustomed to this managerial order, constantly belittled

Special Forces’ officers. According to Kelly:

The personnel actions which bothered the Special Forces members most were the

complete and continual disregard by departmental personnel officials of the comparative

combat responsibilities of Special Forces people. Because the table of equipment for

a Special Forces group specified the position of a Special Forces lieutenant colonel as

the commander of a Special Forces company, no amount of correspondence ever really

convinced the personnel managers at Department of the Army that this position was really

the equivalent of that of a battalion commander in terms of combat responsibility.119

By the same token, there was a normative prejudice against drawing lessons

from foreign experiences with counter-insurgency. This was especially the case

for analysis of the French war in Indochina that lasted from 1946 to 1954. On the

one hand, much was written about it during and after the conflict.120 The U.S. had

underwritten much of the cost of the war, and had sent observers both during and

after the war as part of the Geneva Accords that ended the French phase of the

116 Sheehan (1988), pp. 287-288, Krepinevich (1986) pp. 196-205

117 Sheehan (1988), p. 636.

118 Brig. Gen. Frederick J. Karch, quoted in Jack Shulimson and Maj. Charles M

Johnson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Landing and Buildup 1965, (Washington, D.C.:

History and Museums Division, Headquarters, USMC, 1978), pp. 115-116.

119 Kelly (1972), p. 164.

120 See, inter alia, Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books,

1957) and Hell in a Very Small Place (Philadelphia, PA: De Capo Press, 1967) as well as Ellen

J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1954) for

contemporary or near-contemporary accounts. Graham Greene, The Quiet American (New

York: Viking Press, 1955) presents a fictional account but its popularity shows that the French

war in Indochina was common knowledge in the U.S.


conflict.121 Virtually the whole world watched the progress of the siege of Dien Bien

Phu that sealed the end of the French effort.

On the other hand, information on the French experience was hardly utilized by

the U.S. Army. Senior officers saw little similarity in the French war and the U.S.

war, despite the fact that it was against the same enemy, on the same terrain, fought

with the same tactics. The attitude of service principals and agents alike was “We

are not the French.” The French were regarded as decadent colonialists who needed

the U.S. to bail them out of two wars. There was nothing to be learned from them.122

According to David Hackworth, this inured the Army to the French experience. This

was evidenced by the fact that the Pentagon library was filled with translated after-

action reports of French experiences that were never checked out.123 Though these

reports were “candid, comprehensive, and sometimes blunt,” they were not absorbed.

As Don Starry notes, “in the United States, because of restrictive military security

regulations and a general lack of interest in the French operation in Indochina, there

was no body of military knowledge of Vietnam.” 124

The French experience offered principals alternative information on a variety

of topics. MACV’s firepower and attrition approach had been attempted by the

French. It had been successful only when the Viet Minh had chosen to fight large-

scale battles, as in the Vinh Yen and Red River Delta battles of 1951. Yet, the Viet

Minh learned from those exposures to massive air and artillery strikes, and reverted

to classic insurgency tactics. They continued to bleed the French army, and the

French public began to grow increasingly weary and divided over the war. It was

often called “the dirty war,” and, as casualties mounted, debate over it raged in the

National Assembly.125 This experience would be felt in the U.S. in the late 1960s, as

attrition failed to eliminate the Viet Cong and the number of U.S. dead increased.

Similarly, the French experience at Dien Bien Phu was a harbinger for the

challenges faced by American troops at Khe Sahn a decade and a half later.126 The

most obvious difference is that the U.S. did not lose the position at Khe Sanh, as the

French did at Dien Bien Phu. The use of incredible amounts of airpower, averaging

over 300 tactical and almost 50 B-52 sorties a day, stubborn Marine defense, and

eventual relief by other U.S. forces prevented the fall of Khe Sanh.127 That said,

121 At least one observer was a general officer, John O’Daniel. See Harrison (1989), p.

123; as well as a fictional account of a U.S. observer during this period in Eugene Burdick and

William Lederer, The Ugly American, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1958).

122 Sheehan (1988), pp. 42-43 illustrates John Paul Vann’s beliefs on this subject, which

are probably representative of the U.S. officers in Vietnam.

123 See Record (1998), p. 47.

124 Starry (1978), p. 4. Starry would subsequently be Depuy’s deputy at Training and

Doctrine Command before becoming its commander.

125 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1984), p. 188.

126 See Fall, Hell in a Small Place, as well as Karnow (1984), pp. 188-198. A lengthy

account of the lead up to Dien Bien Phu as well as the battle itself is Martin Windrow, The Last

Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press,

2004).

127 Nalty, pp. 200-201. U.S. forces lost 3 airplanes and one helicopter, while dropping

over 100,000 tons of ordnance on the enemy and 12,000 tons of supplies to friendly forces.


Khe Sanh and Dien Bien Phu were similar in that the locations had little intrinsic

strategic significance. Indeed, Khe Sanh was actually abandoned soon after the

siege.128 Moreover, even though the Vietnamese had not intended to repeat the

Dien Bien Phu operation at Khe Sanh, neither the French nor the U.S. properly

understood the enemy’s objectives.129 A French lessons learned study of the defeat

at Dien Bien Phu concluded that the commander of French forces in Vietnam had

ignored intelligence that did not fit his prejudices.130 The same could be said of

COMUSMACV Westmoreland, who ignored the French experience.

Army officials also failed to absorb the lessons from the British success in the

Malaysian Emergency from 1948-1960. By 1950, a serious Communist insurgency,

almost exclusively composed of ethnic Chinese, was active against the British and

local governments. The British response was to develop a coordinated political

and military plan to defeat the insurgents. Known as the Briggs Plan, after the

general who formulated it, the British built up the police, formed militia to protect

the villages, and created a political apparatus. The groundwork for an independent

Malaysia was laid, while intelligence was strengthened and coordinated. British

military forces spent considerable amounts of time in the countryside, patrolling and

ambushing the guerillas. This plan included unity of command for all forces, civilian

and military.131

The British were extremely cautious in their reliance on greater firepower as a

solution to the insurgency. Bombing was kept away from population centers as much

as possible, and helicopters were used more for resupply and medical evacuation

than for conducting mobile operations.132 Furthermore, the British created “New

Life” villages where the ethnic Chinese could be securely resettled and given the

title to land that they could then farm. It proved successful, as did other incentive

programs to convince insurgents to defect.133

The U.S. Army was not ignorant of the British experience. One of the most noted

of the British writers on the insurgency, General Robert Thompson, consulted with

More detail on the use of firepower at Khe Sanh is available in Robert Scales, Firepower in

Limited War, (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1990).

128 Karnow (1984), p. 542.

129 Khe Sahn was almost certainly intended as a feint, drawing U.S. attention away

from the population centers to the South in preparation for the Tet Offensive. Nalty, pp. 182-

184 and 208. It is worth noting that Nalty presents COMUSMACV Westmoreland (who wrote

the foreword to the book) and his actions in the most favorable light possible, and yet even

Nalty concedes that Khe Sanh was most likely a diversion. Wirtz, The Tet Offensive, also

presents evidence that supports the diversion hypothesis.

130 Karnow (1984), p. 194.

131 For a general overview of the Malaysian Emergency, see Robert G. K. Thompson,

Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, (London: Chatto

and Windus, 1966) and Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War (New York: Praeger,

1966).

132 Jay Gordon Simpson, “Not By Bombs Alone: Lessons from Malaya,” Joint Forces

Quarterly (Summer 1999), pp. 93-97.

133 Ibid., pp. 92-94. See also Robert Komer, The Malayan Emergency in Retrospect:

Organization of a Successful Counterinsurgency Effort (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1972).


President Kennedy in 1963 and observed much of what the U.S. did in Vietnam. He

was aghast at the U.S. war effort, which he considered to be a completely incorrect

approach. He told Kennedy in 1963 that the war would be won “by brains and feet,”

not firepower.134 Thompson also worked with Roger Hilsman of the State Department

to develop a workable plan similar to the British model in Malaysia.

Ultimately, however, this analysis did not resonate with the U.S. Army. It was

assumed that the British experience could not be directly applied to Vietnam,

where government authority had to remain in the hands of the South Vietnamese.

Accordingly, MAAG chief McGarr modified his plan for resettlement in 1961.

When it was finally approved by Diem, the plan did not focus on creating stability

by resettling squatters. Rather, it was aimed at uprooting long-established villages

and moving the populations to new, “secure” sites. The emphasis was on clearing the

decks for firepower, not removing the source of insurgent support.

Conclusion

The U.S. Army’s failure to transform for counterinsurgency is the most extreme

example of failed principal-agent relations in this volume. Rather than merely

shirking principals’ desires, agents in the Army in some cases actively sabotaged

efforts to meet those desires. This pattern of sabotage, beginning with the critical

JCS decision to create a command arrangement in Vietnam that was contrary to

Secretary of Defense McNamara’s wishes, would prevent any serious attempt at

transformation. What is most striking is that the Army thwarted not only civilian

principals like McNamara but also military principals like Generals Johnson and

Abrams, who were not only vested with formal authority but were also respected in

the Army. In addition to sabotaging principals’ aims, the Army squelched alternative

sources of information from other services, from within the Army, and from the

experience of foreign militaries.

134 Memorandum of Conversation, Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Vietnam

Country Series, 4/63-5/63. Available online at: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/viet3.htm.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/viet3.htm

Chapter 7

Conclusion

This book underscores the basic paradox of managing military transformation:

fundamentally “new ways of war” must survive and thrive within organizational

structures and traditions designed to foster continuity. Advances in military technology

and operations cannot be fully explored and absorbed without corresponding

organizational change and flexibility within the armed forces establishment.

However, the functional purpose and enduring ideas of warfare embedded in these

organizations are oriented towards reducing uncertainty and improving the fulfillment

of traditional tasks. If not managed appropriately, the tension between exploring new

technological possibilities and exploiting established methods and procedures can

impede otherwise concerted efforts to effect military transformation.

Though the obstacles to institutionalizing military transformation are formidable,

as this book illustrates, they are not insurmountable. History is replete with examples

of radical, modest, failed, and even subverted military change, revealing that armed

services are neither intrinsically flexible nor hardwired to resist major changes in

technology, operations, or organization. Military organizations not only differ in

how they view and respond to strategic and technological opportunities, but vary

in effectiveness at brokering internal change. The most successful are characterized

by coherent visions of the evolving nature of warfare, flexible leadership, robust

funding for new programs, as well as a commitment to experimentation.1 Yet, failure

to address the organizational dimension can doom transformational efforts of even

the most erudite and committed service entrepreneurs.

Questions surrounding the gap between the challenges and outcomes of military

transformation lie at the heart of this study. Under which conditions can innovation

take root within a service, transforming the ways that it organizes to fight wars?

How are discontinuous leaps in military forms realized within an organizational

context that generally places a premium on continuity? How can proponents of

military innovation effectively circumvent behavioral and cultural barriers within

respective military services? Must they pursue administrative strategies to overcome

1 See for example recent studies that highlight specific organizational attributes

for change, such as Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox, “The Future Behind US,”

in MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, ed., The Dynamics of Military Organization,

1350-2050 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 175-194; Andrew F.

Krepinevich, Lighting the Path Ahead: Field Exercises and Transformation (Washington,

DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 2002); Emily O. Goldman,

“Mission Impossible: Organizational Learning in Peacetime,” in Peter Turbowitz, Emily O.

Goldman, and Edward Rhodes, eds. The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions,

and Interests (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).


the traditional core competency of the service, or should they embrace or coopt

established norms to sustain transformational objectives? Does competition between

and among the services, as well as with a foreign rival, drive transformation or does

the shielding of innovative sub-units hold the key to managerial success? Under

which conditions do military organizations take their cues from external or civilian

actors, not only in terms of recognizing new technological possibilities or political

directives, but with respect to administering intra-service change?

To date the empirical and scholarly literatures on military innovation have been

plagued by at least two fundamental shortcomings that render them incomplete

at addressing these questions. First, extant explanations typically account for the

introduction not diffusion of new ways of war within a military organization. They

traditionally feature precipitating factors for change without fully addressing the

subsequent process of institutionalizing transformation.2 The latter is especially

problematic, given that there are distributional costs within hierarchical military

organizations associated with implementing new ways of war that can form

strong barriers to sustaining necessary change. A second significant deficiency of

this research stems from the treatment of the collective meaning and normative

imperatives for change as clear-cut and readily embraced by those assigned to

supervise and implement service transformation. Yet, service entrepreneurs often

lack expertise to fully comprehend the meaning of change and must gain institutional

support even before a revolutionary idea is wholly envisioned. Implementing offices

too must proceed without clear directives along a nebulous path of exploration. As

demonstrated in this study, successful transformation hinges upon the effectiveness

at striking a delicate balance between powerful winners and losers of change within

an organization. This must be accomplished within functional and normative

organizational settings that constrain the activity of policy entrepreneurs that

champion such change in the first place.

This book offers a first cut at systematically filling these voids by advancing

an argument premised on recent insights from the study of institutional delegation

and oversight. Specifically, we posit a modified principal-agent framework that

treats the process of administering military change as an intra-organizational issue.

In brief, military transformation is the product of strategic interaction between

service entrepreneurs, serving as the principals who decide new general directions

and how to monitor them, and their sub-units, or agents that possess the expertise

and responsibility for refining and carrying out innovative practices. A military

organization’s success at diffusing and assimilating novel technologies, strategies,

tactics, and procedures into a new way of war depends on the harmonization of

incentives among these principals and agents. This convergence is a function of

managerial choices for aligning internal incentives for change with the service’s

established operating core via procedures for delegating authority, monitoring the

2 Legro presents a partial exception to this general rule. Yet even this analysis

relegates the process of institutionalizing change to an indeterminate, contingent political

battle between previously marginalized concepts and their supporters. Jeffrey W. Legro, “The

Transformation of Ideas,” American Journal of Political Science 44:3 (July 2000), pp. 425-

426.

Conclusion 183

fulfillment of organizational objectives, and punishing non-compliant sub-units.

Conversely, the more that interests diverge, the more costly it is to make sure that

directives for change will be followed, and the easier it is for subordinates to resist

change. However, given that the intrinsic uncertainty of defining innovative ways of

war exacerbates gaps in expertise and incentives even within tightly administered

programs, we supplement the traditional procedural approach to supervising change

by featuring the instrumental role of managerial norms. By framing novel technologies

and concepts consistent with service traditions of problem-solving, entrepreneurs

can forge new common knowledge to reinforce material incentives for honing and

sustaining change. Thus, the key to understanding military transformation rests with

organizational forms that do not place a premium on commanders to micromanage

the process of radical change, and that do not vest subordinates with strong incentives

or inclinations to shirk new responsibilities.

We tested these general propositions in four classic case studies of successful

and unsuccessful military transformation that highlighted institutional procedures

and managerial norms as integral to affecting the agency costs of supervising

revolutionary changes. The purpose in each case was not to uncover new empirical

data, as much as to take direct and systematic aim at the rich historical record of

sustained and failed military innovation in light of this alternative explanation for

managerial success. This was pursued with an eye towards illuminating possible

parallels and extracting general guidelines for consolidating military transformation

today and in the future. What ensues, therefore, is a brief summary of the findings

as they pertain to conceptualizing both the problem and organizational challenges

associated with military change. This is followed by discussion of the implications

of our historical analysis for devising an administrative blueprint to match the

technological and strategic imperatives for meeting the challenges of the latest

revolution in military affairs (RMA).

Re-thinking Military Transformation

We began this study by suggesting that military transformation is fundamentally

an organizational affair. Success is measured in terms of the capacity of a service

to sustain and hone the integration of new technologies, strategies, operations of

warfare. This entails not only introducing, but vigilantly institutionalizing innovation.

By contrast, failure pertains to the discrepancy between the potential value offered

by the introduction of technological or operational innovations and the level to

which this potential is embraced and institutionalized within a military organization.

A service can actively strive to subvert new initiatives either by hijacking the

uncertain path of exploration or colluding with other opponents of transformation.

In between these polar responses are a variety of actions that range from hedging to

meet minimum requirements for change, to retarding the integration of individual

policy dimensions. This continuum of success and failure is distinct from the

ability to produce a new weapon, devise a new doctrine, or achieve victory on the

battlefield. Rather, transformation is a managerial issue that reflects an organization’s


proficiency at creating and integrating lasting structures and procedures appropriate

to fully exploiting new technologies and operational innovations.

Using the continuum of service responses to innovation as the main point of

departure, we generated a novel set of findings for social science theorizing about

managing military transformation. One central finding confirms that radical change

can be effectively administered from within an organization. In all of the cases,

the degree of success was determined largely by how policy entrepreneurs chose to

manage strategic interaction among different levels of service hierarchy, irrespective

of the intensity and scope of external shock and civilian intervention, or character of

national political or societal institutions. By the same token, we contend that long-

standing service cultures and substantive frames need not be reconstructed for defense

planners to build the organizational capacity to solve new problems and sharpen new

solutions. Whether major military transformation can occur is contingent upon how

closely service entrepreneurs embrace accepted problem-solving norms to reinforce

material incentives, bolstering common knowledge and trust in the exploration of

alternative forms of warfare.

Second, the study commends reconsideration of sequential understandings of

the interplay between changing interests and ideas and its impact on the diffusion

of military innovation. Our findings reveal transformation to be a function of the

synergy between incentive- and normative-based oversight mechanisms. By re-

conceptualizing military change beyond the stale success/failure dichotomy, the

agency framework explicates a continuum of vigilance/hedging/foot-dragging/

sabotage that begins to capture the rich variation of responses to the introduction

of potentially new ways of war even when imposed from outside of the service. It

demonstrates that certain combinations of material incentives and managerial norms

are likely to align motives for exploration up and down a military service; other

combinations are likely to discourage coordination or to provoke open resistance.

A third central finding is that a modified principal-agent framework can

bridge insights from both the material-functional and cognitive-cultural strains of

organizational theory with the specific requirements and challenges of orchestrating

change in military technology, strategy, and forms. Although there are deep affinities

between respective literatures, as each is concerned with explaining organizational

change, none of them systematically elucidates the administrative processes and

choices that guide strategic interaction within military hierarchies. This can be

redressed by treating transformation as the product of strategic interaction among

different levels of hierarchy within an organization. Military organizations, in

particular, are run by commanders who set doctrinal, strategic, operational, tactical,

and procurement objectives; and sub-units that are responsible for implementing

these tasks. The success of a modern military depends on these levels operating

in unison, thus permitting the smooth implementation of recognized new ways of

war. The problem, however, is that there are information asymmetries whereby

commanders know more about what they want and sub-units know more about their

tasks. Furthermore, the separation of responsibilities between the different levels

of hierarchy introduces a natural conflict of interest: sub-units seek to maintain

professional autonomy and are committed to performing their tasks subject to the

constraints imposed by commanders; while commanders are primarily interested in

Conclusion 185

those tasks performed by sub-units that bear directly on their preferred objectives.

These information asymmetries and conflicts of interest are especially problematic

when new tasks are inchoate. As a consequence, there are potentially high agency

costs, with divergent incentives for exploration and exploitation among the different

levels of hierarchy that require realignment. The challenge for sustaining effective

transformation, therefore, is to put in place mechanisms that lower the costs of

monitoring and enforcing change for commanders and that increase the incentives

and inclinations for compliance among sub-units. Applying this framework, we then

identify how certain procedural and normative techniques used for oversight in civilian

bureaucracies can be imported successfully to manage military organizations, despite

vastly different corporate cultures, missions, structures, and task environments.

Confronting the Challenges of the RMA

Insight into the process of managing defense transformation is as important as ever,

as recent years have witnessed the rapid emergence and diffusion of information

technologies that hold promise for quantum leaps in military effectiveness.

Technological advances that allow military forces to network sensors, weapons, and

command and control systems offer new opportunities for striking targets deeper,

faster, and with more precision and lethality than historically contemplated. At the

crux of the current RMA are increasingly powerful information-processing and

communications systems that can collect and distribute data with unprecedented

speed and effectiveness. The results are dramatic improvements in the quantity and

quality of information available for modern military services to collect, synthesize,

process, and disseminate that, in turn, require them to alter fundamentally the ways

in which they are organized for waging war.3

The opportunity for radical military change has not been lost on the leadership

of the U.S. national security establishment. Even before entering office, candidate

George W. Bush joined previous presidents by espousing the virtues of the RMA

to meet the demands of the information age and shifting post-Cold War strategic

landscape. Upon entering office in 2001, the new Bush Administration embraced

a “transformation agenda” with the aim of selectively modernizing and “skipping

a generation” of technology to ensure that the U.S. Armed Forces “move beyond

marginal improvements to harness new technologies that will support a new strategy.”4

3 See especially Thomas Mahnken and Barry Watts, “What the Gulf War Can (and

Cannot) Tell Us About the Future of Warfare,” International Security (Fall 1997); Thomas

Mahnken, “Transforming the U.S. Armed Forces: Rhetoric or Reality,” Naval War College

Review 54:3 (Spring 2001), pp. 85-99; John Garstka, “Network Centric Warfare: An Overview

of an Emerging Theory,” Phalanx (December 2000). www.mors.org/Pubs/phalanx/dec00/

featrure.htm; and interview with Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, who until early 2005

served as the Pentagon’s Director of the Office of Force Transformation, in Samantha L.

Quigley, “Facing the Future: Transformation Means Making New Rules,” American Forces

Informational Service, 4 April 2005.

4 For George W Bush’s pre- and early post-electoral statements on military

transformation see especially “Speech on Defense Policy,” The Citadel, Charleston South

www.mors.org/Pubs/phalanx/dec00/featrure.htm



This commitment was codified in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s preface

to the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) that declared transformation “not

as a goal for tomorrow, but an endeavor that must be embraced in earnest today.”5

This was matched subsequently by standing up new offices under the Secretary

of Defense, such as the Office of Force Transformation, Joint Forces Command,

and the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Joint Task Force with explicit mandates

to formulate and coordinate “transformational” approaches to warfare across the

services.

Adding substance to the zeal, the leadership in the Pentagon moved decisively

to feature military transformation in successive annual defense budgets. Aggregate

outlays for research and development (R&D) projected for FY2001-FY2009 were

robust and increasing, with spending in FY2005 alone reaching the highest level ever

at 28 percent above FY 1987, the Cold War apogee for defense R&D. Consistent with

the emphasis placed on taking risks on bringing new systems on line, funding levels

allocated for the period call for front loading increases on R&D through FY2008, after

which tradeoffs will be made in favor of enhanced spending on the procurement of

these newly developed systems. Since 2001, the administration also made concerted

efforts to reduce funding or cancel altogether several acquisitions programs based on

traditional platforms, such as the Army’s Crusader artillery system and Comanche

helicopter, while boosting acquisition of potentially revolutionary systems, including

UAVs and several new classes of surface combatant ships, as well as increasing

R&D on a family of future programs, such as light and lethal future combat vehicles

for the Army.6 The commitment to transformation was reaffirmed by the results of

the 2006 QDR that placed emphasis on increasing by one-third the number of active

duty Special Operations Forces battalions and accelerating development of a new

long-range/loiter strike system tailored specifically to meeting the asymmetrical and

irregular challenges of future warfare.7

Nor did the call for transformation fall on deaf ears within the services, as each

drafted an ambitious program for leveraging new technologies to transform the

way that it fights. The Army, for example, designated two brigades as exemplars

for exploring and testing new concepts and organizational structures as part of its

planned high-tech Future Combat System.8 The Navy, in turn, embraced the concept

of network-centric warfare, with the aim of using information technologies to link

up personnel, ships, aircraft, air-defense, and installations into a series of local-

and wide-area networks capable of rapidly processing information and delivering

Carolina, SC, 23 September 1999; and New York Times, 14 February 2001.

5 Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC:

Department of Defense, 30 September 2001), p. IV.

6 See especially Steven Kosiak, Analysis of the FY 2006 Defense Budget Request

(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments, 2005). Though aggregate

funding levels for defense R&D steadily increased during this period, the percentage of change

varied, with a record rise in FY2005 and a slight relative decline (1.2 percent) requested for

FY2006.

7 Department of Defense, 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington,

DC: Department of Defense, 6 February 2006).

8 U.S. Army White Paper 2002.

Conclusion 187

precision strikes. It also initiated the “Streetfighter” project intended to garner new

capabilities and operational concepts for fighting in littoral waters defended by

anti-access/area-denial forces.9 Similarly, the Air Force seriously began to explore

the use of UAVs to perform a variety of missions ranging from reconnaissance to

combat roles including long-range precision strikes, air defense suppression, and

counter-terrorist attacks. The Marines too signed on to the transformation agenda

by working closely with the Navy to form a new “Expeditionary Strike Group,”

combining fast-moving ships, troops, and weaponry in a way that breaks with

tradition in both services. Within each branch strategically situated champions of

transformation emerged to articulate coherent programmatic objectives and visions

to guide respective changes in procurement, doctrine, and organization.

Nevertheless, the drive for transformation encountered significant organizational

obstruction from the outset, leading many to predict failure as inevitable. Despite the

rise in aggregate budgetary outlays, allocations reflected ambivalent priorities for

change, as legacy systems continued to receive the lion’s share of respective R&D

appropriations. The Pentagon’s Science and Technology budget, which contains the

most direct R&D spending on transformational systems, was cut from 2004-2006,

and in FY06 increased over real outlays in FY2001 by only a modest 7 percent

compared to the overall 50 percent rise in R&D spending. These S&T allocations

also paled in comparison to the growth in spending on legacy programs via the

systems development and demonstration (SDD) budget that in FY06 alone jumped

to 112 percent of the same expenditures in FY2001.10 Furthermore, the 2006 QDR

continued to give budgetary priority to programs better suited for traditional warfare

(e.g. the Army’s Future Combat System and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter), at the risk of

starving long-term procurement for potentially revolutionary programs (including

a new long-range/loiter strike aircraft). Thus, despite the welter of attention to

transformation since 2000, the U.S. Armed Forces remained on track to confront a

“significant mismatch between long-term force structure, modernization plans, and

budgetary priorities.”11

Similarly, the services failed to match rhetoric with dramatic action. Despite

claims of embracing new ways of war, all of the services exhibited collective

resistance to revolutionary changes in procurement and organization. Although

combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq gave new impetus to pursuing new

organization forms, experimental units, and joint field operations, the commitment

by each service to such innovations remained uncertain. Within the Air Force, for

example, traditional fighter aircraft continued to receive consistently larger outlays

compared to prospective transformational unmanned systems, notwithstanding the

9 See especially Vice Admiral Arthur A. Cebrowski and Captain Wayne P. Hughes,

Jr., “Rebalancing the Fleet,” Naval Institute Proceedings (November 1999); and Ronald

O’Rourke, Navy Network-Centric Warfare Concept: Key Programs and Issues for Congress

(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, June 6, 2001).

10 Kosiak (2005), pp. 21-22; and Steven Kosiak, FY 2004 Defense R&D Request Raises

Questions About Administration’s Approach to Transformation (Washington, DC: Center for

Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 2003).

11 Steven M. Kosiak, Analysis of the FY 2007 Defense Budget Request (Washington,

DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, April 2006), p. 2.


limitations to tactical airpower exposed by the warfighting experience in Afghanistan

and Iraq.12 Such behavior raised concerns about the commitment to transformation

that will inevitably become magnified as forces and resources continue to be stretched

thin, and as each service confronts difficult budgetary and procurement trade-offs in

the future.

Administrative gaps in oversight lie at the crux of the problem. Notwithstanding

the political and budgetary support for discontinuous change among the senior

echelons of civilian and military leadership, the enthusiasm seems to diminish below

the surface within each service. Information asymmetries and divergent interests

among service sub-units pull at the seams of the Pentagon’s current attempts to

alter the shape of the organizations that wage war. “Roadmaps” for change typically

elaborate lofty goals for inter-service standardization or intra-service innovative

practices without clearly delineating responsibility among newly created offices,

constraining sub-unit autonomy, or specifying promotional and material incentives

for performing new joint or transformational operations.13 Compounding the

problem are expectations within the services that the institutionalization of radical

change will exacerbate agency costs, as flatter organizational forms it is feared will

increase incentives for interventionist, top-down management and will encourage

unrestricted jurisdictional poaching among disoriented services that are left in search

of new missions. For some, therefore, the cure of transformation is viewed with

skepticism and seen to be potentially worse than the problem of inefficiency at

realizing technological opportunities.14

Added is tremendous confusion over the meaning of and affinities for the RMA.

In the Navy, for example, there are numerous and conflicting definitions of network-

centric warfare. As observed by an official on the front lines of promoting this

new approach to warfare, existing attitudes and anxiety concerning the operational

difficulties imposed by flattened command structures obfuscate appreciation for new

possibilities, and thus lie at the root of much of the resistance to thinking and acting

upon change within the service.15 Such normative impediments are not unique to

the Navy. As revealed in a recent study of officer attitudes, much of the resistance

12 Despite the fact that in 1993 the Pentagon issued plans to purchase 2500 UAVs, by

2003 the military had only 164 tactical UAVs (included armed systems), equivalent to only

one percent of the piloted aircraft (fixed and rotary) in the force. Moreover, spending per

annum on UAVs constituted less than 20 percent of the amount allocated for developing the

new manned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Furthermore, the 2006 QDR called for terminating the

J-UCAS unmanned combat system. Elizabeth Bone and Christopher Bolckom, Unmanned

Aerial Vehicles: Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional

Research Service, 25 April 2003), pp. 7-10; and Koziak (2005), p. 23.

13 This critique is especially apropos to both the UAV Roadmap and the Naval

Transformation Roadmap. See especially critque in U.S. General Accounting Office, Force

Structure: Improved Strategic Planning Can Enhance DoD’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Efforts, GAO-04-342 (Washington, DC: March 2004).

14 Elizabeth A. Stanley-Mitchell, “Technology’s Double-Edged Sword: The Case of

US Army Battlefield Digitization,” Defense Analysis 17:3 (December 2001), pp. 267-288.

15 D. Onley, “Net-Centric Approach Proven In Iraq,” Government Computer News

23:10 (2003).

Conclusion 189

to transformation stems from profound uncertainty both across and within the

services over the basic “character and depth of change required for the U.S. military

to compete effectively.” The result is an ongoing “dialogue of the deaf” between

the proponents of advancing transformation and a large percentage of the officer

corps within each service that remains ambivalent about the meaning, priority, and

impact of the RMA.16 Much of the confusion and misunderstanding is reinforced

by service norms that militate against the acceptance of new mission areas. The Air

Force, for example, is typically accused of suffering from the normative blinders

imposed by the “white scarf syndrome” that elevates the prestige of pilots who fly in

harm’s way, while denigrating the skills of unmanned operators who use “joysticks,

pedals, and keyboards.”17 Absent a concerted effort to redress competing normative

paradigms for manning, operating, and developing UAVs, it is expected that the

Air Force will stymie transformation by “loading it down with cultural innuendos

and inaccurate comparisons between manned and unmanned aircraft.”18 As summed

up by one prominent military historian, the culture dominant within each military

service constitutes “the greatest cause for alarm,” as each fails to put a premium on

“learning from history” or inculcating appreciation for debate and embracing the

process of clarifying and sustaining change.19

By the same token, agency costs have continued to bedevil the U.S. Army’s

transformation to meet future requirements for counterinsurgency. Decisionmaking

for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, was characterized by intrusive civilian

micromanagement of force levels that both alienated service commanders and

contributed directly to weak oversight of post-war planning.20 Furthermore, the

service’s counterinsurgency command structure in Iraq replicated many of the

administrative problems confronted in Vietnam. For example, the Multinational

Force Iraq command (MNF-I), with its ancillary corps and Marine units, remained

16 Thomas Mahnken and James R. FitzSimonds, “The Limits of Transformation:

Officer Attitudes towards the Revolution in Military Affairs,” Newport Paper #18 (October

2004); available at www.nwc.navy.mil/press/napapers/nplist.htm.

17 Los Angeles Times, 14 May 2000; and Mahnken (2001), pp. 85-99. On the vexing

challenges imposed by the organizational culture of the USAF, see especially Carl Builder,

Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of the U.S. Air

Force (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1994).

18 Wall Street Journal, 12 October 1999. On the normative rub between manned versus

unmanned performance, manning, operational, and development models, see especially Adam

N. Stulberg, “Managing the Unmanned Revolution in the U.S. Air Force,” Orbis 51:2 (Spring

2007), pp. 251-266.

19 Williamson Murray, “Thinking About Innovation,” Naval War College Review

(Spring 2001) www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2001/Spring/art9-sp1.htm.

20 See Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the

Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, (New York: Pantheon, 2006); and Thomas Ricks, Fiasco:

The American Military Adventure in Iraq, (New York: Penguin, 2006). In particular, the

Secretary of Defense’s micromanagement of planning below the brigade level was the cause

of conspicuous acrimony with the service. This was accentuated by the Secretary’s public

rebuke of Chief of Staff Shinseki, his replacement of Shinseki with Peter Schoomaker, who

had already retired, and abrupt dismissal of Army Secretary Thomas White.

www.nwc.navy.mil/press/napapers/nplist.htm

www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2001/Spring/art9-sp1.htm


technically subordinate to Central Command (CENTCOM), just as MACV was

subordinate to PACOM. The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and the commander of MNF-I

retained the same division of labor and responsibility as the Ambassador to Vietnam

and COMUSMACV. While the Goldwater-Nichols Act and its subsequent evolution

ameliorated some of the challenges of coordinating air power from different services

by creating a single manager for most tactical aviation (the Coalition Forces Air

Component Commander), new entities emerged to complicate organizational

arrangements, including the proliferation of independent special operations task

forces dedicated to hunting so-called “high value” targets. Compounding the

procedural problems has been lingering uncertainty over standardized metrics for

counterinsurgency, resulting in confusion over appropriate nuanced and detailed

“atmospherics” for guiding action at lower levels.21

The persistence of these organizational challenges raises the following questions:

How serious are the problems? Can such dysfunctional intra-service procedures and

normative templates be redressed from within, or should the Pentagon clutch to a

“top-down” approach to expediting extra-organizational administration and outside

intervention? What implications can be drawn from the rich history of success and

failure that may illuminate paths towards striking new balances between exploration

and exploitation in service efforts at managing transformation in the information

age?

Back to the Future: Managing Transformation

Evidence from the comparative case studies in this book suggest that there is room

for cautious optimism regarding the prospects for internally directed military

transformation. Organizational barriers are neither intrinsic nor insurmountable.

What is required, as revealed by our modified principal-agent framework, is

perseverance at crafting a transformation strategy that blends continuity with change.

All four historical cases demonstrated that radical change can take-off or founder

amid conservative organizational leadership and cultures, and that the difference

comes from lodging new ways of war both procedurally and normatively within

the existing set of service institutions. By speaking to a service’s core competency,

service entrepreneurs can use traditional mechanisms to their advantage for inducing

military organizations to explore novel concepts and procedures. Failure to do so,

however, can come at a steep cost of resistance to innovative forms and methods.

Avoidance of these undesirable outcomes and success at turning institutional

constraints into an advantage for organizational change necessitates developing a

managerial strategy that adheres to six core guidelines.

21 See discussion in Austin Long, On “Other War”: Lessons from Five Decades of

RAND Counterinsurgency Research MG-482 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2006).

Conclusion 191

Manage transformation from within the services by creating clear lines of authority

among supervisory and implementing offices

One lesson derived from all four cases points to the marginal effectiveness of creating

an extra-service executive committee charged directly with overseeing change across

the services. Such offices are prone to fostering both administrative confusion and

disincentives for transformation. Outsiders are traditionally granted only limited

access to service structures and resources, as well as tend to provoke professional

resistance, that together lead to burying transformative ideas and cannibalizing new

agendas. Transformation was spurned in both the U.S. Army counterinsurgency

and British armor cases by confused lines of reporting both outside and within the

respective service. Within the U.S. Army, the Special Forces Directorate lacked

discrete authority and had to compete against commanders of the “regular” forces

to supervise counterinsurgency training. Furthermore, the U.S. Army Special Forces

charged with conducting counterinsurgency field operations in Vietnam were ill

served by the division of command authority between the U.S. Army, Vietnam and

the Commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV).

Operating under the COMUSMACV, Special Forces were virtually orphaned within

the theater and effectively divorced from the supervision of Special Forces Office

at the Pentagon. The COMUSMACV, charged with controlling and coordinating all

combat action in Vietnam (except carrier-based and strategic air support), was both

preoccupied and directly responsible for conducting offensive strikes against the

enemy, and had neither the resources nor expertise to oversee the counter-insurgency

mission. Similarly, innovations in British tank warfare and combined armed

operations were stymied by the rampant power-sharing and diffused administrative

structure of the Army Council and General Staff that diluted operational authority

of the commander of the Army and that institutionalized consensual and risk-averse

decisionmaking among senior military and civilian leaders within the War Office. The

confusion was compounded by the British Army’s regimental system of decentralized

but isolated units, the adherence to the Cardwell system of creating parallel units at

home and abroad, the orphaning of the tank corps outside of the regular divisional

structure (eliminating opportunities for joint training and experimentation), the

absence of formal links to mechanized infantry, and the fragmentation of the design

and development process for armored technologies. Even when entrepreneurial

commanders were ceded command authority over armored formations, divided

responsibilities and reporting requirements, coupled with the lack of staff support,

diminished their ability to supervise developments in tank units or to develop well-

integrated combined arms doctrine and operations.

Conversely, integrating the agency of change within a service provides incentives

for change as well as a vehicle for monitoring developments within a service. This

was reflected in the U.S. carrier case, as decisions to avoid hiving-off the Bureau of

Aeronautics (BurAer) from the Navy, either by appending it to the Air Force or by

orphaning it as a separate agency, ensured that naval personnel had a direct stake in

pursuing the carriers. Similarly, innovation with German armor gained traction from

the fluid and direct interaction between the Weapons Office and Branch Inspectorates

within the German Army.


Reward champions of innovation via traditional service lines of promotion and

career paths

Rather than establishing new posts to reward and empower proponents of innovation,

the study confirms that the incentive for exploration rests critically upon assuring

access to mainstream promotion boards and officer assignments. The proponents

of transformation can excel when respective risk-taking efforts create opportunities

to rise to senior leadership positions within the service. In the U.S. carrier case, the

combination of bonus payments for hazardous air duty and the assignment of a rear

admiral billet ensured that promotion to the newly established Commander, Aircraft

Squadrons, Battle Fleet would unambiguously further an officer’s career within

the Navy. Similarly, successful careers in the Weapons Office paved the way for

promotions to coveted positions in respective Branch Inspectorates or line commander

postings in the German military. In both episodes, respective entrepreneurs were

reassured that their exploits would not be held against them within their own service,

and that their success would bring them closer, both professionally and institutionally,

to their commanders.

By contrast, divorcing success and linking failure to traditional promotional

positions tends to stymie transformation. In the British armor case, the institutional

uncertainty discouraged officers from making a career in the Tank Corps. Even

with the formation of the Royal Tank Corps as a separate branch of the Army,

senior officers were transferred from other branches (with no experience in armor)

that effectively precluded advancement for the early champions of the tank. The

incentives for innovation did not improve over time, as promotion both within the

branch and up through the service was determined largely by seniority, regimental

peculiarities, and versatility at serving at home and within the imperial ranks rather

than by specialization. The disincentives were underscored by the creation of the

Royal Armor Corps, consisting of both mechanized and armored units, that gave a leg

up to officers with extensive cavalry experience, and by the institutional constraints

on conducting well-coordinated, combined training exercises. Although several

tank enthusiasts were promoted to senior Army ranks during the period, their rise

occurred almost in spite of (rather than because of) their affiliation or performance

working with tanks. The predicament was equally discouraging for the proponents of

counterinsurgency within the U.S. Army. Special Forces lacked a potent constituency

within the service, as officers were virtually ostracized for championing counter-

insurgency. Only “generalists” were promoted to the command billet responsible for

overseeing counterinsurgency operations, and most officers regarded service within

the Special Forces as detrimental to advancement within the Army.

Avoid creating isolated, ad hoc procedural mechanisms

Managerial success also requires that informal bodies created to promote

transformation reinforce formal mechanisms of reporting and reward within a service.

As demonstrated in both cases of success, the champions of innovation thrived by

exploiting informal channels to facilitate internal coordination that complemented the

formal chain of command. In the carrier case, a back-channel was created between

Conclusion 193

BurAer, the Fleet, and the Naval War College that expedited the generation and

dissemination of realistic scenarios of future naval warfare. This enabled all three

to work off the same page in terms of structuring and analyzing the implications of

experimental models and fleet exercises. In addition, an informal link was established

between the head of BurAer and the Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet

that allowed both to focus on the tasks of monitoring respective sub-components

without spawning inefficient bureaucratic or personal rivalry. This coordination was

reinforced by the informal practice of circulating personnel across the bureau-fleet

divide, and by rotating naval aviators to positions outside of the service in academia

and industry.

Conversely, confused lines of authority constitute significant impediments

to sustaining change, as underscored by the two historical cases of failure. While

the champions of innovation tended to establish and exploit informal channels to

facilitate internal coordination and managerial oversight of innovation, they did

so in manners that confounded the formal chain of command. Although President

Kennedy created the position of Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and

Special Activities (SACSA) to increase the profile and legitimacy of the Army’s

Special Forces, the position both lacked a constituency and circumvented the Special

Forces Command within the service. Consequently and irrespective of personal

differences in counterinsurgency expertise and rapport with the president, successive

advisors were consistently treated as “outsiders” and encountered problems working

within the service. Similarly, the British relied on inconsistent and ad hoc offices to

supplement oversight of tank and armored formations. Yet, each was overtaken by

successive changes in the formal structure, and none of the informal arrangements

were aimed at bridging gaps between the tank command leadership, mechanized

infantry brigades, the makers of doctrine, and the procurement office. The result was

a dearth of horizontal and vertical links between weapons designers, producers and

planners that rendered long-term oversight extremely difficult.

Embrace the managerial norms of a service

What emerges from these classic cases is that prevailing and conservative

organizational cultures are malleable and can be adroitly enlisted to lower the agency

costs of managing transformation. Rather than bludgeoning a cultural change,

service entrepreneurs succeeded by initially framing innovations as consistent with

the dominant strategic beliefs within each service, and then by using respective

“evidentiary standards” to communicate new information that confirmed novel

ideas. Tapping into both accepted strategic missions and rules of evidence gave

service entrepreneurs persuasion power; they acted not only as critics but offered

socially salient solutions to traditional problems that served as common knowledge

amid the uncertainty of preparing for war within the respective services. Aircraft

carriers, for example, were initially proposed as an instrument for fulfilling the

main mission of “fighting across the Pacific,” and as an auxiliary to the dominant

battleship in the U.S. Navy. The orthodox “big gun” club was co-opted ultimately

by demonstrating the potential effectiveness of the carriers in terms that made sense

to them. Specifically, the Navy’s traditional acceptance of technical evidence, culled


from extensive war gaming and fleet exercises, was used to demonstrate gaps between

traditional expectations and the potential payoffs of adopting the carriers. This not

only provided a standard for updating information on the potential effectiveness

of the carriers, but reduced the need for intrusive monitoring among decentralized

sub-units. Similarly, German armor enthusiasts distinguished themselves from

their foreign rivals by effectively tapping into the belief in the value of mobility

and maneuver pervasive within the German Army. This was accomplished by

Seeckt and other service entrepreneurs by leveraging shared normative affinities

for decentralized decisionmaking and technical education. The latter consisted

primarily of accessing long-accepted evidentiary standards of critical assessment

and high error tolerance derived from realistic, open-ended, dynamic, and refereed

war-games and simulations.

By the same token, the classic cases of foot-dragging and sabotage underscored

the decisiveness of enlisting managerial, as opposed to strategic norms. Although the

British Army did not successfully exploit the tank’s operational potential, its failure

cannot be blamed on an overly conservative military leadership that was unable

to envision the utility of army mechanization. Instead, there were long-standing

traditions of top-down command, low error tolerance, and regimental specialization

and fragmentation that militated against operational and tactical flexibility and stifled

initiatives at diffusing innovation across the service. Matters were made significantly

worse, however, by tank enthusiasts who clutched to radical ideas of the superiority

of tank warfare and openly disdained combined arms operations. Diehard tank

theorists had a penchant for promoting massed tank offensives as autonomous

operations without providing objective lessons from history or quantifiable evidence

in support of their iconoclastic claims. In the case of the U.S. Army, there was no clear

service-wide affinity for “pacification,” and the quantitative standards for assessing

combat performance were inappropriate for the management of counterinsurgency

operations. The focus on “body counts,” numbers of sorties, and days in the field

were crude indices that were subject to manipulation and discouraged effective

pacification. The failure of the Special Service pioneers to petition for the indicator

of “battalion days in the field” to apply to population security operations exacerbated

their administrative challenge. In both cases, novel concepts tended to fall on deaf

ears within the service, lacking empathy as well as a constituency. By failing to enlist

the strategic mission or to exploit respective “evidentiary standards” to communicate

new information, to present “new solutions” to old problems, or to “legitimate” novel

ideas within traditional managerial norms, these entrepreneurs and their “radical”

ideas were discredited and lost influence within the mainstream service.

Intensify intra- and inter-service competition, with greater toleration for honest

failures and short-term mission redundancy

The historical cases examined in this study revealed that more not less competition,

both between the services and among sub-units within a service, augurs well for

transformation, especially in those areas involving the development of fungible

technology and sub-components. Such competition can mitigate the inefficiencies

fostered by information asymmetries within a hierarchical military organization by

Conclusion 195

providing indirect, alternative sources of information for entrepreneurs. It also can

create incentives for exploring new capabilities and solving old technical problems.

In the carrier case, inter-service competition with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps

yielded critical information that the proponents within the Navy used to raise the bar

for the development of dive-bombers.

By contrast, the lack of inter-service competition can aggravate inefficiencies

fostered by information asymmetries within military hierarchies by depriving

entrepreneurs of indirect, alternative sources of information. Organizational isolation

can discourage the exploration of new capabilities and resolution of vexing technical

problems. In the U.S. counterinsurgency case, the early effectiveness of the Marines’

Combined Action Program illuminated the prospects for pacification as well as

provided a potential benchmark for assessing the Army’s performance and subsequent

initiatives at “village security” that was woefully ignored. Sub-unit competition

among Special Forces units that were under Army and CIA direction offered insights

into the possible success of counterinsurgency. However, once the Army was put in

charge of planning, evaluating and implementing all counterinsurgency operations,

Special Forces commanders lost an important source of alternative information for

assessing the prospects for unconventional, defensive operations. The managerial

benefits of competition also were lost on the British Army, as the regimental

system created “islands of innovation” that were not transferable across the service.

Furthermore, the resort to ad hoc and irregular training exercises with combined

mechanized infantry and armor units restricted opportunities for assessing heavy

versus light tank operations. When the tank brigade and mechanized cavalry division

were merged in 1937, a virtual all-tank army was created that lacked a doctrine for

massed tank warfare, as well as an intra-service branch for pursuing such forms of

armed warfare.

Rely on extra-military institutions to promote transparency, not intrusive oversight

Outside forces can serve as enablers of internal military transformation. External

actors, including the legislature and industry with independent stakes in promoting

successful innovation, can provide reliable, low cost alternative sources of

information for managing change. While abstaining from the policy game, the

U.S. Congress played an indirect role in facilitating naval transformation by

institutionalizing formal promotional incentives for carrier innovation, and ensuring

that naval aviators would not be orphaned either within the Navy or armed forces

in general. Without intervening directly or mandating the outcome of naval

debates, Congress indirectly smoothed the path for change by rooting out corrupt

practices and fostering an even playing field that provided carrier entrepreneurs

with opportunities to make their case within the Navy. Industry too can be enlisted

to reduce agency costs of managing organization change. Rather than providing a

managerial model to emulate, the private sector served as an independent source of

information regarding the possible application of new technologies. As revealed in

the German study, competition between firms such as MAN, Rheinmetall, Daimler-

benz, and Krupp not only disciplined corporate rivals but provided an important

source of alternative information regarding the technical possibilities for future


tank designs. In the carrier case, the reciprocal flow of information between private

contractors and Navy fostered entrepreneurship on both sides. Close ties with the

commercial aviation industry allowed the champions of carrier aviation to glean

detailed information regarding possible applications of new engine technologies that

were not otherwise provided from within the naval hierarchy. At the same time, once

BurAer decided upon an engine for procurement, it was able to use its contracting

authority to dampen the monopolistic tendencies within industry and to cultivate

commercial support for developing a novel prototype technology that was otherwise

slated to languish.

Conversely, the same external actors can compound the managerial challenge

by providing cover for recalcitrant agents if not rationalized to redress agency

costs. President Kennedy’ enthusiastic support for counterinsurgency alienated

traditionalists within the Army. His penchant for micromanaging the issue also

confounded the task, as he was driven to appoint advisors who were either too

iconoclastic or mainstream to successfully “sell” counter-insurgency within the

service. In the British armor case, the Treasury’s line-item veto power significantly

stripped the Army of important authority to shape its force structure and to procure

critical wireless communication and new tank designs. These administrative troubles

were compounded by strict adherence to the consensual decisionmaking rule within

the War Office that imposed a bias towards continuity and acceptance of the lowest

common denominator in overseeing changes in the Army.

In conclusion, this book underscores the false dichotomy between incremental

and radical change, and the practical pay-offs of orchestrating synergy between

material incentives and subjective understandings of military transformation. Given

the inherent uncertainty of innovation, it is too much to expect that organizational

entrepreneurs can know precisely what they want or can impose a coherent program

to get there. What matters, however, is that those responsible for overseeing and

implementing military transformation share incentives and inclinations to search out

novel solutions to meet the challenges that unfold. Consequently, success at embracing

the new RMA confronting the U.S. military may not require the coalescence of

a new vision of future warfare, overturning traditional service cultures, or arrival

of an enlightened cohort with streamlined access to the senior military leadership.

Rather, it might make more sense to champion administrative reforms from within

the services, creatively exploiting accepted metrics and introducing procedural

mechanisms to allow intra-organizational interests and ideas to converge in pursuit

of an open-ended transformation agenda.

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Index

2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, 186

Abrams, General Greighton, 155, 163, 169,

180

AC, see Army Council

Achtung-Panzer, 81

adverse selection, 38, 46–7

Afghanistan, 187

Agent, see sub-unit

air doctrine, 88, 90

air power, 65

aircraft carrier, 101, 104, 119

air-mobility, 155–7, 161, 164, 173–5

Ait Training Center, see Lipetsk

American Civil War, 170, 171

Amiens, 129

anti-submarine warfare, 20, 108

Argus, 101

Army Council, 137, 138, 140, 147

ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam),

158, 161

ASW, see anti-submarine warfare

Basque region, 97

Battle Fleet, 101, 103–5, 116, 117, 121

Battles

Battle of Ap Bac, 161, 171, 174

Battle of France, 88

Battle of Jena, 67, 78

Battle of Konniggratz, 79

Battle of Midway, 107, 111

Battle of Spicheren, 80

Battle of Tannenberg, 80

Battle of the Coral Sea, 111

Battle of Worth, 80

Battleship, 20, 102, 103, 105, 107

Berrien, Frank, 118

big gun club, 1, 102, 104, 112, 126

big gun culture, 106

big gun enthusiasts, 114

big-gun cruisers, 101

blitzkrieg, 1, 14, 65–9

blitzkrieg developmental success, 72

blitzkrieg doctrine, 85

blitzkrieg operations, 98

blitzkrieg strategy, 135

blitzkrieg tactics, 98

Branch Inspectorates, 70

Branch Inspectorates, 78

British armor, 76

British armor theorists, 87

British Army Council 137–40, 147

BurAer, see Bureau of Aeronautics

Bureau of Aeronautics, 114–21, 124, 127,

191, 193, 196

Bureau of the Navy, 116

BurNav, see Bureau of the Navy

Burnett-Stuart, 136, 145, 148, 149

Bush Administration, 185

Bush, George W., 185

C&GSC (Command and General Staff

College), 157

Caldwell system, 134, 137, 142, 143

Cambrai, 129

CAPs (Combined Action Platoons), 164–6,

169

Captain Harry Yarnell, see Yarnell, Harry

Captain Joseph Reeves, see Reeves, Joseph

Cardwell System 134–5, 138, 142

carrier doctrine, 125

carrier-based aircraft, 126

carrier-centric, 101

carriers, 20

cauldron-battle, 79, 81

CENTCOM (Central Command), 189

CGSC (Command and General Staff

College), 170

Chief of Naval Operations, 109

Chief of Staff von Richtofen, see von

Richtofen

Chief of the Army Command Heye, see

Heye

Chief of the Army Command Kurt von

Hammerstein, see Hammerstein,

Kurt von

Chief of the Army Command von

Bloomberg, see von Bloomberg


CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 162,

166–8, 195

CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group),

164, 167–9

CIGS, 138, 140, 143, 145

CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific),

158–62

clandestine tank school, see Kazan

CNO, see Chief of Naval Operations

Chief of Naval Operations, 114, 118–20,

126

cognitive cultural theory, 13, 28, 113

cognitive-cultural argument, 26, 30

cognitive-cultural biases, 7

cognitive-cultural explanations, 102,

103, 131

cognitive-cultural theories, 104

cognitive-cultural variables, 112

Cold War, 170, 173, 175, 186

Colonel George Linsay, see Linsay, George

Colonel Keitel, 88, 90

Combined Action Platoon 164–6, 169

Combined Action Program, 195

commander‘s war game, 83, 84

COMUSMACV, see Commander, US

Military Assistance Command,

Vietnam

Commander, US Military Assistance

Command, Vietnam, 160–2, 171,

190, 191

Condor Legion, 72, 94–9

counter-insurgency, 1,53,61,153–80

cruisers, 107

Curtiss Hawk F6 dive-bomber, 121

Da Nang, 164

Daimler-Benz, 92

dangle the residual, 47–8

Decker, Army Chief of Staff, 157

Defense Minister Otto Gessler, 86

Destroyers, 107, 111

Dien Bien Phu, 178, 179

Director of Military Operations, 141

dive-bombing operations, 121

dive-bombing techniques, 122

DOD (Department of Defense), 165, 167

dummy tank battalions, 75

Dwight Eisenhower, 99

EAF, see Experimental Armored Force

EMF, see Experimental Mechanized Force

English Channel, 80

entrepreneurial commanders, 44

“Expeditionary Strike Group”, 187

Experimental Armored Force, 133, 145

Experimental Mechanized Force, 134, 139,

144–8, 150

Felt, Admirial Harry D., 159

Field Service Regulations, 145, 149, 150

First Battle of the Marne, 80

Fleet Air Arm, 107

Fleet Problem IX, 105

Fleet Problem VII, 123

Fleet Problems IX–XIX, 112

Flexible Response, 173

foot-dragging, 41–3, 151

Franco, Francisco, 94

Franco-Prussian War, 80

French, David, 143

FSR, see Field Service Regulations

Fuller, JFC 130, 132–4, 136, 139, 144

Future Combat System, 186, 187

General Board, 119, 127, 128

General Creighton Abrams, see Abrams,

General Greighton

General Staff, 67, 73, 138

General Staff system, 65

General von Hammerstein-Equord, 91

General von Reinhadt, 86

Geneva Accords, 177

German Army

Inspectorate of Motor Troops, 68, 71,

72, 73–7, 88

Weapons Office 65, 68–2, 78

Air Staff 68, 72

Luftwaffe 72

Clandestine Schools

Air (Lipetsk) 88–92, 98

Armor (Kazan) 88–92, 98

German General Staff (see also,

truppenamt) 65–70, 73, 78

German specialized warfare schools, 69

German umpire system, 85

Gneisenau, 78

Goldwater-Nichols Act, 190

Grosstraktor, see field tractor

Group Command Maneuvers of 1927–1928,

86

Index 211

Guderian, Heinz, 68, 73–7, 81–2, 87–8, 92,

140

Guderian‘s XIX Panzer Corps, 99

guerre d’escadre, see large-scale

engagement

Gulf War, 16

Hart, BH Liddel 130, 133, 135, 147

Hamlett, Lt. Gen. Barksdale, 157

Hammerstein, Kurt von, 86–7

hard power, 1, 2

Harkins, COMUSMACV, 161, 163, 171,

176

heavy armor, 65

heavy artillery, 65,68

hedging strategy, 41

Henschel 29, 92, 97

HES (Hamlet Evaluation System), 166, 167

High Command, 8, 44, 73, 83

high frequency-low stakes, 2

Hitler, Adolf, 66, 75–6, 94

Hutch Cone, 126

Imperial Navy, 107

imperial-style strategy, 110

IN-6, see Inspectorate of Motor Troops

IN-7, see Inspectorate of Communications

Troops

incentive-ideas divide, 13

inside-out, 13, 17, 21, 131

Inspectorate of Communications Troops,

91, 71

Inspectorate of Motor Troops, 68, 71–2,

73–5, 89

Inspectorate of Motorized Fighting Troops,

74

Inter-Allied Control Commission, 65

Iraq, 187–90

Janus-faced relationship, 37

JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff), 158–60, 162,

163, 171, 174, 180

Johnson, Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Harold,

163, 169, 180

Joint Forces Command, 186

Kasserine Pass, 99

Kazan, 88–91, 98

Kennedy, President John F., 154, 159, 163,

167, 173, 180, 193, 196

Kesselring, Albert, 90

Kesselschlacht, see cauldron-battle

Kesselschlacht doctrine, 79–80

Khe Sahn, 162, 178, 179

Kirke Committee, 136

Kommando der Panzertruppen, see Tank

Forces Command

Korean War or Korea, 164, 170, 172, 173

Kriegsakademie, 87

Krulak, Marine Major General Victor,

162–3, 174

Krupp, 92

Kuhn, Friedrich, 90

Langley, 121, 127

large-scale engagement, 110

Leadership and Battle, 75

Lexington, 104, 118

limited liability, 135

Lindsay, George, 140, 144

Lipetsk, 88–91, 98

LK II, 92

London Naval Agreements of 1930, 111

low frequency-high stakes, 2

Luftwaffe, 72, 90, 94–8

Luftwaffe doctrine, 98

Lutz, Oswald, 68, 72, 74, 76–7, 86, 87, 140

MAAG (Military Assistance Advisory

Group), 158–60, 180

MACV (Military Assistance Command,

Vietnam), 158–64, 166, 168, 169,

178, 189

Malaysian Emergency, 179

MAN, 92

managerial norms, 8, 33, 35, 55–58, 60, 61,

78–83, 103, 122–8, 137, 145–51,

154, 171, 174

Massive Retaliation, 173

Master General of Ordnance, 141, 142

material-functional

material-functioning interests, 7

material-functional explanations, 102–4

material-functional argument, 25, 113

material-functional explanations, 131

material-functional theory, 13, 28, 113

McGarr, MAAG Chieg, 180

McNamara, Robert, 156, 158–61, 174–5,

180

Medium-D, 132, 142


MGO, see Master General of Ornance

microfoundational approach, 13, 36

Militarwochenblatt, 82, 83

military entrepreneurs, 56

Milne, Sir George 132–3, 136–7, 139, 150

Mitchell, Army Air Corps General William

“Billy”, 114

MLI Panzer Corps, 99

MNF-1, see Multinational Force Iraq

Command

mobile airfield, 106

Mobile Division, 129, 140, 149, 150

Mobile Force, 140, 148, 149

mobile tank warfare, 130

Mobile Troops, 77

Mock, Deputy Chief of Staff for Military

Operations Lt. Gen. Vernon, 169

modified principal-agent framework, 6, 60,

103, 113, 131, 137

modified theory of agency, 42

Moffett, William, 104, 115, 119–21, 126,

127

Moltke, Helmut von, the elder, 79, 80, 82

Montgomery-Massingberg 139–41, 145

moral hazard, 38,46–7

Morrow Board, 115, 127

MTTs (Mobile Training Teams), 166

Multinational Force Iraq Command, 189

MW, see Militarwochenblatt

MW Militarwochenblatt, 92

Napoleonic Wars, 79

Natzmer, 74

Naval Operations’ Planning and Material

Division, 109

Naval Postgraduate School, 123

Naval War College, 117–21, 124

Nehring, 90

Neoclassical realists, 19

network centric warfare, 14, 24, 187–8

Nolting, Ambassador Frank, 160

N-square law, 124

NWC, 122

ODCSOPS (Office of the Deputy Chief of

Staff for Military Operations), 169

Office of Force Transformation, 186

Operation SWITCHBACK, 168–9

outside-in, 13, 17–18, 20–2, 131

Pac-10, 110

PACOM (Pacific Command), 159, 190

Panzer

Panzer brigade, 91

panzer division, 73, 87, 141, 150

Panzer Kampfwagen I, 93

Panzer Kampfwagen II, 93

Panzer Kampfwagen III, 93

Panzer Kampfwagen IV, 93

Panzer Troop School, 74, 90

panzer troops, 76

panzer units, 76, 130

Patton, George, 99

PAVN (People’s Army of Vietnam), 162

Pearl Harbor, 106, 111, 112

Peers, Col. William, 162

Plan 1919, 132

poison gas, 65

police patrolling, 45

population security, 153, 157

Porter, Col. Dan, 161, 174

post-maneuver analysis, 85

post-maneuver critique, 86

PPBS (Planning-Programming-Budgeting

System), 175

Pratt-Whitney, 93

Principal, 36, 38, 39, 40, 45–7, 51, 54

principal-agent, 95

modified principal-agent framework, 6,

60, 103, 113, 131, 137

modified theory of agency, 42

principal-agent framework, 6, 7, 33, 35,

40, 43, 184

principal-agent literature, 47–48

principal-agent model, 76

principal agent models, 8,18,21,42

principal-agent problems, 103

principal-agent relations, 36, 154

principal-agent relationships, 84, 86

principal-agent scenarios, 39

principal-agent structures, 51

Principals, 82, 86

process-tracing, 8,60

promotional pathways, 21

PROVN (Program for the Pacification and

Long-Term Development of South

Vietnam), 169

Pz I, see Panzer Kampfwagen I

Pz II, see Panzer Kampfwagen II

Pz III, see Panzer Kampfwagen III

Pz IV, see Panzer Kampfwagen IV

Index 213

Pz-35(t), 94

Pz-38(t), 94

Pzkw, 75

QMG, see Quarter-master General

Quadrennial Defense Review 186–7

Quarter-master General, 141

radio, 71

radio communications, see radio

RAF, see Royal Air Force

Red Army, 88

Reeves, Joseph, 115–16, 119–27

Reichwehr, 81

Reichwehr Command Structure, 71

Reinhardt, 90

reverse engineering, 93

Rheinmetall, 92

Riechswehr field commands, 75

RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs),

183–9, 196

Rosson, Gen. William, 157, 162–4

Royal Air Force, 135, 150–1

Royal Armor Corps, 192

Royal Armored Corps, 141, 143

Royal Navy, 101, 106

Royal Tank Corps, 129, 134, 139, 192

RTC, 140, 141

Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Donald,

186

SACSA (Special Assistant for

Counterinsurgency and Special

Activities), 162, 193

Saratoga, 104, 119, 121

Scharnhorst, 78

Schlieffen, Alfred von 66, 79

SD7, 139

Second World War, see World War II

secret air school, see Lipetsk

Seekt, Hans von, 67–8, 70, 73, 81, 83–4, 85,

88, 91

service unilateralism, 24

Shadow Luftwaffe, 90

Sharp, CINCPAC Admiral, 169

Shielding, 68

Shirking, 9, 33, 41, 43, 46–7, 49–50, 56–7,

128

sine a qua non, 17

Skoda, 93

soft power, 1

Soviet Union HP, 2

Spanish Civil War, 69, 94, 97, 99

Special Forces, 156–7, 164, 167–8, 177,

191–2, 195

Special Forces Command, 193

Special Forces Directorate, 191

Special Staff W, 95

Special Study Group, 169

Special Warfare Center, 162, 164

Special Warfare Directorate, 157

Sperrle, Hugo, 68–9, 72, 90, 95, 97, 99

Spies, Rudolph, 72

staff tours, 83

stopgaps, 116

Storm Troops, 80

Strategic Air Command, 173

“Streetfighter” project, 186

Strv m/21, 92

Student, Kurt, 68,72

Stuka dive-bombers, 97

Stumpff, Hans, 90

sub-units, 4,6,8,32,33,36–51,54–61

T-3, see Truppenamt intelligence section

Tactics Department, 119

Tank, 68, 71, 72, 77, 83, 129, 149, 192–4

czech tanks, 94

tank achievements, 133

tank battalion, 75

tank brigade, 129, 133, 140, 144, 148

tank commanders, 146

tank corps, 129, 131

tank design, 92, 130, 142

tank development, 92, 132

tank doctrine, 69, 73, 74

tank entrepreneurs, 143

Tank Forces Command, 68, 76, 77

Tank Gunnery School, 90

tank innovation, 30

tank innovators, 147

tank models, 132

tank operations, 131

Tank School, 72

tank tactics, 73

tank technology, 9

tank warfare, 1, 14, 151

tanks, 75, 76, 82, 85, 88, 89, 140, 141

Taylor Board, 104

ten-year rule, 131

Tet Offensive, 162, 167


The Great War, see World War I

The Henschel and Fulk Wulf Company, 97

The Schleiffen Plan, 80

third parties, 45,59

Third Reich, 69

top-down command, 9, 40, 137

Towers, John, 121

Treaty of Versailles, 65–6, 69, 74, 78, 88

Truppenamt, 65, 70, 72, 73, 88, 90

Intelligence section of the Truppenamt,

91

Tschischwitz, Erich von, 72–4, 75

two front war, 66

U.S. Congress, 195

U.S. Navy, 107

U-boats, 108

Umpire, 85

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Joint

Task Force, 186

USARV (United States Army, Vietnam),

160,161

Vann, Lt. Col. John Paul, 161, 163, 176

Vicker-Armstrong, 142

Vietnam, 9, 153–180

Volckheim, Ernst, 71–2, 83, 90

Vollard-Bockelburg, 74, 75

Vollmer, Joseph, 92–4

von Bloomberg, 90

von Brauchitsch, 75, 88, 90

von Richthofen, 95, 97

WA-6, 73

Waffenampt, 72

War Office, 196

War Plan Orange, 110

Washington Five-Power Treaty, 105

Washington Naval Treaty, 104, 124

Weapons Office, 67–8, 70–5, 78, 91

Wehrmacht, 94, 95

Weimar Republic, 69

Werner Molders, 96

Westmoreland, COMUSMACV William,

161, 163, 165–6, 169, 176, 179

Wimmer, Wilhelm, 72

World War I, 65–7, 74, 78, 80, 92, 101, 106,

109, 130, 151

World War II, 65–99,102, 106, 129, 137,

151, 164, 167, 170, 171, 174

Yarborough, Brig. Gen. William, 162–4

York, Brig. Gen. Robert, 161,174

Yorktown, 107

managing defense transformation

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