Thaddeus V. Drake and Derrick L. McClain
Military innovation and adaptation studies are a growth industry.1 Since the publication of Barry Posen’s seminal study The Sources of Military Doctrine in the early 1980s, the field has grown extensively.2 Despite well-known military thinkers’ recent book-length treatments of the topic, most studies of change in the military retain two key commonalities. First, nearly all assume that innovation or adaptation is inherently good and worth pursuing.3 Second, they agree that militaries are famously resistant to change and accept this as part of the fundamental nature of the military system. This article acknowledges the first point; indeed, modern military leaders continually claim the need for change.4 The second, on the other hand, is correct but flawed. Innovation and adaptation studies should not accept resistance to change as a fundamental characteristic of the military system but instead must recognize cultural openness as a necessary precondition for any existing concept of innovation or adaptation to succeed to its full potential.
Examples abound of organizational intransigence in the face of military change efforts—everything from the institutional resistance regarding unmanned aircraft,6 to the Army’s controversies on headwear,7 to criticisms of the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030.8 Indeed, a recent report from the Atlantic Council noted: “[T]he United States does not have an innovation problem, but rather an innovation adoption problem.”
No comments:
Post a Comment