Interestingly, this lesson having been learned in war, it lay hibernating to be discovered in engineering decades later.
While most modern safety advice recommends empowering line workers to report safety failures, this also extends to engineering quality. The quintessential example of devolving power down to individuals is Andon[0], the most recognisable feature of which is a little cord any line worker in the factory can pull to stop the entire line.
Yeah, yeah, individual initiative. Nest read an analysis of the Charge of the Light Brigade and see how Cardigan's initiative (or stupidity) led the charge in the wrong direction, despite orders from Lucan.
For a serious discussion of how much initiative is too much or too little, read MCDP 1, "Warfighting", the USMC manual on how to run a battle. Good military forces work hard at that balance.
Initiative is very different at sea, and was especially so before the era of effective radio communications. Nations trusted their admirals and captains to effectively be ambassadors as the effect they could have on foreign affairs during peacetime was enormous. From the USS Pueblo to the USS Vincennes the position naval captains are put is often significantly more isolated, complicated, and symbolically important than any other armed service.
Speaking of trusting naval crews - the UK Tridents subs don't require any codes being sent to authorize launches, they have all the required information and we simply trust them not to abuse it.
I think that's true for all countries that have submarine-launched nuclear weapons. One of the purposes of having nuclear missiles on submarines is for them to pose a credible threat of retaliation against a first strike, even if the first strike is successful enough to destroy land-based installations and the command chain. So the theory is that they need to be able to retaliate without a functioning chain of command.
Of course getting detailed information on these things is difficult but I've seen more than one reference claiming that UK Tridents subs are unusual in this respect - Wikipedia claims that launch keys on US Tridents subs are kept in safes to which the crew do not have the combinations:
Apparently the reasoning is that the UK is so close to potential enemies that there would be no time for the PM or equivalent to give authorization - the so called "4 minute warning" being very optimistic. The US is much further away from the Soviets/Russia so there would be far more time to broadcast a launch order. Also the UK is notoriously cheap about these kinds of things!
If I turn my head to the left and look out of my study window I can look over that exact bit of the Forth in that picture of the British Grand Fleet - the only thing that looks like a battleship there today being the island of Inchmickery:
Though just the other side of the bridges, up at Rosyth, there are two rather large aircraft carriers being built. Also several aging examples of what arguably replaced the battleship, nuclear attack submarines.
Not clear At all clear that at Jutland lack of individual initiative swung the battle. The battle was fairly skilfully fought between two state of the art combatants and errors of judgement, while costly, were retrieved on both sides, making the affair something of a score draw.
Betty's taking the initiative the way he did without telling Jellicoe what he faced or where he was going could have cost Britain the battle, as Beattie sailed into the German trap. Scheer's about turn when his T was crossed saved the fleet, so you could say the superb manoeuvring discipline of the German fleet saved it. You could also say that prioritising speed and heavy gunnery over armour (German ships prioritised armour) in the British battle cruisers didn't help them when they came up against German battleships. Or that the German gunnery was superior, or that the British munitions appeared to malfunction (or was that the German armour). There was, however, at least one instance in which faulty signalling from Beatty's flagship was very costly.
I think I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I would need a much clearer account of what he thought went wrong at Jutland to appreciate or agree with it.
You raised the same issues I was going to. The only instance I can think of where command ossification may have hurt the British was during the night actions, when the (German) High Seas Fleet was escaping across the wake of the (British) Grand Fleet. At that point there was a chance for British capital ships to engage-- they'd seen the Germans-- but they deferred the decision up the chain of command. The rear admiral in charge of the squadron declined to attack without an order from Jellicoe, but Jellicoe wasn't told the situation, so he assumed that the contacts to his rear were German harassing attacks. That allowed the remainder of the High Seas Fleet to escape.
Quick edit: though difficult with all of the smoke, the flag signalling did work as intended at Jutland. Flag signalling relies heavily on skilled signal officers. Beattie did not have a good one, which is why he didn't get a crushing victory at Dogger Bank (his signaler sent his entire squadron after the wrong ship). Jellicoe managed to maneuver the fleet quite well once the main battle commenced.
I think the signalling at Dogger Bank may have been what I had in mind - not Jutland, though. Agreed about Jellicoe as well - it seems miraculous to me that Beatty managed to muddy Jellicoe's reputation after the war.
Hitting a moving target over 10,000 yards away from a moving platform using optical rangefinders and analogue fire control computers. It's a miracle they ever hit anything IMHO.
> I think I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I would need a much clearer account of what he thought went wrong at Jutland to appreciate or agree with it.
To get that account I highly recommend jumping straight to the book the article cites at the top, Andrew Gordon's The Rules of the Game; it's a brilliant work, packed with detail but accessibly written and clearly argued. This article recapitulates some of Gordon's arguments, but the book itself is such a pleasure to read that if you are at all interested in the subject you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Airlines went through this issue back after the Tenerife disaster where the two 747s collided. It was determined that crew must always be allowed to challenge the actions of another.
Now the problem is excess reliance in computer aided flying and procedures. New pilots are receiving less hands on flying instruction and are heavilly drilled in following the procedures to the letter(this is not an exageration). It's like a theater play, like the blind obedience and spit and polish of the navy.
So assets that are extremely useful become a problem when something goes out of the script.
It's hard to maintain the equilibrium, and we have yet to swing the pendulum in the other direction.
The Rules of the Game is a fascinating book because it starts with the lead-up Jutland, goes back in time to explain how the culture and personalities of the Royal Navy came to be, before going back to Jutland. It made my head hurt the first time I read it, because so much was unfamiliar, but a second read really brought things to life.
The synopsis / review this book offers is a good one but it could, perhaps, be generalised. Though Gordon doesn't make it explicit as such, the lesson I ended up taking away from the book is that cultures tend to go through alternating periods of encouraging initiative or obedience. You can see this in armies (perhaps the classic example is the Prussian / German army: it started off with Frederick the Great as an army of obedience; became (at the top levels at least) an army of initiative under von Moltke the Elder; and (in the West, at least) went back to an army of obedience for most of WWI), technology (look at any well known company's research lab culture), and even wider society. If I had to briefly summarise the consequences of this, it tends to come down to when two broadly equal organisations square up against each other: if one uses obedience as its model, and the other initiative, the latter will tend to win; if the two both use the same system, the outcome seems to be mostly random.
[That said, Jutland isn't a great example of this in my opinion, as it was so protracted and its outcome so muddy. Poor ship design and some sloppy practises with explosives meant the British came off worse in terms of casualties, so arguably the Germans won the day. However, the (smaller) German Navy realised that it had only survived through luck, and basically stayed in port for the rest of the war, whereas the British were out sailing in force less than a week later and continuing the blockade of Germany. The Germans eventually thought the only way to win at sea was unrestricted submarine warfare, which turned out to be perhaps the biggest PR disaster in history. I was astonished to realise that the German Navy's inferiority complex from Jutland persisted into WWII: the German Navy stalled shamelessly when asked to help invade Britain, as the lesson they learnt from Jutland was that the British Navy could never be defeated, so what was the point of trying? So Jutland had complex long-term effects that defy easy classification. Which is, perhaps, why it's so fascinating.]
To me, the only question is whether Beatty misused his battlecruisers or whether they were fatally flawed to begin with: whether their speed advantage was really worth anything. And whether the result would be a total British victory rather that just a strategic one.
As for the overall point, success breeds overconfidence, which breeds failure, and so on.
There's a separate, fascinating, historical incident that shaped the Royal Navy and by extension world affairs for centuries. The execution of Admiral Byng for "failing to do his utmost" lead to a culture of aggression in the RN. This resulted over the years in many impressive, against the odds, victories such as Pellew's two frigates taking the 74 Droits de l'Homme. It also led to sacrifices such as HMS Glowworm's attack on the Hipper during the Norway campaign in 1940.
The Royal Navy differs from the British Army in taking a more holistic view of traditions and history. Trafalgar is celebrated by all every year, Taranto is celebrated by all aviators every year - rather than only those descended from units involved. This combined with the length of time to draw lessons from has led to the saying "The Navy has traditions, the Army history and the Air Force has habits. And nasty, dirty habits they are too".
I can strongly recommend "The Silent Deep" about the Royal Navy submarine service. The parts describing the Perisher course are fascinating (the author, perhaps because he is a Peer, actually got to go on subs during the course) - imagine a training course where if you deemed to have failed you are immediately removed from the training area (by helicopter) and never allowed to work in that area of the Navy again! Mind you, apparently you do get a bottle of whisky to make up for your career being in shreds.
There has been a couple of programs on the UK channels (I think mostly Channel4/Five) that dealt with with Perisher course. It is brutal, hard, and exhausting.
And yeah, bottle of whisky on your leave and you can't work on subs anymore (though you do get to keep the Dolphin pin apparently).
After Byng's execution the British officer corps started acting like people who were defending their homes and families against a vicious foe. Like the people of Donbass in Ukraine for instance. The result is that the British would not give up in battle and would turn any slight advantage to their favour. This made Britain almost invincible.
Note that in modern Russia there is a military tradition "Russians do not give up!" which many soldiers, especially the special forces, adhere to. This is partly what drove the rebels in Donbass to stand their ground in the face of apparently superior forces. Combined with the fact that they were literally defending their homes and families, the Ukraine army had difficulty making and holding any advances against them.
War is one of those areas where ideology does not seem to have a role, but if you expand ideology to include the internal psychology of the soldiers and their beliefs and motivations, then ideology may indeed be paramount. It's the political ideology that is meaningless. This is seen in WWII Soviet Union where Stalin relaxed the strict Communist ideology in favor of one of family, motherland, ethnic spirit.
This initiative vs obedience seems a little wishywashy to me.
When do these shifts happen, is is cultural or only a matter of the who is in charge that day? Specially when applied in practice to the German army. Even if the pattern is true, there seem to be many, many far more relevant reasons for victory or defeat.
I think about this a lot these days with regard to the US/NATO and land-based combat. We built up power for decades during the cold war to prevail on land against major powers, and our Battle of Trafalgar was Desert Storm in 1991. In the following years, absorbed in our sense of supremacy, we shifted our focus to asymmetrical warfare, optimizing our vehicles and doctrines for light war against dispersed forces mixed with civilians.
I think of this every time I hear, "XXX is irrelevant in this age of asymmetric warfare." Sure, maybe that system or doctrine is not useful when fighting 1,000 militants blended into a city of 1,000,000. But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Will it look like Desert Storm? Or will it look like the Bay of Pigs invasion? And could the US in 2040 look like France in 1940?
> But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy?
Either the shooting war ends real quick with a diplomatic solution, or the territories of both adversaries quickly turn into faintly glowing wastelands uninhabitable for a thousand years.
The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states. Once you credibly threaten the homeland of any opponent near the US's level of military sophistication, you've already lost the war.
I'd say that you can fight fairly complete proxy wars without ever threatening the homelands of nuclear powers as per the post nuclear gentleman's agreement.
>The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states.
No, that's not correct, and is emblematic of the insistence to "always train for the last war." The reality of what future war might look like is much more nuanced than "either MAD or more COIN." General Milley talked about this last summer, and I tend to agree with his assessment. Incidentally his critique is inline with the posted article about mindless obedience.
Absolutely nobody insists on only training for the last war. The only people who use that phrase are people who are convinced, beyond all reason, that we're making that mistake; or people who use it as a strawman to criticize arguments concerning priority and budget.
I read the article, but Gen. Milley doesn't make the case for why mutually-assured destruction is no longer relevant (he doesn't mention it at all, actually). After 50 years in which it has arguably been the primary strategic factor maintaining the peace among the great powers, I'm curious about why the future would look different.
The problem with mutually assured destruction is the “assured” part. There is nothing assured about it. Cyber, space, and other weapons could dismantle the assurance and we could be in a totally different warfare environment. Certainly this doesn’t seem to be the case yet, but I wouldn’t make assumptions about the future.
I am honestly puzzled at why you believe this to be the case. I'm not even sure it has ever been the case. Consider, for example, how chemical weapons have never been used in WW2, despite all sides having stockpiles. Consider the fact that MAD deterrent absolutely requires both parties to be in perfect agreement about what level of conflict will trigger MAD. Also a shooting war does not have to ever touch anyone's homeland (not to mention that in a war there is usually a disagreement about what exactly a "homeland" is).
No one has a real air force or a real navy except USA. Well some have, but 10% of the size and much poorer trained as well. And air force changed little with respect to asymmetric warfare, and Navy didn't change at all (it only starts to, pouring money into things like lasers to protect from small inflatable boat attacks). They are still pretty much Cold War-ish.
Ground forces will lack artillery pieces and shells and will find its logistics stretched, and tank mods of recent 20 years were going the wrong way for a shooting war, and new combat vehicles like Stryker and not what a real war requires, so it will have some trouble, but ground forces need to act only in the very end - where enemy is softened enough by airstrikes - and that will work whole lot better than in Desert Storm these days. Much more kills per sortie due to all these smart munitions - and there are sufficient numbers of them to break down any armed forces in the world.
So in essence, air force will make sure that every adversary will be pretty soon down to 'asymmetric warfare' level if not completely defeated. Think Russian WWII partisans. And that is what US Army has an excellent experience dealing with.
Ochmanek has run the two-day table-top exercise eight times now, including at the Pentagon and at Ramstein Air Base, in Germany, with active-duty military officers. “We played it 16 different times with eight different teams,” Ochmanek says, “always with the same conclusion.”
I’m convinced that the US needs to differentiate and separately fund resources for limited and unlimited wars. The military has squandered trillions fighting limited wars with assets designed for more conventional wars. It has also led to a less effective effort as the needs of operators on the ground are often disregarded for what the services want to provide to justify funding. Finally, legally separating the two would allow a better application of ROE and help prevent the current state of never ending “war”. The goal being to constantly strive to downgrade from unlimited war, to limited war, to state department diplomacy, with different funding for each and understandable reasons and criteria for transition between the categories.
I totally agree with this. I also think in a large number of conflict situations, the real issue is bootstrapping governance rather than fighting an adversary. Though military protection/action is required due the hostile environment.
Having a group trained and equipped to specifically fight asymmetric warfare is the way to go. They should also be able to help train police, ambulance etc. get basic services working and monitor + prosecute corruption in the regime that's been installed.
There is already a group like that within the US military: Special Forces. And to a certain degree, the Operations division of the CIA. Neither of these approach what you're describing here (if I'm reading your words right) -- and so I think there's room for improvement -- but the seeds for that are already a high priority for our (US) military.
Agreed there's a trend in that direction, but as you say not quite there yet. What I imagine is a unit with the goal of helping civilians as a first priority, but with the full capability to defend themselves and the people they're helping. Similar to the Special Forces but with the priorities reversed.
Yes absolutely. I think bringing people from some military units and then the Peace Corps, USAID etc. together would be a way to get it happening quickly.
Interestingly -- perhaps you know this already -- the US military keeps a strict segregation between Peace Corps and the military: If you join one, you are forever-banned from joining the other. I'm not sure about the historical reasoning for it, though. Something else interesting: One of my childhood friends joined the Peace Corps, and wherever he went (in Africa), those countries always accused Peace Corps members of being CIA operatives. He was always super defensive about there being no CIA operatives in the Peace Corps, which in its own way was kind of suspicious.
Sorry for slow reply. That is very interesting, I never knew that but I guess it makes perfect sense. What I was/am thinking of is a group that is definitely military, but the goal is governance with the option of lethal force any time the need arises - with or without assistance from external units. If it existed I would have signed up years ago.
> Victory begets cultural decay by sparing the navy the rigors of future combat, the truest test of martial adequacy.
Reminds me of a fiction quote:
> The general was only warming up. [...] "You infants who've come up in the past decade and more have no concept of combat. These long periods of unbroken peace weaken the Service. If they go on much longer, when a crisis comes there'll be no one left who's had any real practice in a crunch."
> Miles's eyes crossed slightly, from internal pressure. Then should His Imperial Majesty provide a war every five years, as a convenience for the advancement of his officers' careers? His mind boggled slightly over the concept of "real practice." Had Miles maybe acquired his first clue why this superb-looking officer had washed up on Kyril Island?
59 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadWhile most modern safety advice recommends empowering line workers to report safety failures, this also extends to engineering quality. The quintessential example of devolving power down to individuals is Andon[0], the most recognisable feature of which is a little cord any line worker in the factory can pull to stop the entire line.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)
For a serious discussion of how much initiative is too much or too little, read MCDP 1, "Warfighting", the USMC manual on how to run a battle. Good military forces work hard at that balance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Two-man...
Apparently the reasoning is that the UK is so close to potential enemies that there would be no time for the PM or equivalent to give authorization - the so called "4 minute warning" being very optimistic. The US is much further away from the Soviets/Russia so there would be far more time to broadcast a launch order. Also the UK is notoriously cheap about these kinds of things!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link
The combination was changed in 1977.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchmickery
Must have been quite a site to have the Forth full of ships though.
Betty's taking the initiative the way he did without telling Jellicoe what he faced or where he was going could have cost Britain the battle, as Beattie sailed into the German trap. Scheer's about turn when his T was crossed saved the fleet, so you could say the superb manoeuvring discipline of the German fleet saved it. You could also say that prioritising speed and heavy gunnery over armour (German ships prioritised armour) in the British battle cruisers didn't help them when they came up against German battleships. Or that the German gunnery was superior, or that the British munitions appeared to malfunction (or was that the German armour). There was, however, at least one instance in which faulty signalling from Beatty's flagship was very costly.
I think I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I would need a much clearer account of what he thought went wrong at Jutland to appreciate or agree with it.
Quick edit: though difficult with all of the smoke, the flag signalling did work as intended at Jutland. Flag signalling relies heavily on skilled signal officers. Beattie did not have a good one, which is why he didn't get a crushing victory at Dogger Bank (his signaler sent his entire squadron after the wrong ship). Jellicoe managed to maneuver the fleet quite well once the main battle commenced.
To get that account I highly recommend jumping straight to the book the article cites at the top, Andrew Gordon's The Rules of the Game; it's a brilliant work, packed with detail but accessibly written and clearly argued. This article recapitulates some of Gordon's arguments, but the book itself is such a pleasure to read that if you are at all interested in the subject you owe it to yourself to check it out.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14336897
The vehement disagreement is almost repulsing me to RTFA.
The synopsis / review this book offers is a good one but it could, perhaps, be generalised. Though Gordon doesn't make it explicit as such, the lesson I ended up taking away from the book is that cultures tend to go through alternating periods of encouraging initiative or obedience. You can see this in armies (perhaps the classic example is the Prussian / German army: it started off with Frederick the Great as an army of obedience; became (at the top levels at least) an army of initiative under von Moltke the Elder; and (in the West, at least) went back to an army of obedience for most of WWI), technology (look at any well known company's research lab culture), and even wider society. If I had to briefly summarise the consequences of this, it tends to come down to when two broadly equal organisations square up against each other: if one uses obedience as its model, and the other initiative, the latter will tend to win; if the two both use the same system, the outcome seems to be mostly random.
[That said, Jutland isn't a great example of this in my opinion, as it was so protracted and its outcome so muddy. Poor ship design and some sloppy practises with explosives meant the British came off worse in terms of casualties, so arguably the Germans won the day. However, the (smaller) German Navy realised that it had only survived through luck, and basically stayed in port for the rest of the war, whereas the British were out sailing in force less than a week later and continuing the blockade of Germany. The Germans eventually thought the only way to win at sea was unrestricted submarine warfare, which turned out to be perhaps the biggest PR disaster in history. I was astonished to realise that the German Navy's inferiority complex from Jutland persisted into WWII: the German Navy stalled shamelessly when asked to help invade Britain, as the lesson they learnt from Jutland was that the British Navy could never be defeated, so what was the point of trying? So Jutland had complex long-term effects that defy easy classification. Which is, perhaps, why it's so fascinating.]
To me, the only question is whether Beatty misused his battlecruisers or whether they were fatally flawed to begin with: whether their speed advantage was really worth anything. And whether the result would be a total British victory rather that just a strategic one.
As for the overall point, success breeds overconfidence, which breeds failure, and so on.
The Royal Navy differs from the British Army in taking a more holistic view of traditions and history. Trafalgar is celebrated by all every year, Taranto is celebrated by all aviators every year - rather than only those descended from units involved. This combined with the length of time to draw lessons from has led to the saying "The Navy has traditions, the Army history and the Air Force has habits. And nasty, dirty habits they are too".
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/183977/the-silent-deep/
And yeah, bottle of whisky on your leave and you can't work on subs anymore (though you do get to keep the Dolphin pin apparently).
Note that in modern Russia there is a military tradition "Russians do not give up!" which many soldiers, especially the special forces, adhere to. This is partly what drove the rebels in Donbass to stand their ground in the face of apparently superior forces. Combined with the fact that they were literally defending their homes and families, the Ukraine army had difficulty making and holding any advances against them.
War is one of those areas where ideology does not seem to have a role, but if you expand ideology to include the internal psychology of the soldiers and their beliefs and motivations, then ideology may indeed be paramount. It's the political ideology that is meaningless. This is seen in WWII Soviet Union where Stalin relaxed the strict Communist ideology in favor of one of family, motherland, ethnic spirit.
I think of this every time I hear, "XXX is irrelevant in this age of asymmetric warfare." Sure, maybe that system or doctrine is not useful when fighting 1,000 militants blended into a city of 1,000,000. But what happens if/when we get into a shooting war with an adversary that has a real army, a real air force, and/or a real navy? Will it look like Desert Storm? Or will it look like the Bay of Pigs invasion? And could the US in 2040 look like France in 1940?
Either the shooting war ends real quick with a diplomatic solution, or the territories of both adversaries quickly turn into faintly glowing wastelands uninhabitable for a thousand years.
The only warfare that matters today is asymmetrical warfare against relatively low-tech guerrillas and third-tier states. Once you credibly threaten the homeland of any opponent near the US's level of military sophistication, you've already lost the war.
I do largely agree though.
No, that's not correct, and is emblematic of the insistence to "always train for the last war." The reality of what future war might look like is much more nuanced than "either MAD or more COIN." General Milley talked about this last summer, and I tend to agree with his assessment. Incidentally his critique is inline with the posted article about mindless obedience.
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/miserable-disobedient-vic...
Ground forces will lack artillery pieces and shells and will find its logistics stretched, and tank mods of recent 20 years were going the wrong way for a shooting war, and new combat vehicles like Stryker and not what a real war requires, so it will have some trouble, but ground forces need to act only in the very end - where enemy is softened enough by airstrikes - and that will work whole lot better than in Desert Storm these days. Much more kills per sortie due to all these smart munitions - and there are sufficient numbers of them to break down any armed forces in the world.
So in essence, air force will make sure that every adversary will be pretty soon down to 'asymmetric warfare' level if not completely defeated. Think Russian WWII partisans. And that is what US Army has an excellent experience dealing with.
Haha, read this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
Ochmanek has run the two-day table-top exercise eight times now, including at the Pentagon and at Ramstein Air Base, in Germany, with active-duty military officers. “We played it 16 different times with eight different teams,” Ochmanek says, “always with the same conclusion.”
Can you guess what the conclusion was?
Having a group trained and equipped to specifically fight asymmetric warfare is the way to go. They should also be able to help train police, ambulance etc. get basic services working and monitor + prosecute corruption in the regime that's been installed.
Reminds me of a fiction quote:
> The general was only warming up. [...] "You infants who've come up in the past decade and more have no concept of combat. These long periods of unbroken peace weaken the Service. If they go on much longer, when a crisis comes there'll be no one left who's had any real practice in a crunch."
> Miles's eyes crossed slightly, from internal pressure. Then should His Imperial Majesty provide a war every five years, as a convenience for the advancement of his officers' careers? His mind boggled slightly over the concept of "real practice." Had Miles maybe acquired his first clue why this superb-looking officer had washed up on Kyril Island?
(The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold)