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.