Let me clearly state up front that this is not another of ComNavOps’ famous and much beloved humor pieces. As I’ve said repeatedly, I can’t make up stuff as funny and ludicrous as what the Pentagon routinely comes up with in their “reality”. That said, you’re going to love this one.
After years of debating what the AirSea Battle concept is and how it might be implemented, the Pentagon has finally made a major advance. They’ve announced that they’re changing the name from,
AirSea Battle
to
Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC).
As I said, this is real and is being widely reported across the Internet. Check it for yourself.
Seriously, this is what passes for military thought today – changing the name. I wonder how many man-hours went into this major development? Based on the increase in the number of letters in the title, this new version is just over four times better than the previous one. I guess I have to grudgingly acknowledge that a 4x improvement is pretty significant by anyone’s standard. I, therefore, salute the Pentagon and say, “Well done!”.
No word, yet, on Chinese reaction to this development but they are undoubtedly already at work developing a new wave of ships, aircraft, and tanks to counter this major advance by the Pentagon.
May I attempt to decode this bit of Pentagobble?
ReplyDelete"Joint" What they smoked before coming up with the name. Also signifies inter-departmental but usually just means "single source procurement for all branches regardless of their individual needs."
"Concept" meaning not a solid plan but a vague idea. Also avoids any connotation of war, unlike words like "battle", "Strategy", or (God forbid) "Warfare".
"Access and Manuever" also generic meaningless non-threatening words that avoid terms such as "Combined arms" or even "maneuver warfare".
"Global Commons"--yay! A new buzzword! One that they will never actually come out and define but the basic meaning is "never doing anything without a huge unwieldy international coalition that will enforce draconian ROE and not offend let alone fight anyone"
Does that sound about right to you ComNavOps...oh, apologize for the drug reference in line one, but I got caught up in the moment.
You've broken the code!
DeleteActually, I think one has to look a bit harder at this. The primary objective of the change seems to be to remove meaning, or at least implied meaning, from the term. "AirSea Battle" gives you some general idea of what is meant to happen. "Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons" communicates clearly that someone is being obscure, but nothing else...
ReplyDeleteI think I've twigged this. Probably sometime in the late seventies or early eighties, when Pentagonspeak was developing, some joker introduced the concept of postmodernism. You could sell it easily enough: "A radical new model of thinking, applied to lots of academic fields, going beyond the modern into the post-modern!" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism)
Postmodernism is excellent for creating in-groups and out-groups, and for hiding power under a haystack of incomprehensible language. It can observe and partake of a wide variety of contradictory worldviews - which, lets face it, the Pentagon and the Navy have to deal with in communicating with Congress and the American people.
Postmodernism does have a small problem in that it's very bad at taking action, or reaching clear conclusions. But the DoD had so much momentum on so many things when it was introduced that this can't have seemed like a big problem at the time, and it still has many advantages when the primary aim of military policy is calming the TV channels and conforming to the contradictory shibboleths of politicians.
Outstanding!
DeleteWhat I want to know is how much time was spent developing the new logo to go with the new name.
ReplyDelete