The Roots Of Failure

In this blog, we have often discussed that the roots of future failure (without using that exact phrase!) are being formed today.  Most of them are quite evident and do not require hindsight decades from now.  They are clear to see, today, and I’m pointing them out, frequently.  The list of failure roots is long and I’m not going to bother reciting them. 

With that backdrop, I read an article in Breaking Defense that discusses the roots of failure and is authored by someone who has been in the military system at the highest levels: Lani Kass - special assistant to Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley. (1)  The article offers some fascinating, thought-provoking theories about the roots of failure, not just theoretically but specifically.

The article’s author sets her stage with a reference to a book about systemic failure, “Why Air Forces Fail”, edited by Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris, which suggests the determinants of failure:

• deficiencies in the industrial base
• misguided technology and tactical picks
• inattention to logistics and neglect of training

These determinants are problematic, to be sure, but they seem a bit too ‘in the weeds’ for a discussion about systemic roots of failure.  Systemic failure factors should be at a higher, broader level.  The article’s author seems to agree and offers a different view with her own candidates for the roots of failure:

• aggressors tend to assume risks that seem irrational — and, thus, improbable — to the intended victim. This leads to strategic dislocation, and, potentially, catastrophic failure
• credibility born of past successes rarely suffices as a deterrent
• hubris kills

I would, perhaps, pick a different set of failure roots but let’s ignore that and look deeper into the author’s thoughts. 

The author proceeds to throw out one incredibly fascinating and thought-provoking statement after another!  For example, she expands on her first failure root,

First, aggressors tend to assume risks that seem irrational — and, thus, improbable — to the intended victim. This leads to strategic dislocation, and, potentially, catastrophic failure. (1) (emphasis added)

The concept of ‘strategic dislocation’ is extremely insightful.  The enemy does something we dismissed as unlikely, improbable, or impossible and, when he actually does it, we’re left staring in bewilderment with no plan at hand to counter the action.  Consider the rise of ISIS – no one saw it coming and we obviously had no plan to counter it.  At a smaller, tactical level, consider the use by ISIS of ‘technicals’ - pickup trucks with guns bolted on.  We didn’t anticipate it and had no plan to counter them except the use of carrier groups and front line F-18 Hornets to conduct truck plinking.  Consider China’s construction of illegal artificial islands.  It’s something we never would have thought of doing and so we didn’t anticipate China doing it and, yet, they did and we were left dumbfounded and without a clue what to do about it.  We still haven’t figured out what to do about it and, as a result, the Chinese have annexed the entire South China Sea without firing a shot and with hardly even a strongly worded protest from us!  Consider Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine.  We didn’t anticipate it and had no effective response.  And so on.

In previous posts, we’ve discussed the need to war game and think about things from the enemy’s side and try to anticipate what they’ll do, however unlikely we think it to be.  Instead, what do we do?  We conduct the Millennium Challenge 2002 and hand wave away all the improbable and impossible actions taken by the Red force that, apparently, utterly defeated our Blue force. 

We need to war game the improbable and, seemingly, impossible actions our enemies might take rather than dismiss them just because we’d never consider doing them.

The author continues to throw out insightful statements.  For instance,

The U.S. must balance current exigencies with future requirements. Any single-focus approach bears a huge opportunity cost. The world has not taken a time-out to allow the U.S. to tend to Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, competitors exploited the emphasis on the lower end of the conflict spectrum to leapfrog in areas where the U.S. took its dominance for granted. (1)

Admittedly, this is authored from the vantage point of hindsight but the common sense of it transcends time.  We focused exclusively on third world terrorism and allowed our conventional military to degrade and wither.  We gave up our institutional knowledge of amphibious assaults, we built non-combat LCS vessels, we adopted technology over strategy, we light-sized our Army and Marines, we shed tanks and artillery in favor of glorified jeeps, etc.  The military (uniformed and civilian leaders alike) lost sight of their main mission which is to defeat peer enemies and to do so decisively.  We assumed the world would wait patiently while we took care of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Well, the world didn’t wait and now we’re faced with resurgent peer enemies who have their own plans while we lurch from one stupid idea to another in lieu of an actual plan.

Another gem,

Future conflicts will be more lethal and more difficult to control than ever. The potential for strategic surprise is high, and the military’s residual capacity is at a historic low. (1)

The recognition that the military’s ‘residual capacity’ is at an historic low is profound.  We’ve dispensed with reserve fleets, consolidated our defense industries (industrial base) to just a few, closed shipyards, eliminated multiple types of ships and aircraft in favor of just a very few, regulated many suppliers out of business, forced defense companies to merge, abandoned many types of highly effective munitions (cluster munitions, ballistic missiles), allowed weapon development to stagnate (torpedoes, anti-ship cruise missiles, naval guns), and failed to secure strategic mineral sources.

And,

Concepts and structures, valid for a specific time and place, should not be allowed to become dogma. That too is a prescription for failure. (1)

This has been happening for some time and continues to happen.  For example, we are, seemingly, locked into the dogma of stealth as our ‘advantage’ despite the daily evidence that stealth is becoming less and less effective.  We continue to build Burkes because, well, we always have and always will.  Who cares that they do not have the power, utilities, size, and weight or growth margins to accommodate new radars and weapons?

Debacles-in-the-making develop over time, usually offering plenty of opportunities to spot them and correct the downward spiral. (1)

Isn’t that what this blog is – a series of observations/opportunities to spot and correct the downward spiral?  The debacles of tomorrow are being clearly pointed out, here, today.

What prevents that course correction are systemic deficiencies, wishful thinking, and the inherent human ability to adjust to a “new normal” –the fluctuating baseline of what is deemed acceptable. (1)

Spot on!  Consider how the US moved relentlessly from a requirement to win two major wars, simultaneously, to a major war and a regional conflict, then two regional conflicts, then one regional conflict while holding another.  We rationalized each change so that we could accept it without ever recognizing that the threats didn’t decrease – just our ability to fight them decreased.  Each time we rationalized our decreased capabilities we congratulated ourselves with our new strategic wisdom and celebrated with brilliant white papers and reports.  Heck, we even had to coin a new phrase, ‘regional conflict’, in recognition of our inability to conduct and win an actual war!  Now, we don’t talk about ‘war’, we talk about ‘regional conflict’ as if it were a rowdy soccer crowd rather than an implacable enemy bent on our destruction.

Consider the steady decrease in the size of our carrier force from dozens, post-WWII, to, eventually, 15 and then 14, 13, 12, 11, and now the Navy wants to drop to 10.  With each decrease, we rationalized the change as ‘good’ and right in line with our new strategies – themselves downsized and rationalized.

Unfortunately, this is where my praise for the author comes to a screeching and disappointing halt.  The rest of her article basically violates her own warnings about failure by descending into Air Force parochialism and pitching the case for the F-35 as the salvation of the military.  She states,

No modern war has been won without air superiority. (1)

This is historically, demonstrably false.  North Vietnam kicked the US out of the country with a complete absence of air superiority.  North Korea/China fought the US/South Korea to a standstill with a complete absence of air superiority.  The Taliban are in the process of winning in Afghanistan with a complete absence of air superiority.

She goes on to describe the wonders of the F-35, thereby ignoring or violating her own warnings about dogma (F-35 stealth), debacles in the making (is there a better example of a debacle than the F-35?), the opportunity cost of ‘single focus’ (is there a more stunning example of ‘single focus’ than the F-35?), and the human tendency to accept the ‘new normal’ (is there a better example of our acceptance of the ‘new normal’ than the downgraded and deferred F-35 capabilities?).

I’m not going to rehash the multiple shortcomings of the F-35.  We’ve done that enough and you can check out the archives if you want to revisit that.  I’m also not going to allow the author’s flawed closing to detract from the brilliance of her preceding discussion.  Unfortunately, it seems as if the author failed to read her own writing!  Regardless, I urge you to read the linked article.  It offers some truly profound thoughts.

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(1)Breaking Defense, “US Air Power: The Imperative For Modernization (Buy The F-35) ”, Lani Kass, 18-Mar-2019,

https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-air-power-the-imperative-for-modernization-buy-the-f-35/