How to Think About Risks in US Military Innovation

Abstract

Public discourse about military innovation in the United States tends to portray dramatic changes in technology, organisation and doctrine as desirable. Innovation is a gamble that new ways of war can supplant more traditional means and methods, but it is not always worth taking. Dynamics inherent to the innovation process make it challenging for militaries to properly manage risks. Military innovation is expensive in time and money, but is more likely to occur when these resources are scarce. Also, major innovation proposals usually need to overpromise to secure the necessary support, which sets the stage for future disappointment. Accordingly, defence policymakers should avoid emphasising disruptive innovation as a silver bullet. A more prudent path is to invest in active but incremental changes, as well as resourcing robust but deliberate testing and evaluation processes that avoid rushed development.

Key words:

• creative destruction
• Future Combat Systems
• High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS)
• military innovation
• multidomain operations
• pentomic army
• Revolution in Military Affairs
• United States

Notes

1 See, for example, Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr, The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023).

2 See Kendrick Kuo, ‘Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness’, International Security, vol. 47, no. 2, Fall 2022, pp. 46–87.

3 See Robert G. Angevine, ‘Adapting to Disruption: Aerial Combat over North Vietnam’, Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 96, 1st quarter 2020, pp. 74–83, esp. 76–7.

4 See Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3rd edition (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), p. 83.

5 On defining military innovation, see Adam Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 29, no. 5, October 2006, pp. 905–34; and Michael C. Horowitz and Shira Pindyck, ‘What Is a Military Innovation and Why It Matters’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 46, no. 1, March 2022, pp. 85–104.

6 See US Department of Defense, ‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China’, Annual Report to Congress, 2023, pp. 164–72, https://media.defense. gov/2023/Oct/19/2003323409/-1/-1/1/2023-MILITARY-AND-SECURITYDEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THEPEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF.

7 See John R. Hoehn, Kelley M. Sayler and Michael E. DeVine, ‘Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Roles, Missions, and Future Concepts’, CRS Report R47188, Congressional Research Service, 2022, pp. 6, 14–15.

8 See US Air Force, ‘Agile Combat Employment’, Doctrine Note 1-21, 1 December 2021, https://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/Force%20Management/AFDN_1-21_ACE.pdf.

9 See Ronald O’Rourke, ‘Navy Large Unmanned Surface and Undersea Vehicles: Background and Issues for Congress’, CRS Report R45757, Congressional Research Service, 2023, pp. 20–7.

10 See Andrew Feickert, ‘The Army’s Multi-domain Task Force (MDTF)’, CRS In Focus IF11797, Congressional Research Service, 2023.

11 See Andrew Feickert, ‘U.S. Marine Corps Force Design 2030 Initiative: Background and Issues for Congress’, CRS Report R47614, Congressional Research Service, 2023.

12 See Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 132.

13 Andrew L. Russell and Lee Vinsel, ‘After Innovation, Turn to Maintenance’, Technology and Culture, vol. 59, no. 1, January 2018, pp. 1–25.

14 See Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell, The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work that Matters Most (New York: Crown Currency, 2020), pp. 11–12.

15 See Heather R. Penney, The Future Fighter Force Our Nation Requires: Building a Bridge (Arlington, VA: Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, 2022), pp. 1–6.

16 See Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, ‘Report to Congress on the Annual Long-range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2023’, April 2022, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Apr/20/2002980535/-1/-1/0/PB23%20SHIPBUILDING%20PLAN%2018%20APR%202022%20FINAL.PDF.

17 See Feickert, ‘US Marine Corps Force Design 2030 Initiative’, pp. 1–4.

18 See Thomas Alexander Hughes, Overlord: General Pete Quesada and the Triumph of Tactical Air Power in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 312; and Phillip S. Meilinger, Hoyt S. Vandenberg: The Life of a General (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 168–9.

19 See Thomas C. Hone, ‘Korea’, in Benjamin F. Cooling (ed.), Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority (Washington DC: Center for Air Force History, 1994), pp. 453–504; Allan R. Millett, ‘Korea, 1950–1953’, in Benjamin Franklin Cooling (ed.), Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1990), pp. 345–410; and Wayne Thompson, ‘The Air War Over Korea’, in Bernard C. Nalty (ed.), Winged Shield, Winged Sword: A History of the United States Air Force, Volume II (Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997), pp. 3–52.

20 See Owen Reid Cote, Jr, The Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine: The U.S. Navy and Fleet Ballistic Missiles, PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996, pp. 339–42.

21 See Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 59, 74–5.

22 See John A. Alic, Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs So Much (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 49–106.

23 See J.P. Harris, ‘British Armour and Rearmament in the 1930s’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, 1988, pp. 220–44.

24 See Ronald O’Rourke, ‘Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program: Background and Issues for Congress’, CRS Report RL33745, Congressional Research Service, 2023, pp. 26–9.

25 Thomas P. Hughes, ‘The Evolution of Large Technological Systems’, in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch (eds), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 73–6.

26 See Justin Katz, ‘CNO: Too Much New Tech on Ford Was a Mistake’, Breaking Defense, 21 July 2021, https:// breakingdefense.com/2021/07/cno-too-much-new-tech-on-ford-wasa-mistake/.

27 See Bent Flyvbjerg and Cass R. Sunstein, ‘The Principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand; or, the Planning Fallacy Writ Large’, Social Research, vol. 83, no. 4, Winter 2016, pp. 979–1,004.

28 See Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019), pp. 264–87.

29 See Mark Clodfelter, ‘Molding Airpower Convictions: Development and Legacy of William Mitchell’s Strategic Thought’, in Phillip S. Meilinger (ed.), The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1997), pp. 79–114.

30 On the pentomic army, see Andrew J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army Between Korea and Vietnam (Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 1986); and Brian McAllister Linn, Elvis’s Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

31 On the Revolution in Military Affairs, see Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs (London: Routledge for the IISS, 1998); and Elinor C. Sloan, The Revolution in Military Affairs (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002).

32 For an example of demythologising pertaining to American manoeuvrewarfare maven John Boyd, see Stephen Robinson, The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War (Dunedin: Exisle Publishing, 2021).

33 See Andrew L. Ross. ‘On Military Innovation: Toward an Analytical Framework’, Study of Innovation and Technology in China, Policy Brief no. 1, September 2010, p. 2, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3d0795p8.

34 See Stephen Biddle, ‘Back in the Trenches: Why New Technology Hasn’t Revolutionized Warfare in Ukraine’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 102, no. 5, September/ October 2023, pp. 153–64; and Franz-Stefan Gady and Michael Kofman, ‘Ukraine’s Strategy of Attrition’, Survival, vol. 65, no. 2, April–May 2023, pp. 7–22.

35 See David Johnson, ‘The Army Risks Reasoning Backwards in Analyzing Ukraine’, War on the Rocks, 14 June 2022, https:// warontherocks.com/2022/06/the-army-risks-reasoning-backwards-in-analyzing-ukraine/; and Gady and Kofman, ‘Ukraine’s Strategy of Attrition’, pp. 7–8.

36 See Government Accountability Office, ‘Defense Acquisitions: Key Decisions to Be Made on Future Combat System’, GAO-07-376, 2007, pp. 13–16, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-07-376.pdf.

37 See David Barno and Nora Bensahel, Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 10–17.

38 See David French, ‘The Mechanization of the British Cavalry Between the World Wars’, War in History, vol. 10, no. 3, July 2003, pp. 296–320; and Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson 1914–18 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 292–5, 311–15.

39 See Kendrick Kuo, ‘Military Innovation and Technological Determinism: British and US Ways of Carrier Warfare, 1919–1945’, Journal of Global Security Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, September 2021, pp. 1–19.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kendrick Kuo

Kendrick Kuo is an assistant professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the US Naval War College. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the US Department of Defense or its components.