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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it contributes to our understanding of the role of culture in shaping innovation success and failure in the US Air Force, concluding that competing cultural norms explain the service’s uneven and halting approach to the development and employment of the Predator drone. Second, it breaks new ground in the debate about the role of culture in military innovation. In contrast to earlier scholarship, it contends that it is possible to view culture as a central force in military innovation while adhering to the principles of positivism.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the RPA pilots of the United States Air Force, past and present, for their service to our country. Your story is just beginning- thanks for sharing part of it with me. Also thanks to Adam Grissom, Paula Thornhill, the Honorable William M. Harrington and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on earlier drafts.
Author Biography
Caitlin Lee is a political scientist at RAND Corporation where she works on issues related to airpower and innovation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 This article is derived from the following doctoral dissertation: See Caitlin Lee, The Culture of Air Force Innovation: A Historical Case Study of the Predator Program (London: King’s College, 5 Feb. 2016). See https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-culture-of-us-air-force-innovation(b3f09298-e748-4b25-88dd-6e18f179bfde).html.
2 I use ‘drone’ because it is the most common term, but the USAF prefers ‘Remotely Piloted Aircraft,’ while the Department of Defense term is ‘Unmanned Aircraft System’.
3 For a definition of military innovation and an overview of foundational works in the field, see Adam Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/5 (2006), 905–934.
4 See Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the RMA in the US, Russia and Israel (Stanford: Stanford UP 2010); See also Adamsky and Kjell Inge Berga (eds.), Contemporary Military Innovation: Between Anticipation and Adaptation (New York: Routledge 2012). Older works include Theo Farrell and Terry Teriff, The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics and Technology (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002); Farrell, Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2005); and Terriff, ‘Innovate or Die: Organizational Culture and the Origins of Maneuver Warfare in the US Marine Corps’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/3 (2006), 475–503.
5 Martin E. Dempsey, ‘America’s Military – A Profession of Arms,’ (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2012), 5. For the preeminent study on US military cultures, see Carl Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press 1989); For more on the use of cultural norms to improve military effectiveness see Colin Gray, Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for Strategic Culture (Washington, DC: National Institute for Public Policy July 2006), 2–3.
6 Ian Hurd, ‘Constructivism’, in The Oxford Handbook of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford UP August 2008), 301–302; For a discussion of the relative influence of culture in IR, see John Duffield, Theo Farrell, Richard Price and Michael S. Desch. ‘Isms and Schisms: Culturalism versus Realism in Security Studies,’ International Security, 24/1 (Summer 1999), 156–180.
7 Stuart Griffin, ‘Military Innovation Studies: Multidisciplinary or Lacking Discipline?’ The Journal of Strategic Studies, 40/1–2 (July 2016), 196–224.
8 For a comprehensive approach to this topic, see Lee, The Culture of Air Force Innovation.
9 For the main principles of positivism, see Steve Smith, ‘New Approaches to International Theory,’ in John Baylis and Smith, (eds.) The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, (Oxford: Oxford UP 1997), 165–190.
10 Griffin, ‘Military Innovation Studies’, 10.
11 Jeffrey Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in Security Studies,’ World Politics, 50/2 (1998), 324–348.
12 Farrell, Norms of War, 1–2.
13 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), 92–138; Farrell, Norms of War, 1–2; Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in Security Studies’.
14 Farrell and Terriff, The Sources of Military Change, 6.
15 Jeffrey Legro, ‘Culture and Preferences in the International Cooperation Two-Step’, American Political Science Review 90/1 (March 1996), 122.
16 On this point, I part ways with Stuart Griffin, who argues that military innovation is likely to become less important to practitioners in relative peacetime. See Griffin, ‘Military Innovation Studies’.
17 For more on this point, see Matthew Ford, Weapons of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation (Oxford: Oxford UP 2018), 13–14 and Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation, 65–75.
18 General David G. Perkins, US Army. ‘Multi-Domain Battle: Driving Change to Win the Future’, Military Review, (July-August 2017).
19 Grissom,’The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, 907.
20 For more on the tension between policy relevance and rigour in social science, see Michael Desch, ‘Technique Trumps Relevance: The Professionalization of Political Science and the Marginalization of Security Studies’, Perspectives on Politics 13/2 (June 2015), 377–393.
21 For more on positivist approaches, see Michael Barnett, ‘Social Constructivism’, in John Bayliss, Steve Smith and Patricia Owen (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations Theory (Oxford: Oxford UP 2014), 157–158.
22 Griffin, ‘Military Innovation Studies’, 8.
23 Griffin, ‘Military Innovation Studies’, 205.
24 Stephen Walt, ‘The Renaissance of Security Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 35/2 (June 1991), 212.
25 See Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1984).
26 See, for example, Owen Cote, The Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine: The US Navy and Fleet Ballistic Missiles, (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD dissertation, 1996).
27 Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War; Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1991).
28 An example of the organisational cultural perspective can be found in Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars (Princeton: Princeton UP 1997). An example of the strategic culture perspective: Thomas Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War Since 1945 (New York: Columbia UP 2010).
29 Dennis Showalter, ‘Military Innovation and the Whig Perspective of History’, in Harold R. Winton and David R. Mets (eds.), The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918–1941 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2000), 232–233.
30 Farrell, Norms of War, 16.
31 Ibid.
32 For more on causal vs. constitutive theory see Alexander Wendt, ‘On Constitution and Causation in International Relations’, Review of International Relations, 24/Special Issue (1998), 101–118.
33 Olivier Schmitt, ‘Review of ‘Weapons of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation,’ International Affairs, 4/1 (January 2018).
34 Wendt, ‘On Constitution and Causation in International Relations’, 101–118. Richard Price and Christian Reus Smit make this point too. See, ‘Dangerous Liaisons? Critical International Theory and Constructivism’, European Journal of International Relations, 4/3 (1998), 259–294.
35 Thanks to Adam Grissom for sharing this idea.
36 For more on the stability of culture and the possibilities of cultural change, see Wendt (1999)188 and Theo Farrell (2005) 12–15.
37 Legro, ‘Culture and Preferences in the International Cooperation Two-Step’, 124.
38 Legro developed the portrait approach. See Legro, ‘Culture and Preferences in the International Cooperation Two-Step’, 124; and Legro, Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1995).
39 For a comprehensive literature review, see Lee (2016)8–16. For this study, I adopt the Department of Defense’s 2012 definition of unmanned systems, summarised in a 2012 Congressional Research Service Study as follows: ‘powered air vehicles that do not carry a human operator, use aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload. The definition excludes ballistic vehicles, cruise missiles, and artillery projectiles.’ Newer DoD definitions are exceedingly broad. Jeremiah Gertler, Unmanned Aerial Systems. (Washington DC: US Congressional Research Service 3 January 2012). See also Department of Defence, ‘Unmanned Aircraft,’ DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (July 2019).
40 For the strongest articulation of this view, see Carl Builder, The Icarus Syndrome (London: Transaction Publishers 1994).
41 For an overview of the USAF’s transition from bomber pilot to fighter pilot dominance, see Michael Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals: The Problem of Air Force Leadership, 1945–1982 (Maxwell AFB, AL; Air University Press 1998).
42 For the first to argue this point in scholarly work, see Builder (1994) 27–37.
43 This example technically falls outside the scope of the 2012 DoD definition of ‘unmanned system’ but the ICBM was indeed unmanned and the literature on USAF cultural resistance to it is so prolific that I would be remiss not to mention it. See Kenneth P. Werrell, The Evolution of the Cruise Missile (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1985); Robert L. Perry, The Ballistic Missile Decisions, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp., 1967); Melvin G. Deaile, Always at War: Organizational Culture in Strategic Air Command, 1946–62, (Annapolis: Naval institute Press 2018) 207–213.
44 The best reference on TAC’s initial resistance and subsequent embrace of drones in Vietnam is William Wagner, Lightning Bugs and Other Reconnaissance Drones: The Can-Do Story of Ryan’s ‘Unmanned Spy Planes’(Fallbrook, CA: Armed Forces Journal International 1982). See also Cargill Hall, ‘Reconnaissance Drones: Their First Use in the Cold War’, Airpower History 61/3 (Fall 2014), 20–27.
45 The decline in USAF drone employment coincided with the transfer from SAC to TAC. See General Accounting Office, ‘Need to Maximize RPV Use Where Suited to Save Lives and Dollars.’ Paper presented by Raymond Hautala Group Director, Mission Analysis Systems Acquisition Division, GAO, before the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, Washington, DC, 22 July 1981. For lawmaker concerns, see William Krebs, ‘Did We Err in the Development of Remotely Piloted Vehicles?’ Research Report # MS-018 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, April 1979)2 and 59. For more on Pentagon civilian support see Gene Bigham, ‘The Future of Drones: A Force of Manned and Unmanned Systems,’ Air University Review, (November- December 1977).
46 Thomas Ehrhard, ‘Air Force UAVs; The Secret History’, (Washington, DC: Mitchell Institute, 2010) 42. For more on other service drone development, see Steven J. Zaloga, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Robotic Warfare, 1917–2007 (New York: Osprey Publishing 2008), 26–28.
47 Donald Rice, The Air Force and National Security: Global Reach-Global Power: Reshaping the Future (Washington DC: Department of the Air Force June 1990).
48 Builder (1989) 19.
49 Ehrhard (2010) 7.
50 Ehrhard, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the United States Armed Services: A Comparative Case Study of Innovation (Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins dissertation 2000), 592–593.
51 Mahnken (2008) 5; Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, (Oxford: Oxford UP 1999), 147.
52 Eliot Cohen, ‘The Mystique of Airpower’, Foreign Affairs (Jan/Feb 1994); Gray, (1999), 147.
53 Roger Bilstein, ‘The Airplane and the American Experience’ in Dominick Paisano (ed.), The Airplane in American Culture (Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press 2003), 25; Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Airpower: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press1987), 76–146.
54 Daniel Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, ‘Kosovo and the Great Airpower Debate’, International Security, 24/4 (Spring 2000), 5–38.
55 For more on drones and casualty sensitivity, see, for example, Peter Lee, ‘Remoteness, Risk and Aircrew Ethos’, Royal Air Force Airpower Review, 15/1 (Spring 2012), 1–19. See also Philip Sabin, ‘The Strategic Impact of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,’ and, on the disassociation between aircrews and heroism, see Seb Cox, ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – Cultural Issues’. Both are in Airpower: UAVs: The Wider Context (2009).
56 By 1970, USAF leaders in TAC were highly sensitive to casualties. See Paul Elder, ‘Buffalo Hunter: 1970–1972, Project CHECO report’ (Headquarters PACAF, 1973) 13–14. Outside the USAF, elite and public pressure to employ drones also intensified after a Navy EC-121 was shot down in April 1969. See Wagner (1982) 167.
57 David C. Aronstein and Albert C. Piccirillo, Have Blue and the F-117A: Evolution of the Stealth Fighter (Reston, VA: AIAA 1997), 12.
58 For more on Red Flag innovations, see Brian D. Laslie, The Air Force Way of War: Tactics and Training After Vietnam (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky 2015). For more on the USAF’s cancellation of high-altitude reconnaissance drones in the 1970s, see William Wagner and William Sloan, Fireflies and Other UAV’s The Sequel to Teledyne Ryan’s Lightning Bugs, (Arlington, TX: Aerofax 1992), 46–47.
59 Graham Allison, The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1 ed. (Boston: Little, Brown 1971). See also Graham Allison and Morton Halperin, ‘Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications’, World Politics, 24.40 (1974). Allison and Halperin’s 1974 article synthesises both the organisational process and bureaucratic models in the book, both of which contain elements that are relevant to how most scholars conceive of bureaucratic politics today.
60 While Herbert Simon, James March, Graham Allison and Morton Halperin all sometimes suggest a soft role for culture (the logic of appropriateness) in decision-making, they largely focus on the logic of consequences, based on rational decision-making. In their landmark book on organisational theory, March and Simon make this emphasis explicit. See James G March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell 1993), 7–9.
61 John Farquhar’s doctoral dissertation on Air Force strategic reconnaissance provides an excellent account of the secondary role of strategic reconnaissance through WWII. See Farquhar, A Need to Know; The Role of Air Force Reconnaissance in War Planning, 1945–1953, doctoral diss., (Ohio State University 1991).
62 Warren Trest, Air Force Roles and Missions: A History, (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program 1998) see especially pp. 129 and 130.
63 Trest (1998) 132.
64 Lee (2016) 129 .
65 Merrill McPeak, ‘Selected Works 1990-1994ʹ, (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air UP, August 1995) 207–213 and 214–220.
66 Lee (2016)133–134; for more on Vietnam-era loss rates, see Ehrhard, (2000) 409–411.
67 Lee (2016) 132.
68 Lee (2016) 108–111; Michael Barzelay and Colin Campbell, Preparing for the Future: Strategic Planning in the US Air Force (Washington DC: Brookings Institution 2003), 157.
69 Lee (2016) 109–110; Barzelay and Campbell (2003) 157.
70 Paul Strickland, ‘The Early Evolution of the Predator Drone’, Studies in Intelligence 57/1 (March 2013), 2.
71 Ehrhard (2001) 409–411.
72 Lee (2016) 110; Chris Bowie and Michael Isherwood ‘The Unmanned Tipping Point’ Air Force Magazine (September 2010).
73 Jon Rosenwasser, Governance Structure and Weapons Innovation: The Case of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Medford, MA: Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 2004), 21.
74 Strickland (March 2013)1–6; Lee (2016) 119.
75 David Fulghum, ‘UAVs Win Reconnaissance Roles’, Aviation Week (11 July 1994).
76 Michael Hirschberg, To Boldly Go Where No Unmanned Aircraft Has Gone Before: A Half Century of DARPA’s Contributions to Unmanned Aircraft (Reston, VA: American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics 2010), 15.
77 Fulghum and John Morrocco, ‘US Readies Predator for Missions in Bosnia’, Aviation Week 142/23 (5 June 1995), 22.
78 Fulghum, ‘Predators Bound for Bosnia Soon’, Aviation Week 142/30 (13 November 1995), 72.
79 Fulghum (13 November 1995) 72; Hugh McDaid and David Oliver, Smart Weapons: The Secret History of Remote-Controlled Airborne Weapons (New York: Welcome Rain 1997), 107; Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, UAV Annual Report (Washington DC: Deputy Under Secretary for Defence, Advanced Technology 1996), 9.
80 Lee (2016) 122.
81 Fulghum, ‘Tier II Endurance UAV Nears First Flight’, Aviation Week 140/20 (16 May 1994), 20; Fulghum, ‘Predator UAV Produces High-Quality Images’, Aviation Week 141/22 (28 November 1994), 62.
82 Lee (2016) 131.
83 ibid., 131–132.
84 ACC History Office, Predator Comes to Air Combatant Command 1994–2005 (August 2006) 7; Lee (2016) 148.
85 Lee (2016) 150.
86 ACC History Office (2006) 9.
87 Lee (2016) 151–152.
88 Lt. Gen. Brett Dula, ‘Statement of Lt Gen Brett Dula, Vice Commander, Air Combat Command’, House of Representatives (9 April 1997) .
89 James Clark, ‘Memorandum for AF/CVA, CV, CSAF: PREDATOR’, and ‘Talking Paper on Predator’ (Bolling AFB: Air Force Historical Studies Office, 1996).
90 ACC History (2006) 15–16.
91 ACC History Office (2006) 14; Keith Tobin, ‘Piloting the USAF’s UAV Fleet: Pilots, non-rated Officers, Enlisted or Contractors?’ (Maxwell AFB, AL: School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, June 1999) 49.
92 ACC History Office (2006) 16.
93 ACC History Office (2006) 16; Rosenwasser (2003) 299.
94 ACC History Office (2006) 33.
95 Ibid., 26.
96 Wendt has the most concise articulation of this point; see Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, 46/2 (1992), 391–425.
97 Hurd (August 2008) pp. 301–302; Katzenstein (1996) 5.
98 Elizabeth Kier is one example of a scholar criticising theory testing for causality before subsequently employing it. See Kier (1997) 140 and 164. First noted in Griffin (2016) 206.
99 See Price and Reus Smit for an excellent discussion of the need to employ constitutive theory but also be open to alternative explanations. Price and Reus-Smit (1998) 277–281.
100 For a discussion of the explanatory power of both causal and constitutive approaches, see Wendt (1998) 101–118.
101 Wendt (1999)135.
102 Wendt (1998) 116; Price and Reus-Smit (1998) 277–281.
103 Wendt (1998) 103–104.
104 For more on the idea that both causal and constitutive theory are falsifiable, see Wendt (1999) 106.
105 For an overview of the USAF’s leadership transition from bomber pilot generals to fighter pilot generals, see Worden (1998).
106 Lee (2016) 125.
107 Ibid.
108 Bruce Danskine, Fall of the Fighter Generals: The Future of USAF Leadership (Maxwell AFB, AL: School of Advanced Airpower Studies June 2001), 105.
109 Quoted in Worden (1998) ix-x.
110 Quoted in Tim Hopper, General McPeak: An Effective Change Agent? (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College April 1997).
111 Jeffrey Smiley, ‘The Late Great Fighter Pilot’, US Air Force Fighter Weapons Review (Fall 1990) 31.
112 Lee (2016) 125.
113 Ibid., 138.
114 ACC (2006)3; LA Times (29 November 1995) 1; Burnett (5 July 1993) 17 .
115 McPeak, 1995, p. 207.
116 Lee (2016) 130.
117 Ibid., 181.
118 Barzelay and Campbell (2003) 157.
119 Barzelay and Campbell (2003) 157; Lee (2016) 140.
120 Eric Schmitt, ‘NATO Shifts Focus of Its Air Attacks on Bosnian Serbs’, New York Times (11 September 1995); Derek Chollet, Dayton History Project Interview with Warren Christopher (Langley, VA: CIA 30 October 1996).
121 Grissom (2006) 908–910.
122 Ibid., 910–1913.
123 Ibid., 913–916.
124 Lee (2016) 165.
125 Ibid., 167–168.
126 Ibid.
127 Ibid., 169.
128 Ibid.
129 For more on norm entrepreneurs, see Farrell (2005) 13.
130 Bruce W. Carmichael, Troy E. Devine, Robert J. Kaufman, Patrick E. Pence and Richard S. Wilcox, Strikestar 2025 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air Command and Staff College August 1996).
131 Barzelay and Campbell (2003) 65.
132 Lee (2016) 178–179.
133 Lee (2016) 170; Congress routinely provided additional funding for the USAF to acquire more Predators. See, for example, chart showing delta between request and appropriation from FY2000 to FY2006 in Rojan Robotham, Predator Acquisition Program Transition from Rapid to Standard Acquisition Practices (Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College 2012), 24.
134 Lee (2016) 178–179.
135 Ibid., 156.
136 Ibid., 157.
137 Rosenwasser (2004) 282; Lee (2016) 161; Houston Cantwell, ‘Operators of Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Breaking Paradigms’, Air and Space Power Journal (Summer 2009), 69.
138 Timothy Cullen, ‘The MQ-9 Reaper Remotely Piloted Aircraft: Humans and Machines in Action’, (doctoral diss., Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011) 218.
139 Richard Whittle. Predator: The Origins of the Drone Revolution (New York, Henry Holt 2014), 112.
140 Whittle (2014) 112.
141 Lee (2016) 163.
142 Ibid., 164.
143 Ibid., 174.
144 Ibid., 174–175.
145 Ibid., 173.
146 See, for example, Aviation Week & Space Technology, ‘Time to Cut War Risks with UAVs’ (12 June 1995) 224.
147 Lee (2016) 179–180; Whittle (2014) 112.
148 Rosen (1991) 20–21; Drone pilots had only one option for wing command, Creech AFB in Nevada, until the Air Force began the process of establishing additional base locations in 2016. See Philip Swarts, ‘Air Force Selects Finalists for New RPA Base’, Air Force Times (9 September 2016); Aaron Church, ‘RPA Ramp-Up’, Air Force Magazine (June 2011).
149 For more on cultural barriers to weaponisation, see Lee (2016) 184–283 and Adam Grissom, Caitlin Lee and Karl Mueller, Innovation in the United States Air Force: Evidence from Six Cases (Santa Monica: RAND Corp. 2014), 69–84.
150 NBC News, ‘Air Force Must Do More for War, Gates Says’, (21 April 2008) .
151 Shaun Eagan, New ACC Program Begins, Aimed to Improve MQ-1/9 Community (Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia: US Air Force Press Release 1 September 2015).
152 Stephen Losey, ‘Air Force Announces Official Retirement Date for Predator Drone’, Air Force Times (16 February 2018).
153 US Government Accountability Office, Unmanned Aerial Systems: Air Force Pilot Promotion Rates Have Increased, but Oversight Process of Some Positions Could Be Enhanced (Washington DC: GPO 7 February 2019).
154 Pending congressional approval of President Trump’s proposal. Matthew Donovan, ‘Unleashing the Power of Space: The Case for a Separate Space Force,’ War on the Rocks, 1 August 2019.
155 There are at least two books on the market suggesting the abolition of the USAF, arguing that the time of man flight as a means to win wars is past. See Robert Farley, Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky 2014) and Martin Van Creveld, The Age of Airpower, (New York: Public Affairs 2011), 437–441.
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Caitlin Lee
Caitlin Lee is a political scientist at RAND Corporation where she works on strategy, innovation and personnel issues.