On the Paucity of Military Thinking

A thought that hit me as I was reading the manuscript for a new book by Chet Richards (which is excellent by the way):

Within the current context, "military thinking" isn't a priority. One of the best indicators of why this is true, is how little the US Defense establishment funds the best military thinkers, theoreticians, etc (most of whom are outside the Defense Department). In short, the people that produce the military theory that drives future victories and not the day to day analyst (like a Cordesman).

I know many of the people that would fit this description, and while a few are employed within the military complex (usually doing things that aren't primary to thinking about the future of warfare), most do other things to make a living. The little money that is begrudgingly spent by the half a trillion dollar DoD to engage their minds is measured in the few hundreds of thousands (mostly for travel reimbursement and even that is often not available). It's actually pretty hilarious -- in that so much money could be spent, year in and year out, to drive to a destination that nobody has spent any real money on figuring out.

Comments

[zenpundit]

I perused the recent JFCOM ppt brief on Future war and saw "new" ideas that had been discussed on blogs about 2-3 years ago. Well, at least somebody was reading the posts at any rate. That's something.

BTW this parallels Federal practice in educationwhere the Department of Education spends a microscopic fraction of it's budget on actual research ( evel less on research that could be regarded as scientifically sound rather than social science surveys, racial demographic head counting, meta-analysis etc.)

[Andy]

A bloody sad state.

I had a multi-paragraph rant written out, but the powers that be don't care.

Reference#1: Odierno is the new Vice Chief of the Army

[chadmalik]

lets be realistic here. the pentagon system is mainly an elaborate corporate and congressional district welfare mechanism. hell - even RUMSFELD had trouble cutting unneeded weapons systems. we're at the point where its just impossible to spend pentagon revenues rationally. the budget is WAY too large. we have 5% of the world's population yet spend 50% of the total global military budget.

[Freyr]

I can't figure this out. Why does our government rely on American Enterprise Institute people to create and write policy for the defense department when we have people like the folks at DNI?

It would seem that these people [DNI] should be the people doing so? AEI does have some ex-military but they seem like hacks for the AEI folks?

I don't know them personally, but I can remember one ex-General during an AEI talk saying that Iran was funding the Sunnies and Shi'a. He offered no proof and I looked everywhere on the net for proof but I didn't find any?

I was almost like he said it just to get people fired up for war against Iran? Something doesn't smell right?